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At the legendary domaine of the de Montille family, we were greeted inside the gate of an old stone villa from the 1700s by Alexander Götze, the vineyard manager and assistant to the winemaker. He led us up a narrow stairwell to a lofty space with updated sleek blonde floors and huge, roughly-hewn, exposed dark wood beams that jutted out at all angles from the wavy yellow plaster walls and connected to the wavy ceiling above. Alexander, a bookish German in a baggy hoodie and horn-rimmed glasses, showed us around with sheepish smiles, a bit self-conscious about the state of the place; the dining table, sideboard and small coffee table in the center of a cluster of Louis Quatorze-style chairs were all covered with wine bottles, many still partially or even mostly full. Throw together three young guys with a high level of viticultural expertise in French wine country, and you end up with living quarters that feel like the most sophisticated university campus apartment of all time. After a hasty grabbing of bottles to drink (most labeled only with scribbles in grease pencil), a big loaf of bread and a selection of local cheeses on a well-used walnut cutting board, we headed out back where we were joined by Jon and Tommy, who had more local cheeses and meats and a couple of glorious baguettes. The rolling green grounds behind the domaine, with their stately oaks and ash that lined a winding gravel path, and the clusters of outbuildings added to the illusion of being at an east coast liberal college. The cool damp air smelled of fungus and green herbs and grass. The six of us settled around a small teak patio table and dug into the food. Jon had a constant smile in his eyes and the mellow energy of a yoga teacher. Tommy was scruffy and self-effacing as he told us about his many odd jobs in the states and how he moved around a lot before somehow finding himself in France. He was from New Hampshire and we talked about backpacking in the White Mountains, which I did a lot of when I lived in New York City, and skiing, which he hasn’t done since living in Burgundy. “The Alps are just too far,” he said, and I cringed on his behalf. Ted immediately got down to wine talk with the guys as we made our way through the cryptically labeled bottles from an unnamed producer. The conversation quickly turned to “the mouse,” as it showed up in the second cuvée. (It wasn’t a de Montille wine.) Mousiness is a subtle scent (for those sensitive to it, like Ted, it's extremely strong) that appears at the back of the palate and has been described as the smell of their dander, or even some decay. For a novice like myself, I only occasionally got it, like I was searching the corners of my garage, trying to find the nest, getting close, and losing it. Then I finally found its full effect and I couldn’t not smell it or feel its uncomfortable gassy texture in the back of my throat, and I immediately wished I hadn’t tried so hard. For those who don’t know, the primary cause of mousiness comes from pediococcus, a species of lactic acid bacteria. It took many years to come to these conclusions as quite a few other culprits were considered and then dismissed. The odd thing is that (what with the experience of wine being so subjective) while some people are averse to the smallest trace of the mouse and consider it a glaring flaw, others (mostly in the natural wine community) accept it as a byproduct of natural, or low to no sulfite winemaking. On the de Montille grounds, the consensus veered toward the former stance, with Ted in particular finding it intolerable. They talked about the ways it can be prevented during production with the most effective technique of all being the addition of sulfur dioxide. In fact, it seems that the mouse is usually found in non-sulfured wines. But there is a very subtle art to the use of sulfur; using too much before fermentation will kill most of the good yeast (which will need to be replaced with cultured yeast strains), and not enough before bottling the wine does little to prevent the development of mousiness and other potential undesirables. The wine we tasted could still be saved by the addition of sulfur, since it was still unbottled. Ted said the guys should all try to talk to Jean-Louis Dutraive, a vigneron in Beaujolais who Ted thinks has mastered the art of adding just the right amount of sulfur to his many different cuvées, and at just the right time. I had heard a lot about the big-hearted Dutraive, and was excited to meet him in a few days. Afterward, we gathered on the cracked gray road in front of the de Montille estate to make a plan for our next stop. Across the way, there were twin buildings joined at the hip that caught my attention. One was clean and well maintained, with new wood trim, metalwork and smooth facades. The other was covered with dead ivy and patches of mildew-stained stucco worn down to sores that exposed the tight stacks of thin limestone underneath. Every other house seemed to be in this ancient and extreme disrepair. Windows that weren’t boarded up with rotting gray wood showed dirty, shredded curtains through dusty windows. Roofs everywhere bowed so much it was comical, the stuff of architectural caricature in books filled with witches, the remnants of their terracotta tiles long since disintegrated to rubble and still somehow vaguely in place. As in Puligny-Montrachet and other communes, many of the ancient buildings in Volnay are deserted most of the time, with the exception of when they make great cheap housing for the workers who come to town for harvest season, a common practice in all the half-empty towns on the famous Côte d’Or. When I heard this, it brought to mind the bohemian squalor of a Henry Miller novel: drafty windows, crumbling walls, leaky ceilings, but a roof overhead nonetheless. I immediately wanted to move in. NEXT: La Dilletante

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.

