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Arribas Wine Company granite vineyard planted at 650m in Portugal's Trás-os-Montes (Download complete pdf here) An article in the February 28th issue of The New Yorker magazine titled, “It’s O.K. to Be Confused About This Economy,” hit close to home. January left us nervous and the tension was compounded by all the projections of recession by the experts, but then business boomed in February. Confusing indeed. It seems the unusually heavy rains kept people home instead of in restaurants in early January. We’re grateful for our February, and March is already off to a roar. If it’s going well for us again, hopefully that’s an indicator for you as well. After an absence of almost a year and a half from the States, I flew from Barcelona to Los Angeles on January 12th and landed in sunny weather to find unusually green hillsides after the big rains. My trip was exhausting and the five weeks I was there felt like they went way too quickly. Our company put on a three-day staff meeting followed by some very well-attended tasting events in SF, LA, SD, and Monterey, which allowed me some face-time (albeit brief) with many of our customers and friends. By the time I arrived back in Barcelona—direct flights are now available from LA and SF through Level, by the way—followed by a couple of days’ drive back home to Portugal with an unusually snowy stop in Rioja, I was toast. When people find out I’m involved in wine importation they mostly think the job is all just the pleasure and fun of sipping and feasting. This is indeed a part of it, but that’s not how it always goes. When traveling alone I don’t eat breakfast and sometimes skip lunch, too, and often freeze to the bone in cellar and vineyard visits during cold seasons while the vines are dormant (the best times to visit, unfortunately, are when the weather’s not particularly nice). One Brit in the same line of work summed it up to me perfectly in 2010 at one of Beaune’s infamous restaurants, Ma Cuisine, “It’s good work, but it’s hard work.” In 2010 I was two years into my first wine company (Vance Erickson), and at thirty-three years old I was energized straight off the plane, a fearless consumer of daily foie gras and sometimes two or three pain au chocolat a day while in France for four to six weeks, fuel that fired me up to hit the road. At forty-six, it’s a stumble off the transatlantic flight in full zombie mode, pinched neck, sagging shoulders and desperate, bloodshot eyes, challenges of my life choices and addiction to all things wine, feeling old—prematurely old. Then, after one good and long day of sleep exactly ten days after being home, I’m ready to destroy myself again. My wife doesn’t understand it, and neither do I. A new vine in Douro Superior at Mateus Nicolau de Almeida Spring Travels & Early 2023 Forecasts There is no wine area quite like northwest Iberia. Last week I saw almost all our Galician and Portuguese crew during a four-day bender, and along for the ride was Gino Della Porto, winegrower and co-owner of Sette, in Nizza Monferrato. Here, everyone we work with started their own project from the ground floor, most of whom are like cultural search-and-rescue teams for generations of lost knowledge. They’re often from poor families that support their wine dreams the best they can, working against unfavorable winegrowing conditions every year, lots of hail, and mildew pressure like no other large European wine zone I know. Our guys at Cume do Avia have never had a normal crop load. The best I’ve ever heard was just last season, which was down only 10% from their potential output, when it’s usually reduced by 60-70%; they’re organic farmers in a fungal paradise—conditions inhospitable to grapes. While their neighbors who are not organic have canopies exploding with fruit, they live the ideological dream (nightmares being dreams, too) of the Galician winegrower committed to organic farming as their neighbors chuckle all the way to the bank. Prior to 2022, Diego said that with mildew’s three-peat victory from 2019-2021, they considered putting a stop to organic farming, which they’ve practiced since the very beginning of their project. 2022 has renewed their vow and confidence, and I’m proud of them for weathering the often grueling first decade and half since they started. Spending time with these guys from this part of the world I now call home gives me a reality check on what true exhaustion and stress looks like. Their relentlessness inspires me to reinforce my resolve to do better, not for me, but for them…wait, yes, seeing them succeed is for me, too—I need it, I crave it… I live for this interaction and for the opportunity to make a difference for them and their livelihood. Here, in Northwestern Iberia, all the clichés of humility—shirt off their back, salt of the earth, heart of gold—fit better than any other large winegrowing region I’ve experienced. The Galicians and Portuguese recharge my battery, narrow my focus, remind me of all the gifts that fill my life, while bringing more depth to our work than the squabbling over prices and payment terms, and the utterances of “what have you done for me lately?” all too commonly experienced at well-known wineries run by fortunate offspring in historically important areas—regions that have now become more of an industrial commodity than something inspiring. Here, a sense of entitlement rarely exists, only gratitude for any contribution to their business. I’m refueled now, maybe not physically but at least emotionally, and ready for 2023! I’m off to Piemonte at the end of this month to visit with a few of our new growers. It’s a research trip to collect stories, technical details, photographs, and drone images for three of our newest additions, and to say hello and taste new and upcoming releases out of tank and bottle from our old friends. The three new additions will redefine the direction of our Italian portfolio, giving us a clearer stamp in the land of Nebbiolo. Two of them will one day be very important Barolo estates (it’s hard to believe, but we’ve added two not only new but exciting Barolo producers in the same moment!), and one is a small cantina with lofty goals from an ambitious young grower in the far eastern section of Caluso. All are under thirty, which makes them particularly special for us, and you’ll see just how special they are when their wines are in your glass. Names and details will be revealed next month! Special Feature: Itata on Fire (literally) Leo Erazo Viñateros Bravos Itata, Chile Leo in the vineyards after the fire; Image credit Leo Erazo While California was green and refreshing in January, Chile burned. I’ve spent a lot of summer months there because my wife is Chilean, so I’m familiar with the summer fires and the smoke. It’s exactly like California with its arid climate and devastating earthquakes and seasonal flames. Though it’s a quarter of the way around the world, this particular fire hit close to home for a lot of us who work with growers down in Itata. I spoke to both Leo Erazo, from Viñateros Bravos and his eponymous label, and a friend we once worked with, Pedro Parra, after Leigh Readey, our Santa Barbara neo-hippie, beach and farm girl, Source representative and social media dabbler, gave us a report on the situation. Pedro said that the wind was favorable for him and blew the fire in the opposite direction of his vineyards. Leo’s vineyards, however, were right in its path and were devastated, all but about 10% of the vines. Two weeks ago, I spoke with Leo and he sounded positive but shaken. Over the years he and his wife, Zjos (a Belgian native), invested all their earnings from the Viñateros Bravos negociant program to build/buy their own vineyards and winery. The winery is safe and holds the 2022 vintages still in tank with some lots from previous years too, but the vineyards they bought (for the Leo Erazo range) were scorched in less than six hours. These losses not only include this year’s crop but every crop until three or four years after they replant. With no fire insurance (likely not even available in Chile due to the regularity of burns) puts them back at square one (or even further back) with mostly only negociant fruit to work with, which will also certainly be less available because many of his growing partners lost their vineyards too. These losses mean a reduction to about 50% of normal production each year (estate vineyards and negociant vineyard losses combined), not only for one year, but until he’s able to find more sources of fruit inside this now charred land. Vineyards before the fire Lost were some of the most treasured vines in the world. The only beneficial losses were the eucalyptus trees, an invasive, alien, pesky, thirsty, greedy Australian tree that choked out most of Itata’s historic vines in the twentieth century. As many of you know, Itata is home to a treasure trove of the oldest vines in the world, with most País vines being over 150 years old, and over 80 for Cariñana. Some of the País are even believed to be over 300 years old. Most of the vines are own-rooted as well because Chile was never exposed to phylloxera, which makes Itata even more special—world heritage level; UNESCO level! To think about what wines we get from Leo and Zjos at the prices we get seems ridiculous: cold climate, own-rooted, 150-300-year-old vines on decomposed granite and volcanic soil. Simply absurd values for some of the New World’s most authentic terroir wines. We know we cannot save the whole world by ourselves. But when opportunities arise to help those in front of us who’ve helped build our business and possibly been a part of yours (for those in the trade), it’s gratifying to contribute in some way to ease their stress, suffering, along with those around them—workers, friends, neighbors, people who lost their homes, too. What’s unique in the case of Leo Erazo compared to makers in other wine regions who’ve gone through devastation is that the margins on his wines are razor thin and he lost his vineyards, not just a season’s crop. They need to rebuild, but all of their money was tied into those vineyards and their future crops. Also, this part of Chile is poor—dirt poor, so a little money goes a long way. In other agriculture areas banks often leverage loans against land, but this is Chile, not the EU, or the US. Resources are few and the government’s power to help is limited because it has so little in reserve. Leo said the government will help those who lost their homes, but not their vineyards—an understandable priority. I know firsthand that Leo and Zjos are frugal and live very modestly. They’re free-spirits, happy to live in spare quarters with little, with only good friends and humble means. It’s for this that we know that the financial help they receive will go straight to rebuild necessities for their business. Our resolution is simply to take a modest increase on their already underpriced wines and donate that increased revenue after the business costs, plus a dollar per bottle directly from The Source to Leo and Zjos. We bought a full container, so if we can do it, it will really be something they can work with. Though maybe this year the prices are a few bucks higher per bottle, the wines are worth that and more. It’s about the same percentage increase that most Côte d’Or growers take every year regardless of a bad season or good. The difference in a store will be about $19 to $22/$23 for the Viñateros Bravos line. Simply by purchasing these wines you will be directly supporting the rebuilding of their lives so they can continue their work preserving what they have left and making beautiful, inexpensive terroir-stacked Chilean wines. That’s the story, below are the wines. All are organically farmed, and the following explanation of their details is loosely taken from their writing. The oldest wine ever produced in Chile back in 1551 was called Pipeño. Old vines and natural winemaking make these wines a great introduction to the old vines of Itata. Pipeño Blanco is made with 100% old-bush vine Moscatel planted in the 1960s, and the Pipeño Tinto is made with 100% old-bush vine Cinsault, planted almost a hundred years ago. Both Pipeños are unfiltered and intentionally hazy, which has been the tradition of Pipeño since the oldest memory of these wines. Pipeño is the greater regional “terroir series,” while Viñateros Bravos is the “soil series,” where the old vines have a greater interaction with each specific mother rock, highlighting their mineral characteristics and wineprint. The “cru series” is the result of ten years of soil mapping across the Itata hills, and these are the vineyards that got destroyed. In these wines the layers of complexity and depth, and the longer aging potential are more apparent. All the wines are vinified in concrete (eggs, spheres, and more), amphoras, large wood vats and food-grade polymer containers, and they’re pressed in a vertical, wooden press. We thank you for your contribution to help, which is simply to buy and enjoy the Viñateros Bravos and Leo Erazo wines. Arriving are: 2022 Pipeño Tinto (1L) 2022 Pipeño Blanco (1L) 2022 Viñateros Bravos, Itata, País Volcánico 2022 Viñateros Bravos, Granítico País 2022 Viñateros Bravos, Cinsault Granítico 2021 Leo Erazo, Parcela Unica Cinsault, El Tunel 2019 Leo Erazo, Parcela Unica Cinsault, Superior, Las Curvas 2019 Leo Erazo, Carigñan Parcela Unica Superior, Hombre en llamas New Producer Etna Barrus Etna, Italy Located at an altitude of six-hundred meters, on panoramic terraces of Mount Etna’s southeast side within view of the Ionian Sea, exists the boyhood dreams of four men. Salvo, Toti, Mario, and Giuseppe were inspired by the passion and work of their grandparents when they formed Etna Barrus, a partnership that would begin their collective return to familial roots, where they would “devote themselves to viticulture without pollution; to do it the way they used to.” Named after the elephant, the city symbol of Catania, combined with Italy’s most famous active volcano, the vineyards of Etna Barrus were planted in 2005 below one of Etna’s extinct cones, Monte Gorna. Their 2.7 hectares of vines are committed to a red grape responsible for some of the world’s most beguiling wines, Nerello Mascalese, and its burly and more colorful sibling, Nerello Cappuccio; Carricante was also planted in 2021. Their vineyard is composed of massale selections of each variety and they describe their agriculture as regenerative—they’re moving into organic certification in 2023. However, “to do it the way they used to,” implies that even before their bid for organic certification there’ve been no non-organic inputs in their vineyards. And because of the arid conditions in Sicily, with the exposure to the morning sun on the volcano’s southeast face, few treatments are needed in this natural climate that has been favorable to viticulture for millenia. Their miniscule production churns out two raw though finely nuanced Etna Rosso wines and an Etna Rosato, all a blend of 90% Nerello Mascalese and 10% Nerello Cappuccio, and all on volcanic sand naturally rich in organic substances and life-giving minerals—hallmarks of these nature-friendly soils. The vine density is 5000 vines per hectare trained on Cordone Speronato and Alberello (goblet). The full capacity each season should produce only around 7,500 bottles. The red grapes are usually harvested around the first ten days of October. Once in the cellar, they are destemmed and macerated no more than a week to preserve the fresher fruit nuances and allow the fine tannins from the grape skins rather than the seeds that further break down as the alcohol rises, extracting harsher tannins. The wine is then racked into steel along with the press wine and then finishes fermentation over another two weeks. The wine for the purple label remains in steel for a year, and the orange label, the “selezione,” also finishes its fermentation in steel but is then racked into old French oak barrels (225l-500l) for a period of 12 to 18 months, dictated by the season’s conditions. The differences in taste between the Purple Barrus and Orange Barrus Etna Rosso wines are fitting colors that match the wine personalities. Purple Barrus is grown in a more reductive environment (steel) and tends toward a darker color with more exotic purple fruits than red, and has a stronger purple floral element with wild berry fruit. It’s also very mineral in the palate in a refreshingly cool sensation while at the same time being explosive, vigorous and exciting. The orange label Etna Rosso is stronger in red and orange fruits, due to the slow, oxidative maturation in old wood barrels. The floral elements are relatable to the sun-dried rose, similar to Nebbiolo, and expresses the southern Italian sweet orange peel/Aperol aroma. This wine is also more discreet and finely tuned than the upfront purple Barrus. New Producer Mateus Nicolau de Almeida Douro, Portugal “When I was eighteen, the only thing that I wanted was to see the world. I had no special thoughts about winemaking, but wine runs in the blood.” -Mateus Nicolau de Almeida Renaissance (Cave) Man and the Saint The Douro wines of Mateus Nicolau de Almeida in Vila Nova de Foz Côa are crafted underground in a schist cave, an environment in near complete opposition to the work experiences and family histories of its makers, Mateus and Teresa, as both come from extremely scientific and technical backgrounds. Their stated objective is, “To be transparent, and to transmit the elementary concepts of Douro, even if you are drinking them on Venice Beach!” Organically farmed and certified, their wines are defined through a combination of vineyards in the different sub-regiões (subregions) of Douro and a multitude of indigenous grape varieties. The Trans Douro Express are three “climate” reds from roughly ten different vineyards that demonstrate the three sub-regiões of Douro: in the west, the coldest and wettest, Baixo Corgo; in the middle Cima Corgo, and in the east to the border of Spain, the driest and warmest, Douro Superior. Each of these wines illustrate their differences in climate, which of course, determines grapes suitable for each area, which are not the same. Eremitas are three white wines from the Douro Superior and express three different schist-based terroirs. Made in particular years, the Curral Teles, their “human wines,” are their most experimental, tinkered with in the cellar (including one wine aged inside a granite block!) to discover new gateways to different expressions and nuances—very Portuguese, at least from a two-thousand-year view into the past with this country of historic exploration and discovery. There are also two stellar (but in very low supply), traditionally crafted Port wines, Lágrima (white Port) and Ruby Seco. There are more specific details of each wine toward the bottom of the profile. The Saint (Teresa) and the Caveman, a guy with a crown of thick, windblown, Van Gogh-esque brushed locks, are fabulous cooks and irrepressibly hospitable. They raise their own crops and animals, and a small building on their property is dedicated to the making of their character-filled and full-flavored vinegars. They also produce distillates with juniper and make olive oil; their projects are a constant, including those with artist Pedro Jervell (the producer of their granite rock tank), as well as with wine transporters who use old sailboats. They do music events, wine events (Mateus helped to conceptualize Simplesmente Vinho in Porto, the most important event for small and environmentally conscious winegrowers), parties (legendary by reputation), and began to work with archeologists from the Côa Valley after Teresa found important paleolithic rock engravings. Mateus even has his own tiny wine importing company focused on European producers with their same agricultural ideals in organic, biodynamic, and natural wine concepts. What else? They’re also fluent in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English! With all this time spent doing so many things, when they’re asked who does what in the winery, they respond, “We’re still trying to figure that out…” Bloodlines Mateus Nicolau de Almeida made and bottled his first wine in 1988, at only ten years old. He’s the son of one of Portugal’s most celebrated winegrowers, João Nicolau de Almeida, and the grandson of Fernando Nicolau de Almeida, the founder of Portugal’s most mythical and immortal (and most expensive) wine in 1952, Casa Ferreirinha Barca Velha. By blood, they’re all connected to the legendary Ramos Pinto port house started in 1880 by the then twenty-one-year-old artist, Adriano Ramos Pinto, known today for its historic port wines, but even more for their iconic, art deco label illustrated in 1925 by French artist, René Vincent. Coming to understand Mateus’ family heritage of wine, art, and creative and progressive minds, makes it easier to imagine what his first wine crafted at such a young age would have been like. Mateus’s curiosity for the world and wine led him to experiences in California, Argentina, Chile, and Spain, but most of them abroad were in France, including seasons at Caves de Saint Mont, Château Grillet, and numerous châteaux (Reynon, Doysy Daëne, Clos Floridène) co-managed by University of Bordeaux enology professor, the late Denis Dubourdieu, whose influence on Mateus was enormous. But his most important interaction in Bordeaux was in 1996 at a Third Growth Margaux estate, Château Cantenac Brown, where he met Teresa Ameztoy, who would become his partner in life, the mother to his children, and the holder of the string that keeps the kite that is Mateus from flying away. Mateus’ wine experiences also include involvement in their familial project, Quinta do Monte Xisto, and in 2003, he created the winery, Muxagat, then left it to his partners in 2014 to develop his own project. A San Sebastián native raised in Rioja, Teresa’s father worked for the famous bodega, La Rioja Alta S.A. and Murua. In 2019, she left her position as the head winemaker for Ramos Pinto (2005-2019) to fully focus her energies with Mateus on their wine project, labeled Mateus Nicolau de Almeida, starting in 2015. Prior to Ramos Pinto, Teresa’s vinous exploits include eight years as a winemaker in Xerez, seasonal stints in Italy, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Domaine de Trevallon, and the famous biodynamic Alsace estate, Josmeyer. She also earned a BTS Vitio-oeno at Montpelier and Diplome National d’oenologie at Bordeaux University. Teresa cites her early great influences as the late Eloi Dürbach (Trevallon), Telmo Rodriguez, João Nicolau de Almeida, and her father, but, she says, “Now Mateus is my biggest influencer.” Golden? If one took all the extremes of Germany’s Mosel Valley, France’s Northern Rhône, Austria’s Wachau, and Spain’s Ribeira Sacra and stirred them together you would have Portugal’s Douro River Valley. The extremity of the series of river valleys that stream into the Douro and the bridges towering above them is truly breathtaking, unlike anything else in the wine world. With vineyard altitudes that go from about 80 meters to around 800m very quickly, with land that seems strapped down by vine rows so they don’t fall over into the rivers far below, it’s a glorious view for the non-squeamish car passenger. It’s also an intense, stressful, and envy-filled drive for the one behind the wheel who must keep their eyes on the winding roads at all times. Douro’s vinous history dates to the Romans, who of course, came for metals, mostly gold. Douro means golden in Portuguese, but Teresa pointed out that linguistics theorists believe the name for the Douro River comes from the pre-Roman sound, DWR, which means running water—similar to other river names, like Dordogne, Adour. Centuries later, the Moors instituted a near-complete Muslim prohibition on alcohol from sometime during the 8th Century until around the late 11th Century. The Reconquista resulted in Christians regaining territory in what was then called Galicia-Leon. The new rulers coincided with the arrival of Cistercian monks who planted new vineyards in 1142 in the Douro at today’s Casa dos Varais, across the Douro from Peso da Régua, less than five kilometers by air (15 minutes by car) from Lamego to the south. These monks were also responsible for Galician wine development just to the north, as well as in Burgundy and many other European wine regions. Port wine production appeared toward the second half of the 17th Century to stabilize wines through fortification for export, principally with British and Flemish patrons, who at that time were at war with France. Most of the Port wines were produced from vineyards in today’s Baixo Corgo and Cima Corgo, and Douro Superior was exploited for production in the early 1900s. With the arrival of Port wine, the most historic wine of Douro, still wine, became almost non-existent. However, as already mentioned, Casa Ferreirinha’s Barca Velha was developed by Mateus’ grandfather in 1952, and João, Mateus’ father, developed the “Duas Quintas” still wines in the early 1990s for Ramos Pinto. In the late 1990s, the Port house, Niepoort, under the direction of Dirk Niepoort, took a strong position with a series of new and inspiring still wines. In 1986 Portugal joined the EU (then referred to as European Communities), and subsidies began to finance new ventures along with the crazy bridges and a world-class highway system that made it easier to cross into Portugal’s nether regions, which coincided with an explosion of Douro’s still wine production. Douro Sub-Regiões Douro’s sub-regiões are better understood through climate, with, generally speaking, Douro Superior (east) with Mediterranean (or Continental) dominance, Cima Corgo (middle) with Mediterranean and some Atlantic influence, and Baixo Corgo (west) with Atlantic and less Mediterranean influence. Teresa and Mateus explain, “the three sub-regiões are well delimited, but their differences are still very unknown to general consumers. Apart from that, it would be very important to acknowledge that inside these three sub-regiões of Douro there are other sub-sub-regiões with different climates and different soils.” This would be an enormous task to formalize, and if the history of politics in wine appellations is any indicator of what would likely transpire, it would be a very long time before any consensus was made among growers. Douro Superior Temperature is very influential inside the sub-regiões. Butted up to the border of Portugal’s Vinho Verde appellation, Baixo Corgo (BC) has the mildest temperatures and the most rainfall—nearing 1000mm per year. Cima Corgo (CC) is much warmer and with an average between the two on precipitation of around 600mm per year, and Douro Superior (DS), separated on its far eastern flank from Spain by the Douro (Duero in Spanish) and Agueda Rivers (a tributary to Douro originating further south that acts as the Portuguese and Spanish border for over 100km), is the hottest and has around a mere 350mm. Mildew pressure and disease are highest in Baixo Corgo and decrease the further east through Cima Corgo and then Douro Superior, which correlates directly with the amount of vineyard treatments each season. BC has more trees, but the highest degree of biodiversity is in DS. Climate change is influential in Douro but Mateus and Teresa believe it’s less so than other wine regions. Douro has always been extreme, and they think that it is not so much different than in the 1950s, and they have familial historical references to back this up. The difference is that the extremes of summer highs are higher, but they think the overall temperatures are similar. The most affected region is likely Baixo Corgo (the cooler area), which has warmed the most. However, the burgeoning still-wine business has different needs than those of Port wine production. In general, along the river gorges, Port wine grapes originate on the hot, south-facing slopes, while much of the still wine production is facing north and/or at higher altitudes. Though it’s dependent on each season, normally the bud break starts in Baixo Corgo, then Cima Corgo, and finally Douro Superior. DS is last because the temperatures until February and March are colder, and the spring and fall are the shortest seasons by way of temperature; DS has a lot of winter and summer. Harvest usually begins in DS, then CC, and finally BC. This, in theoretical support of length of season connected to wine complexity, should mean that on some level, Baixo Corgo may have a greater potential of phenolic complexity than the other sub-regiões, in general. However, much of the general population would go for DS and CC because of their richer profiles by comparison. Mateus believes that still wines from BC should be the longest lived, followed by DS, and then CC. Topographically, Baixo Corgo and Douro Superior are more gentle slopes when compared to the more extremes of Cima Corgo. They all have the commonality of various versions of schist, with the youngest rock formations starting in BC leading to the oldest in DS. Interestingly, the many granite terroirs of Douro are not allowed into Port production. New vineyard on Monte Xisto Vineyard Practices and Grapes The philosophical approach in the vineyards to respect nature and encourage biodiversity in and around the vineyards. They believe biodiversity is key, not only to wine expression but overall health of their lands. One visit to their properties demonstrates their commitment to these ideals. Regarding tillage, some are done by tractor, some by horse, and others not at all. The timing of picking is done with a combination of taste and chemistry balance, and all of the wines are grape co-fermentations. They have many vineyard sites within each of the sub-regiões, and each has more favorability toward specific varieties. Though the five most planted in the area are the red, Touriga Nacional, Touriga Francesa, Tinta Barroca, Tinta Cão, and Tinta Roriz, there are over 100 different indigenous varieties in the region. Other notable reds are Tinta Amarela, Malvasia Preta and Tinta Carvalha, which are more present in BC and CC. Whites are fewer, with BC planted more to Malvasia Fina and DS more Rabigato and Codega (Siria). In CC there are fewer white grapes planted than the other sub-regiões. Most of the grapes used for their project are from vineyards they own (4ha in total, all certified organic), and some are from rented vineyards while others are from purchased grapes. Please refer to our Douro Terroir Map on our website for more extensive grape details and terroir overview. Wines The fish on the label—a unique wine logo—is representative of the Allis Shad (known as Alosa Alosa, in Latin, and Sável in Portuguese), part of the herring family. This fish was once able to work its way back into the Douro and beyond until the closure of the river by the fifteen dams that now stop the free flow. As mentioned, the Trans-Douro-Express are “climate” wines, and are labeled based on the sub-regiões, Baixo Corgo, Cima Corgo, and Douro Superior. They all come from vineyards of schist bedrock and variations of topsoil composition, mostly loam (clay and sand mixture) topsoil and are very poor with low water retention. The wines are a blend of more than ten varieties and crafted with the same basic processes in the cellar: all destemmed and spontaneously co-fermented in 4000L concrete vats. Extractions are gently done one time per day (maximum) with pumpovers, or pigeage by feet and hands for four to five days prior to pressing. They’re aged in the same concrete vats for eight months, racked a few times during aging, lightly filtered, and sometimes fined. Total sulfite levels range between 40-50 ppm(mg/L) with the first addition usually made prior to fermentation. Between the three wines the climate and precipitation are evident. Of course, vintages will vary, but early experiences with young wines are that Baixo Corgo leads with a tight frame, iodine-heavy mineral nuances (particularly in the 2021), and rock and wild berry purple fruit quality. Cima Corgo similarly has iodine impressions present in the nose but also some level of reduction/mineral and rockiness in impression. The fruit components are also berry heavy, but those with the sense of cultivated and wild-picked. Douro Superior expresses more burnt earth mineral nuances, like hot iron. It’s not as tight as the others upon opening and expresses more savory fruits and food, with the 2021 showing chestnut, persimmon, red apple skin. Its earthiness seems more dirt than rock. Curral Teles Tinto “Alpha” is done with whole-cluster foot-stomping inside an open-top, shallow granite calcatorium (lagar) for three hours and then slowly pressed in a vertical press. The juice is fermented and aged in 4000L concrete vats for eight months. Eremitas Branco “Amon de Kelia” comes from gray schist with quartz at 500m altitude and is made exclusively of Rabigato, an intense white with very good levels of acidity. Whole clusters are foot-stomped inside an open-top, shallow granite calcatorium (lagar) for three hours and then slowly pressed in a vertical press. The juice is fermented for seven or eight days followed by aging in 4000L concrete vats for eight months. The wine does not go through malolactic fermentation, therefore the wine is filtered prior to bottling and sometimes fined.

(Download complete pdf here) Davide Carlone’s Boca vineyard, Alto Piemonte For the last two months, we temporarily reduced the quantity of wine we’ve been importing in response to California’s sobering six months of film industry strikes and a recovery that’s coming along slower than we’d all like. This month, however, we have a couple of boatloads en route from France and Italy. There aren’t any new producers to report (though there is a lot of news on that front, which we’ll get to at a later date) but there are a lot of new wines from some of our best producers. We’ve trimmed the newsletter down to five featured growers: Château de Tracy’s historic Pouilly-Fumé wines, Anthony Thevenet’s Morgon wines, Dave Fletcher’s starting block white, orange and two reds, Fliederhof’s gorgeously fine and lifted Schiava trio, and Davide Carlone’s Alto Piemonte range grown entirely inside the Boca DOC. More wines are on the way, but there’s enough here to keep your mind full of wine. Along that famous target-shaped, Kimmeridgian limestone ring of the calcareous Paris Basin across Champagne’s Aube, Burgundy’s Chablis and into the Loire appellations, we first come to Pouilly-Fumé, and the riverside appellation’s most historic producer, Château de Tracy. In contrast to Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé is less topographically extreme, with fields that roll gently as opposed to some of the neck-breaking slopes of spare soil exposed to the sun’s ever-increasing pressure on the other bank. The famous Kimmeridgian limestone marl of Sancerre and Chablis is present here too but, like Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé’s other prominent geological feature is silex, known in English as flint or chert. Château de Tracy’s position close to the river has richer clay topsoil and is more dominated by the limestone marl bedrock than silex. Because of the property’s history that extends back to the 14th Century, there is an unusual feature around their perfectly positioned vineyards that differentiates it from most of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé: verdant and wild indigenous forests that offer greater biodiversity and shelter from the heat, all preserved for centuries by the château. This forest is something rare having never been cultivated, leaving its precious nature and unique biodiversity intact. We began our collaboration with this historic château in 2017, and their classically terroir-powered, purely sélection massale Pouilly-Fumé wines continue to impress. Incomings are the estate-fruit bottling of 2022 Pouilly-Fumé, followed by a pricy duo worth the experience: the old vines planted in 1954 that make up the 2019 Pouilly-Fumé “101 Rangs,” and the 2020 Pouilly-Fumé “Haute Densité.” How dense, you ask? 17,000 vines per hectare, now a forbidden density to plant/replant in Pouilly-Fumé. (For context, the appellation norm is 6,500, Côte d’Or 10,000, Thierry Richoux’s HD parcel 23,000, and Olivier Lamy’s famous HDs 30,000.) This not only makes it a particularly special wine, it’s also a unique experience coming from the appellation. What’s more is that Tracy has been under the same ownership since 1396, and its vineyards may boast the oldest known sélection massale Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc they use to replant everything on the property—no clones here! As they say, “When you taste a wine from Château de Tracy you are also tasting history.” Recently, Château de Tracy commandeered some vineyards outside of Pouilly-Fumé to offer a range of price-sensitive IGP wines with Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, and a classy yet upfront Menetou-Salon Blanc & Rouge. When looking for philosophically well-tended vineyards and exceptional value in the Loire Valley, and with Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé almost out of reach for normal by-the-glass programs, Tracy’s IGPs and Menetou-Salons grown on the same general soil types offer excellent alternatives, with prices that turn back the clock more than a decade. Morgon at sunset 2022 Beaujolais could be the vintage with the most beautiful balance of juicy delicious pleasure and pure terroir expression for which we’ve waited almost a decade. 2014 was perhaps the last MVP vintage where everyone seems to have made their most consistent, predictable, and unrelentingly pleasurable wines with great balance, at least in my book. Anthony Thevenet’s 2022 Beaujolais wines are exactly that, and unapologetically sumptuous while maintaining classical form—a hallmark of Anthony’s style. With alcohols between 12.5%-14%, his 2022 range is gifted with one of the region’s oldest collections of vines that produce wines of joy and warmth; they smile at you, and you can’t help but smile back. The 2022 Morgon and 2022 Morgon “Vieilles Vignes” bottlings mirror his 2014s with their slight purple over red fruit profile but with even a touch more body and juiciness—maybe chalk that up to ten years of organic viticulture, the wet previous year, and the sun of 2022. After his first solo vintage in 2013, he has come into his own with Lapierre-level consistency and purity, though the wines are closer to a Northern Rhône body while Lapierre’s hit closer to Pinot Noir country up north. We were able to snap up the last cases of his 2021 Morgon “Cuvée Centenaire,” harvested from vines that date back to the start of the United States Civil War. 2021s from growers with this kind of ancient-vine sappy density from this cool growing season makes for a wine with great refinement and depth. It may live forever—by Beaujolais standards—and would be best served with fewer participants (or more bottles!). This vintage he also made his maiden Beaujolais Blanc, a pure Chardonnay raised in old fût de chêne, and harvested from a 21-year-old limestone, clay, and sand parcel in Corcelles-en-Beaujolais, just east and downslope of Villié-Morgon. It’s a surprisingly good first effort. At the beginning of 2023, Dave Fletcher resigned from his full-time position as the head winemaker for Ceretto’s Nebbiolo stable. But they countered to keep him on as a consultant—good idea, Ceretto! The combination of fifteen years of experience and now much more focus on his own wines is reflected in the constant uptick of his range. We tasted his 2022 Dolcetto d’Alba in mid-January, a wine from a uniquely warm and dry season that somehow resulted in wines with balanced acidity, phenolics, and structure, along with the most perfect fruit Dave claims to have ever seen in the Langhe (no rot, no shrivel, no desiccation). It left me short on words, giddy with excitement, and increased my desire to turn my academic tasting into a drinking session! By the time I tasted his 2021 Dolcetto last year it was all gone. “I didn’t think you’d want any…” he guiltily responded to my look of “wtf?”. Commence well-deserved verbal lashing. Dave is such a Nebb-head (me too) and Chard-head, so I guess we never really talk about the merits of Dolcetto, but I adore its finest examples and will even put them above some Nebbiolos, given mood and occasion. Dolcetto, like Grignolino, deserves a better position in the conversation among Piemontese junkies, though few growers take it seriously enough to attempt to distract the world from Nebbiolo’s most gloriously celebrated historical moment; after all, Dolcetto is known to be the most imbibed family dinner wine of the great Barolo and Barbaresco growers; they all know how great it is, so why don’t many others see it like they do? It’s grossly undervalued, and in the right hands, it’s the bottled joy of Piemontese culture, while Nebbiolo is more prone to capture its cultural pride. (As those in the trade know, one can still experience the greatness of a Barbaresco and Barolo producer’s wines they can’t afford by opting for their Dolcetto. At Bovio restaurant in La Morra, among the juggernaut Barolos of G. Conterno Cascina Francia, and G. Rinaldi Brunate, it was G. Rinaldi’s Dolcetto d’Alba that outmaneuvered the bunch.) Dolcetto is a perfect Piemontese restaurant by-the-glass wine, especially when a five or six-ounce pour fills the glass, initially stifling aromas of subtlety until half the wine is out and down the hatch. Even in an overfilled glass, Dolcetto has enough fruit and aromatic puissance to deliver its message. Dave’s Dolcetto is a pleasant shock that needs to be passed on to restaurant and fine wine store patrons in search of excitement and class, at a first-date price. Despite our adoration for excitingly fresh and tense wines, Barbera’s naturally high acidity requires a longer development to soften which unfortunately results in higher potential alcohol, thus becoming a challenge for those looking to curb alcohol consumption and still drink a great Barbera. Its acidity is so naturally high, as the joke goes, that many growers spend much of August and September in church praying for the acidity to drop enough before rain comes, or the alcohol levels can rival Port (to return once again before the following year’s harvest for the next wave of prayers). To be honest, if I’m going to splurge with my liver, I usually reserve its high-alcohol allocation for wines like Barbaresco or Barolo (and on a rare occasion, Tequila). Yet during a tasting in mid-January, Dave’s 2022 Barbera d’Alba, with its cute new label depicting a train, was strikingly, lip-smackingly, hypnotically delicious, and hard to disengage from to move on to the rest of the exciting Barolos and Etna Rosso wines, and a spectacular new producer we’re signing out of Bierzo (more on that in a few months when the wines are en route!). Part of the magic of Dave’s Dolcetto d’Alba and Barbera d’Alba is the bony-white, calcareous soils and the 60-year-old selezione massale planted at 350 meters altitude on an east-facing plot. The other contribution is Dave’s craftsmanship and nose for quality and style. Old oak is the practice for Fletcher’s reds, and no barrel is younger than ten years. We also have minuscule amounts of Dave’s 2022 Langhe Chardonnay made in a Burgundian style (definitely an overused expression), which implies a dash of new oak–30% this year, spontaneous barrel fermenting, and harvested from vines on limestone soils (the latter of which legitimizes the comparison). His 2022 Arcato Orange wine arrived but there’s too little of this 75% Arneis and 25% Moscato blend, both destemmed but fermented and macerated with whole grapes for three to four weeks before pressing. The whites, like the reds, are exceptionally crafted. For a non-Burgundy Chardonnay, this one is about as close as they get (without the tinkering often slyly employed in New World Chardonnay with cheap reduction tricks paired up with dollops of new oak to blur the lines), and the orange is for all those who like their rust-colored wines with proper trimming. While a troublesome name that translates to slave, Schiava, also known in German as Vernatsch, is the queen of Südtirol red grapes, and the young Martin Ramoser (still under thirty) orchestrates his Vernatsch-based St. Magdalener trio under biodynamic culture with the full support of his family in the vines and cellar. While the grape’s names are hard on the ears, it can render gorgeous wines; we’re thankful that Martin labels the two main players (both with 97% Vernatsch) with their special minuscule appellation, St. Magdalener! Following the line of the region’s greatest growers while already leaving his mark with his Gaia cuvée we start the range with the ethereal, red-fruited, and transparent, younger-vine 2022 St. Magdalener “Marie.” 2022 was a warmer vintage and the fully destemmed Marie captures nuances and the slight glycerol texture of the year’s heat but still blossoms with delicate fruit and flowers. Martin continues to capture each season with his viticultural approach of picking early to maintain ethereal qualities on top of what this regional profile tends toward, rusticity and earthiness (which we also like!). Martin’s 2021 St. Magdalener “Gran Marie” is a selection from the oldest vines (50-70 years old) named after his grandmother, Marie. A bottle we chugged in February this year brought me straight back to 2004 and a visit to Domaine Joseph Roty, in Gevrey-Chambertin, with Phillipe Roty and his lineup of Marsannays and ancient-vine grand crus splayed out for our tasting in the company of a crazy and hilarious New York dentist and wine collector. Like the enviable old vines of Roty’s stable, the 30% whole cluster fermented and ancient botte-aged Gran Marie pulls from its deep well of experience the elegance tucked into the compact and concentrated fruit of ancient vines; however, here in the Südtirol, on one of Italy’s hottest sites in the peak of summer’s heat and one of the fresher vintages in recent memories, these vines have survived a lifetime of stress and pressure from the sun in its spare volcanic and alluvial soils on some of the most picturesque vineyards in the world. With the second glass, the wine tightens, straightens, and communicates with great precision its alpine union of mountain herbs, summer fruits, autumnal spices, and gorgeous, ingrained rusticity. Stunning. Martin Ramoser doing a biodynamic prep (photo courtesy of Martin) A contemporary Vernatsch that touches Europe’s greatest elegance-led wine regions in style and class, the 2021 St. Magdalener “Gaia” is on its own level in Italy’s Südtirol. An entirely whole-bunch adventure first toyed with in 2020, the 2021 is just as hypnotic and charming and only a little more grown up. Relentlessly seductive, the 2020 Gaia made my top ten list of wines imported in 2022—unexpected for a Sütirol Vernatsch, but I remain quite fond of this grape’s humble elegance. Selected from the most perfect clusters from the most balanced vines of medium to old age, like the 2020, the 2021 follows in the line of Gran Marie and the nostalgia, though this time leading me to another great Gevrey-Chambertin grower I’ve never visited and can no longer afford (come to think of it I never could) with all its beauty and filigree trim; of course, only after the new oak was finally swallowed by the Gevrey legend’s wine, hours after being opened. New oak is not an issue here, only the remnants of a great terroir cultivated by believers and sculpted by an inspired young grower in two ancient Burgundy barrels with a vision for his wines, wines that are far from home among Germanic and Italian cultures, the Südtirol being both. The bottles allocated to us are too few and will be doled out sparingly to those who believe a wine’s price should be based on its performance rather than its appellation. This is a wine that transcends the perceived limits of what can be achieved with an unexpected terroir and an underdog vine variety. Carlone Boca vineyard, Alto Piemonte Davide Carlone is so immersed in his day-to-day work that one could easily get the feeling he has missed the surge of global reverence for his wines. With so much going on, it’s hard to get out of Boca and his exposure to other great producers is limited, undoubtedly a consequence of being on the edge of a country in a very rural setting at the base of the massive Alps. Most notable is the nearby Monte Rosa, which is 175m short of the Alps’ tallest peak, Mont Blanc/Monte Bianco, though it’s much more pronounced and visible from the Po Valley. His wines find that elusive common thread shared among the range from great producers of precise craftsmanship (he’s also a blacksmith/metal worker) and big emotion—as though they shoulder the history of Boca and an obligation to reflect its true history in style and taste. The globalization and stylization of wine (à la Burgundy and Bordeaux) remain strong and continue to infiltrate even Europe’s most historical regions, like parts of Spain, and Portugal, where some growers have quality terroirs but need direction—oh, how the dictatorial scars of the 1900s remain in Iberia! I like wines made with these tried-and-true methods (minus the new oak, please), however, they often neuter the cultural message. This is not the case at Carlone, which is why it fits in with one of The Source’s callings as an importer: to focus on cultural authenticity while maintaining responsible vineyard practices and conscious craftsmanship. Few in the world know Davide Carlone, and I think he and his Swiss patrons are partially to blame. The Swiss love their neighbors’ mountain reds; their country is frozen most of the year, too cold to produce them. And what’s better in the freezing alpine territories for a hearty, warm dinner? (Beer works too, but we’ll stay on topic…) Davide is constantly building, expanding, and reclaiming Nebbiolo territory reabsorbed by forests and other wilderness after the economic viticultural failures in the early to mid-1900s that led to mass workforce migration to industrial centers. On his pink-flecked, light gray and volcanic bedrock that’s hundreds of millions of years old and sometimes resembles dinosaur bones, and his sandy topsoil, this expansion of his childhood reclamation dream comes at great cost in time and money. The Swiss (at least certainly those with the better taste inside this neutral bunch) make the windy drive and offer him on-the-spot hard-to-refuse cash in difficult economic times. Thus, the cycle of Davide’s relative global obscurity continues. In California, we’re gifted some limited quantities of his authentic treasures from the prime of his craftsmanship, which by all accounts starts with his meticulous vineyard work. Piemonte’s golden age began decades ago and we’re right in the middle of it. Indeed, the region’s northerners are just getting traction while those in the Langhe were already in sixth gear decades ago. Broken links in this lengthy series of quality years exist and the culprit is often hail, as it was in the catastrophic May 2020 hailstorm. Luckily for Davide, the hail missed his vineyards entirely, making his wines some of the few available from the entire region. These south-facing vineyards perched above all Alto Piemonte appellations and surrounded by densely forested mountains facing the Po Plain were indeed quality fruit from a great season. You only need to experience his 2020 Nebbiolo new arrival! Davide’s starters are rhyolitic ignimbrite volcanic-rock solid!—the technical name for this rock is often tossed into the generic “porphyry” classification. The craft, the exuberance and youthful joy and generosity without compromise for cellar worthiness and cultural identity are more than only present; they are forcefully communicated. The daily confluence of summer sun and mountain fresh air gives these wines of noble vinous genetics their depth and lift. After working with a great focus on Alto Piemonte wines since 2010 (and an in-depth drinking and study of the Langhe more than a decade further back), I believe Carlone is a clear contender for top billing in Alto Piemonte, which always includes consistency aside from terroir merit and past glories, despite the year. They are also quite noteworthy in all Piemonte, Italy, and therefore, globally. We start with the 2022 Vespolina, a grape known for its potentially bitter green tannins, but not at Carlone. Spurred on by another local vignaiolo and well-known enologist, Cristiano Garella, Davide opted to shorten macerations to avoid digging too deep into the seeds and extracting the meaner tannins once the alcohol begins to break down the various membranes around the seeds. Vespolina is yet another unsung superstar-in-waiting from Piemonte, although it seems impossible for any grape, no matter how worthy, to challenge Nebbiolo’s unstoppable generational dynasty. Vespolina is known to be genetic parent material for Nebbiolo and shares its noble balance of finesse and power, at least when crafted by the right mind and hand. 2022 was a unique year and mirrors the general climate of the Langhe with balanced acidity, sun-touched ripeness and gorgeous red fruits tied together with a floral bow. Quick out of the gates on a late Wednesday morning in early February this year, with clear skies and perfect cellar temperature inside and out on Spain’s Costa Brava, the 2022 Vespolina flaunted a gorgeous nose of flowers, clean lees (for those who have cleaned out a red wine fermentation bin, it’s those pinkish-purple creamy, glycerol lees pocked with brown seeds), licorice, carob, fresh cut and raw yam, horse saddle (not in a bretty way), straw, algae, and tree bark. It’s extremely young and juicy with a palate of beautiful chalky tannins—nothing green. It has a stunning savory finish with licorice and is tailored in a micro-ox style on the palate; a compliment considering this stainless steel raised wine, a vessel which typically makes wine more angular, though impossible to tell with this wine, save the striking clarity and clean trim. After a long lunch with some Spanish winegrowers and just before I passed out early, a retaste revealed the sweet black licorice note is stronger than earlier in the day; like the licorice note of a young Vieux Telegraphe CdP from the ‘90s and ‘00s—I haven’t tasted anything from Vieux Telegraph since 2007! Tannins are much tighter and the wine much more savory; blue and black fruits with a red fruit finish. Beautiful. It's sometimes easy to find a strong organoleptic connection between Nebbiolo from the ancient volcanic soils of Alto Piemonte with those much younger volcanic soils of Etna. When two great varieties are predicated on specific aromas like rose and finely delineated red fruits with lighter hues (unless pushed for color extraction), and elegance on sturdy tannic and acidic framing, it may be easy to think certain Nebbiolo wines could be mistaken for the greatest and most polished ambassador of Sicily, Nerello Mascalese. Carlone’s 2020 Nebbiolo is a prime example of this similarity, and that’s why it’s the first Nebbiolo wine I’ve written about in the same breath. (Perhaps this is also because we have now firmly planted our flag on Etna with three new ones to come this year!) The 2020 is darker than the 2019 and more aromatically reserved when compared to the 2022 Vespolina in the same tasting; maybe two extra years in bottle has something to do with that? It’s not particularly varietal-dominated (hence the relation to Etna wines), except the licorice, tar, and the gentle rosy florals. It is most expressive with sun-exposed wild fruit, dry and wet forest nuances, and a sort of volcanic, high altitude, mountain foothill vibe. Firm tannins, clean barn, straw, and animal mat are some of the compelling savory notes that make this even better served with some chow. You may need to have it with food to experience its highest expression. Rarely do I suggest a pre-aeration in the form of decanting, but it might be helpful if you want to dig in straight away. Otherwise, plan well: open it far before dinner (or lunch, for you tireless bons vivants), draw some wine off and let it unfold in time for the meal. I have waited more than two years to finally experience a finished bottle of the 2019 Boca, which I have tasted twice out of botte and once out of steel vat just before bottling. Each encounter was glorious with an educational opportunity to taste separate vinification and aging of different biotypes. The final blend surpassed my expectations. This is a wine and a vintage for the ages, and while it will be good young with the right amount of patience and coaxing, it’s guaranteed to age very well. The most elegant and lightly aromatic Nebbiolos out of botte are reserved for the Adele bottling. In this bottling, labeled simply as Boca, all the many different old wood vats and a dozen or so Nebbiolo biotypes with a dollop of Vespolina (15%) makes for a deeply layered and complex wine that combines autumnal red and dark stone fruit and ripe wild berries, and an immense array of spicy, earthy, animally, savory qualities. This is as good as it gets for authentic Alto Piemonte on this type of hard volcanic bedrock. Carlone’s Boca seems to be in a league of its own up on this hill away from the greater production of Alto Piemonte Nebbiolos further downhill and closer to the expansive Po Valley. Bravo, signore!

