Search Results for: 2017 Croix

If one of the world’s greatest vignerons, Jean-Marc Roulot, trusts him to guide the precious wines of Domaine Roulot, what can we expect from David Croix’s personal domaine? The answer was expressed most succinctly by Clive Coates eight years ago in his book The Wines of Burgundy: “I expect great things here,” he wrote of Domaine de Croix. And indeed, the domaine has delivered. There can be no question that David Croix is one of the outstanding talents in Burgundy. We’d continue to call him “young”—as he has been tabbed for more than a decade—but the 36-year-old has made exceptional wines for long enough now that he no longer requires an age qualifier. An adult in full possession of his powers, David’s ascent has been steady and observable, starting with his first stint as an (actually) young winemaker in charge of turning around the negociant Camille-Giroud (which he did). His star continued to rise in 2005 when he and an investor group took over the old, burnished Domaine Duchets and its outstanding holdings in Beaune and Corton to create Domaine des Croix. Now, in addition to running Domaine des Croix, David has stepped down from Camille-Giroud to serve as winemaker for Jean-Marc Roulot. Not only an honor and a compliment, this is an unprecedented opportunity for Croix to continue his development alongside a modern master. Roulot’s wines, however, will always be Roulot's. With Domaine des Croix, David Croix has nothing less than an opportunity to change the way we view Burgundy, because the holdings Croix bought from Domaine Duchets are mainly centered on the village of Beaune. With its whopping 42 Premier Cru vineyards, Beaune is the largest yet largely forgotten commune of Burgundy. It’s overlooked because an overwhelming amount of its vineyards belong to the big negociant houses of nearby Beaune. How does this limit Beaune as a wine region? Because in the hands of large companies, the wines will never be pushed to reach their greatest potential: the attention to farming and winemaking by negociants will never compare to the work of a talented, small domaine. Once bottled, the wines disappear into large portfolios, becoming lost among the hundreds of labels the negociants produce. There’s simply no one to advocate for these terroirs, to represent them in the marketplace. The result is a never ending cycle of unfulfilled promise: The absence of parental love, the lack of individual attention condemns the wines to be forever what they are, what they ever have been—solid if unspectacular, tasty but lacking charm and personality. David Croix can change this. He can be the one. With his skill propelling his portfolio of excellent Beaune premier crus, Croix can command new attention to Beaune. He can raise expectations. We only have to be there to listen and pay attention. On Beaune’s vast hillside, David’s vineyards stand out, sumptuously teeming on a spring day with a of thicket of organic life, bursting with wildflowers and herbs and butterflies. Domaine de Croix doesn’t possess official organic certification, but one look at the plots suffices to explain his practices, which respect vineyard life in all forms. His winemaking is straightforward and without flash. David prefers to quiet his own influence that we may hear the vineyards speak. Above all, he prizes balance—extractions are tailored for the sites; the wines develop flesh and body, but not too much or too little. Each wine expresses a solidity, a respect for structure, and a frame for aging. One of the most compelling qualities about David is his directness. He answers all questions with honest answers, no candy-coating, no embellishment. His wines have similar qualities; they’re honest and direct. Respectful. We must remember that wine is a collaboration between people and nature. These are beautiful things to see: a humble young winemaker who has been diligently practicing his art for years reaching new heights; the joy of an entire wine zone getting the attention it deserves. To find David's wines, click here

There are few wines I am more excited for you to drink than Domaine des Croix's 2017s One of the most compelling qualities about David Croix is his directness. He answers all questions candidly, no candy-coating, no embellishment. His wines have similar qualities; they’re honest and straightforward. Respectful. There’s only beauty coming from the wines made from this estate. And joy—the joy of realizing possibilities. David Croix, like many other Burgundians his age, is always on the move. In the early years, his wines were by his own description: “Darker and tighter in the past.” He says that now the vines have changed and so have the wines. The fruit now is brighter and more expressive, and the wines more fun to taste when young. The domaine's conversion to organic culture in 2008 is now really starting to, well, bear fruit… Those secondary and tertiary components mentioned earlier began to take on more of the wine’s expression naturally. Perhaps it was the vines that influenced David’s style, not the other way around? Today, he believes that there is more natural balance in all of his wines. A Brief Story & Details On The Wines Regarding red Burgundy, the two appellations David’s Domaine des Croix is focused on seem to be thought of as second or third fiddle within their classification. Beaune’s premier crus are often placed in the middle to lower end of the totem—surely from all the Côte de Nuits’ main appellations. And perhaps it’s qualitatively (not only literally) scrunched in the middle of those from the Côte de Beaune, under Volnay, Pommard and even slightly lower on the hierarchy than Savignly-les Beaune, which I attribute mostly to the quality of domaines that achieve in the latter, like Bize, Pavelot and other big names from outside the appellation who have been drawn to it, like Lalou Bize-Leroy, Bruno Clair and Mongeard Mugneret. Corton, the quiet brute in the family of red grand crus, is experiencing a makeover and resurgence of interest. It seems to be the best value—if you can say such a thing—red grand cru appellation at the moment in the Côte d’Or, if not matched in price by what some consider lesser grand crus like Echezeaux and Clos Vougeots (at least from many producers), for example. Perhaps the new property taken by Domaine de la Romanée-Conti has piqued interest in Corton along with the increased scarcity and absurdly elevated prices of other red grand crus made by a load of fabulous, small production, big-name producers. Corton’s Pinot Noir vineyards seem to be the last of the great hills to be tamed in the modern era, and while its natural attributes may always be more brute than beauty compared to most other Grand Crus, there are those, like David, who are illuminating its finer points. We begin with the Beaune Village, where the plantings range from circa 1957 to 1983 within four parcels. 20% whole clusters are typical and will vary every year. Most of the wines go through the same kind of processing with two pumpovers at the beginning of its natural fermentation and four punchdowns in total toward the end. The fermentation for this wine was short compared to most of the rest of the range with around twelve to fourteen days. It spent twelve months or so in oak before being bottled. My experience with this wine has been that it is an exceptional village wine and I imagine it’s incomparable in its high quality to almost all other Beaune village wines. Croix's Beaune 1er Cru Les Cents Vignes is the best of his Beaune premier crus to drink young. David teases it for its early availability, suggesting a lack of profundity, but we don't see it like that. There's only beauty here. It’s the playful one in the range of premier crus—full of pleasure and no pretension. It sits low on the slope with brown gravelly-clay soil with grèze litée in the upper section and with alluvial soils in the bottom. Grèze litée is an interesting formation in certain spots on the Côte. It’s a small grain rock with sharp angles and often kind of rectangular or square, and about the size of our teeth. It’s a physical component that affects drainage in a positive way, at least when there is rain. In 2017 he used 15% stems and the fermentation lasted around thirteen or fourteen days, followed by aging for thirteen months in oak before bottling. The Beaune 1er Cru Bressandes is situated very close to Savigny-les-Beaune and is high up on the slope. For this reason there are usually no stems employed, because with the high rock content David—like many vignerons his age—feels that they’d contrast the built in textures already present; in this case, the “strong chalky character” David says that this vineyard consistently imparts to the wine. Bressandes is a pleasure for those who seek out great lines, solid mineral textures, lift and cut. This wine comes from vineyards planted between 1983 and 1991, and is usually fermented for eighteen days, and spends a year and a half in barrel before bottling. Further down slope from Bressandes and above Les Cents Vignes, still on the north side of the commune, sits the Beaune 1er Cru Les Grèves directly on the mid-slope; yes, the sweet spot, as they say, where the most balanced vineyards in the Côte d’Or sit. And it’s for this reason that it’s perhaps the MVP of Croix’s Beaune lineup. That doesn’t mean that it’s always the de facto frontrunner in the bunch, but it’s likely never far from whatever we may choose as our favorite in the Croix lineup—if it’s not the favorite to begin with. The vines were planted in 1968 in soil made of a mix of brown clay and, you guessed it: grèze is in the house. As already mentioned, grèze litée provides good drainage to balance out the clay’s capacity to be stingy with water—making for a fabulous soil balance that translates to the wine, endowing it with fine but solid textures and a good balance of vertical (mineral, tension) and horizontal (richness and flavor) elements. There are normally 20-25% stems used here, the fermentation lasted around thirteen days and the wine ages for about thirteen months in wood before bottling. Normally one of the wines that may pique the height of one's curiosity in David’s range is his Beaune 1er Cru Pertuisots. The others are somehow predictable, but in the best comforting and reassuring sort of way. This wine always carries some x-factors that are quite difficult to put your finger on… We’re on the south side of Beaune now, close to Pommard, with vines planted in 1971 and 1987 on deep clay soils and limestone bedrock. Perhaps its enigmatic quality is imparted through its cool, mineral texture and the wild berry and fresh savory green herb characteristics—that Pommard-like grit and untamed quality, one all too often these days under-appreciated by newer Burgundy drinkers. It’s got 20-25% stems included for its seventeen or eighteen days of fermentation, followed by a year and a half in wood before bottling. (The hill of Corton is pictured above) With Croix’s two red grand crus the differences begin with their terroirs. The Grand Cru Corton Les Grèves is ideally situated on the eastern slope about midway up, with a good balance of brown clay mixed with limestone rocks and chailles—a sort of flint stone (or in English, a chert; in French a silex)—atop hard limestone bedrock. The Grand Cru Corton La Vigne au Saint is low down on the slope facing south with deeper clay topsoil. Les Grèves gets no stems, La Vigne au Saint gets 50%. (If you haven’t noticed yet, there is a correlation between some cellars where in stonier soils there is less stem used, and with more clay heavy soils there is more stem.) Les Grèves was a 20-day ferment and La Vigne au Saint sixteen days. Both were nineteen months in barrel before bottling in 2017, and in 2018 they will both be bottled after twenty-two months. Perhaps one could speculate that La Vigne au Saint is more upfront, while Grèves takes a little bit of time to perform once the corks are pulled. However, these contrasts vary from year to year and sometimes they are the exact opposite of what's expected. David regularly laments his parcels of Corton as somehow being the lesser of the hill within the grand cru lieux-dits because they are often not considered to be in the same qualitative level as the Clos du Roi, the king of this grand cru's lieux-dits on the hill. But we don’t buy it. A young and idealistic winegrower from Champagne we recently began to work with, Maxime Ponson, said that he believes that in many cases vineyards that take less work to achieve a great result doesn’t mean those that require more work to achieve a similarly great result are lesser vineyards; it’s a matter of effort and understanding what to do to make the best wine you can with each parcel. David does a fine job with his grand crus and they easily rise to the expectation we may have for grand cru wines. Fortunately, they are still priced fairly (for those who can afford to play the in the financially slippery slope of Burgundy) and I would expect that given this vintage, these wines will be a knockout and deliver on the expectations from those looking for a true grand cru experience from a young wine. David Croix’s Corton-Charlemagne parcel is located in Le Charlemagne, an interior subdivision lieu-dit of this grand cru and part of the commune, Aloxe-Corton. His vineyard is just below the forest that caps this three-sided hill, and faces west at an altitude of 320 to 330 meters. The bedrock here is pernand marl, a white calcareous marlstone with a high silt content, giving the rock a grittier texture to the touch than other usual marls within the Côte d’Or. The topsoil is composed of material derived from the bedrock as well as clay and limestone scree from the top of the hill. The parcel’s Chardonnay vines were completely replanted in the mid- and late-1980s. The upper section of Le Charlemagne’s white marls and their higher than average silt content seem to impart “a lot of texture with salinity and tannin to the wines—delicate tannins, sensitive to too much new oak,” David explained. In the most recent vintages he’s moved away from aging in newer wood to allow these finely textured grape tannins to not be covered by stronger and potentially harsher wood tannins from newer oak barrels. He now uses 350-liter barrels with a smaller proportion of new wood, which he views as a good compromise. The 228 and 500-liter French oak barrels found throughout his cellar he views as less ideal given how “dense” this wine is. He believes his Corton-Charlemagne needs longer-term soft massaging through the right amount of aeration without taking on new oak notes to achieve his ideal wine. The longer aging time in the 350-liter barrels builds on the wine’s freshness, its naturally strong core power and intricate complexity. This Corton-Charlemagne is notably more bright and elegant than ever.

Our morning started at Domaine Simon Bize with Chisa Bize. This domaine has always had one of my favorite labels in Burgundy and it would've been one of the last I'd ever hoped for a change. Chisa pulled out some bottles to taste and lo and behold a new label! Somehow she managed to improve what was already a timeless classic by maintaining the same basic design but with sleek new paper and a more minimalistic presentation—I love it! Another change at the domaine is that all the 2016 red wines are 100% whole bunch fermentations. From what we tasted of her 2016s, I think this was a great move! After lunch we went to one of my favorites, David Croix. He lost about 80% of his crop in 2016 but what made it to bottle is inspiring, seriously focused and delicious. After tasting his 16s, we did a thorough preview of his superb and extremely pleasurable 2017s, with comparisons on all sorts of different barrel coopers—Atelier Centre France, one of the most talked about coopers for their soft touch with new wood, was the runaway favorite. Always on the move, David is 100% focused on his own project (Domaine des Croix) now after parting from Camille Giroud followed by an 11-month experience with Jean-Marc Roulot. With more time on his hands he has adjusted a few things in the cellar and spends more time than ever in the vineyards—a reallocation of his time he welcomes. His use of lower SO2 doses from the beginning of vinification and no cold soak prior to fermentation has rendered wines more red-fruited, lifted and fine. I loved what he did in the past and I love even more what he's doing now—no surprise, eh? It’s always a pleasure to visit with someone like David who is so open and humble about their process and what they have learned along the way. Strangely, David seems to remain one of the best kept secrets in the Côte d'Or. Our final visit was with Olivier Lamy, in Saint-Aubin. His otherworldly range of wines continues to find new heights from vintage to vintage. His 2016s were obnoxiously good out of barrel—a scary good sign for things to come with the almost universal consensus that 2017 may be of the greatest white wine vintages of our time. There is always some interesting experiment Olivier shares with us when we visit. Last time it was Diam vs. natural corks—a tasting that didn’t help clarify my opinion on the question of which is the better closure. Many producers we work with ask for my opinion and I can’t say because I think this is such a personal decision that they have to make themselves. However, what did seem clear in that tasting is that I am sure drinking the wines side by side over a good portion of the day would be far more conclusive than the snapshot of a short tasting. That said, when I think of Diam corks I can’t help but remember the saying about Bose speakers: “no highs, no lows, it must be Bose.” Yesterday's class with Olivier was an experiment between different kinds of SO2 on both red and white. How can a 0.1% difference in the purity of SO2 from 99.9% pure to 100% pure make such a big difference in a wine? By the samples we tasted, the differences were more than subtle and opened another rabbit hole to get lost in. Olivier's relentless pursuit to better understand his relationship with wine, the vine and nature is admirable and inspiring. I've not met anyone who is more committed as a student, teacher and practitioner of his craft than Olivier. He makes me want to up my game every time I visit with him. Chablis is next.

That question again... Is it possible by taste to assess what type of bedrock and soil a wine comes from? I am aware that extensive, abstract or technical wine writing doesn’t usually sell wine, but I don’t care. I view short, oversimplified marketing strategies with catchy, punchy and clever comic book-style writing too short and shallow, word salads that don’t mean much, only intended to attract attention. I prefer the longer form with wine because wine is not a small subject, unless you are a beginner or just drink it because you like it and nothing more; I wish sometimes I could do that too! Short form writing is the same as a quick wine tasting, while the long form is the exploration of wine as one drinks a bottle and really digs in. Many of you subscribe to us because we sell delicious wines made with sound philosophy, practice and a lot of heart, but also because we continue to adventure deeply into the conversation of this utterly fascinating subject. With this offer, I want to share something with you that (like many others in our field) I can’t seem to get enough of. That is, the search for clues to the currently not fully understood organoleptic link between wine and the composition of its bedrock and topsoil. Science can’t yet explain all the processes for what makes a wine taste the way it does, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t possibilities to be considered; we just haven’t found the answers to everything yet. But when we do find answers, will it diminish the thrilling mystery of wine? When one mystery is solved, another will inevitably emerge. So we’re safe to share our ideas outloud, even if they are not completely right; exploration and searching are always at least half the fun! In what I hope will be the first in a series of offers that follow a specific theme, today we focus on wines that grow on landscapes developed more than three hundred million years ago. They come from a world we would hardly recognize today, a time long before the dinosaurs: The Pangaean Era. A Short Preface to the Wines Each of these wines comes from land formed in what geologists refer to as the Variscan orogeny. This mountain building event took place 370 million to 290 million years ago and formed an ancient chain of mountains that connected North America to Eastern Europe and were likely comparable in size to today’s Himalayas. Now they are squat, rounded and extremely short by comparison after hundreds of millions of years of erosion. These mountains were formed during the collision of two supercontinents, Gondwana and Laurussia, and once connected they formed Earth’s last supercontinent, Pangaea. The remnants of this ancient belt-like chain of mountains is connected to today’s ten wines that come from Spain and Portugal’s Iberian Massif, France’s Armorican and Central Massifs, as well as central and eastern Europe’s Bohemian Massif. All of the land that separates these massifs today developed over the last two-hundred million years as Pangaea broke apart and the Earth’s seven continents drifted to where they today. There is no doubt that a wine’s bedrock and soil composition influences certain elements of taste. We can start with the soil’s grain size, meaning whether it’s clay, silt, sand, gravel or a mix. This aspect of the soil imparts a different shape to the wine, which we sometimes describe somewhere between angular and round, or vertical and horizontal. It’s commonly accepted that sandier soils typically veer wines toward elegance and lift, where clay-rich soils make them more broad and muscular. This is an influence of soil grain, not as much as what the soil is derived from. A wine’s palate-weight and the strength of where it finishes with the most intensity and length appears to be more often associated with its bedrock and soil composition, especially if there is a particularly dominant rock type, like a limestone, granite, schist or slate. This is where we will focus on in this somewhat short essay. With today’s current trend of less is more in the cellar, the perception of these characteristic traits from specific rock types has become even more evident to those who spend time observing this particular characteristic of a wine. Indeed this seems like some seriously advanced wine assessment, but once the concept is grasped, it’s digestible. Don’t worry, you’re going to get this. That said, there is one little tedious technical detail that needs to be addressed before we get started. That is that there are two basic categories of igneous rock: intrusive and extrusive. Both were once liquid magma, but an intrusive rock slowly cooled below the earth’s surface, while an extrusive rock was expelled by volcanoes and cooled on the earth’s surface quickly in minutes, hours or days. The resulting wines from these two igneous rock types are extremely different, and volcanic wines have been excluded from today’s conversation, because most volcanic rock on the earth’s continental crust appeared there after the time of Pangaea, and it tends to influence wines quite differently than intrusive igneous rocks, like a granite or gabbro. Finally the Wines! Intrusive Igneous Rock Whites Our first wine is close to home—literally… I live about ten minutes from Quinta do Ameal, which sits along the Lima River in Portugal, a magical place where our dream to live in Portugal started. Ameal’s Pangaean connection is the Iberian Massif, and we are located in the far northwestern area of Portugal, inside the Lima Valley of the Vinho Verde, the latter is Portugal’s coldest wine region, and the former it’s coldest subzone. The bedrock and topsoil at Ameal is 100% granite, an intrusive igneous rock. Granite wines are almost always front loaded in the palate, no matter where they’re from. And you can especially feel this palate pressure about fifteen seconds after you swallow the wine and observe the finish. Granite imparts elegance to its wines and a lot of salty freshness too, which this wine has in spades. This is especially useful for grapes with naturally high acidity, like Loureiro, which constitutes the entirety of this wine. I’ve drunk my way through a lot of Portugal and quite a few of its good restaurants and have asked sommeliers and waiters for their suggestion on wines from the Vinho Verde region just to see what they have to say. Without exaggeration, if Quinta do Ameal is on the list, it is always recommended; and for the price and versatility it always wins. At Ameal, everything is carefully controlled and organically farmed. This wine is raised exclusively in stainless steel and goes with almost any kind of food, especially seafood, fish and full-flavored pork dishes— barbeque included. And it’s a wine for absolutely any occasion. There are only a few vineyard rocks I’ve held that are as heavy and hard as the gabbro found at Morandière's Muscadet vineyards, in the Loire Valley’s furthest west major region. Gabbro is an igneous rock, like granite, that was formed underground before it was plunged to the surface hundreds of