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

Brézé & Bizay His Way Photo and interview by Ted Vance Spring 2021 How did an Oregon native like you end up in France? I moved to France in 2007 after I finished up my studies in Oregon. I double majored in French. I wanted to leave the US for a period of time, looking for adventure, and Europe offered so much of what I wanted. And I met a French woman whom I was married to until a few years ago. How did you find your way to Romain Guiberteau? I lived in Paris for several years and finally moved to Saumur in 2012 to work as Romain’s apprentice. Before that I was working in retail sales in Paris with Joshua Adler, who moved on to start Paris Wine Company. He and I were selling Romain’s wines in the store next to the Louvre. Romain’s wines were some of my favorites in the shop. Once I started tasting through more Saumur wines, I quickly became fixated on the region as a whole: the vibrancy, the electricity. These were the wines that really spoke to me—almost on a spiritual level; but that’s another subject… How have you seen Romain grow over the years? Maybe the most obvious thing is that he’s mellowed out—I guess that’s the most honest answer. He’s also become more in tune with his different vineyard sites. He has the same intensity as his wines and these days they’ve found a greater balance and harmony. I can’t explain why, but perhaps it’s the same for his personal life. He’s been more in tune with his surroundings, like the vineyards and the perspectives of others. He’s truly an altruistic person. He loves giving things. That may even drive his wines: he wants to give people the best he can give in his wines. How much of a part has Romain played in your company’s development? He’s helped me a lot, especially with the market for my wines and his wisdom on what to do. I feel especially lucky in that I’m able to benefit from both his mistakes and his successes. What other wine regions or vignerons have influence on your wine style? Of course, I love Burgundy. I love Pinot Noir. I think specific varieties on certain terroirs are just transcendent. I think probably Fred Mugnier’s are the first ones that pop into my mind. They are benchmark wines for me because they have this extremely fine touch, an ethereal side—maybe even a heavenly side to them. This is the kind of wine that I want to achieve. There’s something in his wines I find both rooted in its minerality and structure and also lifted, high up, where a polarity exists between the elements. This is what I want to try to achieve with my wines. As far as other favorite regions, Muscadet is one of the top for me in the Loire. Jura white and red inspire me too. I’m also totally digging wines from Languedoc. Riesling. Gruner Veltiliner. I’m not so knowledgeable about Spain or Italy, but the Albariño wines Manuel Moldes brought for us on your trip together to Saumur were a real surprise in how good they were. Farming principals? Yves Herody method. Yves wanted to help farmers get back fertility in the soils while at the same time rebuild the soil structure, which are two things that don’t come together for a lot of people. The idea is that we need to introduce fresh organic fertilizer into the vineyards every year: cow manure, cover crops like fava bean, rye, clover, mustard, etc—things that capture nitrogen and put it into the soil. The plants are later tilled into the soil during the winter along with the composted manure. What it's doing is replenishing the soil microbes and organic matter so that the different soil horizons interact better together. It’s a close relative to biodynamic methods of soil preparation. I’ve been doing this since 2018. Romain’s wines have commonly shown more reductive elements compared to wines from other growers on Brézé. What do you attribute this to? I think that residual SO2 in the vineyards is not the ultimate cause. But after pressing we keep a lot of the heavy lees, which is really rich in nitrogen that the yeast needs. Already this makes for more reductive elements. We don’t give the whites any air during fermentation to resolve some of these characteristics. If you compared Romain’s white wines with Arnaud Lambert’s, one of the biggest differences is that Romain works with more lees. How has the climate changed since you began with Romain in 2012? The climate has been whacky ever since I’ve been here. This year (2021) seems to be a later year. Things are changing. It’s noticeable. It's erratic and harder to predict. These days the forecasts are becoming less correct with patterns. It’s tricky because we can’t plan perfectly, but we collect a lot of information from many different sources to make our decisions. What adjustments have happened strictly by the influence of climate change? We used to deleaf more but have stopped that almost entirely because the summers are like 100 degrees now. In 2019, for example, we had a severe drought and everything shriveled up. We’re also considering more grass in the vineyards, to let it go until its past its growth cycle, then roll over it with a type of pincher that creates a kind of mulch that keeps the soils cooler and more humid. Picking dates are certainly earlier. Acidity and pH are changing too, but in the wrong directions. How is your style of wine different from Romain’s on Cabernet Franc? The vinifications are similar to Romain’s, but I’m shortening my time on the skins. My Saumur red is only four days on skins while Romain does six or seven. I don’t work with press juice, but only free-run juice. Romain works with selective-press juice. The wine is aged in stainless steel, but I’m moving toward cement next year to work against the reduction. My first addition of 20ppm of sulfites is made when the grapes first come in. The second is about 10ppm after malolactic. Neither Romain or