Navelli, Abruzzo. Home to CantinArte’s high altitude white wines. (Download complete pdf here) Two months at a time was how I used to do the rounds with our growers. Winter and spring. Summer was too expensive and a fight for good lodging. Fall is too unpredictable with harvest to plan far in advance with most growers waiting for the right time, nerves on alert, hopes high but wearing a stoic face in case of disaster. That was all back before almost every year was hot and early. I arrived home to Portugal in time for Thanksgiving week, obviously not a thing here. During fifteen days on the road I passed through the Loire Valley Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc country (skipping Sauvignon zones–no time this trip), Chablis, Champagne, and added more belly weight and a constant redness to my eyes in Piemonte, as the vines were strangely still green in most of the Langhe toward the end of November. Milan to Porto, an easy direct flight home, I thought, started in Monforte d’Alba at seven in the morning on a crisp, clear, Alp-majestic Sunday morning. Thirteen hours later I descended into a deluge in northern Portugal that started a month ago and hasn’t let up since. I thought I’d have half a Sunday to prepare myself for the coming catchup week, but airports and planes and the unusually extensive delays when you’re tired don’t make for great recovery. Photo from Monforte d’Alba, November 2022 I can’t sleep on planes. Other than one time on the way to Chile it hasn’t happened again for more than ten minutes. I used to fly to Europe three times a year for a month each time when we first started our company. I figured that since I struggle with jet lag as much as I do that I may as well make it worth it by staying longer. Los Angeles (starting in Santa Barbara) to any EU destination is a real slog, a big disadvantage compared to East Coasters. Eventually I extended to two two-month trips in the last three years before I suggested to my wife and my business partner and co-owner and cofounder of The Source, Donny, that I move to Europe full time. Everyone was for it, surprisingly, and during a two-week vacation in Amalfi Coast’s perfect fishing village, Cetara, my wife opened the door with, “I could live here.” We landed on the first of September in 2018, a precise date our visa required of us, but after three months in Salerno, the major port town to the east of the Amalfi Coast, I knew Italy wasn’t our final European destination. Now I prefer to travel in the summer, but this fall trip was a necessity because I’ve done so much scouting and bringing on new producers. I also need to keep up with everyone already on our roster. Last year, having packed a foam roller and nicely padded yoga mat (both necessities now to keep me loose while my body atrophies along the way), I took a six-week solo road trip from Portugal and on through northern Spain, southern France, northern Italy, into Austria, then boomeranging back to Germany, across into Champagne, then directly south through France, a right at Barcelona and back home by the first week of July. It was quite a loop and one of my most memorable trips to date. Despite higher costs, summers are the best time for my work on the road. Long days to grab as much visual candy as possible, nicer weather, light packing, and happier moods thanks to lighter summer fare, an all-you-can-soak-up supply of Vitamin D, and heightened spirits in hopes of a successful coming harvest. 2021 has a lot to offer. While difficult in some places, it put the “classic” back in many wines, despite the losses, though I guess losses are classic too. 2022 was the opposite of 2021. Brutally hot by European standards. However, the upside was that in many places the grape yield was very high, a good offset for what could’ve been a gargantuanly alcoholic vintage turned out not so extreme, though many producers, including Dave Fletcher, said he’d never seen such perfect fruit—no rot, no disease, clean and pretty. The balance of wines in each region is far from determined, but at least for the most part there’s wine to sell after the shortages of 2021. Vincent Bergeron, one of our new producers in Montlouis, explained that he had too much fruit and it was even more stressful as a short vintage because he wasn’t prepared to receive such an overload. 2021 was exactly the opposite. Everyone wants a “normal” harvest each year but we all know that the new normal is that everything is unpredictable. Feast or famine. After two weeks with a party of four (one very light drinker that understandably didn’t pull her weight!), seven meals back-to-back with at least two bottles of Nebbiolo on each table (three the majority of the time), plus cantina visits before and after lunch, five different orders of Vitello Tonnato (top honors to Osteria La Libera, though La Torri and Bovio were a close second, all with different styles), seven orders of Plin in many forms (we couldn’t resist it during every meal, and top spot goes to La Libera again, though all were delicious), and six orders of Tajarin (top spot a tie between La Libera and Osteria Unione with only a slight textural difference in the pasta as the deciding factor), and without a doubt the best steak tartare at L’Eremo della Gasparina. It’s now Tuesday morning, and I’m still hurting a bit but craving a little Nebbiolo. I’ve not written since last month’s newsletter and I’m happy to finally be stationary. As usual, there are so many things to talk and think about re: all that’s happened this year. It’s Thanksgiving week and I have a lot to be thankful for, though I don’t really get to that complete gratitude moment until the week between Christmas and New Year’s when I really feel like I’m left alone to focus on cooking and non-business talk with my wife. But like summer’s promise and the anticipation of the coming harvest and the mystery of opening nature’s unpredictable gift box for the growers, I can’t help but look toward 2023 and what’s coming our way with our new producers. In January, I will share with you a little teaser for what is on the horizon for the first half of the year. There are about fifteen new producers, almost all of whom have never been imported to the US before. You know, wine importers either continue to grow or they get poached to death, so I gotta shed this plin and tajarin weight (and the weight gained on the stop in France beforehand) and get back in the office to prepare for next year. There’s always a new fire-breathing dragon on our heels and promising new winegrowers to be found. I love this job, and though it’s a privileged and fortunate métier, it’s rarely a carefree party. Well, not until Saturday dinner. California Events Friday, December 9th, San Francisco retailer DECANT sf’s 4th Annual Winter Fête from 5pm – 9pm. Join shop owners Cara and Simi along with The Source’s Hadley Kemp for this Champagne and caviar pure drinking-and-eating event. Among many other fabulous bubbles, Hadley will pour some from us, including Charlot-Tanneux, Pascal Ponson and Thierry Richoux. Call for a seat at (415) 913-7256 Saturday, December 17th, Pico at The Los Alamos General Store Bubble Bash- Champagne & Sparkling Wine Tasting from 2pm – 5pm. The Source’s Santa Barbara representative, Leigh Readey, will be pouring at their outdoor tasting event in the Pico Garden and chef Cameron is splurging on caviar and oysters. $40 per person, tickets available for purchase at  https://www. exploretock.com/picolosalamos/event/377637/bubble-bash New Arrivals The short list of arrivals not covered here in depth are the new releases from Wasenhaus and a reload on Artuke’s entry level ARTUKE Rioja and their insane value for such a serious Rioja, Pies Negros. Further along I go deep on two new producers, Champagne’s Pascal Mazet, and Abruzzo’s CantinArte. And included is an overview of Arnaud Lambert’s newest arrivals (too many good things there, so it’s a little lengthy), along with Dave Fletcher’s non-Nebbiolos. New Producer Pascal Mazet, Champagne Thirty hours in Champagne is not enough time. I made stops exactly one week ago to Elise Dechannes in Les Riceys, and a new project in Les Riceys we’ll be starting with in the spring, Taisne-Riocour (a true linguistic challenge to pronounce properly in French), as well as Pascal Mazet in Montagne de Reims, before I jotted off to my hotel at Charles de Gaulle. I am as completely smitten with the Pascal Mazet wines as I was with Elise Dechannes’ the first time I tasted them, though the style is very different from Elise’s Pinot Noir-based Champagnes. Mazet's is the land where Pinot Meunier leads the pack. The lovely and humble Catherine and constantly smiling Pascal Mazet established their domaine in 1981 with 2.5 hectares from her side of the family—enviable holdings in premier cru land on the Montagne de Reims communes Chigny-les-Roses and Ludes, and a grand cru parcel in Ambonnay. Even with such scant vineyard land, Pascal and his third son, Olivier, keep it interesting with six very different wines, soon to be only five. Most of the vineyards are gentle slopes facing southeast at 150m altitude with chalk bedrock alternating with calcareous sands and clay topsoil. They’re easy to spot: green jungle patches amid neighboring vineyards growing on desolate soil. Little by little the Mazets improved their work. The purchase of a Willmes press in the 1990s gently increased the juice yield while reducing gross lees extraction at half the pressure of other presses. Organic conversion started in 2009 and was certified in 2012. Defining elements of their style are fermenting and aging in 225-liter barrels (of at least 15 years old) for eleven to fifteen months and their NV cuvées blended with wine from their 5000-liter “solera” foudre (continuously topped each year with new wine since 1981), followed by extensive lees aging in bottle—a minimum of six years, but often eight. The blends with the solera, Nature and Unique, are bottled only in particular vintages. If the wine needs dosage (to their taste), it is labeled as Unique, if no dosage, it’s Nature—each vintage is one cuvée only, and not the other; for example, 2013 and 2015 are Nature, 2014 is Unique. Dosage of all the wines is decided on taste and wine profile of the vintage. “Scraping,” rather than tilling, is done with a very small tractor (lighter than one ton) to manage superficial grasses and weeds rather than deep gouging that can destroy deeply embedded flora and fauna habitats. While not interested in fully pursuing biodynamic practice, some similar concepts and treatments are employed, like plant infusions for vineyard treatments made from nettle, horsetail, yarrow, dandelion and consoude (known as Symphytum in English), a flower with a multitude of medical uses for animals (including humans!) as well as plants. Pascal (left) and Olivier Mazet At age of twenty-seven, Olivier Mazet took full control in 2018 after completing his university studies in 2014 with an engineering degree specialized in viticulture and enology from the Ecole Supérieur d’Agriculture, in Angers. Olivier’s long view is focused on agroforestry to improve biodiversity in and around the vineyards to help their resilience against disease, improve soil structures by letting nature do a lot of the work—with its billions of years of experience and knowledge—and to try to better cover their viticultural carbon footprint. Olivier’s older brother, Baptiste, also joined the team in 2020. The vineyard collection is about 1.3 hectares (3.2 acres) of Pinot Meunier, 46 ares (0.46 hectare) of Chardonnay, and 23 ares of Pinot Noir, all with an average age of forty years (2022), and 22 of sixty-year-old Pinot Blanc. The yield from their 8000-10000 vines per hectare (similar to Burgundy) in a normal year is around 55hl/ha. Mazet’s solera foudre is a singular experience. I asked Olivier for a taste of it during our first visit together. He looked to Pascal, who seemed surprised by the request, but he agreed to fill a small bottle to taste. When out of the room, Olivier raised his eyebrows, smiled, and said “It’s very unusual that he lets anyone taste from the foudre.” Over the years I’ve often thrown out the descriptor for extremely minerally wines that, “they taste like liquid rock!” This wine was a recalibration of that description in that I would say it was equally rock and metal. It truly was like tasting liquid rock and metal, almost no fruit at all—purely elemental. Never in my entire career have I had a wine so specific as that. What surprised me the most was how unoxidized it was and the purity of color, like looking through the prism of a diamond, the flickering reflection of the sun off the glistening sea. Its taste I will never forget and will always recognize in the mix of Nature, Unique and Originel, the wines to get dosed with this vinous nitrous oxide. The foudre “Nature” comes from all of their parcels and is a blend of 45% Pinot Meunier, 30% Chardonnay and 25% Pinot Noir. 60% is 2013 vintage wine while the remainder is from their single 50hl “solera” foudre, with zero dosage. “Unique” mirrors “Nature,” though it comes from an entirely different vintage base wine, as mentioned earlier. The grape mix is the same, as is the amount of vintage wine, this case from 2014, while the remainder is from their single 50hl “solera” foudre, with 4g/L dosage. “Originel” is composed of 35% Chardonnay, 35% Pinot Blanc, and 15% each of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, all from two different plots: Chardonnay from “Les Sentiers” on chalk and clay, and Pinot Blanc from chalk and sand (with correspondingly earlier ripening) of “La Pruches d’en Haut,” an originel plot that was listed as a terroir of Champagne before the 1800s. 60% of this wine is from 2013 and 40% from the “solera” foudre, with 3g/L dosage. “Millésime,” as the name suggests, is Mazet’s vintage Champagne. The 2015 is a blend of all the different parcels with a mix of 45% Pinot Meunier, 30% Chardonnay and 25% Pinot Noir. It’s aged exclusively in 225-liter French oak casks of at least 15 years old, with zero dosage. CantinArte, Abruzzo I will be the first to admit I am not an expert in Italian wines, despite working in and visiting Italian producers regularly since 2004 and a one-year residence in Campania; it’s a country hard to master if it’s not your main focus. I improve every year but the depth of this peninsula and its islands and mountains can be overwhelming. Abruzzo, for one, is a region I haven’t even tried to wrap my head around (though I don’t have the time yet to dig in like I’d like to) because of its vast expanse and my lack of I’ve been to Abruzzo twice, and other Italian wine regions like Piemonte thirty, if not forty times. I have a grip but still feel like an advanced amateur in Piemonte, so you can imagine how I feel about Abruzzo. I can talk about a few of the big names in Abruzzo and their unique styles (and complain about their strangely high prices), but I can’t speak about the appellation as a whole—maybe only on a flashcard level. For this reason I’m glad that our new Abruzzo producer CantinArte (which I competitively tasted among other wines in the region to figure out if they truly were a stylistic match for us in taste and philosophy, before opting in) has their own small section of Montepulciano grapes in Bucchianico, in the Province of Chieti. It’s about ten kilometers from the Adriatic on a soft sloping southeast exposition (a preferential direction for freshness!) on deep clay topsoil, which is helpful to mitigate arid weather through good water retention. Plus, it’s in the middle of nowhere high up in the mountains with mainland Italy’s most consistently clean air (a unique fact), with no one else nearby. While Francesca Di Nosio’s husband Diego Gasbarri developed his career as an engineer with a degree in Environmental Engineering (an expertise quite useful for their organic vineyards and olive tree groves) and built his small company from scratch in Civil engineering, she was bitten by the wine bug in her teenage years. Her first inspiration was her grandparents, who made wine only for the family’s consumption. Her studies in university were initially focused on Latin and Ancient Greek, and later Marketing and Communication, but a trip in her teenage years to UC Davis in 1988 with her father sparked an interest in winegrowing that eventually grew into a spiritual and cultural bonfire. Eventually she went to France to work in vineyards around Lyon and then a year at the biodynamic Chianti Classico cantina, Querciabella. During her time in Greve in Chianti, she became convinced of her future in wine and went home to start CantinArte with the Montepulciano vineyards her grandparents planted in the 1970s. Francesca Di Nosio, CantinArte Curious about all things, Francesca loves most her connection with people, the talks about culture and wine and food. A mother of two, she remains a complete romantic overflowing with hospitality and kindness and gushing with an eagerness to please. (Anyone would laugh if they heard some of the enthusiastic and fun voice messages I’ve received from her over the last two years.) When asked what she would like for people to feel about her wines, the take away after mentions of mineral freshness and uniqueness was that she wants people to feel their joy. What else? CantinArte’s 740m white wine vineyards The vineyard project high up in the mountains where they’ve planted Pecorino and Pinot Grigio are in Diego’s familial neighborhood, Navelli, a gorgeous old rock village in the Provincia dell’Aquila, an hour drive up into the mountains from the Adriatic to a completely different setting from their Montepulciano vineyards. These new vineyards (first vintages bottled 2021 for both varieties) are at an unusually high altitude for Abruzzo viticulture at 740m (~2,400ft). At first, they thought maybe it was a gamble to go so high, but the results are beyond promising. This place is perfectly suited for these white varieties with a bedrock and topsoil that have an uncanny resemblance to those of the Côte d’Or (a place I’ve dug around in for years): fractured, stark white limestone rocks from a different geological age mixed with reddish-brown clay atop limestone bedrock. They are some of the most striking examples of both varieties I’ve had, and not surprisingly unique with their tense, mountain acidity and even some petillance in the 2021 Pinot Grigio IGT Terre Aquilane “Colori” that gives it extra charge. I remain perplexed by this Pinot Grigio (not only for its bubbles) with its vinous capture of clean mountain air, sweet green herbs, sweet lime and green melon fruit. I’m constantly surprised when I think about this wine (often) and what they did differently than others, outside of spontaneous ferments, low total SO2 (less than 60ppm), and organic farming at super high altitude. I know, Ted Vance, the perpetual wine sales guy, now waxing lyrically about Pinot Grigio? Don’t write it off so easily. This stuff is different, and I guess one shouldn’t summarily dismiss any grapes from the Pinot family when they are done in a serious way! Though the Pinot Grigio is captivating, most will likely go for the 2021 Pecorino IGT Terre Aquilane “Colori,” not only because it is a more classical variety from these parts, but also because it is likely viewed as more complex. High altitude Pecorino works, and the biotypes Diego selected for the plantation originate from northern Abruzzo at very high altitudes— mostly in territories without much commercial production but rather from families who produce for themselves. Here, the brine of the sea in the wine is exchanged for a cold mountain, herb-filled aromatic breeze. This variety seems to have a natural salinity anyway, so you won’t miss much there. The difference between here and 400m down and closer to the sea is that the mountain wines will have a little less oxidation, higher pH levels (3.10-3.15 for both Pinot Grigio and Pecorino), more angles than curves, pungent rocky mineral impressions due to the rockier soil with little topsoil, and the effects of a massive diurnal shift at the high altitude—summer days around 35C (95°F) drop to 16°C (60°F) at night—and without the big spice rack imposed by more heat and solar power closer to the sea at lower altitudes. This white wine project seems to be Diego’s thing more than Francesca’s—it’s his home turf while closer to the sea is hers—and his new Pecorino experiment out of amphora I tasted a little over a month ago caught me with my jaw on the floor, yet again. I can’t wait to see if that one gets into bottle in the same shape it is in amphora! Diego Gasbarri, CantinArte  CantinArte’s two parcels of Montepulciano in Bucchianico sit around 300m (~1000ft) and were planted in the mid-seventies, with another part in the early 2010s by Francesca and Diego. The younger vines are used for the Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo and the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Ode” and the older vines for their Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Rosso Puro. I admit that my greater initial personal interest in Abruzzo was to find a mesmerizing Cerasuolo rather than an Abruzzo red or white. I’ve had a few Cerasuolo from names that most in the trade know well but can rarely find—let alone afford—that give me a stir while others can be a lot of fun to drink, but most are innocuous wines. I find that the most compelling reds and whites of Abruzzo are so often crafted in such an individual way at very specific cantinas under the direction of uniquely special people that it was hard to imagine finding another inspiring standalone superstar in a sea of Trebbiano and Montepulciano. My interactions with CantinArte’s Cerasuolos, like the 2020 Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, and the 2019 before it, hit the mark. I also found that in classical style for this category with high quality producers that they are quiet and tucked in upon opening (the best often need decanting to get past too much gas, and, well, we don’t have all day when we’re ready to drink rosé, right?) which is further exacerbated by a cold serving temperature straight out of the fridge. But with some time open, the structure of this twenty-four-hour skin maceration concedes its authority in CantinArte’s Cerasuolo to fresh red spring fruits and the joy Francesca wants us to experience. It’s a wonderful wine when it hits its stride (half an hour after opening) and maintains a very focused direction. A perfect Sunday lunch wine served at a red wine temperature, it will bloom with the promise of spring into a leafless autumn afternoon meal with good company. Today being Thanksgiving (at least as I write this segment on a dreary, rain-filled Portuguese morning), my mind screams, “Everyone knows that Beaujolais is a fabulous match for today’s traditional fare, but bring on the Cerasuolo!” It’s made in a straightforward way in steel tanks and with grapes organically farmed close to the sea at 300m on clay, facing southeast. The 2019 was a very good but the 2020 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Ode” may even be better. My first interaction with these fully destemmed reds on day one was very good but the second day was always another level for both—first day expected, the second a good surprise for a variety that often seems to put all the cards on the table in short order. Its freshness afterburner (even more so than the first day) demonstrates how picking is prioritized on the earlier side in the season along with rigorous sorting. For these reasons, they show little to no sense of desiccation or brown notes in the spectrum of fruit (a concern for me with young wines from these sunny parts), just a minerally, cool and refreshing palate texture, and ethereal aromatic qualities on top of its natural savory earthiness. Ode is more of a straightforward approach with stainless steel fermenting (10-12 days) and aging (12 months) and is void of tweaks that make it feel heavy-handed, using unique techniques rather than relying on excellent and conscious organic farming with an environmental engineer’s eye for detail. And of course, the joy of the family behind it. The 2010 Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Rosso Puro” comes from the vineyard of Francesca’s grandparents planted in the 1970s. Since the beginning, even prior to the organic certification in 2014, only copper and sulfur were sprayed in the vines when she first started. Francesca says that the main difference in the vineyard is the evolution of the yeasts from the vineyards without any synthetic treatments. As mentioned, this wine is grown on clay on a southeast face, and was destemmed during its three-week fermentation/maceration and raised for three years in no new oak, instead with some first year and mostly older used French oak barrels. This southeast face is key for the freshness of both reds and their Cerasuolo. Though Rosso Puro is one year short of being a teenager, it’s in its middle age, its prime, and perfect now. It’s a good introduction to southern-Italian wine style—even though it’s from the center of Italy—with reminiscent notes similar to aged Aglianico in Taurasi, minus the thick-boned structure. There is very little of this wine available and we expect the 2013 to arrive with our next order. Arnaud Lambert, Loire Valley There are few who candidly share their process with me as much as Arnaud Lambert does, and I had yet another great visit with him a few weeks ago. Perpetually on the move, he always has something new to share about his progress. We had lunch in Saumur at Bistro de la Place in the center of town. It was cold and drizzly. Perfect for a lunch of foie gras and trotters—my usual “light” fare in France; it really is hard for me to stick with “clean” eating in that country. Arnaud asked me to pick the wine and I was pleasantly surprised to see a bottle of 2018 Domaine de la Vallée Moray’s Montlouis “Aubépin,” a wine and producer unfamiliar to Arnaud, furthermore quite unfamiliar in the world as of now, though that won’t last. The sommelier perked up when I named the wine. He came back and poured. I said nothing, just waited. Arnaud took his time, eyes in contemplation, swirling the glass, then sloshing the wine around in his mouth. It was a very impressive first glass (which means the second will be even better!) and I knew he was taken long before he said anything. He commented how remarkable it was for 2018, a difficult vintage with depth and stuffing, which this wine has in spades. During my previous visit with Arnaud, Romain Guiberteau and Brendan Stater-West, I talked about the new producers I’m starting to work with in Montlouis, including Vallée Moray. I was happy to share this bottle. Hopefully Arnaud will come with me to Montlouis on my next trip to meet Hervé Grenier, the humble master who crafted this gorgeously deep Chenin Blanc, among other unexpectedly fabulous and authentic vinous creations. Hervé’s wines will be on offer in January, though the quantities are painfully small. Chenin Blanc Everyone’s lucky to have access to this bigtime lineup from Arnaud. It’s serious juice from recent vintages that he feels have moved well into the direction he’s pursued since his start, tweaking and experimenting along the way to find this specific line. Oak decisions on Chenin Blanc are milder than the recent years—a conversation we’ve had regularly. The previous years were good, and often great, but sometimes time is needed to punch through the oak when the wines are young. Eventually they make it through but perhaps at a cost of some delicate nuances. One thing I’ve noticed with the Saumur wines we work with is that there is often a lot of intensity and vibration rather than rhythmic melody. Arnaud has doggedly sought and seemingly found his tune, a taming of the shivering intensity of this area of Saumur, highlighting the vinous quality often left behind or beat down by the wood in its youth. The innocence of Midi always stood as the north star to his range of Chenin for me, with its crystalline purity, captured joy, and echoes of Arnaud’s deeply hued and thoughtful Belgian bluestone eyes. There are a few goodies arriving from Arnaud’s entry-level Chenin spectrum. 2021 Clos de Midi is more than just a good opener for the range. This year is second to none compared to every young wine I’ve had from this vineyard in the middle (midi) of the slope. I asked Arnaud for more entry-level white, and while it’s almost impossible to increase the quantity of Clos de Midi, he proposed his 2021 St. Cyr en Bourg Chenin Blanc. This all comes from his organic parcels in St. Cyr en Bourg (home to Coulee de St. Cyr and Les Perrieres, just across the way from Brézé), and is made the same as Clos de Midi, in stainless steel. You can’t go wrong with any of Arnaud’s 2021s. The triumphant trio of Chenin Blanc starts at the blocks with 2020 Clos David, a straight shooter and in all ways minerally and rocky, followed by the powerful and usually slow to evolve (though this year is a little more extroverted than years past) 2019 Brézé grown in deeper clay soils atop tuffeau bedrock, all anchored by the 2019 Clos de la Rue. Each is worthy of any serious wine program, though the Brézé is extremely limited. 2019 is likely the best bottling of this wine I’ve had (when young), but Clos de la Rue remains king for me year in and year out after tasting these wines since the 2009 vintage—the Brézé cuvée first bottling was 2014. Seemingly without limits in evolution and a constant rediscovery from one glass to the next, Clos de la Rue is poised with balance and deep core strength. Though Clos David is the bargain cru at the price, and Brézé the muscular unicorn with only two barrels made, Clos de la Rue is the must-have in the lineup. Cabernet Franc Arnaud is in perpetual internal war over his reds. I’ve often pushed for Clos Mazurique to be the guiding light: matter over mind, and hand. Over the years Arnaud reduced his extractions, starting in 2012 with fewer than one movement each day down from three during fermentation—a good decision and still upheld though with even fewer now, only around three vigorous movements for the entire length of fermentation and extended maceration. Next was zero sulfiting until after malolactic fermentation, which turned out to be far less risky than expected. (All one must do is go into his freezing barrel room to know that almost nothing will grow in those wines, only the most resilient of cellar molds on the outside of barrels and the tuffeau rock walls and ceiling.) Eventually that evolved into a solitary addition only at bottling with not a milligram before. The total sulfite levels today are around 25ppm (25mg/L). Both steps were crucial in his evolution. Most recently, however, is the approach on new wood with less is more. This step is more recent, but if there were ever a vintage to digest the new oak entirely, it would be 2019. It also helps that the top red wines, Clos Moleton and Clos de l’Etoile, with about 30% new oak, were in those same barrels for thirty months to eventually shed most of the undesired wood nuances and wood tannins. Considering the pH levels of these wines, they will never flaunt the wood as other higher pH varieties. I don’t really know why that is, but I’ve observed it, as have many other winegrowers. Newer wood tames, manicures, and sculpts. All good things with Bordeaux and Burgundy, I guess, but not for me with Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley. In some ways, newer wood forces manners and etiquette, though I find the nature of Cabernet Franc to be earth-led, with sunlight, spring flowers and spring fruits, a little bit of untamed beast, and maybe even a little solemnity. It’s not at all a confectionary variety with a party personality, so I don’t find that it melds well with sweet, vanilla, toasty, resiny, smoky new wood on it. New wood often neuters Cabernet Franc’s most alluring attributes (as it does other wines), trading out the wild forest, underbrush, and wild animal for stately statue gardens and their regularly trimmed shrubbery. The style works anyway with Cabernet Franc caught somewhere between Burgundy, Bordeaux and the overly polished and utterly boring (again, neutered!) versions of new-wood Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage. Indeed, Saumur rouge and Saumur-Champigny are not the Northern Rhône Valley’s rustic, burly, salty, meaty, bloody, metal, minerally type—though that is what I often want it to lean more toward, though only toward, without succumbing entirely. I think most of us have a good idea of what would happen if one goes full Tarzan with Cabernet Franc. And this variety isn’t Red Burgundy: celebrated, predictable, still exciting (sometimes when young, but mostly with older wines from cooler years), but rarely unexpected, even when the very best show their might, excluding producers like Mugnier, and Leroy (may she live forever, though I can no longer afford or justify the cost to drink anything adorned with her name and crown.) Can these overly crafted wines be a little too good? Like Tom Brady-too-good? So much so that you don’t want it anymore? That you should root for someone else? An underdog such as a Cabernet Franc? I find that Saumur and Saumur-Champigny are often a reflection of its residents, their good manners, happiness and generosity, their contained, clean and well-dressed but slightly casual presentation and warmth; it’s only the weather that brings the chill here, not usually the people. I almost moved to Saumur. I love the place; its gorgeous tuffeau off-white castles and even its simplest tuffeau structures and barns. It’s easy to navigate in the city, much of which was rebuilt after World War II, though not as badly damaged as other Loire Valley cities like Tours. I always feel safe in greater Anjou and Touraine. I don’t mean only from a physical safety perspective but rather that I never feel rushed, like I’m not going to get run over, harassed, or impatiently talked to when my French isn’t on point. Maybe the soft rolling hills and the serenity of the river soften them. Maybe it’s that they lost too many people and things during WWII, which forced a lot of familial and city reconstruction that made them humbler than some other French wine regions? I feel Arnaud continues to move closer to embracing the earthen, well-dressed beast Cabernet Franc can be, despite his reference points and training in Beaune and seeming desire to be closer to a Burgundy wine in overall effect. It’s not a bad objective to want to walk beside Burgundy, though I’m still confused even when I use the term “Burgundian” to try to bring understanding to the style of a non-Burgundy wine. I think I used to know better what I meant by it. Cabernet Franc from Saumur and Saumur-Champigny somehow expresses its dark clay and rocky limestone topsoil and tuffeau bedrock. In the best examples it seems like they drop the clusters on the vineyard ground, toss in some aromatic brush and herbs, wild berries, mash it up a little and then throw them into fermentation bins with the grapes, thereby collecting all that earthy and wilderness nuance. That’s where I see Arnaud going in overall profile, and I do hope that’s where he ends up. Cabernet Franc is an easy grape in many ways when good table wine is what’s wanted, but despite its agreeability its inspiring renditions only come from top sites grown by top minds and hard workers. Farming is crucial and the wines need to be left alone in the cellar to sort themselves out and be put to bottle without much of a mark of ego, neglect, bad taste, or indecision. Intention with Cabernet Franc is crucial. Epic never happens here by accident. Leading off the red range are Arnaud’s two impossible not to like wines (if you have taste for Loire Valley Cabernet Franc!): the 2021 Saumur-Champigny Les Terres Rouges and 2021 Saumur Clos Mazurique. Here you will find Arnaud’s best red wines that have ever borne these labels, no doubt about it. I said it while tasting with Arnaud a few weeks ago, and he agreed. He explained that he found a new way! (As he always does every single year.) They are gorgeous and follow a line of truth for this variety expressing the purity of their terroirs through simple, more-thought-and-less-action winemaking, all a concession to the organic farming (started in 2010) and the need to work with the vine’s nature instead of against it. I shouldn’t spend so much time on them because despite a good number of cases of each arriving, all of them already have a devout following in our supply chain and they’re all expecting their usual share. Perhaps these two reds, like Clos de Midi, are now out of most by-the-glass ranges, but for the price sensitive section of the wine list’s bottle selection, they will be stars for those who are still concerned about the tally on the bill in the face of an increasingly more expensive world. Comparing the hills of Brézé and Saint-Cyr through the lens of Arnaud’s wines is a testament to the validity of terroir. The hills more or less look the same in shape, though Brézé is far more attractive with its forest cap and the famous Chateau de Brézé’s ancient tuffeau limestone walls encircling it like a crown, compared to Saint-Cyr’s slope capped off with the industrial Saumur winery co-op on top, which Arnaud’s grandfather helped establish. The big difference between them is that Saint-Cyr could be described as more homogenous in soil structure with a lot of clay topsoil on most vineyards, while Brézé is a patchwork of many different topsoil structures ranging from almost pure calcareous sand (Clos David), sandy loam (Clos Mazurique, Clos Tue Loup, top section of Clos de l’Etoile), clayey loam (Clos de la Rue), and clay (Brézé cuvée, and bottom section of Clos de l’Etoile). Both hills have tuffeau bedrock and most of the Cabernet Franc parcels have deeper clay topsoil atop the roche-mère. Think of clay-rich sites as a George Foreman-like wine, clay-loam as Muhammad Ali, and sand as Oscar de la Hoya. The pity of this lineup of reds is the missing comparative between Brézé’s Clos du Tue Loup and Saint-Cyr’s Montée des Roches (gravelly loam), the latter of which is not on this boat. Arnaud’s 2020 Saumur “Clos Tue Loup” was raised in only older barrels for a little over a year. I’ve always loved this wine for its higher tones, deep red fruit and cool mineral palate. It embodies what I love the most from this hill and the balance of power. The big hitters, 2019 Saumur-Champigny “Clos Moleton” (Saint-Cyr) and 2019 Saumur “Clos de l’Etoile” (Brézé) are clear demonstrations of somewhat subtle terroir differences that make quite an impact on the final wines. Same bedrock but different topsoil. As mentioned, Clos de l’Etoile has two different soil structures. The upper section is sandy loam and the lower section, clay. This combo makes a wine with great structure but also a little more lift than its near twin on the other hill. By contrast, Clos Moleton is atop a big slab of clay. Like Foreman, it’s formidable, methodical, powerful, intense, with a little chub and a fun personality, especially with more age. L’Etoile is a heavyweight, no doubt, but much faster hand and foot speed and equipped with a silver tongue: Ali. 2019 is one of Arnaud’s greatest achievements in red which makes the miniscule quantities of these two powerhouse reds unfortunate. When you pull the cork do it for a table of two (for sommeliers) or at home with a good friend and a nice long conversation, rather than at a party. Evolution is key here and these heavyweights need twelve rounds in the glass to put on the full show. Fletcher, Barbaresco (Non-Barbaresco wines) Holding up the rear of this newsletter (the caboose, if you will) is the Aussie expat living in what was once the Barbaresco train station, Dave Fletcher. The difference between Dave and many other foreigners making wine in Langhe is that he works a tiny, one- man operation with a little help only when he really needs it, unlike the millionaires buying all vineyards that are on the market for double the previous year’s going rate. His day job since 2009 has been at Ceretto, working as a cellar hand where he eventually became their full time winemaker, pushing organic and then biodynamic farming on them, with great success as they are now under both cultures. I finally visited Ceretto on this last trip in mid-November and I cannot believe the style change he helped instill. The wines now are crystalline, bright, aromatic, almost no new wood (around 50% new when he started but now less than 10%), and graceful, like Vietti’s new style. Dave’s renditions of Barbaresco under the Fletcher label are the real deal. They’re not from big botte because he doesn’t have the volume from any Barbaresco cru to fill one because there are only about fifty or so cases of each made. He’s a real garagiste, or I guess I could say stationiste because he lives in and ages his Barbarescos (in the underground cellar) in the train station he and his wife, Elenora, bought and renovated. I love being in that building, where they did their best to preserve the layout on the first floor, ticket window and all. It’s easy to imagine it filled with Italians traveling away from their home in these hills to Turin for work, after having abandoned their multi-generational vineyards to enter manufacturing jobs just to survive. It was a sad time then and the Langhe was the poorest area in all of Italy after WWII. Things have changed. Despite its current overflow of riches, the vast majority of the Piemontese still carry on many generations of humility, warmth and comradery. It remains for me my spiritual Italian homeland. Dave has pushed his Chardonnay on me for years. They were always good and often I didn’t let him know it because even though I liked them I thought our customer base would think, “Aussie Langhe Chardonnay? Wtf, Ted?”, when Aussie Barbaresco was a tough sell to begin with. I was convinced that Chardonnay might turn the Piemontese traditionalist buyers off from his Nebbiolo wines. I’ve come to realize that that was just me standing in the way, with good intentions of course, to protect and help build Dave’s traditional Piemontese style wines in the market first before letting in his irrepressible Down Under. Dave’s 2021 Chardonnay C21 exemplifies what he’s capable of and his New World versatility and open mind. He’s proud of this wine, and he should be. He loves Burgundy, and he’s followed its stylistic line with his vineyard planted on extremely high pH limestone soils (though here its sandy topsoil compared to Burgundy’s clay), his early picks to preserve tension (this vintage August 21, but he says this is the new norm) and prefers grapes without much direct sun contact—more green than golden. It’s Burgundian in style in that its 30% new oak and the rest in older oak casks. If one were to serve it blind—things we only do with non-Burgundy Chardonnays to try to fool each other into thinking its a Burgundy—especially after it was open for thirty minutes with a little bit of aeration in the glass before my first sniff and taste, I may have a hard time going away from Burgundy, though probably not within the Côte de Beaune. It’s not really New Worldy (mostly because of the similar calcium carbonate influence as Burgundy) but rather somewhere between the style of PYCM–though a little tighter and not fluffed up–and JC Ramonet, but less toasty and lactic. Perhaps its softer textural grip would give it away and take you right back to the Langhe, but I doubt it, unless you know well Langhe Chardonnay. It’s a good wine indeed, especially at its fair price for this category and quality. Definitely worth a look for those craving that fairy dust that’s so hard to find outside of Burgundy’s Chardonnay wines. Orange wine is in, and Dave’s 2021 Arcato is a dandy. He prides himself on craft and he’s sharp on technical tastings, so you kind of know what you’re getting here when you mix early picked 75% Arneis destemmed and crushed, and 25% Moscato whole cluster fermented and macerated, and a final alcohol of 11.8%, labeled 12. It’s a very technically sound wine from a classical point of view, but it’s also delicious and intriguing, a joy to drink. I like it a lot. Not so quirky, just well done and with a lot of personality from these two grapes, one on the neutral and understated side and the other more flamboyant and abundantly aromatic as a still wine. He also nailed the label for this fun wine category—a retailer’s dream etichetta for this category. I’ve been a fan since my first taste of Dave’s Barbera d’Alba made with partial whole clusters. His new rendition, the 2021 Barbera d’Alba comes from a vineyard in Alba with sixty-year- old vines. He said he had to do a lot of sorting because of Barbera’s soft skins, which tend to shrivel a little more than other regional red grapes. The 2021 shows a little bit more mature development on the red fruit due to the heat spike, and he intends to do two picks in the future because of the variability of maturity on the vines. This is delicious stuff and a fun reboot for this ubiquitous Piemontese grape with southern Italian origins.

As the road into the Jura Mountains got steeper, a cliff loomed to our left like a slanting wall of neatly stacked flagstones, done by some midcentury architect with a sense of humor. Each layer of limestone had been laid down as sediment over countless years and then striated vertically every foot or so as the mountain pushed skyward. We turned off into an overlook where we could see the entire patchwork below: vineyards, yellow and green fields of canola and wheat, tan and terracotta villages encircled by bushy forests all quilted together under the bluest sky. The town of Château-Chalon was just a little further up, perched atop a promontory on the first step of the mountain range. The whole village is constructed of the same limestone and in nearly the same shapes as the cliffs below, only (of course) stacked more horizontally. Some walls were spackled over with cement that had long ago crumbled away like skin in spots to reveal the muscle of stones underneath. As we made our way down a narrow street looking for lunch, we passed low arched doorways with doors painted alternately white or red. The place was deserted, with most of the windows shuttered. Maybe only five people materialized from one of these squat structures, then hustled off in the other direction. It was like we had entered a medieval hamlet closed up for a possible invasion. We came to the first destination on our short list of choices from the Internet, Le P’tit Castel, and looked through the darkened window. Inside, the tiny room had about six tables, all full. We went on to the second, Auberge du Roc, and it was the same story. The whole town had apparently congregated where we wanted to eat. The third and final restaurant was closed. It was a pity, since all three were highly rated and looked like places where Hobbits might dine. Slightly discouraged but not defeated, we retreated to the bottom of the hill to a restaurant on the side of the road in a new beige stucco building that would have fit in well in suburban Los Angeles. (It will remain unnamed). The interior was all orange walls, beech furniture, rubber tablecloths and cheap brightly-colored pastoral art that must have been hung in the 1990s. Like many restaurants all over France, they offer a cheap prix fixe menu: three courses with a glass of table wine, for eighteen euros. What a bargain. Yet I can’t recall the first course, and the entrée was only memorable because what was listed as pork came as a slice of ham, like one might get at a HoneyBaked restaurant. For the third course, I passed on desert and ordered fromage blanc, only because I had no idea what it was. For those who don’t know, what I got was a cup of semi-liquid cheese curd reminiscent of Greek yogurt. I took a few bites, and then watched enviously as Ted sliced into his nice plate of real cheese, including some delicious looking Comté. Always health-conscious, Andrea wisely demurred on the third course. I made a note to self: call Le P’tit Castel ahead of time. To be fair, the place where we were eating was also highly-rated and had a great selection on their expanded menu. I may have just chosen poorly from the limited prix fixe, and/or on an off day. We still had some time to kill before our appointment with Jean-Claude Crédoz, so we returned to Château-Chalon and parked at his winery before wandering through town. One road led us to a stunning view of some palatial houses on the cliffs overlooking the beautiful rolling countryside far below. Tiers of green yards lined with ancient rock walls curved along the hillside. The pinnacle of a Romanesque church from the eleventh century towered over the village rooftops, begging us for a visit. After getting lost in a maze of concrete and stone, we finally found the old edifice with the cross on top, named for Saint Pierre. A breath of old wood and leather came from an open arched doorway. I went into the darkness and stood in awe of the silence, the history. The place had none of the grandeur of a cathedral in the big cities of Europe; it was a place of austere worship. A local glanced at me on the way out and I imagined suspicion there. Heathen that I am, I immediately backed out, somehow intimidated by a god I don’t believe in, or maybe, by that cold look from the believer of something I don’t understand. We got separated from Andrea, the shutterbug, but rejoined her back at Domaine Jean-Claude Crédoz. He immediately came out and offered warm and firm handshakes all around. He spoke no English, so it was left to Ted to translate. I understood chunks, but as any intermediate student of a language can confirm, quick speaking natives leave one in the dust. He summarily showed us his two winemaking hangers, with their towering steel tanks, then cut to the chase and led us out to his SUV for a vineyard tour. Crédoz is medium height, very thin and wiry, like a man who works so much he forgets to eat. He has a big mop of straight dark hair parted down the center above a face that’s seems to have more of a permanent pink burn than tan. A thousand super fine crow’s feet fan out from the corners of his eyes all the way to the hair on his temples and halfway down his cheeks, when he squints and smiles, which is to say, almost always. It was the face of someone who works in the sun every day most of the year, tending to his land like the most dedicated of farmers. (Find a little more on Crédoz here). This was the crux of the my trip with Ted, to meet the vignerons he imports who are not the aristocratic château owners of Bordeaux, lording over their field workers, but guys who work the grape from bud to glass, right alongside their employees. To hear Crédoz talk about his land and his process, his passion, dedication and determination came through even when I only caught every other word since Ted was so absorbed that he was only summarizing bits and pieces. The first stop was on the Château-Chalon slope (the first image in this chapter), which faces west in the valley down below the town, where half of his grapes are grown. Then we headed over to the AOP “Côtes du Jura” slopes, which face southwest. Crédoz pointed out that this variance in direction (or “aspect” as it’s called, which can also refer to the slope of the hill) makes a huge difference; as one would expect, it affects speed and ease of ripening and therefore the harvest times in the different areas. We got out at every parcel to examine the vines, with their early season young buds and small clusters of leaves. Andrea took stunning photos of the rolling landscape, occasionally showing me the screen on her camera. Ted did so too, but not before he aimed his lens at the ground to get close-ups of the dirt, soil and healthy greenery. Crédoz uses natural techniques, and his vineyards were covered with natural grasses and weeds over cracked beige clay and chunks of marl. Ted picked up pieces and crumbled them in his fingers, took sniffs and looked closely with his magnifying loupe. It was all very different from the overgrowth and orange decay on some of the other parcels we had seen down below. Andrea and Ted took quick candid photos of Crédoz as he spoke and he humored them with shy grins when he wasn’t trying to ignore the attention. In this age of social media, they carefully strategize what they want to post and say about their producers. Like many natural winemakers, Crédoz uses the undergrowth vegetation as fertilizer by plowing the rows every other year instead of using herbicides, killing two dirty birds with one stone. He also shuns the use of manure, which, he said, artificially induces power in the vines, making the grapes ripen too fast to develop the desired complexity. It is the inclination of purists is to do exactly the opposite of boosting growth, to take steps that make the grapes work harder for their dinner. Another technique is to plow just to each side of the vines so the roots have to dig deeper and make their way down to the rich minerals and other nutrients well below the surface. Yet another way is to allow clover and other grasses to grow close to vines in higher precipitation areas where they can steal water, which also forces the roots downward where, Ted says, “they find their way to more interesting earth, like decomposed bedrock and stone, the bones of a true vin de terroir.” Crédoz gestured in different directions and noted the ages of some of his vines all over the hillside. While some would consider his forty-year-old chardonnay, old vines, he doesn’t agree. But he’s pickier than others about what he classifies that way, which is easy for him to do, since some of his holdings have been around for 120 years. Next: Crédoz’s Cave and Bar

Newsletter May 2025 Les Picaurdières, Crozes-Hermitage In last month’s newsletter, I wrote about my visit with Vincent Bergeron during my 41-day bender with Remy Giannico, our New York-based gaucho, and this month, three of his 2022 Chenin Blanc wines are arriving. Since tasting them for the first time in bottle last spring with our Los Angeles tastemaker, JD Plotnick (and a couple times out of barrel the previous year), they continue to evolve beautifully. Like many 2022 whites from this area, they show surprising snap and tension for this hot season. I know “hot season” evokes great hesitation, if not terror, for those of us who need that electric charge in our wines. However, as I wrote in more depth last month, 2022s are a different breed—they seem to be Defying the Sun. Vincent sent some bottles to taste in the early fall of last year. They were head-turning—another convincing 2022 encounter that dismantled assumptions. This resulted in a request to purchase more to bring home, followed by a second order six weeks later. I’ve had more than four bottles each, and all continue to chip away at preconceived notions about how a “hot year” should taste. I also shared a set of his wines over a cassoulet dinner (the last of the season!) with longtime Villa Más sommelier, Núria Lucia Serra. She was surprised that Vincent isn’t on everyone’s radar. (She has since left Villa Más this year and started a new wine bar project in Girona called La Cantina.) Vincent Bergeron Don’t sit on your hands. This is an impressive set crafted by a young idealist's gentle but well-worn hands, already showing a deep emotional mastery of his craft. As I’ve mentioned, Vincent is a man whose humility and generosity inspire me to better myself. He’s a gem of a human being. It’s easy for anyone to want to do everything possible to support such a person and bring him the recognition he deserves and needs in the face of financially troubling times. Borrowing from the profile I wrote for our website a few years ago, “Vincent is rare in today’s world of self-aggrandizing young vigneron talents—sometimes appointed by the wine community and often by the self, as ‘rock stars.’” Many seek celebrity and membership in idealist tribes rather than going for truth and an honest view into this métier, this artistic pursuit, this craft–a marriage between Homo sapiens and nature. Vincent is a vigneron’s vigneron, a human’s human, an uncontrived example of how to live and simply let be, spiritually, without trying to be someone.” Soul-filled? Angelic? These impressions come to mind with Vincent’s wines and the 2022s follow suit. He crafts serious but inviting organic, and, most of the time, no-added-sulfites Montlouis wines. Again, as I put it years ago, “Emotionally piercing, Vincent’s mineral-spring, salty-tear, petrichor Chenin wines flutter and revitalize; a baptism of stardust in his bubbles and stills—a little Bowie, a lot of Bach. His Pinot Noir is earthen en bouche, and aromatically atmospheric, bursting with a fire of bright, forest-foraged berries and wildflowers, and cool, savory herbs rarely found in today’s often overworked, oak-soaked, and now sun-punished Pinot Noirs, the wines that were the heroes of the past millennium, but today are a flower wilting under the relentless sun. Advances in the spiritual heartland of Pinot Noir have been made, though I sure miss the flavors of the Côte d’Or from my earlier years among wine.” Vincent’s Pinot Noir takes me back to the beginning of my love affair with this grape’s propensity to produce the world’s most beguiling and slightly austere red wines. Sadly, Vincent opted out of bottling his 2022 Pinot Noir. Following two gorgeous sans soufre bottlings (the 2020 seemingly made by the hand of Thierry Allemand himself, and the 2021 in the shape of a Montlouis Pinot Noir that could’ve been crafted by Pierre de Benoist), his 2022 fell short of his expectations. The big tariff we were facing didn’t materialize, so Vincent’s range of 2022 Chenin Blanc wines will be appropriately priced instead of bearing the price of a 1er Cru Meursault. Vincent’s 2022 still whites are some of the first that helped me to recognize the quality of white wine from this vintage across Northern Europe. Again, they’ve got legs and unexpected thrust for a year with such hot weather. Certain L’Aiment Sec (some like it dry) is yet another wonderful example of clean and finely tuned pét-nat from Vinny. The 2021 was oyster-shell bubbles with taut white-fleshed citric and malic fruits and this 2022 engages a broader range of nuances, dipping into stone-fruit skin notes and is naturally fuller, but only slightly. It comes from 2.6 hectares of various Chenin plots in Montlouis on gentle hills of limestone, clay, sand and silt with an average vine age of 30 years (2023). Its natural fermentation takes place in fiberglass until the finish of malolactic fermentation. Sulfites are added (if they are added at all) after malo, and the wine is aged in bottle on lees for 18 months. No dosage, filtration or fining. The 2022 version of Matin, Midi et Soir (morning, noon and night) brought the race for first place between Maison Marchandelle to a photo finish. The 2020 version, also from another warm year, was fleshier and rounder, gliding easily on the palate, while this 2022 expresses the same fullness but with much more tension and texture. But 2020 followed a string of hot years that added the extra hydric stress on the vines with a big spring frost that significantly reduced yields, exacerbating the warm season’s influence with even quicker ripening, resulting in many wines with less tension. 2022 followed the cold and wet 2021, which replenished many water reserves. This restorative energy is immediately felt in these wines, and in this early stage of its evolution, I can’t get enough of this MMeS. Though probably not a good post-morning workout refresher, perhaps I would even drink it in the morning, should my mind and body allow such a lifelong regimen while keeping me in top form. More responsibly, it would be perfect for lunch at Costa Brava’s Restaurant Villa Más by the beach of Sant Pol. And dinner, a fitting accompaniment for any inspired cooking, and a solid rescue for a misfire. The grapes come from the same 2.6 hectares of various Chenin plots in Montlouis as the pét-nat. It’s fermented by ambient yeast and aged for 12 months in mostly old 225-400 liter French oak with the first sulfites added after ML. No filtration or fining. The prized parcel in Vincent’s 2.6-hectare collection of vines is Maison Marchandelle. This Chenin Blanc comes from 0.87 hectares planted in 1970 on perruches, sandstone, and clay. The 2021 was the first year I tasted this bottling, and it inspired the earlier comments about emotion piercing, stardust, and more. Because the 2022 version fights more in the Light Heavyweight class than the tighter, trimmer 2021, it may appeal to a wider audience. It still flaunts all the qualities specific to this site, but they’re slightly more loosely knit with a fuller sensation in the palate and richer in fruit and dried grass aromas compared to the tight weave of 2021. In the cellar, it’s fermented with ambient yeast and aged for 12 months in mostly old 225-400l French oak with the first sulfites added after malolactic. None of Vincent’s wines are fined or filtered. Stéphane Rousset’s 2023 Crozes-Hermitage “Les Picaudieres” has arrived, and this wine is fabulous, rewinding the phenolic clock to 2015. During that long Remy trip this November and December, I stopped in for a visit. You can read more about that further below in the section titled “Rhône.” Those familiar with it know Les Picaudières is a singular, exceptional vineyard that shouldn’t be overlooked in this vast appellation. It’s Crozes-Hermitage, but it's not what people envision when they think of this appellation and its wines. Just look at the picture. If there were ever wines to taste on a brisk, sunny June morning at 8:30 a week after bottling, it would be Dutraive’s 2023 wines at cellar temperature. The négociant range was excellent and better than any year since 2016. The domaine wines were superhero level. 2023 is a fabulous effort for Dutraive. I tasted each bottling of their 2023 vintage on separate occasions to get a more comprehensive read on them, as I wanted to see just how much the set was evolving. With just 10 mg/L of added sulfites (up from mostly nothing before 2022), across the range makes them faster-moving targets than wines with more additions. I tasted each cuvée at least three times: once at the cellar in June just after bottling, five months later, and again this spring after eight to nine months post-bottling. I expect a similar reaction from those who knew the wines before the 2017 vintage: smiles, relief, nostalgia. But they aren’t the same. Things have changed quite a bit from the crescendo they hit and stood atop Beaujolais before the arrival of unrelenting heat, prefaced by the calamities of frost, hail and tornadoes. The wines arriving in the US will need some time to regain their land legs before they spring into action. 2022 was a hot season, but following a dreary, wet and markedly inconsistent 2021 growing season, there seemed to be water reserves that kept the wines balanced through the hottest recorded year in European history. The vintage was more concentrated, yet still fresh, and some changes in picking time signaled a return to the fresher profile, but on a much hotter planet. Jean-Louis’s firstborn, Ophélie, returned home in 2017, a season that marked the start of a series of hot drought years (2017-2020) that tested the region and the willingness of our buyers to jump on the train, even if Dutraive and Beaujolais continued to trend. Dutraive’s more ethereal style with vineyards made of sand made them exceptionally hard to adapt to. During these years, the wines showed much higher alcohol levels and riper fruit profiles, which contrasted with the lower alcohol, brighter profiles of many years before. 2015 was an exceptional anomaly of balanced power, alcohol and acidity. The wines in these hot years differed from the similarly full-throttle years before 2010, celebrated at the time, like 2005 and 2009. The hydric stress of the four hot, low-yielding years from 2017 to 2020 threatened the region’s stability. 2021 was a welcome respite from the heat, but was otherwise an uncontrollable mess across the region. Yet some hit the bullseye with wines that harkened back to the taste profile of 2013. My initial belief in Dutraive’s medium to long-term wine cellaring credibility came from some old bottles he gifted me when we started working together. One was a 500ml 1995 Fleurie Terroir Champagne, and the other was a 2005 Fleurie Terroir Champagne, bottled in Leroy-like heavy glass, an exceptional experiment hand-bottled from a new oak barrel. The 2005 evolved into a wine similar in profile to a higher-altitude parcel in the “Pearl of the Côte,” and the 1995 seemingly inspired by the hand of the late Jacques Reynaud. They were not only convincing, they were glorious. Even though 2023 was another hot year following the hottest European year on record, somehow Dutraive’s collection is the closest in spirit to the lighter style of the 2012, '13, '14, and '16 vintages. Though there were challenges with the widely misunderstood '16s, wines in bottle from well-regarded domaines speak of beauty and refinement, including Dutraive’s Fleurie Tous Ensemble (a collection of all the Fleurie plots blended into one) and two négociant Chénas from purchased organic fruit grown by Thillardon. Even the hot 2015, with its higher alcohol and fuller ripeness, had an unexpectedly high natural acidity, making wines that may still be confidently cellared. As I’ve written many times, Jean-Louis says it may be the best year of his career. My first tastes of the 2023 vintage at the cellar brought me back to my first tasting of their 2013 range ten years ago during my second visit to the domaine, when we were still feeling each other out. I tasted them in the cellar, seated alone with the wines in front of me and the entire family of four towering over me, saying nothing and leaning in with each swirl and sip. I held my cards tight until I couldn’t. A single wine to transcend any Beaujolais I’d ever tasted would’ve been enough. But in 2013, there were five. I didn’t yet have the French words to express everything that went through my head (nor did I have them in English). In California last summer, I revisited every Dutraive bottling of 2013, ‘14, and ‘16, and two from 2012—about 18 wines with many second and third bottles. I also drank 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014 Foillard Morgon Corclette (my preferred bottling from this domaine), various 2013 and 2014 Lapierre Morgon wines, 2009, 2010, 2012-2014 Alain Michaud Brouilly and Brouilly V.V. (simply stunning, all of them), Chamonard 2009, 2010 and 2012 Morgon. Not a single bottle was “tasted,” per se; rather, they were all enjoyed during many different occasions and were savored to the last drop over many hours of observation, leaving some tiny amounts left in the bottle to check in with the next day. There wasn’t an off wine in the bunch. Dutraive’s renditions stood out as more ethereal and with a softer touch—a signature style of the time from his sandy Fleurie vineyards. It was hard to outmatch that element of his range, but they made up for it in other ways; to compare and define the best is the same as comparing the greatest Côte d’Or producers’ wines from different grand crus. The hierarchy is purely subjective. Each has its optimal moment, and all these wines still seemed youthful—Foillard and Michaud, still babies. Every Dutraive wine was pristine on its first day open, without exception. Some showed a little squeak and fatigue the next day, with only a few ounces purposely left behind. They were pure nostalgia that brought me back to period inside of about 18 months of endless gatherings to which I could write an entire book with a fabulous cast of wine characters centered around Santa Barbara at that time: Bryan McClintic (who lived in our back room for four years), Raj Parr, Graham Tatomer (lived in the middle room for maybe seven years), Drake Whitcraft, the late California Pinot Noir legend, Burt Williams, and the late winegrower taken from us far too early, Seth Kunin. Some who share my predilection for brighter, fresher vintages counter that 2013 bettered 2014. There are indeed many extraordinary wines in the former. They’re often tenser, with brighter acidity and higher-toned aromas. Yet the clipped yields and colder season presented challenges that seem to have inhibited some of their prettier aromas from fully expressing, and often delivered shorter length on the palate. However, I can attest that all the 2013s I had from all the growers mentioned were fabulous and as good overall as their 2014s. Jean-Louis Dutraive, 2016 In 2014, everyone seemed to deliver aromatically open and fabulously balanced wines with long finishes that still don’t show any signs of shutting down—at least from the growers I frequent. I can say there are no wines from any grower in my life within a single vintage that I’ve consumed more than Dutraive’s 2014s, except perhaps the 1999 vintage of Jean-Marie Fourrier inherited as the sommelier at Wine Cask Restaurant in Santa Barbara (with nearly a full pallet allocation before he became famous), purchased by the late Christopher Robles before he went to the supplier side. Dutraive’s 2014s gave me that same intense rush of discovery and obsession as Fourrier’s 1999s. We made an offer from my cellar of Dutraive’s 2014s last year, but few jumped on them, and I understood why. Most newer buyers simply didn’t know this era of Dutraive. They were more familiar with the hotter years and the challenges they presented. I thought about doing a tasting to display their qualities, but I don’t like spreading rare and irreplaceable bottles over fifteen palates. What can you gain from that but a still-life of one moment in the progression of a multidimensional wine that changes from pour to pour, minute to minute, hour to hour? I will sell most of my Côte d’Or wines before I sell another bottle of Dutraive’s 2014s and 2016s. But I’m happy to open them with anyone joining for dinner. The 2023s are the closest relatives since. Clos de la Grand’Cour Chiroubles lieu-dit “Javernand” was the juiciest and fullest of the red fruits: thick and voluptuous, seductive, randy. The palate is delicious and a perfect match for the nose. It’s the best example of this bottling from Dutraive I’ve had to date. Chénas “Les Perelles” usually wasted no time opening up. The earlier tastings showed high-toned candied fruit qualities, and later bottles put on some meaty weight but became fruitier as they opened up. I’ve always been a fan of this wine, and this one is close to the 2016 version. All three times I tasted the Saint-Amour "Le Clos du Chapitre" it was super classy and elegant—a straight line. Pure, fresh. While it always remains tight for a Dutraive wine, it doesn’t waste time fleshing out after opening. Lots of ferrous, blood, metal, savory flowers rather than sweet. It’s definitely the finest Dutraive wine made from this vineyard. The Fleurie lieu dit “Les Déduits” may be the trickiest wine in the bunch. Each bottle I tasted started a little closed, with maybe a lean toward a bit of “squeak,” but each time they slowly evolved into a tight, ruby red with striking clarity. This is a wine that cannot be firmly judged in short order. The 2023 version of Moulin-À-Vent comes from younger vines instead of the ancient ones from the previous years. In the cellar, this was one of my favorites. The color is quite pale, like an old Burgundy. Aromatically spicy and slightly reductive/minerally. It kinda smells like old (but young) Grenache-heavy Châteauneuf-du-Pape with low alcohol—even a little Etna-like. It’s a deep wine, and the palate resonates for a long time. While its color is pale, it’s stout in expression and reminds me of those old Jadot Moulin-à-Vent single parcel wines. Of all the wines in the range, Fleurie “Chapelle des Bois” has the most Burgundian evolution. That’s to say that it starts with some wood notes (unexpected) that, with more time open, fall away. My tasting note in November: This is more Burgundian, and the acidity and fruit profile say that as much as the woody note. 25 minutes in, the nose is lifting. This can be the sleeper in the range and top billing on any given day. I’m not sure I would ever guess this is Beaujolais over Côte d’Or—trapped somewhere between Vosne and Gevrey—close to Morey. Tannins have a welcome tautness, keeping the richer fruit profile in check. This wine is rockin’. It’s well above expectation, even from Dutraive. It’s awesome. Ask Dutraive for more. It’s classy stuff in my top four of the range. The Fleurie “Clos de la Grand’Cour” could bring a tear to your eye–the first nose is a real WOW. So classic and refined. It’s like old-school Burgundy without oak—think Mugnier on granite, and the drive in the palate is spectacular. This wine is focused and fine, a dreamscape of a Beaujolais. The balance of stems and fruit is glorious. It has the right balance of bitterness, fruit and acidity. This could be easily missed in the context of others, but should stand tall for those who like it more classic. Also in my top four. Of all the wines to know Dutraive for each year, my pick is the Fleurie “Clos de la Grand’Cour” and Fleurie “Le Clos.” Taken from the same vineyard, separated by vine age and vinified differently in the cellar, every other wine is a satellite around this center point. There’s a lot of tension here in the 2023 Le Clos, and it takes me back to 2014 in overall style, though a little riper. What a nose! It relentlessly expands and fleshes out over time and has the greatest complexities. Top four. In the cellar tasting in June, the Fleurie Champagne was the most impressive and pure wine in the bunch. It was bottled a few weeks before my first tasting and was snug in the right way on the palate, but perfumed like crazy. The second and third bottles (November and February) were hard to read, and the fourth bottle in April, nine months after bottling, seemed to head back home. There is promise here, like all the wines Dutraive has bottled under this label, but as Ophélie suggested, we all just need to be patient with it. The only moment the Brouilly didn’t explode upon first taste was at the cellar, but every bottle since has put it in the running for top billing of the year. The bottle I had in November took a moment, but after thirty minutes it began to climb with brighter and brighter aromas. After an hour, it was fully open, and any doubts were gone with its beauty in full force. It’s the best rendition of this wine I’ve had in any vintage. It may also be the most stable wine in the bunch. This is for those who want a little old-oak Burgundy profile from their Beaujolais. It’s a journey. Don’t drink it fast or you’ll miss its most glorious moments. Top four. Bubbles are hard for me to assess through tasting. They simply must be drunk—a problem for this organism that’s too easily affected by bubbles: instant bloating, a quick rise of desperation for a twenty-minute nap, and almost a guarantee for a headache the next morning, no matter how much or how little is let in. I need that streak of acidity from the tip of the tongue that scorches all the way down to the epiglottis. It needs to journey to the point of no return. Champagne seems to best reveal the length of its capabilities with the entirety of the eight-centimeter or so journey over the tongue. Our day in Champagne was our most ambitious, with at least seven hours in a car fully packed with whatever wines we could fit in from Richoux, Bergeron, and Dechannes around the cassoulet pot and 40-day travel bags, the only view being out the windshield and the rearview mirrors. We left Chablis for Les Riceys, an hour east, trudged the clay-rich and rocky limestone vineyards, and tasted Champagne with Élise Dechannes and Éric Collinet, followed by a Van Helsing-intense race against the sunset to reach Montagne de Reims and catch the last rays of light in Pascal Mazet’s vineyards, toured, tasted, and then boomeranged south to Arbois to squeeze in a brief nighttime nap before our 8:30 am start with a new potential grower, and then on to our organic new grower in L’Étoile, Cartaux-Bougaud. I know no grower as far out on the edge as Élise Dechannes. She’s already all in on organics and biodynamics, but is now committed to completely abandoning sulfur and copper treatments. While other O.B.N. growers are taking all the measures to keep production at a livable level and still losing almost all their crops, she’s at least losing on her terms. She treated the last two harvests with only teas and biodynamic preparations. Nothing was harvested either year. We were again wowed by Élise’s wines, even if many were opened weeks before and stoppered up in the fridge waiting for us to take their last tastes, leaving the fresh tastes of newly open bottles for her next visitors. She did this with me when I first discovered how great her Rosé bubbles were. The bottle was open for three weeks and only had about three ounces left. It was pure magic. I was shocked. Few other growers do this in our portfolio and still provide convincing results. Peter Veyder-Malberg and Tapada do Chaves also make bulletproof wines when opened young. But more than a decade ago, my only visit ever to Giuseppe Mascarello’s cellar only included bottles on their last tastes that were already open for a month. That set did not deliver, but some of my most exhilarating experiences in the Langhe have come from bottles under this label—and when they’re on, they’re bucket-list wines. We will once again have a micro-allocation of Dechannes’ Rosé de Riceys, a wine that keeps me up at night, not due to indigestion, but because I can’t stop thinking about it. She’s known more now for her Champagne, but there isn’t a rosé in the world that tickles my fancy more than hers. Eric Collinet and his vineyards on the right side—the green one Éric Collinet is a relatively new Source addition and a great friend of Élise. He brought the same three wines to Élise’s that I tasted 18 months prior, and again in May. It was a great exercise in observation, especially with Champagne that had been so recently disgorged before my first tasting. The dosage of these wines takes time to integrate, and a year and a half after my first encounter, they’re quite different—alchemized to fluidity now. He was also organically certified some years before her, and these days he’s planting trees right in the middle of his vineyard rows to encourage greater biodiversity with agroforestry. It must be a swift redirection of conversation for the local non-organic growers in this area when these two crazies roll in for an apero—no treatments at all with one and trees in the rows with the other—indeed, low-hanging fruit for a bunch of backwater chemical Champagne hillbillies. But I’m pleased to say that in one of Europe’s most callously farmed wine regions, we only work with growers with organic certifications. Vincent Charlot and Pascal Ponson aren’t available to us all over the US, including New York, so Remy and I had to sneak in and out like Connery more than Craig. There’s another one en route, too. But I won’t let these cats out of the bag until the litter of kitties are on the boat. I’ve released the news too early and occasionally ended up with litter but no kittens. Olivier Mazet, from Champagne Pascal Mazet With the last moments of daylight quickly fading, we met Oliver from Champagne Pascal Mazet in charming Chigny-les-Roses, a village of five hundred inhabitants and one excellent restaurant. Pascal Mazet committed to organic farming when they started, in 1981, and they were eventually certified in 2009. His sons, Olivier and Baptiste, returned to help their quiet, mustachioed, slender and jolly father to contribute to their current offerings. All are released at least seven years after the vintage date, usually nine—a major commitment for these prices on organic Champagne. Leading the charge is the middle son, Olivier, who in 2018 began to incorporate agroforestry by planting trees and shrubs in the middle and ends of vine rows—yep, he’s another crazy, at least perhaps to the neighbors. They’re also exploring more ancient vine-training methods, and soon new labels will be slapped on the bottles. Like almost all of our visits on this trip, it was too short. While we might have been able to make time to dine at that one very nice restaurant, we decided that driving for three hours in a food coma after dinner would’ve been lethal. I thought we might have to eat at Flunch for dinner, but we got an unexpected upgrade instead. Our day wasn’t only ambitious, it also contained some risks that might’ve made it more exciting. Aside from speeding through France while tasting Champagne all day (and spitting, of course), we still had to get fed and get into our hotel in Arbois. I opted for KFC for the first time in 23 years, maybe 24. The alternatives at the auto-stop seemed like gambles, not because of the items listed, but simply because they were on the menu at a gas station. At least KFC is like McDonald's (haven’t touched that one in about 27 years), like Motel 6– globally standardized, so you have a pretty good idea of what you’re going to get. The other choices included random animal parts with plenty of sausage in a stew at the buffet, with only the dregs remaining. It would undoubtedly have been dreadful and rewarded us with unwanted consequences. I don’t usually worry about my stomach; it’s the part of my digestive system that has acquired a tolerance for the questionable. But if something barely gets past that first checkpoint, it’s a sign of unnecessary risk on a lengthy road trip. Better off with deep-fried everything from frozen ingredients. This KFC demonstrated that it was a solid emergency lever in France. Never have I thought that I’d go for it, and it turns out I’d do it again. Arriving late to a French hotel can be like sneaking into your parents’ house in your teenage years in the middle of the night when you’ve forgotten your keys. The desk attendants will let you in, but the disapproving looks can sometimes go well beyond microaggression. We arrived at our Arbois hotel around midnight, no soul in sight. It was below freezing, and thanks to the Cuissance flowing only fifty meters away, the fog was thick–nearly crystallized, which added to the sting. With no obvious parking spots where we could legally park until at least seven am (moving the car by eight), we stood with a pile of bags in front of a dimly lit entrance, an automated door and an intercom between us and our bedrooms. But the Maison Jeunet’s night auditor let us in without the slightest unpleasantness—it was Jura, after all. With my second-story window cracked open to let out some of the massive steel radiator’s boiling rage, I snuggled up with the spare pillow and thought about tomorrow and Cartaux-Bougaud. I wondered how Remy would process Sébastien and Sandrine, two of the nicest people one could meet, whose Jura wines won’t stir the depths of your emotional pot, but rather deliver an honest and finely crafted range of organic bubbles, whites, Vin Jaune, Macvin, Pinot Noir, Poulsard, and Trousseau. Many classically-styled, well-made, straightforward wines in the region mirror places like Burgundy, where people generally shy away from stylistic risks. But Jura wines don’t have to be made uniquely for their easily identifiable house style to be deemed more than worthy. After blasting the heater and patiently waiting for the flailing windshield wipers to scrape the windows clean of the frost, we finally had the first signs of a clear view through the windshield and set off. Our first stop was with a generous man in Poligny whose wines are almost nail-biting in their tension, like watching a gymnast on the balance beam spinning around on the ball of her foot. Some wines are epic. Others nearly throw me off the beam headfirst; his Vin Jaune is simply Simone Biles-level. His whites are quirky but excellent. His reds give me The Twisties. If he just wasn’t so damn controlling about where all his wines go without much intrusion (and this is part of his allure), he might be the most celebrated of all growers in the Jura. Let’s see what happens. After Poligny, we headed southwest to L’Étoile, caught a glimpse of the mythic Château-Chalon on its limestone perch, and landed at the warehouse of Cartaux-Bougaud. (Back at Champagne Pascal Mazet, we were joined with our good friend, burgeoning winegrower, and our French grower/trouble-shooter, desperately needed with all the goings-on: tariffs, delayed freight, etc. To avoid confusion, I intentionally failed to mention his joining us at Pascal Mazet because his last name is also Mazet, but there is no relation.) On our way to the domaine, Gauthier mentioned we would be having lunch with the family; he kept what it would be close to the vest, but alluded to something special. The sun broke through the fog here and there, revealing gilded blue relief, but the vineyards and all of Europe were fully in winter’s grasp, and we wouldn’t get warm until we found fire. And find fire we eventually would, but not until after we tasted through their range. Cartaux-Bougaud’s wines would be a reintroduction for Remy to Jura in their simplest form before the comic book and newspaper cartoon labels took over, and a new style of wines thrust into stratospheric prices. I haven’t yet found an inkling of this domaine trying to rock your world, rather to be accepted as Jura wines of old, though they are crafted to highlight higher-toned aromas and the power of these vines grown mostly in clay-heavy soils. Their reds aren’t richly extracted, nor have they left anything useful to the pomace pile. The whites have broad shoulders, and a deep well rather than an ethereal lift—that’s left for their fabulous bubbles. They’re perfect for local cheese, a fireplace, a warm cabin, hearty food for the laborer, those with scratched, torn, bloodied, and thick hands with an eagle talon grip built for pruning, barrel tossing, and wrenching cellar equipment with the tips of their fingers. Remy got it. Paul Generational shifts can go one way or another. Sébastien and Sandrine’s firstborn of three, Paul, is soft spoken and humble with a quiet charisma. It’s easy to see his conviction and understanding of this work and the benefits of more natural production. It will be interesting to see where he further influences the domaine, and I expect him to push things further in the right direction. They began organic culture some years ago, which was a big step. And this is only the beginning. Fire! At last! It seemed the entire hamlet filed in through the kitchen entrance. It was hard to be quickly herded past their blazing wood-fired oven and into the big dining room with all of their workers, a dozen or more that day. A massive twenty-seat table quickly filled up, faces lighting with anticipation as the blood returned to their extremities. Across from me, Remy silently expressed something between concern and excitement. We toasted with their Crémant and some Champagne we brought down—I thought they might like to try something other than their wines. And then, potatoes. Lots of potatoes. A series of four or five long, thin silver platters filled with long-cut, slow-roasted, mildly caramelized potatoes were set out with more plates of sausages that closed the gaps on the table. More glances from Remy. I shrugged. Gauthier’s smile grew. Sandrine entered with smelted edible gold. She set two wooden, pie-shaped containers oozing with magmatic versions of my favorite runny and crusty French cheese, Vacherin Mont d'Or—amber-tinged rind on a fully melted creamy golden fromage. The woman next to me, as charming as she was country rough, her once frozen hands now glowing pink and hot like her swollen cheeks, took a big spoon, quickly subducted the firmer pieces below into the magma and sheered the spruce-aged crust still clinging to the sides. I was transfixed. Vacherin Mont d’Or, my highest of liquid fromage highs, the pinnacle of what any cheese can express when fully ripened, now quickly forced into a melted state? I’ve had such reverence for this triumph of French cheese. I buy it. Store it. Wait. Hoping, like a bottle of old Michel Lafarge Volnay, that I’ll hit it square on the head of readiness; little margin for error, and when it’s just right, there’re few experiences like it. I never imagined doing such a thing to Mont d’Or, even if it’s been done for centuries. I thought it was regularly done with cheaper, less sophisticated cheeses without a greater purpose, like finding their perfect ripening to compete with the world’s greatest cheeses. Perhaps my reverence for this cheese in one form is shortsighted. In the US, it’s more expensive and who knows where it’s been and what refrigeration conditions it met along the way. Or, maybe it’s the second-quality milk from old cows already predestined for export. But in Europe, particularly France and Switzerland, and even more particularly, Jura, it’s gotta be the world’s best examples, and it ain’t expensive. I can melt a few each year and not feel guilty about it. I’ve done it twice since. It’s one of the two badder habits I’ve picked up from this trip with Remy. The other? The increased frequency of cassoulet weekends with my new but old traditional Toulouse cassoulet clay pot. When it was over and the cheese boxes were scraped clean, our stomachs tested, another wave of cheese magma, potatoes and sausage came. Remy’s smile of guilt, pleasure and recklessness was smeared all over his face. I’m sure mine was the same. Nothing else in the world existed at that moment but the pleasure and glory of that moment–I’ll never forget it. It has forever changed my relationship to Mont d’Or: to bake, or not to bake. It really depends on whether my wife is around (don’t bake) or not (yes, bake). If it’s too stinky, bake it. Either way, Vacherin Mont d’Or is a French triumph meant for the world. Our big night out in sleepy Arbois was at a place seemingly in pursuit of a Michelin star. After our epic lunch, we were tired of eating and drinking and settled on a bottle for the three of us: Poulsard from Bruyère Renard & Houillon Adeline. It was nice to see this celebrated cult Jura wine on a list for a fair price. I think it was 75€. However, its soft pinkish red color was immediately eclipsed by a thick cloud of lees that stifled any purity of the aromas, sadly, and likely, unintendedly, foreshadowed by its label. The wine emerged from the bottle as turbid as pink cotton candy. Behind the thick veil, it was clear; there was excellent juice in there somewhere. But only about two-thirds of the bottle delivered the message; the rest was discardable. I can appreciate growers who want to leave some sediment in the bottle, even if this bottle seemed like a bad rack job or the last bits accidentally taken from the bottom of the vat and bottled before they cut the line. Wines like this, especially when served on home-court in Jura, deserve to be handled with care. I’m doubt the grower bâtons their barrels right before they analyze their wines or barrel taste with clients. In the bottle, they need to be stood upright for a while to clarify before opening. Then they need to be carefully poured. Respected. At least the first glass shouldn’t come out like a violently shaken, nearly empty old glass bottle version of Heinz Ketchup aimed at a ramekin in the service room. Had I paid the going rate somewhere else, which I believe sometimes breaks the four-digit barrier (which I wouldn’t have), I would’ve refused it for lack of careful handling. I don’t know if you feel the same, but I’m fed up with poor wine service, especially when it’s with a bottle that warrants serious attention. If the wine service isn’t done respectfully, what’s the point in committing to anything better than a glass from an already open bottle? At least if you don’t like it, you can quickly dispatch it and move on. If the winegrowers were present, I’m sure they would’ve been embarrassed; though maybe not if only the last glass partially looked like liquid pink Laffy Taffy. But at the bargain price of 75€, I was ok with a milky first two-thirds. Through the thick and dangerously eerie fog of the flat Saône Valley, the car’s black ice alert flashing, we left Arbois at seven and headed west to Meursault. It was below freezing for the duration of this unremarkable stretch separating two extraordinary wine regions. We arrived to the cellar of Rodolphe Demougeot as he finished bottling some of his 2023 vintage. Rodolphe is a giant killer. Built like a pit bull, the man himself looks like he wouldn’t have any challenge dispatching all three of us in short order if provoked. But that’s not him. He’s one of the most unpretentious and gentle growers in the Côte d’Or. Rudy found a seriously new level in 2023, yet another in a sequence of upticks with his modest holdings—modest at least by Côte d’Or standards. What this guy could forge with a bigger stable of superstar appellations and crus? I can only imagine. It doesn’t seem to matter if the year is “classic” or “hot,” he’s bashing it out of the park year to year. There’s so much pleasure with terroir folded into every crease that it’s hard not to stay transfixed in the glass. We thieved through his 2024s with various blending parts of the wines before sitting to taste the 2023s. I’d never tasted the separate parts of his two lieux-dits, Les Pellans and Les Chaumes, for his Meursault appellation bottling. As expected, the former, just below the premier cru Les Charmes, was richer and rounder, and the latter, high up on the slope, just above Les Perrières, is straighter with finely plucked minerally chords. In his glass-encased winter garden, we tasted the 2023s and did a few blinders. He continues to elevate his game, and his 2023s are no exception. It’s incredible what he achieves in his secondary appellations, like Auxey-Duresses and Monthelie. But in warm years like 2023, these are exactly the appellations that should more confidently strut their stuff. Three cases of the 2023s showed up at my place a month later, and over the last month, I’ve worked through six bottles. I’ve tried to cut back a little, especially after this nearly abusive trip with Remy, but once you open one of these, it’s hard to stop. It’s been a long time since I sorted an entire bottle alone in a single night (my wife was in Chile at the time), but each glass of his Auxey-Duresses “Les Clous” was far too enticing and the bottle didn’t even make it to midnight. Short of flash with only two premier crus in his range, he bottles a lot of lieux-dits in his village appellation wines, and there’s distinction in each of those terroirs as much as anywhere. These days, he’s perfectly managing the balance of richer fruit, reduction to keep them closer to the vest at the start, and loads of x-factor. He’s in Côte de Beaune exclusively, but his reds, with three Pommards the highlights, are as lifted as they are rich. The whites are a no-brainer, and his reds are the sleepers. Skipping Beaujolais altogether, Burgundy straight into the northern Rhône is an abrupt transition. Topographically, geologically and culturally, it’s different. We skipped my usual stop in Beaujolais to visit the Dutraive clan, Anthony Thevenet and the Chardigny boys, all of whom we work with in California and several other markets, but nothing applied to New York. Beaujolais is much more free-wheeling, casual, and sometimes rough compared to Burgundy (though Burgundy is loosening up–well, maybe just a little), and with the river insight of all the appellations, the Northern Rhône is far more rustic and industrial. If you’re a Northern Rhône grower and it’s your name on the label, your face is probably weathered, hands gnarled, back and neck tight, likely a few ruptured disks and shot knees; you might also have a thick beer-wine-meat belly more like a keg than a six-pack. In Crozes-Hermitage, there’s a lot of easy work down in the vast flat flood plains where tractor blades tear up the land with ease, while more treacherous spots with dizzying heights and steep terraces, like Saint-Joseph, Cornas, Hermitage, and Côte-Rôtie, are weeded by hand, but most often by spray … And then there’s the Crozes-Hermitage vineyards of Stéphane Rousset behind Hermitage. They’re not what most expect. And they’re probably the reason Stéphane’s body isn’t yet broken down and maintains a core closer to a six pack than a keg. Stéphane was bottling during the only day we had allotted for him, and he didn’t have any time to show us around. I’ve driven through the vineyards enough times, droned them, and mapped them on Google Earth to lead the tour alone through the quietly legendary Les Picaudières and the three vineyards that make up Les Méjeans at the apex of this side in the area around the Rhône, and across the river in Tournon for his Saint-Joseph lieu-dit, Côte des Rivoires. On the latter stop, the road was too precarious for my sedan and Remy didn’t see them but understood the extremity of their cliff-like position. Almost every vineyard in Stéphane’s collection is the hardest of hard vineyard work to be found in France. The only area for tractor work is down by the river on loess terraces, mostly used for his white wines and the entry-level Crozes-Hermitage, and on two parcels of Les Méjeans on the top plateau. Everything else is done by the four hands of Stéphane and his father, Robert, on the Pangean remnants carved into various terraces of granite and sometimes metamorphic rock. In the case of Les Picaudières—a sort of transitional material between igneous and metamorphic—it’s a geologically complex and intimidating slope that stands alone on its steep face. Stéphane’s wife, Isabelle, tasted us through the new releases, and it all made clear sense to Remy: Rousset’s Crozes-Hermitage wines were anything but ordinary from this, perhaps the most ordinary of the Northern Rhône appellations. They were the true underdogs of Crozes-Hermitage, given the quality of their terroirs. They’re more southern Saint-Joseph granite or the extremity of Hermitage’s Les Bessards—little in common with the Crozes-Hermitage of the flats that make up about 75% of vineyard surface area and probably quite a bit more in overall production. Crozes-Hermitage from these granitic parts is rare. The financial incentive is low for Crozes-Hermitage growers because of its appellation price cap. This means that if you can’t do the work by tractor, you’re going to struggle to find people to do the work. Labor costs have to be managed, and sometimes they’re running lean on willing hands. If you were a harvester who didn’t care about the quality of the grapes you picked, would you opt for long days on hot terraces over the flats? Maybe it’d be romantic for a few years, but that romance might run dry pretty quickly. In the hotter years, Rousset can get caught off balance and can’t pick the fruit fast enough. This can lead some wines to express the sun’s abuses. But when the season is milder and not a bum-rush harvest, the whole range is tight. The 2022s were rock solid, but sadly, almost already sold out by the time we tasted them. Outside in the cold and darkness, with faces backlit by the warehouse lights further in with bottling in full clank and buzz, I finally met Robert. I’d only seen him in pictures. He was a beast of a man when young, seemingly double the size of his stout but average height son, Stéphane. Of course, today he’s more squat but still a massive frame with strong hands, more like skillets, and with medium-sized potatoes for fingers. Our encounter was brief, and he was much nicer and more welcoming than I expected; I guess I’d forgotten that giants are often gentle, too. He’s also a giant in my personal wine story with the Roussets and their nearly forgotten celebrated vineyards on some of the region’s historic terroirs. The other parts of Crozes-Hermitage to the south of Hermitage shouldn’t be part of this appellation but a different one altogether. It’s much closer to the top sites of the entire region, while the others are relatable by climate, grape and culture, but not much else. While we find the Roussets the financial incentive to see how far they can take it, let’s continue to enjoy their wines that offer the greatest value for serious wines in the entire Northern Rhône. Photo of a photo: Robert and Stéphane Rousset France overflows with hidden gems in the world of food, art and craft. Just down the street from about any friend’s house, from the Loire Valley to Provence, there are always some fabulous multigenerational artisan cheesemakers, bakers, charcuterie masters, a gypsy truffle hunter with great prices you have to work a little for, and broke artists on every block. It’s harder to find these gems unknown to the wine world now with importers scouring every corner, but we’ve got one, and he’s hard to top in quality and price with his Syrah. Just outside the southern border of Crozes-Hermitage, lies Domaine des Collines, a winery with exceptionally high-quality wines at an incredibly affordable price. It’s run by Sébastien Mazérat, one of the most mechanically ingenious winegrowers I’ve ever met. We were greeted with warmth and openness on this drizzly, cold day, and a smile and laugh of a man who clearly loves his life. Mid-forties, Sébastien is a longtime friend of Gauthier, so our warm welcome was already a little expected. Another Working Class Hero, I’m sure that if Sebastien were given the opportunity with a slab of Cornas, he’d be on the podium. Here we’re talking wines that will hit retail shelves under $20 and easily put many neighboring high-quality Crozes-Hermitage growers on notice, if they even knew he existed. A native of Cornas and from a family of winegrowers, after nearly a decade in Chapoutier’s cellar, he’s now in Rhône no-man’s land producing wines in the style of the luminaries of those celebrated hillsides. Not only talented in the cellar, he’s da Vinci-like in his creative mechanical ingenuity. Because he can’t get much for his wines in the broad IGP Collines Rhodanienne, he needs to keep his labor costs down, so everything is farmed and picked by machine—machines he bought and adapted to his specific need in the vineyards. We were given a tour of his gadgets as well as his wines. If he wants a certain kind of filtration, he designs prototypes that, when other growers learn about them, they ask him to make for them too. Custom fittings for all his tanks, labeling contraptions, dolly case-loading assistants, everything is a custom contraption. He’s a talented inventor who also has a great palate for wine. Every little detail is optimized in efficacy so he can do as much as possible alone, and this carries over into everything he produces. His two versions of Syrah, one with a soft addition of sulfites and one without, are stiff competition. They need to be tasted alone, away from other organic Syrahs, because few could challenge this one for the price. It’s just not a great value; it’s a great wine for an absurdly low price. If I told you the price was double, you wouldn’t blink. You’d likely even think it’s still a great deal. After an unexpectedly fabulous multi-course lunch cooked over fire by a friend of Sébastien (by far the best I’ve ever had in these parts, which is usually of the belly-thickening vigneron type), Remy and I headed south. It was a two-hour drive, which gave us just enough time to reflect on the three-week French leg of our trip. We agreed that the cassoulet back at Laurent’s in Cahors and the Cartaux-Bougaud madness of melted golden mountain cheese on roasted potatoes and the multi-course lunch we just wolfed were the top meals in France. I also had to acknowledge the KFC emergency rations from two nights before. It wasn’t the worst meal I’ve ever had—not even close. I don’t remember Remy’s reaction to this admission. It was probably silence. Still dumbfounded by Sébastien and his extraordinary wines that go for nearly nothing, Remy said, “How do we show Sebastien’s Syrah next to other wines? They’re such a gift.” “We don’t,” I replied. “It should go alone.” We were on our way to my regular French refuge, my French home away from home, La Fabrique. Sonya was waiting there with boudin and sautéed apples and upside-down pineapple cake finished with rum. It would be Remy’s first time, and it wouldn’t be fair to include her meals in the competition; they’re in a league of their own. Some people I’ve taken to Fabrique don’t appreciate it like I do, and I understand—it’s not for everyone. Sonya says that I belong to the house now—and she’s right—but she wants to sell it because it’s too big for her and she’s too old now to take care of it alone after the passing of her husband, Pierre, last year. But Fabrique is not only a place she could make into an amazing home–a home is a state of mind. Somewhere to forget the world while sojourning there, eat like it was post-WWII Provence, inhale a little second-hand smoke, and drink things you normally wouldn’t. I knew it would be a Remy place. Next month    