millions of years ago with tectonic movements. By sight, the gabbro in his vineyard has a slightly green/grey cast and sometimes some faded white splotches. What it delivers to the wine is a tremendously dense core and front palate power on the finish, similar to what granite imparts. Muscadet is a cold region and is part of France’s Armorican Massif, named after pre-Pangaean mash up when Gondwana and Laurussia played a rough game of bumper plate tectonics with the smaller floating continent Armorica sandwiched in the middle, forming a long, crumpled up, snake-like mountain range. During this period the vineyard land of Muscadet used to be connected by land to the Vinho Verde, through northern Iberia, and there are similarities between the way these wines feel—especially in the palate aftermath once you’ve swallowed the wine. The grapes from these regions are very different; both are super fresh, but the Loureiro is extremely lithe but angular, while the Melon de Bourgogne, the grape in Muscadet, often carries more density, texture and deep mineral and metal characteristics; but the mark of their similar bedrocks is evident, leaving pressure on the front palate of the finish. Metamorphic Rock Whites The Bohemian Massif, another Variscan remnant, is what makes Austria’s Wachau river gorge special. The Danube River carved out this narrow, picturesque gorge now covered in steeply terraced vineyards atop soft, short riverbanks filled with vines and small villages. If it weren’t for the Danube slicing through this area, it would be a very different geological setting—a continuation of the relatively flat plateau covered in forest next to the Pannonian plain toward the east. The Danube exposed, gneiss, a beautiful metamorphic motherrock with colorful earthtone mineral bands that give the impression of a bunch of strings bunched up, compressed together and turned into rock. Tegernseerhof's Superin vineyard is planted to Grüner Veltliner and sits just next to the Danube, though not on a terrace. It’s in a unique position compared to other vineyards down by the river in that it's butted up against a hard gneiss outcrop that the village, Durnstein, was built on. As the river rushed by, it stripped the topsoil from the rock, leaving a shallow covering of river sediments on top of this gneiss bedrock. Here, in classic Tegernseerhof style (mineral, crystalline and pure), we jump into the metamorphic wine world. Unlike the first two wines, this one digs deeper in a way that, as the famous Chilean soil scientist, Pedro Parra, says: “it drills into your back palate.” While the igneous rock wines hits hard and continues to weigh heavily on the front palate after the wine is gulped down, here it rests on the side and back palate, often leaving the mid- and front-palate finish nearly non-existent by comparison to what an intrusive igneous rock imparts. Continuing on with another metamorphic white wine, we jump back over to the Armorican Massif, not too far east of Muscadet, and into likely the oldest exposed rock formation in France—at least according to Patrick Baudouin, the maker of this wine who, like me, spends a lot of time shooting the breeze about minerals, smashing rocks and sipping wines with geologists and asking too many questions. Here we find some pretty nice schist, a metamorphic rock formation about five hundred million years old. Baudouin's Coteaux du Layon "Les Croix" is an organically farmed vineyard within a complex valley stitched together with a wide variety of rock formations, largely from volcanic and metamorphic origin. I don’t know what it is with these metamorphic rocks, but they also make wines especially salty and with strong impressions of metal even more than mineral; the grape, Chenin Blanc, is a fabulous transmitter of terroir and really lets these features fly. Put a Baudouin Chenin from the Layon or Savennières, next to a Chenin grown on a limestone terroir just toward the east, in Saumur, and if you don’t know Chenin well, you may not believe that they are even the same grape, let alone grown so close to each other. Like other wines grown on metamorphic bedrock and soil, Patty’s salty and fresh Les Croix drills into the back and side of the palate, especially on the finish, somehow leaving you quenched while at the same time still wanting your next sip. Intrusive Igneous and Metamorphic Rock White Last for the whites today is the 2018 Bodegas Paraguas "Atlantico." Here we have a blend of different motherrocks, and you’re going to feel it. We’re back to the Iberian Massif, more specifically the Galician Massif in northwestern Spain, and a wine region I believe to be one of the greatest future prospects in all of Europe, the Ribeiro. Why such a seemingly cavalier claim for this mostly unknown wine region? We’ll get to the geology, but first we have to note its history as one of Spain’s most celebrated wine regions of yesteryear (the other being Rioja, which never fell out of favor) before more than a century long series of problems, listed here (in order to the best of my knowledge): powdery mildew, phylloxera, downey mildew, WWI, Spanish Civil War, dictatorship, WWII, continued dictatorship, post-war industrialization and the abandonment of the countryside by poor farmers in search of work within nearby bigger cities. From a geological standpoint, the Ribeiro has no limits to its potential with its blend of a wide range of metamorphic and igneous rocks. And in the three parcels that make up this wine we have a blend of schist and granite. Taking into account where these wines strike and remain with pressure on the palate (intrusive igneous in the front, metamorphic in the back and on the sides) you can imagine the level of impression on this wine. It’s more diverse but still strong on the palate, making for a wine with more dimension in some ways than the others. That doesn’t make it better, it just makes it different and perhaps more full and rounded, and without dominance of either schist or granite. The primary grape here is Treixadura, one that lends itself to more richness and softer acidity. I guess one could say it’s kind of like the Chardonnay of Galicia, but if it’s not managed well in the vineyard it can lose its freshness more quickly; but at Paraguas it’s done quite right and surprisingly taut for this grape. If you buy this mix of ten wines, try this one after you’ve gone through the other whites so you are more familiar with the way the individual rock categories feel in the palate before you get the one-two punch here. Intrusive Igneous & Metamorphic Rock Red Continuing on with the igneous and metamorphic vineyard mix, and because our first red is from the Ribeiro and extremely elegant, I put Cume do Avia's Colleita 6 as the starter in the lineup of reds. The vineyard for this wine is not far from Paraguas, deep inside the Galician Massif. As mentioned in the last white, many factors are at play in the Ribeiro. But there is also the proximity of the land to the Atlantic, the constant whistle of fierce winds that bring in fresh air and help grapes to stay somewhat dry in this pest-rich environment. And of course, there is the richness in diversity of the bedrock and topsoil composition. The bedrock and topsoil in Cume do Avia’s vineyards add great breadth to their wines and from one meter to the next they can quickly alternate. Here you’ll find a kaleidoscope of different intrusive igneous rock, metamorphic schist and slate. The soil grain is equally diverse and randomly shifts back and forth between sand and clay. The soils are dark orange, white or brown, depending on the mineral makeup. It’s an extremely complex area within only twenty-two acres. What is incredible about this wine made principally from the grapes Brancellao, Caiño Longo and Souson, is that it is so sleek, elegant and low in alcohol (11%) and looks like it won’t feel or taste like anything, but nothing could be further from the truth. When this wine hits your palate, and the weight of all we spoke about—the front palate from the intrusive igneous rock, the side and middle of the metamorphic rock, and now all the different grains of soil from sand to clay—flood the palate with an unexpected weight and pressure, like you have a mouthful of buckshot (the small metal balls inside shotgun shells) resting on all points of your mouth with the added electricity that metal brings to the tongue. It’s really quite fascinating how this level of complexity happens with such a humbly-priced wine, but for me these elements point to the rock medley the grapes are grown in. Metamorphic Rock Reds We have two wines on this offer from Breogan Rodriguez, the one-man show at Terra Brava. Breo’s wines come from three hectares of steeply terraced vineyards in the Amandi sub-region of Galicia’s Ribeira Sacra, on Spain’s ancient Galician Massif. The vines face south and southwest on shallow decomposed gneiss and slate terraces with topsoil derived from the bedrock and kept in place by the terraces. Cool air from the Atlantic and warm air from the Mediterranean influences the climate, creating a tug of war that usually brings beautiful balance to the growing season. However, this is extreme wine country in every way—hot summer days, cold nights, heavy rains, unexpected hailstorms in the summer, etc. And it’s the most fun place to bring someone who hasn’t been there before to hear the gasps and oohs and ahhs as you drop into the gorge from seemingly a mildly hilly country road—just like many of the entry points to Germany’s Mosel River Valley. It’s an impressive place and it’s impossible to capture the literally breathtaking intensity of it in a photo. I admire Breo and his fine craftwork in the cellar and organic practice in this extreme and sometimes brutally harsh work environment. Terra Brava's "Xastre" could easily be mistaken for a wine from France’s Northern Rhône in taste, were it not for this mix of indigenous Galician grapes that bring their unique stamp unlike any others outside this part of the Iberian Peninsula. This is no surprise because most (some would say all) of the best vineyards in the Northern Rhône Valley are remnants of Pangaea's Variscan mountains. They share a similar geological history and makeup, with their intrusive igneous and metamorphic rocks. This wine, made of 85% Mencia, is seductive with fresh berry and earthy nuances along with a natural propensity for being a strong transmitter of mineral and metal impressions, associated with the bedrock it's grown in. The textural grit is expansive and the pressure of the finish is clearly weighted in the back and side palate on the finish. The next wine is the Terra Brava "Lagar do Breo." It’s made with 95% Caiño Longo, an indigenous grape specific to this area of the Iberian Peninsula that will catch your full attention with the first taste. It can be freakishly acidic for a red wine, but it delivers a full range of complexity that is undeniably noble, and somehow balanced. This must be the most overlooked mega-talent on the list of the world’s great grapes, at least from what I’ve tasted. I guess one could criticize Caiño Longo for not being so subtle, but the wine as a whole can be layered for days and may in the future stand tall next to the world’s elite grapes. There is some kind of beautiful rage inside Caiño Longo and its naturally high acidity hums like an overhead power line, much like a Chenin Blanc from the hill of Brézé, in France’s Loire Valley. And, like a great Côte Rôtie or Cornas that shares some likeness to this wine, you must take your time to see all it has to offer, and you surely will have the same effect on the finish of the wine's mid and back palate. There are layers and layers to discover here and given that there are so few wines made with almost 100% Caiño Longo, it would be a waste (but not entirely) to gulp it down and not give it the time to fly as high as it will go. Finally, we jump to Beaujolais. We are now entering France’s Massif Central, home to so many great wines of France. I saved Thevenet for last in the discussion because of the power of the 2015 vintage. Sure, 2015 has its detractors because of this power, but when we speak about balance, it can exist on all levels, whether gentle and soft, or brutally strong. 2015 Beaujolais is no exception to this. It is indeed a vintage of impressively high natural acidity and higher alcohol than usual, but it also has a profound well of complexity that could help its wines ride as far and long as any vintage before it. The detractors? They are mostly Beaujolais drinkers newer to the game in search of wines that must be under 13% alcohol to be worthy of their appreciation. Sadly, this perspective pretty much shuts the door on many of the world’s epic red wine regions. Wine’s diversity, not its uniformity, is what keeps it interesting. So, we finish with two Gamay wines in Beaujolais grown not more than a few kilometers away from each other, same grape, weather, vinification in old oak barrels, cellar aging, low SO2 regimen and organic farming, but different bedrock and dirt. I’ve not found greater confusion about the geological composition of any other famous wine spot than the Côte du Py. I’ve been on the hill with the geologist Brenna Quigley, talked with winegrowers, looked at everything I can find on the Internet with very little consensus. There are a lot of different explanations that include igneous intrusive or extrusive (volcanic) rock, and metamorphic rock; it’s most often referred to as either a schist (metamorphic rock) or andesite (an extrusive igneous rock, so a volcanic rock formation). Recently I asked Brenna what her general conclusion is for the Côte du Py. Her safe bet is to say that it is likely a mix of meta-diorite (the "blue granite" people refer to), meta-basalt and likely some granite; so likely dominated by metamorphic rock. The Côte du Py is a rounded, freestanding lump of a hill with these rocks scattered about ranging in color from orange to light and dark shades of teal. Important to note is that whatever the rock is, it's incredibly hard and the vineyards are often spare in topsoil, making for straight and powerful wines with more defined lines and a deeper core concentration than what is typically found from wines grown in granite. Wines grown on metamorphic bedrock showcase pronounced unique stony, mineral and deeply metal nuances in the aroma, taste and texture. The most palate impact with this wine rendered from 80+ year old vines is to be found toward the back and sides of the mouth—in the palate it has always felt more like a meta wine to me. Intrusive Igneous Rock Red There is no doubt whatsoever that granite completely dominates Thevenet's Morgon Vieilles Vignes vineyards. The mix comes mostly from vineyards in Douby, with semi-coarse, shallow topsoil and exposed bedrock on the north side of Morgon between the Côte du Py and Fleurie; and the lieu-dit, Courcelette, where his parcel is on soft, coarse beach-like granite sands. Much of these vineyards are on gently sloping aspects ranging from southeast to southwest. There are also rocky sections where the bedrock pokes out, but generally the vineyards are fine-grained to coarse sands. This leads to wines that exhibit elegance and subtlety, but are endowed with great length and complexity from its ancient vines that range between 85-150+ years old. If you’ve read this entire essay on these wines, it may seem redundant to say that you can expect a little bomb on the front palate and remains strong for a good length on the finish. That concludes this extremely oversimplified (though complex) idea that I have observed and discussed at length with wine lovers, wine specialists and scientists, for quite a few years now. I hope you enjoyed it and take the leap to give these wines a swirl. Thanks to MSc in Geology, Ivan Rodriguez, for his assistance on the geological story of Pangaea and the Variscan orogeny.

It's been a long wait, but Jean-Noël Gagnard's 2017s finally made it. Within our group of restaurant sommeliers, Jean-Noël Gagnard has some seriously devout fans that have snapped up our minuscule supply for their restaurant programs since we began to import her wines a decade ago, starting with the 2008 vintage. Perhaps it’s because the range is a match made for classical French countryside cooking that doesn’t stray too far off the path and into trendy winemaking. While Gagnard's Chassagne-Montrachets drink beautifully without an accompaniment of food, it’s a pity not to pair them up with something like slow roasted chicken, or even a richer French classic fish preparation, like à la meunière—a dish I think could be a top choice with the aromatic and taste profile of these Chardonnay wines.Is 2017 one of the white Burgundy vintages of a generation? For a quick anecdote about the 2017 Côte d’Or whites, I will borrow the words of Pierre Morey (by way of a conversation with his daughter, Anne), a quiet legendary winegrower who made his reputation as the régisseur (the wine director) for Domaine Leflaive during twenty years’ time. He played a largely influential role in Leflaive's conversion to biodynamic farming, along with his own biodynamically-run domaine, Pierre Morey. As I recall, Anne stated her father said it was among the most beautiful Chardonnay fruit he has ever seen. What else is there to say? A Brief Story & Details On The Wines The style at this Chardonnay focused domaine is one of subtlety led with gentle sweet golden earth tones. Often found in Caroline’s range of whites are beautiful wild mushrooms scents of chanterelles and porcinis, brown butter, dried herbs and always some kind of citrus tones, often like a Meyer lemon or the unique purity of an Amalfi Coast lemon grown on steep limestone terraces overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s hard to know exactly why her style is unique in this way—I can’t find another that I could say is a mirror image—and even to ask her why her wines are the way they are brings her to a full smile, often bursts of laughter, followed by little explanation except that it’s just the way she does it. In the cellar, the wines are made in a straightforward style, and thankfully gimmick-free within a white Burgundy world of too much of one thing, or not enough of another. There are no games with reduction, so the perception of mineral nuances is textured and aromatically present and finely tuned. Flashy wood techniques and other fooling about simply aren’t her style either, just a confidently crafted set of wines that demonstrates—and concedes to—the differences between their terroirs with striking clarity. When one does organic farming like she does (along with certification for it), as well as following many biodynamic principals and treatments, a soft touch in the cellar seems the logical approach. We begin with Gagnard’s Hautes-Côtes de Beaune "Sous Éguisons." This small Chardonnay parcel was planted in the early to mid-2000s high above Saint-Aubin, west of Chassagne-Montrachet. It’s delicious and serious Chardonnay deeply marked by its terroir: 430-450 meters of altitude (30% higher than most that lie on the Côte), colder weather than vineyards on the Côte d’Or main slope, spare clay and limestone rock topsoil and limestone bedrock. This is the highest energy and frequency in her range of still white wines and over delivers on expectations, even from this special winegrower. Gagnard's Chassagne-Montrachet "Les Chaumes" is always a tough one for us because of the quality of the wine and its price—at least for those who have a budget for Burgundy—and the minuscule quantity we get each year. Burgundy can be confusing and when one tries to dig into the lieux-dits of premier cru wines it can get a little hairy, but few more than the south side of Chassagne-Montrachet. In this specific area of the commune, known for its darker red clay soil, the premier crus, Boudriottes and Morgeot, are singular parcels in their own right, but they can swallow many of the less famous premier crus surrounding them and put their names on the label despite being different vineyards. To make it more confusing, there is a parcel of premier cru also named Les Chaumes, but Gagnard’s village parcel Les Chaumes abuts the premier cru, Boudriotte, just to the south. This wine always exceeds the expectation and given its proximity to one of the village’s most well-known vineyards, it’s no surprise. Gagnard’s parcel of Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Chaumées (not to be confused with the previous village wine, Les Chaumes) begins at 300 meters altitude and faces northeast on a relatively steep slope composed of shallow rocky white clay soil and limestone bedrock. It sits within the mouth of the east to west valley that opens up into Saint-Aubin and is exposed to cooler winds than those more protected in the middle of the Côte and far away from the valley. The characteristic trait of this type of terroir is expressed by Caroline through strikingly fine cords and a harmoniously high, but gently flowing analog frequency. Given this terroir’s natural tendency for tension, freshness and excesses of stone and mineral-like impressions, it’s all tucked into its read-between-the-lines style. This is not a tour de force Chassagne, but a tour de finesse. Les Chaumées' discreet nature will resonate with those who enjoy quietly beautiful, confident and thoroughly complex wines. The Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Blanchot-Dessus is one of Gagnard’s best wines. It’s grandiose in a grand cru way with its heavyweight body and richness for a good premier cru price. The premier cru, Blanchot-Dessus, (not the village lieu-dit close by), is the story of seemingly an unlucky fault break in the limestone bedrock that may have led to this vineyard ultimately being stripped of the name, Blanchot-Batard-Montrachet, which if it weren't it would have catapulted it into eternal glory as the sixth Montrachet grand cru. Now it's one of the few remaining secrets for Burgundy insiders. There’s a lot more story behind this vineyard (which you can read about here), but suffice it to say that with only three cases imported each year into California, and with this banner year, it's a no-brainer for those with a bit of money set aside for special and rare bottles. The Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Caillerets is Gagnard's top premier cru; some consider it to be the grandest cru on the south hill of the commune. Gagnard’s parcels are prime, and located in En Caillerets on the spine of the hill and Les Combards, higher up on the slope. The other two vineyards within the commune that can be labeled as Les Caillerets are Vigne Derrière and Chassagne—yes, a vineyard in Chassagne-Montrachet is simply named Chassagne. What’s interesting about Gagnard’s parcels is that they are either quite steep (Les Combards) or on what appears to be more of a strongly convex section (En Caillerets), making for—in theory—even less topsoil than others that have a more concave slope, like much of Vigne Derrière, the vineyard just north of En Caillerets with the village on the other side. What a convex hill slope means is likely more cut, freshness and stoniness to go along with Les Caillerets’ fabulous body. The only critique I would dare to send the direction of Les Caillerets (and this is a stretched criticism) is that sometimes it’s too good at everything—like the MVP-type quarterback in American football that can throw perfectly and run with the speed and agility of a spooked deer. Caillerets’ imperfections are few. However, its shortcomings may be found by those who adore the imperfections in a wine that make it stand out, so long as the losses are made up with authenticity and honesty—for me, this is often the case with wine, and friends too. Everything is in line with Les Caillerets and it’s a tough one to beat, and criticize. Once the cork is pulled, take your time; this wine needs it. It will show you its magnificence one slow layer at a time and will surely earn your respect, as it confidently carries the reputation of Chassagne-Montrachet on its very capable shoulders. One extremely memorable bottle of Gagnard's Santenay Rouge 1er Cru Clos de Tavannes was opened for me on a recent visit to Caroline's cellar. It was decades old (I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t tell you what vintage it was!), and it floored me. It made a permanent believer out of me concerning the quality of Pinot Noir that is often overlooked in Santenay and Chassagne-Montrachet. Clos de Tavannes sits just across the border toward the southeast from Chassagne-Montrachet on perfect red wine soil: iron and calcium rich red clay and limestone. My suggestion is to forget about this wine once in your possession and occasionally check out its pretty label—one of my favorites in Burgundy. Caroline L’Estimé, the winegrower for decades now, and daughter of Jean-Noël Gagnard, destems the grapes completely but isn’t afraid to extract old school tannins to create a wine designed for the long haul. This renders a young wine with a stern palate but strikingly bright red fruit aromas that can be misleading for its early approachability. We were allocated only 48 bottles of this wine and a few will make it to my cellar, as they do each year. 2017 should offer a wine with much more upfront appeal than past years, but I’d still suggest to wait.