I are interested in having brettanomyces around so we calculate to have the right amount of free sulfur to keep that out of the mix. I would say that I have a lighter, more ethereal style but with the same ripeness as Romain’s, and there’s definitely less tannin on my reds. My new cru red, La Ripaille, is seven to eight days on skins and in barrel for a year. There’s about 20% new oak and the rest is a spice rack of older barrels. And Chenin Blanc? My Saumur appellation wine is aged on its fine lees for six months, then it’s filtered and bottled. Les Chapaudaises is twelve months in barrel, followed by a few months in tank. The Brézé bottling was originally like Chapaudaises, but because the grapes come from old vines I think I should’ve aged it longer—maybe two years, instead of one year in wood, plus six months in tank. For the foreseeable future Brézé will be in élevage for two years before bottling. All the whites are filtered because they all have malic acid, and malolactic fermentations are rare, if they ever take place. Regarding the vinification, I use less lees than Romain and have a tighter racking after the pressing. I love reduction in wines but I feel like it’s not necessarily the style I want. I think it can take away from the purity of Chenin Blanc and its ability to transmit its terroirs. I respect and understand that, but I feel that it puts too much of the person’s influence into the wine. The Brézé bottling has 30% new oak, but with a light toast. Les Chapaudaises has 20% new oak, and the others have no new oak. What is your idea of the perfect soil composition for Chenin and Cab? Limestone. Romain’s grandfather had the basic principle of a topsoil of one meter or deeper and you plant Cab Franc, because the roots need bigger systems. It doesn’t like to suffer and it also needs a lot of nutrients. By contrast, too much topsoil with Chenin makes the vine too vigorous and it will vegetatively grow too much with a consequence of less energy spent on the grapes. Is there a perfect soil composition for the type of wines you like? I love the mix of clay, loam and limestone together. The clay gives a certain structure and the loam gives a certain sweetness (without residual sugar) and the limestone gives it the grip, like sucking on a rock. I think the best expression of Cab happens on sandy clay soils over limestone. Sand gives the light powdery texture; the clay gives the structure more depth. Limestone gives textural finesse and influences the fineness of the tannins on the finish. I find that limestone as a whole draws the finish on a wine to something longer and more complete. Can you explain each of your vineyard sites? All of my vineyards on Brézé face south/southwest. Les Chapaudaises, which is in the commune of Bizay, faces north/northeast and is only a couple of kilometers away from Brézé. Les Chapaudaises is next to Romain’s Clos de Guichaux vineyard. It’s planted on about 40-50cm of clayey loam with a lot of sand on tuffeau limestone bedrock. The wine is more “vertical” with more of a straight-razor-edge profile by comparison to the Brézé wine. The vines were planted sixteen years ago and have been organically farmed since 2010. The Brézé comes from old vines on clayey loam on limestone bedrock. It has a sort of thicker structure and gives the wine a more austere character with a more “horizontal” profile. The vines are seventy years old and began organic conversion a few years ago. The Saumur rouge comes from five-year-old vines on the Brézé hill. Its topsoil is sandy loam over limestone, a combination that gives a lighter texture and touch on the tannins. The plot is a little over half a hectare in size on the site known as “La Ripaille.” This wine is different from the others in that I intended to make a quaffable, easy-drinking and fruit-forward wine. My vision of Cabernet Franc has been evolving for several years. What I once saw as a rustic, terrestrial grape variety, I now see as having the potential of making something brighter, more fruit-forward, and much more fun to drink when it’s young. La Ripaille has seventy-year-old vines on sandy loam, or clayey loam—depending on the section—but all over limestone. What are people planting when they have the opportunity to replant? People are planting more Chenin now instead of Cab. The global market demand and need for Chenin has grown a lot, and there is already a lot of Cab grown inside of the Saumur-Champigny appellation. Brézé is outside of the appellation and still has a lot of Chenin Blanc grown on the hill. People focused on red much more in the past, but this is flipping. Can you talk a little bit about the vine material planted in the region? I’ve talked a lot with Arnaud Lambert and he’s shed a lot of light on the fact that much of the younger vines are planted to productive varieties rather than quality focused ones. What are your thoughts about this? We don’t talk enough about vine materials, but I think this is an important and necessary subject. A lot of people talk a lot about minerality but without talking much about the rootstock and vine material. Why is this important? People think that old vines simply produce more mineral wines or wines with more depth. I don’t think that’s the case because you could have the SO4 rootstock that gives big, juicy grapes, but not concentrated flavors and textures. Then you could have a limestone resistant selection massale rootstock called Riparia Gloire, which gives tiny, concentrated clusters where even the young vines are giving amazingly pure expressions with great distinction of the terroir and vintage. I don’t think people are talking enough about the importance of it from a genetic vantage point for the right rootstocks either. The rootstock is a filter between the soil and the grape. What is your perception of how the wines taste when