After two exhausting days on the Corsican wine trail I passed on our first two visits of the third day to try to catch up with some work while I had good access to wifi. It was a tough decision because the first one was a tasting with Sebastien Poly, a young biodynamic vigneron, followed by another meeting with Abbatucci at the new vineyard. Last year, Sebastien was a riot to visit. His personality and wines matched perfectly: playful, smart and energetic. His wines are some of my favorites on the island. I was sorry to miss them both, but the first meeting with Sebastien started at seven o’clock and it was just too early. Manu picked me up at 9:30 and we drove about forty-five minutes south toward Sartène and into one of Corsica’s most picturesque valleys, la vallée de l’Ortolo. Our first visit was at a beautiful organically farmed vineyard (which I won’t name for now) where the vigneron (who I’ll refer to as François) wasn’t sure how to get the wines where he wanted them to be. I had been along for the ride last year on Manu’s first visit with François and at that time there were a lot of barrels that weren’t so nice to taste. Before our visit Manu said that he will need about three years before the wines start to take a more clear departure from where they were. I didn’t have much expectation for them and Manu wasn’t sure of how they would taste. The question was whether François took his suggestions and ran with them, or fumbled and fell back into the same routine as last year, which is often the case. I consulted for a winery for a number of years, and if they did half of what I asked each year, I considered it a success. Consultants merely serve as council to producers; they are not the ones who make the wine, or final decisions. They can only express their opinion about the vineyard and cellar and explain the adjustments that will bring about improvements. The advice is not always taken, which can make the progress slow and painful. Our first task with François was to taste the 2016 blending material, a vintage that was harvested before Manu was onboard and they tasted a lot better than my memory of last year’s wines. The health of the fruit that year was good and all François had to do was protect the wine and not heavily mark them with bad taste (too much new wood) during the aging. François’ estate is one of the most beautiful polycultural properties we would visit in Corsica, with numerous fruit orchards, olive groves, vineyard parcels and gardens. There aren’t many monocultural zones anywhere on Corsica, which makes it somewhat unique to much of France’s most well-known vineyard areas that have every suitable hill covered with vines alone. This estate’s potential is great; the quality of their fruit combined with a few fundamental changes to their program should bring good results, right? The 2017s were unrecognizable from the previous year. The whites were definitely better but not a smashing success, which I thought was due to a combination of a warmer vintage that got ahead of them in ripeness and too much newer wood. The reds, however, were shockingly pure and delicious. His entry-level 2017 red was perfect gluglu (a French term used for a cheap, gulpable wine you can drink by the pitcher) and by far better than any of his others from 2016 and 2015. The 2017 Sciacarello out of tank were wonderful and I asked to retaste them to confirm that I wasn’t tripping out. I was so pleasantly shocked by François’ progress that I’m excited to go back to see what happens next year. I used to work in a winery making wine with Adam Tolmach, from The Ojai Vineyard, in California. In 2002, I went wine tasting in the Santa Ynez Valley to a number of other wineries. I came back enthusiastic about what I tasted out of barrel, even from some estates who I thought didn’t always make such memorable wines. Adam smiled and told me one of the truest statements about tasting unfinished wine: “There is a lot of great wine in barrel, but getting them into the bottle with the same quality is a difficult skill that few have.” I’ve made plenty of mistakes as an importer, but if I’d imported all the wines that tasted great out of barrel before I tasted them in bottle, I’d probably be out of business by now. After our visit, François invited to lunch in Olmeto, a village perched high up on a hillside about fifteen minutes north of Propriano. The name was Restaurante la Source—how fitting! We parked next to an ancient (and long since retired) stone public bath house, crossed the road and entered this rustic joint perched on a cliff with a perfect view of one of Corsica’s most stunning inland areas. At the entrance is a huge wood-fired oven where they were piecing together some pizzas. I still hadn’t recovered from the dense food of Northern France the previous month and again was desperate for some vegetables. But upon seeing the wooden pizza oven, my dream of a light lunch disappeared instantly. We sat outside at about a thousand feet above sea level with a perfect view of the valley below and the range across it. The wind was brisk and chilly, but we stuck it out to marvel at the dreamscape of steep mountains and the fields below. If there were ever a place I should’ve had my camera with me this was it, but I left it in the car and decided to just enjoy it for myself. Still longing for some vegetables, I ordered a vegetable pizza with some local saucisson. What I didn’t know was that I was getting a pile of regional charcuterie thrown on top with a dense portion of local cheeses with a few slices of onion and zucchini. It ended up being one of the best pizzas I’ve had in Europe, and I’ve been on the hunt for them for years. The crust was a perfect balance of crunch and stretch, and the wood fire gave an alluring aromatic accent. It was spectacular. Manu ordered a “small” steak and it arrived on a big cutting board with a salad and fries. The fries were fantastic and looked like they were cooked in animal fat (the only way to do it right) and topped with the perfect amount of flaky salt, which for me means a lot. The steak was Argentinian-like in immensity and though Manu looked at me with disbelief at the size, he managed to get all the way through it. Neither of us had any expectations going in, but now we can’t wait to go back. Our first stop after lunch was with one of the most promising producers in Corsica whose owner is concerned about the prospect of discontinuing the use of chemical herbicides. Manu and the winemaker are pushing to make this final change and it was supposed to happen this year. This last step could result in the filling out of their range of wines that are already quite good. The herbs and grasses on the drive up to the property showed some promise of change. Last year they were a rainbow of orange and yellow, the colors of death by herbicide—a common site in most of Beaujolais and Champagne—but this time, I was hopeful. Once in the door, we were greeted in a kindly fashion by the winemaker, who I’ll refer to as François II (to protect the identity of the domaine during this time of transition), one of my favorite guys in Corsica. Manu went straight to the point and asked him if they bought the machine to plow this year so they didn’t feel obliged to use herbicide. François II’s shoulders rolled forward and disappointment clouded his expression; the owner hadn’t made the purchase, so it was going to be another year of herbicide. What we had seen were grasses still alive because they hadn’t been sprayed yet due to the season’s late winter storm followed by a month of rain. I asked about other chemical treatments and was happy to hear that they had abandoned pesticides three years ago and systemic treatments (the ones that aren’t visible) two years ago, so there was only one more major step to go. Francois II explained that he had done a test of foregoing pesticides in the vineyards years ago and was met with great success, which helped spur the change. Inside forests, untamed land and natural farms (which are all abundant on Corsica) the insect population teems with a wide variety of tiny predators and prey. Pesticide is not preferential; it kills everything, which throws off an ecosystem that’s equipped to manage itself. When he held off on spraying pesticide and used pheromones instead (to confuse the pests during mating season), the diversity of the pests within the brush surrounding François II’s vines proved to be enough to maintain the vineyards without any sprays. Systemic chemical treatments, in particular, concern me. Many vineyards and crops are plowed, manicured and look great, but what’s not visible are the chemicals that are applied to the soil which go through the root system and into the plant’s tissues, including the parts we eat. It’s a big topic and those who use them don’t want to talk about them. This is different stuff than a topical application of herbicide or pesticide because you can’t peel or wash them off. The only way to know if systemic treatments are being used without testing for them is to ask the farmer, which I always do with my growers who are not organically certified. It’s a question that often catches them off-guard, and I’ll know by their non-verbal reaction before they even say a word whether they use them or have in the past. Systemic treatments are not allowed in certified organic farming in Europe. I’ve tried to find out if they are legal in USDA organic farming, but I couldn’t find a definitive answer one way or the other. We tasted through François II’s range of bottled 2016s as well as the 2017s out of stainless steel tanks and they were all beautiful. Ugh… This kind of moment kills me because I don’t want to like this herbicide vineyard wine. François II is the saving grace at this domaine because he is an excellent vigneron. The good news is that the intention to make the change is there and it seems to be only a matter of time. My fingers are crossed, but we will have to wait another year. Like the use of pesticides and systemic treatments, I consider the unconscious, habitual and regimented use of herbicides malpractice. Indeed, there is a tremendous amount of truly inspiring wines that use these unnatural treatments but my personal preference is to not drink or import them. Our next visit at Domaine Pero Longo was a stark contrast to the previous. I was excited to see Pierre Richarme, the owner and vigneron and all of his vineyards, which bustle with life and have been under biodynamic culture for many years. We drove down the highway for some time and pulled into a dirt road with deep potholes full of water from the previous night’s heavy rain. It was a slog and even a good test for Manu’s new 4 x 4 to get through. Moving to higher ground we rose to meet Pierre’s gorgeous vineyards with the backdrop of the cliffs of Ranfone, one of the most striking hills in Corsica and Europe. (Ranfone is in the opening photo of this article.) From the west, it looks like a giant mythological lion (perhaps Corsica’s Lion of Roccapine) scratched massive dark vertical gashes down Ranfone’s pale granite cliffs, giving it a unique and mysterious appearance. Pierre’s winery rests up on a foothill of Ranfone with a perfect view of its southern end. Surrounded by vineyards and a cow pasture to the south, the winery is made from slabs of local granite, all put together by Pierre’s hand, as were his house and bed and breakfast. My memory of the visit with Pierre the previous year was still vivid, so as we arrived it seemed like only a couple of weeks had passed since I was there last. His smile is warm, like sunshine, and the gap between his two front teeth makes it even more charming. The creases in his weatherworn face reel you into dark eyes that show humility and honesty. His nearly 70-year-old body is worn but still strong. His hands are dense, thick and dry, like an old cowboy’s leather gloves. His handshake is firm and welcoming, and reminded me of my dad’s old hunting buddies. As much an artist as he is an artisan, Pierre’s creations are rustic, practical and original. In his winery he built sideways concrete eggs, which I’d never seen before, and when I asked why he built them sideways instead of upright, he said that if you set an egg down it will always fall on its side. Pierre finds his own harmony with nature and nothing in his process is taken for granted. He’s the kind of person who will only be satisfied by learning through his own adventures as opposed to taking someone else’s word for it—an approach I can relate to, for better or worse. He’s a self-made man and authentic, and this is what draws me to him; I’m sure they’re the same reasons that Manu is so fond of him as well. Yet Manu admitted that Pierre’s search for truth on his own terms often undercuts Manu’s suggestions, though Pierre will come to those same ideas on his own after a number of years. When we arrived, Pierre wasn’t there. We were greeted by his son, Quentin, a tall, wiry, steel-cable of a young twenty-something. Without an ounce of slack on his frame it’s obvious that he’s a hard worker, like his dad. He’s come to work with his father now after going to wine school and Manu believes that his influence and assistance will help to further the quality of their wines. Pierre was more than an hour away and we didn’t have much time, so we started the tasting without him. Just like last year, not everything at Pero Longo was a hit, but when they were on, they could easily be put at the top of the class of reds from the island. Manu and I thought the best wine we tasted was the 2016 red in the sideways eggs. Compared to numerous other lots of the same wine being raised in square concrete tanks a few feet away, it was as straight as an arrow, more high-toned, fresh and refined. Manu and Pierre have the same theory about the egg and its potential contribution to a wine. If placed properly in the winery (away from water currents, electricity and metal) it can communicate a wine’s story with more purity and focus than in stainless steel, or concrete tanks—just as it did on this day and in the cellar of Jean-Charles Abbatucci the day before. After almost a month on the road with a lot of dreary weather, this day was by far the top for photography and I took advantage of it before the sunset. I snapped some pictures of Manu and Quentin with the constant soft blue-gray haze that sits in front of every mountain view on the island. Then we finally jumped in the truck and headed to Porto Vecchio for an interesting night with twenty or so of France’s top vignerons. Next Week: Of Corse, Part 8 of 9: Porto Vecchio and the Shrinking World

As the meeting with the Chardigny brothers came to an end, Ted and Andrea were talking softly about needing to get back on the road for the hundred and fifty mile ride to Chablis. After some quick goodbyes, Ted was again at the mercy of the white wagon’s fickle navigation system, so we got lost in a maze of tight roads on the way out of Beaujolais while he looked around the car for a hammer to smash the dashboard screen. When we finally broke free into the countryside, we passed through Beaune again on our left and Ted pointed out Savigny-lès-Beaune on our right, an underrated AOC with great pricing (for Burgundy). “Savigny-lès-Beaune producers don’t get the respect they deserve compared to other appellations in Burgundy; the region is extremely diverse, so I think it confuses some people. There are a lot of different aspects, that is, the way the slopes face—in many direction. The two main hills are completely different, one is north to east and the other east to direct south.” These features lead to wines with widely varying attributes, so it’s hard to define them with an easily accessible label, which is unfortunately what most consumers need. Flying down the Autoroute du Soleil, the sky opened wide over rolling hills filled with beige cows on bright green grasses in every direction. We were in a rich dairy land, the home of Époisses, a very soft, gooey cheese with a washed rind that I love. As we got closer to Chablis, the temperature dropped to seven degrees Celsius, down from twenty-eight back in Provence (or eighty-two to forty-four, Fahrenheit.) On entering the tiny medieval town of Chablis, we passed the Saint Pierre church, a simple Gothic structure surrounded by a crumbling graveyard and dated to the twelfth century. It’s just one of many ancient churches in the town and surrounding areas, and though I’m not religious, these buildings always hold a certain fascination for me. Probably because all of the money and architectural efforts throughout the ages went into them instead of the peasants’ mouths, which of course makes me feel more than a little conflicted on the topic and sure that they're all haunted. Little storefronts for boulangeries and cafés along the main drag look like they haven’t changed for hundreds of years. Then you see slick, modern glass-front wine shops here and there, jarring in their shiny newness. We were running a little late and finding a spot on the street took longer than anticipated, and when we stepped out of the car, the air was a shock of freezing cold in the gray-blue dusk. The restaurant for the night was a new place called Les Trois Bourgeons, run by the same group who owns the famous Au Fil du Zinc, a few blocks away. It being a Tuesday, Zinc was closed, so Bourgeons picked up the slack. Our table wasn’t ready, which was fine, because our dinner companions were even later than we were. Then the notorious Romain Collet finally made an appearance. Another vigneron Ted frequently refers to as one of his favorite guys in France, Collet is the son of Gilles Collet, a quietly preeminent Chablis producer over the last few decades. In recent years Romain has taken the reigns from his father, and is continuing to make some of the finest wines in the region—with a little help from his family’s large holdings of Grand and Premier Cru parcels. When he’s not applying his inexhaustible energy to vinification and farming, he does the same to eating and drinking and partying—to having as much fun as possible; the stories of his all-night hijinks are legendary. But that evening he seemed tired, for reasons that he would get into later. Romain Collet looks remarkably like a young, mustachioed Timothy Dalton from Flash Gordon, but with a Franco nose, a tangle of teeth and (at the time) a wild and wavy head of shoulder length hair. He smokes incessantly, which I thought strange for someone with such a highly-tuned pallet and sense of smell—abilities he clearly depends on for his craft, and apparently this contradiction is not uncommon in France. At one point he said that he smokes a pack a day and his breakfast consists of just a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Of course, as a non-smoker and habitual square meal breakfast-eater, I was utterly appalled. Yet he won a national blind tasting event when he was just twenty-one, and has only gotten better at it; he can still detect the minutest differences between cuvées. It is true that he was born into his family’s business, but he is one of those rare cases where his extraordinary natural talents fit the bill perfectly. He introduced his girlfriend Charlotte, who smiled politely, shook our hands and smoked as vigorously as he did. She worked the desk at a hotel in town at night and helped Romain with office work during the day. They were planning to buy a new house together soon, and she had every intention of quitting the hotel to work with him full time. They looked at each other, dropped their cigarettes on the ground and stomped them out in unison. Romain looked around at everyone with a wink, slapped his hands, rubbed them together and said, “Hungry?” We took a seat at a table near the door, the only one available in the room with just nine others. I was closest to the entrance, and every time someone came in, they brought the quickly plummeting temperatures in with them. I kept my jacket on the entire meal and pined for the thicker coat I had left in the car. The décor was simple, contemporary and unremarkable, with cold, bright overhead LED lighting. But Romain said the place was getting some buzz and he’d been looking forward to checking it out. He deferred control of the wine list to Ted, who ordered two wines that he imports and a champagne that he wished he could add to his book. He picked up a glass from the table, took a sniff, and immediately said they needed a rinse. He does this at every meal, but this was the first of the trip to fail the test. Usually it’s the smell of wet dog that comes with old water or a dirty drying rag, but this was a case of the opposite: too much sanitizer in the wash. The server came to pour and I was surprised when he didn’t mention the glasses; he always has them replaced when they come flawed. It occurred to me that he was making an effort to curb his fastidiousness in this new place with this old friend. Instead, he nodded over at a tall man with gray hair a couple tables away and said, “that guy ran a tasting at a restaurant where I worked in Arizona, twenty years ago. Small world.” I thought, yeah, small world—and you have a hell of a memory. As the door opened and closed again behind me, chilling me every time, Romain talked about being up all night the night before in an effort to save his crops, the reason for his apparent fatigue. The unseasonable cold was posing a real threat; if the thermometer dropped below negative two degrees Celsius, frost would form and destroy the new buds that were just starting to appear. So the producers in the area resort to extreme measures: teams of workers lay out hundreds of cans of fuel (like big cans of Sterno) between the rows of vines, which they light if the temperature falls to that dreaded number. Romain pulled out his phone and showed us a video a friend had posted on Facebook the night before, footage of darkened hillsides alight with orange blossoms of thickly smoking flames as far as the eye could see. It was a stunning sight, made horrific by what it meant for this to be happening, the difference between making wine the coming season, or not. As with what happened to Dutraive after the hail in 2016, vignerons can buy grapes from other growers to produce something, but resulting wines are just usually not the same. In the case of guys like Collet, it is not an easy thing to replace fruit from Grand and Premier Cru vineyards. He has lesser valued parcels, but of course it is these top plots that get first priority when the threat of frost looms. He had so far dodged the bullet, but he would be watching the temperature carefully on a phone app as dinner stretched later into the night. His guys were already out in the fields making preparations, and he would join them again if and when the time came. The stress of these times turned the talk to the gambles producers make every year, the careful balancing act of keeping a company afloat. He finds that the hardest part is deciding whether to bottle all the wine once it’s finished, or sell a good portion off to negociants (who will bottle it under their own label) to make ends meet, but at the cost of losing distribution of his own product. Vignerons will have to do this in lean years, if the financial standing of the winery is shaky. Families sometimes need to make the quick sale to negociants even in solid years, to help them prepare for the disastrous ones. Just a few bad seasons in a row without proper preparation can burn up financial reserves and break their business. Talk like this really reminded me that we weren’t in Bordeaux, where wineries are owned by endless supplies of old money and new corporate backing. People like the Collet's are artisans who live at the mercy of nature like any Midwestern farmer. I was hungry. Though the starter list included what I was informed was a local favorite, “oeuf en meurette,” I ordered the sautéed trout “Prégilbert,” to be followed by the roasted pork loin with creamy mushroom polenta. The trout was tender and delicately spiced, dotted with orange trout eggs, a little too like the salmon eggs I used to catch fish when I was a kid. The pork was good, and with the polenta, just like something I could have ordered at any number $$$ Yelp restaurants in the States. I also realized that my tepid impressions were probably being cooled by the freezing wind at my back. The 2013 Rousset St. Joseph, on the other hand, was delicious. I drank less than my fair share, but a little went a long way. Ted recently started carrying the label after pursuing them for quite a few years and kept raving about it. The server was a cheerful Japanese émigrée whom Ted had also as a server over at Au Fils du Zinc in recent months. The two cooks in the open kitchen were Japanese as well, and Ted went on to say that there’s a decent Japanese population in France. Apparently a lot of the chefs at Au Fills are also Japanese. Romain started in on a story about a good friend from Tel Aviv, a professional soccer player who drank very little and was a very careful eater at home, but when he came to France, all bets were off. He ate and drank all day and night and was a comrade-in-arms during many a forty-eight-hour fête. Since I was still feeling under the weather and taking judicious sips, and had passed on ordering desert, I didn’t think I was imagining it when I caught Romain giving me the suspicious side-eye during the story. I might have been just trying to ward off his appraising gaze when Ted’s chocolate crème brûlée came and I stole three quick bites that garnered a glare and growl from its owner. The dinner wrapped up pretty quickly, but we knew we’d see Romain a few times more in the coming days. We all stood shivering on the street by the white wagon as Romain waited for the temperature to update on his phone; he still didn’t know if he’d need to man the fires again. A big digital sign in the town square right above where we were standing read zero degrees Celsius. It didn’t look good. Ted took us onto a dark country road outside of town to the neighboring village of Préhy, a tiny cluster of ancient cottages, population 129. We entered the main street and blew right by our Airbnb in the very first building, the front of which had been converted into the only modern glass facade around. It was late and freezing and it had been a very long day, but I paused in the middle of the street to notice the black sky packed with stars, the local light pollution nil. Then we stumbled into the two story apartment full of Ikea furniture, and tromped up a rickety metal spiral staircase that seemed to be made from a kit, like all the other stuff. Ted mentioned that the building was owned by the daughter of a famous biodynamic producer in the area. The three of us were to share the one big bedroom with an accordion door and an exposed bathroom sink and shower, while their friends Geraldine and Arnaud Lambert, who were joining us the next day, would take the other one for themselves. But the place was much smaller than advertised. By this time, my loud snoring had become a bit of a joke, and with the prospect of sharing a room with me, it suddenly wasn’t funny to Andrea anymore. Everyone was tired and tensions ran high for a few minutes, until Ted came up with the idea to book another place in town for his friends. I was left in the big room, where I had already settled, and was relieved that I wouldn’t be sharing it. I felt both guilty and grateful that my sleep difficulties had afforded me some much needed solitude.

Ahh, Tuscan sunsets… (Download complete pdf here) Due to the lengthy content of our monthly newsletter and the desire to be more accurate on wine arrival timing, we are breaking it up into two segments each month, delivered on the first and third Fridays. Let’s dig in! Source Happenings We’re adding our trade and consumer events to the newsletter so you know what is going on! Austria’s Riesling and Grüner Veltliner wizard, Michael Malat, will be in California November 8-11. He will be at the following events/dinners: Thursday, November 10th, Austrian winegrower Michael Malat at Nari in San Francisco. Join Michael and Nari sommelier, Sam Zelver, and The Source’s Danny DeMartini at this fabulous contemporary Thai restaurant. Call to reserve at (415)-868-6274 Friday, November 11th, Austrian winegrower Michael Malat at Napa Valley’s Compline Wine Shop with sommelier/owners Matt Stamp and Ryan Stetins, and The Source’s Hadley Kemp from 6:30pm – 7:30pm. Tickets available for purchase at https://complinewine.com/collections/wine-education/products/fancy-flight-night-with-michael-malat Saturday, November 12th at Santa Barbara’s Bacara Resort, The Source’s Leigh Readey will be pouring donated wines at the Santa Barbara Vintners Foundation Gala Dinner and Live Auction benefiting Direct Relief and Community Health Centers. Tickets can be found at https://sbwineauction.org/ Wednesday, November 16th at The Anchovy Bar in San Francisco, The Source will be featured for their new dinner series with sommelier Adam Robins and The Source’s Danny DeMartini. Wines poured will include Galicia’s Manuel Moldes and Augalevada, and Piemonte’s Luigi Spertino and Monti Perini. Reservations at https://www.theanchovybar.com/ Navelli, Abruzzo New Arrivals Just in time for the holiday season, we have a load of great stuff to beef up wine programs. Our newest arrivals include Romain Guiberteau and Brendan Stater-West’s new Saumur releases, François Crochet’s cru Sancerres that show freshness is not lost on that entire appellation in the face of climate change, Pierre Morey’s statuesque Meursaults, and David Duband’s reliable and finely tuned terroir exposé. I’ve written exhaustively about these producers (available on our site), so they don’t need more plugging. Plus, their quantities are spare. Our main focus in the first half of this month is the arrival of wines from future Austrian legend, Michael Malat. Indeed, I’ve extolled his talents many times before, but his range is growing along with his experience! Weingüt Malat’s ancient cellar Special Feature Michael Malat – Kremstal, Austria Michael Malat has it all: affordable and spectacular, premium wines that exceed expectations, full of terroir and joy in every category: red, white, rosé, sparkling, and orange. Malat found his breakthrough with the 2013 vintage, six vintages after his father, Gerald, put him in the driver’s seat. Since then, notable years were 2015 and 2017, and now 2019. Michi, as he’s referred to in Austria (pronounced Mickey), who’s only a hair over forty, puts to bottle wines marked with a similar throughline: deliciousness, depth and terroir purity. Uniquely, he manages to get his Kamptal Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners to express fruit nuances of the same color as his deeply hued yellow capsules and labels. These exotic but discreet yellow fruit notes filled with Amalfi Coast-like sunshine makes their intellectual stimulation even that much more pleasurable. From the top of the range to the bottom there are few in the industry who deliver such serious wine with so much glee. The Vineyards Malat’s vineyards are mostly inside Kremstal (with some actually just inside of the Wachau), one of Austria’s most famous and equally geologically diverse appellations. All but his Pfaffenberg wine come from the Danube’s right bank (south side) where the hills slope more gently with multi-rowed terraces, while on the other side the hills are mostly treacherous, rocky sites facing south with more extreme exposure to the sun, similar in hillside structure to the neighboring Wachau. The flatter land on the south side has a greater level of loess (extremely fine-grained, calcareous, mineral-dense, wind-blown sand) in the topsoil. There are also sections on this side closer to the river on gravel and sand deposits where they grow some of the Pinot Noir grapes and others for the entry-level wines. Further upslope most of the vineyards in his top crus are usually covered to some degree with loess topsoil but are in closer contact with a solid bedrock of ancient acidic rock formations that date all the way back to Pangean times, hundreds of millions of years ago. Climatically, because of the tug-of-war between warm Pannonian winds and cold blasts from the Alps, it’s much colder than most of the rest of Austrian wine country, between the warmest and coolest areas of top Riesling and Grüner Veltliner production. Most of Malat’s vines were planted during his lifetime, despite the winery’s history dating back to the 1700s. This is largely due to his father’s ambition, which set the stage for Michael’s fabulous collection of vineyards in their middle age, perfect for wines of great balance. Bubbles We begin with bubbles. Michael’s father, Gerald, paved the way for Austria’s Sekt market in 1976. A straight shooter from the post-WWII Austria, post-Soviet occupation (until 1955) recovery generation, he pushed against the Austrian Republic’s law ordaining that only licensed producers could produce sparkling wines (Sekt in German). They also used local grape varieties, like Gelber Muskateller, Müller-Thurgau, Grüner Veltliner, and Riesling. After Gerald’s nationally followed fight and subsequent victory, it only took a few vintages for him to see that his wines were lacking in structure and finesse made from these local varieties when compared to those of Champagne. He already had Pinot Noir and Chardonnay planted but expanded his holdings during Michi’s childhood to provide his son with the superb material he uses to craft them today. Both the 2017 Brut Rosé Reserve, made entirely from Pinot Noir, and 2017 Brut Nature Reserve, purely Chardonnay, are aged in bottle on their lees for four years, while the law only requires nine months. Gerald used to add a small dosage but today Michael adds nothing because of the fuller flavor and fruitiness that climate change has imposed on the wines. The results are substantial, and many consider them to be the best of their kind out of Austria. Only a hair above the price of the least expensive organic Champagnes made from small-house producers, they’re a good blind taste for Champagne buffs. Orange Wines Curiosity, necessity, and keeping up with the times led Michael to develop orange wines starting in 2016, bottled now under the Malat label RAW. During the 2016 harvest the press broke when the Gewürtztraminer was perfectly ripe. Just as the “natural wine” movement was a topic of discussion and scorn in Austria, so was orange wine, but a decision had to be made to either leave the grapes on the vine until the press was fixed or give it a go with full skin maceration and put himself in the crosshairs of his colleagues. He explained that at the time in Austria there were only about ten producers making orange wines and only a few of them were good, at least to his Austrian winemaker’s palate. In classic Malat fashion, he was comfortable in the crosshairs. Grapes that seem to fare better for orange wines are often excessively aromatic whites with pungent floral and sweet spice notes, reminiscent of strong perfume scents that evoke generations of family gatherings. Toward the northeast of Italy and into neighboring countries, like Slovenia and further east to Georgia, orange wines have been a thing since antiquity, perhaps the way all white grapes were made into wine long ago. From a stability standpoint, orange wines would’ve outmatched a white wine due to tannins and polyphenols extracted from the skins in more low-tech generations. The yields are surely higher compared to white grapes pressed upon arrival at the winery that still retain some juice even with rarely employed high pressure at a quality producer. Being that orange wines are nothing new to the Old World’s older world, they deserve some attention, not solely as a trend but as a legitimate category. I, for one, love good orange wines, which are less rare than in the past. As with any category, many are lazily crafted and poured into the natural wine river, while on the other side, orange wines from big producers must be just as innocuous, soulless and uninteresting as others on their marketing team’s menu. When craftspeople with a level of mastery of fundamentals in wine chemistry and viticulture play with orange wine the results can be consistently compelling yet still framed in wine classicism: harmonious, reliable, and of utmost importance to this taster–intricacy. Michael has achieved a level of mastery with his craft, fundamentals all the way to a certain level of artistry, and though the orange wines are relatively new to him, it doesn’t appear so. Both of Malat’s orange wines are clean and elegant renditions with the 2021 Gelber Muscateller RAW more tense and bright by nature of the variety than the expectedly fuller and powerfully expressive 2021 Gewürtztraminer RAW. They spend between two and three weeks on the skins, age on their lees in large, old wood vats, naturally go through malolactic fermentation, and are bottled with low sulfur levels (given the greater natural stability extracted from the skins and seeds). The last batch we ordered evaporated, and though we tripled the order this time, it still won’t be enough. Classic Range – Entry Levels Malat’s starter kit on the classic range is second to none in Austria, especially when price is a consideration. Labeled Furth, after the main town in the area, they demonstrate what can be done on a medium scale in production with superb results. All come from the right bank with those close to the river on flat vineyards and the others with a slight northern tilt. The 2021 Riesling “Furth” is mostly grown at higher altitudes further upslope on terraces and in closer contact with rocky bedrock and topsoil, as opposed to an endless bedrock and topsoil of loess further below that much of the 2021 Grüner Veltliner “Furth” is grown on. An additional detail to highlight on these two entry-level wines is that they are aged entirely in ancient 5,000-10,000-liter wood casks. This type of aging vessel polishes them out into more of a friendly analog frequency than the digital-like renditions from stainless steel. I’ve asked Michael why his wines are so specific and unique from other wines in the area and have yet to receive a clear answer. My guess is that it has to do with these ancient barrels and the three-hundred-year-old cellar. I guess I could coin the term “The Rayas-effect,” where taste is so specifically linked to a winery, despite the origin of the grapes. When I visited Château Rayas it smelled like I was inside a glass of his wine the whole time. Malat’s old wooden vats The Riesling is as expected: sharper, fresher, more minerally, angularly nuanced, and with a subtle range of yellow fruits, spice and delicate flowers. Riesling can be so Germanically serious sometimes that it’s refreshing to slurp Michael’s down without thinking so much. The Grüner Veltliner has more body by comparison to his Riesling, though it’s not a full-bodied wine by any stretch. The variety is generally friendlier by nature than Riesling for most consumers, and under Michael’s hand it captures one of the most compelling profiles for this grape variety (re: my preferences) compared to much of the rest of Austria. Emitting Ischian Biancolella-like sunshine and smiles, this starter to the Veltliner range is generous and refreshing—a welcome departure from the densely spiced and almost overwhelmingly herbaceous, cloying nature of Grüner Veltliner taken far too seriously in the cellar. Many with less exposure to Austrian wine might be surprised to learn that Pinot Noir has been cultivated in Austria since the twelfth century. While it was initially grown in the warmer parts by the same order of monks that established Burgundy and Galicia, it crept into other regions as the climate warmed and made it possible to make solid Pinot Noir still wines instead being relegated to wiry rosés and sparkling wines. Grown further down the slopes closer to the Danube, the 2019 Pinot Noir “Furth,” comes from a fabulous year with sufficient ripeness for Pinot Noir to achieve its full robe of taut to fully mature red fruits while retaining its gorgeous and subtle florals. The soils here are largely composed of river alluvium with some in contact with loess. One cannot expect a Burgundian style wine here in the sense of texture and fruit notes. It’s simply impossible to completely replicate Burgundy outside of Burgundy, though there are many excellent Pinot Noir wines made in other parts of the world. Here, the textures are more pointed and slightly gravellier with aromatics that dance between the densely green north-facing hills covered in forest and bramble that borders all the vineyards to the south. Local herbs, flowers and berries, not the four-berry mix found in Côte d’Or Pinot Noir, but rather wild red and black currants, taut and bright wild cherries and blackberries, marked with a distinct Alpine quality. Classic Range – Cru Wines I admit that if given the opportunity to choose between a great Austrian Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, nine and a half times out of ten, it’s going to be Riesling. However, 2021 Grüner Veltliners might be the vintage that changes that, as it was an exceptional season due to the high ripeness of the grapes with an unusually high amount of acidity for this level of maturity. They are structured and deeply pleasurable. If you have a liking for Grüner Veltliner, don’t sit out 2021. Hohlgraben has been part of the Malat’s family vineyards since 1722 (think about that…), and for this reason, Michael describes it as the “classic Malat wine.” As with all years, the 2021 Grüner Veltliner “Hohlgraben” takes on its personality from a set of terraced vineyards at an altitude of 250-300m with loess topsoil on top of alternating layers of alluvium and loess—a consequence of cyclical erosion and deposition by way of Danube flooding and windblown loess depositions blown in from the Alps. Wines grown on loess tend to be more rounded and juicier than those from rocky bedrock, which, by contrast, usually imparts more angles and deeper mineral impressions. Grüner Veltliner doesn’t like to struggle in the vineyard, nor does it need to do so to find its happy place, unlike Riesling. Loess offers Veltliner optimal conditions due to its higher water retentive capacity and nutrient levels, which are also less favorable for high quality Riesling. The results are a spicy and easy-to-drink yet serious Veltliner with a medium body rather than the fuller ones often found across the river on the Wachau’s south-facing vineyards. Despite its immediate accessibility, it retains the interest of the taster with its palate-refreshing acidity and minerally qualities. A name from the Middle Ages that means “sharp ledges on the ridges,” Malat’s 2019 Grüner Veltliner 1ÖTW Gottschelle is their top site for this variety. This premier cru classified wine—abbreviated in Austria as 1ÖTW—sits atop a granulite bedrock with the vine roots mostly in contact with a deep topsoil composed of calcium-rich loess (fine wind-blown sand) and a layer cake of gravels further down, deposited there by the Danube during the most recent ice age, but the bedrock is so deep that most vine root systems may not make contact with it. Like all of Malat’s top Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners, Gottschelle is raised in 2000-2500-liter old foudres for six to eight months. This is the winery’s biggest Grüner Veltliner and expresses a forward spiciness and minerality with supporting notes of white and orange fruit, iodine, and dried grasses and grain. Malat’s Riesling Premier Cru trilogy is indeed special. First is the 2019 Riesling 1ÖTW 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, while the 2019 Riesling 1ÖTW Silberbichl has strength in its 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 member of the lineup is one of the rare wines made at Malat from someone else’s vineyard: The 2019 Riesling 1ÖTW Pfaffenberg is a glorious 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. Pfaffenberg’s terraces hold nearly a maximum of two or three vines per terrace because of the steepness of the hillside. A family friend with a small parcel offered 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 perched on a massive hillside 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, though further inside after some time open. Checkout Michael explaining his wines at https://thesourceimports.com/videos/ The Times They Are A-Changin’ It wasn’t just us. Everyone in Europe complained this year about the endless heat and massive mosquito invasion. It was a blistering summer, exhausting, a time when mosquitoes should’ve been hiding in cold basements waiting for cooler nights before pestering. Not this year. Shadows and corners in every hot room had one or two waiting, moving from one spot to another to keep you guessing. Mosquitoes all day. Mosquitoes all night. Hot days and hot nights. Humidity unlike any year before, according to locals. Can’t open the windows because few European rental homes have screens, and even fewer have AC. Open windows at night offered no relief. The Mediterranean wasn’t refreshing either. It was hot! One minute out and you want back in. REM sleep wasn’t possible until utter exhaustion. Blooming mosquitoes populations are only one of many consequences of climate change, like changing weather patterns, extreme flooding, which in some places, like Germany, some have increased mosquito populations tenfold (read more here). Here’s an obvious statement: Nature is out of balance. Some, often with a degree of condescension, say “We’ve had hurricanes and tsunamis forever. The planet has warmed like this before. It’s all a lie for x, y, z.” European wine producers are often conservatives too. They’re countryside folk. But they know the only lie is: it’s a lie. They’re seeing it firsthand. The moment of budbreak to harvest has completely changed. Everyone with a history in wine feels the new boozier norm, the richer and cleaner fruit, less earthiness and more solar power, a flatter, less fresh style. Yes, The Times They Are A-Changin’. Amended lyrics? Come gather ‘round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have gone And accept it that soon You’ll be dry to the bone If time to your kids is worth savin’ And you better start conservin’ Or they’ll be dry as a stone For the times they are a-changin’ Over the years I’ve posed the question to growers about the difference in time between budbreak and picking in an attempt to understand the actual differences in terms of growing-season days compared to the past. In theory, when it comes to complexity, the length of the growing season is more important than how late in the year the grapes are harvested. In many recent years budbreak was early and the entirety of the growing season (the number of days in all from start to finish) wasn’t as short as it is now, compared to even ten years ago. There were many seasons shortened by a week or two in total, but budbreak happens even earlier and the full length of the growing season is also short, very short—by as much as a couple months in some places, no foolin’. The impacts of these elements have many implications, and not all of them are negative. For example, fruit picked in the earlier side after drier months are less impacted by botrytis, leading to fresher and cleaner nuances. I’ve told my friends many times that my generation is the last who might ride things out without completely devastating consequences. None of us, ni moi, take enough measures to make a dent in the right direction. Little adaptations are important and helpful on some level, but we’re not going to save this sinking ship by only pumping the water out when there’s a massive gash in the bottom. At forty-six I still feel young most of the time. I suppose I’m about halfway to the end, but I hope I’ll have a little longer. When I enter partnerships with producers under thirty years old now, I don’t feel so young anymore. We visited one of our new ones, a young, twenty-something winegrower in Barolo a few weeks ago (who will remain nameless for the moment) who took over the family’s cantina after finishing her university studies. As I sent a mosquito to the next life from my arm in the cellar, the conversation began; she too had had an unbearable mosquito season. She started reeling off statistics of insect reduction and the decreased population of birds which has further opened the door for a mosquito explosion. When she brought up the birds my mind trailed off back to a few days prior when I made an unwanted contribution to the bird statistic just outside of Basilicata’s historic and gorgeous rock city, Matera. A tiny member of a flock of about a dozen bounced off my front bumper and tumbled behind us as I watched in the rearview, grimacing and feeling horrible. Immediately distraught, I told myself that I somehow didn’t have a choice in that event. My wife didn’t notice our involuntary birdslaughter, or that I immediately went from smiles to momentary devastation and remorse. It was probably chasing a mosquito but I killed one of ours. Damn. A few days later in Bramaterra, October 19, Andrea Monti Perini opened his cellar door and a swarm of mosquitoes charged. It was warm and dry, and they were thirsty. “Zanzare in late October in Alto Piemonte… That’s new,” Andrea quietly lamented. Their numbers were too great in vineyards to keep my hands on the drone remote. Like in Madonna’s Vogue music video, my wife elegantly and rhythmically maneuvered her hands around my face and hands warding them off, doing the modelesque gestures for me as I filmed, especially during our visit between to two lakes in Northern Piemonte with a new and exciting young producer in Caluso, though on the far northeastern edge of the appellation. Eugenio Pastoris, from Azienda Agricola Massimo Pastoris, focusses on Erbaluce and Nebbiolo—both excellent and with great promise, though the quantities are small. At only twenty-six-years old, he has degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Latin—an extremely clever young man (see, I even sound like an old guy now) with generously spirited and supportive parents. People complain about the younger generations, but what generation didn’t complain about the new ones? Today’s tepid efforts on climate change have diminished my faith in humanity, but these younger generations will be better than ours. Their eyes are open. They know they have everything to lose. It’s us older, more established ones who are the problem. We see the change and the need to react, but perhaps in our psyche we know our time is nearer to the end, so we talk too much and act too little. As I write this in late October, it finally feels like fall again. We’re happy to be back in Portugal in the cooler weather and this season’s welcome torrential rainfall. The reservoirs across the country were getting pretty low, especially with the rivers that originate in Spain where many Spanish wanted to cut off the river supply to Portugal, forgoing their bilateral agreements. Thankfully that didn’t happen and I think things might become more stable again, for the moment. San Casciano dei Bagni, Tuscany