A path along Scotland's Great Glen Way Here we are again with yet another new year after one that seems to have blistered by. Indeed, it wasn’t a complete year on our business end, what with the restaurants not opening until after the first quarter, but from there it quickly picked up momentum. I got home to Portugal a couple of weeks ago after a two-month California trip that was capped by my catching a strange (non-Covid) bug that was mild but lasted for more than three weeks; it even moved into my chest and called for antibiotics to head off the possibility of pneumonia. I wasn’t able to see everyone I wanted to see, but I was happy to get together with many of my friends and family, and to connect with our company staff on a deeper level than a Zoom call. I’m so proud of each of them and feel privileged to work with such talented and thoughtful people. Inflation. Wow! I remain shocked by the overall price increases of food products at the grocery store and in most restaurants, and some of our growers are feeling the brunt of the trend, saying that it’s all due to material shortages from freight delays, etc. But what I’ve seen so far from them is very modest—not much more than what it takes to cover these increased costs. Meanwhile, some other suppliers take advantage of higher market prices, bloating their margins even when their costs have gone down. Here at the Source, we wish you the best luck and great fortune in the new year. New Arrivals I love writing our newsletter. It’s a great outlet for me to communicate to you—relatively unhindered—from what is basically isolation here in our homebase of the Portuguese countryside. There’s a lot arriving this month (including three new producers!) from many different countries, including France, Italy, Austria and Spain. I’ll try to keep it short, but if you’ve seen our newsletters before, you’ll have noticed this isn’t easy for me because there’s so much to share. France During my recent visit to California, I had the chance to show some older vintage wines from David Duband to our top buyers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego; they were on fire, and he now has a lot of new fans. In the end it became a feeding frenzy, and the allotments we offered sold out every day, sometimes forcing us to find different wines to show midway through our tasting appointments. David Duband Duband’s 2018 and 2019 wines are not what one would expect from these two vintages known for their greater ripeness levels. For Duband, both are fresh and, remarkably, under 13.4% alcohol across the entire range—not something that most domaines can boast, something David made sure to point out. Along with the range from Demougeot in 2018 and 2019, Duband may be one of the only other domaines we import where I find the vintages relatively equal in both quality, interest and overall personal stylistic preference. I am generally not one for wines that are too far from red tones if redness is the common characteristic of the grape variety, specific terroir, or traditional style—which isn’t to say I’m against purple or blacker wines, if that’s what the varieties/terroirs usually create without too many cellar techniques involved. Redness in red Burgundy to me usually suggests that there is less hand in the wine and a greater freshness at the fruit level, but this is only my perspective. Escaping darker tones was nearly impossible in these vintages due to the intensity of the sun (certainly not even close in overall redness of the 2017 vintage), but thankfully red fruit characteristics still dominate chez Duband, with the darker notes a nice contrast and a welcome contributor to each wine’s overall complexity. In the 2012 edition of the French publication, Le Guide des Meilleurs Vins de France, they went so far as to say that the turning point of Duband’s style closely reflects the great wines of Lalou Bize-Leroy, that his wines show themselves to be precise and of an astounding purity with each cru displaying the correct reading of its terroir. It’s big praise to compare him even slightly to Leroy, and don’t get too huffy yet you Burgundy elites; we should all understand this as a potential overstep only in that it includes almost mythical, untouchable, demigod-level wines from Domaine Leroy; Domaine and now Maison Leroy wines are mostly well out of my (and most people’s) budget, but there was a time where they were accessible, even for a poor sommelier, so I’ve had my fair share. There have been few wines in my life that have marked me with such vivid emotions that still resonate with me today as some I’ve had from Leroy. The hillside of Duband's Hautes Côte de Nuits "Louis Auguste" Part of Le Guide’s commentary I find to be a cornerstone statement about Duband’s style. His range of wines as a body of work demonstrate with crystal clarity each wine’s terroir. Great things have happened at this domaine and they continue to do so. His wines remain one of the best bargains in the Côte de Nuits; seriously, how many domaine-bottled wines of this quality are selling at close to négociant prices? Duband is crushing it, and I was even more convinced as I showed his wares around CA, observing about fifteen or sixteen different wines across many different days, each with twelve hours of evolution after opening. They were all startling and had magical moments throughout the day. This year, there are fewer bottles than any allocation we’ve had since we started with David, so lap ‘em up. You’ll be happy you did. There’s a new video on our website where David takes us through the entire range of wines we import. Don’t miss it if you want to better know this thoughtful and playful man. Here’s the link: https://thesourceimports.com/videos/ Spain Rioja is one of the wine world’s most intimidating sleeping giants; even though the region is very present on a global scale, the overall quality of this region’s wines is underwhelming—either it’s made by people who neglect quality for higher-volume production, or craft far overplayed wines in pursuit of critical press. I’m relatively new to Spanish wines as an importer and was warned against trying to go hard on Rioja, and I’ve tasted so many astoundingly bad ones that it wasn’t easy to jump on the train. But there is something happening over there. Combine one of the world’s greatest wine regions with a new-generation of idealists who are breaking out of the American-oak, over-extracted wine style and walking into their craft with their eyes wide open to the world. A generational revolution is en route, we want to be a part of it, and we’re starting with one who many consider to be its quiet leader. When I began to sniff around Rioja, I started by seeking suggestions from our Galician winegrowers. They asked their Spanish distributors, who then asked their top sommeliers in Michelin-starred restaurants. One name consistently came up, either in first place on their list or in their top three or four: Artuke. A new winery built by the thrust of a family’s generations of grape growing in La Rioja Alavesa and La Rioja Alta (really the same general terroirs where they are located but politically divided), they first bottled their family’s estate wines in 1991. Today, Artuke is run under organic viticulture by Arturo de Miguel Blanco, a large, well-groomed Spaniard in his early forties who also somehow seems like he’s been around for two-hundred years; regardless of your comparative age, Arturo feels like your wise old Spanish uncle. His movements are methodical, like he’s measuring each step, and his words are spare, precise in meaning and intent. When we sit to taste his thought-provoking range he observes you in silence; his responses to questions are short so as not to cloud your observations with his own thoughts. Artuke's Paso las Mañas vineyard in the foreground There is almost no question that one of the greatest values in our entire Source portfolio is the new addition of their Rioja, simply labeled ARTUKE. The 2020 ARTUKE is a traditional Rioja made mostly from Tempranillo (more than 90%) that goes through carbonic fermentation with whole clusters followed by three to six months of aging in concrete, similar to Beaujolais. Carbonic fermentation was actually the way Rioja was made for centuries prior to the arrival of Bordeaux négociants in the mid-to-late-1800s who crossed into Spain in search of suitable wine to tide over their market until solutions for phylloxera were fully deployed. I honestly don’t know who was first to use carbonic methods (it surely dates back thousands of years, long before these two wine regions existed) but there is no doubt of the juicy link between this wine and Beaujolais. With the ex-cellar tariff list in hand, I did a doubletake on the price and sheepishly asked Arturo if it was a mistake, hoping he’d let it slide if it was. He assured me it was so and also that he believes the wine merits its extremely fair price because of its low production costs and intentionally higher yield. This wine from a serious estate sets the bar for a range’s entry-level that the rest of the world might want to notice. For those interested in more recent Rioja winemaking trends, the 2019 Pies Negros (which translates to black feet, in reference to the wine’s extractions done by foot and the resulting skin-stains) is the place to start. Still in an extraordinary price range for its quality, it will over-deliver on expectations. It comes from high-altitude vineyards tucked underneath the south face of the Sierra Cantabria Mountains in the La Rioja Alta village, Ábalos, which sits around 600m. Raised mostly in 500-liter old French oak barrels for a year, this Tempranillo wine carries a darker profile than ARTUKE and an expectedly deeper complexity. Similar in placement inside the range of a top Tuscan producer’s entry-level Chianti Classico, or Rosso di Montalcino—both categories of red wine that I believe are global wine industry standard-bearers on price, quality and top-level craftsmanship—Pies Negros is very serious, classically-styled Spanish wine at a not-so-serious price. Artuke’s single-site Riojas are fascinating. All share a mouth-staining, cold-iodine-mineral texture, with the familiar streak of Tempranillo acidity that starts at the front of the mouth and dives deep down into the back of the throat, leaving graphite mineral sensations on the front and middle palate, and palate aromas of the gorgeous violet and lavender-infused grapey flesh of young Tempranillo. At an altitude of 700 meters, just below the limestone cliffs of the Sierra Cantabria, Paso Las Mañas was recently replanted entirely to Tempranillo on its limestone and shallow, clay-rich, and rocky topsoil. Syrah-like spice spirals out from the glass with brown and dark earth, licorice, and anise. On the palate, residue of allspice, and a gritty but suave texture is balanced with salivating minerality, along with a sharp, wild blueberry finish. Here, there are more lines and less fat than Finca de los Locos, a Tempranillo made the same way— though from a very different terroir—except that it remains limestone and clay, with much heavier clay on a flat terrace with old vines, with a mix of 20% Graciano. Arturo’s father bought this parcel at a time when everyone wanted plots further down on the flat lands closer to the Ebro River that were easier to access by tractor and had deeper soils that produce a greater volume; we must remember that not too long ago Spain was ruled by a harsh dictator until 1975 (hard to believe it was so recent) and fine wine was not the goal for the poor—it was a time for survival. His father’s parcel was the opposite, hence the word locos in the name, which means crazy, in Spanish, and implies that it was the country home of the crazies. While Paso las Mañas has trumpet-like octaves, Finca de los Locos is a long, Tibetan horn heard in a mountainous landscape with a deep, low and expansive vibration. But as with any compelling wine experience, its best moments are revealed after it’s been open for a little while. With time, these two wines find their groove and a more distinctive personality, shedding their youthful power and expressing more delicate qualities. I’m not the decanting type, but these wines may perform at their best after doing so, if you don’t have time to wait. Their second day is just as strong as their best moments on day one, perhaps even better. They should both age well, but they’re delicious now, too. While I seem predestined to prefer the more minerally Paso las Mañas, Finca de los Locos has equaled it in its own way, and after three days of nursing the wines I can’t pick a favorite. They’re just different and they’re a great complement to each other. Artuke’s two flagship wines, El Escolladero and La Condenada, are so rare that we can’t get much of them, but we will see more in the years to come as we work our way further into better allocations at Artuke. Spain’s Navarra has long been in the shadow of La Rioja, its illustrious neighbor on its western border. Just as Artuke’s Arturo de Miguel seems to be making significant strides as he inspires his fellow winegrowers in Rioja with Tempranillo, Navarra’s newest talent, Pedro Leunda and Jon Aseginolaza, with their eponymous label, Aseginolaza & Leunda is focused on old-vine Garnacha, historically the region’s predominate red grape variety. Educated as environmentalists and formerly employed in that field, Pedro and Jon launched onto the scene with their 2018 vintage (their third harvest), its results so compelling it was immediately noticed in all corners of Spain, including in the wine press and almost all of the country’s Michelin-starred restaurants. We have three different vintages arriving, all of which experienced very different conditions: 2018 the coolest, 2019 warmer, and 2020 somewhere in between. The wines come from high-altitude sites, mostly old-to-ancient vines planted on variations of calcareous sandstone bedrock, sandstone and clay, all organically farmed and running wild with aromatic plants like thyme, rosemary, and lavender—all left to grow freely, even between vines. The thyme is particularly amazing stuff, so aromatic it’s like a hybrid with lavender—crazy! All their wines are in quite limited production, with merely 1000 bottles imported for the entire US, cut up between seven different bottlings, two of which have only 24-36 bottles. At first I thought it would be a little silly to import such minuscule quantities of a few of their specific wines, but the 2018 Camino de Santa Zita, a pure, old-vine Garnacha, and 2018 Camino de la Torraza, an equal blend of old-vine Garnacha and Cariñena, are rich in flavor of the Spanish countryside and express mesmerizing aromas; our buyers absolutely must get to know them, even if there is nothing really to sell, so as to witness the potential of this new beacon of Navarra’s future. Also in the red range are four others, each with their own specific characteristics. Kicking off the reds is the 2020 Kauten, made entirely of Garnacha. Aromatically the brightest and lightest in color, leaning more toward a crimson red, this is the most playful of their wines. Not to be taken too seriously while at the same time not letting its complexities go unnoticed, the vigor of its young vines bring on its upfront appeal while the 25% stem-inclusion was a solid stylistic choice to soften its wonderfully aromatic, taut red berry punch. If Kauten represents the spring and early summer berry fruits, 2020 Matsanko (75% Garnacha, 15% Tempranillo, and 10% Viura) shows early spring sugar plums (perhaps influenced by the little bit of Tempranillo) balanced with exotic green notes. It comes from old bush-trained vines, which is noticeable in the wine’s broad palate expanse. While plums are mostly harvested in the summer, the overall appeal of this wine is one for the autumn. Aseginolaza & Leunda's Santa Zita vineyard In the middle range, the 2019 Cuvée (88% Garnacha and 12% Tempranillo) is a lightly extracted ruby red, subtly woven with a lovely high-toned red fruit; it still remains more firmly planted in the savory realm than the fruity—perfect for food. Almost marked by its surroundings of wild aromatic herbs (known as garrigue, in French) and a delicate orange blossom note, the 2019 Cuvée las Santas (100% Garnacha) is composed of all the single-vineyard plots that in 2019 didn’t yield enough fruit to make into individual bottlings—including Santa Zita and Torraza. It’s only slightly stouter and spends a few more months in old oak barrels than does Cuvée. It’s a deeper scarlet, sanguine red, and carries a welcome gentle amargura to balance its glycerol mouthfeel of its old-vine fruit. If time isn’t available, a slow-pour decantation will surely speed up to full reveal. Aseginolaza & Leunda’s savory wines capture the essence of the Navarra and will always be best with food. Imagine these wines on a rustic Spanish wood table next to a vineyard eating jamon de bellota and chorizo with a wood fire readied for Galician beef chuleton (ribeye) or some black Iberian pig cuts with gorgeous marbling of fat, and dark red meat, like the cuts la presa, el secreto, and la pluma. The second day of tasting these particular 2020 bottlings proved even fresher and redder in fruit tone than day one, and the 2019s were even gentler on the palate—so promising! Italy The Ramoser family’s Südtirol wines will finally arrive toward the end of the month, but one never knows these days with all the extra delays. As mentioned on our website profile for their wines bottled as Fliederhof, I adore the duality of the local, indigenous grape varieties, Schiava and Lagrein, especially when they’re made as precisely as Fliederhof’s. We brought in two different vintages of their Schiava-based wine grown on volcanic porphyry and rocky alluvium to get as much into the market as possible. The 2019 and 2020 St. Magdalener Classico, composed of 97% of Schiava (with the remainder Lagrein) are wonderfully inviting examples of this grape grown under two opposing seasonal conditions. 2019 was warmer so naturally the wines are fuller, rounder, and more fruit forward for this already pale-colored, light and fragrant grape variety; there was also 15% whole bunches in the fermentation. 2020 was a cooler year with a lot of precipitation but a great finishing month around harvest time, leading to a wine with stronger palate textures and angles, and more taut red fruit notes. The wines are gorgeous and fun to have side-by-side to better illustrate the differences between the seasons. Santa Maddalena vineyards and the city of Bolzano—Gorgeous! The 2019 Lagrein is what one expects from this palate-staining wine, but with finer edges and a cleaner aroma than most Lagrein made in the area. To me, many of the Schiava and Lagrein from Südtirol often have reductive elements deep inside the wines, inhibiting their full openness. At Fliederhof, the young and talented Martin Ramoser is aware of these reductive tendencies and works early in the fermentation to ameliorate them, ensuring that his wines shine brightly, and they do! Unfortunately, the Ramosers only have a single hectare of land in the area, making their wines quite limited. Martin, with his alliance with nature through organic and biodynamic practices, has brought their multi-generational family a new level of winemaking. Industry peers have also taken notice by awarding his 2019 St. Magdalener with the best Schiava of the vintage. There are only 900 bottles between the three cuvées to spread across the US, but they are worth getting your hands on to remind you of the merit of Südtirol’s reds. There is another video I filmed this summer during my big trip with Martin Ramoser. Meet the man and learn more about his wines at https://thesourceimports.com/videos/ Mauro Spertino, the mastermind behind Cantina Luigi Spertino Mauro Spertino is our portfolio’s sorcerer, an alchemist of his trade, with a Guillermo del Toro-like imagination for his wines from Cantina Luigi Spertino. He again dazzles us with a lineup from his upper-tier division that will surely be of interest to all restaurants with tasting menus, as well as anyone interested in wines that have as much of an aperitif quality to them as they do for food matching. Those of you lucky enough to know his Grignolino d’Asti will be in for a surprise with his 2019 Grignolino d’Asti “Margherita Barbero” raised in amphora and grown on a nearby hillside with a greater quantity of clay mixed in with sand. (Historically, sandy soils are more common in the cultivation of this very light-colored, almost transparent variety.) When our sales team tasted the 2018 version the first time at the cellar in the beginning of 2020, they went bonkers; and rightly so! It’s not only fascinating, it’s otherworldly, and delicious! We also brought in the 2019 Barbera d’Asti “La Grisa”, the new release of this typically deep-colored wine crafted with intensely dense, savory material to offset the sting of this variety’s acidity. Mauro’s Barberas are purposefully augmented to stylistically echo the deeper red wines of Valpolicella (but only a quiet echo!) with a short dehydration of the grapes prior to fermentation. The results make up for the lack of tannic textures intrinsic to this variety, with palate-coating, rich, concentrated flavors of taut fresh red (despite the drying of the clusters) and dark fruits with savory, beguiling x-factors that don’t drift too far from the familiar. Spertino's vineyard for the Margherita Barbera Grignolino A true drifter into what used to be an abstraction in our business but is now the hottest wine trend, is Spertino’s 2017 Cortese “Vilet”, an orange wine raised in amphora. What a brilliant idea for this often somewhat uninspiring but very serviceable grape. Under Mauro’s hand, it takes on greater relevance and is a wonder to explore. As expected, tea notes lead the way, but with tremendous delineation between specific, refined aromatic notes, rather than the bludgeon of blunted herbal flavors that many orange wines offer. From what I’ve experienced (and I can’t say it’s been a lot over the years beyond producers historically famous for orange wines), it stands as perhaps the greatest example of orange wine I can remember. Lastly comes a new wine, the 2018 Metodo Classico Pinot Noir. Mauro’s first dive into bubbles is a great success and I, for one, fell for it straight away, and to my surprise he was intrigued that I was so taken by it. Imagine a nose gently filled with the first-of-the-season tiny wild strawberries and wind-blown scents of almond blossoms; a palate that is not commanding like a young Champagne, but rather inviting. The mousse is fine and the bubbles attack with gentle and invigorating cuts to the tongue. For aroma lovers like me, this is a must. Austria What a lineup we have coming from Austria! It’s a shame that dry Riesling isn’t as popular as it should be. Ask any fairly sane wine professional and it’s sure to make their top three white grapes. Let’s start with perhaps the most startling development of one of our historic producers. Weingut Weszeli makes their top Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners with 30-month aging in large, acacia foudres. Who does that? Very few indeed, but more should! That alone makes their wines quite different from other Riesling producers around the world. While they’ve fully committed to certified organic farming since 2017 and biodynamics in 2019, the truth is that they farmed organically for many years before their certification, and this can be tasted in each wine’s kaleidoscope of pronounced nuances surrounded by subtler notes. All that time is spent in non-new oak (although there is an occasional wine marked by a touch of new because they buy a fresh foudre every other year or so) which leads to great durability that transforms their fresh fruit qualities into something more savory and multi-layered with a seemingly endless well of depth. I am genuinely impressed by their path and what they’ve already accomplished. Heiligenstein in the foreground and Seeberg in the background My usual takeaway with Weszeli is that their wines are alive and moving. A critique might also cite their copiousness, but I think that following a couple of kill-everything-in-the-vineyard-but-the-vines, and leave-only-the-rocks! generations may have made our expectations for the body of Riesling more spare, the way those same generations fashioned the body of Champagne. Things are changing, and today’s wines made in more of a nature-friendly way that were in the past leaner are beginning to express more expansive volume and bigger flavors on some fronts (in the case of more naturally-farmed Riesling and Champagne), while others take on more subtlety (like many red wines with a tannic history that are notably softer with less angularity and harshness as a result of more natural farming). While their top wines spend a long residency in large wood casks, the method appears to toss out ubiquitous (and elementary) characteristics in exchange for a terroir viewed through a different lens. Davis Weszeli and his right hand, Thomas Ganser, have invested a lot of time (and money, on Davis’ end) to keep these wines healthy and maturing into something more compelling than they would be with less time in the cellar. They maintain a distinctive house style, and that helps them stand out in a sea of formulaically made, predictable Austrian Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners. Weszeli’s wines are usually a mouthful. In 2017 the stars aligned and Weszeli’s greatest vintage to date appeared. Endowed with a soft but full-flavored, underlying nectary quality they often match the expansive body and richness of Chardonnay but with an incomparable acidity. We start with the 2017 Riesling Seeberg. Exotic but trim, and the most discreet in this range of full-flavored Rieslings, it’s slightly herbal in a minty way, and showcases a textural balance between the slightly gritty and glycerol. Planted in the 1960s on mica schist bedrock, its refreshing acidity emits an enzymatic electrical vibration similar to a pineapple, or kiwi. Grown on more hard gneiss than the slightly softer mica schist, the 2017 Riesling Steinmassl is powerful and spicy with a salty nose of preserved lemon and lemon curd—two aromas I adore! More tense in white stone fruit and high-acid yellow fruit, it’s nuanced with a thin dusting of almond flour. Weszeli’s first Heiligenstein was their 2015, and it’s a doozy. However, the 2017 Riesling Heiligenstein is a true achievement. Like the other two Riesling crus observed over three days, it gained momentum the longer it was open with no sign of fatigue. This vineyard’s distance from the colder sections of Kamptal (in Seeberg’s direction) and further into the path of warmer Pannonian winds from the east embellish its richly expansive qualities. It’s the broadest wine in their Riesling range and perhaps the most crowd-pleasing. They own a mere sliver of the hillside, so quantities are limited. Michael Malat is one of Austria’s most promising young talents. And while 2019 is widely regarded as one of the great Austrian vintages of the 2010s, with 2013, 2015 and 2017 the leaders, it is yet another bigtime success for Michael. (2010 should’ve been one of the greatest too, if not the greatest in longevity for a variety predicated on its acidity and ability to balance that over time when in a seemingly overabundant quantity, but most producers deacidified… openly! For shame! But at least they were honest about it… However, I suppose it was partially a preemptive move by both Austrian and German growers in anticipation of a press that would’ve predictably commented about unbalanced acidity when tasting them young to keep their readership confident… But isn’t this what epic vintages are made of? Have we forgotten everything we’ve learned?! Goodness! Stay calm, reader…) One of my favorite things about Michael’s wines is their upfront appeal and nicely tucked in nuances. When I write or think about them I always resolve to drink even more Malat wine because of the joy they offer. On a rainy day in Portugal, they bring some much-needed sunshine. With their orange and yellow fruits—strangely a match for the yellow on their label and foil capsules—they are bottled pastoral Austrian sunshine and its verdant, rolling-hill countryside. Malat’s Riesling trilogy is indeed special. First is the 2019 Riesling Steinbühel, a name that dates all the way back to 1322 and means “stone hill.” Grown on a bedrock of granulite (a high-grade metamorphic rock similar to gneiss) with a loess-rich topsoil mixed with eroded bedrock, it’s perhaps the most elegant in Michael’s range of top-flight Rieslings. The 2019 Riesling Silberbichl follows its typical qualities with strength in mineral impressions and broader power than Steinbuhl. Known as Silberbichl since the fourteenth century, which means “silver hill,” it’s named after the shimmering silvery reflection of the mica schist bedrock and topsoil best observed with the sun’s rays lower on the horizon. The newest addition to the lineup is one of the rare wines made at Malat from someone else’s vineyard. The 2019 Riesling Pfaffenberg is a glorious new addition to the range and wonderfully demonstrates how structurally different and contrasting the mouthfeel of wines are from this side of Kremstal on the gneiss rock compared to those on bigger terraces with deeper topsoil on the south side of the Danube with dozens of vine rows on each terrace, rather than Pfaffenberg’s, which holds nearly a maximum of two or three per terrace because of the steepness of the hillside. A family friend across the river with a small parcel offered up her Riesling fruit to Michael for the first time prior to harvest. Of course, Michael had to accept on both the level of friendship and the curiosity to work with this celebrated vineyard on a massive hillside on a cliff that seems ready to fall right into the Danube below at any minute. The wine is simply spectacular and maintains Michael’s predilection for immediate pleasure with seriousness surely to be found, but further inside. Checkout our new video of Michael explaining his wines at https://thesourceimports.com/videos/ Kremstal's Pfaffenberg vineyard Veyder-Malberg, is, well, Veyder-Malberg… Glory is to be found around every corner of Peter’s wines and both the 2018s and 2019s have not disappointed. Our second batch of wines are a follow-up to the same ones that arrived in October. There may be some wine still unaccounted for, so give us a shout before it all ships out. New Section: Unposted, Instagram-Worthy Outsiders The Preface I fell out of love with Instagram. The process started a long time ago because I had always had a rocky relationship with it. Every time I posted I felt strange about the self-promotional aspect of it, which is clearly at odds with the fact that I’m running a business and it’s now a major player among commercial tools, but there you have it. When I was posting, though, I liked to showcase wines that truly moved me and that I took time to enjoy over a couple hours, with very few people. This section of our newsletter is my replacement for social media, where I have the room to share everything I want to share, in a medium that, to me, feels more organic to the process. None of the wines I will write about here were merely tasted and not fully enjoyed from start to finish. Tasting is tasting and is so clearly different from drinking, and in my experience, it’s almost impossible to have an emotionally revelatory tasting with just a couple ounces. The evolution of a wine’s layers takes time, and those layers are gradually released at different stages after opening. For me, tasting surely has value, but it still represents little more than a two-dimensional take on something with at least three dimensions—with a fourth that may just be my imagination… I often wonder how many talented and experienced wine professionals actually take the time to sit down, relax and slowly drink the greatest wines on earth over hours instead of quickly sport-tasting them in the company of numerous people with an embarrassing, overindulgent amount of wine on the table that mostly goes to waste. Two great bottles, two or three people, over two or three hours? Done too infrequently, I believe. (And the fact that working sommeliers only have a single night or two away from the restaurant each week is not lost on me; it’s the nature of their trade that they see wine in a different way and are exposed to so many more than I am each year. Time to sit down is sadly very limited for them and I wish it could be different for this demographic of true wine lovers…) However, maybe the absolutely ridiculous prices of rare and special wine can be somewhat attributed to the wastefulness of sport and comparative tastings instead of more meaningful drinking—I wonder what my psychologist would say if I used that one in a session to better describe my habit… If we weren’t such a wasteful wine community, we could all afford to drink better, no? Great wine was never meant to mostly be tasted and analyzed. It was always meant to be drunk! I drink wine every day. Probably shouldn’t, but I do. The problem with wine is that too much of this good thing is not so good for the body and mind. If wine didn’t have alcohol in it, I’m so obsessed and intrigued by it I guarantee you that I would drink it during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and surely snack on it between meals while working, or even while at the gym—why not? Hopefully it won’t come as a surprise that I drink a lot of wines from outside our portfolio as well as our own. Of course, I’m infatuated with the wines from the producers we represent, but we have a minuscule portion of the world’s great wines—maybe less than one-thousandth of a percent of all the great labels out there. I can’t represent the life’s work of all my heroes in wine, but I can still admire them and their creations; and I do. What follows are a few wines I drank prior to the end of last year that simply blew me away or became a gateway that opened my eyes to personally discover another vein of vinous gold. I will keep to just a few truly noteworthy wines each month that imposed an emotional and moving experience that reinvigorated my spirit—this is my true measure of the greatness of a wine. The Wines Our company has been out of the Kabinett Riesling game for a couple of years now with the amicable parting with importer Dee Vine Wine, but that hasn’t stopped me (and our Riesling-crazy staff) from drinking them! I love Kabinetts and the three 2019s from Maximin Grünhauser are simply stunning. I visited the estate four years ago and was able to walk the vineyards with Carl-Ferdinand von Schubert, an extremely lovely man, and the sixth-generation owner of these historical vineyards on their incredibly steep blue slate hill cultivated since Roman times. All the Kabs are wonderful, with Abstberg almost impossible to beat on all-around quality, but it was the electric blue slate Bruderberg that literally sent shivers down my spine. It’s rare, and that’s unfortunate, but it’s not expensive if you can find it… At LA’s Terroni restaurant, before my return to Portugal, I had a bottle of 2006 Cavallotto Barolo Riserva Vignolo from my cellar with friends, Peter, and Kevin O’Connor (an old friend and our new National Sales Manager). It was a bottle of near perfection and all of us were flabbergasted by how simply gorgeous and approachable it was straight out of the gate; in fact, we had to set it aside because we were finishing it off a little too quickly. Alfio Cavallotto and I have maintained a good friendship for quite a while, since we worked together for a few years, and I’m proud of what he and his family achieve every year. Lastly, is a Spanish wine from Gredos, a territory just northwest of Madrid, 2017 Bernabeleva Garnacha de Viña Bonita. Pale in color with rusted-orange, light red trim, like a lightly extracted Barbaresco combined with the faint color of a 2001 Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny, it was one of the most compelling new wineries for me in 2021. So delicate are the aromas, filled with gorgeous, dainty red flowers and slightly oxidized skin of first-of-the-season strawberries. Its high-altitude granite terroir showed through with great purity. It’s the best experience I’ve had from Gredos. (Side note on Mugnier: a bottle of 2013 Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny I shared with my wife and our friend and co-worker, JD Plotnick, was perhaps the most memorable single bottle of wine for me in 2021.) Ok, one more! Like Bernabeleva, I’ve totally fallen for this Sicilian Nerello Mascalese producer. I’m sure I’m way behind the times on this in that every informed wine buyer probably knows them already, but wow… The 12.5% alcohol 2018 Eduardo Torres Acosta “Pirrera” Nerello Mascalese rocked me, along with many others I explored in his range at the same time. X-factor for days and a sublime, glycerol texture, with only ashy, aromatic hints of its volcanic terroir, its belt was loose enough to let the vineyard and wine’s entire ecosystem deliver its quirky intricacies while framed tightly enough to understand the quality of craftsmanship at this supernatural, natural-wine cantina. Bravo!