grown on contrasting soils, like clay, sand, rock? I think that a lot of it depends on how the winemaker makes the wines. I like to think the lighter the soil, the lighter the wine is on the palate. The rockier or denser the soil is, the same can be said for the wine. I feel the world has an idea of malolactic fermentation as being very specific in its influence on Chardonnay, but my feeling is that it’s not quite the same with other white varieties. How does it influence the taste on Chenin? ML is hard for us to attain because of the low pH levels. Bacteria just don’t like that environment. At Romain’s cellar we’ve only had it twice by accident. However, in my opinion it rounds out the palate and you lose edge—it dulls the razor. There’s a roundness and sweetness with ML in Chenin. I feel that the intense acidity [without a malolactic fermentation] melds together over time. When Chenin is young, the acidity stretches it like a rubber band, but over time the tension eases. When you use the word minerality, what does that mean to you? How is it perceived? Aromas? Mouthfeel? A combination? This is a can of worms. It’s a huge debate. I think there is a misconception of minerality. Is it even something we can define? I don’t think we will find exacting definitions of this. I try to avoid using minerality as a descriptor, but it’s hard to find other words. But I think when it comes to Chenin from Brézé, I see it as a sort of flinty, reductive smokiness. I think in the mouthfeel there’s a depth that draws the wine out. It seems to give a certain verticality to the wine. It also lingers on the front part of the palate, and it opens up my appetite. I think this is why they are fun to pair with many different types of food. There’s a saltiness to the wine and I think this makes it work exceptionally well with food because many people like salty food. We all know that salt enhances taste and I think minerality does the same. Last one. What is your feeling about reduction and/or acidity as an interplay within the concept of “minerality”? For me, reduction does enhance the perception of minerality, but it also can confuse the palate and aromas. Sometimes that is intentional by the winemaker, but sometimes it’s not. I think it’s all a question of balance. I feel I’ve grown a lot and am still growing in my understanding of minerality. Sometimes when I taste Olivier Lamy’s Saint-Aubin wines, (a benchmark white wine producer for me) there’s a richness to the body, some flesh, a backbone, a hold or grip in the wine like: Wow! It can give me goosebumps. One question I struggle with as a winemaker is, “What’s the fine balance of minerality? Can it be too intense and dominate the wine?” When I made my 2015s, my first vintage, they were like lemon juice. But when I open a bottle now that acidity is finally integrated into the wine. So I ask myself the question of whether I am making a wine for now, or do I want to make something that will open up later in its life and integrate that intense acidity and find harmony? What’s the right balance between all those elements that will get it right for the wines I’m making?

Andrea and I started our journey with a much-needed out of wine experience in Scotland on the Great Glen Way with our friends, Reuben, Bella and Benjamin Weininger. I admit that after seven months in Italy it was nice to be in a country where both of us were fluent in the local language; although sometimes Italians speaking Italian are easier to understand than Scottish speaking English. I’d wanted to make that walk in Scotland for a long time. It was memorable, not only because it was the first time I’ve walked/hiked 19.5 miles in a day, but we also found the best fish and chips I’ve ever seen and tasted along the trail. Edinburgh lived up to the hype of its beauty and had an unexpectedly diverse, quality ethnic cuisine scene; we ate some of the best Indian and Korean food while there, and a duck dish that I will remember forever. And I’ve got to give props to the less attractive industrial city of Glasgow for the same high quality of ethnic food. After Scotland we went to Madrid for a few days to wait for two of our coworkers at The Source, Andrew and JD, to join us for a trip in northwestern Spain. After an uneventful couple of days in Madrid that were highlighted on two occasions by visits to the restaurant, Media Ración, we set off for Jimenez de Jamuz to visit with the folks at Fuentes del Silencio and Chef Gordon at the restaurant El Capricho for my seventh meal there (but whose counting?)—never a disappointment. But first, we had to stop at Segovia, one of our favorite small cities in Spain, for a dinner at José Maria to eat his epic suckling pig. Sadly I was a little sick from something I ate in Madrid so I took only a single bite from Andrew’s plate, but it was delish! José Maria probably makes the best suckling pig in Spain, though I am sure there are contenders I don’t know about, and in my last four visits it’s been perfectly consistent. My favorite portion is the leg, so if you get the opportunity to choose your portion, go for that one. We left Segovia the next morning for Jimenez de Jamuz to revisit its ancient resurrected vineyards, discuss the gold in the soil and the local yeast strain that pronounces the unique voice of its terroir, and the early promise of more special wines to come from Fuentes del Silencio and their team of fired up wine pros. Then it was off to El Capricho for the four-hour lunch, and on to the ranch to watch José wrangle some 2000 lbs+ steers with his team. We plan to import José’s delicious wine when he has something for us to sell. We started the next day with an impromptu visit with José Antonio Garcia and his wife, Julia, vignerons in Bierzo, who were kind enough to give us a quick vineyard tour of the area around Valtuille and