(Download complete pdf here) Cilento Coast, 2019 (Wouldn’t that be nice right now?!) Last month’s newsletter shared the hope that this year’s cold and wet weather in many parts of Europe would eventually turn out favorably. 2021 was also damp and challenged by mildew pressure across Europe until the summer’s long days opened the skies and supercharged the grapes before picking. And while many of our growers in Atlantic-influenced areas of Spain and Portugal struggled to achieve their desired ripeness levels, many continental climate areas were gifted wonderfully fresh, classic wines that rewound the phenolic and structural clock decades. Most of these 2021s are on the market or have already sold. Having visited and talked with over a hundred buyers in California and Illinois in the last few months, the consensus is that 2021 is a smashing overall success with quality, especially white wines. At the end of June before my early July flight back to California, I visited David Duband at his cellar and he was, at the time, hopeful the summer would arrive and lift the clouds to bring hope. The day before we published our August newsletter, we had a video call to discuss how we could maximize our intake of so many special wines from his domaine’s 2022s and 2023s and his new “natural” and mostly no-sulfite-added range, Les Terres de Philéandre (named after his kids, Philomène and Léandre). What was to be an exciting meeting about the future kicked off with stress and grim news. “It’s shit. It just continues to rain, and it hasn’t stopped raining all year and it’s already August.” David has enviable holdings in the Côte d’Or with six Grand Cru bottlings, nearly a dozen Premier Crus, and all the major village appellations, save Fixin and Marsannay. At the time of that meeting, he believed he’d already lost more than 90% of all his grapes on the Côte d’Or. David Duband’s new “natural-ish” Burgundy wines David has been certified in organic viticulture for more than twenty years. Still, many other organic and biodynamic growers I spoke with on my final trips in France, Italy, and Spain before July, he’s not sure if the practice is still sustainable each season. These days, scorching hot years take turns with low-yielding, wet ones, like 2021 and 2024. Due to climate change, the aperture of each season’s rainy and mildew-heavy periods and blistering sunny ones has widened unpredictably, causing greater variability in the bandwidth of weather patterns each year. As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, many growers continue to be concerned that organic viticulture is no longer tenable every year now, and, unfortunately, David is a new addition to that list, stating, “If next year is like this again, I will have no choice [but to resort to some non-organic certified methods].” Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits site for David Duband’s cuvée “Louis Auguste” The good news for David is that over the last few decades, he started to insulate himself from what seems to be an inevitable collapse of Burgundy’s hierarchy when he invested in land further to the west of the Côte d’Or in the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits where similar to the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune, much of the land shares the same basic geology (Jurassic limestone bedrock and clay-rich topsoil) but is fresher and less exposed with a lot forest that mitigates some of the extreme heat and cold through shading, moisture regulation, and thermal insulation, among many other benefits, like biodiversity. However, hail may be an increased risk in this backcountry. The Côte d’Or has the forest’s support usually on one side of the slope (the western, upper slope areas), but is otherwise much more exposed to the extremes of climate change as it’s open to the vast Saône Valley. The difference is that the backwater Burgundy areas and the better potential sites (at least for this moment in climate change) are relatively unknown, or undiscovered, compared to the fully dissected and classified Côte d’Or. The Burgundians will have to do this work, but who knows how many generations that will take. Would any of us give up three-quarters of our annual earnings out of principle when it would put our future at risk in these uncertain times? As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, we cannot judge growers who have no choice but to pull the plug on organic and biodynamic practices to maintain financial security. We can’t forget that growers who believe in and truly practice these along with natural viticulture do it because they know it’s a better way to work with nature. But nobody should have to go down with their ship for the sake of ideology. As I also asked in last month’s newsletter, would any of us give up three-quarters of our annual earnings out of principle when it would put our future at risk in these uncertain times? We don’t yet know what 2024 will deliver across Europe, but by the time this is published, we will have more news as harvest has already started in many places. Hopefully, others will have better fortune than those like David who have lost most of their harvest. Writing about newly arrived and released wines in our newsletter is speculation based on my experiences of these wines in Europe and I make sure I’m well rested before tasting, and taste over hours, if not days. We work with living wines, and that’s to say that they’re not enologized into a static, microbially sterile state. Like us, our wines move, evolve and have moods: sometimes charming and giving, sometimes stubborn or unfriendly. A wine can be shut down and confusing one day, and another bottle of the same on a different day can be compelling and mind-bending. Unfortunately, many in the wine business (me included) can be harsh and unforgiving critics. Four beautiful wines out of five from a grower, and we rarely forget (and forgive) that one that was off, even from a single taste, or bottle.   One of the many cover illustrations of Les Misérables, a story of second chances. When a wine arrives by boat after a month or more en route, or travels in a car for only a few days, it needs time to regain its footing. Ship shock is as real as bottle shock, and so many times wines that taste glorious in Europe arrive in the States jostled and off balance for months, sometimes even a year. Because we can’t make a first impression with our clients twice, we almost always try to give new vintage releases at least a full month of recovery in our warehouse before we present them. With about 700 wines imported yearly, we can’t taste everyone on them twice! All it takes is one unready bottle to turn a buyer off until the release of the next vintage. But that same wine can go from introversion to complete extroversion in four months. People don’t forget wines that strike them the wrong way, especially when expectations are high based on experiences with previous vintages. I often hear that a newly arrived vintage isn’t as good as the previous one. This depends on things like that year’s overall quality, but it likely depends more on the advantages or disadvantages of time. If the previous vintage is tasted close to the time of the newer release, last year’s release has the advantage of both more time in bottle and more time stateside after arrival. Wines tend to be more resilient than we expect, especially those crafted by a disciplined grower with experience and a quality track record, but one of the ever-present obstacles is that small growers, like the vast majority we represent, don’t have the financial means to hold wines until they are in their best first moments after bottling. They need to sell them as soon as possible. As students and observers of wine’s nature, we must always give bottles more time and revisit them further down the road. We should resist jumping to and maintaining conclusions without a second-tasting opportunity, which presupposes that living wine is static, without the potential to evolve, improve, and find its shining moment. Wild cherries (best of my life!) picked in 2022 from the land of La Casaccia, in Piemonte’s Monferrato Since I got to California at the beginning of July, I’ve feverishly tried to catch up on how our wines are tasting here in the States compared to my experiences at the cellar and well-rested bottles in Europe. Those that had just come off the boat were notably short and tight in their first weeks compared to almost all my experiences back home. A few weeks later they’re now starting to sing, and those that hit their expected marks will be covered further in this newsletter. But it’s the wines that have been in our inventory for some time that are, not surprisingly, on fire. During my time on the road through California, sorting through some wine I wanted to taste in our warehouse cellar, and at several tasting events between California’s main markets and Chicago, I found many wines at the peak of their powers at this young age. Cherry-picking anyone’s portfolio of wines is really about timing, and I’ll help with that here. There’s also the other side of the coin. For example, the red wine I wanted to drink the most before I arrived from Europe was from our new grower, Domaine Les Infiltrés, and their Saumur Puy-Notre-Dame. This extremely seductive wine has me hooked but none of the four bottles I had in California in July expressed that same level of magic. Everything was tight and the reduction on the nose was unshakable. In mid-July I tasted another bottle and it began to sing that familiar and obsessive tune. On the Friday before Labor Day Weekend, I took a bottle around the Ojai Valley and Ventura to see if it continued to improve, which it did. However, we must wait for its full return to glory, and I’m sure it will soon. Because we’ll be receiving an immense quantity of wines in October and November but not much in September, I’ve decided to share what I think are some of the best-drinking wines I’ve tasted over the last two months that are still in our inventory. Over the last year and a half, budgets on all sides have been tight and many of our best weren’t tasted with customers as far and wide as usual, leaving some untouched ground with many. Cume do Avia’s new labels We’ll start our list of recently released arrivals with the new vintage from Ribeiro’s Cume do Avia. While I’m obsessed with Cume do Avia’s wines, their style isn’t for everyone in every vintage. However, the 2022s will capture a much wider audience because of their joyful nature and immediate accessibility. The cold and wet 2021 season produced wines with tension and less body for an already racy, high-toned style. The 2022s hit the sweet spot on all wines, white and red, with the 2022 Colleita 10 Blanco surely the best of this label ever bottled and a strong consideration for those who miss the acidic snap and mineral depth of Sancerre and Chablis in these warmer times. I tasted it out of vat last March, along with the 2022 Dos Canotos Blanco, and they were stunning. Their bottling date was set for July and I asked why. “Why wait? It’s perfect now! Bottle it yesterday!” Two weeks later it was in bottle, and those extra months in glass instead of steel paid dividends. 2022 is a marriage between the best qualities of electric Rías Baixas Val do Salnés Albariño and the unmistakable delicacy of pastoral flowers, fresh leafy herbs and white fruit of Treixadura. The charm meter is as high as I’ve seen on their whites, yet they remain packed with regional terroir dialect and the fresh saltiness of the Atlantic. 2022 was warmer and more balanced than 2021, and the reds also greatly benefitted from this warmth. The 2022 Colleita 10 Tinto is the colleita we’ve been waiting for. It has much more upfront pleasure than last year’s Colleita 9 (they don’t use vintage dates, only “harvests”), and was immediately showy even after a week off the boat. As I write this portion of this newsletter in Los Angeles after 12 days and 12 different bottles, it’s simply stunning. The Atlantic-influenced red fruit from my two favorite Galician red grapes, Caíño Longo (more than 50% of the blend) and Brancellao, and their darker cousin, Sousón, are a brilliant trio, and this version will continue to add even more flesh in the coming months. The delicate nature and pale, almost completely transparent 2022 Brancellao would be the envy of the likes of Frédéric Mugnier. Its extremely light color looks as though it should taste like nothing and then it bursts on the nose and palate with sublime and fine red flower and fruit notes tightened by the unmistakable minerally texture and nose of these vines grown on igneous and metamorphic bedrock. Don’t miss these 2022s from Cume do Avia. They are a striking realization of what these humble dreamers intended to achieve. A few new head-spinning Ribeira Sacra bottlings from Argentine Pablo Soldavini landed and made a solid impression. Lurpia and A Besta are made with some of the same red grapes as Cume do Avia and are equally elegant but fuller. Harvested entirely from the Quiroga Bibei subzone of the Ribeira Sacra D.O. (though electively not bearing the appellation name), this region combines more continental influence than Atlantic compared to the further west Galician regions, Ribeiro and Rías Baixas, as well as those further west and north Ribeira Sacra subzones. This, in addition to the gentler slope of these vineyards compared to the celebrated and vertigo-inducing terraces in the famous pictures of Ribeira Sacra imparts a plusher, fuller character. Pablo’s interest as a winegrower is with the “first-known generation” varietals, like the Caíño clan, Brancellao, Sousón, among others, than Mencía, a relatively recent migratory variety from further east in warmer, drier areas, like Bierzo and Jiménez de Jamuz. Mencía was heavily propagated in the last century for its higher yield and easier-to-manage farming during economic hardships that further intensified with the Spanish Civil War, collateral effects of two World Wars, and the ensuing Francoist dictatorship. Like a lot of Piemonte, post-World War Two, who left the countryside for Milano and Torino, some growers entirely abandoned their countryside homes for work in Galicia’s industrial centers, like Vigo and Ferrol, others left home for the weekdays and returned on weekends to keep the vines going. Fewer stayed put, but with little help and financial incentive to grow grapes and sell wine, they bet on Mencía’s reliability and durability at the cost of the region’s more historical varieties. Lurpia is Pablo’s 100% whole-cluster Brancellao vinified without any active extractions (infusion, as we often refer to it) and aged in 500-600L old French oak, and A Besta, equal parts of that same whole-cluster Brancellao mixed with entirely destemmed Sousón. Lurpia is a seductive and contained beauty, while A Besta (Beast, in Galego) is more exotic and wild with a darker color from the Sousón, also known in Portugal as Vinhão. With only just over 1000 bottles of Lurpia and 600 bottles of A Besta produced, these are rare and as good as any Ribeira Sacra wine I’ve had in this elegant and high-toned style. We finally dug into Carmelo Peña Santana’s Bien de Altura range, and they knocked it out of the park. Only four weeks after their arrival, Carmelo’s flagship, the 2022 Ikewen, a blend of seven different parcels, and perhaps the most well-rounded wine of the range, was unstoppable from the first to last tastes. 2021 El3mento (the only non-2022 in this offering) showed Carmelo’s touch for refinement and perfection of craft for an unmoved, eight-month, whole-cluster, amphora-aged, pure Listán Negro harvested from a plot above 1300 meters. And the extremely limited 2022 Tidao, with its blend of ancient vines, seduced all comers. Every wine climbed further each hour through our sales day, and these wines will continue to flesh out but are already singing Carmelo’s soul music. What a thrill to work with this level of talent! (Vineyard picture taken in a parcel of Ikewen with the two single-site wines, El3mento on the left, and Sansofi on the right, and Carmelo in the dirt.)   Jumping from one volcanic island and Carmelo to another, are the wines of Carmelo Sofia (pictured on the right in the front and his father, Giocchino), from Azienda Agricola Sofia. By contrast to the three Spanish growers’ wines, Sofia’s were stateside for more than two months before we showed them, and they were at the peak of their powers. Both the 2022 Etna Rosso “Giocchino” and 2019 Etna Rosso “Piano dei Daini” came out in full swing and we sold almost half of our initial order of Giocchino in San Francisco on the first day of shopping it around. Giocchino, a red-fruited and competitively priced Etna Rosso is the charmer, and may only be matched in price and quality with our very own Etna Barrus. After our first day with Giocchino, we secured another pallet that will arrive before the end of the year. Piano dei Daini is more serious than the fully extroverted and friendly Giocchino, and carries greater depth but without expense to its similarly generous and convivial nature. The 2019 Piano dei Daini is the second vintage for Carmelo, but it has the maturity of a vineyard and cellar hand who worked, as Carmelo did, for a decade with Vini Franchetti’s Passopisciaro. This is another not to miss! Now it’s time to cherry-pick our portfolio and I’ll focus on a few individual wines that are as mesmerizing as ever, and still available. Please note this list is not some sort of clearance attempt, but one for those that shocked me with how wonderfully they are tasting now and just happen to be still hanging around our warehouse. Most of the wines that made this list came in over the last year and a half during a difficult economy that we launched in California during the very long film industry strikes that tested many restaurants’ financial stability and, unfortunately, put some out of business. Few white wines can outplay Riesling in the summer heat. I had the pleasure of again tasting Katharina Wechsler’s 2020 & 2021 Kirchspiel & Morstein crus on several occasions recently. They’re fire right now, with perhaps the 2020s a little showier, despite the high octane of the piercing 2021s. The unique marriage of Riesling to limestone from this region seems to find the palate of a broader audience than most dry German Rieslings grown on slate and other formations. Despite the acidic freshness, this bedrock and soil type seems to impart less hard yet still clear and precise lines than those on igneous and metamorphic bedrock in places like the Mosel and Nahe. Though it’s hard to pick a favorite, Kirchspiel’s more extroverted character makes it good for a group, while Morstein is best enjoyed over hours with fewer friends. With the stratospheric rise of “Grand Cru” vineyards in this region due to the viticulture, cellar and market work of the local luminaries, Philip Wittmann and Klaus-Peter Keller, the names Morstein and Kirchspiel should immediately evoke interest. Katharina has fully embraced organic farming for years and her wines stack reason after reason to get behind this first-generation winegrower making all the right moves with Germany’s top dry Riesling vineyards. Katharina with Pinot Noir grapes, harvest 2023. Photo courtesy of Katharina Kremstal’s Michael Malat continues to hit the mark each year, but vintages like 2019 and 2021 are exceptional, for him and his peers. We took a position on Michael’s 2019s because we know they’ll be great for a long time. We showed some 2019 Rieslings and the that used to be the most reserved upon release was the star-of-the-show. 2019 Riesling Silberbichl is in a perfect place and a virtual guarantee to satisfy anyone interested in great white wine, even those with a tentative acceptance of dry Rieslings. As I tasted it in each account, which I normally do when I show wines, my mouth tingled and flooded; it’s simply spectacular, with so much joy and pleasure. Those who have already tasted and are pouring Pedro Mendez’s 2022 Albariño by the glass know it’s outrageous and stunning to all comers. Every year I drink most of Rías Baixas’ top-grower Albariños from the Val do Salnés, and this is the most head-turning “entry-level” 2022 I’ve had from the vintage, bar none. What seems an almost impossible mountain to climb, it’s even a match for the more subtle but striking Manuel Moldes 2022 Afelio. (Manuel’s 2023 just arrived.) We don’t have much more of the 2022, so don’t sit on your hands. I have yet to taste Pedro’s 2023 out of the finished bottle (though tasted from vat) but I expect big things after this breakthrough wine. My first ever bottles of Tapada do Chaves in 2020 Wines that continually baffle and seduce almost everyone who tastes them are those of Alentejo’s Tapada do Chaves. This is one of Portugal’s most important historical wineries that survived the Salazar dictatorship which converted much of the vineyards of Alentejo to other crops and redirected the country’s focus on wine elsewhere. In 1901 and 1903, Senhor Chaves planted vines on the top of a unique granite massif at 400 meters, dating to Pangean times. Here, the now biodynamically run vineyards and winery house some of Portugal’s largest collection of massale selections that they only allow to be propagated inside their vineyards on this massif. Both wines, the Alentejo Branco Vinhas Velhas, the remaining ancient vines of the original plantation of whites in 1903, and its descendant vines replanted some forty years ago that go in the Alentejo Branco, left us all in awe. I’ve had so many of these white wines from the 1980s and 1990s bottled before the sale of the vineyards to a sparkling wine company some two decades ago and they are epic and timeless, even if some of the bottles looked like they were stored on your grandparent’s mantle above the fireplace since release. They’re unbreakable and will seemingly live forever, but it would be nice to get more voices to speak up on behalf of this Portuguese history-in-a-bottle. Sticking with Portugal but digging into red cherries, the Arribas Wine Company Saroto Branco, an orange wine, has stolen some of the momentum of their 2021 Saroto Tinto, a wine that was flying out of our inventory before the bigger production of their orange wine stepped into the limelight. We took a bottle of the 2021 Saroto Tinto out in San Francisco and it was shining all day, like a baby Côte-Rôtie without the excessive sun, the newer oak, and the extraordinarily high pricing. The pricing here is also extraordinary, but it’s on the other side of the spectrum. It’s a steal for a wine crafted from old-vine, ancient cultivars almost lost to history but revived by a couple of brave young Portuguese winegrowers who adopted the region and are nursing it back to health. We have a good amount stocked, but I consider it a cherry because it’s hard to match it on authenticity, price and craft. Indeed, I understand a narrative of 40 different red and white grapes inside a red wine from a place no one has ever heard of is not easy. But this wine drinks gorgeously and will present an opportunity to learn and teach something new about the rising tide of Portuguese wines. Arribas Wine Company ancient vines in Portugal’s Trás-os-Montes As good as any elegant red in our portfolio, I’m in love with Vincent Bergeron’s no-added-sulfites Pinot Noir, “Un Rouge Chez les Blancs.” Today it tastes like my first tasting out of barrel: perfect. When it arrived our staff said that it was a little shut down. This didn’t surprise me. It has no added sulfites and after its long journey needed more time to resettle. Now it’s glorious purity. It has the nose of a Loire Valley Pinot Noir or Irancy but a gentler palate like a Côte d’Or Pinot Noir, minus the new wood. It’s an outstanding wine and will deliver for those who miss pre-2003 classic red Burgundy with a softer structure. I’d love to see what this humble winegrower could do with some Côte d’Or fruit. Vincent would be a global phenomenon if he were making wine on the Golden Slope! Over a couple of days in San Francisco, we took out the Demeter and organic certified 2019 & 2020 Sadon Huguet 14 “Expression Calcaire,” a Saint-Emilion Merlot and Cabernet Franc classified as “Vin de France” from an organic and biodynamic certified vineyard. Its makers, Bénédicte and Mathieu, are consulting enologists in Bordeaux (with Bénédicte most notably the former enologist for Margaux’s Rauzan-Ségla and Saint-Emilion’s Château Canon) that today specialize in organic and biodynamic farming. Sadon Huguet is their tiny “zero-zero” personal project (8-10 barrels per year), made without any additives. Both wines showed wonderfully and were full of flavor, everything we’ve been missing from Bordeaux’s over-crafted winemaking history. The 2019 is the most open-knit between the two, and the 2020 is a little more tied together with perhaps greater structure and closer to a classic Bordeaux, despite checking all the boxes of a natural wine. These are Bordeaux to get behind as they’re in a beautiful place now. To finish our ciliegie-picking session with Italy, we start with the single-site, high-altitude Giacomo Baraldo Sangioveses farmed from the slopes of Monte Cetona were a standout from my trip. These three terroir-dense and undeniably delicious 2020 beauties can’t be much more ready than they are now (though seemingly decades from any kind of downward trajectory). After tasting the three in Chicago at a tasting event, one well-respected and experienced taster went so far as to say that Giacomo’s style redefined Tuscan Sangiovese. As it is usually my favorite of the range, 2020 Caccialupi, his highest altitude site on galestro and limestone bedrock with red clay topsoil was gorgeously complex and fully fleshed out. A few hours in, it only continued to rise. Yes, I know every sommelier in our market isn’t running out the door to grab as much IGT Sangiovese as they can (unless it bears the name, Montevertine) but Giacomo’s set is also worth considering. After years of many harvests in the southern hemisphere and finally in Europe at Burgundy’s Domaine de Montille, he returned home to San Casciano dei Bagni and Monte Cetona, an undiscovered mountain in Tuscany just at the border of Lazio and Umbria with a geological story as complex as any (see his profile on the website to read a brief geological summary of the mountain) and well-equipped to produce top class wine. Once tasted, the mystery of why this small mountain wasn’t already famous for wine may be perplexing. The Baraldo family also has two fabulous restaurants (a breakfast & wine bar called Bar Centrale and their informal but classic and charming, Restaurante Daniele) with a great selection of Burgundy and Champagne wines along with Italian classics and other global greats curated by Giaccomo. They also have a hotel … Giacomo’s world is a must-visit, and like my first time there with my wife, we didn’t want to leave. (Photo lifted from wineanorak.com. Thanks for the stand-in photo, Jamie!) The trajectory of Dave Fletcher is in a steep incline. His Barbaresco crus are beginning to be traded in Italy’s secondary market at much higher prices than normal, and it’s understandable why: they’re fabulous. Despite being an Aussie making full-flavored, gorgeously crafted Nebbiolos, his are as Piemontese as any Piemontese out there. However, while Dave’s 2022 Dolcetto d’Alba and partial carbonic 2022 Barbera d’Alba are exceptional gateways into Italian wine culture, they are a little more fun than these often stoically framed, serious Italian classics. The combination of Dave’s desire to have as much pleasure in his wines as intellect, and the solar power of 2022, brings these two to a more rounded, generous personality than the typically sharper angles and stern structure of these two grapes. Given the pedigree of its vineyards, the 2021 Barbaresco “Recta Pete” is also stunning. Already touted as one of the greats, there’s a lot of buzz surrounding this vintage. And it’s easy to imagine the hype when faced with a taste of this wine harvested from the great crus, Roncaglie and Starderi, and a touch of the lesser-known, Ronche. We took it out in Los Angeles with the Dolcetto and Barbera, and three spots asked to pour it in their by-the-glass programs. It’s an unshakable Nebbiolo with tremendous energy and wow factor at a reasonable price. Vineyards in Calabria’s Ciró DOC With a portfolio full of wines I adore, Sergio Arcuri’s 2016 Ciró Riserva “Più Vite” has everything I want in a classically styled wine: authenticity, emotion, tradition, intention-filled and thoughtful craftsmanship, and a soft touch. Sergio puts these old-vine Gaglioppo grapes grown on calcareous clay next to the Ionian Sea through a couple of weeks of submerged-cap fermentation without any extraction movements before separating the free-run wine for Più Vite, while leaving the press wine for another bottling that’s only sold locally. Most who taste it for the first time are sure it’s raised in old botti when in reality, it’s refined exclusively in concrete for four years before another two in bottle before release—in a blind tasting, most also mistake it for a very old-school (though clean) style of Barolo or Barbaresco. 2016 is a perfect vintage to reinforce this ancient variety’s delicate nose of effusive sunbaked strawberry, rhubarb and orange peel fruit notes and soft, sun-scorched but living roses, licorice and tar, with bright acidity, balanced by tight tannins, and a light, crimson red and orange color; yes, so much like what we read of the great Barbaresco or Barolo wines made half a century ago, and with a deft touch. Over the last few years, I had Sergio ship cases of this wine to my home in Portugal, and now I have a few safely cellared to feel its magic every year in the coming decades. I’ve already shared at home a few bottles with some of the most talented growers we work with, and all finish their last taste in awe of the majestic purity of this unknown and nearly forgotten Calabrian wine. What’s more, Gaglioppo is a genetic sibling to two of Italy’s most compelling and talented grapes, Nerello Mascalese and Sangiovese, and also the charming Sicilian variety, Frappato. We still have a few cases and any Italian wine lover would be remiss to miss this one; it’s an experience-wine. As a side note, Sergio’s 2018 Più Vite arrives at the end of this year.

Alfredo Egia's Txakoli vineyard New Education Materials After doing tons of research, Spanish geologist Ivan Rodriguez and I finished our latest terroir map, as well as a short essay on some of the geological story between Navarra and Rioja, both of which are downloadable here. Also, on our website profile of Navarra producer, Aseginolaza & Leunda, there is a deeper exploration of how Navarra, even though it has an equally compelling terroir, began to fall behind Rioja more than a century ago, despite that both regions were once highly celebrated as one. It also compares Garnacha and Tempranillo, which you can read about here. New Arrivals Spain New Producer: Arizcuren, Rioja Oriental Good timing for the Tim Atkin report on Rioja! Atkin was very favorable to Javier’s wines and he was a regular in his extensive feature about producers filled with good information, and good wine! The report is a must read for anyone interested in what they should be looking for during this European wine region’s renaissance. Rioja is Spain’s most historically important red wine region, and, if you believe in the merit of terroir, you can’t ignore this one. Most of the red wine regions that dominated the fine wine marketplace over the last decades are now registering much higher alcohol contents. Côte d’Or is often beyond 14% (though many won’t change the labels to reflect their true numbers), and places like Barolo and Barbaresco regularly clock over 15% now, and also stay quiet about their numbers. Châteauneuf-du-Pape has been simply shameless in producing wines well beyond 15% for decades now because critics saw monsters with balance and gave monster scores (and gave most of us monster headaches). I remember discussing with Emmanuel Reynaud, from Château Rayas, in his cellar about low alcohol wines. He smiled and explained that while this trend is happening, he wonders if people know, or care, that his wines regularly hit 16%, but remain balanced. They do, and, yes, they are balanced, and that’s what should count, no? You just need to measure your pregame wines before you dive into the Rayas range because they’re worthy of the experience and are always better served slowly than a rapid glugging before moving on to your next bottle. Javier Arizcuren One of the longer-term assets (by climate change standards at least) in the face of our planet heating up in Rioja is its altitude and potential for planting and replanting in even higher zones. While lower-lying areas are bound to suffer more from the heat and spring frost, Rioja has many locations that sit well above 500m, and as high as 900m; in the past there were a lot of vineyards planted above 800m, especially in the southern mountain range of the Systema Ibérico, in Rioja’s Oriental subzone, where Javier Arizcuren grows his grapes at high altitudes.   Javier Arizcuren is one of Rioja’s most exciting new talents. He’s also a very well-known and highly respected architect, and his cellar in Logroño is just next door to his very successful, but modestly outfitted architectural firm. With the help of his father, Javier spends his “spare time” focused on rescuing high-altitude, ancient Garnacha and Mazuelo (the local name for Cariñena/Carignan) vineyards that managed to survive both phylloxera, and the trend of replacing these historic vines with the popular Tempranillo, an early-ripening grape that is only a small part of this region’s long history despite its dominance today. (Tempranillo is expected to have more trouble with climate change than Garnacha and Mazuelo due to its more precocious nature.) His experience with architecture and his insatiable curiosity (a trait many of us in the wine business can relate to) leads him down rabbit holes of possibilities with broad experimentation (a rarity in this often predictable and extremely conservative wine region), so that he may better understand the aesthetic of each site and build on its strengths using various fermentation and aging techniques, and different aging vessels, from concrete eggs, porcelain, amphora, and, of course, oak. During a dinner with him last month, we discussed architecture and interior design. He explained that spaces have a particular personality and that you must be open to collaborating with them as much as dictating what you want them to be. I can see that he approaches his wines with this same respect and openness. Arizcuren's 750m, pre-phylloxera Barranco del Prado vineyard He’s in his early fifties, and with just over ten harvests made in his cellar, there are few who show as much promise as Javier. He’s sharp and his eyes reveal a state of constant contemplation and openness, and he earnestly and humbly listens to everything said without interruption, like he’s downloading your words to his hard drive. I expect big things from him in the coming years because his back isn’t against the wall to make financial compromises to stay afloat due to the financial backing of his architectural career. While he’s an entirely self-made man from humble beginnings in a very competitive field (and is friends with many of the region’s legends for whom he’s helped rebuild houses and bodegas), it remains a true pleasure to have an exchange with him. Hanging around guys like Javier makes me realize how little I know about what I do compared to what he knows about his primary trade—he’s truly cut from the same cloth as our friends, Peter Veyder-Malberg, and Olivier Lamy.  Javier feels that the higher altitude sites in Rioja Oriental are a solid bet for the future of Rioja for many reasons: they are later to ripen and are also later to start the vegetative cycle (which helps to avoid spring frost); the Serra de Yerga mountains have a lot of limestone-rich terroirs in higher locations; he continues to find ancient, pre-phylloxera vines and nearly extinct varieties that made it past the regional homogenization phase with Tempranillo. The Tempranillo he grows is good, but the historical varieties here are Garnacha, and before that, Mazuelo. The 2019 Rioja “Monte Gatún” clocks 13% alcohol, a very modest figure considering the heat of this vintage; it’s generally the direction he wants to go with his wines, showcasing their balance with a duality of roundness and angularity. It’s a blend of Tempranillo with 15% Garnacha and 10% Graciano. It’s a straightforward, full-flavored Rioja with great freshness—an impressive starting block for Javier’s reds. I had a Graciano sample out of barrel with Javier just three weeks ago that was simply riveting. I’d never tasted Graciano on its own (and if I did, it wasn’t memorable enough!), and man, what promise that grape has! Graciano could be the grape of the future regarding climate change. It’s so insanely balanced for such high acidity, and that’s the kind of thing that gets me fired up. The only problem is that he made a single barrel each vintage… Come on Javi! What a tease! As mentioned, curiosity drives Javier, and his 2019 Sologarnacha Anfora—as you guessed it, only Garnacha and raised in amphora—needs to be tasted. I’ve never had Garnacha/Grenache in new oak barrels that have agreed with my sensibility with this grape (and most other wines, too), and have always enjoyed it out of more neutral aging vessels. Amphora Garnacha is another new and enjoyable experience for me. It’s aged for only five months to preserve just enough of the fruit aromas while allowing it to take on more earthy notes. It’s another lower alcohol Rioja wine at 13.5%. The 2017 Solomazuelo is, you guessed it again, made entirely of Mazuelo, the historic, historic grape of Rioja. Before phylloxera, Mazuelo was the dominant variety in Rioja, but when it came time to replant, Garnacha was favored (for what reason I don’t know), and since the 1980s, these two grapes were both ousted by the mass proliferation of Tempranillo in all places Rioja. Mazuelo has incredibly good balance considering the juicy wines it can create. It’s a solid transmitter of terroir (very important to us) and maintains great class and complexity for a fuller throttle wine. I think that many see our wine selections in the more racy, even austere overall profile, but it’s not always the case. We have long pursued wines with great acidity and also focused on regions that will manage the climate crisis well during our generation’s time on this earth. Mazuelo and Javier’s project is in line with ours: the future is always met better with the preparations of today. Javier is headed to the hills to prepare for the onslaught of climate change, and places where the very late ripening and high acid varieties of Mazuelo, Graciano and Garnacha are his guide. New Producer: Alfredo Egia, Txakoli “Above all, I want my wines to express sincerity. Aromatically, I like that they show more organic notes of a real nature associated with fermentation, never “synthetic” aromas. But that doesn't stop me from looking for the complexity that I think my terroir can achieve. I like that the vegetal rusticity of the Hondarrabi Zuri, Hondarrabi Zerratia and Izkiriota Txikia integrates perfectly with a more complex matrix framed by mineral notes and a more or less oxidative evolution without the use of sulfur, offering the wine a natural path to balance. “I consider acidity to be a natural part of our wines, being much more integrated when the wine is less intervened. But I think that wine is made above all to be drunk, ingested, and so it should feel good—a like-it feeling that the body is in tune with it, and that is easily digestible. I want them to leave a good memory, combining that part of a certain indomitable nature with the part of elegance to which we want to take it in its upbringing. But I would also like it to reflect the particularity of the vintage, both climatic and the eventual intention of the vineyard in its evolution as a being.” –Alfredo Egia Alfredo Egia The wines made in Txakoli by Alfredo Egia are radical for the region but not for the world, since he is committed to biodynamic farming and natural wine methods in one of the wine world’s most difficult places for this practice. And with the influence of Imanol Garay, the highly intense and fully committed Basque naturalist living in France whom he refers to as his mentor, he’s determined to harness the intense energy of Izkiriota Txikia (Petit Manseng) and Hondarrabi Zerratia (Petit Courbu) to give them a different expression, shape and energy, with a constant evolution upon opening that can last for days. These white wines grown on limestone marl walk the line with no added sulfur and I would suggest that they should be consumed earlier in their life to ensure captivity of one of their best moments. Whether they can age well without added sulfur or not remains to be seen, but since they have very low pH levels that usually sit below 3.20, and ta levels that can be well above 7.00, and are bone dry, they should be insulated for a while. Rebel Rebel (12.5% alc.) is the solo project of Alfredo, and Hegan Egin (13.5%) a joint venture between Alfredo, Imanol and their other partner, Gile Iturri. Imanol Garay My first interaction with Alfredo and his wines was almost exactly a year ago. The weather in Balmaseda was clear and crisp but icy cold. Thankfully there were moments in the sun that gave us a thaw, but in the shade it chilled us to the bone. My wife and I spent the morning with him in his vineyards and I returned again alone to taste the wines later in the day. I simply couldn’t get enough of Rebel Rebel and Hegan Egin as we worked our way through bottles of the 2018s and 2019s, while camped out in his vineyard and freezing our buns off. I’m convinced of Alfredo’s imminent stardom; his wines channel the spirit of the Loire Valley luminary, Richard Leroy, via Imanol Garay who spent time working with him prior to starting his own project, and now Imanol’s project with Alfredo. Rebel Rebel and Hegan Egin both start with the Leroy-esque, indescribable x-factor, reductive/mineral pungent aromatic thrust (but much more delicately than Leroy's) that somehow imparts textures into your nose and throat. They are both imbued with citrus notes and fresh, sweet greens and herbs of this verdant countryside, but after open for more than an hour they begin to grow apart in style with Rebel Rebel remaining more strict and Hegan Egin softening and broadening its mouthfeel and fleshiness. 2019 Rebel Rebel is a blend of 80% Hondarrabi Zerratia and 20% Izkiriota Txikia, while the 2019 Hegan Egin is 50% Hondarrabi Zerratia and 50% Izkiriota Txikia. Both shouldn’t be missed, but these wines have the familiar story of extremely low production. There were only 360 bottles of Rebel Rebel imported, and 120 bottles of Hegan Egin for the entire country. Hopefully more in the next vintage! Cume do Avia Suffice it to say, 2020 was a painful harvest for many European winegrowers. The mildew pressure was so high through most of the year leading up to harvest that there were tremendous losses. Cume do Avia continues their commitment to organic grape production, which they’ve done since the very beginning, but the losses in 2020 were more than 70%, a staggering and demoralizing number that shook their belief in the idea that organic farming is a financially sustainable philosophy in this part of the wine world where more than seventy inches of rainfall each year is the average and the mildew pressure knows few European equals outside of Galicia. I continue to do my best to encourage them to keep their heads up, but I know it’s hard. The good news is that what they did pull off the vines was in good health and, despite the challenges, they have topped their previous efforts with the four different wines bottled this year.  Cume do Avia vineyards Cume do Avia’s 2020 Colleita 8 Branco has every white grape they harvested this year, as there are no single-varietal white wine bottlings due to the massive losses. 2020 was a cold year in general for the region which plays very well into the overall style of their white wines. This year’s version is as charming and serious as ever and warrants pursuit for those of you who have already fallen for their white wines over the last two years.  Arraiano Tinto comes from grapes the Cume clan help to farm with some of their relatives near their estate vineyards. It is also another step up from last year’s, if not with a little more cut to it while maintaining its upfront appeal, and Colleita 8 Tinto must be the best to date. Granted, I’ve said that every year since we’ve imported their wines, but it’s always true… The 2020 version (No. 8) has everything in it, except about sixty cases worth of Brancellao they bottled separately. It still has a load of their Brancellao, all of their Caiño Longo, Sousón, and Ferrol, and all the other micro-bits of whatever other varieties they have among the fifteen or so planted on their small patch of extremely geologically diverse bedrock and dirt. Normally there are two other single-varietal wines (Caíño Longo and Sousón), and their Dos Canotos Tinto, a blend of all the best parts into one wine. This year, it’s all there in Colleita 8, and that makes it one heck of a wine for its price. The 2020 Brancellao, when young, was the best to date I tasted in barrel. Aromatically striking, it had even more x-factor than the previous years. Materials were a problem to get this year in time for bottling—a challenge that started across Europe in 2021 and remains a problem. They bottled a few months later than usual, but perhaps it will serve the wine well by softening its approach. It shows a little more earth than sky this year (maybe that’s the x-factor?) and exhibits a broader range of nuances than the previous years. This grape is special and this vintage shows its capacity for diversity while maintaining its quality.  Portugal Constantino Ramos While you might never see a picture on the cover of Wine Spectator of a Vinho Verde micro-producer who makes 11% alcohol reds with razor-sharp edges and deeply earthy notes, Constantino Ramos, one of my great friends since we moved to Portugal, was just voted one of the four Enólogo Revelação do Ano (the winemaker revelation of the year) by Revista de Vinhos, an important Portuguese wine publication. Constantino is hitting the road with me and my team a little bit this year to explore more wine regions outside of his region, Monção e Melgaço. Already well traveled after working a harvest in Chile some years ago for the DeMartino family, he’s always interested to learn and experience new things and made numerous visits all over Europe to some serious addresses with his former boss and continuing mentor, Anselmo Mendes; Constantino went totally solo at the beginning of this year with own projects. He’s also crazy in love with Nebbiolo, which is one of the many reasons we get along so well—he has taken over as my Nebbiolo drinking buddy! His new release of 2020 Zafirah is, like last year, in short supply. Best served slightly chilled, it’s another one of those northern Iberian reds that feels as much like a white as it does a red, except its tannin and dry extract. It’s a blend of ancient vines at very high altitudes grown exclusively on granite bedrock and topsoil from many micro-parcels of local, indigenous grapes, like Brancelho (Brancellao), Borraçal (Caíño), Espadeiro, Vinhão (Sousón), and Pedral.  Constantino Ramos While it’s hard to sometimes connect wine regions using maps of specific countries because they seem to end at the borders, there are many that are just across the river from one another in Spain and Portugal, but between other countries there are often large separations of land around national borders. Here, these vineyards are within sight of the Rías Baixas subregion, Contado de Tea, and only less than twenty miles south, as the crow flies, from Ribeiro, the center of one of Spain’s most historic wine regions. Each of these regions share these grape varieties, and Zafirah is more closely related to Galician than to Portuguese reds. I have come to understand that in Portugal many of the young winegrowers look up to Constantino and greatly appreciate his Zafirah red. It’s stylistically by itself within his region. Most of the other reds here in Vinho Verde are dark and meaty (which I also love), but are made primarily with Sousón, a beast of a red, known here as Vinhão. France Thierry Richoux Richoux Thierry Richoux makes it impossible for me, no matter how distraught I am at certain times with certain French winegrowers, or nasty French drivers riding my butt like we’re in an unwanted game of Super Mario Cart, to make any generalizations often made about the French (which is done mostly by reductive people who’ve been rubbed the wrong way by them). I know no kinder, gentler and earnest man in the world than Thierry Richoux. I adore him, and sometimes I think this is mutual. Every time I talk about, write about, think about, and finally drink wines from the Richoux family, I get excited. I have cellared a ton of them, but they are still not drunk without a proper special occasion. Thierry and his boys, Gavin and Félix, are in a league of their own in Irancy, a small, steep amphitheater that opens toward the west and is plastered with Pinot Noir grapevines grown on limestone and clay (the same basic soil type as Chablis, but not precisely a mirror of it), garnished with cherry trees. In the center sits one of France’s most ornate, ancient villages, with its narrow, adjoined, grayish-white limestone houses and sagging lichen-filled, dark orange roofs. Only two of his wines have finally arrived, and, believe it or not, both were ordered last summer! Others will be on their way this summer, including the magical 2016 Veaupessiot!  Facing toward the east end of Irancy's amphitheater with the Irancy town center in view A very special arrival indeed is Richoux’s 2012 Irancy “Ode à Odette”. I’ve tasted this wine for years during its three-year élevage in new, 600l (demi-muids) French oak barrels before it was bottled and released last year. This is a once-in-a-lifetime bottling; it sounds absolutely crazy to be saying, right now, “I think the next one is scheduled to be the upcoming 2112 vintage.” At the time of the 2012 harvest, it had been a hundred years since Thierry Richoux’s grandmother, Odette, was born. She used to go to a particular parcel on the far northeastern corner of the amphitheater and work it by herself; can you imagine the meditative work during the years before iPhones or headphones and even battery-operated radios? I don’t even think I’m capable of that anymore without driving myself completely mad with too much inner monologue… Time to dedicate some time to mediate? Yeah, probably… This is the parcel Thierry has chosen for this very special wine. Through the moments of tasting in barrel, which I am sure I did at least six times, it always had a fabulous day, and this is what makes it so promising! While it’s young, at only ten years old, the new oak nuances are present but with some time open they get swallowed by the wine and—as embellishing as it sounds—a high-altitude, Vosne-Romanée-style Burgundy emerges. I know that sounds far-fetched, all things considered, but it carries that noble, voluptuous, clean and pure red fruit of those higher Vosne sites on rockier soil that stare down at some of the world’s most precious vineyards. Maybe it’s more of an emotional similarity than a directly comparable one, nevertheless I’m extraordinarily pleased that you will have an opportunity to snag a bottle, or two, of this wine. We imported just over three hundred bottles. Richoux’s Crémant de Bourgogne is here now too. This has been a fan favorite since the first Richoux wines we imported ten years ago (man, has it been that long?) and we finally procured a good load of it. In the past we always needed to order well in advance because they mostly bottle for export markets by request. Made entirely of Pinot Noir, it’s a charmer, and if tasted blind you’d swear it was pink. There’s an anxious line of Richoux disciples queued up for this one, so let us know if you’re interested before it all gets snatched up.  Chablis 1er Cru Vaillons on the right of the central road, Chablis Village vineyards to the left going up the hill and 1er Cru Montmains on the far left as the hill once again slopes down toward the south. Reload: 2019 Jean Collet Chablis We have another anticipated load from the family who introduced me to Thierry Richoux some years ago. The 2019 Collet 1er Crus are officially reloaded and ready to begin to circulate again. We have more of the Vieille Vignes, and the premier crus, Montmains, Vaillons, Forets, Mont de Milieu, Montée de Tonnerre, and Butteaux. It sure is hard to pick a favorite between them, but I’ve listed them in order from the most minerally to the most corpulent, with those in the center perhaps a tradeoff between these two particular characteristics. Now you only have to decide what shade you want/need over the next months. Just don’t forget that summer is coming soon, and it is tragic when there’s a shortage of Chablis during high Chablis-drinking season. La Madone, Fleurie Justin Dutraive’s 2020s Justin Dutraive sure is making notable strides in his style. I think we all can acknowledge how difficult it’s been in Beaujolais to manage every vintage since 2015, where every year was a different variation of a mess. 2020 was no different. The weather was nuts, vacillating between intense heat and dryness, to cold and wet, then to monster heat and drought conditions. Well, at least the grape here is Gamay, one of the wine world’s jack-of-all-trades reds. Its versatility is enormous and almost unparalleled in the red grape world (in white, there are few that can match the versatility of Chenin Blanc and Riesling whose only restrictions are that they can’t be red!)… Gamay can take a solid knock to the face during the growing season and still smile through the glass at you. Justin managed very well this year and his overall style is much more elevated and nuanced than before. In 2019, there’s a nice uptick in overall quality and style, with a notable departure from denim and toward more lace. During my visit last summer, I was surprised, and openly admitted to the Dutraives, to the pride of his dad, Jean-Louis, that within the context of all the 2020 Dutraive family wines during that day I tasted (drank) with them, Justin’s were my favorites, and that’s never happened before between these two Dutraive ranges. I’m sure that since then, the Grand’Cour wine have, at the very least, stepped up. During the second to last week of February (just as I started to write this newsletter), Justin sent me a note that our quantities of the 2021 wines are severely cut due to another year of tremendous losses. 2021 was the opposite of 2020, except the similarly low yields. It was a cold and dismal, mildew heaven that required an intense triage. 2020 is, in my opinion, Justin’s best year so far by a pretty good length. The three that are arriving are his Beaujolais-Villages “Les Bulands”, a wine that will not exist in 2021 because the entire harvest was lost. These vines are on a flat area with deep soils—prone to frost and greater mildew pressure, as it was in 2021, but ideal for the hot years, like 2020. Justin’s Beaujolais-Villages “Les Tours” on pure granite rock with almost no topsoil stands in opposition to Les Bulands. Les Tours is the kind of ankle-twisting vineyard where you must really watch your step because the granite bedrock outcrops here and there, camouflaged by shards of granite rocks scattered about. His Fleurie “La Madone” is on the famously steep hill below the chapel, La Madone, and is sundrenched and on spare soils. La Madone quantities are miniscule, so there won’t be much to go around. Italy Riecine The new releases of the top wines from Riecine have landed. I know 2016 is a hard follow, but every vintage has its merit and 2018 and 2017 are no exception. Like most of Europe (including Piedmont and Burgundy), 2017 was warmer around harvest and made for extremely clean picking. 2018 was also warm, but maybe a little readier in their youth than the 2017s? 2017 was a perfect year for La Gioia given this wine’s typical lead of a full red fruit spectrum that buoyed on its deep, earthy core. La Gioia is one of Tuscany’s seminal IGT successes with its inaugural 1982 vintage, designated as a “Vino da Tavola di Toscana.” While past iterations had 15% Merlot added to them, today they are composed entirely of Sangiovese since 2006 and is designed in the cellar for the long haul. Aged for thirty months in a mixture of new, second and third year 500-liter French oak barrels, it’s clearly not the same type of wine as any of Riecine’s wines because it’s notably more flamboyant and unapologetically full, decadent and loaded with flavor.  Continuing with Riecine’s less traditionally-styled wines is the Gambero Rosso “Tres Bicchieri” winner, 2018 Riecine di Riecine, a pure Sangiovese that transcends the appellation as a singular expression of the grape in the Chianti hills. It can test one’s notions of high-end, blue chip European wines—particularly those from Burgundy (minus all the new oak), and my first taste of the 2013 vintage was perplexing because the wine evoked the feeling of high-altitude red Burgundy from a shallow and rocky limestone and clay topsoil on limestone bedrock. It was supple but finely delineated with high-tension fruit, earth, mineral impressions and a sappy interior. Its beguiling aromas were delicate but effusive, and very Rousseau-esque, in a higher-altitude-sort-of-way (think Rouchottes, without the bludgeon of new oak upon first pulling the cork from that wiry but full beauty of the Côte d’Or). While similar to the Côte d’Or in some ways, this wine is grown at a much higher altitude of 450-500 meters—about 200 to 250 meters higher than most of the Côte d’Or’s grandest sites. To preserve the wine’s purity, and in opposition to La Gioia, it’s raised exclusively in concrete egg vats for three years, which serves this wine well; not all wines of pedigree can thrive so well raised solely in this neutral aging vessel. The vines planted in the early 1970s further its suppleness and complexity and concentrate its fresh red fruit characteristics. The 2018 is juicy and lip-smacking good, and I was surprised when we hit the bottom of a bottle over dinner long before the dinner was done.  After jumping from one opposing style to the next, we find ourselves with Riecine’s traditionally made, savory-over-fruity, 2018 Chianti Classico Riserva. It’s the third wine in a line of Riecine’s top-flight range (though soon there will be a fourth in the form of the new Chianti Classico classification, Gran Selezione) and clearly demonstrates the skill and versatility of Riecine’s wine director, Alessandro Campatelli. Harvested from vines ranging between the ages of twenty-five and forty years old, the wines are aged for twenty months in large, old oak barrels. With old vines grown on limestone and clay, this terroir imparts more roundness and a fuller mouthfeel than Riecine’s starting block Chianti Classico. At a tasting in Los Angeles with the most discerning palates from many of the city’s top Italian restaurant sommeliers and wine buyers, the merits of this wine, due to its more classical and expected style for a Riserva, were immediately evident and it was a true highlight with the more traditionally-minded Italian wine buyers. Indeed, it will age well in the cellar, but it can also be enjoyed early; just give it a little air before diving in and remember that it’s best drunk with the right meal—just like every traditionally-made Chianti Classico. Inside Source Blog Post A Musing Faced with some recently arrived samples from a new project in Rioja with a lot of buzz around them, and so many thoughts swirling in my head, I began to write to encourage myself to be open to what sits in front of me. Countless times in my wine career (and my life), including the moment minutes ago that I began to cut the foils on these samples, I’ve come face to face with my own ignorance, and sometimes narrow mind, especially when it comes to wine. I confront myself and my predispositions more now than any other time in my life, and I’m sure (and hope) it’s only going to become more frequent. Change can be good, and many good things can pass by if we refuse to look outside our box. I took on the French language about twelve years ago after dabbling in school and many years of trying to memorize phrasebook words and sentences on flights to French wine country. I understood the translations but not the actual roots of the words or grammatical structure, so any conversation beyond ordering food and securing lodging was impossible. Then, a few years ago, I focused on Italian during our short-lived stay in Campania. Once my wife and I discovered that Italy wasn’t our spot for the long haul, we went to Portugal. Portuguese has been brutal for me; it may as well be Martian. I think the seemingly insurmountable speed bump is a result of the void of Portuguese culture in the States compared to other European cultural influences. Spanish is my focus now, and I’m not surprised that it’s improving my Portuguese. It’s the easiest language I’ve studied, and it even reinforces what other foreign words still float in the dim lightbulb of my brain.  New styles and ideas with wine—especially twenty-five years in—are sometimes hard; as with the benefits of cultural immersion to learn a language, they sometimes have to be a little forced at first in order for any progress to be made. Our wine community can be brutally critical, especially when one is thought to be stuck in the style of wine they are open to, and I think you can tell when you run across someone who is set in their ways because the excitement is gone; the love lost. As I move forward in this wine life, I am as equally distraught by the enormity of it all, as much as I am excited and satisfied with where my path has led me and the things ahead that seem mostly clear.  Iberian wine appeared on my radar in 2013 when an old friend and quasi-mentor, the late Christopher Robles, recommended what was our single producer in Portugal for many years, Quinta do Ameal. These days I am tackling many new wine regions (for me) that seemed completely foreign in my recent past. In my early years when I had more energy to burn and healed faster, I had no problem sorting out big-hitter Spanish wine, like Priorat or Ribera del Duero. My most recent “old interests” remain, but the regions I fell deepest in love with are now bearing less resemblance to what they were with the stage of climate change even just a decade ago. Today it’s clearly advancing quicker, and it’s already worrisome that some wines are almost unrecognizable, not necessarily in the entirety of a terroir’s expression, but in their nuances developed through longer, cooler seasons, resulting in perhaps fresher fruits and more subtle things, with less concentration, and noticeably less alcohol.  I feel, at the very minimum, obliged to remain open because I see the burned-in impressions of the world’s historical regions slowly fading away from my palate memory: the taste of young, vibrant new vintages from blue chip regions and the excitement about their potential with longer cellar aging. In the past, wines from the most celebrated regions were designed for the longer game from the start, not to be sold and prematurely consumed during their formative years when the complexities in a more subtle form would take center stage. I love low alcohol wines, crunchy fruit and zippy acidity; not only do they keep my mouth fresh, they keep my mind wound up, my energy and enthusiasm zooming and my heart pounding. They’re more invigorating, vibrating, goosebumping, and exciting, no? Bigger hitters are now saved for a once-in-a-while night, and most of the time Nebbiolo is the lead contender for my liver’s high-content alcohol allocation, and my I-know-but-I-don’t-care-if-I-feel-it-the-next-morning monthly limit. Andrea mostly opts out now when the label reads more than 13.5%. Like me, she likes to drink wine and doesn’t want to do it so sparingly. Now it’s a choice between two glasses of 12% or less, or a single glass of 13.5% or higher, for her. Sadly, I can hardly even get past the first glass of some of my old favorites that now clock in (and clock you) at a walloping 15.5-16.5%, when they used to be 13.5-14, tops; ok, maybe 14.5—but rarely! There is one producer I won’t mention by name (whose initials, M.G., may offer a small clue) who is the greatest recent loss for me in this way, and their older Nebbiolo-based wines remain in my private stash. While lamenting the absence of my in-home, Nebbiolo drinking companion, I’ve come to realize that there may be a third glass inside an epic Barolo or Barbaresco that I wouldn’t have gotten in the past!  I sure as hell won’t kick Vin Jaune off my list of annual needs, and many of you won’t either. But there’s a time and place for every wine and going bigger has become more of a special occasion because at forty-five (still young!), I can’t do 14% every night anymore. Simply from a sustainable perspective—if I want to continue to enjoy wine everyday—it must be lower alcohol on average, especially on weekdays. Of course, if they are big, they must also be balanced to enjoy—not so interested in big, wobbly wine caricatures. We all have different calibrations, sensitivities and interests when it comes to our own definition of balance. Indeed, one size or style does not fit all. To find balance within low levels on the alcohol spectrum today is just as hard for those on the opposite end. We import many wines that hover around 10.5-12% alcohol that are often too intense for some but exciting and riveting for others like myself who aren’t deterred by vibrating acidity and freshness. (At the moment I’m actually drinking my daily quota of lemon water—a new experimental treatment for my skin challenges.) The same is true for the higher alcohol wines. If one decides to pick earlier in the season on the account of high alcohol concerns, to find balance there needs to be adjustments not only in the cellar work, but also with anticipation in the fields. All the world’s historical benchmark wine regions—with very few exceptions—are beginning to tip the scale too far in the wrong direction, and the growers are obviously not happy about it and are scrambling for answers. I imagine they feel stuck in a flavor/phenolic/balance calibration en masse by their neighbors and their region that makes it hard to make necessary concessions in favor of less alcohol and ripeness, while others on the opposite side of the spectrum have also gone too far—sounds like today’s politics! Winegrowers are doing their best to adapt quickly, but are struggling to keep pace with climate change.  I often contemplate whether or not traditionally famous wine regions will become a generational thing for the elders of the wine community that still hold tight to what used to be instead of a pivoting toward a sort of philosophical shift in greater favor to open-mindedness and continued learning and the acceptance of the ongoing and rapid evolution of our global winescape. But yesterday’s heroes should not be forgotten (or chastised by the alcohol police!) as they do their best to navigate solutions that can make the difference for their survival. Should we begin to accept (and mourn) that our favorites from Burgundy, Barolo, Barbaresco, Wachau, Mosel, and other places will never again be exactly like they were just ten years ago? Does this sound like climate change doom and gloom? Maybe… But I’m trying to look at what is happening in a more positive light, and as an importer looking for my own necessary solutions for the future. What we’re seeing is newly emerging talents born into historically (at least in the last generations) second-rate regions (considered so mostly due to climatic limitations and/or locations far from big local markets and easy transport systems) who now have the potential to move into the top tiers of quality when in the past it only happened once every twenty years, not with enough frequency to gather attention and momentum. Another of climate change’s positive collateral effects is that it shakes up the system by opening opportunities for historical growers in colder regions who fought hard for generations to simply achieve ripeness with balance. Our new organic and biodynamic Champagne grower, Elise Dechannes, says that climate change makes it much easier for her and her neighbors to fully commit to these methods, when in the past there were much greater consequences for people using her practices. While climate change is indeed very disturbing and a real threat to humanity, today’s wine world seems more exciting than ever. As I sink my teeth into Rioja and some other Spanish regions with higher alcohol levels than I usually gravitate toward, I’ve been surprised to find out that they may have a brighter future than many other historical high quality wine regions. Since we posted the new terroir map on Rioja and Navarra, solicitations from Rioja producers have poured in. There are many out there who want to break into the US market, and the Spanish wine critics are certainly rolling out some hefty (and sometimes overly generous scores) to get the region out of second gear. Once the growers figure out and accept what the upper tier of the fine wine market wants today, these areas will come alive with a clearer sense of what to do, and they may stir some serious waves. Today, there are only a few mostly small-scale producers who are changing the game in some of these areas, but their success will pave the way for those who are worried that they might be stepping out of line; I’ve heard many stories about members of the new generation making almost unnoticeable changes in family cellars, on the down-low, so as not to upset their families, those who did the groundwork for them to have the opportunities they have today. Obviously, I’m excited about these wine regions and the growers who want to reach beyond the historically self-imposed confines that many believe exist.  Two hours later and a mess of red wine on my table… I don’t know how Tim Atkin does what he does. I certainly couldn’t. In his report, (along with the fantastic section, “The Ten Things you Need to Know About Rioja 2022”), there are 132 pages of tasting notes with about six to eight wines reviewed on each page, mostly with in-depth notes—not quite John Gilman-level depth, but still thorough. Of the wines I just tasted, three of them were awarded 94, 95 and 96 points, and Atkin’s notes are detailed and enthusiastic about them all. The wines are clearly well made, though I think they’re tailored for a different generation than my own. The extraction is gentle, but the ripeness is still bordering on too much. All of them have a blockade of that slightly pungent reduction/new oak characteristic—that too many days-old, raw, oxidized ground-beef-in-butcher-paper smell, and the burdensome oak tannin to match. The best scenario for me is to write to the producer to have them give me the “hard news” that they’ve already found a new importer—letting me off the hook easily… Indeed, Rioja as a general region has a long way to go (at least for my taste in wine), but when it gets there, it’s going to be exciting. The region has too much going for it to prevent its advancement, even in the face of climate change.