Südtirol, Italy Our first terroir map is up! I’ve been teasing the official release of our terroir maps for a while. Finally, our Ribeira Sacra terroir map is up on our website. It’s the first of seven from Northwest Iberia that we have coming over the next few months. There’s also an essay on Ribeira Sacra on the same page that I wrote last summer that offers a greater in-depth view of this complex wine region. Both the map and the essay are downloadable in pdf format. Each of the vineyard maps have three supplemental pages that help users orient themselves, the first classifies the rock types that are numerically coded on the map page, and the second presents some geological basics on different rock types. We know that rock is only part of the story of a terroir, so on the last page are listed other factors to consider while theorizing about the wine in your glass with what else beyond the cellar and vineyard choices may be at play. The work is surely incomplete on many levels, but it’s a good starting point for what I hope will be an ongoing project. You can find the first one here: https://thesourceimports.com/terroir-maps/ New Arrivals Spain We have two new batches coming in from Ribeiro, the most historical center of Galician wine for more than a thousand years. There are good reasons for that too, what with its fantastic balance of medium-to-steeply-angled vineyards, a kaleidoscope of exposure, stunning river valleys, a broad range of metamorphic and igneous rock types, as well as a combination of cold Atlantic winds and the Mediterranean climate coming from the east and south. Bodegas Paraguas’s new vintage of their Treixadura-based wine (more than 85%) is the 2019 El Paraguas Atlantico. It’s grown in three different parcels with different altitudes inside the Miño River Valley and is a mixture of mostly granite soils and a smaller amount of schist. It’s truly the most Côte d’Or-ian white we have from the region in the sense that it has a broader and fuller mouthfeel and the strong presence of mineral impressions, but without many nuances of Chardonnay. With Treixadura it’s all about the timing of the pick; if it’s not done well the acidity plummets. Paraguas does it extremely well and their sole focus is on wines from this grape variety blended with microquantities of Albariño and Godello, both very high-acid grapes that impart more lift in the palate and enrich this already deeply complex and layered wine. There are only thirty cases docking this month, but another thirty are on the way. With so many new producers joining our portfolio, Ribeiro’s Fazenda Augalevada is one of the most highly anticipated. A former professional Spanish futboller turned winegrower, Iago Garrido has begun to turn heads in Spain and there is already a strong buzz in some corners of the US in anticipation of the arrival of his wines. Both his and Paraguas’s wines are ubiquitous on the wine lists of almost every top restaurant in northern Spain, especially those with Michelin stars. Iago’s wines are different from any other in Ribeiro because he works with flor yeast in all of them—a great accidental discovery for him. After six years under the veil of flor, his high-strung white and red wines have started to find their voice with great clarity. Iago Garrido of Fazenda Augalevada These days, there are few wines that find their place on my dinner table more than Augalevada’s (along with those from the guys at Cume do Avia, his friends who introduced us), and it feels like we’ve been already working with them in the US for years, despite this being our first batch to reach the shores. For many, this will be a first introduction to his wines, while anyone who knows them already will see how far he has progressed in such a short time. They are all in very limited supply and we simply won’t have enough to fulfill the demand. Please be patient with us on this one. We hope to get more in the coming years. Augalevada’s range of whites are Mercenario Blanco, a blend of five different white grapes; Crianza Bioloxica, a blend of Albariño and Treixadura; Ollos de Roque, made of Treixadura, Lado and Agudelo (Chenin Blanc); and a 100% Albariño wine from grapes in Salnés, the most famous subzone of Rías Baixas. The two reds are blends, with the first, Mercenario Tinto, composed of 40% Caíño Longo, 20% Brancellao, 20% Espadeiro, 15% Sousón, and 5% Caíño da Terra, all from many parcels throughout Ribeira in the Arnoia, Avia and Miño Valleys. The last red, Mercenario Tinto Selección de Añada, is a blend of 60% Caíño Longo, 30% Brancellao, and 10% Caíño da Terra. All the wines I find are particularly special in their own way, and a few are some of the most compelling wines I’ve had from Galicia, even among the most revered wines from well-known producers. There are more details on Augalevada on our website at https://thesourceimports.com/product-category/spain/galicia/fazenda-augalevada/ France Another new and highly anticipated arrival (at least for me!) for the first time in the US are the wines of Elise Dechannes, a petite domaine under biodynamic culture in Les Riceys, two hamlets (Ricey-Bas and Ricey-Haut) that share a small appellation in the south of Champagne known for its rosé, Rosé des Riceys, just an hour drive northeast of Chablis. The character of the Pinot Noir in this region is exceptional and unique. Through her range (almost entirely composed of Pinot Noir-based Champagnes and one still wine rosé) the through line of deep but elegant sappiness in the palate and ethereal, wildly complex aromas seem to truly come from this particular place. Elise Dechannes Three of Elise’s wines are arriving. The first is her 2017 Rosé des Riceys, a well-worth-it, juicy and tremendously complex and delicious rosé with real stuffing. It alone brings greater meaning to rosé for me than a festive warm weather drink and sits atop a very short list of truly extraordinary rosés I’ve had in my life. Once open, it often shows darker fruits and needs time to show its full range of complexity while it works its way into the higher fruit tones and sweet rose aromas. We have a lot of great Pinot Noir rosés in our portfolio (Bruno Clair, Thierry Richoux, François Crochet), but I’ve not found the same level of complexity in Pinot Noir rosé like I’ve found in this wine, even including the greats we already represent. Unfortunately, there are only twenty cases allotted to us for the entire US each season (I’m working on trying to improve that number), so please reach out to us as soon as possible to try to reserve some bottles. The next is her second tier Champagne Essentielle, bubbles made entirely from Pinot Noir from Les Riceys. The price is only a little higher than her starting Champagne, but for me it better captures the essence of the winery. It’s gorgeous and delivers as much pleasure for a young Champagne as seems possible. The bright Pinot Noir fruit is not subtle and makes for an unapologetically delicious, serious Champagne (2016 vintage, zero dosage) that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s also limited. Lastly, the most limited wine is the Champagne Chardonnay. After tasting the range of limited cuvées of which I can only buy 36 bottles of each, the 2012 Chardonnay Brut Nature is a great view into her more distinguished wines. It has a lot to say but needs a little time open to show its finest points. It comes out straight away with a lot of flavor and Chardonnay power and becomes more finely tuned with more time open. Chardonnay can be surprisingly beastly in the south of Champagne on limestone marl and clay, but with the right amount of patience, its characteristics narrow and refined. These days, it seems like Sancerre is viewed as a real commodity on any wine list. Sancerre just sells, and often a great one is not needed for customers to order it. That’s why it’s so great to work on the flipside of that with people as talented as François Crochet, a winegrower in constant pursuit of improvement who every vintage seems to produce some of the most exciting wines in the entire appellation. Even in the warmest years François manages to surprise us all with the tension of his wines and solid natural acidity. Usually, we space out the arrival of François’ wines, so we don’t overwhelm everyone with too many choices, but we are playing catch-up after all of the time that things have been shut down. Three are from 2018, and from most elegant to most powerful, we start with Le Petit Chemarin. This wine has quickly moved to the top of the range for me based solely on its bright mineral characteristics and elevated aromas—a profile that I’ve yet to be exhausted by within my general view of wine. It’s substantial but flies high and always maintains a dainty, but ornate frame. Next is Le Chêne Marchands, the flagship of the winery and the grandest cru in Bué, Crochet’s hometown. My challenge with this wine is that it’s always at the top of the range and sometimes I want his other wines to finally pull ahead of it, the way it’s fun to see an underdog beat the champion; as loved as they are, it’s sometimes nice to see someone else with the gold. Le Chêne Marchands is perhaps the most well-rounded in the range. It has big mineral characteristics, medium to full structure and an endless well of fine nuances and broad complexities. Lastly, Le Grand Chemarin is perhaps the most explosive of the three 2018s. It’s often marked with more stone fruits along with sweeter citrus notes than others in the range. It has a more expansive body and bigger shoulders. It perhaps shares the title of most powerful in the range with Les Amoureuses, but in a denser and stonier way. A few 2019s are also arriving and there will be more to follow. The first is Les Amoureuses, the most consensual and powerfully expressive wine in the range. It has the biggest shoulders of all, and this is most likely due to its numerous clay-rich topsoil and limestone bedrock parcels. Each of its dimensions are strong and seem to tuck any subtleties further into the wine. It’s a perfect Sancerre for four or more people who want to break the ice at lunch or dinner with a nice refreshing glass that doesn’t stutter once the cork is pulled. Les Exils is the outsider in François’ range of Sancerre single-site wines. It’s grown on silex (flint, chert) on a more northerly facing slope, while the others are all on variations of limestone with more sun exposure. Les Exils is perhaps the most mineral dense of all, with mineral impressions that are heavy and dominant in the overall profile; perhaps flintier (a natural expectation from wines grown on silex) than the others and with less presence of fruits and with a grittier mineral texture than what the limestone vineyards impart to their wines. Les Exils is always one of the favorites because it’s a bit of a marvel of minerality in itself, especially when tasted in François’ exciting range. A New Team Member The Source continues to improve, and our level of advancement has always been subject to the quality of the people in our company and the producers we represent. Sometimes we lose ones we don’t want to lose, but we’ve always been fortunate to fill those shoes with other great people. Over the last two months we’ve added two fantastic new additions with Kevin O’Connor and Tyler Kavanaugh, both mature, smart and very well-experienced wine professionals, and most importantly for all of us, a joy to be around. When we first started our company, we went through quite a few people because we couldn’t offer much more than a bag full of good wines to sell and a commission rate. But these days, we are in a more fortunate position to attract top people in our industry and (hopefully) keep them. Early this Spring we were in search of someone to align with our company culture in San Francisco. During a five-month vetting process there were many fabulous applicants that were hard to pass on, but we found one who seems to be the right fit for us: someone who inspires us to be better... Hadley Kemp will join us in the middle of August. Her last post was as the General Manager of Spruce, one of San Francisco’s most notable restaurants inside the Bacchus Group’s top tier collection of Michelin-starred establishments. She worked with the group for around a decade, with some of that time spent as the General Manager and Sommelier/Wine Buyer for an award-winning wine program at, The Village Bakery, prior to taking the helm at Spruce. I’ve never liked the idea of phone interviews and I generally try to avoid them, but two minutes into my conversation with Hadley I had a smile from ear to ear. I knew she would be someone who would offer our company (and any company for that matter) yet another opportunity to up our game through the quality of our team members. More importantly, Donny (the other owner of The Source) and I realized, at this stage of our lives, that she is the type of person in whom we want to invest our energy. We want to work with people who we truly enjoy spending time with. Some say, “work is work,” or “business is business,” but for me, my work and business are my life; they’re very personal as well. I want to enjoy the people I work with and we also want our customers to have a good time with the people who represent us. Many San Francisco restaurants and retail stores will now benefit from Hadley’s great outlook on life, her deep knowledge of wine, and her humble, soft and extremely hospitable and professional approach. She’s a great compliment to Danny DeMartini, the consummate pro we’ve worked with in San Francisco for almost five years now. Wine Feature Poderi Colla Bricco del Drago Written by Donny Sullivan, Cofounder of The Source A tall tale is what it sounded like in 2013 when I first heard of this wine and its aging potential, and with a name like Bricco Del Drago, or, Hill of the Dragon, a little bit of hyperbole seemed pretty likely. But Tino Colla of Poderi Colla has been cited as saying this very prized and historic wine has a hard-to-believe aging potential of 50 years. Of course in my experience of Dolcetto, even if it has a splash of Nebbiolo (15%), longevity of this kind seemed inconceivable, but I didn’t want to question the claim. So began my pursuit of understanding the wine and maybe proving it wrong. Then one night, eight years after I heard the claim in question, I was sitting in Tino Colla’s most-welcoming dining room awaiting a home-cooked meal by his wife Bruna, when we did a blind taste with many great wines, and as it turned out, it was a 1970 Bricco del Drago that was the wine of the night. It was precisely 50 years old and it not only blew my mind, but also those of a handful of my colleagues and fellow wine trade professionals. It was alive, fragrant, regal and as seductive a wine as I’ve ever had: honestly, shocking! I’ve only tasted the one from this vintage, but I’ve tried others from this wine and I can confirm Tino’s statement that this is arguably the greatest and most age-worthy Dolcetto-driven wine in all of Italy...ever! The history and lore of this vineyard and wine speaks for itself. It’s grown on a very steep hill that climbs from around a thousand feet to over 1200 feet above sea level, faces west and has vines of 20, 30 and 50 years of age. The plot has undergone hundreds of years of genetic adaptation, having been planted to Dolcetto for many centuries. This wine has an immense power and structure upon release, while still exuding the aromas of Piemonte and the freshness of the cool fog that often covers its vineyards. This is a very serious wine, contrary to the often oversimplified reputation of Dolcetto. Don’t be intimidated; just be patient and you will find one of the true hidden gems of Piemonte. This time we do know where the diamonds are buried: on the hill of the dragon—Bricco del Drago! Rocca di Montelino, Oltrepò Pavese Travel Journal 2021, Part 2 by Ted Vance Beaune, 26 June I just finished a plate of perfectly in-season heirloom tomatoes I picked up from Grand Frais, a local grocery store with a knack for quality products on a larger distribution scale. The farmer’s market in Beaune was today, but I didn’t feel like tangling with a crowd and waiting in line, even if it was for some of the best ingredients to be found in all of France. Yeah, maybe I was a little lazy… I went for a run this morning for the first time in more than six weeks. This allergy season has been hard on my profession, which relies so much on my nose. Symptoms have been intense and incessant due to the excesses of rain throughout spring and well into June. The last time I went out for a run was in southern Portugal’s Alentejo when I was there with my wife and Constantino Ramos, a winemaker we work with, and his wife, Margarida, on our first getaway in Portugal after things opened up. The run was a terrible mistake. The grass was chest high and the typical Portuguese square cobblestone country road had it bending into the lanes, so every car that passed brushed against it. A few hours later, I could hardly breathe. My nose was firmly blocked for the rest of the day and most of the trip. There was no wind today and it rained pretty good yesterday, so particles were wetted down and I took the run (sans Zyrtec) from downtown Beaune mostly on Chemin des Tuvilains nearly to Pommard and back (I’m too out of shape for more), as the wine writer, Vicki Denig, recommended I do during a tasting with her and Paul Wasserman in David Croix’s cellar the day before. My lungs were working like the clogged air intake on my old 1984 Toyota Landcruiser as it struggled to ventilate the engine while it tried to keep up with the flow of seventy-mile-per-hour California freeway traffic. The first run after a long break is always the hardest. Attack of the Drone A few weeks ago, I headed west from Piemonte and into Lombardia’s Otrepò Pavese (OP) to see Andrea Picchioni. My primary agenda was to do some drone filming of his vineyards. Andrea doesn’t speak English and my Italian has been completely written over by Spanish, so I struggle now to find the words. On this trip, I just spoke Spanish and English with some Italian words peppered in, hoping he’d understand, which he mostly did. I got great footage of the original Buttafuoco vineyards that he works with only one other grower, Franco Pellegrini. OP is overwhelmingly a marvelous place to see, and its potential to reside in the upper echelons of quality wine is grossly underestimated. It’s a shock that there aren’t more outstanding producers in the region. After hitting all his vineyards in the Solinga Valley, Andrea took me up to Rocca di Montelino, a castle that sits at the northernmost point of the Apennine Mountains. I wanted optimal reception for the drone and to photograph Lino Maga’s vineyards as well, for context. Andrea had a hard time helping me locate Lino’s parcels from above because they aren’t as obviously discernable as others, but after my drone battery was two-thirds dead from looking around, we found them. Basically nobody is familiar with how things look from an aerial perspective, including local producers, so it takes us a while to find our bearings. I got a few shots and my low-battery warning started beeping and wouldn’t let up, making me nervous and feeling rushed. I had to hustle it back. It was pretty windy and the drone made its way up through a clearing toward a stone pad just about big enough to land a helicopter—so no problem for a tiny drone, right? I zipped it through some trees without any worry about hitting them (which I did in Portugal a month before the trip and had to replace the drone) and then over the pad to about six or seven feet from me and Andrea. Andrea moved in closer to the drone to get a better look while I was trying to land and a collision sensor triggered, freezing my controls, jerking it backward and along with a gust of wind it quickly pushed back toward Andrea. Everything seemed to suddenly be moving in slow motion as the propellers wrapped against his legs (thankfully he wasn’t in shorts) and as he tried to dance out of the way I stood there helplessly, but amazed at his agility as it stayed on him like an angry bee looking for its target. With the sensors fully restricted, the drone was completely out of my control for a very slow but exciting five seconds. Andrea finally evaded the machine and its propellers slowly met the rock wall, busting up almost all of them and leaving me in a state of complete shock and embarrassment, but I couldn’t stop laughing and was in tears in seconds—a total Johnny Knocksville, Jackass moment. I was speechless. Nothing but English words were coming to mind as I apologized while nearly hysterical with laughter as I analyzed Andrea’s pants to see if the propellers caused damage. Thankfully they’re flexible plastic and he had on a durable pair of old school Levi’s 501s, as he always does when I see him. Andrea smiled in disbelief at the drone all mangled on the ground. I’m sure it was one of the most exciting moments over the last couple years, and he repeatedly assured me that he was okay and took greater interest in whether the drone was badly damaged. It was an easy fix, but I wasn’t at all cool with what happened; I was shaken up and realized the drone had simply gotten too close to him for a landing. We got back in the car and headed down the bumpy road and the whole trip back to the cantina I had to keep turning away from him because I couldn’t stifle the giggles and the tears—indeed, I’m still a mere child at heart… Before I left, he insisted that I sit for some pancetta and focaccia that his mother prepared. Andrea told her about the drone (but not the attack) and then asked when they could see the video. I told them in about a month or so after I edited it, but after a few minutes I realized how cool it would be to watch his mother’s face as she surely had never seen this area where she’d probably spent the last eighty years from a drone’s-eye view. I got the computer out, plugged in the SanDisk card and watched her repeatedly shake her head in disbelief, repeating bello… bello… bello… We live in a different time and some of the things we can do today are almost unfathomable for older generations. Andrea Picchioni’s Buttafuoco vineyards As I watched Andrea’s mother melt, something was also melting in my mouth; the pancetta was extraordinary (not all of them are) and accompanied by a little perfectly baked focaccia with just the right amount of soft crunch in the flaky salt and the crust below, a calculated measure of the stretch of the bread and olive oil dusting. It was dreamy. It reminded me of a discussion I had with one of my Iberophile friends about Spanish versus Italian ham a few years ago, while in Costa Brava. In Matt Goulding’s fabulous book on Spanish culture through the lens of food, Grape, Olive, Pig, he compared the best Spanish hams to Italian, saying, “Yes, Italy produces fine cured hams, but next to a slice of three-year, acorn-fed, black-footed jamon, prosciutto tastes like lunch meat.” I adore Matt’s writing and in a perfect world, we’d be friends who regularly shared food and wine together. However, it’s hard for me to agree with that comment; in my opinion, there’s a time and place for everything. In my experience, Italian cured hams come in many more forms than the Spanish and are less monotonous. The Spanish seem to have found an extraordinary combination with the race of the pig, its diet and habitat, and stuck with it; why change something that’s already perfect? It may be true that jamón de bellota will provide one of the single greatest tastes of cured pig you could put in your mouth, but I don’t find it as pairable or combinable with other foods as some of the very versatile Italian cured hams. The best Spanish jamón is exhilarating but can be somewhat exhausting for me after a solid plate of it, and I need to take a break for a few days before the next ración. It’s kind of like a mushroom trip—you don’t want it all the time, but when you do, it can be life altering. And pancetta and the elegance of Italian cured meats with a higher quantity of fat compared to those of Spain may offer some daylight for me. The fat of this pancetta was extremely fine and elegant, creamy, and salty like a gentle ocean spray breeze, a nice contrast to the profound umami and oftentimes excessively thick greasiness I find in many of the most intense cured Spanish hams. This particular pancetta at the Picchioni cantina was one of the best I can remember. Andrea insisted I have a few sips of his Bonarda Ipazia (twist my arm), a semi-sparkling, dark red wine served chilled, and it was an absolutely perfect match. Val Camonica, Lombardia Back on the road, I set the course for Enrico Togni, a Lombardian winegrower whose wines stunned me the first time I tasted them last February. Enrico invited me for lunch and in typical Italian fashion, I had to nearly run away from the Picchionis because my final destination that night was Bolzano, and I had to get to Togni on time, otherwise I could be staring at a dark hotel and an unwelcoming innkeeper, if there was any innkeeper at all. Enrico lives up in the Val Camonica, a place in the Italian Alps I never imagined existed. Arriving from the south, outside of the ancient city, Brescia, a right turn on the highway leads you into a valley surrounded by mountains to an almost immediate, unexpected and magnificent view of Lago d’Iseo, which has the largest lake island in Italy and Southern Europe, called Monte Isola. It’s truly a stunning image with this island that quickly rises to more than four hundred meters above the surface of the water below, and you’re only able to see its magnificence in bits and pieces as you slowly go downhill from one tunnel on the east side of the lake to the next. Driving through the ancient glacial valley and into the tiny centro storico of Boaria Terme, the streets began to narrow sharply and it became more than an ordinary nerve-wracking ascent, toward Enrico’s house and winery, tucked just below a series of limestone cliffs on the north side of the valley. Had I driven a Fiat Panda like Enrico’s, it wouldn’t have been intimidating, but I was in a Renauld Megane station wagon and I barely made it through a few strips squeezed together by towering stone buildings on either side by an inch or two. My wife would’ve gone completely nuts if she were with me as I carefully and slowly negotiated some hairpin turns while the car’s sensors beeped obnoxiously no matter what I did because there was zero room for error in every direction and no possibility of backing up without destroying the side mirrors of the car, and likely the doors. It reminded me of rock climbing: no direction to go but all the way to the top before calming the nerves. First, it was the drone attack on Andrea and now this. Things seem to go in waves of three, so I wondered if there would be a third on this day. Enrico quit his university studies in Law to get out into nature. Over lunch, Cinzia, his partner and the mother of their daughter, lovingly told many stories about Enrico and his unique obsession with farming, and about some of his vineyard workers that happens to be a flock of sheep he hangs out with first thing in the morning and again later in the night before bed, every day. She also told a story that seemed only partially embarrassing to Enrico about how much he loves animals, and that on his sixth birthday he asked for and got a sheep, on his seventh birthday he got a donkey, at his eighth, a pony—and none of them were the stuffed versions. Enrico Togni Enrico’s vineyards sit on limestone terraces only a half kilometer from volcanic hills across the glacial valley. The grapes of his focus are Barbera, which he makes mostly into sparkling wines, a Nebbiolo still wine, and a few different wines from Erbanno, a member of the “Lambrusco” family that requires almost no treatments in the vineyards because it has a strong immunity to mildew and disease. There are two still versions of Erbanno: one that has almost no extraction and is pressed quite early that he labels as a Rosato (though I asked that “Rosato” be removed from the label because I find that it is more of an extremely light red in almost every way, like a Premetta, a very light Schiava, Poulsard, or even the Galician variety, Brancellao, and it deserves a better fate than to be lumped into the Italian Rosato category) and the other, a darker, more typically extracted red wine version. The lighter red is absolutely wonderful, and I’ve come to adore it after just four bottles and a few tastes in the cellar. The darker version is more gamey and perhaps even better with food. His Nebbiolo wine, labeled as Vino Rosso 1703, is special. It comes in around 12% alcohol, is very light in color and layered with extremely delicate classic Nebbiolo nuances, especially that sun-roasted red and orange rose smell. He said that his great challenge with Nebbiolo is that there are no references for it in his area. He’s the only one who grows it. Before I left, we spent a few minutes tasting his 2020 wines out of barrel and tank. Their purity was mind-blowing, and I wanted to just sit there and drink them for the rest of the day and dream about the reaction of our buyers back in the US. I’m fired up about what I tasted and can’t