Corullón. While Bierzo is not part of the Galician wine region, when you start to climb the hills it’s every bit of Galicia when considering its geological heritage. After a walk in the dark red clays of the lower vineyard land, he took us for a quick tour of high elevation slate-dense and quartz-rich vineyards of Corullón. It was my second time with José up the hill and it was as impressive as the first—what a place! Everyone talks about the extremes of the Ribeira Sacra because the vineyards and valley carved out by the rivers are truly breathtaking (a description I will reserve solely for this wine region—a place where photographs just don’t do its beauty justice), but some slopes in Bierzo are just as steep but not terraced like they are in the most steep parts of the Ribeira Sacra, which makes them all the more precarious. Once we got up into the higher areas it began to snow, a signal for us to return down the hill. Next stop, Galicia. The Galician wine scene is inspiring (as are many of the southerly regions of Spain) and I am humbled to become involved and received with such welcoming hospitality. Andrea and I went to Spain on our honeymoon a few years ago and completely missed Galicia as we seemingly went everywhere else in the country—I guess we were saving the best for last. After too many heavy reds on that trip we fell back on beer and Albariño only after the first week of our month long adventure. I asked waiters along the way if there was an organic Albariño on the list, but no one knew of anything. I contacted a certified organic Albariño producer there and started the ball rolling in that direction and imported their wines for a short time afterward. I had no idea that I was walking into a wine world that would capture my attention and consume my focus. When we got back home to Santa Barbara from our honeymoon, a series of events happened that were like a calling to Galicia. It started with our friend Rajat Parr who randomly gave me a bottle of Envínate and said, “you need to go to Galicia.” Brian McClintic, who lived in our back studio at the time, went too and came back with the same encouragement. Then we hired JD Plotnick, a wellspring of information on Galicia, a region he had already focused on back when its newfound uprising was only a whisper. He helped direct my attention to which producers' wines we should seek out during our first trip to set the bar on taste, as well as which restaurants to visit. I asked him if he knew of anything out there that wasn’t already being imported to California, or anywhere else in the US. He gave me many names but one of them was “an upcoming producer” he’d heard about from Raul Perez (Spain’s New Wine Testament prophet), though he hadn’t yet tasted the wines. After one Facebook message to this guy, in Spanish (thanks to my wife), we had a meeting set up. Andrea and I have now been Galicia five times in less than two years (three times in the last seven months), and plan to go back again at the beginning of June and then again in September. I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years but there are too many loose ends and much more context needed before I engage in more extensive writing about it from a technical and experience standpoint. What makes it most difficult to wrap one’s head around is that the locals have to largely rediscover their own region because much of the knowledge has been buried in the local cemeteries with generations past. What also holds me back from going deeper at the moment is that I’m one of the newer importers there and have great respect for those who have focused on this region for so many years before me. I feel I need to earn my stripes first, and only time brings those. Our first stop in Galicia was the Ribeira Sacra to visit a new producer there, Breogan (Breo) Rodriguez, the owner/vigneron at Terra Brava. It was an impressive lineup out of barrel with his miniscule quantities of 2018 (thanks to the monstrous mildew challenges to that vintage), so we expect a great follow-up to his super 2017s. Breo’s wines made from Mencia and Caiño Longo (my new favorite grape) are clean and honest and bear a strong resemblance in mood and some characteristics to Côte-Rôtie and Northern Saint-Joseph Syrahs grown on a mix of metamorphic and igneous rocks; I speak of those cool metal and mineral fresh notes on the palate and nose with darker earth and fruit. The wines just landed in the U.S. and with the enthusiasm of JD, Andrew and Rachel Kerswell (our national sales manager and New York outpost who has visited Breo and our new roster in Galicia), spreading the word on what we were able to buy from this micro producer should be short work. Next was the Ribeiro, a region I think may be the top place to watch in Galicia. I admit that I don’t yet know much about Galicia compared to other wine regions, but over the last twelve years I’ve spent nearly four months of each year on the wine trail observing the physical traits that make up Europe’s top wine regions, which have led me to this hunch. Aside from that, perhaps the most compelling argument is that long ago the Ribeiro once shared Spain’s top honors next to the Rioja for wine and there’s no doubt that it has the potential to rise again to take its place as a contender for top billing. What makes it most interesting from my perspective is the Ribeiro’s perfect location between the climatic tug of war between the cold Atlantic and a warm Mediterranean influence, its great diversity of rock and soil types (all acidic soils with a lot of granite, schist, slate, gneiss and other metamorphic rocks that contribute to a more broad impact on the palate of the wines) on mildly steep hills, and softer sun exposure, resulting in wines with great snap and crunch in both white and red—the latter being the most intriguing to me. The red grapes of