(Download complete pdf here) Domaine Les Infiltrés old-vine Chenin Blanc, Saumur Puy-Notre-Dame, May 2024 Gen Z already at the helm of a Barolo cantina? Impossible, you say? Nope! Born in 1997, the first year of Z, the inspirational Daniele Marengo from Mauro Marengo, and Gino Della Porto, the soul-surfing, super-chill Gen X visionary from the establishment-rocking Nizza Monferrato, Sette, are about to invade California over the next two weeks. These two long-time chums will be a two-person road show, with Daniele flaunting his triumphant 2019 Barolos (crafted at a jaw-dropping 22-24 years old!), and Gino, Sette’s revelatory range after the biodynamic conversion six years ago of their lucky-strike purchase of old vines on a perfectly situated hill in Nizza Monferrato. The Barolo and Monferrato reboot is here, and these two are quietly at the front of the charge. One producer I’m excited about this month comes from the humble and nearly forgotten Loire Valley appellation, Bourgueil. Operated for the last few decades by François Delaunay after his father handed him the reigns, the now organic (certified in 2013) Domaine de la Lande maintains spectacularly priced wines that simply overdeliver with an extremely classic sensibility. Full of flavor, François’ wines rewind the clock to my first encounters with Cabernet Franc, which, almost thirty years ago, was an esoteric variety in the States thought best blended rather than as a monologue performer. Cabernet Franc from Chinon, Bourgeuil, Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, Saumur and Saumur-Champigny remain some of the world’s best deals for legitimately great wines. Even the average ones are higher than the average from most famous appellations. The most common Loire Valley Cabernet Franc can age well, if not more consistently than most Burgundies two or three times the price. And while the wine world continues to flirt with new styles in each area and decade-long trends, some, like François, have wedded themselves to traditionally and simply made wines. With the first sample bottles I received, I knew by the aromas alone—rustic but clean, deep, balanced between darkness and light—that they were for me. I admit, I’m an aroma hound first, texture second. My first visit with François this last December brought my enthusiasm to new heights, and my second only three weeks ago was reassurance that it wasn’t a fluke. My first cellar tasting last December was on point, followed by a quick vineyard tour of the well-tended and thriving grounds, still green even in December. But it was in the ancient tuffeau cave with old bottles that I understood the true quality of this domaine and was reminded of the breed of Bourgueil. François (but he’s usually much more smiley than this picture) At the top of the slope near the forest, we pushed through thick bushes, ducking under an overgrown tree and into their hidden cave. Entombed in the milky white tuffeau cavern were vintages as old as François, with bats quietly sleeping before slowly unraveling like old wines as they stretched before flight. As with many of us, one of my greatest pleasures is old wine that’s still sound. Well-aged wine is the final frontier of wine appreciation, a test of pedigree and clairvoyance (and sometimes vindication) of its maker. Most “taste” old and celebrated wines with too many people for a single bottle, which works as an academic snapshot, or often to fluff their experiential inventory to be later embellished in recounting, as though a taste is enough to know a wine. “Tasting” a great bottle is wasting a great bottle. Great wines reveal their merit when drunk over enough time—at least until the conversation starts to go downhill. The worst tastes of a great wine are the first, or the mud in the bottom. It’s everything in between over a time where one really gets to know a wine’s true character and breed. I’ve long collected wine to age. In the late 1990s, I worked at Restaurant Oceana in Arizona, with its chef, Ercolino Crugnale. He moved there from California with an extensive collection of mostly California wines he intended to put on his wine list, only to find out that he’d have to sell them to a distributor first and have them sell them back to keep things legal. He decided to drink them all instead. He was, without a doubt, the most generous restaurant owner I’d ever worked for. He had all the California greats from the 1970s-1990s, the highlights for me being Ridge and especially Williams Selyem. His pleasure was sharing as much as drinking the wines themselves. And we definitely didn’t taste. We drank. And that’s when I fell in love with old wine. Williams Selyem was the first great influence after flirting with the world of cheaper wines—the price point I could afford to drink. I was fortunate to spend a lot of dinners in Santa Barbara and Sonoma with Burt Williams, from Williams Selyem, during his last five years when he brought out mostly magnums because he’d run out of 750s. Darn. In the mid-nineties, young and ambitiously curious wine freaks like me weren’t easily allowed into the exclusive “wine club.” I was dismissed regularly by older wine professionals who guarded wine knowledge like gatekeepers, bestowing to the worthy (but moreso those who kissed the ass the most), or to the guests they schmoosed. Never one to kiss the ring (and not so humble about it either) I walked my own path until I met Ercolino. The other most generous boss I ever had was The Ojai Vineyard’s, Adam Tolmach, with whom I worked in the cellar for five seasons and remain good friends. There are few wine experiences like old wines crafted by generations past that then go unmoved in silence and darkness for decades deep inside the cold, damp earth. It’s incredible to think that some of the wines that had been guarded perfectly for decades before François opened them were destined for my glass that first day I visited Domaine de la Lande. It’s humbling, and a special privilege that I can’t say I felt I deserved. Yet, I could cite countless examples of having experienced that sort of kindness and hospitality in the wine world. François started with the younger wines, 2010 first, then we blind-tasted another half dozen that went back to the early 1980s. As he ripped corks from the bottles between his knees, gave his glass a sniff, smiled with the joy of sharing, and poured, everything was top-notch. The “great vintages” were as expected and the overlooked ones were even better; there are so many special wines in that cellar, and the vintage was inconsequential for the quality. Like all great reds of Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Rhône, they are aging gracefully with similar results and fewer differences beyond color and structure, despite big differences in terroir and variety. Though undoubtedly Loire Valley Cabernet Franc, many of François’ wines would stand their ground next to other aged greats from more celebrated regions. No wine showed a hint (at least in the first ten minutes) that they were on the other side of their peak. The “great” years were fuller and showed the ripeness of their seasons, and the fineness of the lightest years was magnified and bright. It was freezing. I was hungry. But I didn’t want to leave. Back in Portugal, I messaged François about possibly buying some old wines—a mixed case or two, I begged … I could see François’ lean, rosy high cheeks pressed up as he smiled and typed a mile-long list of options with every vintage back to 1982 that he sent me a few days later. The list was thorough, the prices jaw-dropping—a mere $0.50-$0.65 for every year aged in the cellar; top years, $1.10 for every year. I scoured the web for vintage charts but came up short on information for Bourgueil. I asked for guidance, which François gave. I proposed four mixed cases off his list: some very old that I would try immediately and other young ones (2005-2015) that I’d cellar longer. So far, I’ve pulled the cork on about ten bottles (1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005–and there may be a couple I’ve forgotten), and each has been glorious. Most I shared with our Portuguese grower and great friend, Constantino Ramos, who is also now obsessed with them. The only confusing moment is just after the cork is pulled. No bottles had been capsuled until François’ family readied them for me; they’d all been left exposed to that ancient cellar, some for as many as four decades. The top of each cork was moldy and smelled like the deepest corner of the cellar and even a little TCA, quite rotten. But none of the wines were corked! The bottles only needed their lips and inside the neck cleaned, where the cork was in contact. Bourgueil has long been overshadowed by Chinon, at least in the US market–maybe because it’s easier to pronounce? With all those vowels, Bourgeuil is tough to get right! Bourgueil and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil (SNdB) are on a contiguous slope on the north side of the Loire River. Chinon is more topographically diverse and mostly sandwiched between two rivers (the other being the Vienne), like Montlouis-sur-Loire’s vineyards are between the Loire and Cher. Perhaps Bourgueil is viewed as more rustic than the typical Chinon. Perhaps a matter of more gravelly and sandy sites in Chinon? Without a classification system in place, location is an important variable. The pedigree of each vineyard bearing this appellation name can be quite different from the next. There are wines for easy drinking and others far more serious. Looking closely at a Google Earth image, or an appellation map, the land near the Loire River has fewer vineyards than other crops. Bourgueil is split in two by the small creek, Le Changeon, and from a 20,000-foot view, along with the SNdB, the contiguous slope is like the Côte d’Or and many Champagne areas, only facing south and southwest. Many of Burgundy and Champagne’s top spots favor more eastern expositions. Given its abundance of pyrazines, Cabernet Franc historically required more late afternoon sun, so more south/southwest positions. These days, it ripens quite easily regardless. The lower slopes of Bourgeuil and SNdB are generally sandier, and those on the riverbank have more unsorted alluvial sand, silt, clay, and gravel. About 4km north of the Loire River toward the forest, a gentle uptick begins from 40m, peaking around 90m. The top sites for wines of pedigree sit higher on the slope, close to the forests, where roots make contact with more of the tuffeau limestone bedrock and calcareous clay. François’ family vines begin just north of the village on the western end of Bourgueil at about 50m with more clay than sand and move upslope with the oldest vines destined for the “Prestige” bottling. Bourgueil Burgundy’s Côte d’Or and Champagne’s Côte des Blancs In short, the Bourgueil comes from six hectares planted between 1965 and 2010 at 50-60m facing south on a gentle hill of tuffeau limestone bedrock with a shallow siliceous clay topsoil. This is the easier-going wine, fresh, beautiful, and lifted with a substantial follow-through. It’s a great wine that will improve your day when you need a fair-priced, terroir-laced organic wine that doesn’t make you work too hard to find its cultural and regional stamp. Lucky for you, we were able to buy both the 2015 and 2017 Bourgueil “Prestige.” This is their superstar wine from two excellent and balanced vintages (from the same vineyards those old wines that I bought from François grew and then aged so long in the cellar). They are also their current releases—it’s nice to have some age built into a wine program! Prestige is more profound and substantial than the appellation wine. It’s equally classic in style, and just as fun to drink, but in a heavier weight class (though more a tight-lipped-but-fluttering Ali than a bruising Tyson) flowing with waves of complexity. Also facing south on a gentle hill of tuffeau limestone bedrock with deep calcareous clay topsoil at around 70m, this two-hectare plot was planted between 1930 and 1964. These old vines give it its torque and the organic culture for more than two decades now, its vivacity. The 2015 is for those who want more meat on the bone, while the 2017 is only a little more lifted and still quite substantial. Next time someone says they’re the winemaker, ask to see their hands! All François’ Bourgeuil wines are made in a very straightforward manner. They’re fully destemmed and fermented/macerated for around two to three weeks with one punch-down and one daily pump-over. Then they’re aged 18 months in old 5000 L French oak foudre and steel, with light filtration but no fining. Speaking of nice guys making wine in a similarly straightforward way as François Delunay, Rodolphe Demougeot takes his humble (by Côte d’Or standards) scatterings around Beaune, Pommard, and Meursault to peak performance for their classification—a subjective hierarchy in the face of climate change since we don’t all see eye to eye in our preferences. Unless someone else is paying the tab I’ll often take a young, higher altitude premier cru above a grand cru. Demougeot’s vineyards are either high or low, with hardly anything mid-slope: two premier crus, Pommard Charmots and Savigny-les-Beaune Les Peuillets, among eighteen different bottlings, no grand crus. It’s not Mercurey-level humble among the hierarchy of Burgundy areas, but it is modest considering his surroundings overlooking Pommard’s top Epenots premier crus on the north hill, paces below and above Meursault’s top premier crus and in the vast expanse of Beaune, with its swarm of négociants and tainted reputation. He does the best with what he’s got, and his best are charming and finely tuned. I’m a fan because, like I always say, I love honesty and less hand in the wines. As mentioned in a previous newsletter, when traveling in Burgundy with the Austrian luminary, Peter Veyder-Malberg, Rudy’s wines topped his list. Purity and sophisticated simplicity won him over, and we visited a lot of excellent makers. Yes, it was hot. But … How about some perspective without the spin? It wasn’t exactly hot like other hot years. There were so many heat waves in the spring, summer and fall of 2022 but there was also at least some healthy rain at crucial times in Burgundy. 2021 was a cold and wet year, and hot seasons following cold ones always benefit from less hydric stress because reserves are topped up, especially in limestone and clay-rich lands. This was felt all over Europe, which makes 2022 compelling enough to bet on. This didn’t happen so well for the string of hotter years that started in 2017 and was bookended by 2020, though 2017 also benefitted from some seasonal particularities (cold and wet until the summer went nuclear) and a colder year prior. This filled 2017 with some playfully serious wines with classical trim and their terroir clarity fully intact. 2017 remains my go-to red Côte d’Or drinking vintage since 2013, though the 2014s with their often hollow interior are filling in, and the furrowed brow of 2015 has begun to loosen. Let’s see what happens in the years to come with the 2018-2020 vintages. At the risk of being dismissed as having a house palate, I admit to being very happy with our two main Côte d’Or growers in these hot years. They delivered fresh wines of low alcohol and a well-managed structure. I have a fortunate history of steadily following most of the same producers as a Burgundy lover since the release of the 1999 vintage, until the wine industry lost its mind on certain domaines. Coche and Roumier used to be about the only small domaine Côte d’Or unicorns with hefty second-market prices, but now there’s an uncountable amount. Before the zombie buyer searching for unicorns who had more dollars than sense showed up, guys like Demougeot took over his family’s domaine and nobody cared because he didn’t have top premier crus or grand crus. And Duband was under severe scrutiny for big ripeness and extraction and lots of new oak, which he then drastically recalibrated and has since evolved into one of the finest top values on the entire Côte. France’s top wine publication, La Revue du vin de France, went so far as to put him in the same sentence as Leroy. Let’s face it, while many regions benefit from newfound positive ripeness where it was once impossible, Burgundy is facing a climate change dilemma more quickly harrowing than most—it’s particularly existential for those in the prime historical spots. Aside from the new challenge of frost and hail almost every year, the solar beatdown on what makes it to harvest is off balance compared to what it once was. The phenolic balance of Burgundian Pinot Noir and Chardonnay has always teetered on a knife’s edge. Other French red varieties in more continental climate environments such as the Cab family and the Rhônes, get away with more acceptable variation in some sense (except when the alcohol is too high), and the varieties are sturdier. But when Pinot Noir loses its flowery palate freshness or the growing season is too fast, forcing shorter and/or softer extractions during fermentation, they may maintain acidity by being picked early, but they’ll lose their magnitude. Chenin Blanc, unlike Chardonnay, has a history of tensile-dry wines and sticky sweets successfully grown at world-class-quality levels on just about every soil type. Its chameleonic quality is more resistant to the immediate weather challenges at hand. But when Chardonnay is picked prematurely in a warm year it gets bitter, and when picked late its flat and feels prematurely aged in bottle. The truest statement about navigating Burgundy still stands (for now): Buy the producer, not the vintage. The amendment to that rule should be to follow producers working on a more human scale with less surface area that are personally in daily contact with their vineyards. Slight adaptations during the growing season make the difference on that knife’s edge. And that brings us to Rodolphe Demougeot, who works in his vines all day and leaves his wines in tranquility until bottling. These will go as fast as they have been lately, since our fan base in California began to see the light of Rodolphe’s wines a long time ago, and his 2022s are about to land. First in the hierarchy … We have the Bourgogne Côte d’Or Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. (Which I think they could’ve shortened by leaving out Bourgogne…) These two wines are a case in point for Rodolphe’s talent with lower classification wines built like a Champagne flute rather than the slightly audacious Zalto Burgundy stem. The Chardonnay is a blend of different parcels from high up on the slope above and below Meursault. This combination delivers a wine with a somewhat mid-slope weight and richness (lower site) and minerally lift (higher site). It’s a great starter white and tastes as much like a Meursault as, well, a Meursault. This isn’t too surprising since it’s located in Meursault! The Pinot Noir comes from old vines near Chassagne-Montrachet, an appellation formerly more famous for red than white. It’s a serious ferrous red Burgundy, without the lipstick. Rodolphe has done all of us terroir junkies a favor by presenting almost all of his appellation wines with their respective lieux-dits. This way, we can still contemplate and play with terroir without selling Mom’s jewelry to get familiar with Burgundy’s terroir mapping. Let’s start in the north with Savigny-les-Beaune and work our way south. Savigny-les-Beaune is a diverse appellation and probably less famous than it could be. The diversity of its parcels divided between two main hills spread far and wide with so many expositions (southwest to north-northeast) and deliver unexpectedly high-quality wines. Outside of the local luminaries, like Simon Bize and Chandon de Briailles, many great to very good growers from other appellations (like Leroy, Bruno Clair, and Mongeard-Mugneret) have planted flags in the appellation and on the south hill with sites facing as much northeast as east on the same slope of Rodolphe’s two wines, Les Bourgeots and the 1er Cru Les Peuillets. These are adjacent, with the former a more gravelly alluvial wash from the now creek-sized waterway, and the latter, farther from the creek, built with more sand than gravel. Les Bourgeots is often grittier in texture and darker, while Les Peuillets is brighter and more lifted. Rodolphe in his Pommard 1er Cru Charmots Jumping over the freeway and to the south side of Beaune, Rodolphe has the Clos-Saint-Désiré, a Chardonnay harvested from a soft slope with deeper topsoil than expected so high up. It’s crafted in the cellar the same way as his Meursaults but it doesn’t taste like Meursault, beyond the variety and the more general region. It has bigger shoulders and is more frontloaded, while the Meursaults have that ingrained finesse and specific Meursault minerally magic. Rolling downhill just to the main road shooting out from the south side of Beaune’s town center, is Les Beaux Fougets, a red Burgundy. I’ve always loved the texture of this wine; it’s a rich Pinot Noir with a lot of earth and density yet remains lifted and lightly exotic by Rodolphe’s touch. Like many of his other reds, they often open with some reductive elements but quickly move into a more open expression. In photos, Rodolphe looks rough and tough, and though he might be tough he’s not at all rough. He’s gentle and generous, thoughtful and accommodating, an unstuffy Burgundian with a soul surfer’s demeanor unless he’s talking about organic certification, which furls his brow and thickens the air. He works organically but doesn’t certify because he, like many in France, doesn’t believe in the paper shuffling certifications. Auditors don’t go to the vineyards. They focus on receipts to see what makers have bought. Not sure that’s the best metric … Ever heard of cash purchases? The next commune to the south is Pommard. Like Savigny-les-Beaune, it can be a difficult village to navigate because of its many faces. Rodolphe’s appellation Pommard is one of the few non-lieu-dit wines as it’s a blend of two parcels in very different areas, like his Bourgogne Blanc and Meursault. A blend of unusual names, La Rue au Porc and En Boeuf—in English, they could be loosely translated as The Pork Street and In Beef. (There is also a Pommard climat outside of Rodolphe’s collection called La Vache—the cow. When they were classified in 1936, Pommard clearly had a few jokers on their marketing team; perhaps these names were chosen to stimulate digestion, and I guess we know why Rodolphe didn’t bottle them separately as lieu-dit wines … ) La Rue au Porc was planted in 1948 and composed of deep clay and limestone rock topsoil—the sources of the muscle and weight of the wine. En Boeuf is located in the Grande Combe, a somewhat narrow valley far to the west of the appellation on the north hill facing south on a steep slope of shallow rocky topsoil, close to forests, and in the direct path of colder winds from the countryside to the west, which presents an almost complete contrast to La Rue au Porc. Planted in 1979, the position of these vines brings the balance of mineral, tension, cut and lift, to compliment the richer fruit and fuller body from En Boeuf. Compared to the other Pommards of his range, this is more savory and meaty, while the others are more lifted and ethereal. Vignots, mid-slope above the fork in the road and up to the top Moving away from vineyard names with animals and on to more sexy, Pommard “Vignots” is not part of the upper cru club, but of cru club quality, thanks to climate change. Perhaps it was left out mostly because of its altitude which more or less begins at 300m on Pommard’s north hill. Vignots is a phonetic portmanteau of vigne and haut, which means, high vines. In communes with grand cru wines, above 300m usually defaults to a premier cru or appellation wine. But in Pommard, where there are no grand crus, the default goes to either village or Bourgogne. Regardless, Vignots is a serious wine, especially today. (Lalou Bize Leroy knows it, Vignots being one of her domaine’s bottlings.) It leans toward those of us who often appreciate as much angle in our Burgs as curves. Rodolphe’s 0.21ha parcel was replanted in 1983. Its defining characteristics of being south-facing, higher altitude, windy and steep, with thin topsoil and limestone bedrock are on full display after his soft approach in the cellar and rigorous organic vineyard work. Though its full name is a bit long, we’ve finally arrived at an A-level marketing decision on the name of Rodolphe’s top red: Pommard 1er Cru Les Charmots “Le Coeur des Dames.” I.e. High Charm, “The Heart of the Ladies.” Now that’s more like it, Pommard marketing team! Here, we flip Vignots upside down by leading with more curves than angles. Nature abounds in this small clos enclosed by limestone walls that keep out the diesel and brake dust from the surrounding roads. The vines here are plowed by horse as much as possible to respect the microbial life in the soil while also maintaining control of the natural grasses and weeds. Purity, elegance, and nobility are consistently defining factors rendered from this hillside planted in 2001 on limestone and clay. It’s made the same way as Les Vignots, which makes for a clear two-bottle demonstration of terroir at play with two of the most elegant faces within Pommard’s diverse range of terroirs and wine styles. Both are softly extracted through the infusion method, which is to say very little is done in the way of punch-downs or pump-overs during fermentation. I love this style because I subscribe to the idea that if the terroir is strong it doesn’t need to be forced to deliver its message. Last but not least of the reds and the furthest southern Pinot Noir vineyard in Rodolphe’s range, aside from the Bourgogne Rouge, we finish the red set with the Auxey-Duresses Rouge, “Les Clous.” Harvested from a single acre of Pinot Noir planted on a direct south exposition, it’s perfect for this appellation which is sometimes cooler than the rest of the Côte. Tucked into a small valley back to the west of Meursault and scrunched between Monthélie and Saint-Romain, this is a smart buy in warm and healthy years, like 2022. The soils are limestone and clay, but are very well drained due to the ample mix of stone sizes deposited by the small creek that once flowed through this valley long ago. Earthy and foresty freshness with a long finish are its lead characteristics thanks to the depth of the vines planted in 1949. Though more fruit-driven in 2022, it remains restrained and savory, a lovely match for food. As it is traditional tasting in barrel rooms in the Côte d’Or, we finish with Chardonnay. Demougeot’s Meursault is composed from two different lieu-dit village sites, Les Pellans and Les Chaumes. Located low on the slope, Les Pellans sits just next to the Puligny-Montrachet border below the famous Meursault 1er Cru Charmes known for its full-bodied and burly shoulders. Planted in 1957, these old vines set on a deep clay topsoil bring weight, earthy power and thrust to this seemingly lithe, middleweight Meursault. Les Chaumes, planted in 1999 and just above a deep limestone quarry above the village’s most famous 1er Cru Les Perrières, is the pointed spear in the charge of this ensemble. The stony and shallow soils—just next to one of Coche-Dury’s principal sections that make up his Meursault—brings lift, high energy, tension and vibration. The combination of these two sites that sit above and below some of the most talented terroirs for white wine in all of Burgundy make this a noteworthy Meursault. As usual, everyone wants it but there’s so little to go around. Planted in 1969 on just a tenth of a hectare (eight vine rows!), Rodolphe’s minuscule parcel of Meursault “Le Limozin” is surrounded by premier cru greatness on three sides. Indeed, not all village wines are created equal, and it’s good to note the location of this one: downslope from Genevrières, south of Les Porusots-Dessous, and north of Les Charmes-Dessous—not bad neighbors! Like his appellation Meursault, it’s another rare example—at least these days—of strikingly pure Meursault, devoid of overindulgent and trendy reductive winemaking notes. Its privileged placement among giants renders a deep body, dense interior and aromatic spring. The soils are deep with limestone-rich clay, and while this wine has striking tension, its depth is credited to its deep soils with a clear balance to bring weight, texture and finesse. The production is tiny with only five cases for the US. 2021 is the vintage to understand just how good Falkenstein’s wines are. I tasted them out of vat with our Southern California team, JD Plotnick and Tyler Kavanaugh. Their eyebrows shot up like mine did a decade ago during my first encounter with their wines at a restaurant near Lago de Garda, with Le Fraghe’s Matilde Poggi. Our first vintages imported, 2019 and 2020, were warmer years. The wines were still exquisitely crafted by Franz Pratzner, the founder, owner and chief winegrower. Though more now under the welcome influence of his daughter, Magdalena, Franz was already doing great work before she returned from school and with experience from working in other wine regions. She’s gentle, but also a force of nature that will help elevate the level even more. We tasted Falkenstein’s 2021s in their state-of-the-art, frigid cellar dug into the mountainside tricked-out with gorgeous medium-sized, mostly 10hl-18hl acacia botte in the middle of May 2022 with already sweltering heat that didn’t let up the rest of the year. If I ever had a cellar (and a lot of cash), it would look like theirs: immaculate and with big, beautiful, botte! When they released these vintages, we received our 2020s in California and needed time to work through them. They asked if we wanted to skip the 2021s and buy again with the release of the 2022s. Not a chance! The 2021s are too good and you need to know how special they are in the cooler years. Grown on a mix of metamorphic and igneous bedrock, it shares similar geology to the region for Franz’s inspiration with Riesling, Austria’s Wachau, though from a different geological age. Franz’s wines speak the same language but with a different dialectic twist. The Südtirol’s Vinschau DOC is similarly continental/mountain climate with hot and dry summer days and frigid nights, though the Wachau has been much spottier as of late during fruit season with more frost and hail. While the Wachau is a narrow river gorge, the Vinschgau, or Val Venosta, is an expansive and steep-walled glacial valley. The topsoil of their vineyards are a mix of glacial moraine and sand derived from the bedrock. The vines are also at much higher altitudes than the Wachau, at 600-900m—about 400m maximum in the Wachau. First up, the 2021 Weissburgunder. In Südtirol, Weissburgunder (more commonly known as Pinot Bianco or Pinot Blanc) is often considered the top white variety and when tasting those from the best local cellars, it’s easy to see why. On Jancis Robinson’s website, she describes the grape as it usually presents itself in most regions: “Useful rather than exciting.” She’s right. The majority are like that. But things are changing, and this grape offers pretty dull wines most of the time (especially further east in Friuli), but in Alpine country it thrives. Take Wasenhaus’ German Weissburgunders from Baden as another excellent example. In Südtirol, Weissburgunder is truly their top white, on average, and a lot more exciting than those produced elsewhere. Many whites grown in Südtirol grow well on the Dolomite limestone formations further east, and, just like the Sauvignon grown there, can be intensely racy, fully aromatic, and sharply textured. In the center of the broad region, on porphyry rock and glacial moraines, usually the hottest zones, they tend to be richer and more glycerol, salty, expressive of spices, honey, and more mature stone fruit. In the areas with the coldest nights and on more acidic soils, like those of Falkenstein, the combination of bedrock, sandy soil, bright sunny and warm days and frigid nights keep it fresh, lifted and complex. Weissburgunder is never a pushover inside special terroirs like Falkenstein’s. And 2021 is the season to give them a spin if you’re looking for more zing in your Pinot Blanc. The six hectares that make up the headlining 2021 Riesling vary in vine age and are planted with a multitude of different biotypes, with the oldest established in the mid-1980s, and others up until the late 2000s. The selection for this first Riesling in the range (the one bottled with only Südtirol Vinschau DOC printed on the label; the other is labeled Alte Reben—“old vine”) comes mostly from the younger vines and the upper row of clusters of the older vines. And while the Alte Reben is a grand wine, the appellation wine is the one I want to drink most, like the Federspiels of the great Wachau growers—though this one lands between Federspiel and Smaragd with a tilt toward the latter. The altitude ranges from 600 to 900 meters and offers a broader span of characteristics. The Pratzners describe theirs as typically dominated by citrus, stone fruit and salty minerality. But in 2021, it’s even more minerally and with greater citrus dominance over the stone fruit and the textures have finer lines. The vintage brings us back a decade or two in climate influence. It also validates the claim of their Italian peers and many Austrian and German Riesling growers that Pratzner’s Rieslings are indeed Italy’s flagbearers. While Germany’s most famous dry Riesling is concentrated in the Rheinhessen’s limestone sites, these match the more historic Austrian deeply salty dry Rieslings grown on metamorphic rock inside the Kamptal, Kremstal and Wachau. This year is the best demonstration of what the Pratzners can do with the noblest of grapes. My wife thought Marrakech would be similar to Napoli, one of her favorite cities. But on Napoli’s most chaotic roads (which are everywhere), at least you have the body armor of a car. The center streets of Marrakech are narrow and dirtier, but not with the scattered and ubiquitous trash like Naples. Marrakech has a lot of dirt, brake dust, smoke, exhaust, buildings in ruins, quieter and gentler people, and cats … lots of cats. After quickly rinsing off the air-travel grime and donning a fresh set of clothes, outside of the riad (a small privately owned hotel), wood and meat smoke, tajines, herbs, spices, and motorbike exhaust are instantly cured into your skin, hair, and clothes that were fresh a minute ago. Everyone is on their toes, even the locals, and tourists’ heads bob up and down as they check their spotty phone navigation apps trying to decide which street to take as men and boys honk and blister by them through the souk market on bikes. Among the disgusting and divine scents, I was happy that one was notably absent: that of dogs; their scent couldn’t be found anywhere. I don’t mean the smell of puppy fur only a couple days after a bath (which I and most people like), but rather the stink of Europe’s urban centers where dog owners all too often shirk responsibility for their animal’s messes (necesidades, as the Spanish say) and the noise pollution of territorial barking. I saw only one old black-and-tan canine trotting through the chaotic traffic at dinner time, tongue out, confident. Though it’s a mere hour and forty minutes by plane from Porto, it’s a very different world. Despite warnings about dark streets at night and misdirection from locals with dubious intent, the only things I felt were unsafe were the bikes and cars. But for as much shock and terror as there was in realizing that there were only millimeters separating us from severe injury or death every thirty seconds, my wife was anxious and somehow relaxed at the same time. A change of activity and mindset was needed: no home and office habits, no computers, poor cell phone coverage (and I was disappointed my phone worked at all)—every reminder of our privileged life back home was gone. And on the street of Marrakech, your inner yogi has no choice: you must be present, or you’ll get run over. The highlight of our trip was the day we spent in the Atlas Mountains with a Berber family. Our first stop was Asni, a town in the lower mountains and foothills, damaged by last year’s earthquake, the most severe in over a hundred years, responsible for the death of a few thousand people—a tremendous amount in proportion to these sparsely populated areas. Some who slept in their clay houses were crushed by truck-sized boulders crashing from above, and many survivors now live in tents outside of their ruins while they rebuild. We stopped at the Saturday market for the vegetables we needed for our cooking class with a Berber woman, Latifa, who taught us how to make the real-deal tajin, fresh bread and the unforgettable and easy-to-make eggplant dish, zaalouk. Without a doubt, I was the only blond, fair-skinned dude, and my wife was the only woman I saw among the mess of tents and rough-but-kind Berber men. And I’m sure there were positively no California health code violations in that market … We barely made it back to the airport after three days. Not because we didn’t have enough time, but because our young driver was a stone-silent, horn-honking swerving, needle-threading, 4-Runner-driving madman with a death wish. Our lives were out of our hands for thirty minutes, but we got to where we were going. Pointers after four days in Marrakech: be patient; remember why you’re there; concede to the chaos and smile, knowing that they’re gentle people and they will smile back even if they’re not trying to sell you something; arrive at least three hours before your flight departure—the lines are slow and long, especially inbound passport check so don’t underestimate how much time you’ll need; go to L’Mitad restaurant (our lunch pictured), the best modern(ish) restaurant we went to—other highly recommended places fell very short by comparison; explore the street as much as possible during your first days before you commit to any street food so you can find the right ones. If you’re going to risk Montezuma’s revenge, Moroccan style, better to get it the day you return home instead of at the beginning of the trip.

(Download complete pdf here) Amalfi Coast in the Summer of ‘22 Last month I finished a new Audible favorite, easily in my top three best experiences of all time on this app, though it should be noted that I only began my subscription last year. The Book Thief just tied A Gentleman in Moscow, and as soon as I finished it I got it on Kindle too and read it cover to cover in short order (of course after relistening to the last chapter three or four times; in addition to rewinding to many more chapters that had nuggets I might’ve missed). Another is Surrender, narrated by the author, Bono, which is full of bedtime stories told by what sounds like a leprechaun drinking beer in a Dublin pub, his voice scratchy, and almost completely worn out. It includes tales from before the start of U2 and follows a lifetime of incredible stories that would defy belief if they were about a rock band of any other caliber. From doggedly getting themselves signed by a record company (after delivering their demos by bicycle) to meetings in the Oval Office, reluctantly suckered into a charity concert by Pavarotti, and with every accent attempted by Bono himself, all woven into the story of a young man and his brother and father who never got over the unexpected early passing of his beloved mother, Iris. (Do any of us ever get over our mother’s passing?) Aside from the obvious advantage Bono has with his one-in-a-billion talent for entertainment, the narrator of the audio version of The Book Thief, the lively actor, Allan Corduner, was second to none. Or maybe he tied Bono. There are few audible books I recommend more than The Book Thief. I didn’t know they released a film adaptation in 2013 starring Geoffrey Rush until I was halfway through it and beaming with enthusiasm to share it with my wife. Andrea is a voracious reader and a sucker for romantic war stories and historical fiction. As a Portuguese language student, she decided to read the bible-sized Portuguese novel, Diz-Me Quem Sou, with its 1,104 pages, in small print. She lugged this five-pound tome everywhere for almost a year and her eyes are getting rapidly worse, as are mine. I finally bought my first reading glasses at the end of June, but not until I completely wore out the frame of one of her two pairs over the last year. Since it was published in 2005, I thought it possible she had already read it, but when I asked her she said, “No, but I watched the movie,” popping my balloon and then moving on to some pressing detail about the renovation of our endless Portuguese countryside rebuild that will likely be ready for us just before we die. “You must listen to this book on Audible!” I insisted, and she still seemed uninterested… “But mi amor, there is no way that movie can possibly stand up to the actual words of such a great book, and the narration is the best. You’ve listened to Bono and Prince Harry, you have to listen to this one!” One day she will thank me for pushing her so hard. If Allan Corduner narrated a thousand books, I’d listen to them all. He told with great impact Markus Zusack’s story about the intense grief, stress, and brutality of war, and balanced it all with moments of much-needed hilarity when the main character, Liesel, is out of the direct line of fire. His comedic handle on the sometimes sharp and jolting quality of exaggerated German accents often gave me a solid ab workout between free-weight sets while I was surrounded by a bunch of solemn Spanish and Catalan bodybuilders who shot confused looks at the American guy who was giggling and sometimes wiping away tears of laughter as I lifted. But I hit pause out of caution during heavy sets for fear that Allan might pierce my focus underneath too much weight, as it did while I was benching (almost dropping it on my chest) as Pfiffikus was introduced: “Geh‘ scheiße!” Salnés area of Rías Baixas with the Parque Nacional Marítimo-Terrestre de las Islas Atlánticas de Galicia in the background Speaking of Spain, we finally have a new boatload arriving from the peninsula with a lot of goodies, only maybe too many all at once. We will stagger their release, but you can expect to soon be tempted by Prádio and Augalevada’s long-awaited new releases, Portugal’s Arribas Wine Company and a Mateus Nicolão de Almeida restock, and more surprises that will be covered in September. But first, we will begin with perhaps our biggest Spanish superstar, and then we’ll follow that with one of the Loire Valley’s greatest talents. I know of very few European winegrowers outside of Ernst Loosen who taste as much European wine outside of their home country as Manuel Moldes, though Ernie’s access to epic wines with age seems unparalleled. I rarely mention a wine to him that he doesn’t already know. And the ones he doesn’t know, are often unknown outside of the village in which they’re made. After more than a dozen years making wine, Manuel is no longer only tinkering with ideas, he’s mastering his craft, especially with Albariño. In my book, he has matched the likes of growers like Arnaud Lambert and Peter Veyder-Malberg, the latter of whom I sent some of Manuel’s bottles, and he’s a big fan now too, as is Arnaud after meeting him in Saumur some summers ago while on tour with me. We are lucky to have such talents in our collection of US growers and even luckier to have Manuel as a close friend—the same with Peter and Arnaud! On my last visit with him two months ago at his brother’s restaurant, Tinta Negra, I left frustrated by my level of Spanish comprehension. I’ve studied at least four days a week for more than two years now, but I totally bombed. Even if he is one of the most difficult to follow out of all those with whom I speak Spanish, it seemed like my mind was out to lunch. However, I understood him perfectly well when he smiled and turned to Andrea and said in Spanish, “What happened? He lost his Spanish…” I was relieved when my wife told me on the drive home that Manuel speaks Galego half the time and she too has a hard time understanding him sometimes. And she’s a native Spanish speaker! We’re going to kick off Moldes’ lineup Burgundy style with reds first and then dig into the whites. Manuel Moldes, 2020 2021 was the season across Europe for continental/Mediterranean climate zones that have been missing the tension in their wines over the last decade; it was mostly cold all summer—perfect for fresher fruit qualities, low pH levels, and vibrant acidity. Rieslings across all countries are at their best, with impeccable balance. Burgundy and Chablis delivered wines from what seems like a long-gone era, though many had to chaptalize (at least in Chablis)—historically a very common adjustment for vintages with less sugar. (No one wants to talk about that kind of thing anymore, but let’s be honest about it, eh?) The Loire Valley hasn’t seen such a perfect Chenin year (at least qualitatively) for a long time. 2021 is a vintage I’m definitely going to stock up on. Even if Côte d’Or prices are almost entirely outside of my budget now, there is a wealth of great wines out there outside of Burgundy to drink early and to cellar long too. It was a perfect season for the 2021 Bierzo “Lentura.” This far western area of Castille y León is a geological transition zone at the foothills of the Galician Massif and the expansive high desert of northern Spain. Geologically it is both, though perhaps a little more associated with the Galician Massif from its mostly slate-derived soils in rock and powder form: slate rock up on the steep hills, and a lot of slate-derived clay, silt, and sand pulverized by quartzite cobbles on the valley floor below. Here, summer daytime temperatures can reach 40°C (104°F) on any given day while the nights can drop by a full 20°C (35°F). The oceanic influence is blocked from Bierzo by the Galician mountains toward the west and the Cantabrians toward the north, making it much drier compared to the neighboring Galician appellations like Monterrei, Valdeorras, and the eastern portion of Ribeira Sacra. Winters are freezing and go as low as -10°C, but with little snow because it’s not such a particularly precipitous area. It’s perfect for viticulture, but the wines can often be very strong, and may similarly be described the way Hemingway wrote about Corsican reds in A Moveable Feast, “you could dilute it by half with water and still receive its message.” Surely he meant those Corsican reds with the likes of Nielluciu rather than Sciaccarellu, or however it is you want to spell those two grapes. “Lentura” is much fresher tasting than the fuller vintage wines that came before. It’s composed of 60% Garnacha Tintorera/Alicante Bouschet, a grape not related to Garnacha/Grenache, and, sadly, only occupies 2% of Bierzo’s surface area. I’ve come to like this variety a lot for its high acidity and tannin, inky color, and virile nature. We’re in an age of elegance (which I love) but with that pendulum having swung so hard in the direction of gentle wine, perhaps one day it will swing back to favor grapes like Garnacha Tintorera, which gives varieties like Syrah a run for the money on wildness and surely on bigger natural acidity. It’s a great balance for the remaining 40% Mencía in the blend, which is naturally more suave but with far less acidity. If I’m being honest, I’ve had just a few experiences with Bierzo wines that got me excited about the appellation, but if more were made with a predominance of Garnacha Tintorera like Manuel’s, that would probably change. But since it covers only 2% of the surface area of vines, it ain’t enough for a full-scale revolution. The first vineyard is in Valtuille at the bottom of the valley on fully exposed gentle hills at around 500 meters on red clay and quartzite cobbles. The other is from the famous Corullón, one of the most impressive wine hills in all of Europe. This legendary local vineyard faces east at 750m, applying a g-force weight to your face as you try to balance and look up at what tops out near 1000m, quickly. One needs to be mountain goat-surefooted with every move in all directions—up, down, sideways—with its precariously slippery, paper-like slate shards and greasy clay that keeps the rock stuck to the hill. With an average vine age of over seventy years and the extremity of the terroir and Manuel’s mind hard at work in these organically certified vines, the value here for such a wine is tough to top. The 2020 Acios Mouros is different in structural style than Lentura and benefits greatly from its extra aging before release. 2020 is another great year for Rías Baixas red and white wines, which is not always the case because the reds benefit from a warmer season to soften the piercing high-tone vibration. A masterfully blended, harmonious ensemble of red grapes with distinctive personalities, it leads with the highly acidic and gorgeously aromatic and softly balsamic red Caiño Redondo (70%) and the other 30% split between the tannic, acidic, ink-black beast, Loureiro Tinto, and the suave, rustic, floral and lightly reddish-orange colored Espadeiro. Grown on granite and schist bedrock within view of the Atlantic, their naturally intense varietal characteristics are amplified by their spare metal and mineral-heavy soils and the natural saltiness that seems to be imposed by this oceanic climate. While Lentura is more generous with a little chalkier tannin chub that softens its structure and minerally body, Acios Mouros can be tough love at first taste for those not calibrated to this red wine of the highest tones. Neil Young-level feedback upon opening, it evolves into a long, hypnotic Gilmour finish. I love Acios Mouros, but my wife has to gear up and strap in to prepare for its first strike. She wants to relax and sit back at the end of her day, but this wine makes everyone sit up straight and pay attention. These 45-55-year-old vineyards sit between 20-80m altitude and are purely Atlantic in climate—two more notable differences from the continental climate and high altitude of Lentura in Bierzo. It’s no secret that Manuel’s big ticket is his Albariño range. He’s simply reached a new level for this grape variety and few from the area match his wines’ value, and almost no one can touch them on intellect and craft. (They’re also dangerously easy to gulp down.) I believe the quality of his work must now be counted among those of the world’s great, rarified-genius white wine producers, luminaries like Olivier Lamy, Peter Veyder-Malberg, and Klaus-Peter Keller, to name just a few. Manuel’s starting Albariño, Afelio, has made solid jumps from one vintage to the next and offers a value rarely matched for elegance and substance, though Arnaud Lambert’s Clos de Midi from our portfolio comes to mind. Afelio is a blend of dozens of parcels with an average age of over fifty years (2023). The parcels face in all directions at 15-90m on a mix of expansive terraces and flat plots on granite bedrock and topsoil. Over the years he gradually moved toward more aging in older barrels to polish its framing and lend greater depth and more subtle nuance to the wines compared to when they were raised exclusively in steel vats. Manuel has made a habit of snatching up as many agreements with landowners whose vineyards are on schist as he can; it’s an extremely rare soil type for this part of Galicia where most of the land is granitic. Now, schist single-plot are the only Albariños he bottles as single-site wines while almost every other producer is bottling only granite-based wines. The original schist site in Manuel’s range goes into A Capela de Aios, which put Manuel on the map under his other label, Bodegas Fulcro, where it’s labeled as “Fulcro O Equilibrio.” Tasted next to Afelio, one might think it was a different variety if it wasn’t for the consistent high citrus notes and ripping acidity that few white wines maintain while remaining completely balanced and delicious. It’s fuller in body than Afelio (and most of the range) and more deeply salty, more metal than mineral, and slightly more amber in color. One could say they almost are as different as Loire Valley Chenin Blanc grown on schist and those grown on limestone. It comes from a south-southwest facing terraced vineyard at 80-90m planted in the 1940s and 1980s on fine-grained pure-schist topsoil and bedrock. As with all the wines, it goes through natural fermentation, and like the other “parcela” wines, it’s aged in old 500-700L French oak for 9-11 months. Schist The newest vino de parcela is Peai, pronounced the P.I., as in Magnum P.I.—a TV reference that may be lost on some of our younger colleagues in the wine business—sorrynotsorry. Made similarly in the cellar to A Capela de Aios, Peai comes from a west-facing terraced vineyard at 65-70m with 40-45-year-old vines on rocky and coarse schist topsoil and harder schist bedrock, while the bedrock of A Capela de Aios, by contrast, is severely eroded and softer. Peai is notably more structured and broader-shouldered compared to the other wines in the range; referencing white wines, think of Tegernseerhof’s burly Kellerberg compared to the gentler Loibenberg, or Veyder-Malberg’s beefier Buschenberg compared to the fully structured but finer Brandstadtt. Peai’s first year bottled alone was with the stellar 2020, and this 2021 is only an inch up in quality because there was only an inch of daylight to start with from the inaugural vintage. As Dunas On the subject of the rarest soil types in Rías Baixas, As Dunas is perhaps the most unique of all. Comprised of a few adjacent parcels that are less than a kilometer from the beaches west of Sanxenxo and Portonovo on pure schist sand, it’s like a beachfront dune—fine-grained, as much desert as a beach. On a soft slope, it was acquired only recently (first bottle vintage 2019) and the grapes were split between Manuel, Rodrigo Méndez, and Raúl Pérez. I believe these are now the three most expensive white wines in Rías Baixas, with Manuel’s maintaining the best price of the bunch; however, it isn’t the third rung in quality—that’s for each taster to decide, if bottles of each of these rarities can be found in order to make the comparison. The parcels are on that gentle slope, facing south-southwest at around 50m, originally planted in the 1940s and 1990s. As Dunas is deep, and showcases a broad range of delicate aromas, with some of the more distinguished veering slightly toward sweet balsamic notes, sweet mint, and exotic spices, on a surprisingly structured frame for a sand terroir. Perhaps the original cornerstone of our company is Arnaud Lambert. He remains one of the three growers still left from the original roster of French wines imported in our first year; the other two being La Roubine and Jean Collet. There are also fewer growers we’ve written about more often than Arnaud Lambert, so I will try to keep this portion of the newsletter short. New Crémant label Always in high demand are Arnaud’s Crémant Blanc and Crémant Rosé. They are a great value and deliver on quality and price, like all of Arnaud’s wines. Due to the chalky, sandy soil and cold climate, Saumur has always had the potential to deliver high-quality bubbles, but the financial incentive to compete with Champagne never materialized. The cost of production for serious wines would be more or less the same, and Saumur could never compete on price, though it can also be said that the cost of land is much more expensive in Champagne. Compared to Champagne, Arnaud’s Crémants have a gentle and inviting rawness and simplicity because they’re aged in steel for six months then bottled, dosed between 4-8g/L, and aged for a short time prior to release. Like most Crémants across France, they are typically relegated to by-the-glass programs, and there are few (I don’t know of any, really) that maintain a useful place on a bubble list in the middle price range. Believe me, we’ve tried to sell Crémant bubbles between Champagne prices and those that fit the by-the-glass price range and they move at a glacier’s pace, which is still slow despite climate change. Due to the smaller allocations of the past, the wines have mostly been on lockdown with many accounts. This year we have more, so if you want a piece of the action, tell us sooner than later. After asking for a by-the-glass option for those who are priced out of Clos de Midi (or are short on allocation), Arnaud offered us the 2022 “Les Parcelles.” This 100% Chenin Blanc is labeled as a Vin de France because Arnaud supplemented the cuvée with some Chenin outside of Saumur due to all the frost damage in 2022. However, it’s still composed of 85% of the young vines from his top parcels and is aged in steel for six months prior to bottling. Given the pedigree of that 85% (and you can be sure that Arnaud is buying top-quality fruit if he has to buy), this wine is another steal. Formerly known as Clos de Midi, the 2022 Midi has also arrived. The authorities in France have begun to enforce a new rule that limits the labeling of wines with a clos, most likely to protect the concept of the word from overuse. Surely there’s a lot more to this story, but in any case, all of the vineyards labeled as a clos chez Lambert were all historic walled vineyards. We could sell a thousand cases or more of Midi every year, but we don’t have nearly that quantity; it has become one of our most pursued wines because of its quality for the price. It’s always tense and ethereal, and, like Manuel Moldes’ Albariño “Afelio,” it simply over-delivers on expectations and shines in terroir expression. It also doesn’t hurt that it is one of the region’s most celebrated crus and drinks far too easily. Montsoreau is a special wine Arnaud makes exclusively for us. Initially, we committed to only a couple of barrels each season but recently asked if we could have more to make up for our reduced allocations of Clos de Midi, and this increase should come about in a couple of years. The newly arrived 2018 was somehow overlooked along the way and we were finally able to bring it over. This parcel comes from a specific plot in the Saumur-Champigny commune Montsoreau, just next to the Loire River about 500 meters from the limestone bluff overlooking the Château de Montsoreau. While much of this plateau has a deep clay topsoil before the white tuffeau limestone bedrock, this small plot is almost pure white with a thin tuffeau sand and rocky topsoil with tuffeau bedrock, which makes it perfect for Chenin Blanc. Because I’m a big fan of Chenin aged in neutral barrels and for a shorter period after finishing primary fermentation, this wine was aged for one year in old French oak barrels prior to bottling. Montsoreau is usually more powerful than Midi and closer to his Les Perrières bottling from the Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg hill. I wouldn’t wait long to try to claim a case or two of this wine, since he makes only 48. Like Midi, Mazurique is one of Arnaud’s most coveted wines because it’s a red that delivers well beyond what’s expected of its price. The coldest of Arnaud’s red crus, it stylistically lands somewhere between a low-alcohol, high-altitude Beaujolais, and a Hautes-Cotes de Nuits Pinot Noir, minus any oak—only steel here. Mazurique’s varietal characteristics are more subtly delivered than many young, high-pedigree Loire Valley Cabernet Franc, and its shallow rocky topsoil of sand and clay on tuffeau limestone bedrock renders an expansive but finely textured palate in full harmony with its spirituous nature. To have Arnaud’s Mazurique and Les Terres Rouges in a tasting together is to witness a clear demonstration of the merit of soil terroir in wine. Both are made the same in the cellar and are harvested from vines with an average age of about 45 years and raised only in steel with almost a full hands-off practice on extractions during fermentation. They are almost within view of each other, with most of the parcels of Les Terres Rouges on the Saumur-Champigny hill, Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg, facing Brézé across the way, where lies Mazurique. Even though Les Terres Rouges has no red soil (as the name might suggest it does) it’s a light-brown clay and sandy topsoil on tuffeau limestone bedrock. While Mazurique can be found in the clouds, Les Terres Rouges is more earthy and richly fruited. For some reason, perhaps the greater clay content(?), all of Arnaud’s Saumur-Champigny wines from Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg are darker, rounder, fruitier, and more accessible when young than those from Brézé only a kilometer or two across the way. Brézé wines (the reds labeled only as Saumur) are almost always redder hued than black, though with plenty of darker shades. They’re more vertical than horizontal, in need of more time in the bottle, and more time to express themselves when first opened, compared to the Saumur-Champigny wines. Hailing from Brézé on a mix of orange clay and coarse, microscopic shell-filled sand on tuffeau limestone bedrock, Clos de l’Étoile is indeed the star of Arnaud’s Cabernet Franc range; that is if one is in search of his fullest and most age-worthy wines. Its complement from Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg across the way, Saumur-Champigny “Clos Moleton,” is vinified and aged the same with 30 months in barrels and then another six in bottle before release. Moleton, as previously explained about the differences between Brézé and Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg, is fuller and rounder than l’Étoile, but not by much. Perhaps a regular note of difference between them is the tension and slightly wilder notes and x-factor in l’Étoile. Based on tasting old wines from Arnaud and his father, Yves, before they had as great a level of craft as Arnaud has now, this is a wine that may age better than you and me, but will also deliver an enlightening experience upon opening now.