wait for them to be in bottle. It was a great sendoff before I worked my way through the Alps toward Bolzano for a visit with Falkenstein, a winery that I’ve known about for many years and whose wines I love, and another, Fliederhof, a producer I’ve kept an eye on over the last few years. A slow, four-hour drive through the Alps was perhaps the part of the trip I looked forward to the most since I began to plan it. I’m originally from Montana and I often have a great craving for backcountry mountain terrain; I spent one summer in my early high-school years working in Glacier National Park where the Rockies are gorgeous and treacherous, and totally wild. The Alps are even more beautiful and somehow very inviting, plus they don’t have grizzly bears like Montana, which makes it easier to hang out alone snapping shots with my guard down, to fully take in the clouds that covered part of the bright blue sky and the enchantment of mountains. The air was so fresh, clean and invigorating it was hard to believe I was still in Italy. In fact, I was headed for a countryside civilization that was annexed by Italy after World War I, but culturally is more obviously Austrian than Italian. Some of the locals don’t even really speak Italian because their native tongue is German. The Italian Alps at Vermiglio On the other side of this corner of the Alps I had my much anticipated and first in-person meeting with Martin Ramoser, a young man I was introduced to by Florian Gojer, of Glögglehof, a winery I feel produces the strongest killer combo of red and white wines in the Südtirol; many wineries there are very good at either red or white, but few make extraordinary wines in both colors. I asked Florian, with whom I worked with some years ago, for some insider tips on who was up-and-coming in the red wine arena and he pointed me straight toward Martin. But first, it was a long overdue visit with Falkenstein, whose unforgettable Riesling I had for the first time almost ten years ago, just on the edge of Lago de Garda. Gevrey-Chambertin, 29 June I’m parked on a dirt road facing north with Lavaux Saint-Jacques directly to my left and Le Clos Saint-Jacques straight ahead. I just finished eating a jamon emmental sandwich and a vanilla éclair I got from Pàtisserie La P’tite Chambertine, in Gevrey. I’ve got about two and half more hours before my visit with Amélie Berthaut, in Fixin. The weather is volatile, fighting between intense gusts of wind and solid downpours that last just a few minutes, followed by a bright blue opening above that’s framed by ominous and angry, saturated gray clouds. The juxtaposition of colors between the shade and illumination of the earth and sky is intense and seems unnaturally exaggerated—like it’s all photoshopped. It’s typical of the weather back home in Ponte de Lima, Portugal, which for us is a regular daily light show from our perch behind a big glass wall facing directly west. About fifteen minutes ago, while I worked my way through the sandwich, I thought that I should break out the drone to capture some images of the Côte Saint-Jacques while everyone is eating lunch, so I’d be more likely to go unnoticed. I honestly don’t know all the legalities of flying a drone in France because the information online is vague, and I can only imagine how much paperwork would be required if I were to try to seek out official permissions from each location (if there’s even an easily accessible office that actually does such things for private fliers, which I doubt). I follow the rules I find on the internet the best I can, and I steal as many shots as possible without attracting any attention. I went for it and made a quick loop above Gevrey, landed the drone and quickly packed it up and opened my computer to write. La Côte Saint-Jacques I love eating sandwiches outside on park benches in France—although I ate this one in my car because there was no bench to be found. I still had a fabulous view of one of my favorite vineyards, Le Clos Saint-Jacques, with its slight tilt in my direction toward the south so I could see all the rows behind its famous, beautiful limestone rock wall on the south side. Sometimes a sandwich is all I want while on the road in France, after a few big sit-down meals with a lot of great wine for lunch. As long as the sandwich has good bread, at the very least. This is usually my first choice if the weather is good because for some reason I don’t love dining in French restaurants where there is often too much emphasis on the process, when I just want to eat something with quality ingredients without as much ado. (This rarely happens when I’m travelling with others because not everyone comes to France with enough frequency to forego a great wine list with absolute bargains on rarities that, depending on the wine, would cost more than four times the price on a wine list in a big US city.) France has the best baguettes for sandwiches; while other countries have amazing bread, the baguette medal is firmly in France’s corner, and they cost almost nothing when compared to a good baguette in the US from an artisanal baker. When I first started to develop our import wine portfolio, sandwiches were about all I ever ate for lunch if I didn’t have an invitation. While eating in a park, the French usually give me an extra-long stare, looking at me like I’m some strange creature they’ve never seen before, or like they’re scared of me. But after a smile in their direction, occasionally followed by a non-committal smile in return, there is sometimes a surprising utterance of “Bon appétit!” The truth is, our company’s start was fueled by sandwiches. A little less than three weeks ago, I drove to meet Magdelena Pratzner and her father, Franz, the family who started Falkenstein, a winery located in Italy’s Südtirol/Alto Adige that produces many fantastic different wines (Weissburgunder, Sauvignon, Pinot Noir—all grapes that have been cultivated here for centuries) and many consider the Pratzners to be the most compelling Riesling producer in Italy. The vineyard and winery are located in one of the many glacial valleys in the north of the country, with a typical relief of a flat valley floor surrounded by gorgeous, steep mountains, which creates starkly contrasting shades and colors throughout. All the vineyards in these parts must have the correct exposure on northern positions that provide some angle of a south face, otherwise there is no chance to achieve palatable ripeness. The vineyards here are some of the wine world’s most stunning, and it’s surprising how many are tucked into the valleys of Trentino (the bordering region to the south) and the Südtirol. But what’s even more attractive to me (because I see vineyards all day long) are the north facing hills, with their spring and summertime bright green pastures on equally steep mountainsides, surrounded by forest and a great view of all the terraced vineyards across the way. Falkenstein Walking in Falkenstein’s vineyards in the heat wave that just took hold a few days before, after a very wet and unusually cold spring, it was easy to see how their slab of the mountain is perfect to ripen the late-ripening Riesling grape. Magdelena led the hike up in the stony, sandy terrain of their vineyards, a walk that demonstrated just how steep and slippery they are. The rock types here are mostly medium to high-grade metamorphic, like schist and gneiss, with the latter quite similar to Austria’s Wachau wine region, a place that inspired Franz to focus his energy on Riesling instead of their apple orchards. The sandy topsoil is derived entirely from the bedrock, and unlike many of Austria’s famous Riesling terroirs, there is no loess to be found here in their vineyards, making for Rieslings with a more dense mineral core, a deep, mouthwatering saltiness and acidity, and concentrated but still tight yellow and orange stone fruit characteristics imparted by the generous summer and fall sun, and the massive diurnal shift at nightfall. The first time I tasted one of their Rieslings about ten years ago, it brought vivid images of the Wachau and its gneiss-dominated vineyards—loess, which is commonly found in the Wachau, adds a sort of fluffy, extra mouthfeel to wines, which can be good with Grüner Veltliner, but I prefer Rieslings from purely stony soils derived from the bedrock below, like Falkenstein’s. After our tasting, and a few quickly snapped photos with her very humble, shy but very photogenic father, Franz, Magdelena and I went to Kuppelrain, a Michelin-starred restaurant that serves a more casual lunch, just a short drive west from Falkenstein. It sits above the Castelbello train station, named after the castle that sits on the north side of the valley, right across the small Adige River, no more than three hundred meters away, in full view of the restaurant’s outside terrace that overflows with plants and flowers. I love the food in Austria and I think it’s completely underrated on the European scale. People are always surprised when I praise Austrian food in the same breath as French and Italian and often insist that the average there is higher. And what foodie doesn’t love Italian food? Imagine a marriage of the two at Kuppelrain: a capture of the sun’s generosity in an Italian summer fare and intensely fresh alpine spring greens and pastoral fruits with deep, concentrated flavors. Anytime beef carpaccio is on the menu it’s hard for me to not order it, and Kuppelrain’s is one of the best I can remember. Other than perhaps the shaved parmigiano-like cheese (which is still from only a few hours south), everything was local including the beef, which came from a cut with almost no sinewy parts—just clean, perfect slices that stayed together with each bite wrapped around the supporting ingredients. It was served with chicory, edible purple and yellow flowers, perfectly caramelized miniature golden mushrooms that exploded with salty, buttery, sweet woodsy flavor, and rose-infused salt. I asked to buy a little bit of this salt tinted slightly purple with little pieces of dark dried rose floating around, one of the most simple but special ingredients and I supposed that it has to be done with a specific kind of rose, or flower, but I was rejected. No problem. I’ll go back every time I’m in Südtirol, which should become another annual visit with our two producers there. The St. Magdalena hill, Südtirol, Italy Chez Dutraive, 30 June While I lived in Campania a few years ago, Martin Ramoser sent me samples of their wines labeled Fliederhof. They were mostly crafted by his father, Stefan, and were obviously well made and in a charming but rustic style better suited to their local market than to most of my customers in the US. I find it funny that in the US, a country so culturally diverse, the wine trade professionals have specific expectations about the style of wines we drink from other regions, so the wines they buy need to be a sort of hybrid of what the region has historically done and what we like, when it seems more authentic for us to embrace their tastes if we’re drinking wine from their area. I suppose my comment is really a criticism of me more than others because I also do this all the time. Perhaps it’s really a function of the diversity of our culture and exposure to so many different types of cuisine. Martin and I cultivated a telephone friendship in hopes that we would someday work together, talking a lot about his family’s winery and where they were in their development. Though he’s a few years younger than thirty, Martin’s parents, Stefan and Astrid, gave him philosophical control of the vineyards and he began to inch toward organic farming. During our conversations, I gave him a strong push toward full regenerative farming and encouraged him to make the jump because the market would support it, and his wines at the time were just a shade away from something really special. A year later, they not only fully committed to organic farming, but also to biodynamics. The wines? I was shocked at the progress in just two years. It was a big left turn from more weighted wines toward a more invigorating and ethereal style with wiry tension and brighter fruit tones. Before dinner, Martin told me that their Schiava, labeled under the St. Magdalener appellation, had just been voted the best of the year by the local wine community. Their Lagrein is also wonderful, but I am a sucker for Schiava. I had dinner with the family that night on their terrace overlooking their Santa Magdelena vineyards under a faintly starry sky, just next to the Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena, its spire backlit by Bolzano’s city lights toward the south and just over the small hill the church is perched on. It’s during these moments that I wish I spoke the local language perfectly (which here in Südtirol is more German than Italian) or that they spoke fluent English. As I feasted on a simple-looking but gloriously-addictive fresh ravioli stuffed with spinach, ricotta, onion, parmigiano, and a little nutmeg, I wanted to tell Stefan and Astrid so much about what I think about Martin and how they’ve obviously done an outstanding job raising him and how proud I was of his drive and achievement that clearly has taken flight because of their support. Martin speaks perfect English, but it would’ve been strange to ask him to translate those thoughts. With a thankfully negative result on the Covid antigenic test in my hand (that Martin assisted me in getting the day before), I was off to Austria. I would do a straight shot north, pass over the Austrian border in the far west of the country, up into southern Germany, take a hard right to reenter Austria and pass through one of my favorite small European cities, Salzburg. After about seven hours on the road, I would set up shop at the Malat family’s hotel, on the south side of the Kremstal region, just across the Danube from the local wine hub, Krems. Throughout the trip I was always a little nervous crossing borders with these kinds of restrictions and requirements that are vaguely understood by anyone on either side, except perhaps the guards whose authority could turn me right around if they were simply having a bad day and wanted to give me a hard time. But this was Austria, and they’ve always been nice people in my experience, aside from the often startling abruptness of the German language, especially when spoken by law enforcement. The border guards were professional and courteous, quite the opposite of my unexpected run-in with a set of four more police the next day at Stift Göttweig, a famous and impossible to miss, massive and almost ostentatious rock monastery overlooking the Danube River valley, with the eastern end of the Wachau, and most of Kremstal, Kamptal, and Wagram within view. Not surprisingly, my covid test was finally checked at the Austrian/Italian border and it was no problem crossing for me, but the traffic jam filled with container-carrying trucks destined for Italian seaports coming from the other direction was about fifteen kilometers long—maybe even longer. One of the reasons for the extensive freight delays we are experiencing in the US as a European wine importer became obvious as I passed by hundreds of semi-trucks that stood completely still for the entire length of the jam. I felt terrible for those guys. Austria and Germany will be on the docket for next month. It was a great leg of the trip, as always. The Austrians are an awesome and welcoming group. Every time I’m there, I feel more comfortable than in any other country I visit.■

The style of wine crafted chez Collet is directed by the deep history with their family's vineyard parcels, how they grow and how they’re different from each other. Each wine has something to say, and the Collets have taken the route of customizing their approach to exemplify the natural talents of their many different vineyards. At the young age of twenty-one, the eccentric and fun-loving Romain Collet knocked it out of the park with his first vintage, 2008, which was also the first vintage we imported from their domaine. The foundation established by centuries of viticultural knowhow passed down through generations and Romain’s relentless curiosity and desire for improvement further set the stage for decades of inspired drinking from this domaine gifted with an average vine age of about fifty years. Romain pointed out that, “I am the luckiest generation. To have old vineyards like these to work with in my lifetime is something special, and it’s thanks to my grandfather, Jean.” Organic viticulture is now part of the domaine’s practice under Romain’s direction. The two grand crus Valmur and Les Clos, the premier crus Montée de Tonnerre, Vaillons, Butteaux and Les Forêts have all been converted to organic farming, as well as a good portion of the Chablis AOC wine, where the organic viticulture conversions were first done. The rest of their vineyards are sustainable, lutte raisonée, farming with the intention of eventually having all the sites fully converted. (Read more about Domaine Jean Collet here.) The first Chablis in the range, their village wine, comes from many parcels throughout the appellation, with a large portion from the backside of the Montmains hill, facing the premier cru hill, Vaillons. Were it not for its soft northern exposure, this vineyard section surely would've been a premier cru because it shares the exact same geology: kimmeridigian limestone marls with limestone and clay topsoil. This entry-level Chablis for the range over delivers for its price and classification. (Read more about the Chablis here.) The premier cru Montmains is located on the left bank of the Serein River. This south-facing lieu-dit is likely the rockiest premier cru within Collet's entire range. There is nearly nothing that sits between the Kimmeridgian marl bedrock and the vine roots, but an extremely shallow topsoil of clay and limestone rocks. The wine is aged exclusively in stainless steel tanks for eleven months and leads the pack with the most intense mineral impressions. (Read more about Montmains here.) The vineyard for the premier cru Vaillons has an extremely high concentration of rock mixed in the topsoil with very little clay and organic matter—but still more clay than the neighboring cru, Montmains. The somewhat steep slopes reach higher elevations than Montmains as well, and its similar south-face brings the advantage in even ripening across the entire hill. The higher quantity of clay brings to it extra weight, and fills in-between its lines with a little more body. The wine is raised mostly in stainless steel with a smaller proportion in an old 85-hectoliter foudre, all to preserve its slightly angular dimensions. (Read more about Vaillons here.) The most famous premier cru of Chablis is Montée de Tonnerre. The thin Fyé Valley separates it from the grand cru slope, and if it weren’t for some weakness in the bedrock that eventually led to the creation of this erosional valley in former times, Montée de Tonnerre would likely have been included in the grand cru classification. It shares nearly the same southwest aspect as the grand crus, as well as the deep marne (calcareous clay) that is mixed with Portlandian limestone scree and Kimmeridgian limestone marls that have been unearthed through time from the bedrock. This wine is fermented and aged in second- and third-year 228-liter French oak barrels. (Read more about Montée de Tonnerre here.) Collet’s Chablis Grand Cru Valmur is a true grand cru in every sense. Their parcel is nestled high up on the slope near the top and faces slightly northwest, while the other main face of this vineyard sits opposite, facing south. It has relatively shallow topsoil (at least by grand cru standards) thanks to gravity. The vineyard’s altitude keeps it fresh, and that combined with its favorable aspect will give it an edge in the face of climate change. Because of its endowed mid- and back-palate weight and full finish, complexity, minerality and nuance, if a blind-taster got as far as pegging it as Chablis, it would be nearly impossible to not sense its breed as that of a grand cru. It’s fermented and aged in second- and third-year 228-liter French oak barrels. (Read more about Valmur here.) Click here for all available Jean Collet wines

The Source’s Most Important Recent Arrivals Welcome to the first official Source monthly newsletter. Yeah, it’s been a long time coming! After a tough economic year for all of us in this métier reliant on hospitality, food and wine, we are gearing up for what we hope will be a strong return before 2021 comes to an end. Hopefully you’ve made the best of a pretty dismal situation to expand in positive directions, and not too much in the waistline, like some of us have. During this quiet time, two of our star cohorts at The Source, Rachel Kerswell and Danny DeMartini, separately brought two new arrivals into the world, offspring that will undoubtedly continue their parents’ positive impact on all of those around them, and judging by our Zoom calls, little Simona and Vienna are happy and healthy kids. I’ve often pondered these pandemic-era newborns and young kids stuck at home, showered with so much love and attention from both parents during their most formative years. I think they’re going to be special kids worldwide, and probably like no other generation in history, who alone may make the troubles we’ve globally endured worth it. By comparison, I suppose we can recall the progeny that sprung from the US during the Spanish Flu, World War I and The Great Depression, those who became known as the “The Greatest Generation.” This new one might be the generational catalyst that provides a strong pivot for mankind and its relation to the earth, led by a deeper well of care, love and gentleness—another thought in the utopian dreams of my optimistic side. As luck would have it, it’s actually been one of the most personally fulfilling years I can remember, on top of so many others that preceded it, ever since I started snooping abroad for wines to send back home to our friends and customers, so they can pass them on to others as well. We’re happy you’ve managed to hang in there and I hope to see some of you back in the States in a couple of months. New Arrivals This month we have the 2017 Poderi Colla Barbaresco Roncaglie and our first red wine from the new and exciting Portuguese producer, Arribas Wine Company. The 2019 Arribas Wine Company Saroto Tinto, a blend of a multitude of Portuguese grapes that most people have never heard of, carries a modest price tag for this low alcohol, high energy, ancient-vine glou glou with some serious trimmings. Quantities are limited, with only 50 cases imported to the US. Next year we will get a bit more. 2017 Poderi Colla Barbaresco Roncaglie The Collas have the potential to produce a lot of wine from their 6.5 hectares of Roncaglie and 8 hectares of Barolo Bussia Dardi le Rose, alone, without even counting the other two historic estates they own. But to keep the quality as high as possible, they sell quite a bit of wine made from what they deem to be lower-tier parcels from each specific vintage. This keeps the Barolo and Barbaresco sourced from the best interior plots. Sometimes all the plots render gorgeous wines but some will still be sold off to negociants because the Collas haven’t built a market to support the sale of the potential maximum quantity from their Barolo and Barbaresco vineyards. While I know what I am about to say goes against every sales pitch containing an illusion of scarcity for a particular wine or producer to build demand, I will pivot with Colla when I say that it is my personal goal to make sure that not a drop of this most-deserving of family’s gorgeous wines is ever dumped into the river of innocuous bulk wine from the negociant industry.  The Collas are the quiet family who makes the least noise at industry gatherings, who humbly waits for someone to step away from the growers behind the loudspeaker and into a different scene where the wine does all the talking, after which they thank you for stopping by to take a taste. These wines are available to us and it is our unapologetic intention to get them in as a regular fixture within many restaurant wine programs where we want to ensure that they have reliable opportunities to reorder as much as they need, instead of sticking them with only a single case. We want these wines to be solid workhorses in as many places as possible, to spread the joy, and so that those that are in fact relatively rare aren't depleted too quickly. Poderi Colla has been such an important part of our identity, not only within our Italian selection, but our entire company culture and wine preferences. While 2016 is a hard follow (as are the Barbarescos from ’15, ’14 and ’13, on their own merits) this softly sun-touched 2017 Barbaresco Roncaglie will keep up the Colla’s winning streak and surprise most who haven’t yet realized that they are an institution of consistency. My last personal bottle of this wine that I opened just a week ago was simply stunning. A bright and upfront Verduno-esque nose jumped out of its extremely inviting, high-toned, pale reddish/orange color. It was so captivating that it took some time to simply unhinge my nose from the glass to even take my first sip. But, take my advice when I say open it up thirty minutes ahead of time and draw out a touch of wine to get a little microoxygenation working before serving (without necessarily decanting the entire bottle) to let it find its footing on its high profile Barbaresco cru tannins, which seem very stern initially but somehow quickly resolve into refinement with a newly found supple mouthfeel that is hardly even recognizable from the first sips. This is simply a wine not to miss if Nebbiolo with more pleasure than pain is on your horizon—if you can leave it alone for that first half an hour! The aromas of the 2017 Barbaresco are reminiscent of the best of the lifted nuances of the 2011 and 2012 vintages but with even more taut and generous fruit. Within only a short time after opening (while being served with the right food, as it should be with any wine like this crafted for a place at the long lunch or dinner table) the palate and nose begin to become one. Pietro Colla is an impressive young craftsman and his grape-growing team, spearheaded by his father, Tino, continue to deliver on the promise of their historic family’s success. I’m simply impressed by this wine and like so many other Colla wines before, it surpasses my already high expectations for this spectacularly talented Barbaresco cru. Every year the Collas do superb work. Their wines are clean and aromatic, appealing in their youth, but without sacrificing their cellar worthiness to mature, to stretch, to broaden in complexity and narrow each nuance into a harmonious ensemble of finely struck chords. The critics also took notice in 2017, and they seem to have come to understand that Colla’s wines always show up no matter the hardships and complaints of any given year. There’s three hundred years of passed-down knowledge at play with the Collas, and it’s obvious year in and year out. 2019 Arribas Wine Company Saroto Tinto The new and youthful Portuguese winegrowers, Ricardo Alves and Frederico Machado, are at the beginning of their lifelong path to play their part in the rediscovery and redefinition of the unique Portuguese wine region, Trás-os-Montes. In two short years they’ve already made waves with the local administration by creating wines dramatically different from the rest of the region, with very low alcohol, low extraction, high-altitude field blends with sometimes as many as thirty different indigenous grape varieties, as it is with the red wine we started with, Saroto Tinto. Interestingly, just last month they were awarded with “Revelation Producer of the Year” by Wine Magazine. They have other very interesting wines in the range, but Saroto sets the pace for pleasure, intellect and authenticity, at an extremely fair price. The demand for their wines in Japan and Scandinavia is already gobbling up their stock faster than we can get around to buying it. Look for Saroto’s release toward the end of March. The quantities are limited, at 50 cases for the entire US market, and the new vintage won’t come in until much later in the year, which will include their white (orange wine) and a few other higher-end very compelling wines—tastes you may not have experienced before with this enormous mix of grapes and talented terroirs. We’re extremely excited to be a part of their story now. Further On The Horizon Iberian Dreams What a time to turn over rocks in Iberia! You’re going to see a lot of new things continue to roll out of this area in our upcoming offers and sample bags, and our selection of wines from its colder parts in the north has particularly blossomed. Personally, I feel extremely lucky to have the opportunity to represent such wonderful people making such compelling wines so new to me in a multitude of ways. The benchmarks are all spoken for, so naturally we’re hitting the next generation of winegrowers. The youth in these parts seem infected with a generational ailment whose cure seems to be to get out of the city grind and into the countryside that many of their parents and