Brancellao, Caiño Longo, Souson, Ferron are a few examples of indigenous grapes that show tremendous promise. Our new winery partners there are Bodegas Paraguas, Cume do Avia and Fazenda Augalevada—all tough names (especially the last one) but spectacular wines. To have three producers from this single region seems like a lot at first, but each of them are different shades of the area. Paraguas is exclusively producing white wines led by Treixadura, a grape that in their direction has a Chardonnay-like body and structure, but with almost no relation to Chardonnay’s presentation of tastes and smells—it tastes like Galicia: savory and mineral, with honey, dried grass, citrus and stone fruit. Then it was Diego and family at Cume do Avia with their high energy, organically farmed reds that completely blew my mind last year and redirected my attention to red wine. The new vintage of their whites is a significant jump from last year and shows wonderfully raw, straightforward terroir-rich expressions of indigenous whites. Finally it was Augalevada, the unique embodiment of the biodynamic grower, Iago Garrido, who buried an amphora filled with wine in his vineyard that subsequently developed flor yeast and set the direction of his focus. He thought the wine should be thrown away at first, but bottled them for his friends who began to ask for more and what stood in Iago’s way became his way. As a new winemaker, Iago has demonstrated early his tremendous eye for detail and a few of the wines I have tasted from amphora and barrel over the last three visits are on par with some of the most riveting single tastes of wine I can remember. His estate white, Ollos de Roque, is a magical mystery tour that lands somewhere between Chenin Blanc from Vouvray and Savignin from the Jura, with a subtle touch of flor. Some of the reds out of barrel can, like they did for me, compel you to once again pose those meaning of life questions. Our final visit in Galicia was in the Rías Baixas for a new project with the budding superstar—to be revealed at a later date—whose name was given to me by JD. During my first visit with him a couple of years ago, he politely refused my proposal to work with him in California out of respect for his U.S. importer, who I didn’t know already represented his wines in CA, and who buys as much of his wine as he has to sell. Accepting and respecting the answer but not the defeat, I proposed a new angle on my second visit with him and he was open to it: a project together. Since then we’ve developed a strong friendship and when we visit the area, he literally clears his schedule for us. It’s funny though that he speaks no English and I don’t speak Spanish (yet!), so it’s a relationship that exists through my wife and Google Translate when we are at dinner or lunch together. He asked how I thought he should make the wine for this project but I told him that his approach already embodied all I could dream up in crafting an ideal Albariño: sleek, mineral, energetic but balanced, and a nearly perfect match of intention and execution. I gave a few minor suggestions, which he employed, and the results were staggering—not because of anything I did, but because he’s got the magic touch. I could see it on the face of Andrew and JD as we tasted through the range of unfinished wines over lunch, that they had already sold every bottle of his wine in their minds before they were even finished and brought to the U.S. Those wines will arrive in the fall. It was great to run the route with Andrew and JD, to soak up their experience and passion for Spanish wines and the abundance of conversations about unusual things and trends in wine. Those two could captivate an audience with an unscripted on the road wine comedy show. Even Andrea was laughing out loud regularly by their never-ending conversations full of disagreements and amusing offhanded comments. She can really get sick of the wine talk, but I kept checking in on her through the rearview mirror while she quietly tried to get some sleep as they ceaselessly rambled on about everything and nothing, while at other times she smiled and erupted into hysterical laughter with tears streaming down her face. We jumped over the Spanish border and into Portugal’s Vinho Verde country to one of our favorite spots in the world, Quinta do Ameal, and one of our favorite people, Pedro Araújo. Whenever we find ourselves in Ponte de Lima, a beautiful and well-kept Roman village, in the Lima Valley, we never want to leave. The visit with Pedro was as great as usual and involved his rapier-like delicious wines, epic sea bass and suckling pig, along with the constant feeling that Andrea and I may have found our Elysium on Earth. Ponte de Lima has become such a special place for us; the energy, the humility and kindness of its people, the landscape rich in trees and beautiful rock outcroppings, the ocean a fifteen minute drive away with the Spanish Galician border the same distance. Andrea and I have decided to move to Ponte de Lima after our one-year anniversary of living in Italy. In fact, we’re in the process of buying a house in the countryside (we won’t know for sure if it will be ours until June) and will be setting up our residence there for the foreseeable future. During our time there we invited Pedro, Andrew and JD to check out the place we are trying to buy. Pedro was skeptical before seeing it because he knows the land so well and what’s available out there, but once we arrived he went crazy for the place. It’s located up a ravine near an old monastery and sits out on a point all alone with exposed views on three sides. It’s a lot like Toro Canyon in Santa Barbara (for those who know the area) but with a Midwest U.S. country home price. We’ve fallen in love with it and hopefully the June deal will go our way. Our short trip with JD and Andrew