Piemonte and the Alps I’ve finally returned for a couple-month stay in California and was greeted yesterday by a torrential downpour that the state has desperately needed. Meanwhile, the wine industry freight woes continue with the constant touch-and-go challenge of extensive delays. I waited until the last moment to write this newsletter until I got the go ahead from my sister Victoria, our company office manager, to let you know that a container from Italy is finally landing after more than two months of holdups. It’s filled with some exciting new releases from some of our favorites in Piemonte. There isn’t a lot arriving for a typical November, however some Burgundies may also arrive from David Duband (Côte de Nuits), Rodolphe Demougeot (Côte de Beaune), and Domaine Chardigny (Beaujolais and Mâconnais), as well as some from Germany’s latest cult wine producer, Wasenhaus, and Katarina Wechsler, a young producer out of Germany’s Rheinhessen who has fabulous Riesling vineyard holdings, including Kirchspiel and Morstein. New Italian Wines Poderi Colla - Langhe, Piemonte I doubt there’s another importer worldwide that beats the drum of Poderi Colla louder than we do. We just can’t seem to get enough of them. And it’s partly due to the fact that during the many changes in trend over the last few decades, the Colla family has stayed the course on the traditional approach since the late 1950s, when Beppe Colla owned Prunotto until the early 1990s. Once Prunotto was sold to Antinori, the Collas put all their money into only a few specific estates that Beppe and his brother Tino thought were as good as it gets in the area: Barolo’s Dardi le Rose, Barbaresco’s Tenuta Roncaglie, and Cascina Drago, a high altitude estate just across the road from Barbaresco-classified vineyards where they produce their Nebbiolo d’Alba and Bricco del Drago Dolcetto-based wine, along with other atypical higher-acid varieties that thrive best in cooler climates, like their sparkling wine made from Pinot Noir, a Pinot Noir still wine, and a dry Riesling. We’re fans of everything they make, but as one may expect, our focus is on their traditional local varieties. Aside from a restock on the fabulous and underrated 2017 Barolo and Barbaresco (which are now being reassessed by some critics in a more positive light), the single most exciting new Colla wine on this container is Colla’s 2019 Nebbiolo d’Alba. The reviews of the finished bottlings of 2016 Barolos and Barbarescos started coming out about the time that the producers were harvesting a vintage that appeared to be one of the most important in recent decades: 2019. 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 (pictured here), 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. Their Nebbiolo d’Alba is a preview of that oncoming quality, and it’s gorgeous. Colla nails it every year with this wine, but 2019 is a little different. As always, it’s made just as a Barbaresco would be with one year in old botte to soften the edges while preserving its delicate aromas, but the 2019 Nebbiolo d’Alba is notably more suave and with profound depth for this classification of wine. Aside from the balance of the vintage itself, the high altitude of this vineyard—370m on average—imparts vibrating tension and snappy-to-the-tooth fresh fruit. During the last three years that I’ve lived in Europe, I’ve had the opportunity to taste many wines from different producers before they reached the states. (Of course, I’ve tasted a lot of others we don’t import, as well.) The quality demonstrated in this broad sampling of 2019 Nebbiolo wines from great producers is convincing enough to suggest that you should buy as much as you can, not only from us but from everyone who’s selling them. All of the best examples will improve in bottle for a long time, despite this classification’s less reliable reputation for doing so, compared to Barolo and Barbaresco. Look out for the great Nebbiolo vineyard sites outside of the limits of Barolo and Barbaresco that can only be labeled as Nebbiolo d’Alba, instead of the declassified young-vine Barolo and Barbaresco fruit bottled as Langhe Nebbiolo. In Nebbiolo d’Alba vineyards there are characteristics imparted by old vines, which, in Barolo and Barbaresco appellation vineyards are all reserved for their top bottlings. If Nebbiolo is one of your passions and you need a price break without sacrificing quality, go deep on 2019 entry-level Nebbiolos. Barbera always needs more heat than Nebbiolo to reach its peak. This may not be music to the ears for those in search of lower-alcohol wines but with the top producers exceptions can be made. While visiting Giacomo Conterno in 2019, perhaps the most unexpected and mind-bending wine in the bunch was the 2017 Cascina Francia Barbera, out of large oak cask. The layers of depth were simply extraordinary, and our entire group walked away from that visit with a newfound respect for big-hitter Barbera, even with its high alcohol well over 15%! (The reality is that many Barolo and Barbaresco are labeled 14%, but are well over 15% nowadays with the continued increase in solar power each year.) 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. It 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 with most of them 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. Crotin's new high altitude Nebbiolo vineyard - first vintage 2021! Crotin - Asti, Piemonte Just north of the Collas is the Russo family, who are also extremely big fans of the Colla’s wines. Their wines are labeled under Crotin, the Piemontese dialect name for small cellars under the main cellar, used for keeping the best wines for long-term aging. The Russos have been churning out some of the top values in all Piemonte 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. Here, 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. Crotin is most known for their Barbera d’Asti wine but these days a major uptick is Grignolino, a variety with bigtime aromatic pleasure and a fruity and round but tight mouthfeel laced with scents of Aperol and sun-dried red and orange flowers. Crotin’s Grignolino has become a big call item for our restaurants, and we buy all that we can from this cantina. Everything Crotin makes is priced exceptionally well, and their Grignolino offers profound value for those with a hankering for wines from this part of Italy. Freisa, a nearly forgotten grape variety ubiquitous in Piemonte only three decades ago, is found today mostly in the region’s backwater areas. It lost its footing to the rise in popularity of Nebbiolo-based wines and hasn’t yet found enough Langhe cantinas to be its modern-day champion on a larger scale. However, there are still compelling examples to be found at cantinas like Brovia and Giuseppe Rinaldi. 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 red 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 they’ve tamed it and it brings great pleasure with only a slight tilt toward more rusticity than their Grignolino. There’s a new and perhaps polarizing wine in the Russo brothers’ range called Ruché, a grape variety I was unaware of until two years ago when I had my first one at their cellar. They made one for a well-known producer of this variety and after it permeated my nose with Piemontese potpourri aromas, I was sure there would be takers in today’s market filled with highly aromatic wines; in this style, Ruché seems like a shoo-in. The problem—one I realized after Federico Russo sent me a mixed box of some other producers from the area along with one they produced for another label prior to bottling their own—is that most of them are above 15% alcohol and hard to enjoy because they overindulge in strong, perfumy, caricature-like aromas that can be wonderful for some, but downright cloying for others. Their 2018 was delicious enough for us to give the 2020 vintage a whirl, their first vintage bottled under Crotin. At 13.5% alcohol, their 2020 is lovely and not at all overwrought, but rather subtle for a wine that can sometimes be suffocating. If you are in search of pleasure and fun in your Piemontese wine experience, Crotin’s Ruché should be on your list. The first drone video I did (which was more of a practice effort) is a regional teaser for our new producers in Spain’s Rioja and Txakoli areas, a short piece of eye-candy that covers some interesting ground from earlier this year. It’s fascinating how different the landscape in Rioja is compared to Txakoli, which is barely a half hour drive away from the northern parts of the region. The shots were filmed within a day or two of each other, but the drastically different environments make them seem like they are hundreds of miles apart. One of Fabio Zambolin's vineyards Fabio Zambolin - Alto Piemonte Going north into Alto Piemonte, the alpine foothills are home to Nebbiolo’s most historic roots. We’ve established a good foothold there with four winegrowers: Davide Carlone, Monti Perini, and two who have new arrivals in this container, Ioppa and Zambolin. Fabio Zambolin has a garage-sized operation and only a few very small plots of land in and around the most historically celebrated region in Alto Piemonte, Lessona, and an appellation that covers a lot of peripheral territory near the most famous DOC appellations known as Costa della Sesia. He also has a bureaucratic challenge in that his winery is in the Costa della Sesia appellation but his vineyards are inside of Lessona’s borders; this makes his wine labeled as Costa della Sesia Nebbiolo “Vallelonga” ineligible for the Lessona DOC, despite its fruit being grown entirely within Lessona. (This is the cue for savvy buyers to look a little closer at this bargain-priced wine that drinks as well as many wines bottled under this appellation.) Fabio’s wines are a favorite among our wholesale staff so it’s often hard to keep them in stock, especially given that we are allocated fewer than a hundred cases of all of his wines for the entire US. The overall style is one of finesse over power, a combination of the sandy volcanic soils of Lessona and Fabio’s stylistic preferences. Vallelonga is made entirely from Nebbiolo with extremely serious trim and represents one of the top values in the region. Zambolin’s Costa della Sesia “Feldo” is a field blend of old-vine Nebbiolo, Vespolina and Croatina, and it flies out of stock upon arrival. I never imagined that a blended Piemontese wine without a dominant grape variety would be one of our top sellers, but Feldo has proven me wrong with every delivery, and I don’t expect anything different this time. It has gobs of festive aromas and flavors (at least compared to other wines in an area known for often producing more solemn, strict wines in their youth), with not a single dash of pretension—it’s well-made Northern Italian glou glou. Rustic and playful flavors evoke those of an ancient Italian festive culture and are perfect for full-flavored food, like cured ham, braised meat, pasta, and pizza. There’s a lot of seriousness tucked in there too—no surprise considering the perfectionism with which Fabio organically farms his vineyards and his meticulous work in the cellar.  When I am able to finally unplug myself from the unusually high quantity of new producer profiles I need to write for our website, I will get to the left bank of Chablis, along with dozens of other videos I plan to create from the drone footage I shot on my two-month trek through Europe, which only really missed the Loire Valley and Central and Southern Italy. Ioppa's Santa Fé Ghemme vineyard with the Alps in the background Ioppa - Ghemme, Alto Piemonte Since the first day we started to import Ioppa, the 2016 vintage of single-vineyard Ghemmes were greatly anticipated. 2016 marked the first year of their collaboration with Cristiano Garella, a Piemontese enologist with a knack for slight alterations in philosophy, cellar work and final blend decisions that can significantly improve a wine. Interestingly, I used to sell Ioppa’s wines back at the beginning of my import/distribution career in 2008 and 2009 when the wines were imported by a progressive Italian importer of the time, Matthew Fioretti, through his company, Summa Vitis. I visited the cantina in 2009 and I would’ve never guessed that almost a decade later I would be importing the wines myself. The first vintages we brought in from their crus, Balsina and Santa Fé, were 2012s, wines that were built to show their best at least a decade after their vintage date. Cristiano had a hand in finishing them and they and the 2013s are just now beginning to open up. Ioppa turned a corner starting with the 2015s, moving away from a bigger, more tannic style that, when young, required food, to wines with more immediate accessibility that at the same time are still very ageable. The cantina also began conversion to organic farming around that time, which also seems to have softened the overall impression of their entire range. Ioppa’s 2015 Ghemme is simply wonderful, and six years after the vintage date the tannins are softening and this alpine Nebbiolo beauty is expressive immediately upon opening. The 2016 Ghemme DOC is the same overall quality as the 2015 that just arrived, but will come in next year. This Ghemme is composed of 85% Nebbiolo and 15% Vespolina and is aged for 48 months in 25-30hl Slavonian oak botte. The single-cru 2016 Ghemmes, Santa Fé and Balsina, are stunning. I tasted them this summer at the cantina with Andrea Ioppa, the eldest of the family’s progressive generation of thirtysomethings, and Cristiano. The results between the two were simply stunning. With the proper time given after pulling the corks, they will greatly reward the patient drinker. And with even more patience for cellaring, there is no doubt that they will last decades, improving along the way.  The majority of the most important Alto Piemonte wine regions are set upon igneous rocks in geological origin (Bramaterra, Boca and Gattinara on the volcanic porphyry, and Lessona on volcanic sand), while Ghemme is mostly alluvium. However, not all alluvium is the same. Ghemme’s unusual bedrock mostly consists of incredibly friable granite cobbles brought in from the Alps by way of both glacier and river. These rocks, or what appear to be rock, can be crushed into sand with a gentle squeeze of your hand. This granite sand and completely decomposed bedrock is one of the keys that elevates Ioppa’s wines to higher tones. It’s more present in the topsoil of the Balsina vineyard which makes the more elegant of the two cru wines. Mostly composed of iron-rich clay topsoil, Santa Fé is more muscular and has deeper balsamic notes. But in the case of the Ioppa’s vineyards, no matter what lies on top, they all rest on granitic alluvium bedrock. If Santa Fé is brutish power and earth, Balsina is elegant power and plays slightly more in the ethereal realm. For the collectors and cellar builders, you might not want to take Balsina without Santa Fé. They are a match that shows greater strength together. Both of these Ghemme wines are composed of 85% Nebbiolo and 15% Vespolina, and are aged for 48 months in 25-30hl Slavonian oak botte. Lastly, an unexpected thriller is Ioppa’s Vespolina “Mauletta”, which I tasted this summer along with the 2016 cru wines. It was the wine of the day for me among Ioppa’s power quartet of 2015 and 2016 Ghemme DOC wines, and 2016 Balsina and Santa Fé. However, it didn’t take the day because it was the best, it was simply the most stunning because I’ve never had a pure Vespolina wine of this caliber. Vespolina is a fabulous grape credited as contributing genetic parent material to the Nebbiolo. In recent years there’s been new focus on this ancient variety; much has been discovered about how to manage it in the cellar, and few have more experience vinifying it than their enologist, Cristiano Garella. Cristiano, Andrea and the other Ioppa boys, Luca and Marco, truly unlocked the key to this noble variety with their 2016 Mauletta. The answer for working around Vespolina’s often green tannins when the rest of the grape is phenolically ripe is simply to vinify it for a shorter time in the cellar separate from Nebbiolo instead of co-fermenting them together, followed by 48 months in botte to further sculpt it through a slow maturation. When Vespolina hits its balanced ripeness, its tannins are still green, so shorter fermentations may be preferred while extremely long ones often significantly reduce the impact of the wine’s primary fruit. Ioppa plays it in the middle with eighteen to twenty days on the skins and the 2016 Mauletta is a breakthrough performance and should not be missed by anyone interested in Piemontese wines. Monte Vulture, Basilicata's extinct volcano Madonna delle Grazie - Basilicata, Italy Madonna delle Grazie’s entry-level Basilicata Aglianico wines, Messer Oto and Liscone, are some of the most sought after in our portfolio for restaurant by-the-glass programs. Since the first wines were imported five years ago, they were immediately scooped up by the half-pallet by many of our top restaurants. The Latoracca family, with their extremely astute and well-educated sons, Paolo and Michele, in the cellar and in the vineyard with their father, Giuseppe, were relatively new wine producers that started bottling their own wines only fifteen years ago but have been growing grapes for generations. Initially, they simply couldn’t keep up with our demand—mostly because Immacolata (Irma), aka mamma, couldn’t hand label every bottle herself fast enough. These days, they’ve given Irma a break with a new labeling machine, and our ability to get stock on a larger scale is easier, despite the massive port delays. (Though these wines were supposed to arrive three months ago!) I snuck down into the cellar for a shot while Irma was hand labeling bottles. So cute! The two-hectare parcel of Aglianico that makes up the 2017 Messer Oto comes from the family’s youngest vineyards in Venosa’s Fiano di Camera district, inside the Aglianico del Vulture DOC in southeastern Italy. A location 420 meters above sea level on volcanic soils full of limestones bears this highly expressive and bright wine. The grapes are a massale selection of small berries with more polyphenols in the skin, which brings more color to this wine. These grapes are usually picked in the middle of October and are the first in for red wine production. Climatically it is the same as the other vineyards in their range, but the soils are better drained which results in earlier ripening than the Liscone, Bauccio and Drogone, all with richer volcanic clay soils. Raised in stainless steel, Messer Oto is a charmer and perhaps their most versatile wine, able to appeal to a broad range of wine lovers. The aging in steel preserves the wine's aromas and freshness, revealing impressive levels of bright acidity, earthiness, and an ethereal nose filled with red and purple fruit.  Paolo Latoracca paid us many visits during our year in Salerno While Madonna delle Grazie's Agliancio del Vulture 2016 Liscone is the second Agliancio in the cantina's range of reds, it can easily rival many cantinas’ top wines. It’s very serious wine with equal charm and punches so far above its weight class it seems silly for the price. (I’ve told as much to the Latoracca family, followed by tongue-in-cheek threats to dissuade them from increasing it!) Liscone is made from thirty-plus-year-old vines that sit at 430 meters. Three kilometers away from Messer Oto, it’s harvested a week later at the end of October because its soil is richer in volcanic rock-derived clay, not because the temperature is dramatically different. The plants are ancient biotypes different from Messer Oto and have larger berries and clusters because of the great water retention of its clay soil. The average yield here is 50-55hl/ha (70-80 quintale; ~2.8tons/acre). Grown in a sub-parcel of the Liscone vineyard, the grapes for 2015 Bauccio are grown entirely on black volcanic clay with a soft volcanic tuff layer about 60-70cm below the surface. Tuff is a combination of sand compacted with pyroclastic material, and each volcanic region and subzone has its own combination of minerals and bedrock structure. In contrast to sections used for their Liscone bottling, the topsoil here has little to no tuff in its black volcanic clay topsoil. Despite growing beside all the vines for Liscone, it takes a week or so longer to ripen due to the topsoil depth and the temperature influence of the nearby creek. A perfect marriage of volcanic and Aglianico flavors, Bauccio will age effortlessly for decades while maintaining very good accessibility in its youth. The grapes are picked at the end of October and if the ripeness is not there, its grapes are blended into Liscone, which has a shorter fermentation that doesn’t extract hard tannins. Bauccio is a noble wine with a fine balance of Aglianico power and elegance with both dark and bright fruit and savory characteristics. Every wine in every price level from Madonna della Grazie presents as good a value as can be found the world over, and Bauccio in a mid-range price is no exception. From a classically styled wine standpoint, Madonna delle Grazie’s 2013 Drogone d'Altavilla takes its place at the top with the best of all we have to offer in our portfolio. The 2013 checks the boxes of a great wine: impeccable balance, powerful yet refined, both gritty and suave, a deep well with elevated lift, and enjoyable young but destined to grow old with grace and polished nuance. It's made only in the best years when the Liscone vineyard's oldest vines find optimal ripeness. Usually it’s blended into Bauccio or Liscone on other years, and the only vintages bottled thus far have been 2003, ‘04, ’07, ’09, ’13, and ’15. What makes Drogone special is a combination of vine age (planted around 1960) and its genetic makeup. It’s a unique massal selection of Aglianico with a more compact cluster and more red than black tinted grapes. The deciding factor each year if Drogone is bottled is whether this extremely late-ripening ancient cultivar achieves the extra phenolic maturity to properly ripen the seeds to withstand its 40-45 days of fermentation without the tannins overwhelming the wine. For this length of time, the Latoracca’s need the seeds to be perfectly ripe, or the tannins may be slightly too coarse for what they expect out of a wine that will take the top spot in their range over Bauccio. Paolo, the winemaker of the family, explained that it has little to do with the concept of whether it is a “great” vintage or not, but only if the seeds can reach maturity in that last week on the vine, which is usually harvested the first week of November. Drogone is made the same in the cellar as Bauccio, except for the additional time of the post-fermentation maceration on the skins. Drogone remains one of the great wines in our portfolio. It’s a big win for me on authenticity and emotional value and transports me straight back to the Basilicata into the view of Monte Vulture, the extinct volcano that gave dramatic birth to this rich land with its black and beige volcanic soils, and the Latoracca’s bountiful vineyards. Drogone tastes, smells, and feels like this ancient land whose vinous history is as old as any in Europe, all with the added touch of the heart-warming spirit and generosity of the Latoracca family. During this unique moment in history, we greatly expanded into Iberia and picked up a few other producers in Italy, France and Germany along the way. Many of our new producers are not even close to arriving and I wanted to play them close to my chest until they got to the States because I’ve had bad experiences where people changed their minds and pulled out after we had already started to promote them. But given that this month all our new arrivals were already covered over the last two monthly newsletters, it’s a good opportunity to talk about some great new things in the market, and what’s more exciting than that? Many of Venosa's streets in this ancient village's centro storico are paved with massive slabs of black volcanic and white limestone rock found throughout the area.

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.

We can see the light, but we’re not out of the woods yet. One of the most important wine business headlines for us importers happened on March 6th, with the suspension of the tariffs on wine, among other products. The day the news dropped, a steady stream of messages from our producers flooded my phone, along with all my other receptacles of communication—the variety of which is head-spinning these days… The tariffs had kicked off a series of unfortunate events for many of us in the businesses of fine food and wine. While we’ve all eked out some wins, starting with the presidential election (I’ll be happy not to get more grief from our winegrowers about Trump!), followed by the surprisingly rapid distribution of Covid vaccines in the US—a stark contrast to what’s happening in the EU; here in Portugal they’re projecting that at this rate, people my age won’t get the vaccine until September. With the tariff suspension we can see the light, but we are far from out of the woods. Naturally, after a couple steps forward there’s inevitably a step back: right now, containers outbound from Europe are so backed up that it’s basically impossible for any wines to run a proper route in decent time. Many shipments are scheduled to take two to four times longer than they normally would—another dinghy race with a broken paddle. Firsthand Europe News Sadly, some parts of the EU are struggling even more than expected right now, especially in the bigger countries, such as Italy and France, where there’s a resurgence that as of mid-March has forced them back into lockdown. Over here in Portugal, we had a startling uptick that went down just as fast, and now we are opening up after Easter weekend, along with Spain. As has happened in many places in the States, it’s been a rollercoaster in the EU; improvements as a result of draconian rule enforcement were undone by sudden and severely relaxed enforcement over summer, fall, and into the holiday season, all of which led to the massive and unchecked return of the curve. Restaurants have been completely closed here in Portugal, except for takeout, but in the countryside it’s not quite the same experience as in a city… Next week may possibly be my first restaurant-cooked meal since I had one in early October of last year, in Bologna, Italy—not a bad place to leave off. The Missing Links A strange reality for us in this extensive pandemic period is that some of the vintages allotted for the US have yet to make it over, and many may not make it at all. As an importer who tries to visit around 90% of our producers each year, these days I can feel a little lost with regard to how some of the new vintages of wines we’ve regularly tracked for more than a decade have currently evolved, from cellar aging to their current state, now that they’re in the bottle. This opportunity to know these kids while they’re young and undeveloped is a unique opportunity for perspective that gives us confidence (or not) about a wine’s future. We know that many of you share this sense of vacancy in the understanding of what’s really going on with many of the wines we’ve kept tabs on all these years—a vacuum of knowledge and experience for these latest vintages. Hopefully we can all catch up together soon and try to continue the streak of understanding our wines from one vintage to the next, and through many of the most formative years that help us with our outlook on where the wine may go based on where it’s already been. While it may seem that living in Portugal should’ve made it easier for me to get samples from our producers and try the wines, it’s not that simple. One doesn’t really propose to have wines shipped—even from producers who are great friends—knowing there is not yet an intent to buy… The only exception I’ve been able to make is with some of our Iberian wines whose makers are relatively nearby, and just a few of our most historical friends, like Arnaud Lambert. We’ve gone national! In California, recent developments seem promising and we hope that trend continues. However, it might come as a surprise to some that we’ve expanded our company outlook to a national platform. Toward the second half of last year, Rachel Kerswell, a beloved member of any wine community blessed with her presence, moved to New York, had a baby right as Covid started to take shape in the US, and then came back into the fold with some serious motivation to develop our national import agenda. Going national was never really part of the plan in the beginning, but Rachel asked for the shot so we could keep working together despite her move across the country, and we sure are glad we bet on her. We now work in nearly fifteen states, and our national portfolio has taken on quite a different focus compared to our California selection: it’s almost an even split between Iberia and France, with some solid Italian and Austrian wines. It really is exciting to progress in new directions, and I’m happy to report that all of our Spanish and Portuguese producers thus far (except Quinta do Ameal) are national exclusives for us. There’s a new geologist at The Source…  I stayed quite busy during the pandemic with many other projects other than the daily effort of bailing water out of our company boat and plugging the holes with every finger and toe (with the help of a few deeply committed members who didn’t miss a day of work since the start of the pandemic). About six years ago, we began to work with geologist, Brenna Quigley, at the start of her now flourishing wine career. These days she’s focused on her fabulous podcast, Roadside Terroir, and along with her efforts at a number of California wineries where she helps them better navigate the ground they work to optimize their potential and encourage the voice of their terroirs. So for a while we had a vacancy in the position of resident geologist. In 2018, while fooling around inside the caldera of Basilicata’s famous extinct volcano, Monte Vulture, with the talented and scientifically astute brothers from Cantina Madonna delle Grazie, I finally had a phone call with a Spanish MSc geologist and PhD student from the University of Vigo, Ivan Rodriguez (pictured above), a guy whom I’d been stalking on the internet for a couple of months. Vigo is about a forty-five minute drive from where I live in Portugal, so the proximity was perfect. I was looking for another talented and young (I do prefer the open minds of young scientists), to help me continue to push my Sisyphean wine’s-relation-to-geology-curiosity-stone up the hill of nonstop roadblocks, curves and, sometimes, complete dead ends. I’ve not given up on trying to better understand the links between the wine and the rock, but I’ve begun to focus more on documenting information with greater accuracy so that maybe someone smarter and more talented than I am will be able to take real data and narratives that are peer-reviewed by historians, scientists and winegrowers, and make more sense of it. Upcoming Geological Map Series We have a series of geological maps that I developed with Ivan and Andrea (my wife), that we will begin to circulate soon. We started with the lower-hanging fruit of Galicia and Northern Portugal because of its lack of more in-depth coverage on the subject (at least in English), its need for illumination on its geology and grape varieties, and because it’s now my backyard and a major focus for our company. Some of the maps will have essays that go into greater depth on specific regions with mostly a technical vantage point. The maps may seem simple (by design), but they take a great deal of work to develop the finished products. Is anything actually going to arrive in April?? Yes! But we should’ve had a full boatload (literally) of wines arriving from Europe this month, but clearly haven’t received them due to all the massive delays. Some of the top-tier goodies include the 2017 vintage wines from Simon Bize, which I’ve tasted here, in Portugal, thanks to the Wasserman’s coordination with Chisa Bize to get some wine over to me to enjoy; it’s a truly breakthrough vintage for the Bize team with a slightly gentler disposition than the entire range had in the past few years since the passing of Patrick Bize. There’s also a big mix of vintages from Guiberteau as well as the wines of his partner-in-crime, Brendan Stater-West. There’s a lot more on order, but they probably won’t start to hit the warehouse until May. Making the rounds this month We’re extremely happy to add a new producer from Bramaterra, in the Alto Piemonte, to our roster of Italian gems. Our collaboration with Andrea Monti Perini (pictured above) has been in the works now for more than a year and a half, though we’ve obviously had a little trip-up along the way. (Most of our San Francisco and Los Angeles sales team visited this true garage-sized cantina exactly one week after landing in Milan on the Sunday the news broke about Italy’s pandemic surge!) Andrea, a one-man-show, is crafting perhaps the most understated and subtle Nebbiolo wines within his region; of course, this means that his wines could be a top contender for the most understated and elegant young Nebbiolo wines in all of Italy. The production is tiny (200-250 cases annually) and his winery project has barely hung in there after the devastating season last year when a major hailstorm left Alto Piemonte, particularly his area, just on the border of the Lessona appellation, in ruins. During our visit with many of the great cantinas of the Langhe (team visits for perspective with G. Conterno, Brovia, B. Mascarello, Burlotto, Cavallotto, and more) of the most compelling wines we tasted out of botte was Andrea’s 2019 vintage Bramaterra—simply stunning and an experience we dream about when we taste what many on our team consider the king of all Italian grapes. Around the end of the month, we are going to get a small dose of wines from Riecine, a historic, organic Chianti Classico producer located in the highest altitude zone of Gaiole in Chianti. It’s been a little crazy with these wines because the basic Chianti Classico often seems to evaporate by the end of their first month in stock. Why, you ask? Well, because it’s simply delicious and breaks out of the common must-add-food-to-fully-enjoy Chianti Classico mold. Riecine makes a more upfront fruity style with the entry-level wine, and then there is the Riserva (which isn’t on this container, though we should have it by the fall of 2021), cut from the from old-school cloth: deep, with a broad range of red and dark fruits, foresty, fresh, savory to the bone, and almost unbeatable with backcountry, high-altitude Italian cooking—think Sean Connery in tweed hunting quarry in the Alps. But, in this first offer of 2021 we have the two most sought-after wines in the range. First is Riecine di Riecine, a mean blind-taste for industry professionals because of its regal red-hued, high-on-the-slope Vosne-Romanée nose (minus any wood presence at all because it’s aged for three years in concrete eggs)—think Audrey Hepburn in a black turtleneck with light red lipstick. The other wine, La Gioia, is the most unapologetically delicious and voluptuous red in the range and has all the trimmings that drive tasters— those who want a lot of personality, curvature and sensuality in their wines—utterly mad; it does have a bit of newer oak too, but it wears it like Sophia Loren wore red dresses in the 1950s) utterly mad. Oh, and La Gioia and Riecine di Riecine are both 2016s! Quantities are very limited, but midway through last year I asked our friends at Riecine to hold some for us so we didn’t miss this gem of a vintage while we waited for things to begin to open up again. Lucky for us, these wines are almost here. In Portugal, we have another gem from Trás-os-Montes, Menina d’uva. The resident maker, Aline Dominguez (pictured below), a French native with Portuguese parents, found her way back to her parent’s familial countryside after years of extensive education in a multitude of universities along with experiences working wine bars in Paris and wineries in Burgundy. Her wines are a new take for the region, just as those from the nearby Arribas Wine Company (a new producer we just introduced last month with immediate success, i.e. overnight depletion of the single pallet of wine we had for the US), that follows the line of “natural trimmings,” but with more of a finishing touch to keep them from the funk often associated with wines made in this style. Strongly textured in the palate, the aromas are lighter and brighter, with some elements of reduction at first after opening, and this is by design, in order to enable her confidence with using much less sulfur than is often used with normal still wines. With some air and patience they deliver an authentic array of characteristics from this unique corner of Iberia. Aline is a special one. What the heck is happening in Chile and its Itata Valley?! There seems to be an explosion of interest in the area, and I’m happy to say that we got there early (thanks to my Chilean wife and our visits to her family over the years), and I think we have one of the very best in Leonardo Erazo, with his A Los Viñateros Bravos range of wines and his estate-owned vineyard wines bottled under the Leonardo Erazo label. Leo recently quit his activities working double time with his project as well as being the primary wine director for the Altos Las Hormigas project, which has a fully working program in Cahors, France, and another in Argentina’s Mendoza wine region. Leo’s Itata Valley wines were already superb, but with his full attention solely on his own project, it has truly found another level. Last year, Andrea brought home some of Leo’s wines from Chile for me to taste, which of course found their way to blind-tastings with a bunch of top winemakers in Galicia and Northern Portugal. I thought it would be interesting for them to blind taste wines (included in the mix were those of Pedro Parra’s delicious wines from Chile) grown on the same type of granitic bedrock and topsoil that many of these winemakers work on. Almost everyone guessed that these wines were Beaujolais—no surprise… Beaujolais is largely granitic too, just like many wine regions in Galicia and Portugal (same geologic era, too), and from some mineral and textural profiles they’re nearly identical. Don’t miss out on this new batch of Leo’s wines. They’re stunning, and for the price they’re unbeatable for terroir-driven wines that are superbly crafted and deliver a great amount of emotion and pleasure. New Producers On the Horizon I don’t know why this is all happening so fast (well I guess I do…), but we continue to amass almost an entirely new portfolio of exciting wines. In Spain, we’ve just snagged a great winery partnership in Navarra. Yes, I’m aware of the reputation of good-but-rarely-compelling wines from Navarra, but for good reason the guys over at Aseginolaza & Leunda have captured the attention of Spain’s new generation of growers, sommeliers, critics, and wine journalists. The recognition these two environmental biologists are getting is not surprising because they masterfully capture the essence of Garnacha (and other local, indigenous varieties) reminiscent of in-balance Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines of old, with a solid Spanish flare. This is exciting and authentic stuff, and doesn’t carry CdP prices. Others new Spanish additions mentioned in last month’s newsletter are Fazenda Prádio (Ribeira Sacra), Augalevada (Ribeiro), César Fernández Díaz (Ribero del Duero), and Bodegas Gordón (the wines of the famous Castilla y Leon steakhouse, El Capricho). Another next-generation Portuguese project is Quinta da Carolina, taken over by the son of the family winery, Luis Candido da Silva, one of the winemakers at Dirk Niepoort’s empire. A random search online for producers from the Douro led me to send Luis a message, while he had already been advised by the guys at Arribas Wine Company to contact me—serendipity! A lunch together at my place with a salt-roasted, wild Atlantic sea bass (called branzino in Italy, robalo in these parts) was knocked out of the park with the accompaniment of Luis’ off-the-hook Portuguese white wine, with its perfectly balanced mineral drive and Richard Leroy-scented reduction (but far cleaner, refined and completely measured), along with an Arnaud Lambert-like refinement and energy. I am certain that this white wine was the most compelling unfinished (at the time, bottled at the end of March) white wine I’ve tasted in Portugal. However, the majority of the production is a range of reds that maintain that wonderfully cool, slatey mineral and metal freshness on the palate. Once Luis took over the family estate just five years ago (although he’s been working in the vineyards since he was eight), organic conversion began and all the wines started their baby steps backward in alcohol and extraction—a wise move to not upset the family with too dramatic a change so quickly, and a good long-game strategy to not have the age old tension between father and son come into play. There are wines that are experimental, but most are more in the vein of the classically-styled European wines with a lot of personality from both the terroir and its cellar and vineyard master. His wines will be a welcome balance to our Portuguese collection. Falkenstein, perhaps Italy’s most famous Riesling producer, has been on my radar since I first tasted a Riesling about eight years ago over dinner with Matilde Poggi, from Le Fraghe winery, in northeast Italy, near Lago de Garda. Matilde is the rare producer who doesn’t just taste her own wines during a meal with her customers, but also pours other inspiring juice. I was smitten at first smell and taste; the wine bore the mark of a familiar bedrock type that immediately transported Donny (the co-owner and co-founder of The Source) and me to Austria’s Wachau. To test our theory, Matilde phoned Franz Pratzner, her good friend and Falkenstein’s visionary, to ask about the bedrock. We were right: these wines are as much Austrian in style as they are Italian in the sense that the bedrock is indeed mostly gneiss and other hard metamorphic rocks; and not surprisingly, Pratzner worked for some time in Austria’s Wachau wine region, too. Even better news is that the Pratzners have now worked organically for some years, which clearly upped their game to another level, and I’ve continued to drink the wines every time I have seen them on Italian wine lists over the years. Stylistically, think of the Wachau’s Veyder-Malberg Brandstatt Riesling for purity, mineral characteristics and freshness, with the gusto of a dry Rheingau Riesling from one of Robert Weil’s top sites. For all of us on the sales side (both wholesale and direct to consumers), Riesling indeed remains a labor of love. That said, we’re extremely excited that we have the opportunity to represent this family’s seeming mastery of Riesling along with other great surprises in their range, like their gorgeously compelling Pinot Noir (this wine you’ve got to taste!) as well as their other whites, Pinot Blanc and Sauvignon, which are enriched with the same backbone, mineral drive and electricity as the Rieslings. Staff favorites from March 2018 Mittelbach, Federspeil Grüner Veltliner by Leigh Readey, Santa Barbara My first introduction to Grüner Veltliner was around 2009 while I was selling wine for a different company who partnered with a small Austrian importer. In Santa Barbara, I was mostly knowledgeable about (and drinking) classic California grapes, and my tastebuds were blown away by this not-so-fruity and spicy dry wine. With Grüner you can still have a multitude of expressions within a relatively modest price range. I’ll find myself drinking an array of wines but then realize I’m missing something. Then I remember... Grüner. And I realize that’s exactly what my palate is craving. When I found out that we were bringing in a Wachau Grüner from fifth generation winemaker Martin Mittlebach (pictured above) of Tegernseerhof that retailed for around $20, I already loved the wine without even tasting it. This wine delivers the spice in the form of Asian pear and cracked pepper, and the citrus is all things lime and lemony, lemonheads, preserved lemon, and lemon zest. The textural sensation is an experience, the acid so lively it dances around your tongue. It’s become my go-to wine, pairing extremely well with my plant-based diet. This is such a pure expression of Grüner that if it had been my first introduction to the grape, the bar would have been set very high. 2017 Demougeot, Pommard, 1er Cru Charmots, Le Coeur des Dames by Donny Sullivan, The Source co-founder and General Manager Anyone who is fascinated with Burgundy or has had an exceptional bottle of it will find great appreciation for this pick. It’s a true standout that stood tall in a tasting over a year ago, upon the wine’s release, and was considered by many to be the top wine of the day.  I have touted the humble and quietly brilliant Rodolphe Demougeot as one of the best hidden-gem producers in the prized Côte d’Or, for years. It’s partially because he is not on the board with top cru vineyards, though his address in Meursault sits amongst some of the biggest names in Burgundy. And he’s not the kind of guy that’s gonna be tootin’ his own horn, so he stays quietly known by those who know.  He’s a reserved man who lets his wines speak for themselves and although they don’t shout at full volume, they communicate with intense clarity, detail, meaning, and authenticity. The tastings I’ve had in Demougeot’s cellar remain some of my greatest experiences in Burgundy. Every time I leave the cellar I think to myself, “How could the rest of the world not already know of and covet these wines? I am so fortunate.” Although he doesn’t have a full lineup of top crus, he has this one, his best, and it’s nothing shy of one of the finest parcels of land for Pinot Noir in all of the Côtes de Beaune. Pommard, often known for more sturdy or even harder wines, Charmots is somewhat wedged into a valley crease, where access to water and limestone bedrock is more substantial and in balance with the clay topsoil. This vineyard offers, as suggested by its name, a very charming, expressive and beautiful wine contrary to Pommard’s generalized reputation.  Les Coeur des Dames (The Ladies’ Heart), Demougeot’s monopole lieu-dit inside of the Charmots premier cru, is the crown jewel of the domaine and is handled with exceptional care. For many years now it has been plowed by horse and worked by hand with only a minimal intervention of organic or biodynamic treatments.  The concentration and intensity in its lifted, somewhat lighter-bodied and fine-tannin structure deliver the juxtaposition we seek in great wines. The spectrum, precision, weave and evolution of aromas is intoxicating, as are the bevy of flavors on both the savory and sweet side of the palate.  This wine offers a huge opportunity to food, and to the patient and contemplative taster.  Sometimes the stars simply seem to align, and while Demougeot’s cellar has a sky full of constellations, this one is exceptionally easy to pick out! 2018 Christophe et Fils, Chablis By Jon Elkins, Cayucos (Central Coast) California Sharing so many great wines from Europe with my restaurant and retail customers is always a joy. Many of them haven’t really been shown a wide selection of imports, and I love to be the bearer of enlightenment. One of my absolute favorite consultations is the one where I help the buyer choose which of the Chablis producers that I present suits their business the best. Of course I’ve made up my mind as to which direction they should take, but it’s really up to them to decide. There are more than a few things to consider, such as the cuisine; is it forward, minimal, simple but sublime? Or, is it classic, complex, rich and comforting? What’s the vibe like in the dining room? Who are the clients? Recently I found the ideal restaurant to offer the 2018 Christophe et Fils Chablis. The wine buyer is also the chef and it is especially fun for me to present a wine the way a chef would construct a dish, breaking it down into its components and discussing how and why they work so well together, and I find this wine to be so much like a dish that I really want to eat. Sebastien Christophe creates a Chablis that is remarkable in its restraint, its subtlety, its demure elegance, and yet because these characteristics are so thought-provoking, the wine leaves a powerful impression. These same characteristics are what makes the wine such a pleasure to pair with a dish composed in the same fashion. The wine has great clarity, with just the faintest tinge of golden-green hue that shines for you as you swirl it in your glass, the color is that of freshly pressed Chardonnay that never deepened beyond that process. The aromas are all classic Chablis, at their freshest, their most lovely. That flinty wet stone. It’s there, but it’s not so overtly developed to be the first thing you notice, and all the other expected mineral components are present, including crushed oyster shells and fine sea mist, hints of chalky coastal bluffs. The texture is very much alive with that same sort of sea salt and mineral-tinged acidity that escorts the fruit across your palate. The fruit component of this wine? Well, it’s Chardonnay. It tastes like really fine, well-raised Chardonnay from brisk Chablis vineyards. It’s odd to have so much to say about a wine, but when you get to the part about all the expression of various fruit components, there just aren’t loads of comparisons to make. It is what you’d expect, a bit of that just-a-moment-away-from-ripe apple, a bit of lemon, a bit of lime. Together they form a very delicate and lithe little lemon drop candy that sits itself right in the center of your tongue. Savory components, herbs like fresh lemon thyme bring an earthy note. Then a very familiar Chablisienne bitter, almost unripe green almond component comes through on the finish. It’s quite classic, but quite modern in its interpretation. The chef was inspired and prepared a little nibble for us. A crudo of scallops with a splash of a very light and gingery ponzu, a sprinkling of pulverized lemon grass, and just a bit of Thai chili and lime zest. I thought that Christophe et Fils was probably the right choice for this restaurant. Oh yes. ■

(Download complete pdf here) Colares, Portugal, March 2024 It seemed possible that winter wasn’t going to arrive. Dave Fletcher called from Barbaresco to confirm they weren’t alone in facing a sunny, dry, and unusually warm January. In Spain’s Costa Brava it was like fall had returned and even sometimes felt like a cool late-summer day; a hot, sunny spot protected from the wind on our terrace pushed this particular vitamin D-soaking lizard back inside after only ten minutes. People were at the beach, swimming. It rained less than usual in Portugal and one of my best friends and favorite winegrowers, Constantino Ramos, was enjoying the balmy temperatures but had the same concerns as every grower: the vines might fail to get enough of their much-needed winter hibernation, and could start pushing far too early. It cooled off and things slowed again in February but March temperatures picked back up. Growers in southern Portugal said bud break is even two weeks earlier than 2023, and that year was early too. The fourth weekend of March in Portugal’s Ponte de Lima (where we live) hit an unusually high 83°F. A few days later it plummeted to highs in the mid-fourties. 2024 holds the record for the warmest January in history. February got a little chillier, and winter arrived again for me on the bone-chilling London Stansted tarmac in near-freezing temperatures during a slow march to the terminal in face-stinging drizzle and hair-twisting winds of well over twenty miles per hour. Passengers on some planes were in for a white-knuckle, stomach-churning, face-blanching landing. I heard that the next day planes had to attempt numerous landings before they were successful. Photo borrowed from tripadvisor.com We came to London for a Spanish winegrower-tasting event called Viñateros. But our first stop was 10 Cases. Highly recommended for a casual but effective culinary experience, this bistro à vin was commandeered by the lovely Parisian-born, Émilie, and Matt, a youngish, lanky, long-haired, elegantly scruffy British wine-tender who floated in and out of the bar, sometimes drifted across the street, then outside on the bench for a smoke, maintaining at all times his devilishly inviting Bowie-like charm and smile. With an endless supply of temptations on the list, we followed the food. For my wife, a one-bottle date for dinner and a single-glass date for lunch who always prefers the lowest alcohol options, the 2019 Prager Riesling Federspiel “Steinriegel” couldn’t have been a better choice to cover our diverse food choices. Minerally icy and wiry, the extra years in bottle from this top vintage provided the right richness and flesh for its naturally sinewy frame. The start was Cantabrian anchovies with bread and addictive salted Beillevaire Normandy butter, followed by duck rillette, beetroot salad, bacalao-cheek fish and chips (a clever play on a local favorite?), and caramelized sunchokes (delicious, though not worth the ensuing internal pressure for this eater, some hours later). Then we finished with a trout reminiscent of the Danube (though born of the Chalk River) with fried skin, which was perfect for a Wachau wine. Then we may or may not have had two back-to-back orders of eye-crossing chocolate delice to tie everything off. Our first imported Portuguese wines from Quinta do Ameal arrived in California in 2012. Our maiden voyage to the verdant hills of Portugal’s granite-dominated Lima Valley and its fast-moving Atlantic weather—a daily Ridley Scott-like scene from dark and frightening deluge to enlightening solar explosion and warmth—enchanted us enough to move here in 2019 after a year in the beautiful and unforgettably chaotic Salerno and the Amalfi Coast. It took seven more years to land a second Portuguese grower, and before that we already had a good collection going in Galicia. Today we import more than twenty-five growers from Iberia, and we’re just getting started. It’s only April and we recently made a lucky strike in the tiny, historic Colares, Portugal’s rare pie franco beachfront refuge. While there used to be 1,500 hectares of vines, there are now fewer than fifty, credited to Lisbon’s ever-expanding urban sprawl. (Beachfront property outside of Lisbon is far more valuable as real estate than vines!) Like Provence’s Palette, Colares produces mysteriously immortal and charming wines in what’s now considered a tiny appellation buttressed by a beautiful limestone city and limestone ridge, though it’s not as dramatic as Palette and Aix-en-Provence’s iconic Mont Sainte-Victoire. Two hours south of Colares and ten minutes east of the Atlantic there’s another genius we hope to work with. At the Simplesmente Vinho on the Douro in Porto, one would be hard-pressed to find wines more delicious. And maybe another grower in Dão! We’ll see. Exciting times in Portugal, nonetheless. And then there’s Spain. Photo borrowed from sbnation.com Our first Spanish wine arrived in 2017, but this short-lived Albariño affair led us to the humble luminary, Manuel (Chicho) Moldes. Chicho’s generosity and immediate friendship brought us deep into Spanish wine culture and an entirely new family of growers close to what would eventually be our new hometown on the border of Galicia. Spain is on a different trajectory than its neighbor with which it shares one of the oldest national borders in the world—around 900 years now. Indeed, Portugal is moving, but only fast by Portuguese pacing. Thirty years ago, Spanish reds and Austria whites exploded on the scene. Twenty years ago, indigenous Italian wine started to capture a lot of real estate on fine wine restaurant lists and store shelves. However, it seems to be losing ground now, slowing to a Bolognese-bubbling simmer. At the same time, Germany’s dry Riesling revolution grabbed headlines. And a newer taste began to develop in Spain, spurred by the natural wine movement and fresher, lower-alcohol wines. Spain may be progressing faster than the rest of the wine-producing countries in Europe. Indeed, France continues to evolve, but the French are not rediscovering old viticultural heritage at the pace of the Spanish. Rather, France continues more in its evolution with techniques, but mostly with already well-established viticulture land. Spain is nearly equal in scale, but they’re rebuilding a forgotten wine culture and nearly entire regions throughout the country. Their tumble into the dark times started like the rest of Europe with the 1800s nasty-boy mildew-twins, and led by phylloxera. Then it was time for a couple of World Wars, between which the Spanish had a Civil War that landed them with a thud under the dusty boot heel of a Francoist dictatorship that lasted forty years until his death in November 1975. Spain is only fifty years past this brutal moment (of many brutal and cruel moments in their history), and over thirty percent of today’s population there lived part of their lives under Franco. While other European countries were in full recovery mode after World War II, the dreams of the average Spaniard under Franco were kicked down the pitch. The answer in Spain during those times was not to work in vineyards but to go to the cities, breaking many of Spain’s historical wine links. Today it’s on an impressive rebound, and with extraordinary terroirs yet to be fully realized. Imagine if Côte-Rôtie and the rest of the Northern Rhône Valley were reignited only a decade or two ago. That’s what’s happening all over Iberia, from Douro to Dão, Galicia to Gredos, and one of the first nearly forgotten lands in Spain to strike it big, Catalonia’s Priorat. Montserrat photos (above and below) borrowed from worldsbesthikes.com (One of my Spanish teachers, Montserrat—a tough name to pronounce on first go for any Anglo-Saxon—explained that it was given to many Catalan women during the Franco dictatorship as a passive rebellion against Franco’s ban of català, Catalonia’s native tongue. The Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey, just northwest of Barcelona on one of Europe’s most entrancing and singular conglomerate formations, Montserrat—directly translated as jagged mountain—resisted and continued to speak català throughout the dictatorship. They also gave shelter to political dissenters against Franco, for which many priests paid the ultimate price. When she was in school, there could be seven out of twenty girls named Montserrat. She jokes that the only Francos in all of Catalonia are the dogs no one likes.) And while Portugal moved peacefully into democratic society more than a year before Spain, it is the Spanish that bolted out of their boxed-in apartments and stone houses with tiny windows to enjoy fellowship with friends in restaurants and threw their bikini tops on the sand—some also occasionally discarding their bottoms—and began to live like their freedom wasn’t going to last. Almost every restaurant, no matter how poor the food may be (though they always have a decent beer, if anything), is full of Spaniards, cañas on every table, paellas, pulpos, tortillas, and jamon, elements as necessary to them as the air they breathe. I attribute part of Spain’s recent rise—and now Portugal’s—to how international wine has become a regular part of progressive restaurant and wine-store culture. Passionate local Spanish wine importers and influential winemakers travel, learn, and bring back the intellectual spoils to everyone at home. It’s astounding how fast some find new and interesting growers outside of their home country as fast as the rest of the world. And it’s equally impressive that they all know each other throughout the country, like a massive version of the enviable comradery of the tightly-knit Austrian wine community. Spain’s interest in the outside world means open minds and exponential progress. Every progressive Spanish grower I know, and likely 95% of those at the Viñateros tasting in London, are not only acquainted with the boutique wines of Champagne, Burgundy, Jura, Rhône and Loire Valleys, Italy’s Barolo, Barbaresco and Etna, Portugal’s Dão and Douro, the Wachau and Mosel, they also know the great producers in those regions by name and frequent their wines as much as Spanish wine. Do you think many growers in the famous French and Italian wine regions know today’s greats of Spain, or Austria, or Portugal? But to be fair, there’s a lot to learn in their own respective country for the growers in France and Italy, and for every great Spanish grower, there are five French and three well-fed Italians.   Spain is in full explosion mode. Not only because of the growers themselves but also thanks to a series of importers (and critics) that preceded the arrival of The Source, by generations. Much is to be credited to those who forged a path into Iberia and encouraged growers to rediscover and rebuild. We can’t forget that Spain was under a dictatorship until 1975, and people were, and some remain, in a period of healing and recovery while others simply won’t make it out from under the weight of that past. And while we may pick sides with the style of wines we prefer, those Spanish importers during the ‘90s and aughts gave confidence to a country by reigniting their dreams of rebuilding their viticultural heritage. The Spaniards did it. The world noticed. And they were and are being rewarded. That brave generation set the stage for today’s generation to thrive. One such importer of more than thirty years and part of this Spanish renaissance is Eric Solomon. Initially cutting his teeth in France, Eric’s first imported Spanish wine was made from a globally unknown region at the time. That first wine that brought Eric to Spain was crafted by a Swiss-German born in Paris, Daphne Glorian, a dreamer who forged her first wine from seventeen terraces in one of the world’s most aesthetic and extreme environments. She called it Clos Erasmus, and she went on to become one of the most celebrated growers of Priorat and all of Spain. She and Eric married in 1997. Though Eric’s first love was music, then French wine, he’s more known today in the US market for his influence with Spanish wine. Names Eric championed include growers from Priorat (Clos Erasmus, Terroir al Límit, among others), Sierra de Gredos (à la Commando G), Ribeira Sacra (Fedellos), Jerez (Luís Perez), among many others. We know the strength of our Spanish range here at The Source is Galicia. Eric’s is the entire country. His wines bring a matured Spanish wine culture that has come about after the modernist age of extraction and without any natural wine boobytraps, rather a group of the country’s most progressive and talented growers. Our producers at The Source tend to play in the more tense and aromatically piercing, austere realm (except those from Castilla y Léon and Rioja). They’re sharp and lean toward brighter acidity for structural framing, and crunchy fruit and rocky terroirs for aromatic and textural strength. In my January snapshot at the London Viñateros tasting, I found that the dozen Indigo Wine Spanish growers are equally elegant but fuller. Perhaps they could be described as more classic, and on the stage of the world’s universally appealing superstars. They’re less austere yet strongly distinguished in palate texture with intendedly middle-amplitude acidity and they’re salty, the way we love them. If I were to use a hillslope to chart the general feel and shape of wine with the sparer soils on the top and richest soils on the bottom, The Source profile tends to play in the upper section where some richness is exchanged for tension. Eric’s are in the center, the sweet spot for balanced fullness. Philosophically, Indigo Wine’s Spanish lot occupies that center space between modern movements of the last fifty years, where the hand in the cellar is measured, nothing of value is left to the pomace pile, and craft is never forsaken for dogma. Most practice organic and/or biodynamic farming. (Once I have more in-depth experiences with Indigo’s French wines, I’ll write about them.) Indigo Wine’s Spanish collection represents today’s voice that evolved over the last fifty years of cultural rebirth and renaissance in one of the world’s most exciting wine-producing countries. This April, The Source will start to bring to California Eric’s small winegrower portfolio from France, Spain, and Switzerland. I am thrilled by the opportunity to learn from and work with Eric, who shares a common bond with us at The Source in that he also built his company from scratch. I am also excited for our team and our California wine community to benefit from his crew of deeply experienced former sommeliers and now longtime importing colleagues. “People and places are the essence of what I do. Had I focused solely on monetary success, I would have retired years ago. When I add a new producer to my portfolio, the wines must say something unique about variety and place and something profound about the winemaker. Interesting people make interesting wines. They tend to work at the margins, rebel against convention, and doggedly follow their own path. They are thoughtful and hospitable, demanding and loyal, surprising and dependable. If I have to work harder to get attention for their efforts, I do this gladly because they're not just business partners but friends. “Late last year, I met Ted Vance. The instant and easy rapport that developed might have been from shared experience. Ted was born and raised in Montana, and I grew up in small-town North Carolina, but we feel genuinely at home in Europe. While I have Daphne to ground me, Ted has Andrea. Fundamentally, we share a deep connection to the winemakers we represent and the relentless curiosity that led to their discovery. With Ted, I feel the same excitement and possibility as some of my most talented winemakers, and through our shared commitment to people and places, I couldn’t be more confident in my new partnership with Ted Vance and The Source in bringing my Indigo Wine portfolio to California.” In London I was greeted by Eric and some of his team. I then surprised six of our Spanish growers, since they had no idea I was coming. I hadn’t seen them outside of the cellar and vineyard in events before (I avoid them like the plague), and they were bursting with enthusiasm. Our real purpose in going to London was to meet with Eric and taste the dozen or so of his growers that we would represent in California. Our small team of producers at the event made a strong showing among a carefully sorted high level of Spain’s top progressive producers in one small space. Eric’s range of Spanish wines was equally impressive and covered much more ground than our seven years of importing from the region. No surprise. Ahead of time, I calibrated my palate with growers from our portfolio before tasting Eric’s—a practice I regularly do before and during tasting new prospects to gauge them better. Setting the bar, Manuel Moldes (aka Chicho) and Iago Garrido’s Augalevada wines both showed spectacularly. And while Iago never seems convinced by his reds over his whites, they blew my mind, again: indeed of the most compelling reds of the tasting for their uniqueness, beauty, and delineation of fine nuances; the new labels are great, too. Similarly, Chicho’s were just as good as we expected. Manuel Moldes and Iago Garrido (Augalevada) In Rías Baixas, there is some unspoken internal hierarchy in the wine community. I know part of it is out of respect for the region’s trailblazers (same as other Galician regions), and each other. But we outsiders have more freedom to express opinions: Chicho is at the top of the heap. I adore and drink the top Rías Baixas growers’ wines every year, and in fluidity, detail, and spherical harmony few match his complete body of work; certain wines in another range do, but few demonstrate the same across the board. Each wine he puts to bottle seems as though he’s bet his life on it. Part of his progress is that he’s one of the most well-tasted growers I know in all of Europe, and has a clear vision and the tools to achieve his objectives. Our first imported wines, 2018s, were already in the upper division. Today, however, even his entry-level, Afelio, is tough for any Albariño to beat on balance. His reds now also find the mid-palate flesh they were short on when we first started. At the tasting was also Artuke, the most developed of the Rioja growers we represent. Arturo Miguel Blanco is well past the initial discovery phase and deep into the refinement of details. He’s middle-aged but has already achieved a certain level of mastery, similar to Chicho. But it’s the wines of the relative winegrowing newcomers from our portfolio at Viñateros that pleased me the most. The Rioja wines of José Gil and Javier Arizcuren, and Aseginolaza & Leunda’s Navarra range reached a new level. Javier’s reds were some of the most exhilarating in the whole tasting on full-flavored deliciousness, nuance and craft. An architect by trade (and famous for his designs in Rioja), in the last ten years he’s become an obsessive vineyard worker and cellar tinkerer, and his wines, many from recovered ancient vines at high altitudes, have found their voice. They went from a little loose but serious in the first wines with a bit much newer wood for my taste (sometimes necessary when increasing production with the desire to guarantee the hygiene of the wood in the cellar), to wine more sculpted by now more mature wood barrels, with intense joy and better-contained fullness. I tasted them after a few hours open, and the top of his range (wines we haven’t yet imported) delivered two of the best reds I tasted all day. Now to wines that are actually arriving. Wines arriving in California from Indigo Wine will be covered in greater detail in the marketplace with our sales team and support from Eric’s team, and sometimes Eric himself. The amount of knowledge Eric’s team has about their wines (and their similar fascination with geology’s relation to wine) and the most important wines of Europe is at the highest level of any importer. Many of the growers, as in the Jon-David Headrick Selections French roster, were sourced and are also managed directly by them. More on those producers to come. At the tasting next to Javier Arizcuren was José Gil, who, interestingly enough, already works with Eric Solomon in the rest of the US market. José is on a seriously fast track, as if he was born to do this the way Messi was to play fútbol. While Javier’s Riojas hit the mark of contemporary classic, José’s are equally delicious but flash more x-factor, a wildness of that northern Rhône garrigue with its lavender and purple flowers, thyme and other parched high-desert herbs framing the fruit. This year we’re getting a little more from José than usual, but only with his starter red. And with José awarded Tim Atkins’ 2021 “Young Winemaker of the Year,” and a big belief with big numbers to match from the Wine Advocate’s Luis Gutiérrez, it makes it even harder to parcel out his top wines. This leaves the range’s starter, 2021 Viñedos de San Vicente de la Sonsierra, the wine to focus on. It’s vinified and aged as the entire range with just short of a two-week fermentation (here about half stems included, all others destemmed), pumped over a couple times per day followed by a year in older 300-500L French oak barrels with sulfites only added at bottling. It’s 80% Tempranillo co-planted on large terraces between 1932-2017 with Garnacha Tinto and Blanco, and Viura, exposed in many directions on shallow calcareous sandstone bedrock and calcareous silt and sand topsoil at 510-620m. If you don’t try his top wines next to this one, you might think it’s one of them. The other 2021s are so small in quantity, it’s too much of a tease for a big presentation. Arriving are the elegant Viñedos En Labastida, a blend of 85% Tempranillo, 10% Garnacha, and 5% Viura from Labastida, a neighboring commune to Sonsierra; the potent and equally fine Parcela La Conoca from a 0.5-hectárea Tempranillo (and a little Viura) on the easternmost area of San Vicente de la Sonsierra Valley planted in 1967 on a northwest-exposed terrace of deep calcareous silt and clay topsoil on calcareous sandstone bedrock at 560m;  Parcela El Bardallo, a big-flavored Tempranillo co-planted with a little Viura, exposed northwest on sandstone and limestone with calcareous silt and sand topsoil at 540m. What some consider the most complete wine in the range, Parcela La Cancova “Camino de Ribas” comes from the Concova vineyard with Tempranillo (~60%), Garnacha Tinto (~40%) and a minuscule amount of Garnacha Blanca and Viura planted between 1892-2017 on northeast-facing calcareous bedrock with shallow sandy topsoil at 610 m. José’s parcela wines are extremely limited but a lucky few might be able to grab some. Don’t hesitate to ask. We will do our best to accommodate. While Javier and José are hitting big on the Rioja scene, Basque natives and environmental biologists by education and trade, Jon Aseginolaza and Pedro Leunda, are no longer quietly grabbing attention for their appellation-revitalizations in Navarra. Their wines in London sent a message as they pursue elegance over power and have made directional choices to either play on the lighter side with each specific cuvée or sometimes with a grander tune. What I like most about their choices is that they highlight Navarra as an undervalued and underutilized multi-talent with the possibility to create refined beasts and ethereal beauties from the same ancient and nearly forgotten Garnacha vines. From one vineyard on the south side to another could be more than an hour’s drive, they play in Navarra with Garnacha like Sonoma winemakers source Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from many corners of county. There are countless changes in terrain and climate as one moves across the appellation, especially in the north, passing through the desert and closer to the Bay of Biscay. Jon and Pedro Before we jump into the reds, I want to acknowledge that I made a mistake by not importing the new vintage of their white, Txuria. This old-vine Viura was absolutely one of the most compelling whites tasted in London. They found a great path and I hope they continue to follow it so we can get some next year—a perfect balance of reduction, finely etched framing and gorgeous, sharpening stone texture. Beautiful! What’s landing now are the reds that play more in the ethereal, high-toned domain than the darker, earthy, beast realm. All are in the 13.5% range, which is no easy task in today’s Navarra with its long, hot summer days, especially with ancient Garnacha vines whose grapes mature faster than the younger ones. The most ethereal and freshest of the bunch is from the sole young-vine wine in the range, Kauten. 50% whole clusters from 15-year-old Garnacha vines, soft-touch extraction, and five months in old French wood forged a gorgeously lifted, bright red-fruited aromatic wine with elegant graphite-like textures and sappy back palate finish. If there ever was a poundable Navarra red with serious quality trimming, this is it. The 100% whole-bunch, x-factor-heavy Matsanko is bright for a Tempranillo-dominated wine. More purple than red, it emits fragrant lavender with wild purple thyme blossoms and dark green leaves. The remaining blend of 10% Garnacha and 5% Viura adds to the already lightness of this wine from old, resurrected, dry-farmed bush vines grown on rocky calcareous clay soils at 410-490 meters. Taken from the same vineyard sources, is Cuvée, one of their principal blended wines loosely composed of 75% Garnacha, 20% Mazuelo (Cariñena), and 5% Tempranillo. It’s assertive, with the Mazuelo shouldering its way to the forefront with sweet sugarplum, black raspberry and exotic Persian mulberry. I don’t know how he does it, but give Pablo Soldavini a box of vitis vinifera grapes from anywhere and prepare yourself for a miracle. He started making wine in 2010, but it seems like he was born into it. Ollo de Sapo (Eye of the Toad), one of the famous gneiss rocks of Ribeira Sacra Pablo grew up in Argentina, a seven-hour drive south of Buenos Aires. He attended university for graphic design but it wasn’t for him. Instead, he hit the road. First France, then England, and into Castro Caldelas, a medieval town with a castle in the heart of Galicia’s Ribeira Sacra. It’s the birthplace of his grandfather who emigrated to Argentina in the 1930s—a fortunate move considering what was in store for Spain shortly thereafter. What was originally just a return to Pablo’s ancestral background spurred a romantic interest in wine that turned into his calling. Fully committed to his objectives, putting all his money into only smoke, drink, food, and his vineyards and cellar, today he lives humbly, like a forty-something-year-old overactive hermit, high up in the Ribeira Sacra in a desolate and largely empty town full of rundown houses and a church and cemetery in almost complete disrepair. His only full-time companion in his tiny ramshackle wood house atop a tiny rock-walled cellar is his cat. Bank funding in hand, last year Pablo began to build a new winery across the street in preparation for production from some old vineyards he’s worked back to health—very few of them Mencía vines, rather more historical indigenous varieties if one could even say such a thing; centuries-adapted-cultivars? And after being dragged around the last decade starting with the 2013 co-founding to his ultimate departure in 2018 from the now famous Ribeira Sacra producer, Fedellos do Couto, followed by a consultation gig for a misguided heavy metal rocker in Ribeira Sacra’s Amandi who bet his wine economics on a tree swing, and then Adega Saíñas in Riberas do Sil, Pablo has found his footing. The results are as good as expected, and the once-underutilized talent of Pablo Soldavini is no more. Fidgety, often overly anxious, he has irresistible cravings for smoke and drink and carne (he loves four-legged and winged animals but isn’t a fan of seafood—both Argentine cultural heritages, at least from his generation). With his perpetually vigneron-stained hands and whole-bunch-rarely-destemmed grooming, he’s mostly Dr. Jekyll and rarely Mr. Hyde. The man is generous and friendly and can’t sit still in the company of others—maybe not even when alone. But who can say? Two of the four wines this season from Pablo arrived in March and should be rested enough to give them a swirl in the marketplace in April. The two that come later are new: A Besta, the beast, a blend of mostly whole-cluster Sousón and Brancellao, and Lurpia, which means harpy (an inside joke that belies this beautiful wine), a pure, whole-cluster Brancellao with intoxicating qualities. They arrive this summer. I’ve already polished off numerous bottles of each but need to slow down or I’ll run out too soon. (2022) O Branco isn’t technically vintage-dated but rather is coded on the back label. It’s harvested from 80-year-old Albariño vines in the Rías Baixas subzone, Salnés, from a flat plot of granite bedrock and deep granite topsoil. It’s naturally fermented and aged for eight months in old 300 and 500-liter French oak. Unfiltered and unfined, it’s a sharp but full-bodied wine made in an atypical fashion compared to most Rías Baixas Albariños. The minuscule amount of sulfites is added only before bottling, lending a view into a more sulfur-free élevage from the heartland of Albariño. Critic and strong advocate of all the wines Pablo has touched over the years, Luis Gutiérrez describes the 2021 perfectly as having a “reductive and leesy nose,” and says it’s “austerity in a bottle.” There is fruit tucked in there, but it’s tertiary. The 2022 vintage carries the same feel but there’s more stuffing and flesh—a good step up. Not labeled for its appellation nor vintage, the (2022) Simple is a field blend of 30-80-year-old vines of Mencía, Garnacha Tintorera, Mouratón, Godello (white) and many other varieties grown in the subzone Ribeiras do Sil with many expositions on steep slopes of gneiss bedrock and sandy and loam topsoil at 400-500m. Naturally fermented with 50% whole clusters and infusion extraction for a week and then aged in steel, it’s also unfiltered and unfined. It may seem simple at the start, but layer after layer emerges when given time to properly open. 2021 was difficult due to the cold year and problems with mildew. Like O Branco, the 2022 is much fuller and giving on fruit. Spain’s Michelin-starred restaurant count is just short of two hundred and fifty, with thirteen holding three stars. And while its total is only a little more than a third of France’s and more than half of Japan’s, it still has more than the US, despite having only 15% of the population of The States. Germany and Italy are the only other countries to have more than Spain, and both have many millions more people. Michelin-starred restaurants haven’t always been a big deal for Spain (after all, it’s a French concept), but one Catalan trailblazing restaurant that’s now a museum, elBulli, led by the Ferran and Albert Adrià, changed the face of Spain’s global restaurant position and was the first one fully committed dive into molecular gastronomy, worldwide. While Michelin-starred restaurants don’t have much pull in the US over the market’s fine wine interests, they remain the primary measuring stick for Spain’s growers and their achievements. Real estate on lists for these limited-seat restaurants is hard to get (except for wines with built-in investment value), especially with Spain’s embrace of international wines more than most other major European wine-producing countries. To make the cut, you must already have the world’s attention, or you must be doing something unique and at a high level. Pedro Méndez doesn’t yet have the world’s attention, but he’s well represented in Spain’s top culinary destinations, including dozens of Michelin-starred spots throughout the country, including País Vasco’s three-star Arzak, an institution that landed its first star in 1974. Pedro’s breakthrough into Spain’s top spots started with his reds—50-70-year-old Mencía and Caíño Tinto vines, with the former a peculiar variety for the appellation, especially with its enviable vine age. With just over 1000 bottles produced of each of the two reds, more than half of them are sold to Spanish Michelin-starred restaurants, and most of the rest to top local restaurants. This says something, no? We’re lucky to import a quarter of Pedro’s production of reds along with a quarter of his micro-production, ancient-vine Albariños. It’s not much wine, but we’ll take them. I understand Pedro’s wines’ place in Michelin restaurants. Both red and white perform extraordinarily well with more time open (one micro-dose of oxygen every ten or fifteen minutes makes them sing after an hour), but the reds glide with light textures with unique finesse and balance of mineral, metal, tea notes, soft fruits, and salivating salty oceanic freshness. After a few hours, they’re gorgeously refined and attractive. On the second day, they feel like they’re still on their first hour. They’re also an adventure for most of us into the unknown. The aromatically powerful and classic Galician Atlantic red, Viruxe is entirely Mencía from a single vintage, while the more refined but edgy Xuntanza, is a blend of Mencía and Caíño Tinto, from two vintages… I never thought a still wine blend of two different vintages would interest me, let alone result in such a compelling wine. But it did, and I’m more than ok with it. It’s the wine’s magic. Both come from a granite sand vineyard in Meaño four kilometers from the ocean. Both are whole-bunch fermented for 20 days in steel and aged nine months in old barrels. Neither are fined or filtered. On first taste, the 2021 Viruxe delivers classic Rías Baixas red wine aromas of chestnut, austere red fruits, pomegranate, sour cherry, bay leaf, and pungent mineral and metal notes. Because of its strong natural snap, I wouldn’t guess it to be 100% Mencía in a blind tasting. (I admit I struggle with Mencía, though Pedro’s is like a ray of light for me. I find a lot of the top examples overrated. In places like Ribeira Sacra, for example, most other indigenous/historic varieties, or combinations of them, would make a more compelling wine on the same dirt. However, there are a lot of great old-vine Mencía around that should live out their days of production before replanting.) Viruxe, which means “fresh wind,” is aromatically intense but deceptive, as the palate delivers the variety’s naturally gentle touch. Equally gulpable as it is intellectually stimulating, Viruxe alone presents a compelling argument for Mencía as a reasonable Rías Baixas red grape alternative to some of the more aggressive reds of the commune. It lacks naturally high acidity and is usually acidified or blended with other grapes endowed with massive acidity, like Caíño. But here it doesn’t need the unnatural boost or the blend, especially when harvested from such old vines grown on granite and a finishing alcohol of 11%. In Rías Baixas, this is perhaps the least ornery and easiest, pleasure-filled, aromatic and serious red I’ve had from Salnés. Indeed, others deliver a worthwhile experience and are extremely well made, like those of Manuel Moldes, but few are so inviting and gentle as Pedro’s. In a side-by-side two-day comparison next to Xuntanza, it doesn’t evolve as much with time open but after more than a half hour of micro-pours, it finds its footing and lifts off. Probably like you, I haven’t put much serious contemplation into mixed-vintage still wines, nor have I wanted to. But Pedro’s choice was clever because the result is a beautiful Salnés Valley red. I’m starting to notice mixed-vintage blends more now, but perhaps they’ve been around more than I thought. Xuntanza, meaning “union,” is a blend of equal parts 2020 Caíño Tinto and 2021 Mencía. Initially, it shares the same aromatic profile as Viruxe, except that it’s mellower and less effusive, more analog if Viruxe is a little more digital. The palate is more stern and tense (Caíño effect) but finishes with salivating mineral strength in the front palate and a suave back palate despite its Caíño-charged acidity. Like many wines with upfront acidity, the first glass seems like a different wine than the second. Its aromatic austerity softens quickly and makes way for more spice, orange peel, pomegranate, and rhubarb. With each swirl flows more delicate aromas while the palate continues with sharp textures and a slight sting but finishes gently. Half an hour in, it softens and begins to ripple like a crystal-clear lake disturbed by the first drops of rain. Pedro’s Albariño collection is from the Salnés Valley hamlet, Meaño. If I were to draw a comparison to Pedro’s wines and our other growers in Rías Baixas, I’d say they’re more powerful than those of Manuel Moldes and, perhaps of equal power to Xesteiriña, but are more contained and classically styled than the latter. Pedro’s Albariños have broad shoulders, a compact core and megathrust. This may be partly due to the older average vine age of his many parcels, and, in some cases, deeper topsoil. Moldes’ cru Albariños are on schist, with his Afelio on the mostly granite. Xesteiriña harvests from a single plot of extremely hard metamorphic rock with almost no topsoil. The bedrock is somewhere between medium- to high-grade metamorphic rock: some looks like gneiss while others look like schist. Xesteiriña’s rock type is probably the rarest of all in Salnés with vineyards planted. Each of Pedro's cuvées are staggered releases based on their more optimal drinking window. The eponymous label, “Pedro Mendez,” is the earliest, along with the previous season’s As Abeleiras, and the year before that one, Tresvellas. All three vintages arriving, 2020, 2021, and 2022, are stellar Albariño years, which makes this trio particularly exciting. None of Pedro’s wines conform to the appellation Rías Baixas, therefore none bear the vintage date or grape name (though coded at the bottom as a Lot). These two non-conforming label elements are common in Galicia. Formerly labeled as Sen Etiqueta, the (2022) Pedro Mendez “Viño Branco do Val” (Albariño) lays down the gauntlet as the first wine to taste in the three together. It’s so delicious on the first take, that it’s hard to want to move on. It reminds me of Arnaud Lambert’s Saumur “Midi” with its power over your ability to restrain and drink slowly. It captures the elegance of sandy granite soils, salty ocean breeze rim, sweet Meyer lemon, sweetened juicy lime, honeysuckle, and agave—like a wine margherita (my Achilles’ heel of cocktails, which I rarely partake in nowadays). Forget the oysters and jump straight into salty clams, sweet Santa Barbara ridgeback prawns, and spiny lobster. Though dry, the sweet elements and effusive aromas bring great lift to this fluid and undeniably delicious wine. It’s a firecracker of a starter. The (2021) As Abeleiras “Viño branco de parcela” (Albariño) is released a year after the entry-level Albariño and comes from a single parcela planted in 1993 by a very young Pedro and his father. It sits at 100 meters altitude, also on granite soil. While the 2019 version was raised in steel, this year spent time in old French oak barrels. (2020 wasn’t up to Pedro’s standard, so it wasn’t bottled alone.) While the other two Albariños have a broad band of expressions and roundness due to the diversity of the many vineyard parcels in each wine, this single vineyard’s uniqueness offers a more vertical than horizontal experience. While the other two would be great for a bigger party of people because they jump into the mosh pit and start knocking people out on the first swing, As Abeleiras is initially more snug and better suited for a two-person tango. While the others are wonderful in their way, this is the thinker, the wine to observe and admire for its singularity, focused austerity, and tight, chalky and grippy texture. It’s a minerally beam of light. The others are mineral bombs. I first tasted (2020) Tresvellas “Viño Branco de Viñedos Históricos” (Albariño) in Pedro’s arctic-cold cellar on a rainy and freezing November day. It was almost impossible to warm up and to break the ice shell on the wine. Cold Albariño, no matter how good, doesn’t pair well with a runny nose, numb face, and icy fingers and toes. But in the comfort of my apartment overlooking the Lima Valley on a sunny winterish day in March, it’s different; I’m different. This wine is a gorgeous beast! And when you see the vines it springs from, you know the description is apt. They’re small trees! Their average age is well over a hundred years, and you feel it in the wine. With concentration, depth, and restraint, the warm and well-worked Tresvellas (Three Old Ladies) fills the glass. All the varietal’s classic high-toned lemony notes went to full preserves: sweet, salty, acidic, zest oil and the right amount of bitter pith. The color is between straw and gold leaf, and it tastes expensive. The three tree groves sit at 10, 50 and 130 meters altitude in Meaño on granite bedrock and granite sand and gravel on wide, relatively flat terraces. (In these parts, extreme slopes are less important than other viticultural areas with clay or limestone because water passes through granite soils quickly.) And, Meaño has a lot of the earliest part of the day out of the summer sun because it’s tucked down in a little valley with the highest parts on the south and southeast of the vines. It’s also protected in the north from the wind, which gives that extra body pump in an already naturally pumped wine. In the cellar, it’s naturally fermented and aged in old French oak until the next season’s wine is ready to go into the same barrel.