grandparents vacated in that last century, to get away from the relentless economic woes Spain hasn’t seemed to be able to shake since the sixteenth century. And they’ve come to restore ancient abandoned or neglected vineyards, or in other places reset with new plantations of ancient masale selections of hundreds of grape varieties most of us have never heard of. Over the last four years, we went from one producer in this area to four, to eight, to now fifteen and counting; my sample room is constantly full of new things to explore and most of them are suggestions from the growers we already work with! The camino we walk along in Iberia was paved by the hard work and belief of so many importers before we set foot here, and to them we give great respect and thanks for their groundbreaking expeditions. In all the years of doing this work I am pleased to report that I have never been happier with where we are (despite some of the pandemic’s ramifications) and where we’re going. I’m genuinely excited and ready to return with the spoils given to us by our supporters, those who believe in our efforts and “finds,” and to do our part to contribute to the narrative of Northern Iberian wine. We are learning so many new things that we want to share, just as we’ve always done. Some new names to add to our exclusive national portfolio: Augalevada (Ribeiro, ES), Fazenda Prádio (Ribeira Sacra, ES), Bodegas Gordon (Jimenez de Jamuz, ES), Menina d’uva (Trás-os-Montes, PT), and César Fernández Díaz (Ribera del Duero, ES; previous job was at Comando G). There’s too much to say about each of these new producers in one newsletter, but when they start to arrive you will certainly hear more. Iberia has some of the most exciting depth of discovery in the wine world, and most of the heavy lifting is being done by the most recent half of the Iberian Gen Xers, followed closely by some Millennials. Italia We’ve also picked up some new and thrilling growers in Italy for California and some other states. In Alto Piemonte, we’ve scored with Davide Carlone, from Boca. There is a new horizon for this already talented and continuously evolving winegrower, and that is that Cristiano Garella, our longtime friend and cornerstone of this entire region’s mega growth spurt over the last fifteen years, is now advising Carlone. Carlone brings our tally in Alto Piemonte to four, with Ioppa (Ghemme), Zambolin (Lessona, but labeled as Costa della Sesia), and Monti Perini (Bramaterra). Carlone’s wines will arrive in the late summer/early fall. Up in the alpine foothills of Lombardia, Enrico Togni, a former law school student who left man’s academia for nature’s bounty, is crafting some very interesting naturally grown wines on steep, acidic rock terraces. The first two wines I tasted, a 12% alcohol, dainty but deeply substantial and aromatic Nebbiolo, and a lightly extracted rare red grape, Erbanno, were an exploration into another dimension of alpine red wines. Enrico’s earlier years were marked by a more untamed naturalness and have now matured into something quite nuanced and cleanly crafted. The high CO2 content at the start, left in place during the aging and bottling so as to use as little SO2 as possible, takes some management by decanting, or with a vigorous aeration and some patience to follow. Once through the gas, the wines are striking, emotional and original. The Erbanno is an almost entirely new idea, with its pale colored rendition of a dark grape; think somewhere in the same vein of Grosjean Premetta, Emidio Pepe Cerasuolo, or a light, but non-flor-heavy Jura Poulsard—a pale red, almost more of a rosé. I tasted the wines over two days and the second day was even as good with both, although it was hard to stop drinking them on the first day to save a little for the next for curiosity’s sake. He also makes two different sparkling wines, one from Barbera and the other from Erbanno; both are interesting and, not surprisingly, very good. All of his wines are bottled under a combination of both of his parents’ familial names, Togni and Rebaioli, and will arrive in the third quarter of the year. The quantities will be very limited. An Austrian Reunion We’re happy to announce that the nicest guy in a country of some of the nicest people on earth, Michael Malat, will be rejoining us (in the California market only) after a year and a half away. We’re going to reboot the program with his 2019 vintage, a stellar year for Austrian white wines and clearly Michael’s new gold standard. In this year he added Pfaffenberg to the roster from across the river, on the north side. I had a bottle and Andrea (my wife) and I almost snuffed it inside of an hour before we realized that we were well outpacing our dinner. Everyone on staff is excited to have this special guy back on our team. The first set of wines should arrive at the start of summer. Staff’s favorite wines from February It’s long been an aspiration of ours to bring the voice of our talented wine team to a broader audience. With a strong passion for wine, food and European culture, they are all well traveled in wine country and speak from their own personal experiences on wines that were love at first sight, and many others that slowly grew on them over time and then developed into some of their favorites. All of us wine people are on a constant path of evolution and the things that interest us today may not be as interesting tomorrow. Our team has been invited to write each month for our newsletters about any wine that was a true highlight for them over the last month. 2018 Quinta do Ameal Loureiro by Rachel Kerswell National Sales Manager & New York Lead Salesperson It’s been some time since I cracked a bottle of Loureiro from Quinta do Ameal. While impatiently enduring this New York winter, I often find myself reflecting on this special yet unpretentious Portuguese white wine. One could say it’s simple in some ways, but its versatility around food and profound sense of place can set this wine up to be as deeply meaningful and emotional as any other. In 2018, during a sunnier-than-usual Iberian Peninsula autumn, I was visiting Ameal’s restored, ancient quinta in the Vinho Verde’s Lima Valley. Over lunch—a perfectly premeditated assortment of deeply-flavored fare, clean and full-of-life local vegetables and an abundance of fresh Atlantic seafood —we shared several bottles of Loureiro dating back fifteen years. I’ve been fortunate to experience vintages of this wine as far back as the early 1990’s with the now former winemaker, Pedro Araujo, and though they are all captivating in their own unique way, it is typically the younger vintages that steal the show for me. In its youth, Quinta do Ameal’s Loureiro is etched and incisive but its natural tones of sweet fruit keep it from being abrasive. Pedro raises the wine entirely in stainless steel vats, which keeps its purity and maritime salinity intact. 2017 Fuentes del Silencio “Las Quintas” by Danny DeMartini Northern California Lead Salesperson Fuentes del Silencio’s Las Quintas hails from villages on the high plains surrounding Herreros de Jamuz, an area with ancient abandoned vineyards with many that predate phylloxera. It’s made predominantly from Mencía, with a little Alicante Bouschet (Garnacha Tintorera) & Palomino. Mencía from Jamuz enjoys a very long growing season, high altitudes (the highest average elevation where Mencía is planted in Spain), cold air currents, and poor soils composed of fine grained silty sand. The combination renders balanced wines with stunning elegance and complexity. Light tannins and expressive fruit are perfectly juxtaposed with raw, earth-driven spice and aromatic lift. Las Quintas stands apart for its immediate appeal and elegance as well as underlying depth and brooding complexity. This wine perfectly illustrates the felicity of Mencía within this region. 2017 Poderi Colla Nebbiolo d’Alba by JD Plotnick Southern California Lead Salesperson I recently had the pleasure of taking out samples of Poderi Colla’s current releases, and while I expected to be enamored with their excellent Barolo and Barbaresco crus, I was reminded just how fantastic their “basic” Nebbiolo d’Alba is. Several years ago when I was tasting and buying wines with Lou Amdur at his eponymous wine shop in Los Feliz, we were constantly searching for affordable nebbiolos that were expressive, floral and aromatically compelling. Things that, to us, tasted like “real nebbiolo.” Most affordable nebbiolos, it turns out, are rather boring. Not necessarily bad, just not exciting. An annual favorite of ours was always Brovia’s Nebbiolo d'Alba, but the problem with that wine (and every other nebbiolo we seemed to fall in love with) was that we could only get one to two cases per year; clearly not enough to work with year-round. When I started working with The Source and tasted Colla’s Nebbiolo d’Alba for the first time, I immediately thought that this was the wine I had been looking for: an organically farmed, beautifully expressive nebbiolo that is actually affordable and in decent supply, it’s uniquely approachable when young, and bursting with all of the savory, umami nuances I look for in great nebbiolo. Quiet European Adventures In A Pandemic Year by Ted Vance Andrea (my wife) and I moved to Portugal two Decembers ago after a chaotic and eternally memorable year in Italy’s Campanian coast. We got out of Italy just in time for the pandemic to drown the world in despair, starting with where we’d just left. Our Italian friends said their parents regularly commented that Italy's draconian confinement was like the confinement during wartime years, and there’s still a big group of old Italians who know all about that, firsthand. We miss the ferry rides from Salerno to all of the Amalfi Coast fishing villages and the warm, salty Mediterranean, the endless supply of anchovies and spectacular seafood, bufala mozzarella and fresh ricotta from Vanulo; and then there’s the epic summer infused pastas and the real deal Napoletana Margherita pizzas for 3.50€ to 4.50€—so basically, free. Food and wine writer, and dear friend, Jordan Mackay, regularly says, “It’s hard to get a bad meal in Campania.” There were too many good ones to count and there’s hardly evidence of a bad one within the neurological scramble of my brain. We couldn’t have picked a more civilized modern country to hide out during what has been for so many a difficult and cruel time. The Portuguese took it in stride and without panic; the middle-aged and senior population of the country just got free from a terrible dictator fewer than fifty years ago, so they’ve seen much worse, in different forms. The Portuguese are special people (as are their ancient, gentle kin across the border up in Galicia) and they’ve done nothing but welcome us to their country and help, help and help some more. We’ve already made great friends—true lifers, these ones—in the wine industry and outside, too. This year was my most academically focused year to date. Italy was a solid gearing up to my output, but I feel I’ve found a stride on some new level. So much study and research, and boundless time to work uninterrupted on my writing and English and local language skills, which have been as enriching as anything I’ve done before it. (I never went to University, but I very much crave education.) I know I’ve progressed from where I started six years ago when I penned my first short essay about a thirty-hour awakening through a bottle of 2009 Pierre Overnoy Poulsard I nursed alone that finally ended in disaster—that is, the bottle was eventually empty… But with the turning of each page in books by literary luminaries, a lifetime of strong headwinds has been revealed to me, an endless—and welcome—intake of humble pie all the way to the end. Language has always been of interest to me. After flailing with Portuguese for the first six months, I knew I needed a stronger base. One day, after envying Andrea’s easy assimilation (she’s from Chile), I asked her how much of Portuguese is only slightly different from Spanish. “Maybe 80%?” She said. So I was doing it wrong… That prompted me to immediately dive into Spanish, a language I knew would be the easiest for me after many years of studying French, followed by some dabbling in Italian. It was the right move. Portuguese will likely be a painful slog, but the Spanish is already breaking through the Portuguese cloud in my head. Reading Portuguese is easy if you have a decent grip on another Latin language, but as I try to make sense of the spoken word, it could just as well be Ukranian. People—non-Portuguese people—say that Portuguese is like a drunk Russian trying to speak Spanish, with which I would heartily agree. Andrea and I got out a few times when Europe completely opened up to countries inside the EU. We know that restrictions have been different everywhere, and during this last year in Portugal we’ve been on lockdown for nine out of the last twelve months with everything proposed to continue until the end of this April. Once California’s restaurants shut down, our company’s cash flow did the same, and we all hunkered down and began the hibernation. Thankfully our growers have been patient and supportive because they are all in the same boat; plus, we all need each other as the gates begin to open. Trying to pay bills during this time was like trying to propel a dingy without a paddle, and because they weren’t small, I didn’t think it wise to post our meanderings on social media; otherwise my new strategic location could have been a terrible oversight: it’s a lot easier to reach me during a pandemic from France when I live in Portugal than when I’m in California! All of us needed some refuge from the pandemic, and when we were given permission we took advantage of it. The highlights of our brief opportunities to get out while the restrictions were lifted across Europe started with a twelve-day drive across Spain’s north coast in July. We started in Galicia, and then made our way through Asturias, Cantabria, País Vasco, and the Costa Brava for a week in Sant-Feliu de Guíxols. Between Sant-Feliu de Guíxols and S’Agaró, on the Platja de Sant Pol beach, there’s a restaurant with a decent wine list and fabulous food with the little bay in front, a perfect Spanish stand-in if Fitzgerald had chosen to set Tender Is The Night in Spain instead of the Côte d’Azur. The restaurant tour along the north coast was altogether wonderful, and felt like one generous gift after another in both food and wine. The dream candy goes to the Asturian coast, a place that is unique and almost surreal; some places felt like you were the first and only person to ever set foot on that section of the beach, crag or cliff. If there were ever a countryside that could give me courage to extract a novel within my lifetime, that coastline might be the place. One could be brought to tears, just as my sister, Victoria, was the first time she walked into the piazza of Italy’s famous Amalfi Coast mountain town, Ravello, with the limestone cliffs and the view of the turquoise sea far below; the sheer natural majesty of some places in the world can sometimes be overwhelming. While the EU lockdowns were lifted and the borders still open until early October, we went to visit our good friends, Max Stefanelli and Francesca Sarti, from the Terroni Restaurants in Los Angeles, who unexpectedly committed to a yearlong sabbatical in Bologna with their three kids in tow—so young they are, all five of them! Sadly, they decided to close their downtown location permanently and were in need of a moment away to reset. The tickets were already booked before we got off the phone with Max when he broke the news. It was the first time for both of us in Bologna (what a terribly overlooked city!), Modena and Venice, and we didn’t want to leave as Max drove us back to the airport some days later. We stayed at the famous Hotel Principe, close to the train port, in Venice. The clerk’s light blue eyes nearly fell out of his head when we passed our two American passports underneath the newly installed protective glass. Aghast and giggling like a schoolboy meeting the couple on a poster in his childhood bedroom for the first time, he explained that these were the first American passports he’d seen since March. He got emotional; we couldn’t see anything else on his mask-covered face but his slightly welling eyes—they somehow expressed relief, and even more, hope. It was the end of September, and this was probably the first six-month stretch in any Venice hotel since before the spring of 1945 without a single American occupying a room even for just a night. We saw the world’s most famously overrun tourist city—the world’s living museum—with only the company of European tourists; no boatloads or droves of busses with foreigners on a speed tour with all their memories being captured in their phones instead of their minds. On the streets it was calm and surreal at night, and quite busy during the daytime. It seemed like a different pandemic already wiped out a lot of Venice before we arrived, and that I was the only American (Andrea is Chilean) in the entire centro storico. I felt a little like I wasn’t supposed to be there, like I’d entered a new Forbidden City. Even the gondoliers, suited up just like the postcards promised, were begging us to take a ride. On one of the three nights there, only two people and a couple bands of pigeons shared the entirety of Piazza San Marco with us under the moonlight and the platinum and gold reflections of the piazza lights on the wet rock floor with the fresh, muggy, and salty Adriatic breeze. Venice is almost an unbelievable place, like something out of fiction, like it can’t possibly be real. Like many cities at night during this pandemic, at some moments Venice was all for us, and that was even more unbelievable. ■

Reznicek, a fabulous, new Viennese restaurant by sommelier Simon Schubert I’m writing this month’s newsletter in Vienna even though I thought about canceling this trip, as I have frequently done in the last few months due to Covid and the war next door, but I figure I can’t wait forever for the world to stabilize in every direction to feel completely comfortable traveling in this area. My wife and I decided to take a few days in Austria and the Czech Republic for her birthday before the arrival of some of my team from the States. This week is the beginning of forty consecutive days I’ll be on the road, starting in Riesling and Grüner Veltliner country, ten days in Northern Italy between Südtirol, Lombardia, and Piemonte, followed by what will surely be a stunning train ride from Milan through Switzerland and into Germany. From there, after a brief German excursion with Katharina Wechsler, the first team goes home, and I fly to Madrid to welcome three others for two weeks in Iberia. It’s going to be an intense one, but it will clear my schedule for a more relaxed summer. Last night we went to one of Vienna’s cool wine spots, Heunisch & Erben. It had been an overcast day, a little chilly but sunny, similar to when we left Portugal, though a bit drier. We settled into a tastefully remodeled modern flat with a light oak and shiny dark marble floor apartment with the classically high ceilings in a historic building in the Neubau district of Vienna. The original plan in Austria this year was to go to VieVinum, but despite how great the event is, I opted to avoid the crowds and see our Austrian growers in a more intimate setting. Ever since my first visit in 2004, I’ve searched Austria for the best wiener schnitzel and I may have finally found it. Two nights ago, at Heunisch & Erben, Katharina, our server, gave it a 9.5 out of ten, and I had to agree, only because she insisted a ten isn’t possible. It was near perfection: thin, soft veal somehow floating inside and seeming not touching its pillow of gold and brass-hued breaded crust with a superb and perfectly crafted delicate crunch. Their wine list is massive and requires a thirty-minute hunt to settle on the bottle for the night. We scoured the list of old Riesling with one of the sommeliers but he didn’t commit to pushing us in any particular direction, so we started with a series of Riesling tastes from their extensive wine-by-the-glass list and asked for a bottle of 2017 Domaine du Collier Saumur Rouge “La Ripaille” (because we knew we wanted a red for the night as well) to nurse over the next hours. During the last two years, I’ve had three different bottles of this Collier wine, two 2014s and one 2016. The La Ripaille Cabernet Franc wines I’ve had are, to me, complete in every way, and loaded with x-factor and perfect texture and palate weight. The 2017 clearly needs a few more years for the newish wood notes (not sure of the wood regimen) to meld a little further into the wine to make it a true 9.5. It was a solid 9, but I’m sure it will go up a notch with more bottle age. Everyone who will join me on this five-week journey will experience new places and meet new people that they admire through their wines. It’s a great pleasure to watch them visit places for the first time that I’ve had the fortune of visiting many times before, thanks to the great support of our customers and friends in the wine industry! Sometimes during the first visit to anywhere we are so worried about avoiding missteps that further complicate our travels that we miss the pleasure of watching others enjoy themselves too. My fondest memory guiding someone to somewhere I frequently visit was with my sister, Victoria (also our company’s Office Manager and Company MVP—yes, the second should be an official title), the first time she went to the Amalfi Coast. My wife, Andrea, and I lived on the eastern border of the area, in the port town of Salerno, a place people often just pass through without staying for more than a day or to just hop on the bus to Amalfi; Salerno is a true Southern Italian city populated mostly with Italians. Almost every sunny weekend we would catch the ferry to one of the Amalfi Coast villages, and our favorite was Cetara. Amalfi Coast fishing village, Cetara On the ferry ride we sat daydreaming while sea mist cast into the air by the boat bobbing up and down in the wake from other boats, the cool water freshening our faces under the hot sun. But anyone familiar with the area knows the better beaches, at least for relaxing, are to the east and south of Salerno in Cilento, not the pebbly and cobbly Amalfi Coast. The Cilento Coast is much flatter and has expansive and long, soft beaches made of fine sand, save the occasional razor-sharp volcanic outcroppings on the shore and scattered in the breaking waves. The water is cleaner and clearer than most of Amalfi (a place already known for its beautiful, clean water), and it’s where many Campanians go during the summer when excessive amounts of tourists make Amalfi unbearable, if it weren’t for its breathtaking beauty. One can only imagine the origins of the beauty of the Amalfi coastline adorned with limestone cliffs: surely it was the hot spot for torrid love affairs between gods. In Cilento, every beach shack restaurant surely has better food than you can find anywhere else on the beach in Europe; the Neapolitans have very high expectations when it comes to food and these places deliver, even if they’re served on paper or plastic. The place was Ravello, perhaps the most picturesque and well-kept village along the Amalfi Coast, a hilltop town about a thousand feet above the sea, celebrated in books, clean and well-groomed, and subtly posh. It’s a place that attracts the richest and the most artistic of our species for inspiration from the Mediterranean below, with its shimmering kaleidoscope of inimitable shades of blue and green, all backed by a treacherously steep, wild shrub-covered, limestone mountainside that seems to run right into the city center. It was only there that I ever witnessed someone so deeply awed by the beauty of a place that it brought them to tears. This person was Victoria, who was embarrassed by how it moved her, and this is, and will always be, one of my greatest travel memories. There won’t be anything quite as stunning as Ravello and the Amalfi Coast during my upcoming trip, but Galicia’s Ribeira Sacra and Portugal’s Douro will stimulate many other sensations: vertigo; disbelief that people would elect to work in such extreme conditions; deep contemplation about the history of conquest and religion in the region; the superiority of Roman engineering in their time and their lust for gold and how deeply they changed Europe. All this lies between our start in Austria’s Wachau and our terminus in Portugal and Spain’s Atlantic coasts. So much to see and experience, to learn and to ponder! It never gets old, only we do… Ancient gneiss from hundreds of millions of years ago, the famous bedrock (or “primary rock”) of Austria’s Wachau New Arrivals: Austria Tegernseerhof, Wachau An hour’s drive west from Vienna lies Austria’s ground zero for the country’s great Grüner Veltliner and Riesling. While I feel it’s not fair to say one region is better than another when comparing Kremstal, Kamptal, and Wachau, Austria’s elite spots for these grapes, Wachau certainly gets heaped with the most praise and is home to a tremendous number of great producers, including our friend Martin Mittelbach and his historic Weingut Tegernseerhof. The far eastern side of this appellation’s steeply terraced, ancient gneiss rock hillsides is where the recently organic certified Tegernseerhof has operated since 1176. While vines existed in the area for hundreds of years before the arrival of the monastic order of Tegernsee, Tegernseerhof is the oldest Wachau winery in the Loiben area. Owned and operated by the Mittelbach family for the last five generations, there are dozens of winegrowers in the area now, including two of Mittelbach’s neighbors and close family friends, the Knolls and Alzingers. Martin’s stylistic difference from his friends lies mainly in how he now organically farms and is certified (and I could see that would eventually head that direction when I first met him in 2009) and uses only stainless steel for fermentation and aging. He is also slightly stricter about excluding berries that are concentrated by good botrytis in his classic still wines from Grüner Veltliner and Riesling. Similar to the others, however, skin contact is used depending on the health of the berries: the better the health and the greener the berries, the longer the maceration before pressing. His vineyard and cellar choices leave Martin’s wines naked with a starkly clear view into the differences between the aspects, slopes, bedrock and topsoil, and genetic material from each particular vineyard site of his top wines. Always straight and intentionally slow to unfold upon opening, Martin wants his wines to evolve through time rather than erupt in the first moments. To better understand terroir with an extremely fair-priced wine, Tegernseerhof is second to none—make sure you do more than just taste them; better to drink them over some hours next to each other to let the differences truly reveal themselves. What a treat to have more 2019 vintage wines coming from Austria. Similar in overall caliber to other recent banner years, 2017, 2015 and 2013, 2019 may be considered a leader among them. Of course, each vintage has its standout characteristics, but 2019 fires on all fronts, leaving nothing ambiguous regarding its potential as well as its natural openness early on. The ripeness is full but balanced with zippy acidity and mineral nuances and loads of texture. It’s a great vintage on which to double down: one for today and another for the cellar. The Austrians are crazy about Grüner Veltliner. Why, one might ask? It’s extremely universal. It invites everyone with its mixed simplicity and convivial nature, and with the good ones, a deep but unintrusive complexity. At home, grandma, grandpa, mom and dad, and the entire extended family, and some of the country’s older kids enjoy their time together with this appealing white wine shared among everyone. Yes, Austrian teenagers drink wine (and probably more beer) with the family and in restaurants. The public drinking age in Austria is 16, and alcoholism is not a big societal problem thanks to the lack of taboo… Better to get them started on Grüner Veltliner than waste the Rieslings on them at such a young age! (Save the Riesling for the adults!) Interestingly, when asked which wine between Grüner Veltliner and Riesling may age better and even improve more, many of the winegrowers have a strong belief that Grüner Veltliner may slightly outdo Riesling in the long run. And if anybody knows, they would! Grüner Veltliner is a grape variety that doesn’t like to suffer too much stress in the vineyard, that is, benefit from the vine’s search for nutrients and water in the soil. It’s mostly planted on less extreme slopes and on deep soils, whereas Riesling takes to more precarious, spare soil, with picturesque positions that result in greater stress to the vine. Here in the Wachau and the surrounding regions, Veltliner loves to bathe in the water-retentive loess, a wind-traveled, fine-grained, and well-structured calcareous sand—well structured enough through its crystalline matrix that entire loess caves can be dug relatively