ended at the Porto airport. They were headed to France to run the route over a couple of weeks in Chablis, Côte d’Or and Beaujolais. We spent Andrea’s birthday in Porto, a wonderful city in the middle of a full renaissance. When we were there the first time in 2014, they were selling abandoned apartments in Porto’s historic center for 1€ (no joke!) if you had the money to renovate it. I told Andrea that Portugal was the place to be and I’m even more convinced today. Now the city is full of life, color and people—in a very short time so much has happened in that city and the changes are welcome, except for the new busloads of tourists. A tip: If you ever stay there, try the Sheraton. They have the best spa facilities we’ve been to for a hotel in their range and the staff is extraordinarily gracious and attentive. Andrea and I headed south from there to visit some parts of Portugal we hadn’t already seen. First stop was the Alentejo region in a shockingly beautiful ancient roman city, Evora. I got a much-needed haircut but was treated to a monster of an allergy attack from all the surrounding grassland. Happy to leave because I could hardly breathe, we went south to Faro and stayed at a decent beachfront hotel on the ocean. The highlight there was the Portuguese hospitality and a great little lunch spot called Zé Maria. It served up a perfect beach day lunch because the food was simply prepared and not overdosed on anything, including the price—my whole grilled sea bream was only 15€. Sadly, they are only open for lunch otherwise we would’ve eaten there for every meal. The final stops on this leg were in Jerez and Cádiz, two places we were near but never made it to on our honeymoon. We went this time to meet a prospective producer, but our first stop was in Sanlúcar de Barrameda at one of Jerez’s legendary bodegas, Barbadillo, with Armando Der Guerrita. In our short time with Armando, he overflowed with enthusiasm about Jerez and the magical effect of the flor yeast, as well as his opportunity to work as the wine director of a new inside project for the bodega. Armando also owns a drinking hole, Taberna Guerrita, which comes highly recommended (though we didn’t make it there) and is apparently the place to go if you are a Jerez (Sherry) nut. He explained during our visit that in Jerez, it is all about the yeast and the bodega and its buildings, each with their own influence over the wines they house. I brought up certain estates where I know this to be true on the wine route, like Château Rayas, or many of the Burgundy domaines that carry a mark of their cellar as much as they do the hand of their maker. He looked at me and with a resounding response, he said, “yes, of course!” He’s a special guy and Jerez is lucky to have him. After a quick bite of Spanish seafood and vegetable tapas, we headed south to Cádiz. What a city! Surprisingly clean, it has stunning ancient architecture and a spectacularly modern San Francisco-like (toll free) bridge that Andrea would have simply refused to drive over if she was behind the wheel due to a slight phobia she’s recently developed with bridges. After a mix-up in scheduling, our visit with the producer we came to Jerez to see was given by one of the cellar hands, a gracious and young fourth-generation bodega employee (something you definitely don’t hear everyday). It seems Jerez is another one of those Spanish wine places overrun by importers on the hunt. There’s not much left to choose from, but the good news is that new young producers are on the rise. The challenge is the uphill battle for any mainstream market share because Jerez is not a typical wine and there is a lot of this unique wine produced. Many of the new upstarts are playing with non-traditional wines, like straightforward still white wines, from the same vineyards, which have a much greater chance of breaking into the mainstream. Despite being utterly different wines, I found Jerez to be some kind of mirror, or doppelganger, of Champagne in some ways. It has similar limestone bedrock and limestone rich topsoil, the topography is not so different with relatively flat landscape with undulating soft hill slopes and the juxtaposition of colorful farmland on the flat, non-vineyard areas, and a wine industry based around a unique wine style. They both take a lot of time in the cellar to develop their depth and are often blends of different vintages to bring more complexity and balance. It wasn’t so long ago that Champagne discovered its true talent for bubbles, which was first recorded in the early to mid-1500s; similarly, Jerez’s development of wines under flor yeast and the solera system apparently originated in the late 1700s in the humid climate of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. The last similarity I will point out is that like Champagne, Jerez has a lot of work to do with regard to farming and boutique wine crafting. Indeed, Champagne is light years ahead of Jerez, but the output similarly remains vastly controlled by the big houses, as it does in Jerez. Most of the vineyards we drove by in Jerez were over cropped and showed obvious signs of chemical farming. The bodegas are huge industrial operations with staff managing their cellars who likely have no inputs or have anything to say about the wines, which we witnessed firsthand (excluding Armando, of course, who seems like the walking historian of Jerez)—in other words, they are the antithesis of boutique and are difficult to get behind as an importer who prefers to work with small growers that know great wine starts in the vineyard. I am not blind to the fact that with the low price of most Jerez wines that take a lot more time in the cellar to produce makes it difficult to justify more idealistic approaches in viticulture and detail work in the cellar and still make a profit. Once consumers