Over the last couple of decades, despite the persistent churn of changing wine trends, some vignerons steadfastly affirmed their terroir vows.  No matter how unappealing their honestly crafted wines were to some, these vignerons resisted the temptation to cater to critics that awarded high scores to hulking wines and so were lost in the shuffle during those darker days of wine. Back then the fashion was too much hand in the wine, and these days it’s nearly no hand at all.  Sadly, today’s hands off winemakers often leave their grapes—many from gorgeously farmed vines—unprotected, paving the way to disfigurement and death before most make it to the bottle.  Today’s wine is often a different kind of bad, where the smell of decay and rot replaces tastelessly over-made, soulless, candied wines.  (Truth be told, I’d take the tastelessly made wines over the ones that test my gag reflex.) In the fine wine trade the pendulum swung away from the heavy hitters and more recently, away from the extreme naturalists, with their new brand of flaws.  The market trend went from the big boys almost straight into the ideologically pure natural boys, which kept traditional gems like the Rousset family under the radar for a long time.  However, this explanation of how the Roussets and their most talented vineyard have been missed all these years seems inadequate. During my first visit with Stéphane, he mentioned that he had an importer at one time (a famous one, no less) who, shortly after they started working together, abruptly stopped placing orders with no explanation.  It was around the early to mid-2000s, about the time when the Rhone climate went through a short crisis, and Rousset’s wines might not have been in best form for their coming out party. The Northern Rhône Valley had just experienced a number of good to very good vintages between 1995 and 2001—each had their virtues, and certainly some were much better than others.  Then came the disastrous 2002 vintage.  A terribly rainy season spoiled the streak—though there are some surprises here and there. Then came the heat.  In 2003, unprecedented temperatures were responsible for the deaths of nearly 15,000 French citizens, primarily the elderly.  Unlike any vintage since—even in our current record-breaking years—the heat was relentless from bud break to the day the grapes were harvested.  It was an especially tough vintage for those who like elegant wines, while being a banner year for people who like to get knocked out by high alcohol, power and extraction. Livingston-Learmonth gave Rousset’s wines from 1999 through 2001 very good reviews, but then came 2002 and 2003.  According to his tasting notes Rousset also struggled (as did many producers in Crozes-Hermitage) between 2004 and 2008—though a second look at Rousset’s 2005s warranted an upgrade from a prior review.  It’s just a guess, but this mix of vintages might have made it difficult to understand Rousset’s elegant style, which could be one reason why his importer pulled the plug after just beginning in 2006. The years between 2002 and 2008 were obviously impacted by dramatic climate shifts from one year to the next, and it put every vigneron to the test.  However, in 2009, Livingston-Learmonth’s reviews on Rousset changed; things got better, and stayed better. In Livingston-Learmonth’s book, Robert Rousset is one of Crozes-Hermitage’s beacons of light, and Les Picaudières is the greatest terroir in the more than 1700 hectares of the appellation.  The book was published twelve years ago, and given the consistent high quality of Stephane’s wines over the last six vintages and the pedigree of his holdings, it’s hard to believe they weren’t snapped up by new importer. If Rousset wasn’t on Norman’s radar, it’s surprising that he didn’t at least mention Les Picaudières. The “backbone of Hermitage,” as Norman put it, Les Bessards, is the closest in elevation, steepness and soil type to Les Picaudières on this side of the river.  Perhaps pulling out the measuring stick to compare a Crozes vineyard to one of Hermitage’s best was a stretch; after all, it was Crozes-Hermitage, and Roure, likely the largest landholder of Les Picaudières, hadn’t hit one out of the park in decades. Click here for Part 3:  The Rise of Stéphane Rousset and Les Picaudières

29 August, Ponte de Lima I was afraid the details of my summer trip would begin to fade after I wrote my last entry two months ago, but the best memories are still vivid; I can already tell that the impression of certain moments will be lasting, even if they get fuzzier with time. I seem to have a mental limit (especially these days), but memorable experiences seem to unconsciously get upgraded. However, there are so many good ones (and difficult ones, too) that bring on the humor of the circumstances now, that it’s actually been hard to forget any of it. Once I start down each lane of memory, it doesn’t matter anymore if things are perfectly accurate, or even if they’ve become more fantastical than they were at the time. Our imagination can be just as important as the original occurrence in that it rewrites things to keep them interesting when they’re not, and less painful when they’re that. I just finished lunch on our terrace overlooking Portugal’s Lima Valley. (The picture above was shot from there.) We live in a part of the world with many specific products that have few equal or greater examples the world over. The combination of seafood and frango caseiro, the Olympic athlete chickens sold to the butcher by the locals, acorn-scavenging pigs, and free-roaming countryside-grazing cattle, deeply sweet carrots, and eggs with, at best, only one equal in the world. And the lemons. Sorry Amalfi, we lived on your shores for a year and had your lemons every week, and while yours are grown on limestone cliffs and are extraordinary in a different way, size isn’t everything; those just from our own property, grown on extremely acidic soils of metamorphic and igneous rock, are even more aromatic and much less bitter than most lemons. And with Galicia just twenty-five minutes north, some of the most prized shellfish in the world thrives at extraordinary and almost unbelievable quality, thanks to the extremely high content of plankton inside the estuaries (locally called rías). Oh, and the Galician beef: it’s the real deal (but However, I’m sorry to say that the best versions of grilled Galician beef are not usually found in Galician restaurants, but rather in other Spanish regions that use the product, like the many great Basque restaurants.) One of Many Obsessions The ingredient I didn’t mention in the list may be mainland Portugal’s most special gift from the Atlantic: sardines. Portugal is globally famous for their conservas (canned) sardines, as is Spain, but that’s not what’s served at the famous street side seafood and fish grills in the ancient port of Porto, Matosinhos. There it’s all about the fresh, wood-fire grilled sardines and other seafood—a must for anyone coming to Portugal for the first time, or for another round of this country’s warm hospitality and extraordinary food at prices unmatched in any other first world country. Sardines have become an obsession. They’re seasonal—a truth that put me in a state of depression last winter, perhaps greater than the pandemic restrictions themselves—and I understand why: it’s the fat! Between the late spring and early autumn months, plankton populations are at their peak and the sardines gorge themselves, building up fat and improving their flavor. Sardines are one of the healthiest, if not the healthiest fish for you, because they don’t consume mercury-rich food—only plankton, not other fish. Anchovies are the same, but they are less common to get fresh here in Portugal and while the salt content of the canned and salt-packed versions is a deterrent for some, they are without a doubt my greatest food obsession. Anchovies are a part of almost every lunch and dinner made at home. Wednesdays and Fridays, Armanda, a middle-aged Portuguese woman with a soft and kind face, brings fresh shellfish and fish straight from the Atlantic, a twenty-minute drive to the west and visible from our terrace. On her truck she always has sardinhas, and while they are a lot of work in the kitchen because she doesn’t clean them, they’re irresistible, and at five euros a dozen, no matter the size, it’s impossible to pass on the deal, and she always gives me thirteen or fourteen, depending on how many she has. Shellfish and fish in the States are usually too expensive. It’s for that reason that I’ve always hesitated to experiment too far with them because when you put a lot of cash down, you don’t want to mess it up, and with seafood minutes can make what would be potentially epic turn dry and hard. But here, ocean fare is almost free by American standards (it’s even half the price of what we used to buy during our year on Italy’s Campanian coast, on average), and I’ve let loose to explore more, and I only wish I did more twenty years ago when I first moved to Southern California with its multitude of Pacific Ocean options. Here, the only real cost associated with sardines is the time they take to prepare. That’s one reason they’re so cheap; the other is that there’s so much available when they’re in season. My first sardine experiments began as freshly cleaned, filleted and lightly cured with lemon wheels and salt for just a few hours, or overnight—I did that one the first half dozen times and it was always delicious and as good as any fresh sardine I’d ever had. Then it was on to mild pickling with a modest amount of lemon juice and vinegar. Vinegar is all too often overused in everything from pickling to salad dressings; with the right ingredients, vinegar is the needed accent, not a taste that kills the wonderful ingredients it’s meant to lift even higher. I’ve marinated sardines still fully intact (except for the guts, scales and head, which needs to be clipped off to evenly fit into my roasting pan) in lemon, vinegar and salt for only thirty minutes and quickly cooked below the oven’s salamander with a touch of olive oil, oregano (an herb that seems perfect for fish) and flaky sea salt atop extremely thin slices of onion that render just enough to stay crunchy but lose their harshness while soaking up the flavor of the fish and a little portion of the marinade dumped over them. Recently at our new favorite restaurant in Porto, called Apego, I was given perhaps the most simple and extraordinary preparation yet. The restaurant is owned and operated by Aurora Goy, a chef raised in France by her French father and Portuguese mother, who judiciously employs French techniques on her Portuguese food. She does sardines every which way, but last Saturday night I had the mother of them all. I asked her about the preparation—the secret, please—and she smiled and said, “it’s really simple: salt, but it has to be the right salt and for the right amount of time, thick sea salt and no more than an hour, but perhaps thirty minutes is enough.” The perfect time needed is only based on the size of the sardine, and my first try was another lucky strike I hope to repeat. Enter Austria Far away from any ocean but a land full of gorgeous food, is Austria. I’ve said many times that I think Austria is grossly underrated in the context of European cooking. Perhaps people lump it in with Germany—often the least inspiring cuisine of all the European countries I frequent—but it’s different, and just a “simple breakfast” at the Malat family’s hotel alone stands as proof. I passed through the mountains of the far western end of Austria in its western state, Tirol, heading north through Germany, took a sharp right just southeast of Munich around Rosenheim, and headed back into Austria without being stopped for proof of the Covid test I took the day before in Italy’s Südtirol. After fewer than three more hours on the road I’d be checked into Malat’s hotel. It doesn’t matter how recently I’ve showered before arriving at the Malat’s hotel, I’ll want to close the elegant and diaphanous white curtains of the room above the courtyard below and take another one in the fully-exposed glass shower stall that separates the bedroom from the bathroom, get the blood flowing with a nice hot one—even on a blistering summer day as it was the day I arrived—and lay around the room in the towel (or in the buck) to relax and forget the world for a moment. The Malats had a vision with their hotel: they want you to feel pampered (and sexy). And you do. I snapped out of my half hour of vacation mode and went down to meet Michael Malat (his friends call him Mickey; pictured below), who had checked me into the room. I’d been driving all day and was hungry, so we patched together a few things in their hotel’s breakfast kitchen, popped a bottle of Riesling, and caught up on the state of the world and California. We hatched a plan to start the morning doing some drone shooting up at Stift Göttweig, the towering, ancient monastery that dominates the top of a tall nearby hill to the south of Malat’s place. The monastery has an epic view of Kremstal’s alluvial plains and loess covered metamorphic rock terraces below (pictured above) and its steep hillside vineyards on the north side of the Danube, with views deep into the Wachau River gorge to the west, Kamptal straight to the north, and Wagram to the northeast. Breakfast at Mickey’s Normally, I don’t eat breakfast and haven’t done so regularly for nearly twenty years—save for when I’m on vacation, or the need for food to gain warmth from the empty cold and hollow feeling that follows a restless night of attempted sleep. If you seek to live well and not miss excellent things, skipping breakfast at the Malat’s would be a crime against yourself. Here, there is no choice. The Malats truly have one of the best breakfast spreads outside of a Michelin-starred European hotel one could find; it’s so good that it’s almost embarrassing that it’s all there for you and you can have as much as you want. Michael’s mother, Wilma, greeted me at the door with a big smile and her soft, motherly energy—the inner caretaker that treats all like they’re her children coming in from playing and starving. My late mother, Rosemary, was mostly of German heritage, and being around Wilma was like being near an extension of her spirit. On their vinyl record player spun Neil Diamond, one of my mother’s favorites, and honestly, I would’ve never expected to hear Neil in the Austrian backcountry. It all made me feel like I was safe at home—as I always do in Austria—but my mother never served a breakfast like the one I was about to partake of, filled with the joy of hospitality that infused the room from Wilma and her culinary staff and the edible pastoral gifts of the early summer. The spread was immense, and even slightly unusual for a breakfast. It had all the standards, like homemade chunky granola, cakes, nuts, cereals, cheeses, breads and the Waucher-Laberl, one of the great breads of Europe and a specialty of the historic Schmidl family, in nearby Dürnstein. A small, round and flaky, crunchy but soft-inside roll, it’s always branded with an S on the bottom to show that it’s come from the Schmidl bakery (pictured below with Austrian winegrower, Peter Veyder-Malberg); no others are quite the same, so ask to see the branding and prepare to keep searching it if it’s absent. Don’t forget that it was Austria’s capital, Vienna, that is the origin of the world’s great pastries, not France; in France pastry places are not called Viennoiserie without reason. It also included a whole host of unexpected things, presented as salads and hors d’oeuvres, from sauteed chanterelle mushrooms with asparagus and feta cheese (for breakfast!), burrata with roasted beets (obviously they know how valuable beets can be to travelers), vegetables, alpine-fresh wild strawberries and cherries, thin slices of eggplant with fresh figs and fresh goat cheese, and desserts galore. Wilma is a master omelet maker. She gets it: soft eggs, not overcooked, nor overmixed, finished with killer ingredients, including comté or gruyere (I forgot which one it was), and some delicious and locally cured pork belly fried on the griddle just before the eggs hit the flattop. Interestingly, she adds a little bit of grated carrot, a touch I never would’ve considered in my omelet but now do. It’s a breakfast room you never want to leave, and here, you don’t have to. You can come anytime, grab a bottle of wine, drink as you want and tell them what you had when you are finished. It’s an incredible place where you really are made to feel at home to do what you want, when you want. Spy Games It was the twelfth of June and it was hot. Last year, it was July that scorched Europe, but this year it came a month earlier and following a very cold start to the growing season which stunted the growth of plants, the blazing heat made it so that you could come to the same vineyard at the end of the day and see that the shoots had pushed out three or four more inches by sunset; this was a story that would follow my path from Austria, through Germany and into France. In 2021, the vines grew as wildly as anyone had ever seen before. Michael and I started our drive up to Stift Göttweig. Once at the top, the place was swarming with attendants and police officers doing nothing but wearing Soviet-like faces, looking for trouble. That day there was a meeting of politicians and media and I could sense that drone filming wasn’t a wise choice, but Michael insisted that we press forward and approached every guard for permission to take some “photos of the place,” but we were denied, denied, denied. Finally, we found an unattended trail that circled the monastery. Out of sight and earshot, we passed an older couple who smiled and made us feel like we weren’t doing anything wrong—just out for a stroll on a Saturday morning. I found the right launch pad with just enough space between two trees to get the drone out into the clear. It was a perfectly blue sky, and I knew the shots would be money. The drone, that had somehow and somewhere along the route acquired the name Bob, had the sky to himself, and I zeroed in on my controller to make sure the flight was smooth with no wasted time. I knew I would be limited to one battery’s worth of time, despite having three others fully charged and ready to go, because once the drone would come back in for the landing, we may get spotted. We weren’t doing anything wrong, per se, but given the political event and the intense atmosphere, it felt like we were a couple of Double 0s wiggling our way into a party to which we weren’t invited. After some glorious shots (including the one above), the battery warning began to shriek, potentially calling attention to us. I brought Bob back and slowly threaded him through branches with only a foot or so to spare on each side—a precarious situation because the sensors might have stopped him from coming too close to the trees, leaving him out there above us with no place to land in time. But he got through, touched-down quickly and less than a minute later was tucked into an unassuming white cloth sack I used instead of the drone case—something I always do to camouflage my intention to film. I don’t like trouble, especially in other countries that use languages with which I’m less familiar. Something was telling us that we should go back out the way we came, and we should’ve followed our instincts, but we decided to go straight to the car because it was only a few minutes’ walk while the backtrack was at least ten. As we turned the last corner around the building, with our car in sight, we came upon four Austrian cops in the middle of the path, a fifth on his way. Without saying a word, Michael and I knew we had no choice but to walk right between them to get to the car, and any unusual movements or direction changes would attract attention. I tucked Bob’s white sack back behind my Canon on the same shoulder to use the camera as a decoy. Not twenty feet away, their eyes narrowed on us in unison. We knew we were in for some trouble. Sometimes not attempting to speak the local language is a good strategy for potentially minor offenses where no one else is involved. Some years ago in Chablis, Dominique Collet, from Domaine Jean Collet, was with me in my car after we had some Champagne at their place before a scheduled dinner in the village center. There was an alcohol checkpoint, and she firmly grabbed my shoulder as we approached and said in French, “Don’t speak French with them. Only speak English and they will probably let us go without testing.” I’d only had a glass of Champagne and was sure I would be under the limit, and I’m always ready to practice my French. But when they stopped me, I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French…” They waved me on. I don’t speak more than ten words of German. My German is so bad that whenever I’m in Austria or Germany and need gas, I pick only pumps with numbers I remember how to say to the cashier, which means I am stuck between pumps one, two and three, and picking back up at six and seven. I never get gas from pumps four or five because it’s only after I leave the station that I remember the words, vier and fünf, even though they’re so obvious, being so close to English… By the movie-like interrogative tone the first officer took, our Double 0 game seemed to begin to unspool. Ciao for now, Bob, I thought… For those who don’t speak or understand German, the language can be startling and sound aggressive by nature, even when niceties are exchanged; Italian can be the same. It’s not fluid and melodic like Latin languages, and American culture has long villainized the German language, particularly since WWII. It can sound so harsh, and it did from this officer, the squattest and ugliest of all the guards and clearly a guy that relished his position of authority. The others formed a half circle around us as the officer barked at Michael and then he turned his angry dog face on me, intensely. He shouted some words. Michael interjected. He yelled at Michael. Michael, with his unflappable calm, spoke with what felt like authority over all the officers present—he was their sergeant, telling them to calm down. The guard switched to poorly spoken English and firmly said, “Identification. Please!” I forgot my passport at the hotel, something I rarely do; even when I go two kilometers down the street for dinner in Portugal it’s always in my pocket along with my Portuguese ID. Thankfully, I had my Portuguese resident visa, which I’ve pulled out of my wallet maybe five times in total over the last nine months, since it arrived in the mail a half year late due to the pandemic. The officer reviewed the card, looked up at me, handed it back, showed a half-cracked smile and calmly said, “have a nice day.” We slipped past the pack with the white bag making a smooth transition to the front of my body and the camera slipping back to continue shielding it from their view. On the drive down the hill, Michael explained the exchange he’d had with the officers. I was impressed by how he had managed the situation and took the attention away from me while I nervously hid Bob from sight. No doubt he’s a better Double 0 than I am, more of a James Bond type: ice-cold, the looks, the silver tongue, the confidence. I on the other hand am a terrible liar, and when the officer was yelling at Michael, telling him to be quiet because he was addressing me and not him (as explained by Michael), I was ready to just hand over the drone because I was sure that’s what they were talking about. Someone surely saw it flying around this heavily guarded monastery that was soon to fill with important people and they’d waited for us to come out from the trees, arrest us, confiscate the hardware, and pitch us in the who’s cow. But for a minute back there, Michael owned those guys and shifted the dynamic. And we got lucky, too. They had no idea what we were up to. Next month, we’re off to Weingut Tegernseerhof to meet with our very good and longtime friend, Martin Mittelbach. First order of business: film the Wachau vineyards around the Loiben area that includes some of Austria’s most well-known crus, like Kellerberg, Höhereck, Schütt, Loibenberg, Steinertal, and Kremstal’s Pfaffenberg vineyard.

The drive between Sartène and Porto Vecchio is beautiful and the day’s sunny, cool, windy weather was perfect for this cinematic dreamscape. We drove by the famous natural sculpture, Lion de Rocapinne, a granite outcrop atop a hill shaped like a perched lion that faced south, like it was guarding the island. The lion’s mythological story is of an impossible love and a sad hero who committed suicide and was then transformed into this natural monument. We wrapped around the bottom of the island and tried to make out Sardinia. Last year with Manu there was only a little haze and we could barely see it; I couldn’t keep my eyes off it until we turned a corner and it was gone. Without Sardinia in view this year I was transfixed on the beauty of Corsica’s southernmost granite beaches. The hillsides close to the beach were stripped of most of their soil and left with only short green shrubs that grew from cracks in the rock, with every curve, nook and color variation of the sea beyond. Without another landmass in sight, it felt like we were on the edge of the earth, alone, winding through a land of extraordinary beauty and tranquility. As the sun set behind us, the whispers from the wind came through the windows and after three days of wine madness, we were spent and said little. We slowly rolled into downtown Porto Vecchio, inside the gulf, and checked into our rooms. I had seen so much beauty in Corsica that Porto Vecchio was just another pretty face and I went straight to my room without marveling at all it had to offer. I laid down on the bed backwards and propped my feet up on the wall for fifteen minutes, which wasn’t nearly long enough; I could’ve passed out on the bed until morning. Instead, a dinner had been arranged and we were expected. Only one more act to play. We drove to a spot about ten minutes away to meet with the vignerons who came from mainland France for a tasting that was organized by a well-known Corsican sales guy, Pierre-Marie. At this point, I felt a little out of my comfort zone because I was a sort of accidental guest who was backstage at a great show only because of my trip with Manu. The awkwardness of the moment vanished in the parking lot as soon as I saw Julien Zernott and his wife, Delphine Rousseau, make their way out of a car next to us; it’s easy to spot Julien, a 6’5”, 300 pound giant towering over a crowd of Frenchies. They own a small domaine in the Languedoc, Pas de l’Escalette, and visited me in Santa Barbara just before I left California for France. They were fast becoming some of my most regular French friends and I was set to meet them again at their domaine the following week. Not only that, Pas de l’Escallette is another one of Manu’s clients. Accompanying them was a well-dressed guy in snazzy eyeglasses, with a full but cleanly trimmed beard and suave, modern Spanish-style clothes, form-fitted to his thin, sturdy frame. By first take, he reminded me of one of those brilliant guys I know who always have a slight mischievousness tucked into their bright smiles. His name was Thierry and his handshake was warm, his eyes connected to the moment, and I knew I was going to like him. Once in the wine shop, I shook the hands of a number of people I’d never met before. When I’m introduced for the first time, I rarely remember names (except Thierry, just minutes before) because I’m so focused on the energy of the person and what they look like, and not as much on what they are saying. It’s a terrible habit and something I attribute to my general lack of focus and again, that nearly deaf right ear. Toward the end of the apero, I saw that Delphine was talking with the only woman in the group I had yet to meet. Before I approached them, I warmed up my French with a young Corsican couple for about fifteen minutes, which helped me lose my apprehension. They were an interesting pair who had just begun making infused spirits under the label, U Massicciu, and had been invited to the party to share some of their products with everyone after dinner. I went over to Delphine, who introduced me to her friend as her California importer. Of course after all my preparation to speak French, the woman immediately switched to perfect English, even after she asked me which I would prefer. I told her my first name and with bright, surprised eyes, she said, “Ted…, Ted Vance??” I smiled, equally surprised. “Oui, c’est moi.” I couldn’t imagine why she would know my name, or why she seemed bewildered, as if she had just met Bond… James Bond. But the wine world is small and as I get older, it gets smaller. You spend enough time working around Europe and the degrees of separation shrink exponentially. Her name was Anne-Charlotte Genet, and just the night before I happened to request her friendship on Facebook. She had liked a pic I posted the day before of my visit earlier in my trip with Romain Guiberteau, one of the Loire Valley’s most exciting winemakers, and after realizing we had plenty of mutual friends I thought we should connect. Who would’ve known that I’d meet her in a wine shop in Corsica the very next day? After we had a laugh, Anne-Charlotte revealed that she “worked” for Charles Joguet; I found out the next day at the tasting that it was her father’s domaine. I appreciated that she didn’t feel the need to give me her resumé within five minutes of meeting me. I’ve always liked the Joguet wines and it was nice to meet her and learn about her family’s domaine. The sales agent, Pierre-Marie, stood in front of me with a big smile under his wine-soaked eyes and long nose. He was as happy as a dog on the beach rolling on a dead seal to have most of his great producers in Corsica at one time. He probably knew I was a little uncomfortable and he dispelled that immediately with a solid, welcoming handshake. I was in, and it was time to relax and enjoy the show. After tasting a load of Corsican breads, cheeses and meats with a bunch of bubbles from some of the producers (man, do the Champagne guys stick out like a well-manicured thumb in a group of vignerons) we headed to the American style burger joint just next door for dinner. Sure, why not a burger in Corsica instead of some insanely delicious seafood? Being the foreign guy, I didn’t know what to do about seating, so Julien grabbed me and sat me down. To my left was the daughter of Yves Canerelli, all of about nine years old, while Manu was on my right at the end of the table. Thierry sat across from me and Julien to his right. I had no clue that these two would end up being the most mischievous of the bunch, cheerleading the party to devolve into raucous laughter and hijinx more quickly than I would have expected. Thierry engaged with me immediately and asked about my involvement with the group and who I was. I told him about importing wine, working with Manu and my interest in Corsica. I still didn’t know who Thierry was, so I asked. It turned out that he was Thierry Germain, one the Loire Valley’s very best vignerons. I’d heard so much about him but I’d never seen a picture before and was totally taken off-guard by how different he looked than I imagined. The old saying about dogs looking like their owners can be said about wine and their winemakers, but I guess I just didn’t even think about that when I thought about Thierry’s wines. His Loire Valley wines from Saumur and Saumur-Champigny were indeed like him: extremely polite, well-dressed, engaging, thoughtful, intelligent, with a classy demeanor and not a hair out of place. I was truly surprised and immediately had a good feeling about him, though there was no possibility of working together because he works with Kermit Lynch and is surely happy to be there; I was just impressed with him as a person and saw that we had a shared passion for wine. He repeatedly insisted that I visit him the next time I was in Saumur and I happily accepted. I knew by reputation that he’s a super technical and perceptive vigneron, almost surgical with his wines and there’s nothing overlooked in any bottled by his hand. I was looking forward to picking his brain. Pierre-Marie was glowing as he walked up to our table with some kind of Corsican swagger (whatever that is), carrying Pandora’s Box. Julien’s blue eyes went neon as he stuck his monstrous hand in the box and pulled out a cigar that was about the size and look of a big blood sausage. It was no doubt the biggest cigar I’d ever seen, and a fitting size for Julien, a former rugby player that would’ve been a lineman in the NFL if he were born in the US. Thierry grabbed one too, gave it a sniff and asked for the lighter. We hadn’t even ordered dinner yet and they lit up and instantly changed the atmosphere of the entire restaurant. I looked at Manu and he smiled sheepishly, cocked his head to the side and shrugged his shoulders. Within minutes, there was smoke billowing out of more than a dozen frogs and it seemed that every waft of smoke was sent my direction. I’ve never experienced anything like it. The stench of my clothes when I went back in the hotel was so bad I thought about leaving them in Porto Vecchio, but decided to just put them in plastic bag so they wouldn’t ruin everything in my suitcase. With cigars still smoldering as we ate our dinner, we went from one magnum of Corsican wine to the next. There were some pretty good ones, but the white and red from Clos Canarelli stole the show and were in the best company of top domaines in Corsica. They were a fine pairing with the white fish crudo entrée followed by the American style burger I ordered. Manu and I had the same idea and snuck out of the restaurant early, long before the group completely exorcised the demons that had built up over the last month of being stuck inside during the unexpected cold and rain. It was one of the wettest late winters/early springs in a while and they were all anxious to get to work their vineyards before they were overwhelmed by what would come with the quick temperature shift on the horizon. After a bout of weather like that the vines will play catch up fast. This would be the last party before the 2018 season was suddenly in full swing. The next day we put in some good time at a tasting that started at ten in the morning. There were some top producers there, and highlights included Abbatucci, Clos Canarelli, Vieux Telegraphe, Charles Joguet, Thierry Germain, Pas de l’Escalette and Yves Leccia. Yes, for those familiar with Kermit Lynch’s portfolio of producers, it seemed like a small Kermit tasting without Kermit. It was great to taste and meet all these superstar vignerons. When I arrived I immediately looked for Pierre Richarme, the owner and vigneron of the Corsican domaine, Pero Longo. He walked in ten minutes after us and quickly caught my glance. We shook hands and the smile I couldn’t forget from last year was on full display as we tasted his wines and sat for lunch together with Manu. Manu poured his own wines, GRVins, which we import to California, and they showed beautifully amongst many of Corscia’s best. GRVins is a tiny negociant business where Manu buys organic grapes from some of his best producers and their top parcels (both undisclosed). He supplies all the materials, including 600-liter French oak barrels usually crafted by the cooper, Atelier Centre France—the fastest rising star of the barrel world, and one of my favorites (if I had to choose between new oak barrels). Before Manu and I left the tasting I went back to taste Pierre’s range and tasted them one more time. On the way out the door I asked him if he’d let me represent Pero Longo in California—a moment I had planned before I went to Corsica. I had a good feeling about him from the start and wanted to be a part of what he’s doing and where he’s going to go with his son involved. He was happy to hear that I was interested and answered with a resounding yes. Next Week: Of Corse, The Last Chapter: A Reflection on Experience from the Inexperienced

It’s summertime and while we tend to veer toward drinking bubbles, rosé and white, reds still have their occasion. The six red wines in our offer come from six different organic and biodynamic growers. What I’ve chosen is only one of the many wines each of these growers makes. So, don’t stop with these, dig into their other wines by clicking their link, because there is so much pleasure and fascination to be found in each wine we import directly from these producers. I’ve written a brief summary about the wines in The Skinny. If you want more, like I always do, you’ll find a more extended piece below that I enjoyed writing, titled, A Faux Seasonal Affair, which also includes a more in-depth overview of the wines. The Skinny 2017 A. Peraccia Ajaccio Rouge "Prestige Cuvée" There’s x-factor for days in this exotic and spicy red from Corsica. Thanks to its proximity to the sea, the granite soils and most of all, the lovely Sciacarello grape, this wine is a dandy. It looks and expresses like a wine from the Reynaud family of wines (I know the Rayas comparison is overused, but these wines really go that direction), but tastes Corsican. It’s one of the most compelling wines we import and we’re only able to get very small quantities. 2016 A.D.N. Patrimonio Rouge Patrimonio is often Corsica’s most rustic, manly, hairy-chested wine, but A.D.N.’s takes a leap into a more elegant world with this wine primarily composed of Niellucciu, the island’s adapted version of Sangiovese, the famous grape from Tuscany. This wine is suave, with gobs of crunchy bright red and black fruits and lots of texture, and the full range of the island’s smells and sunny demeanor. 2013 La Madura Saint-Chinian "Grand Vin" If one were to measure a wine’s merit by the length of its finish, layers of complexity and quality of craft, this wine would rank near the top. It’s a clean and full-throttle old-school style red mix of Mourvèdre and Syrah aged in concrete and old oak barrels. There’s not an ounce of slack here, just layer upon profound layer of texture and nuance; and it's savory to the bone—perfect for a night of long conversation in the cool summer night air. 2017 Jean David Seguret Rouge This is singing Provençal dialect in a bottle. Jean David concedes all to his nature-filled terroirs and the old-vine Grenache, Carignan and Counoise blend in his Seguret makes the wine deep and vibrant but a refreshing take from one of the Côtes-du-Rhône’s best kept secrets. If you miss more crunchy redness in your southern French wines, this is a good place to recapture it, as these wines are picked with ripeness that truly hits the mark. 2018 Pas de L'Escalette Coteaux du Languedoc "Les Petits Pas" It is only a matter of time before Languedoc reds shake the misconception that they are all bruisers. It is indeed the biggest region for French wine production—often of the mass variety, but this size also brings diversity in the terrain that can translate into some zones that make for crunchier style reds. Escalette’s organically farmed vineyards are in one of the coldest zones of the appellation, far from the Mediterranean. This is a sweet spot on rocky mountain terrain that preserves the tension and high-toned aromas in this Grenache, Syrah and Carignan blend. 2017 Roc des Anges Côtes-du-Roussillon "Segna de Cor" This biodynamic winegrower is going to almost single-handedly change France’s Roussillon. (Yup, big claim…) Their wines have snap and freshness, and stick out like a beacon of hope for this region known for its exhaustive reds and fortified wines. For any serious wine drinker or Francophile, these can’t be passed over if one wants to stay in the know. This wine is a mix of Grenache, Carignan and Syrah. A Faux Seasonal Affair (The Extended Skinny) I have many fond memories of Southern France, and I relive most of them at least twice a year with Pierre and Sonya, the extraordinarily talented cooks and two of the most loyal and generous friends I’ve ever had. Mas La Fabrique is their private country home in the Provençal village, Graveson, located between the ancient papal city of Avignon and the Roman city, Arles, to the south. Here the fire in their kitchen is never dormant for more than a couple of hours and the subject of food never ceases. Meals are planned days in advance and sometimes weeks. Even more than a month before I come, Sonya begins to press me for exactly what meals I will partake in and on what days. If only I were as good at business planning as they are with their meals. The contents of La Fabrique’s meals are sourced from local purveyors, including the fabulous outdoor market located in the former Roman outpost, Van Gogh hospital locale and current celebrity hotspot, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and whatever you can’t find there you can get a little further south at the mile-long market in Arles, another Roman and Van Gogh hangout. The best nights in Provence are in the summer, when dinners are outside under the starry night sky and the occasional chaotic whistle of the forceful woosh of the cleansing mistral winds through the cypress trees and the constant, mesmerizing chirp of countless invisible cicadas. Once past the aperitif, which usually involves rosé on ice (yes, I do this sometimes too…) and the almost certain first course of cold fish, seafood or vegetables followed by fresh, taut and salty white wines, the main event begins. Of course a lighter red is the right start because its still hot out and the sun is still strong, but when the mountains and trees begin to shield the sun, and the cool, sometimes thick, soft air eases the parched earth and the trees and flowers, and the wind fans a welcome damp freshness to the skin, a chilled, sweating bottle of southern French red is the proper transition into the night. Many people carry the idea that it’s sort of a faux pas to drink full flavored, richer reds in the warmer evenings, but I don’t subscribe to this at all; we just have to wait for it to cool down a bit first and drink the red with a deeper chill than room temperature. Some think southern French reds, and other reds like them, only fit into occasions almost exclusively for cooler months. While it’s true that these heavier wines naturally compliment richer, stronger flavored dishes served with more regularity in cooler times, my summer night meals in France are often chock full of flavor and richness too, especially when the produce has regained its natural, non-greenhouse and hydroponic flavors, and the meat courses begin to make their way to an open flame. And anyone who has spent time in the south of France and dined with the French or lives close to the ocean where it can be hot in the day and sweater-worthy at night knows that the only thing faux is the idea that full-flavored red wine is a seasonal affair. Red wines somehow enrich the meal in ways that whites and rosés don’t, no matter what time of year it is. It seems to better pair up with the deeper conversations that arise later in the night, relaxing us while softening our concentration and rendering us fully present. It helps us shed the weight of the world that then somehow remains absent until after lunch the next day. Big southern French reds, like Bandol, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, or medium-sized Saint-Chinian or Côtes-du-Rhônes somehow fit into almost all occasions, and every season. Let’s remember to forget those false ideas ordained by those who forgot how to live! Do it the southern French way, where red wine is the occasion whether it is le dîner à l'automne, en hiver, au printemps ou en été. Wine Stories I adore A. Peraccia's Prestige Cuvée. We get too few bottles from this Corsican gem in Ajaccio, and the only thing that stopped this minuscule allocation from disappearing as quickly as it did last year was that they had only just arrived a few months before the world shut down, so this is a rare opportunity for everyone to pounce on. A bear of a man, Laurent Costa is the one-man-show who works his vineyards by hand, employing biodynamic and certified organic practices. Rich in beguiling x-factors channeled by Corsica’s queen red grape, Sciacarello, and the iron-rich sandy granite vineyards soils, Laurent’s Ajaccio red wines are unexpectedly captivating and complex for extremely modest prices. First timers may be taken off guard as the utterly compelling and peculiar characteristics far exceed the expectation of the price of this wine, and like any wine of true breed, you need to be patient with this one to see all of its dimensions. The color is lightly rusted garnet; the aromas are effusive, exotic and savory; and the palate is compact with a core of sappy, glycerol orange-tinted red fruits and refreshing mineral textures. It shares a similar temperament and x-factor with some uniquely individual wines, like those from France’s legendary Château Rayas and Corsica’s Abbatuci, a couple hours’ drive south, and Sicilian Frappatos by COS and Occipintini, and Langhe wines made by Guiseppe Mascarello and Fabio Alessandria, from Burlotto. The comparison to these luminaries may seem overindulgent (and it is only when comparing historic pedigree with some of the wines these producers make), but in delivery, Laurent’s wines speak the same heightened dialect and holds its own. Moving north and further toward the east in Corsica, we arrive at Patrimonio, one of the wine world’s most complex geological spots. Granite is the most dominant geological feature for wine production on the island, but here there is the full gamut of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rock, sometimes even within the same vineyard. This makes for an immense amount of palate texture and depth of complexity in the resulting wines. This wine, an exciting expression of Patrimonio, is crafted by Emmanuel Gagnepain, one of France’s most well known enologists, a man with a penchant for elegance over power—quite the contrary to most enologists charged with the job of point catcher. The A.D.N. Patrimonio is grown on limestone and schist from a few different parcels and is a blend of mostly Niellucciu (believed to be from the same parent material as Sangiovese), a grape with good acidity and structure, with smaller amounts of the more elegant and high-toned aromatic, Sciaccarellu. Limestone imparts more muscle and broad complexity while the schist seems to impart more deep mineral/metal characteristics and sharper angles. The 2016 is especially refined for a Patrimonio red wine. The vintage was perfect for those who like some freshness, and the palate texture is rich in mineral sensations. Overall this organically farmed wine is a solid balance of the rustic and the suave, with good upfront red fruits and already revealing great secondary and tertiary characteristics akin to a good Brunello, minus the power, pain and high alcohol. It's a lovely wine, great with food, and a clear demonstration of the genetic and cultural heritage shared between Italy and France on Corsica. This organically farmed wine is such a steal when considering the price and delivery. And with the extra years in bottle, La Madura's Saint-Chinian "Grand Vin" has opened up into its prime drinking window with many more years to continue its upward climb. Another blend of different bedrocks, topsoils, and grapes, the range on this wine is vast—truly… Mourvedre and Syrah take center stage and are collected from many different parcels grown on limestone, sandstone and schist bedrock, with topsoils heavy in rock derived from the bedrock and clay to cement it all in place. All of these elements contribute in different ways to the blend, giving broad impact on the palate with just the right amount of cut to keep it fresh and enticing. Once opened, the dense perfume of southern France opens up fields filled with the lavender and thyme that permeate the aromas. The palate has a balanced density with red earth, molten iron, meat and chaparral. As the wine unfolds, its softer sides take shape and offer up more red and purple fruits, Middle Eastern spices, coffee, garrigue and a deep, salty and mineral freshness. We’re all in on this one and if you like a little gentle oomph with your wines, this is a must. Being organic or biodynamic is a way of life, not just a philosophy reserved for the fields, or an effort to keep up with a current marketing trend. The age of extraction and chemical farming continues to lose ground, and Jean David, one of France’s humble and often overlooked heroes was ahead of the curve when he went full organic in 1979, a radical move at the time in a region overwrought by chemical farming within one of France’s main breadbaskets, Provence. His home is Seguret, a small wine-producing village set on the fringe of the better known wine appellations, Gigondas and Vacqueras, and further to the west, the most famous, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Seguret should be more well-known, but I’m happy to say that it’s not. It remains quaint and not overrun by tourists (at least in the off-season) with the occasional painter in the street working away, or a man sitting alone on the back of his truck playing the guitar for his own pleasure—both of which my wife and I saw on the same day in Seguret with not another soul in sight. It’s an inspiring village of narrow rock passageways, thankfully not suitable for cars, with sometimes just enough room for one person at a time to pass. Seguret is an epicenter for geological studies and contains countless different rock formations from different epochs that date as far back as almost two hundred million years, with everything that’s happened up to now piled on top. Largely composed of limestone, clay and sand, the vineyards of Seguret begin low on the Ouvèze River terraces with soils derived from river deposits and work their way up toward the steep Dentelles de Montmirail, a jagged uplift of vertically positioned rocks, largely composed of limestones. It is geologically complex and so are its wines, especially for such modest prices. In these parts, there is always potential for high alcohol, power, extraction and prematurely aged, brown-tinted Grenache wines; but in Seguret the story can take a brighter more fresh turn, as it does with Jean’s wines. Protected by the Dentelles mountain range and the cool winds that flow through the Ouvèze down from Mont Ventoux, the great white limestone capped mountain of Provence, the wines can be more garnet red and dark pink on the rim of the glass, indicating less oxidation in the aging and earlier picking of the fruit. Jean’s fresh-tasting wines are balanced by the cold winds from Ventoux at night, the fifty-plus-year-old vines of Grenache (55%), Carignan (25%) and Counoise (20%), the concrete tanks the wines are vinified and aged in, the almost non-existent use of sulfur, and Jean’s pension from an organic, artistic way of life with the sole purpose to capture the true essence of his countryside in his finished product. They are true wines, with their tastes a result of concession to their land and its historical culture, truly worthy of attention from anyone looking for something honest and without pretension. From the moment the Pas de L'Escalette "Les Petits Pas" was created, Julien and Delphine’s intention was to create a charmer in their line of wines that didn’t take itself too seriously —hence the full color pinkish red label with neon green footprints, inspired by their children. 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 the 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 of organically farmed vines on limestone terroirs with a mix of 40% Grenache, 40% Syrah and 20% Carignan. Each of these grapes naturally carries ample freshness which is magnified by a little chill, making it anything but heavy under the sun. It is indeed a compelling wine for us wine geeks, but it’s more of a drink it, don’t think it kind of wine, high brow and low maintenance at the same time. It doesn’t constantly tug at your sleeve begging to show you how good it is, it’s just good. Roc des Anges is not the kind of domaine you expect to find in the Roussillon. Marjorie and Stéphane Gallet, both transplants from other parts of France (the Côte-Rotie area and Normandy, respectively), have constructed a biodynamic wine sanctuary in the Vallée de l’Agly, a nearly deserted vineyard land dominated by co-ops and famous for producing fortified wines. (The locals continue to abandon vines every year because the yields are tragically low and make it one of the most difficult places in France to make a living with vineyards.) Since she began the project in 2001 (at age twenty-three), Marjorie’s intuitive and peaceful contemplation has resulted in wines that carry a signature of purity, focus and elegance unlike anything made in the region. They are low alcohol, hands-off, mind-on wines bottled by varietal from single sites on specific and unique soil compositions. In smell and taste, their structure and style more closely resemble that of their earthy and salty cousins from the middle of France’s Loire Valley. The Segna de Cor is their starting block red, and it’s a knockout, as is their entire range, which I cannot recommend enough for their compelling interpretation of this part of the world. Senga de Cor is a blend of Grenache, Carignan and Syrah grown on schist. She picks the grapes weeks earlier than everyone else, and at first, her neighbors thought she was crazy. It’s impossible to think that now, and it was only a matter of time before someone came along and went against the grain to begin the reshaping of an entire region’s image. They’re doing it and the wines are fabulous.

Pommard’s south-facing hill. (Download complete pdf here) New Arrivals We have a lot of goodies arriving in the second half of November. First is Rodolphe Demougeot’s 2020 Côte de Beaune range. Demougeot’s quantity this year is extremely limited, as is the case with the rest of Burgundy. As we’ve professed many times, we love Rodolphe’s unadulterated style. His wines are precisely crafted and lifted with balanced delicateness and dense core strength. While some reds off the main face into more forest-dense zones—Auxey-Duresses, Monthélie—are a little reductive (sometimes the Beaune appellation wines further down the slope are too) at first, they fully blossom with enough time to reward those Burgundy specialists who understand that patience rewards, especially with more savory Pinot Noir like Demougeot’s. What percentage of truly great wines give it all up in the first ten minutes anyway? Others, like his Pommard, Pommard “Vignots,” and 1er Cru Charmots, are often ready to go relatively quickly, with the latter two showcasing brighter red notes typical of the northern side of the appellation, and the Pommard village wine with more earthy, slightly darker nuances. The whites? Well, let’s not talk about those until we get a year with some quantity to sell! A new set of Riecine’s pure Sangiovese wines has arrived. Made entirely inside of the Chianti Classico DOCG area, all the vineyards are in the higher altitude (450-500m) of Gaiole, an area with a great range of vineyard altitudes, from 300 to 600 meters. Principally composed of limestone and clay, there are also some parcels with galestro soils (though not noted on their website). Most of the higher altitude areas of Gaiole are heavily forested, lending the wines gobs of savory nuances and freshness to balance out the sunny, red fruits. This new collection is a strong continuation of this cantina’s renaissance and a clear demonstration of this young team’s openness and capabilities with different cellar aging processes. On the docket: 2020 Chianti Classico, aged 14 months in 900l old wood casks, 2019 Chianti Classico Riserva, aged 24 months in large, old Grenier botte, and their two iconic “Rosso Toscana,” the 2019 Riecine di Riecine, aged 36 months in egg-shaped concrete vats, and 2018 La Gioia, aged 30 months in equal parts of new, first- and second-year wood, 900l barrels. We also have reloads from Stéphane Rousset with the 2019 Crozes-Hermitage “Les Méjeans” and 2019 Saint-Joseph “Côte des Rivoires.” I have written extensively about these wines in our September 2022 Newsletter. Click (here) to read more about them. La Casaccia, our hot new organic Monferrato producer creates wines far too good for their price. New arrivals include a reload of the finely etched 2021 Grignolino and the new release of their 2021 Freisa. These wines are special and so is the family. You can go deeper on our website (here) with much greater detail along with a geologic snapshot of the area. We are also hopeful that four new Champagnes from our new organic-certified producer from Montagne de Reims, Pascal Mazet, will arrive in time for the holidays. Fingers crossed! This is a fabulous addition to our collection and I’m extremely excited to represent this wonderful family and their collection in the US market. More on them next month! Südtirol (Alto Adige), Italy. Special Feature Fliederhof – Südtirol, Italy Our second, highly anticipated order from Fliederhof has finally arrived after much delay. Highly anticipated, you say? Yes. Surprising, I know, but not for me. The few who tasted Martin Ramoser’s Südtirol wines, particularly the Schiava/Vernatsch-based ones (labeled as St. Magdalener Classico DOC), in the first go around recognized their high quality immediately and became fans. They have new labels now that are something entirely different and fun than the last ones: elegant, linear, and with some curves though not full bodied. The wild hair represents a fliederbusch, a local bush with bright flowers from which their winery takes its name. After all, the wines are a mix of German and Italian cultures: Straight but with rich personality! Most importantly, our staff loved the wines, and they are the tastemakers in their respective markets. A visit this last summer to the cantina with two of our many talented team members, JD Plotnick (LA sales) and Tyler Kavanaugh (SD sales), met the family. It doesn’t take long to be charmed by them, along with the gentle and humble but extremely motivated and intelligent Martin Ramoser, another special twenty-something who took over the direction five years ago after university, promptly converting their tiny parcels to organic and then biodynamic farming. Astrid and Stefan, his parents, are fully behind his renaissance undertaking at their cantina. Though Stefan did have reservations at first about this youthfully electrifying and lifted, ethereal direction, a move away from his more regionally styled wines, he’s since become a convert of his son’s vision. Martin and Stefan Ramoser Martin added the Sauvigon Blanc “Stella” to the range in 2021. I was skeptical at first, not because of Martin, but because of my personal ambivalence toward this variety. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Martin’s first go at it is already knocking on the nobles’ door.  The best from this grape are considered noble (especially when properly aged), but the rest, even those considered “very good” don’t usually get me fired up. Stella is different. Grown further away from their homebase on Santa Magdalena, the terroir sits on the western end of the valley at 450-480m on a mix of dolomite limestone and porphyry (volcanic) bedrock, both glacial depositions. Because of its east face and close proximity to the western cliffs carved out by glaciers, the sun sets here three hours earlier in the summer than on the Santa Magdalena hillside. The sun also hits the Sauvignon vineyards one hour earlier in the morning. Stella is electric and she brings more joy in the form of a stronger fruit presence and grace to this sometimes solemn, herbaceous variety. The main focus at Fliederhof is Schiava (Vernatsch) grown on Santa Magdalena, one of the wine world’s most spectacular hillsides. Their 2021 St. Magdalener Classico “Marie” is composed of at least 97% Schiava (mostly because in the past every tenth vine or so in the row was Lagrein, so they’ve kept this tradition while slowly replacing them with Schiava) grown on three different plots composed fully of massale selections from this ancient hill with an average age of around thirty-five years: one lower down on deeper soils with a lot of rocks which brings riper fruit and smooth tannins; another on a very loamy spot with a steep aspect; and the last further up the hill behind their house at around 350m in a windy spot with rockier soil that imparts greater tension. The grapes are mostly destemmed with around 15-20% whole clusters included. Alcoholic fermentation typically ranges between eight to twelve days, and the malolactic fermentation begins naturally shortly thereafter. Due to the variety’s typically reductive nature, the wines are pumped over during fermentation to minimize this (instead of numerous rackings during aging that can exhaust its freshness, which is very common in the area), and they’re tasted each morning and night to observe their evolution. Martin explained, “If you wait too long to aerate the grape must during fermentation, you may never get the reductive elements out of the wine.” It’s aged in big, old oak casks for nine months prior to bottling and stored for an additional few months prior to release. Generally, this wine is joyful and soft on intensity outside of its aromatic profile that, at Fliederhof, is laced with pleasant red fruits and flowers and a soft but tightly sculpted palate accented with volcanic rock spiciness. We squeezed the Ramosers for more quantity this year but given that they only have a little over three hectares in total production, the increase wasn’t as much as we would have liked. St. Magdalener Inspired by Ceparello, a wine made by the famous Tuscan vignaiolo and enologist, Paolo de Marchi, from Isola e Olena (which I’ve been a fan of since my earliest years in the wine business, though I’m a little out of touch these days given that it’s been almost a decade since I’ve tried a newly released vintage), Martin and Stefan crafted the 2020 St. Magdalener Classico “Gran Marie” from a selection of small clusters and berries from the family’s oldest Schiava vines to have a more concentrated wine—not a bad idea given Schiava’s tendency toward lightness and transparency. Vinified the same as the first St. Magdalener in the range (8-12 days with a natural fermentation), it’s aged entirely in a single old 15hl French oak cask for nine months followed by nearly a year of bottle storage prior to release. Gran Marie is named after Maria Ebnicher Ramoser, Martin’s great grandmother, who first brought the family to St. Magdalena. The 2019 and 2020 vintages of this wine are lovely, and if one were to call the first St. Magdalener Classico in the range a “village” wine, this would be their premier cru due to its wonderful balance of body, palate weight and minerally texture. Despite the selection of smaller berries and clusters from oldest vines, it maintains a tight but fleshed-out profile that highlights the elegance of the top wines made from this historic hill. This next wine I debated putting in our newsletter. My staff has requested that I not include things in such limited supply such as this one because we only have 48 bottles for the entire US market! But I can’t help myself because people need to know that this wine happened, and so therefore it’s going to happen again; it’s one of my favorite wines of the year, bar none, and needs to be recognized. Also, you need to be apprised of its inevitable rise! But really, how epic can Schiava be?? Well… Fliederhof’s 2020 Santa Magdalener “Gaia” is a MEGA-breakthrough Schiava made with 100% whole clusters and almost no extraction during its maceration and fermentation. Our first encounter (for JD, Tyler and myself) was this summer. We were all surprised by its depth, significance and profound pleasure. It topped my charts on both pleasure and seriousness and made my top 15 wines of the trip (likely in the top 5 of the 15, and surely one of my new favorites in the entire portfolio), and it made JD’s top five—tough choices all the way around on that trip with so many good wines! The young Martin Ramoser nailed it with this one, and he’s still got a few more years to go before he even crosses thirty! Don’t worry about missing this one this year. I told him that he needs to ransack more Schiava from the Santa Magdalena wine and dedicate it to this style instead. He’s significantly increased the quantities in 2022, but still with less than 1000 bottles in total. I’m excited about this guy and what he’s doing. His mind is open, all the way, and with the loving support of his family and their daily work together in the vines, this kid’s going to be a regional legend. Lagrein often renders wines that are menacingly beefy. In contrast, Martin’s agenda with this muscular, rustic and mineral-dense wine that seems to express the fire of the ancient magma that became its bedrock nearly three hundred million years ago, is to shed a little bit of the excessive weight it easily takes on, to keep it lighter on its feet. Gently extracted during its natural fermentation through daily pumpovers for eight to twelve days (always with a watchful eye on its even greater tendency for taking on reductive compounds than the already reductively inclined Schiava), it’s pressed and then aged in 12-25hl old oak casks. Whole bunches are used sparingly (15-20%) in years where the grape skin tannin is gentler (like 2019 and 2021, but not in 2020). Lagrein is easy to ripen, and all too often becomes overripe, and Martin does his best to reel it in on the hotter years, like 2018. His greater preference, like ours, is for cooler years, like 2019, 2020, and 2021. The 2020 Lagrein “Helen” embodies the spirit and rugged feel of the rocky mountain area where it’s grown, and one should think about heart-warming, rustic mountain-style food as the perfect match. No matter what’s done in the cellar, Lagrein will always remain on the dark side with strong wild blackberries and savory but inviting green characteristics. While dark chocolate and red wine is almost always a food and wine pairing misfire, Lagrein is one of the few that pairs quite well. With Martin and Stefan’s soft touch on tannins, the first Lagrein in their range (there is a Riserva as well) benefits from a slight chill. If you want to learn more about Fliederhof, you will find an exhaustive account on our website at https://thesourceimports.com/producers/fliederhof/ You can also virtually meet Martin and learn more about his wines directly from him at https://thesourceimports.com/videos/ Rodolphe Demougeot in his top Pommard vineyard, Pommard 1er Cru Charmots “Le Coeur des Dames.”