deep into the earth with very little structural support and concern of collapse. Most of these loess vineyards in the Wachau are down by the river, on more east-facing terraces or in areas inside the river’s historical flood plains. The first Grüner Veltliner and Riesling in Tegernseerhof’s range are labeled Dürnstein (formerly labeled Frauenweingarten for the Veltliner, and Terrassen for the Riesling). The Dürnstein Grüner Veltliner Federspiel is grown on alluvial river sands and loess which brings bright notes of spice, honeysuckle, and white pepper to the forefront and a broader palate richness. (Federspiel is a ripeness category particular to Austria’s Wachau region, similar to a Riesling Kabinett in ripeness level but a dry wine rather than a sweet version one would typically expect with the reference to Kabinett on the label.) The mineral nose is further enhanced by notes of dried yellow and green grasses, and white radish, while the deep and glycerol back palate is characterized by Indian spices and a slight minty, lime finish. Between the Veltliners in Tegernseerhof’s range, this is the easiest and most universal for all palates. Grown in a parcel only a few dozen meters from the Danube and right at the doorsteps of the historic rock village, Dürnstein, Tegernseerhof’s Superin Grüner Veltliner Federspiel is quite different from the Dürnstein bottling. Here the Danube did some sculpting and stripping away of soil during flood periods while replacing it with new river sediments. Through this erosional process, it carved deep enough to expose the gneiss bedrock below. In other Grüner Veltliner vineyards used for Federspiel, they are often covered in a deep enough topsoil of loess and alluvial sediments with very little, if any root contact with gneiss bedrock far below. The dynamic of gneiss as a dominant feature of this vineyard creates a Federspiel Grüner Veltliner with a much more vertical, mineral, saltier, and deeply textured palate. Between the two Veltliners, this is the one for the mineral seeker while the other may be better suited for those in search of more obvious Veltliner deliciousness. The three newly released 2019 Tegernseerhof Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Crus are all located in the Loiben area. Leading with the most elegant of the three, we start with Loibenberg, a Smaragd (the Wachau’s regional name for the highest quality dry wines; think the equivalent of a dry Spätlese or Auslese-level trocken) grown on numerous parcels on perhaps the most recognizable hill in the Wachau. Unlike many other Grüner Veltliners from this hillside, similar to other Loibenberg Grüner Veltliners, Martin’s is a mix of around 2/3 loess-dominated soil in the middle and lower parts of the hill, but with the other third harvested from gneiss-dominated soils and bedrock further uphill, which may make (in theory!) his version a little more minerally than one may expect from a Smaragd Veltliner from this hill. The aromas and flavors express a beautiful collection of sweet purple fruits, Concord grape skin, violets, green melon, green candy, Meyer lemon, and kaffir lime. Tucked further in this tension-filled but open Veltliner sits a deeply rooted core of iodine, sea urchin, and marine salts. One of the most famous and exclusive vineyards in the Wachau is Ried Schütt. As far as I know, only Weingut Knoll and Tegernseerhof have labels that carry this name; both have Grüner Veltliner, but Knoll is the only one to bottle Riesling, which some say is the best Riesling in Knoll’s impressive range. This Veltliner from Mittelbach is slightly more textured and amare (in a very pleasant way!) than his Loibenberg Grüner Veltliner, with ethereal aromas of fresh sage, spice, exotic greens, and sweet lemon. On the palate, the aromatic sweetness of bay leaf stains deeply on all sides, while sweet green grasses, marine salt, and lightly purple and yellow citrus fruits round out the full but clean palate. Schütt is perhaps the most regal and firmly textured of the Veltliners from Martin, and it sits beneath Höhereck inside of a combe (known as the Mental Gorge, or Mentalgraben) where water eroded the eastern neighboring hillside of the Loibenberg vineyard just across the way. The combe floods with cold air from the Waldviertel forest behind and above the vineyards, contributing tension to balance out its deep power. An unusual look for a great cru site, it’s a relatively flat vineyard with only slight terracing below Höhereck. It’s composed primarily of hard orthogneiss bedrock and decomposed gneiss topsoil with a mixture of different sized, unsorted gneiss rocks and sand deposited by the former water flow. Replanted in 1951, Tegernseerhof’s Ried Höhereck is the Grüner Veltliner parentage of many vines in the area. A rare Grüner Veltliner planted almost exclusively on the acidic metamorphic rock, gneiss, rather than the sandy, nutrient-rich and water-retentive loess, typical for this variety with a beneficial southeast exposure inside and just popping out of a ravine with great access to mountain winds and an early summer and autumn sunset, Martin says that the most important element of Höhereck is its genetic heritage. This half-hectare (1.25 acre) vineyard has been a growing field for centuries for ancient Grüner Veltliner biotypes, thus contributing to the complexity of this wine and Martin’s entire range of Veltliners, with all new plantations made with genetic material from this hill. Höhereck produces dynamic wines that still manage to show great restraint, though this is perhaps due to its great abundance of layers that unfold once the bottle is open; it shouldn’t be drunk quickly because all the most important acts of the show take time. As charming as it is serious juice, with precise nuances of yellow and white peach, cherimoya, lemon curd, baking spice, bright green herbs eventually take center stage. It’s a lovely wine with immense depth. We have a rock star lineup (pun intended) of 2019 Tegernseerhof Rieslings grown on gneiss bedrock with slight variations of exposure and topsoil. First, we start with Martin’s rapier-like Dürnstein Riesling Federspiel (formerly labeled Terrassen). Every year this Riesling shows a gorgeous selection of green notes that dance somewhere between sweet mint, green fig, green apple skin, and sweet green melon, with razor-sharp steel and crystalline, salty mineral notes adding to its appeal. These grapes come exclusively from the first and second pickings of Riesling clusters from the gneiss terraces of some of the region’s greatest badass Riesling vineyards: Loibenberg, Steinertal and Kellerberg. The pedigree is all there, and Martin’s deft touch and desire to craft this wine into fine liquid art, making it one of the world’s greatest values for serious but delicious white wine. In the range of Martin’s Smaragd Rieslings, the Loibenberg Riesling Smaragd is the most delicate and refreshing while maintaining its Smaragd-level fullness. It comes from one of the warmest sites in the Wachau (which is still much cooler than most parts of Austria’s white wine regions) and is often the first to be picked within Tegernseerhof’s Smaragd Rieslings. The numerous parcels that are scattered over this large hill give the wine a great balance of characteristics from sweet Meyer lemon notes to the first pick of yellow stone fruits in early summer. It has a wonderfully refreshing spring-like feel, adorned with sweet flowers, acacia honey and early spring grasses. Indeed, spring and summer nuance is what this wine is all about, however, earthiness and forest floor notes are very present. As already noted, Martin prides himself on the savory and subtle nature of his wines, all framed with precise and regal mineral notes of river rock and freshly scratched metal, like a carbon steel knife after a good scrubbing. Refreshingly delicate for a Smaragd, it’s one of the most quaffable in the range and can be thoroughly enjoyed without the need for your full attention on each sip. If there is one wine in Martin’s range that he (and I!) might favor, the Steinertal Riesling Smaragd may be it. This tiny vineyard’s particularities give its wines tremendous range and also make it uniquely special. Steinertal is one of the great sites in all of Austria and its aromas beam from the glass with enticing and full-of-energy, high-toned mineral impressions; if it sounds exciting, that’s because it is! These elements of the wine are likely due to its growth in purely gneiss rock, spare topsoil and Martin’s preference for earlier picking and rigorous sorting to remove any concentrated botrytis grapes. The vineyard’s heat-trapping amphitheater shape and the steep ravines on both sides also create a teeter-totter of hot days and the cold nocturnal mountain air that breezes in and cools down the vineyards. My tasting notes from last summer express that the second glass emits discrete, late summer stone fruits, citrus, flowers, and French lavender. Exotic and sweet herbal notes follow, displaying fresh thyme, lemongrass and subtle wheatgrass and watermelon rind nuances. In the deepest parts of the wine, the acidity is fluid but intensely focused, supported by a gentle gust of palate-refreshing tannins. This full-scale orchestra of profound intellectual and hedonistic pleasure seems endless, so prepare yourself. If one were to cut their Wachau teeth on this Riesling, it may set the bar a little high. As Burgundy grower David Duband says when we dig into his grand crus at the cellar, “Be careful. It’s very good…” If one were to ask a knowledgeable wine professional about the greatest vineyards in Austria, the Wachau’s Kellerberg would likely be mentioned in their first breath. Keller-berg, or “Cellar-mountain,” is without a doubt one of the Wachau's greatest vineyards, and Tegernseerhof’s Kellerberg Riesling Smaragd is the fullest Riesling in their range, surely vying for the top spot with Steinertal. Imposing and profound in every dimension (very Chambertin-like in this way), from structural elements to the balance of power and subtlety, the only known weakness of this type of wine can be its maker; fortunately, Martin has a handle on it. To attempt to describe all the nuances of this wine would be a paragraph with no end. However, to better understand the wine’s nature it would be easier to demonstrate it with an explanation of its terroir. The hill faces mostly southeast, giving it good morning sun but also an earlier sunset than the neighboring Riesling vineyards with more southerly and sometimes western exposures, like Loibenberg and Steinertal. Similar to Steinertal, Höhereck and Schütt, and unlike the main face of the large Loibenberg slope, Kellerberg is exposed to a large, open ravine to the east that brings in a rush of cool air during the night. The aspect and exposure to this ravine, along with mostly unplanted hills just to the west, allows the fruit to mature to ripeness without imparting excessive fruitiness, while highlighting its pedigreed gneiss bedrock and spare topsoil. It has a deep range of topsoil from volcanic, loess and bedrock-derived gneiss, and Tegernseerhof has six parcels inside its boundary that cover these soil types. Loess brings richness and lift, gneiss the tension and focus. Even more important than the nuances is the way this wine makes you feel: the energy, the profound reservation, and at the same time its generosity. Kellerberg is formidable and does indeed comfortably sit among the world’s greatest vineyards. There are also reloads of Tegernseerhof’s popular 2019 Bergdistel Grüner Veltliner und Riesling Smaragds. These wines labeled with the name Bergdistel are a blend of many different small plots not big enough to be made into their own wines. Some of the grapes also come from further west of Dürnstein, closer to Weissenkirchen, home to many great vineyards, most notably (for me) Achleiten. Tegernseerhof’s renditions of these wines are his most generous in the Smaragd category. They are another great example of drink-it-don’t-think-it fabulous Smaragd Rieslings that don’t hold anything back immediately upon opening. New Arrivals: Italy Poderi Colla, Piemonte (Langhe) I think I write more about Poderi Colla in our newsletters than any other producer we work with outside of Arnaud Lambert. We always have new things coming from these guys and they’re fun to talk about. The Collas, like Lambert, are one of the most important cornerstones of our entire portfolio. I simply never tire of drinking their wines and would be happy to have them as my desert island red wine producer, although the island would have to be a little less tropical because warm Nebbiolo doesn’t sound so appealing… The reason for my infatuation—that could more aptly be described as absolute love—is simple, but also a little complicated to explain… Colla is among very few other producers throughout Europe who represent to me an unmovable historical wine culture. The Collas, like other quiet giants of the wine world, didn’t alter their course over the last fifty years regardless of the constantly changing wine styles the broader market wanted. Through the years of conformity in the global market in European staple regions like Tuscany, Piedmont, Rioja, Burgundy and Bordeaux, some producers stayed the course on more natural methods through the age of chemical farming (since WW II), the caricature-like muscular and overplayed wines of the Age of Extraction (1990s-2000s), until today, with the welcome movement away from those eras toward softer handling and elegance over power on one side, and on the other to the culture of unapologetic and, unfortunately sometimes, unaccountably flawed natural wines whose fans fashion them as a sort of punk rock-like movement; the difference is that the respectable punk rockers were good musicians that knew how to play their instruments in order to hit the notes they intended to hit. Intention has everything to do with any great wine too, “natural” or traditionally crafted. Tino Colla in Bussia Dardi le Rose The game-changers of old, the unflappable ones, refused to conform. Think of the many iconic and unmistakable historical styles found in the wines made by producers similar to Clape, Rayas, Rousseau, Leroy, DRC, Lafarge, Pierre Morey, López de Heredia, Vega Sicilia, Giuseppe Rinaldi, or Bartolo Mascarello; you get the point! (Perhaps the only shift in some of these producer’s philosophies in the last fifty years is in the direction of more natural farming.) For me, Poderi Colla is also on that list. It’s true that the Colla family’s wines weren’t popular for decades, but why? Because they made them like they were made in the 1950s and 60s, and they weren’t cutting edge anymore after the 1970s until about a decade ago. The Collas made their wines more or less the same seventy years ago as they do today. For example, Colla’s Barolo Bussia Dardi le Rose still goes through a two-week natural fermentation and is then aged two years in massive old barrels (50++ hectoliters) before bottling, as it was half a century ago. The difference is that now people get them because their graceful but traditionally sculpted and gently structured style is in again. Their wines are elegant and old-school, pale in color, subtle but fully expanding by the minute as they aerate, and, today, more pristinely crafted than in the past—perhaps the only thing I can think of that one might criticize about their style… Many of the great producers of wine know perfectly how to measure the risk in walking the line of volatile acidity in pursuit of x-factor perfection while remaining only a shade to the right of vulgarity. The Collas don’t walk that line, they keep it straighter from the start all the way to the finish, and that’s one of the many reasons why their wines are so incomparably reliable in this area. In fact, I cannot think of another producer with better consistency in their entire region—believe me, I’ve tried. The Collas are indeed pure on craft, thanks to the laser-sharp attention to detail of the family winemaker, Pietro Colla, with the help of his father, Tino, and their deeply ingrained three hundred years of knowledge passed down from the many Colla winegrowing generations. Another element I believe defines the Colla style is their unique position that lands between Piemontese and French style, more specifically, that of Burgundy and yesteryear’s Northern Rhône. I’ve often thought that the Colla’s wines would be less understood inside of a largely Italian portfolio, or a broad tasting of Italian wines because they are so straight. In many ways they fit perfectly into the expectation for the region, but in other ways they don’t. To better understand this, let’s rewind the clock a little. Back in the early 1960s, the late Beppe Colla (the family’s spiritual leader and a quiet revolutionary during his seventy years making wine and influencing his neighbors) went to Burgundy and it changed him. He returned home and decided to bottle, with the epic 1961 vintage, the first commercially marketed single-cru Barolo, Barbaresco, Nebbiolo d’Alba, Dolcetto and Barbera. It’s hard to believe, but Beppe is the true O.G. of the single-cru wine movement in the Langhe. Beppe was the first to commercially do this in the region’s history, all bottled under the Prunotto label, a winery they owned until the early 1990s before they sold to Antinori and then launched Poderi Colla. Colla’s wines today bear the mark of that pivotal moment in Beppe’s perspective, and that’s why I view them as wines that agree as much with a French palate as with an Italian one. I’m also inclined to mention (and not massively expand on, though I really want to) that Piemonte is historically linked to France by way of the rulership of the territory by the Savoy for almost five-hundred years. Many things in Piemonte are very close to France, but none more than the Piemontese dialect, which is clearly heavy on French-like vocabulary. For me, Colla’s wines somehow embody this (even if the Collas may not see it that way), and it’s interesting to be mindful of this when their wines are in your glass. They’re surely Italian, but there is a distinctive dash of French there from influence hundreds of years ago, but even more recently with Beppe’s pilgrimage to Burgundy a half century ago. The best news with Colla is that we have a great relationship with them, and despite their major surge of interest by the global market as of late, we are still able to import a good quantity of wine from them. Most of what we have arriving from Colla are restocks on wines that we simply can’t seem to keep around long. However, their 2020 Dolcetto d’Abla “Pian Balbo” is a new release. Dolcetto is a grape that deserves more respect than it gets. I am sure every visit I’ve had with Tino Colla he tells me that Dolcetto is the wine the local winegrowers drink the most. It seems like they would drink their top Barolos and Barbarescos with every meal, but their reality is that they focus on wine all day and at the end of the day they want something a little easier going, and less serious but also delicious and complex, and unmistakably Piemontese—and that’s Dolcetto! Pian Balbo, sourced from Cascina Drago, their magnificent vineyard on the border of Barbaresco at around 330m altitude, is macerated on the skins for a week, or slightly less, and aged in stainless steel to preserve its fresh and bright fruit profile. The acidity is cleansing and the tannins smooth and lightly chalky. It may seem strange, but I often open Dolcetto on the nights when I need a couple-hour vacation from too much seriousness in my wines, much like the vignaioli do. Sometimes I find its simplicity just as thrilling as the complexity of other greater wines. But no matter whether a wine takes itself too seriously or not, Colla’s Dolcetto, with its unmistakable Piemontese aromas and tastes, transports me back to Piemonte, and what can be better than that? And the price? At four or five bucks per glass at your home wine bar, it’s almost free. When Dolcetto is in the right setting, however, it can indeed be serious business. We squeezed the Collas for a last batch of their 85% Dolcetto, 15% Nebbiolo blend, 2016 Bricco Del Drago, a monumental wine with this historical blend long before the concept of IGT came around, with the quality and guts to outlast even the most prestigious of Barolo and Barbaresco wines. I know that’s a big statement, but I, a former skeptic too, have been convinced of this wine’s chops from the numerous examples with decades of age, especially the 1970 that Tino Colla regularly speaks about with seemingly greater reverence than even all the great Barolo and Barbaresco he’s had in his seventy-plus years. Piedmont wine junkies, like us at The Source, know that 2016 has all the accolades (well-deserved), and they are a treasure to keep but also show fabulously now. Don’t miss an opportunity for a serious cellar wine at a very fair price for the pedigree that will likely outlive you but give you a lot of pleasure along the way. Do all those six-year-olds in your family (and extended family) a favor and lay some down until it’s time to give them some as a special and thoughtful gift. The 2016, and all the other vintages of this wine, will likely stand the test of time without much effort—probably better than many of the Barolo and Barbaresco wines from the same year, but at a third or quarter of the price. There’s more 2019 Barbera d’Alba “Costa Bruna” arriving as well. There was a battle between our sales team for quantities of this wine for our top restaurants and I’m sure these will go fast again. Notes from November 2021 Newsletter: Almost every vintage in the last twenty-five years (save a few, like 2002 and 2014) has brought greater credibility to Barbera as a world-class variety, and 2019 has kicked it up a couple notches. The 2019 Vintage was a long growing season with steady weather all the way through, and despite the lack of extremely high temperatures in the previous two vintages, it ripened perfectly, and its naturally high acidity relaxed just enough to bring its stockpile of complexities into balance in this slow growing season. What’s more is that Colla’s Barbera d’Alba “Costa Bruna” is sourced entirely from the Barbaresco cru, Roncaglie, on what would typically be a Nebbiolo exposition facing south, and with very old vines that were mostly planted in the 1930s. It offers a diverse combination of fruits, from bright red to dark, with sweet red and purple flowers and spice. It’s absolutely another Colla wine to pepper into your annual wine schedule. More of the outstanding 2019 Nebbiolo d’Alba hit too. We went as long on quantities as the Collas would let us with this wine. It’s truly one of the greatest Nebbiolo years and this one will simply blow out your expectations with respect to category and price. It’s made with the same care as a Barbaresco (a year in large, old botte) and has the same basic calcareous marls and sand. The difference is that it sits between 330-370m and covers a multitude of aspects from east to west, and sits at the top of the hill, fully exposed to cold air which makes for a wine of great tension and never any hint of desiccated fruit, only fresh and bright notes, like those old-school Barbaresco and Barolo wines we all miss. As we said back in our Notes from November 2021 Newsletter: While discussing the 2016 vintage in Piemonte at the start of the pandemic in Italy during a visit to the Collas (among about a dozen other top estates visits in Barolo and Barbaresco) in February of 2019, Tino Colla, who has seen more than fifty harvests as an adult, basically skipped over 2016 and jumped right into the merits of 2019, a vintage he felt would be one of the most important of his lifetime. Colla’s Nebbiolo d’Alba is a preview of that oncoming quality, and it’s gorgeous. If Nebbiolo is one of your passions and you need a price break without sacrificing quality, go deep on 2019 entry-level Nebbiolos. For the very serious collectors and Nebb-heads, the 2017 Barolo Bussia Dardi le Rose MAGNUMS came in on this boat. The critics are circling back on this year and retracting a few of their initial concerns. Built to age for decades, and even longer in magnum, this could be a good one to take a look at. (We also have a few 2015 Barolo mags left in our inventory if mags of epic wine are your thing…) Crotin, Asti It seems that when we bring in wines from Colla we also take more wines from the Russo brothers at Crotin at the same time. The word Crotin is Piemontese dialect for “small cellars under the main wine cellar,” and is used for keeping the best wines for long-term aging. The Russo boys have been churning out some of the top values in Asti now for nearly a decade, under the assistance of the well-known prodigy enologist, Cristiano Garella. Their organically farmed vineyards are in some of the coldest growing sections of southern Piemonte, where the frigid temperatures offer grapes a long growing season, ideal for the high-toned aromatic Piemontese varieties. In these parts, it’s all about punching power inside of this lightweight division. We have the 2019 Barbera d’Asti “La Martina” finally arriving. It’s been more than two years since we ordered Barbera from these guys (and that’s what they specialize in!) because the last order of 2018 landed a month or two after the shutdowns of 2020 began. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you already know 2019 is a simply fabulous year for Piedmont. Wines like Barbera, known for their intense acidity, found their heights in this long and steady growing season (at least for my palate, whereas many growers here prefer the even hotter years for this grape) that helped the grape phenolics balance out this variety’s naturally high acid. Organically grown on calcareous sands and clay, the vineyard, La Martina, is in a very cold section of Asti and makes for a special profile mixture of crunchy but ripe, palate-staining dark red and purple fruit. It’s aged only in stainless steel, so you can expect notable purity here as well. Crotin’s 2020 Freisa “Aris” is made from this nearly forgotten grape variety that was ubiquitous in Piemonte only decades ago. Today, it’s been relegated mostly to the region’s backwaters in the wake of the mass propagation of Nebbiolo in Piedmont. There are still compelling examples to be found at cantinas like Brovia and Giuseppe Rinaldi, but perhaps with the ever-increasing demand for Barolo and Barbaresco, it won’t regain footing in the Langhe anytime soon. Nevertheless, it should be on anyone’s radar looking for more of the identifiable but difficult to describe Piemontese characteristics imprinted on all of its wines. From year to year, Freisa can vary in its tannin levels and if not managed well it can be a beast, but at Crotin’s Aris vineyard they’ve tamed it and it brings great pleasure with only a slight tilt toward its natural rusticity. Over the pandemic, the Russo brothers came up with a new wine bottled in liters: 2020 Vino Rosso Contadino “Beverin”. The label is totally different (more fun!) than the others in their range and it is certifiable Piemontese glou glou, by design—not a typical wine style for this very traditional region! It’s a blend of 80% Bonarda (the fiesta grape) mixed with 10% Freisa (the curfew police for the Bonarda party), and 10% Grignolino to bring more elegance and beauty to the scene. Beverin is Piemontese dialect that implies “a light and easy to drink wine.” I took my first sample bottle to a tasting in Portugal with some of our producers there and it was a favorite for all who tasted it. For the price and quality, it’s tough to beat for those looking for a glass of Piemontese deliciousness. New Arrivals: France Patrick Baudouin, Anjou I finally made it back to the Loire Valley three weeks ago after an almost three-year absence! Crazy! Last summer I hit the road for six weeks straight at the end of spring and into the early summer and missed only the northern part of Champagne and all of the Loire Valley before the fall Covid restrictions started to complicate things again. It was strange for me to miss this part of what has been my usual wine route because over the years I often stopped there twice in the same year. Now, one hour and twenty minutes on a plane from Porto drops me right into Nantes, making it one of the easiest trips from Portugal. It was a great tour and nice to finally see our friends there. I took some days in Saumur and then a few in Montlouis (some very cool things coming from there a few months from now!) and finally hit Patrick Baudouin on my last day before flying back home. Since I saw Patrick last, he seems to have swapped out his old crew for a group of younger workers in the vineyard and cellar. I’m sure this will influence some of the wines in the coming vintages. Months prior to the pandemic when those nasty tariffs were imposed, we had an order waiting to set sail from this natural-wine guru and somewhat controversial Loire Valley winegrower. The order was suspended and then the pandemic hit. We added a few more goodies but managed to maintain some quantity of great wines from 2015 and 2017. The first wine is Patrick’s 2019 Anjou Blanc “Effusion”, a Chenin Blanc grown on a mix of a few different parcels of vines on metamorphic and volcanic rocks, the latter formation was the inspiration for the name of this bottling from “effusive” igneous rocks, magmatic rock that cool on the surface of the earth instead of underground, which are known as “intrusive” igneous rocks. We historically import the highest volume from Patrick, so it may be the most recognizable. It’s made in a simple way, as are all the dry Chenin Blanc in Patrick’s range, with barrel aging mostly in older French oak with very little intervention. I find that all of Patrick’s wines go down very easily, but Effusion is the one that performs its best melodies in its younger years, and that’s why it’s always released earlier than the others, along with Les Fresnaye, a vineyard that has seen a lot of trouble in the years from frost. Volcanic ash rocks from one of Baudouin’s vineyards for his Anjou Blanc “Effusion” Produced from Chenin vines planted in 1947, the 2015 & 2017 Anjou Blanc “Les Gats” bottlings represent perhaps Patrick’s highest level in his range of dry Chenin in this neck of the woods, on the left bank of the Loire. The others may equal it, but Les Gats carries a few x-factor notes that in my opinion often separate it from the others. The other dry wines in the range are maybe a little more predictable in some ways, whereas Les Gats, even once you think you know it, somehow reveals a new secret with each vintage. That is the case with these two very good Chenin Blanc vintages, and to have them side by side in a tasting shows the merit of these two stellar years and the talent of this northeast-facing site grown on ancient schist that dates to Pangean times. Les Gats is raised mostly in older barrels (perhaps with a new one slipped in there occasionally) and is always released quite late. The 2017 is the new release and the 2015 was a wine that I requested before the pandemic that Patrick held onto for us. The quantities of both wines are minuscule, but at least we finally have some! We wanted to bring in some stickies from the Loire Valley because there is a small but growing interest again in the category. To work with Patrick on these wines is always a pleasure because they are typically quirky sweet wines, but under Patrick’s direction of natural methods in the vineyard they take on a few lesser-known layers in this part of the Côteaux du Layon, an area that is largely chemically farmed. The 2018 Côteaux du Layon “Les Bruandières” grows very close to the borders of Quarts de Chaumes, the most famous sweet wine appellation of the Loire Valley. Historically, Les Bruandières was on equal footing as Quarts de Chaumes but was not given its own appellation, perhaps due to its very small size? Les Bruandières is a fabulous sweet wine in the sense that it’s not overwhelming with too much sugar. I even sometimes find myself drinking it at a still-wine pace, like drinking a fabulous German Spätlese or aged Auslese, because the balance is gorgeous. It’s perfect for tasting menus when the dessert or cheese course needs something sweet, but it’s not overbearing after an extensive meal and at a time when palate fatigue (or disinterest in more wine) begins to set in. The 2015 Quarts de Chaume “Les Zersilles” is a very different story than Les Bruandières despite also being a sticky. It’s denser and darker in color, and serves a very different purpose at the end of the meal (I cannot imagine having it at any other point in a meal other than the end!) geared toward a more decadent finish. In contrast to some of the profound, sweet Auslese and TBA wines of Germany, this purely Chenin Blanc wine exists in a more deeply earthy, damp, and herbal sweetness—almost like a Sauternes (I haven’t written that word for almost two decades!) without the aristocratic gold trim and aim for perfection; like us, Patrick prefers the perfectly imperfect wines. Here, in Patrick’s Les Zersilles, it’s a berry selection; not a selection of berries that are totally free of funk, but rather full of the good funk! The quantity of this wine is even less than the others and is meant to be for the many restaurants with tasting programs looking for truly organic and naturally made, high quality sweet wines. Patrick Baudouin

Süditrol’s St. Magdelena vines shot from Fliederhof winery, May 2022 May, Europe’s new summer month… As we descend upon Germany via train from Milan through the Alps, our group of four are all wounded and bloated from a massive intake of beef tartar, vitello tonnato, agnolotti, ravioli, gnocchi, and a near overdose of Nebbiolo (if that’s possible… well, maybe it is with the tannins of young ones…). We are in Germany for a day and then I’m off to Iberia for two more weeks of visits with another group of our staff who are joining me there as the others head home. I packed light for this forty-day bender, as sparingly as I ever have for a journey of over a month: four pairs of pants, two sweaters and a long jacket have taken up precious space in my bags since I left Prague at the end of April. It’s strangely hot this year and especially dry too. Climate change is really starting to weigh heavily over here and everyone’s concerns are more heightened than ever, despite 2021’s colder year in many locations, with great losses in some areas due to mildew pressure. In the past, climate change was a talking point in the midst of each vintage’s woes, but today, perhaps elevated by the post-pandemic shutdown period (hopefully post!), Ukrainian invasion and inflation ridiculousness, the mood is heavier than ever, especially after so many years of wackiness with the twisting of seasons. In many parts of Northern Italy it has only rained three times since November and what has arrived didn’t deliver enough. We just left Barolo and Barbaresco and many of the Nebbiolo vines were already flowering in those areas and their surroundings, around May 20th, which means a harvest will likely be in early September. There isn’t anything to do except hope for some relief, but it’s already quite late to slow things down enough to extend the season. I started the trip with ten days in Austria and the Czech Republic accompanied by my wife, Andrea, where we found the best Napolitana pizza I’ve had outside of Campania, at Pizza Nuova (which has a fabulous Italian wine list too), and a great wine bar, Bokovka, both owned by the same clever company. When Andrea left, JD, our Los Angeles sales rep, arrived. After a great visit with our Austrian team—all highlights, honestly, between Tegernseerhof’s 2019s, Veyder-Malberg’s 2021s, Malat’s 2019s and 2021s, Weszeli’s 2017s, and Birgit Braunstein and her cool range of progressive and well-made, biodynamic natural wines—he and I jumped down to Milan to grab Victoria, my sister and Office Manager, and Tyler, an Aussie expatriate who represents us in San Diego and Orange County. We all have serious farmer tans now just in time for the real summer months and big setbacks on our beach bellies. There is far too much to say about my trip here, and I wish I had time to share it all. What I can say is that I am very proud of the producers we represent in Austria and Northern Italy. Perhaps the biggest surprise for our team was the quality of wines coming from our four producers in Monferrato: Crotin keeps nailing it with inexpensive but serious wines and some new bottlings, too; Spertino is becoming a problem because the international demand for this true vinous artist is putting a pinch on our allocations; La Casaccia, a new producer for us, was probably the most unexpected knockout visit for our group with their masterfully crafted range of Barbera, Grignolino and Freisa (the latter is simply inconceivably delicious, perfumed, and subtle but generous as any Freisa I’ve ever had); and Sette, a new winery working biodynamically that lived up to my hype for my staff with their head-turning wines from Nizza. Alto Piemonte and Langhe also had a spectacular showing with the most notable highlights being Monti Perini’s yet-to-be-bottled 2017, 2018 and 2019 Bramaterra wines, Davide Carlone’s upcoming 2020 entry-level wines all grown in Boca, Dave Fletcher’s 2019 four Barbaresco bottlings that were simply a stunning breakthrough for him (an already very good, young winegrower) and Poderi Colla’s 2019 Barbaresco Roncaglie, a true masterpiece and unquestionably the top Barbaresco I’ve had from them. There’s so much more to add, but we’ll get there another day because now we’re off to Spain and Portugal. In next month’s Newsletter, I’ll give the play-by-play and note the highlights from my final two-week leg of the journey. New Producers In June we have a real boatload of wine coming in (unapologetic pun intended). It’s hard to know where to start because there are so many good things arriving. All the new wines this month are from France, except a lone Spanish wine made from one of our new French producers who plays by his own rules, Imanol Garay. Also arriving in the warehouse are new wines from Arnaud Lambert, Thierry Richoux, David Moreau’s 2019s, finally the 2020 Dutraive wines, Francois Crochet’s 2021 Rosé of Pinot Noir, Domaine du Pas de L’Escalette, Pascal Ponson “Prestige Cuvée” Champagne, and finally a reload from our lone Bordeaux producer (for the moment), Cantelaudette. Because there is so much, I’ll only highlight a few, starting with our newest additions. Aside from the two new producers we will explore today, there are over a dozen more we signed on with over the last six months or so whose wines will finally be arriving by the last quarter of the year. We have new wines coming from Chile (Itata), Saumur, Montlouis, Champagne, Bordeaux, Piemonte, Abruzzo, Douro, Setubal, Alentejo, Azores, Rías Baixas, Ribeira Sacra, and Sicily—finally, after five years of poking around the island. We are in the middle of exciting times at The Source and we greatly appreciate the support from you who continue to work with our talented team and consider the wines from our constantly evolving portfolio. It’s because of you that we can continue to do the work we love to do. Imanol Garay, Southwest France/Northern Spain Spanish/French former engineer and barrel broker, Imanol Garay, un vigneron libre, follows no wine rules (other than some labeling requirements for his French/Spanish wine blends) and believes in terroir not only as the concept of specific site or even region but as a contiguous philosophical thread practiced in different places that may be forged into one wine. A resident of southwest France, his cellar is in Orthez, only a short drive from Spain’s Basque country. Before starting his project, he worked with French natural wine gurus Richard Leroy and Vincente Careme, among others. Some vineyards are his own, some he rents and farms, and some fruit comes from friends with the same deep respect for nature aligned with their life philosophy. He has another project in Spain’s Txakoli region with friends, Alfredo Egia (also in our portfolio) and Gile Iturri, labeled Hegan Egin; some years he makes Rioja, others Navarra, and always a lot of French wine. Cautiously walking the natural-wine line, his pursuit is of the clean yet uninhibited, void of unwanted animally smells (the mouse, the horse), and instead with wonderful character-filled and potently nuanced, high-energy wines filled with joy and authenticity, like the man himself. Imanol Garay We start with Imanol’s 2020 Clandestinus, a Pyrenean red wine from Spain’s Navarra grown on limestone bedrock with brown topsoil. CLANdeSTINUS is a play on words regarding Imanol’s family history, the Stinus clan, from (de) Alsace in former times, and a “tribute to all those who have crossed mountains, seeking a better life.” The mix is equal parts Grenache and Graciano, the latter a less well known and very promising red variety with an incredible structure led with, at times, jarring acidity when not fully ripe, but gorgeously savory with tight dark red fruit. As all of Imanol’s wines, it’s made without any additions throughout vinification, with some added after malolactic fermentation where it receives a sparse amount of sulfur prior to bottling. Élevage takes place over a ten-month period in a mix of 228-, 600- and 700-liter French oak barrels with mostly old wood and a small portion of new. Clandestinus dances on its toes around the danger of a natural wine disaster while delivering a non-stop barrage of juicy, slightly baked fruits and roasted nuts, and sweet, northern Spanish countryside rusticity—think leather, chestnuts, and cured meat. I observed this young and surprisingly voluptuous wine for days after opening it, waiting for it to succumb to exhaustion after its vigorous dance, but my wife fell under its spell and finally finished it off before I could stop her—a surprising act from someone who usually has little interest in red wines that hit 14% alcohol. Diving into Imanol’s highly sought after whites with unfortunately extremely tight limitations on quantity are his Ixilune (pronounced “itchie-loo-nay”), French whites grown in and around the Madiran and Béarn appellations, without the appellations on the labels. These are very special whites indeed, and we took whatever Imanol would allow from the two vintages available. Both are deep in reductive, minerally elements (à la Richard Leroy) and need a moment to open and express their rolling hill, limestone and alluvial terroirs. The 2018 Ixilune is composed of 70% Petit Courbu from d’Aydie, and 30% Petit Manseng from Soublecause. The élevage takes place in 225- and 500-liter barrels of young but no new French oak. Free of sulfites through its time in wood, a first and final addition was made at bottling. The 2020 Ixilune is a blend of 25% Petit Courbu and 25% Petit Manseng (both from Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh), with the difference, a rare white grape with a long tradition, Raffiat de Moncade, cultivated in and around the village of Orthez. The potentially high-yielding Raffiat de Moncade produces relatively neutral white wines, often expressing soft, white flesh fruit notes and flowers. It offers this blend with the other two higher-toned and more tense fresh grapes a gentler mouthfeel and softer aromas. The 2020 Ixilune is similarly aged in 225- and 500-liter barrels of young French oak and 10% in a small amphora. Always searching to work around sulfur, Imanol was confident enough to bottle this white without adding any. Given his successes with his no-sulfur Txakoli project, Hegan Egin, the 2020 Ixilune appears to follow in those very successful footsteps. Both wines are 14% in alcohol, but fresh, tight, minerally (alongside its beautiful reductive elements) and as mentioned, surprisingly unbreakable for days after opening. New Producer: Nicolas Pointeau (Domaine de la Sablière), Chinon Due to the severe shortage of Saumur red wines from Arnaud Lambert, Romain Guiberteau and Brendan Stater-West, I began to search for some young blood in the Loire Valley’s Cabernet Franc world, especially outside of Saumur, to add a little variety to our Cabernet Franc range. I love the wines of Saumur, but I’m also interested in finding other things throughout the rest of the Loire Valley, a region we adore. Marielle et Nicolas Pointeau I received a tip from one of our top winegrowers about the wines of Nicolas Pointeau, a young vigneron working his family’s Chinon winery organically with his wife, Marielle, in Domaine de la Sablière. Any tip from great producers is worth exploring, and a few years ago they met Nicolas at an event and pointed me in their direction—this is how “discovery” in importing works most of the time (nearly all the time), rather than knocking randomly on doors and cold-calling in other ways. A lot has happened between my introductory tastes of his wines in the summer of 2019, with the 2017 and 2018 vintages, and what is in the bottle now, with the 2020 vintage. The conversion to organic farming and a few more years of experience in the cellar, Nicolas made wines convincing enough to jump on his wagon. Pointeau’s organic Chinon vineyards on alluvial soils used for the entry-level Chinon wines Nicolas’ wines will not yet revolutionize the Cabernet Franc wine scene because they are made in a very straightforward way without much “hand in the wine.” His entire range is solid, unpretentious, and not over-thought or overplayed; they deliver tremendous value and exist squarely in the realm of lightly structured, delicious, gravelly, black earth, lovely red and dark-fruited, perfectly ripe and deliciously savory Cabernet Franc. Their vineyards in Chinon are largely on alluvial soils with some on shallow topsoils above tuffeau limestone bedrock. The alluvial soils make for wines with a little more gentleness on acidity and palate roundness without being too rich from the soil and much less solar powered than Cabernet Franc wines from further south in western France. If you are familiar with Arnaud Lambert’s range (as are most restaurant and retail buyers who work with our portfolio), think Les Terres Rouges, or Montée des Roches, both grown on Arnaud’s richer soils of the Saumur-Champigny commune, Saint-Cyr en Bourg, but maybe a little less dense given the loamier soils than the clay-rich soils of Saumur-Champigny. Even more, Nicolas’ reds represent his conviviality and hard-working nature; when I drink them, I am always reminded of him in his well-worn vigneron’s clothes, with a smile from ear to ear. The Pointeau cellar Within the range of the three Chinon reds that will land, the 2020 Chinon “Tradition” is the first in line and raised in only stainless steel tanks and comes from gravelly soil on large terraces. The wine does indeed have gravelly textures (classic for the variety), a good mix of dark and red fruits, graphite palate and nose, on a light frame. The 2020 Chinon “Tonneliers” is raised in old French oak barrels (called fûts de chêne in these parts, rather than barrique) and similarly grown on gravel soils as the “Tradition” bottling. The difference here is maybe just a slightly fuller body and rounded edges though with a similar fruit profile. The time in wood also imparts more savory notes and a slight softening of the fruit notes. The 2020 Chinon “Vieille Vignes” comes from parcels with a greater tuffeau limestone presence, further uphill from the vineyards used for the other bottlings we imported. Finer lines and a deeper core with additional mineral notes alongside the variety’s ubiquitous graphite notes, this stainless-steel-aged Cabernet Franc has great purity and depth for Nicolas’ gentle and easy style. The average age of vines for all the cuvées is around forty-five years, with the Vieille Vignes closer to eighty. All the Chinon red wines we imported from Pointeau are bottled between March and June after their vintage year. New Arrivals Richoux, Irancy We have a fabulous group of wines coming in from Thierry Richoux and his fils, Gavin and Félix. The baton is in the process of being passed from Thierry to them, which explains why some labels display their names, and others have Thierry’s. Since 2017 a few things have changed at this organically-run domaine. The boys have incorporated some new techniques, most noticeably a gentler extraction and the use of smaller barrels, where in the past they were aged exclusively for a year in stainless steel, followed by another year in large foudre between 55hl-85hl capacity. They are also experimenting with notable success with smaller total sulfur additions and holding out on the first addition until the wines are ready to be bottled. Much of these changes will be felt in the years to come more than those that arrive today. We adore the old-school style of Thierry and hope they will stay close to it, but it’s obvious that Gavin and Félix are making a few advancements instead of experimental setbacks. Félix, the youngest of Thierry and Corine Richoux’s sons We have a reload of 2017 Irancy and our first batch of 2017 Irancy “Veaupessiot”. This vintage expresses the beautiful fruit nuances of this warm vintage that ripened when the fruit was still dominated by red tones. In the 2005 vintage, Veaupessiot became Richoux’s first single-cru bottling of Irancy, and for good reason. While a good portion of Irancy sits inside the amphitheater shape that surrounds the ancient village, there are many prized sites just outside of it, or on the south-side of the south hill of the appellation. Veaupessiot is on the outside, at the southwestern end of the horseshoe-shaped appellation as it opens toward the west. The slope is moderately steep and ends near a ravine that cuts in below it, and an incline far too steep for vineyards. Other vineyards look like they could be as good, but that’s the fun and mystery of great vineyards; it’s not what’s above that determines the great sites, it’s what’s below. Richoux recognized this early on and it remains the most well-balanced single-cru wine in his range. This wine will have good moments early on but certainly has the chops to age as effortlessly as Richoux’s many wines have time and time again. The Richoux family’s wines are bulletproof and remain one of the greatest deals still to be had in all of Burgundy among top domaines. Richoux Veaupessiot parcel to the left of the road Les Cailles is Richoux’s second single-cru bottling and is more powerful and structured than Veaupessiot. It’s spicier, more mineral and with more formidable tannins, requiring extra time in bottle as well as aeration once opened to find its peak moment. When it gets there, it arrives in a big way, but we must be more patient than with Veaupessiot. 2015 Irancy “Les Cailles” will surely be the best yet put to bottle (that is released), and this year is a perfect vintage with its boosted ripeness and softer tannins; this means that it will require of you less patience to find its moment upon opening compared to the previous three releases. (The first year of Les Cailles was bottled in 2012.) The 2015 Veaupessiot is an extraordinary wine (that sold out in a flash), which means that Les Cailles will be nothing short of impressive for decades to come. It will be interesting to see Veaupessiot and Les Cailles duke it out over the years, and it would be best not miss a vintage from either of them to experience this intriguing comparison. Les Cailles is situated on the north hill of the amphitheater facing south. The vines are over seventy years old and contribute added depth. South-facing old vines of Les Cailles Arnaud Lambert, Saumur Yet another group of wines from Arnaud Lambert is arriving. We have a lot of coverage of his wines in our newsletters and on the website, so I won’t take a deep dive here. On the boat are reloads of the Crémant de Loire Blanc & Rosé and some new releases of single-cru wines. It seems we have some of our barrels marked in Arnaud’s cellar! In the Saumur Blanc department, we have the 2020 “Les Perrieres”, 2018 “Bonne Nouvelle”, 2018 “Coulee de St. Cyr”, 2018 Clos de la Rue, and the 2018 Saint-Just “Brézé”. Quantities are minuscule on some of these, so please go easy on us if we can’t fill your requests. In the red department, the new release of 2019 Saumur “Montée des Roches” and 2018 Saumur-Champigny “Clos Moleton” will arrive. Quantities on these two wines are very limited, so get ahead on those and reach out soon if you are interested. Brézé’s tuffeau limestone diversity from stark white to light orange due to a higher iron content Jean-Louis Dutraive, 2017 Dutraive, Beaujolais Finally, the 2020s from Dutraive will arrive. We opted to wait until all the wines were ready in this vintage (some fermentations ran a little later than expected) before we brought them in, which resulted in some unexpectedly lengthy delays. The 2020 vintage was relatively uneventful and without demoralizing natural elements such as frost or high mildew pressure. However, it was a warm year all around. The difference between some of the other warmer seasons of late is that the vines had a good natural yield that was only curbed by the summer heat, concentrating grapes and making for riper wines. The most positive element of the year was that the growers were able to choose when they wanted to pick, resulting in balanced fruit. Dutraive’s wines in 2020 are fresher than many of the recent years thanks to the naturally balanced crop load. The recent warm years that had early season losses to nature’s elements affected the final balance of the wines due to too much of the vine’s focus on the little quantity of fruit they produced. As usual, quantities are very limited. Dutraive’s Clos de la Grand’Cour vineyard in Fleurie Pas de L’Escalette, Languedoc Julien Zernott and Delphine Rousseau have become one of the Languedoc’s leading producers for substantive wines with higher tones and greater freshness than the typical wines from this massive area of France. During the pandemic many producers were understandably forced to seek out new markets for their wines while their traditional markets, including France, waited out the pandemic. That, in conjunction with the rest of the world taking notice, is why our allocations are more limited these days. I apologize in advance for an unusually small quantity of wines from this young (still!) and progressive duo. Escalette vineyard with walls constructed from “clapas” 2021 should be a great year for French rosé. It’s probably the coldest year since 2013 and offers a lot of freshness to the wines, especially after the long string of warm years, particularly between 2017 and 2020. Escalette’s 2021 Ze Rozé is a slightly top-heavy wine sourced from some of the better red grape parcels—no specific parcels are isolated for the rosé. Here, compared to most Provencal rosés similarly composed of Grenache, you can expect more body but on a rather tight frame due to the higher altitude, rockier limestone bedrock and topsoil, and the constant fresh winds that blow through this narrow valley. The blend this year is 65% Grenache, 20% Carignan for greater flesh and deeper fruit, 10% Cinsault for more lifted and floral aromas and 5% Syrah. The 2021 Les Petits Pas also benefited greatly from the cooler year, yielding a very fresh red. From the moment the Les Petits Pas was created, Julien and Delphine’s intention was to add a charmer in their line of wines that didn’t take itself too seriously—hence the full color pinkish red label with neon green, baby footprints. Pas de L’Escalette is nestled up into an ancient roadway that connects the Languedoc to the north by way of France’s central mountain range, the Massif Central. This is cooler wine country, far from the Mediterranean, so it’s plenty cold at night, even in summer, and this is what imparts their wines with more zippy freshness and crunchy red and dark fruits, which make it a perfect wine for warm weather. Les Petits Pas is a multi-parcel blend from organically farmed vineyards on limestone terroirs, typically a mix of 40% Grenache, 40% Syrah and 20% Carignan. Each of these grapes naturally carries ample freshness, magnified by a little chill, making it anything but heavy on a sunny day. It is indeed compelling for us wine geeks, but it’s more of a drink-it-don’t-think-it wine. Les Petits Pas doesn’t constantly tug at your sleeve begging to show you how good it is, it’s just good. Les Clapas Rouge, named after the limestone rock piles (clapas) found in the vineyards, is led by Syrah, which makes up 50% of the blend. The Syrah is entirely vinified in whole bunches, and Delphine says they never destem Syrah because the stems add so much complexity; they’re mixed in for the fermentation and contribute what one might expect: heightened freshness, texture, and exotic green, animal nuances. The remainder is a mix of 30% Carignan and 20% Grenache, both co-fermented with 50% whole clusters. The latter two grapes contribute more of the suppleness, but the combination of the three—all extremely noble grapes—make for a wine broad in dimension and full in flavor. After its three to four week “infusion” fermentation (which simply means no big movements for extraction) the wine is polished up over fourteen months in 50-hectoliter upright wooden tanks and a single 20-hectoliter foudre. It’s racked once in the spring and the only sulfite addition (no more than 30mg/l, or 30 parts per million of total SO2) is made just prior to the bottling, without any filtration.

It’s week two of our ten weeks in Europe visiting our producers and things are going well. Today we sampled the very promising 2016s from the Côte d'Or with Maxime Cheurlin, Amélie Berthaut and Bruno Clair. Bruno Clair is letting more and more whole cluster sneak into his wines these days. Every 2016 we tasted was singing from the first barrel to the last. No surprise! Maxime (from Domaine Georges Noellat) is speaking more English these days and also broadening his range of wines. When you taste in his cellar, you think, "yeah, yeah, yeah, do we have to taste one more unapologetically delicious wine before lunch?" My old boss, Adam Tolmach, used to say that winemaking is 90% logistics. With Amélie's new underground winery finished and her fiancée, Nicolas Faure, managing her vineyard team, everything is beginning to fire on all cylinders. Her 2016s were yet another jump from the previous year. Now it’s back to the Côte de Beaune to taste with Simon Bize, David Croix and Olivier Lamy.