(Download complete pdf here) Left: Giovanna Bagnasco holding Pinot Noir harvested from Brandini’s Alta Langa vineyard grown at over 600m Right: Wechsler Scheurebe in the hands of Manuel, Katharina’s new husband! Europe is in full harvest and vinification mode, and 2023 will go down as a challenging one for many regions. Of course, the usual culprits chipped away at the morale of the growers from the start of the season with the arrival of frost, torrential floods, relentless mildew pressure, soul-crushing hailstorms late in the season, and untimely rain on nearly ripe grapes. Few regions were spared but there is still great hope for quality. As usual, we’ll know when we know. In the meantime, there are a lot of superb wines making their way to our shores from the 2018-2022 vintages. In anticipation of a strong second half of the year, we have a massive dose of wines arriving. No one saw the breadth of the industry-wide entertainment strike coming until it was here, and it’s yet another one of our industry’s major speed bumps that began with the tariffs in 2018 and got worse shortly thereafter and hasn’t quite rebounded in full yet. We’re in this one with you again, and after having been through so much together already, we know we’ll make it to the other side of this situation, too. And with the writers now returning to work, we’re at least part of the way there. Another installment of the Rare & Allocated Flight Tastings trade event is on the schedule. Seats are limited so check with your salesperson to grab a spot. The lineup includes all organic wines and a broad snapshot of our European imports. Our Champagne flights include a new organic and biodynamic micro-producer from the Pinot Noir focused appellation of Les Riceys, Eric Collinet, as well as wines from one of Champagne’s biodynamic gurus, Vincent Charlot, and the bubbles from Pascal Mazet’s vintage wines blended with about 40% of their solera foudre that’s been topped with wine since 1981. Then we dig into some white wines with Tegernseerhof’s top 2021 Smaragd Grüner Veltliners and Rieslings. Katharina Wechsler’s highly anticipated 2021 dry Riesling crus, Benn, Kirchspiel, and Morstein are arriving. A new batch of Montlouis from the sulfite-free Domaine Vallée Moray, and then Augalevada's flor yeast wines. On the red sets, we focus on Italy with Burgundy-trained Giacomo Baraldo’s Sangiovese crus, Dave Fletcher’s three Barbaresco crus and finally a series of new Barolo from Brandini, possibly with its winemaker, Giovanna Bagnasco, in attendance. Photo borrowed from Austrianwine.com Many of these wines (particularly Augalevada, Vallée Moray and possibly Fletcher) will be shown only at these events, so please try to secure your spot ASAP. We will have four one-hour seatings starting at 11 a.m., with the last at 2 p.m. Los Angeles - Wednesday, October 25th at Truffle Brothers San Francisco - Thursday, October 26th at Fort Mason Second on our October calendar is a visit from La Casaccia’s Margherita Rava, a producer of some of the best terroir and culture-rich value boutique wines in our portfolio. Her schedule is below. Margherita Rava picking Freisa harvest 2023, photo taken by her mom, Elena. Los Angeles, October 16th-18th San Diego, October 19th-20th San Francisco, October 23rd-24th Central Coast, October 25th-27th Katharina Wechsler is on a roll. She got married in August, had some rave reviews (not important to us, but they don’t hurt), and just released what is likely her top Riesling vintage to date. Last month we released Wechsler’s classic dry wine starter kit with the 2021 Scheurebe Trocken, 2021 Riesling Trocken, and the 2021 Riesling Trocken “Kalk,” formerly known as Westhofen Trocken. This month we have two of the 2021 Cloudy by Nature wines: the orange 2021 Scheurebe “Fehlfarbe” and 2021 Pinot Noir Rosé “Sexy MF.” Both are superb and without any added sulfites. The bottles of 2021 Sexy MF have some carbonic gas and need a gentle jostle once open, but once it shakes loose, it is as sexy as the name suggests. Perfectly clean lees come through with sweet red and pink flowers and first of the season sunny wild strawberries. Its slightly more overcast side (albeit still quite illuminating) is a slight tilt toward cranberry and sweet orange peel. It’s far too easy to drink, so bring out two bottles for each occasion of more than two people. As upfront and fun as it is, tasted next to the Scheurebe Fehlfarbe, Sexy MF comes across as discreet. Named after a famous 1980s German punk rock band, Fehlfarbe’s tone and energy is a match: a spicy, zesty, leesy, yeasty explosion! The aromas are completely untamed and eye-widening fun. By comparison, the palate is more Pink Floyd: dreamy, zingy and tightly effervescent with coarse enough tannins to keep you locked in the trance, stoned and coming back for more of the jasmine, white flowers, earl grey and lavender tea aromas. During Katharina and Manuel’s wedding, I focused on the 2021 Riesling Crus: Benn, Kirchspiel, and Morstein. The three wines were dynamic and such a pleasure on an unexpectedly cool, wet and windy August weekend. Benn presented its most compelling argument since I first encountered Wechsler's wines and is a pretty successful bid to clear its name as the third wheel in Katharina’s big three. The most surprising uptick is its more pronounced mineral impressions and core depth than in the past. It’s a perfect vintage for Kirchspiel and its predominance of loess topsoil above limestone bedrock, which tends to push it to be the most extroverted of the bunch. In a vintage of fruit that’s understated compared to that of hotter years, it’s more wound up and regal than in the past. This colder season seems to have given center stage to the limestone bedrock to do more chalking early on. As I was drowning in the operatic emotion of Morstein and the weight of their wedding, I pondered what it means to get married to someone, what it’s like to watch people possibly taking on the biggest commitment of their life. There were a lot of other special wedding wines from local superstars, and the one I wanted the most was Katharina’s Morstein. It was a monumental wine for a spectacular day. Martin Mittelbach continues his ascent in the Wachau’s pecking order. Unlike many of his famous friends and winemaking colleagues, he’s been in control of his family’s winery since his mid-twenties. Many his age (now around fifty) still have parents who claim retirement but don’t completely let go of the stylistic steering wheel and the company business. But this is understandable given that the oldest generation was the one who recovered their towns and the wine industry after World War II. They understand war and poverty and had to do the heavy lifting to rebuild their culture and once again earn the respect of the world. It’s hard to let that go. One of the most important recent changes for Martin is his embrace and certification of organic farming, which alone sets him apart from most of the Vinea Wachau’s ruling class, who can’t seem to break their addiction to “conventional” farming. He’s a fifth-generation winegrower (though Tegernseerhof dates back more than a thousand years), and his philosophical compass always pointed toward natural farming. Like most producers, Tegernseerhof’s Riesling vineyards are also mostly located on the steep upper terraces composed of gneiss, and the Grüner Veltliners are on lower loess and alluvial terraces. However, Martin has three Grüner Veltliner crus on gneiss bedrock with little to no covering of loess: Ried Höhereck and Ried Schütt, bottled as a Smaragd, and the Federspiel, Ried Superin. His range is also distinguished by his exclusive use of steel vats and vigorous sorting to remove any density-adding botrytis and slightly shriveled and sunburnt clusters. 2022 was a hot year, which makes the usually zippy Federspiels more attractive to a wider audience. The Dürnstein Grüner Veltliner Federspiel is a mix of many different parcels low on the terraced slopes and on loess plateaus next to the Danube. The bedrock and topsoil are primarily loess and river alluvium. This is the grü grü of Tegernseerhof’s range and offers an expansive and soft overall dry, chalky profile with fresh fruits, pastoral summer flowers, and Veltliner spice. Martin’s Ried Superin Grüner Veltliner Federspiel comes from a spot down by the river on gneiss bedrock cleared of any loess deposits yet replaced by river alluvium. The roots here are in contact with the bedrock. The bedrock coupled with rocky topsoil makes for a contrast to the sunbathed and deep loess soil parcels of the Durnstein bottling. It’s more rocky and minerally in profile; spicy, deeply salty, and with a tighter and straighter frame. Tegernseerhof’s Dürnstein Riesling Federspiel comes from many steeply terraced vineyards with southerly exposures in the eastern end of the Wachau, most notably from the crus, Loibenberg and Kellerberg. The bedrock is mostly gneiss and the topsoil is gneiss with some loess. The 2022 version is another gateway drug for non-Riesling drinkers to discover this variety. It combines open-knit yet ornate aromas with tight framing and tension. I’m sure I will sing the praises of the 2021s from my first tastes in the spring of ‘22 til the day I can’t taste a thing. I remain floored by the quality of the wines and cannot get enough. Aside from Tegernseerhof and Veyder-Malberg, I’m also lapping up various Federspiel wines over here in Europe from the great Wachau producers we don’t import. (Teaser: three main ones begin with the letters A, K, and P.) At around 12% alcohol, Federspiel is what I want to drink from the Wachau these days. Their freshness and fruit profiles match my calibration. However, the two growers we work with in the Wachau that make Smaragd-style wines—Veyder-Malberg doesn’t use the Vinea Wachau classifications—are closer in overall profile to Smaragd wines of the past (minus the botrytis), and closer to the Federspiels of today. Martin makes glorious Smaragd wines for those who go for a lean and focused body and texture. Fluidity is one of his hallmarks and one of Riesling’s most important attractions. Other great white grapes, like Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc, can get away with noisy yet compelling wines steeped in deep textures, but a great dry Riesling needs to express fluidity. This is one of the elements that I believe have separated Austrian dry Rieslings from German for many decades, though the Germans are certainly catching up. (Indeed, there are certain German individuals who broke through long ago, but the Austrians were cranking out fabulous dry Rieslings for many decades before many Germans began to rediscover them.) Tegernseerhof’s newer wines find that greater fluidity and this is especially important at this time when wines can go full monster under the sun after a few extra days left on the vine. I may again take the liberty to partially credit this to an even softer, more natural approach in the vineyards. (If presented with two peaches of the same type and same ripeness level, one organic and one conventional, do you think you could tell the difference? Beyond the sugar, acid and textural balance, I think chances are high that you would. It’s the same with grapes.) Ried Loibenberg is the main hill of the north side of the east end of the Wachau and probably the most photographed series of vineyards. From a terroir perspective, its diversity is due to its size, both vertically and length, and the variation of bedrock and topsoil. But one consistent characteristic is that it is one of the warmest hill slopes in the Wachau. It has few ravines that pass through it which creates a non-stop hot mountain face. Usually, when there is a substantial ravine cutting through a hill, the hills take on a different name and have wines with different expressions. Rieslings sit in the upper section of the hill on gneiss bedrock while mid-slope and toward the foot of the hill are the Grüner Veltliners, though this is not always the case. Loibenberg is almost always the first picked each season for the Smaragd wines and Martin picks even earlier than most. He has many parcels scattered about the hill (as most growers do) with some Grüner Veltliner at the extreme top and Riesling closer to the bottom, offering him a wide window in which to pick. Just to the west of Loibenberg are the Grüner Veltliner sites of Martin’s Ried Schütt and Ried Höhereck. Both sit partially inside of a ravine (known as the Mental Gorge, or Mentalgraben) where water erosion separated them from Loibenberg. The combe floods with cold air from the Waldviertel forest behind and above the vineyards, contributing tension to balance out its deep power. With an unusual appearance for a great cru site, Schütt is a relatively flat vineyard with only slight terracing below the steeper 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  Höhereck is the Grüner Veltliner parentage of many Tegernseerhof 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 the ravine with great access to forest freshness and 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 its genetic material. 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. Kellerberg Martin’s Ried Steinertal Riesling Smaragd comes from one of the greatest Riesling sites in all of Austria and its aromas beam from the glass with enticing and full-of-energy, high-toned mineral impressions. These elements 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 vineyard. 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. Tegernseerhof’s Ried Kellerberg Riesling Smaragd is the fullest Riesling in their range, surely vying for the top spot with Steinertal. The hill faces mostly southeast, giving it good sun exposure in the morning but also an earlier sunset than the neighboring Riesling vineyards with more southerly and sometimes western exposures, like Steinertal and parts of Loibenberg. Kellerberg is also 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. We’ve waited quite a few years for another opportunity to walk down memory lane with Southern Rhône wines like Eric and Sophie Ughetto’s 2021s bottled under Domaine la Roubine. We love full-throttle, deeply flavorful versions of their organic wines (certified since 2000) in warmer years, which they manage masterfully every year, but we love even more their wines from cooler years, like 2021, which seem to be a once-in-a-decade occurrence—perhaps 2013 was the most recent one with those seasonal features. Similar to the limited Rioja section on many wine lists where there is almost exclusively preserved for the fabulous historic R. López de Heredia wines, those from the Southern Rhône without association to the name Reynaud hold many fewer positions compared to what they once did. With the greater demand for lower alcohol wines (for obvious reasons) in the face of the south’s naturally higher alcohols, its warm climate, and the longer season needed for phenolic ripeness to bring, Grenache, one of the world’s most noble grape varieties and the south’s leading red wine (and rosé, and white!) protagonist from tannic austerity to the potential for sublime texture and aroma is a short window before the wines quickly pack on the muscle and more mature fruit. But even above 16% alcohol, Grenache can miraculously achieve balance (though it may take away the drinker’s): consider those from the Châteauneuf-du-Pape luminaries, Rayas and Vieille Julienne. (Somehow many wine pros insist on low-alcohol wines but quickly blur their lines when presented with an opportunity for the holy grail and singularly perfumed yet blockbuster-level alcohol wines of the Rayas-associated domaines.) Whole cluster and long fermentations are one of Roubine’s signature characteristics, and this keeps their wines fresher and more savory without getting overrun by the south’s big fruitiness. Whole cluster ferments take a month in the case of their two Côtes-du-Rhône Villages, Sablet and Seguret, and about 45 days for Vacqueras and Gigondas. This leaves even their most unassuming and price-friendly red starter range raised in concrete and fiberglass tanks to deliver unexpectedly ornate details for commonly forceful wines from these parts. Both Vacqueras and Gigondas still represent supreme value and often age effortlessly. I recently pulled out some cellared bottles of Domaine des Pallieres, vintages 2001 and 2004. They were fabulous and didn’t yet seem to be on top of their aromatic potential—a grossly underappreciated and nearly forgotten element of aged Grenache. Dentelles de Montmirail All of La Roubine’s vineyards are on the north-facing end of the Dentelles de Montmirail. This adds the benefit of less directly south-facing positions. The results are less desiccation of fruit and perhaps “cleaner” and more precise, taut fruit characteristics. The Sablet comes from four hectares planted in the early 1990s on northwest-facing limestone terraces of sand, sandstone and quartz. The 2021 blend of 70% Grenache, 25% Syrah and 5% Cinsault delivers inviting earthy aromas lifted with mild lavender, black pepper, cedar smoke and herb-dusted black raspberry. Its polished, fine-grained tannins point to an evolved wine of a much higher caliber. (Disappointingly, we didn’t receive a single case of their beguiling Seguret this year.) Roubine’s Vacqueras comes from five hectares planted in the 1960s on limestone and calcareous clay facing west on the west side of the Dentelles de Montmirail. The 2021 blend of 70% Grenache, 15% Mourvedre, 15% Syrah offers clean, spicy florals on the nose that follow through the silky mouthfeel. Candied red fruits and delicately smoked meat flavors inform this extremely elegant version. At the top of their food chain, and a sort of super-second appellation (behind Châteauneuf-du-Pape) is Roubine’s Gigondas. They have five hectares of 50-year-old vines on the north side of the Dentelles de Montmirail, with one flat parcel at 150-160 meters on iron-rich red clay and cobbles, and the other is a series of north-facing terraces at 260-300 meters on quartzite, limestone and alluvium. The 2021 blend is 70% Grenache, 15% Mourvedre, and 15% Syrah and renders a deep wine rich in aromas of perfectly ripe blue and red fruits with remarkable earth notes that push through the dense mid-palate flavors of cherry liqueur, black pepper, garrigue and subtle smoke. It’s seamless and already fully integrated, even as early in its life as it is. What makes Dave Fletcher such a talent is the juxtaposition between his technical confidence and strong opinions with an outward insecurity about what people think of his wines. (This makes him a lot of fun to tease, and I never do this directly if I don’t like the person or the wine.) I don’t think it’s only Dave’s strengths that have brought him to where he is today, it’s also his openness to not only share the technical details of his crafting and vineyard terroirs but to allow us into his thought processes where he not only shares the triumphs of each season but the challenges and how they’ve irreversibly marked the wines. He openly and sometimes painfully admits what he sees as his mistakes in each wine, even when the hair on your arms and neck and sides of your face are goosebumped from the emotion stirred by the Nebbiolo in your glass. There have been many successful wines (I can’t say I’ve had an unsuccessful one) since he started his winery; Dave has progressed quickly and his 2020 Barbarescos are undeniably contenders for the very best he’s done. Does a wine’s aging potential make it a greater wine than those that may have less potential to age well longer but that have a longer optimal drinking window? Perhaps it does from the point of view of producers and critics because their legacy is important to them, but is it important to us? I think some of them might claim that the 2020s’ more modest tannins could be a hindrance toward aging, but I don’t agree. California’s legendary Syrah winemaker, Bob Lindquist, from Qupé, told me while at my last restaurant post as a sommelier at Wine Cask in Santa Barbara in the early 2000s, that balance is what’s most important for a wine to age well. We were tasting some of his Bien Nacido Hillside Estate Syrahs after long cellar aging and they were wonderful. I can still taste those wines from that day and see Bob’s earnest eyes inside his glasses, and what he said always stuck with me. Sometimes I think the great Nebbiolo producers put too much value on Nebbiolo’s tannin level; the grape’s talent isn’t always best expressed in the vin de garde form. It’s extremely versatile, from Langhe Nebbiolo to bubbles, as well as its ability to achieve greatness in quite different terroirs, from the calcareous sands and mountainous, Mediterranean climate of the Langhe, but also the acidic igneous and volcanic rocks in the mountain climates of Alto Piemonte and Lombardia. I can’t speak for everyone else’s 2020 Barbarescos, but I am a big believer in Dave’s entire range. 2020 Barbaresco and Barolo are sandwiched between some pretty serious years, but for me, it may be the dark horse challenger for the 2019s and 2021s with some producers—not only in the medium tier producers but the uppers too. However, time will tell. Fletcher’s 2020 Barbarescos are readier than the already upfront 2019s, but they don’t seem to lack anything, except stern tannin to fruit balance in their youth. “I prefer this kind of vintage [2020] because they’re a little rounder and softer to begin with, but Nebbiolo still has plenty of tannin in the background.” -Dave Fletcher Dave is a university-educated Australian enologist living in Barbaresco since 2009. He also has the area’s coolest cantina (maybe even literally): a remodel of the historic Barbaresco train station. He began working at the famous Ceretto Barolo and Barbaresco cantina as an intern, eventually becoming the head maker of their reds. Now he makes his own wines from more than a dozen vineyards around Barbaresco, Alba and inside the Roero. All vineyards farmed by Dave are either certified organic or under conversion (some with biodynamic practices as well), and leased vineyards worked by their owners are encouraged toward organic farming. In addition to his Barbaresco range, he’s experimenting with local varieties, like Barbera with partial cluster ferments and Arneis orange wine, and others that grow well in his hood, like Chardonnay. “There wasn’t a lot of rain in the winter and there was almost no snowpack, which led to slow growth. Then in May, it rained a ton and the vegetation took off. Then we went into a dry spell through the summer which took us from saturation to dryness which caused rapid development of the fruit—a hallmark of the vintage. The fruit is super expressive and dense but not as tannic as the 2019s where there was a longer season for slower ripening compared to 2020. I prefer this kind of vintage because they’re a little rounder and softer to begin with but Nebbiolo still has plenty of tannin in the background.” Everything is hand-harvested, destemmed, and naturally fermented for 14-60 days (two to three weeks for the 2019s and 2020s; three to four weeks for the 2021s) with a single gentle daily extraction by hand. The first sulfites are added after malolactic and all the Nebbiolos are aged in 10-15-year-old small oak barrels (two years for Barbaresco, one year for Nebbiolo) prior to bottling without fining or filtration. There’s a lot of talk about the high quality of the 2021 vintage in the Langhe. Many growers were talking about it as though it’s one of the best they’ve seen, but they seem to say that a lot these days. Dave’s on the fence, but he doesn’t question the season’s high overall quality. We’ll get into that next year as Dave’s 2021 Barbarescos are about to be bottled right after the 2023 harvest. In the meantime, Dave released his 2021 Langhe Nebbiolo (formerly bottled as Nebbiolo d’Alba) and it’s a beautiful precursor to what will come with the 2021 Barbarescos. It’s sourced from Scaparoni, across the Tanaro River west of Alba, Montà, further north toward Roero DOCG, and Barbaresco, close to Fletcher’s winery. The vineyards are principally calcareous marls, sand and clay on a multitude of southerly expositions and altitudes. It’s also fermented and aged the same as all the Barbarescos but about half the time in wood. The 2021 is yet another example of Dave’s fine tuning, and always punches well above its class, especially because it parallels Barbarescos’ DOCG cellar regulations. The alcohol balance in Fletcher’s 2020s seems optimal, even with an average of 14.5%. Those of us who want to experience/drink more all want less alcohol (personally, I wish they tasted the same without any alcohol), but in this case, it brings a tiny dash of sweetness that compliments Nebbiolo and lifts the retro nasal spicy, earthy, woodsy perfume. I suggest serving the 2020s cooler to keep their voluptuous assets tight and in place, especially the curvy Starderi. Named after Dave’s familial Scottish clan, Fletcher, Shoot Straight translates the unique name given to the Barbaresco “Recta Pete.” The 2020 is a blend of 50% Roncaglie, 30% Starderi and 20% Ronchi, the latter a less-known vineyard adjacent and south of Montestefano facing south-southeast on a steep limestone sand and calcareous marl hillside. (The other crus, Roncaglie and Starderi, will be covered inside the profiles of each respective wine.) This Barbaresco is meant to be an early charmer, but with all of the crus so charming out of the gates (even if the Roncaglie is more stoic compared to the others) it represents a great value and better availability in the range, even if the quantities are miniscule. We will start with Faset, the puncher in the group with great tableside manners and charm. Tasted in late September with Max Stefanelli, a recent addition to our team, along with my wife, Faset opened with a flurry of sappy red fruit and chocolate. In the mouth, it’s upfront, bigger, and rounder compared to the other Fletcher crus, with maybe a little more freshness on the palate—perhaps a credit to the vineyard’s greater clay content. It’s muscular at first and works to impress while the second pour tightens a touch with more earthy notes. An hour later the forest begins to thicken and the nose is denser and the wine calmer and less extroverted. Faset seems more universally appealing for drinkers who prefer a little more richness and weight at the expense of pointed and lifted aromatics. It was my wife’s favorite of the bunch on both days. Faset comes from vines planted in the mid-1980s on a south-facing steeply terraced amphitheater at 200-250 meters on calcareous sand and limestone marls with a high clay content. Fall flavors of sweet and dried fig, roasted chestnut, cedar box, anise, sweet red and dark licorice, pumpkin, persimmon, unfrosted carrot cake, and a strong finish in the back palate of Starderi provide a notable contrast from Faset’s straightforward fruit and earth punch. In the context of the three crus, it was the most charming from the first sip to the last sip on day two. The nose is intoxicating and lifted volatile compounds ride the edge as happens with so many wines from great producers. It’s immediate and seems to ready itself knowing the cork is about to be pulled. Warmth and joy emit as it takes in deeper breaths. The aromatic notes don’t change too much with time, except that they snug up and lift even more. The tannins nibble at the palate but never settle this uncontrollably extroverted wine down. This was Max’s favorite wine from start to finish. Dave’s parcel of Starderi is planted in one of the sunniest plots in Barbaresco and is very close to the Tanaro River. His 0.10 hectares were planted in 1985 on a south-southwest-facing, medium slope of calcareous marl bedrock (~30% sand, 55% clay & 15% sandstone) and topsoil at an altitude of 200-210 meters. If Starderi is the last born in its buoyant personality, Roncaglie is the first. Roncaglie is the most regal and articulate of the 2020 trio and initially expresses itself sparingly with short powerful bursts. Tighter upon opening compared to the Starderi and Faset, it has a balance of woodsy notes that lead over its floral and fruit spectrum. Aromatically, it’s a forest floor littered with chanterelles and the invigorating smell of disintegrating fallen redwood after a rain and old wood furniture with good patina. The aromas lift with rose, allspice, and patchouli. The fineness of the aromas misleads the palate as the first taste went off like a backdraft, sharply and endlessly expanding in dimension with power and precision. Once it settles after a few full gasps of air, the guard goes down and Roncaglie offers deep, soft and pleasantly revitalizing floral aromas. Rongcalie is very serious, and while it’s not as stunning as Starderi, it may be more beautiful. Even if it’s hard to pick a favorite, the tense beginning and constant evolution upward over hours made it the most compelling of the three, at least for this taster. Roncaglie comes from vines planted between 1970-2010 on a south-southwest, steeply terraced amphitheater of calcareous sand and limestone marls at 240-280 meters.

After leaving Chez Dutraive, our next stop was a business call to two promising young Beaujolais producers that Jean-Louis had met a few months earlier, when they had sold him a shipment of much-needed grapes after the losses to hail. Once he tasted their wines it immediately occurred to him that Ted should meet them. Again we drove through countryside usually only seen in photographs: one-lane roads squeezed between verdant berms among huge expanses of now green and healthy vineyards stretching to a distant horizon, under blue skies mottled with perfectly spaced cotton ball clouds. There were actual castles on distant hilltops, just for good measure. Ancient crumbling walls and structures lined the road and lay in piles in the fields. I kept wanting to reach for my camera, but it occurred to me that if I did this every time I thought of it, I’d never put it down. New research suggests that the practice of always holding a camera in front of an experience greatly diminishes our ability to retain what we are seeing; somehow by concentrating on storing images in a device, they are less likely to store in our brains. Then we have thousands of photos we often don’t look at again later on, and the bulk of what we’ve seen is forgotten. I kept my phone in my pocket as much as I could and recorded everything with my eyeballs. We were yet again sent sideways by the white wagon’s navigation system, and by late afternoon finally found the domaine of brothers Victor Emmanuel and Pierre-Maxime Chardigny. Both were boyishly handsome and surprisingly young; Victor was in his early twenties, while Pierre-Maxime was just short of thirty. They were both a little shy and quietly earnest at first. They showed us the buildings they had recently acquired for their operation: what appeared to be big barns, a bit ramshackle and in need of renovation, but full of promise. Then they took us around back to a large expanse of their parcels as a chilly wind kicked up that sent me running back to the car for my coat. The guys gave us the rundown in threadbare cable knit sweaters, seemingly immune to the cold. They told us that when they were growing up, their father had a mobile bottling machine, so they got to know a lot of winemakers in the area. Eventually he was able to buy some land that he rented out to a vigneron who worked the land for a few decades. When the maker retired, the land returned to the family and Victor and Pierre-Maxime jumped at the chance to take over and start their own operation. While Victor is the resident maker and holds a National Diploma in Enology, Pierre-Maxime runs the business side of things. They also have a third brother who has a degree in agronomy and works for the famed biodynamically run Domaine Leflaive, so he contributes with advice on crop production and soil management. At the time of our visit, they had twelve hectares, and their cousin contributed to their efforts with an additional eight. All of the vines were surrounded by healthy green undergrowth; in recent years the land had been chemically farmed, but they had plans to go completely organic and biodynamic and were looking to achieve full certification in 2018. They pointed at some slopes in the distance where they had more vines and said they had yet another on the other side of the hill. Then they jumped in their little white Toyota Tercel and took us over to each parcel, where Ted and Andrea clicked away with their cameras and Ted rubbed stone and dirt between his fingertips. At our third stop, their vineyards overlooked a small valley with a church and graveyard surrounded by more vineyards. I wondered aloud if the graves would have any effect on the grapes around them and Victor gave me a wry smile and a shrug. Their primary production facility was in another big barn beside a house to which they would expand in the coming year, though there was the possible complication with an old lady who had lived in the top floor for decades. Inside the big rickety doors with peeling pain and an ancient lock, the space was filled with a tight crowd of steel tanks that on first glance looked like a mob of hulking robots from an old sci-fi movie. Through another door to the side was a small room with new oak barrels stacked in triangles of three. Victor poured tastes from his pipette and he and his brother spoke with humility, gratitude and pride about the growing success of their new enterprise. As we tasted, Ted continued to be surprised by the quality of the work coming from such a young vigneron. We got into our cars again and followed them to a large house with a tall iron gate. Inside on the property was a sprawling lawn full of trees with big white blooms called boule de neige (snowball), a type of rhododendron. Across from their father’s huge limestone house, there was another building filled with more tanks and equipment, shiny and fresh out of the box, which they had recently purchased to keep up with their rapid expansion. Under the beautiful home, which was draped with big clusters of pale purple wisteria that Pierre Maxim referred to as glycine, there was a tidy tasting room with stone walls and a low wooden ceiling. We all sat around an antique oak table, as Victor Emmanuel opened bottles and poured the newest cuvées. Ted mentioned that he was one of three brothers as well, separated by about the same number of years as the Chardignys. He immediately pegged these guys as having a similar dynamic to his with his older brother; there was even a little tension caused by Pierre-Maxime being more assertive and bossy, while Victor had a mischievous glint in his eye. Pierre-Maxime said Victor is prone to jokes and pranks, like Ted has always been. A big difference was that Ted’s brothers aren’t involved in his business, but his sister Victoria is the general manager of his office and developed the entire administration side of things almost from scratch. Ted was enjoying the wines immensely and was already sure he wanted to do business with them, a decision compounded by this newfound sense of kinship. They were being distributed to some extent across Europe, but seemed to be hesitant about going overseas, or maybe even starting with someone new in any capacity. They had recently been burned by a middleman who had taken a huge shipment of bottles and then disappeared and never paid them. Ted assured them that his reputation for scrupulousness was sound, as Dutraive, for one, could attest. They quickly conceded the point as Ted said he would see that they benefit greatly from being distributed widely in his territories of Chicago, California and Oregon, all of which he would soon be expanding. Ted continued: “I like to support producers in any way I can. I don’t consider myself a merchant, more a partner. The lines of communication are always open; I want everyone to feel free to communicate their questions and needs at all times.” The Chardignys were soon as sold as Ted was. Ted mentioned that we had been at Julien Zernott’s place the day before, and Pierre-Maxime said they had exchanged bottles with him a few months earlier. Zernott had left six for them at Dutrave’s and when Pierre-Maxime heard that he would be at Dutraive’s again more recently, they brought him six bottles in return and got to meet him. Ted and the guys talked about the regular practice of vignerons exchanging their wares, the meeting of peers and gaining of friends in the process. Ted started in on talking allotments and noticed that the stack of boxes against the wall were all in six packs, their preferred way of doing things thus far. He said it would be helpful for them to upgrade to boxes of twelve, since the shipping companies charge per box, not just weight. That change alone would clearly reduce transport costs by half. Pierre-Maxime expressed surprise at this, but it was just one of many things he would be learning as he took the jump across the Pacific. Back outside, talk turned to the personal again, as Pierre-Maxime said that he was relocating to Lyon to move in with his longtime girlfriend, a physics student. I was surveying the beautiful grounds and the rolling land of Burgundy beyond, when I asked about the house. He said it has been in the family for three hundred years and the big lawn out back was often used for parties. It seemed to me like it would be the perfect place to get married (if one was into that sort of thing).

(Download complete pdf here) Matera, November 2023 Yes! Finally rid of you, you…2023! It’s January, and that means we’ll either commit even more to our goals with great preparations for the coming year, or we’ll pivot and aim for something else. Or maybe we’ll just plan nothing at all in rebellion against our own interests… If you do have goals for 2024, then this is the moment to dig in your heels, take off the gloves, burn the midnight oil (and whatever other overused idiomatic expressions come to mind), but reconsider that Dry January thing because isn’t life too short to drink nothing at all for an entire month? Two weeks? We’re going to start this year with the inspiring story of Laurent (Lolo) Marre, a wine-crazy Frenchman, who in his late forties almost died, and when given a new lease on life he refocused on a lifelong dream. I hope you enjoy the story about this passionate no-sulfite-added, natural, biodynamic, self-described “neo-vigneron” in Cahors living the life many of us on the other side of the wine trade dream of. In the meantime, best of luck to you this year, and welcome once again to the beginning of the rest of your life! After twenty-five years as a sommelier, wine wholesaler and the owner of a Parisian wine bar, forty-eight-year-old Cahors native, Laurent Marre, found himself in a hospital bed. Unexpected life-threatening circumstances and four months confined to a hospital can change anyone’s perspective. After he was released, Laurent and his wife, Nathalie, started to plan a return to Laurent’s familial homeland. Since 2018, they’ve been raising horses (Nathalie’s métier, along with plowing the vineyards) and farming eight biodynamic hectares of vines on their 30-hectare plot surrounded by forest on one of Cahors’ geologically diverse and high-altitude limestone plateaus. Our first interaction with Laurent’s impeccably balanced, no-sulfites-added “natural-wine” range (white included), evoked a whole-body YES! The range begins with C’Juste, a welcome and unexpectedly intense mineral and fresh, amphora-raised Gros Manseng, followed by a series of emotion-inducing and minerally fresh Malbecs raised in concrete, amphora, and large old French oak barrels and foudres. Laurent offering wild onion growing in his vineyards No one’s body stays young forever, but at fifty-something, Laurent’s mind seems to have turned back the clock. From the abyss of his hospital bed came rebirth and revelation that brought him back home to Cahors and a dream he had almost forgotten. Laurent was in line to be the fifth generation of operators of the Cahors hotel and restaurant, Le Terminus. Hospitality, wine, culinary arts and living well from one meal to the next were their family heritage. They took their vacations in wine countries with good restaurants, and it set the course for his adventures abroad. After high school, he attended viticulture and enology university in Toulouse. Instead of jumping straight into the vineyard and cellar, he worked in Alsace for three years at L’Auberge de l’Ill with Serge Dubs, one of his great mentors and the winner of the 1989 “Best Sommelier of the World” competition. Eventually, Laurent owned a wine bar and also represented various vignerons in the Paris market. “I always wanted to be a winemaker. But not coming from a farming family, my former job as a sommelier allowed me to achieve this dream of working in the wine world. Then a serious health issue in 2016 pushed me to achieve my dream to become a vigneron.” Put on hold and then nearly forgotten, his original dream took a backseat as he got accustomed to Parisian life where he watched the rest of France and the world passing through the iconic Ville lumière. Now he’s a new-world mind in Cahors’ old-world setting, and there are few vignerons we’ve encountered so sure of their calling to the vines as Laurent. It’s rare in France for outsiders of the wine community (even if they’re French) to make the leap from life in restaurants and wine bars to that of a vigneron. Laurent is an exception with his quarter century in helping to promote young vignerons’ names and reputations in Paris and elsewhere. With full idealism intact, his splash was immediate and perhaps surprising to some. But it wasn’t for those who are familiar with his immeasurable urgency to live life that followed years of reflection on the nature of wine, and the words and ideas of the thousands of vignerons, sommeliers and talented tasters and thinkers who crossed his path. With clarity in his practice, his ideas have come together quickly yet he remains as endlessly curious and enthusiastic as Pollux, his canine vineyard companion. During our first visit, Laurent and Pollux were hardly able to contain themselves, moving quickly through their vineyard and forest playground poking and sniffing, analyzing flowers and herbs and limestone rocks like they’d just discovered them. Laurent paused as we examined the curious six-inch porcelain plates on white limestone rock and he explained that below are highly porous terracotta amphoras beside newly planted vines to offer them micro-doses of water and temperature regulation needed to thread the needle through the hot and dry summers in their crucial years before fruit production and greater root development; these clever and cute pots are a useful gardening technique he saw in Japan that replaces drip irrigation. Some people use punctured plastic containers as well, but that’s neither sexy, cool, nor aesthetically pleasing in such a natural setting. You can take the man out of the wine bar, but you can’t take the wine bar out of the man (or something like that). Laurent transformed from rustic wine grower to hospitable Parisian barman (which may seem like an oxymoron) the moment he held the cellar door for us to pass into his winemaking workshop. He described his objectives with each aging container while patiently watching and offering a light commentary to preserve the mystery for each of us to bond with his wine in our own way: to discover something completely new or uncannily familiar; to let our interpretations and creative juices flow; to make our relationship personal and deep in a matter of sips with our unique perceptions that only we sometimes understand. As Andrew Jefford writes in the opening sentence of Drinking with the Valkyries, “We know no moment quite like this.” Childhood friend and business partner at Le Vent des Jours, François Sudreau is not only a great supporter of Laurent’s dream, he is also one of his biggest fans. With his infectious smile and eyes enlarged by his glasses, a bottle or glass in hand (and sometimes a cigarette in the other), like Laurent, he closely attends to his guests: Water? Wine? A smoke? Perhaps some rillette de canard? A great friend to have for any epicurean, François’ 130-year-old family business carries from the late-1800s to our century the ancient craft of charcuterie quack: confits, rillettes, pâtés, and foie gras a hundred ways. Sudreau-Côte Cave is an evil temptation in the center of Cahors that preys on those of us who lack restraint for France’s Michelin-starred picnic fair. His shop is lined with all their ancient recipes in jar and tin, and also a fabulous collection of wines, piles of the most mythological French cheeses and sausages (especially those from the southwest), along with a room in which to sit, pull corks, enjoy everything on offer, and commune. François brings a dangerously good accompaniment to visits at Le Vent des Jours, and he surely pushes harvest lunches and a quick casse-croûte to a stratospheric level. Once a prolific variety used for its color and structure contribution to Bordeaux, a frost in 1956 exposed Malbec’s Achilles’ heel for this once rare seasonal challenge compared to the Cabernet brothers and Merlot. Commonly referred to as Cot (pronounced like the abbreviation for company: Co.) in other areas of France, its thick skins and dark, lip-and-mouth-staining color earned the name, Malbec, which Laurent explains in the local dialect of Cahors means “bad mouth.” (The Vin de Cahors website, vindecahors.fr says the name’s origin involves a dubiously named and seemingly shameless self-promoter, Mr. Malbeck.) A half-sibling of Merlot, among many other winding vinous relations, Cahors (presumably made with Cot/Malbec) was also an inspiration for the Roman poets, Horace and Virgil. I suppose this shouldn’t surprise us that Horace wrote about it given that he was from modern-day Basilicata’s Venosa (in his time it was called Venusia and part of Apuglia), a central hub for Aglianico wines of Vulture. Assuming the Cahors of his time was Malbec, this grape is of an equally dark color and structure as Aglianico, though perhaps a little less intense by comparison when measuring tannins and perhaps naturally juicier and more seductive. In Bordeaux, Malbec was used as a blending component to beef up Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. But in Cahors, Malbec performs on a world-class level as a single-varietal terroir wine at higher altitudes on limestone bedrock and calcareous topsoil. Perhaps more so than the low-lying and largely alluvial soils of Bordeaux, also similar to the many vineyards inside the Lot River gorge on former flood plains, the limestone roche mare of Cahors seems to naturally impart a more linear and strict architecture to the aromatic and palate textures to this often fruit-heavy wine. An hour and a half northwest of Toulouse, three hours by car from the city center of Bordeaux, four hours from Lyon, five from Marseille, and eighteen hours by car, or 400 hours by foot from Horace’s hometown, one doesn’t “happen” to cross Cahors by car on the way to somewhere else. (Imagine how sound the Cahors must have been to travel so far over 2000 years ago and still inspire Horace to immortalize it!) Located just west of the western end of France’s Massif Central, an ancient igneous and metamorphic rock mountain range with some young-ish, seemingly (hopefully) dead volcanoes, Cahors is a land of Jurassic limestone plateaus (referred to in French as causse) above a deeply carved, Mosel-like, dizzying meander of the Lot River. The Lot sprung near the Massif Central’s Cévennes and carried a variety of different rock types from the ancient massif to the Lot River Valley, depositing them in cobble form along the limestone ridges and eventually joining the Garonne River after 485 kilometers of travel from its source. Malbec is perfectly situated in Cahors for many reasons. The most influential factor in determining a grape’s ideal place in the world is the climate. The southwest is generally mild in the winter, wet in the spring, hot in the summer, and humid in the fall. It’s more influenced by oceanic conditions despite being relatively equidistant from the Atlantic and Mediterranean. At the western base of the Massif Central’s Parc Naturel Régional des Causses du Quercy, Lot’s path has a convergence of strong opposing natural forces. The Pyrenees to the south block much of the intense African and Mediterranean heat and spring storms, and, like the Massif Central to the east and north, offer cool mountain air relief; the Massif’s north winds also bring Cahors’ biggest threat of frost. Toward the west, it’s open to the Atlantic, which brings autumnal rains and cool winds. With similarities to Southern France’s famously howling cold north wind, the Mistral, the opposing warm Autan winds originate above the Sahara and roar through the Languedoc and Roussillon gap between the Massif Central and the Pyrenees, through Carcassonne, Toulouse and finally Cahors, and it can be beneficial or dangerous, depending on its duration and timing. Laurent says that it often carries a lot of desert sand, and, like the Mistral, it’s said that it usually lasts for three, six or nine days. If it arrives late in the growing season, it can dry grapes and reduce yields, as it did in 2023. However, Laurent’s biggest concern among these multidimensional influences is hail. The vines have been under biodynamic culture now for almost two decades. The conversion began with Fabien Jouves (Mas del Périé), a biodynamic-natural wine vigneron who sold the vines to Laurent and François in 2017. What great fortune to walk into such a thriving ecosystem! The following is a lightly edited version of Laurent’s responses to some of our questions, though it should be noted that he speaks English well. My agricultural philosophy as a neo-winemaker is as simple as possible. First, the size of the estate is a human scale: eight hectares of vines to make our living, eleven are made up of woods and pastures for our horses, eight for the sheep, one for the truffle oaks, and one with woods for our beehives. I try to apply a “farmer’s” common sense and replace most Phyto treatments with infusions, porridges, and natural minerals. If my schedule allows it, I follow the planet’s calendar; if I can’t, I deal with those processes the following days. Our animals eat organic hay and graze on organic lands, so they make organic manure which we recover to make our supply of organic elements for our soil health. Our horses also pull our plows and our sheep are part-time mowers and fertilizers. Our bees make honey for our breakfast and to treat our horses’ wounds. White clay is also used to heal the wounds of animals or ours, but we also spray it on the vines as a way of using a natural substance to fight against leafhoppers effectively. All these natural products cost almost nothing, unlike Bayer or Monsanto products which are accompanied by very harmful effects. Since 2022 we leave the grass cover [which is extremely spare anyway] in the center of the vine rows and till only directly under the vine lines in autumn to build a mound around the vines for winter protection. At the beginning of spring, we put the mound back. Ultimately, Laurent’s philosophy is to first respect nature and work in its flow as fluidly as possible when creating their wines. The second is to make sure his wines bring clear sensations related to this historic vineyard land and most importantly to the rocky and fully exposed terroir. “Aside from an empty bottle, the greatest compliment is to taste my wine blind and tell me it’s Malbec on limestone.”-Laurent Marre On their thirty hectares, just southwest of Cahors’ town center and east of the village, Villesèque, Laurent and François have a single, contiguous, eight-hectare vineyard plot on a limestone plateau. “Maintained with love,” the bordering forests on the north and east offer some frost protection, and the 284-310 meters of altitude (higher compared to neighboring appellations, Bergerac and Gaillac) brings good air circulation that reduces fungus populations resulting in fewer vineyard treatments during the vegetative cycle. Laurent explains that the seasonal average of sulfur and copper treatments is around six to seven times, though in the hot 2022, there were only three, and in the dismal 2023 there were 13, though they still lost 60% of their crop. The summer’s diurnal shift when perched up on the causse plateaus is dramatic. The days often hit highs between 36-42°C and then at night plunge to 16-22°C, with the wind always present. The white limestone also keeps the ground cooler in this fully exposed setting, which pushes harvest times (during the last decade) of Malbec to late September and sometimes into early October. Even if it’s a small piece of land, Laurent explains that there are three distinct geological settings. The differences are most evident with Malbec picked over 10-12 days with the first grapes harvested where the central plot thickens with red clay (Quaternary geological age), followed by the red-tinted Jurassic limestone section at the bottom, and the last of the Malbec is picked from the white Jurassic limestone sections in the upper part of the vineyard where the sheep hang out the most. The Jurassic age of the limestones is dated to the Kimmeridgian (Upper Jurassic). Though they’re more similar than different from the famous sharp but friable and soft Kimmerdigian marls of Chablis and the Upper Loire Valley, they’re hundreds of kilometers away and are not exactly the same. Much of the limestone formations have heavy faulting that allows roots opportunities to dig deep. On the top areas of the causse with what seems like impenetrable limestone, the rock is broken up over time from cryofracturing (among many other names with perhaps the most common reference, the freeze-thaw cycle) where water enters gaps in rock and freezes and expands, wedging the rock apart. No known hard rock can resist the 10-11% expansion when water turns to ice, but uniquely, the softer the rock the less it is affected by freezing water; for example, because of the plasticity of mudstones and claystones, they’re not affected. Malbec is the focus of the domaine and the vine age ranges between 25 to 45 years old (2023). It’s planted with 5000 vines per hectare, which is half of what is typical in the Côte d’Or. It grows on all the soil types, but principally on the rockier limestone sections. The 40-year-old Merlot vines are planted on the heaviest red clay. The 25-year-old Gros Manseng and Ugni Blanc (10% of the C’Juste blend) are on the Quaternay section (red clay) as well but with a large vein of white clay. Chardonnay and Viognier are also inherited and were planted 25 years ago on the poorest limestone soils. As a former sommelier who’s had every French wine at his fingertips, it’s understandable that Laurent is not completely satisfied growing what was already planted. This prompted him to cultivate other varieties he loves that thrive perfectly on limestone and clay; they’re also varieties that we love: Chenin Blanc, Pinot Noir, Trousseau, and Syrah. With 90% of C’Juste composed of Gros Manseng grown on the large veins of white clay in warm-to-hot summer conditions and without added sulfites, we may expect its takeoff to be like the first throttle on the tarmac in a fast but chubby commercial liner; however, it’s more like (what I imagine) being pressed against the seat of screaming fighter jet during takeoff. We, for one, find C’Juste yet another impressive no-sulfites-added white wine that demonstrates what’s possible if done correctly in the cellar. It’s as inviting as it is electric, and once open the bottle tends to empty rather quickly. Laurent describes C’Juste as, “a rich wine due to the typicity of Gros Manseng. From one year to the next, the Victoria pineapple side (a note not often found in colder and wetter climate Gros Manseng wines) remains the common thread, while the 10% of Ugni Blanc brings freshness and acidity—the lemon side on the finish. It’s for the meal rather than apero hour and can compete with a fine Chardonnay in terms of power and the freshness of a great Chenin Blanc.” Once in the cellar, the grapes are first left for 24 hours in concrete to cool down, then they’re whole-cluster pressed before being returned to the same medium. At the end of the 10-15-day natural fermentation, the wine is racked off the gross lees into four 8hl Italian terracotta amphoras for 11 months before bottling. There is no sulfite added to this wine at any time, though the exception is the 2020 version. C’Juste is lightly filtered but not fined. The red starter in Laurent’s range is also the wildest of his no-sulfite-added Cahors. It’s not made every year but reserved for years (like 2018, 2021, and 2023) where certain lots don’t hit the stylistic mark for the Les Calades and Les Moutons bottlings. Initially, the wine is explosive, shooting aromas in all directions. A member of our talented team at The Source, Tyler Kavanaugh, tasted the 2021 over five days after the wines arrived stateside and sent notes that perfectly sum up this wine: “It’s wild and swerving out of the gates; lots of raw and pungent primary fermentation elements raging around; a little awkward at first.” On the second day open after only a little taste on the first, he describes it as though the angst backed off and the wine is more subdued and approachable, though still sanguine and raw. On day five he pulled it from his refrigerator, “And wow, what a remarkably stable and intriguing wine without SO2. It softened into this delicate, powdery wine; the acidity and volatile elements zenned out; nothing weird, out of place, or fault-adjacent to be found. Much of the raw and unhinged qualities are no more. It’s honestly become a geeky pleasure to drink to the point I may very well polish the bottle.” Other pronounced notes include high-toned purple fruits, purple flowers (iris, hibiscus, petunia), beets (fresh and roasted), freshly tilled soil, dark and earthen; smells of a nursery/gardening store; Sichuan pepper and Chinese five spice. “Un Jour ou l’Autre must be my everyday, financially accessible Cahors; a 100% Malbec for thirst, aperitif, sausage, barbeque.” -Laurent Because it comes from the plots used for Les Moutons or Les Calades, it’s composed of a combination of Upper Jurassic limestone bedrock and the Quaternary white clay and limestone rock topsoil. (For more on the terroir read “The Plot” and “On the Range” sections.) Once in the cellar, the grapes are 80-90% destemmed before a 20-30-day natural fermentation in open concrete vats. Two pump-overs a day are employed early in the maceration period and almost nothing is done during fermentation. It’s aged in 50hl concrete tanks for seven months before bottling with a light filtration. No sulfites are added. A blend of Malbec from their three different soil types (see The Plot section) picked at different times within a 10 to 12-day span, it is for this that Laurent’s mid-range Cahors, Les Calades, is the most accessible and widely appealing. He describes it as the flagship of their range, “a pure Malbec with power and freshness that represents the king grape variety of our appellation on limestone, and the new generation of Cahors: more fluid, rich and balanced with a distinct and very present mineral and marine finish.” Each plot has an average age of around 40 years (2023) and naturally ferments in separate concrete vats with 10% of whole bunches between three weeks to a month. Because Malbec already provides a lot of substance from its very thick skin, he does a single short pump-over every two days to preserve the hygiene of the cap of about 300 liters in total of the 50hl vat. After fermentation, the grapes are pressed and mixed with the free-run wine and aged for 11-13 months equally between Italian terracotta amphora, old 30hl French oak vats and six-year-old 225l French oak barrels. They’re lightly filtered at bottling without any added sulfites. Again, we defer to Tyler Kavanaugh for a thorough description of the 2020 Les Calades tasted around Thanksgiving: “A deep and focused black-red fruit medley and purple flowers with a refreshing graphite-cool mouthfeel. It’s soft and broad in the mouth and a little sanguine in a steely, iodine-forward sense. The tannins are pleasantly chewy with sweeter black and red berries (though not ripe/overripe) and loads of freshness. It feels firm in the middle on weight, structure and acidity with a nicely detailed direction to the fruit that keeps you coming back to the tart blackberry and boysenberry, bramble, florist fridge fresh dark flowers and leaves and stems in the cold. It’s solid on the second day with the floral aromatics lifting well above the fruit with the tannins lightly tightening up. It didn't last beyond the second day due to its deliciousness factor, which kept me pulling it from my ‘secret’ Thanksgiving bag.” Les Moutons comes from Laurent’s favorite Malbec plot at the top of the hill on its poorest rocky topsoil on Jurassic limestone bedrock. This is where les moutons (the sheep) like to hang out the most, eating and fertilizing—“a sort of organic doping of the vineyards,” Laurent says. “Les Moutons is destined to be my grand cuvée,” Laurent says This 0.45ha upper plot in the vineyard always produces extraordinary wine from its 45-year-old vines, which he partially attributes to the plot’s spare soils and the regularity of sheep contributions. But perhaps the most significant factor is that it’s not made every year. Laurent’s vision for this wine is to have something serious and precise, and when the year doesn’t line up the way he wants it to, like 2021 and 2023, he blends it into Les Calades. Tyler’s take on the wine was that it has “a more finely etched and detailed frame with dustier but more precise tannins; it’s more elegant and less fruit nuanced than Les Calades.” This fineness and savory character is not only by design from Laurent but also by the forceful voice of this section of his vineyard. Once the grapes arrive, half are destemmed and layered, “millefeuille style,” with the whole bunch clusters in a 30hl tronconic wood vat for around three weeks of natural fermentation with a control of between 12-14°C. The must is pumped over once per day until pressing. Despite the notable beauty and class of the wine each year that it’s made, Laurent says that he’s still finding his way to fully realize his vision for this wine. In 2019, it was aged for 13 months in equal parts amphora, foudre and barrel. All of the 2020 was aged in 8hl Italian terracotta amphoras, and in 2022 it was four-year-old French oak barrels (at least from October 2022 to October 2023). As with the other reds, Les Moutons is not fined but passes through a light filtration, and has no added sulfites at any time. Each season is quite different and despite the notably erratic behavior today, it’s wild every year regardless of climate change. The most notable challenge today is how the extremes are even more extreme. Laurent has provided a quick overview of his most recent vintages. 2019 was very sunny which resulted in a lot of sugar which, of course, raises the alcohol. The natural yield was 32hl/ha. 2020 was a perfect vintage that resulted in magnificent Malbecs. 2020 was the first season they used pheromones to confuse the grape worms during their reproductive period. Laurent describes this as a smashing success. There was almost no rot in the vineyards and the yield was 36hl/ha. Laurent refers to 2021 as a “shitty year!” with nine months of rain over 18 months. “Luckily it was cold, so we didn’t have mildew problems.” It was difficult to have the sugar levels they wanted and also difficult to harvest with showers every day. The final yield was an average of 23hl/ha. Regardless of the growing season, the 2021 C’Juste is spectacular! 2022 was a very beautiful vintage, similar to 2020 but with four months of drought from May to August and temperatures between 36 and 42°C. However, there was little water stress thanks to the depth of the old vines’ roots. The yield was 38hl/ha. 2023 was a very complicated year because of a lot of rain in spring with 220mm (almost nine inches) in three days at the beginning of June and storms every evening in May. The spring and summer were very hot and there was a permanent attack of mildew, very similar to what happened in many other European wine regions. At the beginning of September, the hot Autan wind dried many of the remaining grapes. Many winegrowers didn’t even harvest. The average yield was 12hl/ha.