are willing to pay the higher price for higher quality Jerez wines, it seems the doors will open for agricultural idealism to gain a solid foothold and the cellars will naturally improve where they can as well. It’s the same argument for a place like Saumur, France, which clearly has the weather, soil type and a great white grape (Chenin Blanc) to make truly compelling sparkling wines, but few are willing to pay the higher prices for a non-Champagne sparkling from a region that has churned out some pretty good bubbles at a modest price. So what’s the incentive for the producers to ignore the costs and go for the gold medal? During our chat with Armando, he made sure that we understood that the renaissance has begun with some tiny unknown producers, and that some of the larger bodegas are coming out of the of the smog of industrial times and seeing the potential of improved quality if attention is placed on the vineyards instead of only the cellar—what a concept! And that’s a wrap on a rookie perspective on Jerez. As we returned to Sevilla to fly back to Italy, we accidently found ourselves with six hours to spare literally in the middle of Sevilla’s big annual festival, called Feria, and what luck! Sevilla is one of the great cities of the world and to see this classy, familial, deeply cultural affair took our experience there to a totally different level. From there it was a short flight to Roma, where our luck continued when we found that all the national monuments and buildings were open and free for everyone for the day! We went to the Palatino and Colosseum and there were no lines… that would never happen any other day of the year. Is there any city in Europe that tops Roma in history and beauty? Not for me. Ciao.

The first time I stood on the hill, I didn’t think much of it.  It’s a quiet place just outside of the famous French wine town, Saumur.  To tell you the truth, there wasn’t much to admire besides a quaint, but lifeless, chateau sitting on top of it. This insipid wonder attracts droves of tourists every year to snap photos and walk away with a lousy souvenir wine from the chateau.  Indeed, the recent history of this chateau is one of making downright terrible wines. This hill, however, has a glorious history that has been almost completely forgotten –until now… My addiction to this hill began about four years ago. During my debut as a wine importer, I spent six months chatting it up with various people in the business about producers that could be interesting for me before I pulled the trigger on my maiden voyage in search of the holy grail.  Amongst my group of “sources”, was a friend back in Virginia who also runs an import company.  Although he was only 26 when I met him, this guy had developed a remarkable and enviable palate for wine.  He told me that he drank many great wines throughout his life because his father was a serious wine collector.  It must have been nice…  My first taste of wine was not one of privilege.  I grew up in a small town in Montana, called Kalispell.  Most people thought I said “cow’s bell”, or “cattle smell”, when they asked what the name of the town was.  I suppose both names could make sense after meeting a hick like me.  Because Montana wasn't exactly a mecca for wine lovers, my first contact with wine was an unforgettable bottle of Manaschewitz.  It was one of the worst things I can remember putting in my mouth as a kid, and believe me, I put a lot of disgusting things in my mouth back then.  After I snuck a taste, I couldn’t understand why my parents would drink this thing that seems like it should have been poured over our salad.  Given my first encounter with “wine”, it’s a miracle that I ever drank another glass of the stuff.  I must admit, however, that I’ve never had another sip of Manaschewitz.  Maybe I should give it another go, just to be fair; after all, it was probably open for at least two months, and I think I was about eight years old at the time.  Anyway, my buddy back east told me about a few producers; one in particular caught my attention.  He said that they were somewhat of a newcomer to Saumur, which is an area that specializes in two grapes: Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc.  He seemed pretty surprised that no major importer had picked them up yet in the States.  It was a good lead, so I put an email together and sent it off to Domaine de St. Just, fingers crossed. You’d be surprised at how fast people sometimes respond to this sort of inquiry; most of the time, if you ask to buy their wines on the spot, they put it together and send it to you without much ado.  Of course, you have to pay in advance, but that’s about it.  At any rate, the owner of the domaine, Arnaud Lambert, wrote back immediately and invited me to visit the estate.  I asked if it was fine with him to send samples to my friend’s house, in Provence, as I wasn’t planning on going to the Loire on this trip (even if the wines from this place were top notch).  This was the only producer in this region that I had the beat on, and it was pretty far out of my way.  Believe me, a thousand kilometers out of the way is a long distance to go only to find disappointment. By the end of 2010, I set off for France with proper financing to start importing wines to California.  My first stop, whenever I travel to France, is at Pierre and Sonya’s house in Provence, called La Fabrique.   Before I arrived, I made sure that it wasn’t a problem for them to receive samples sent for me –little did they know how much was on the way. Before my arrival, they sent me a message saying that, over the last couple of weeks, they had amassed about 11 boxes of wine.  Admittedly, I also was a little surprised by how much wine showed up.  I was going to be there for only two nights, so I proposed that La Fabrique throw a party.  They thought I was insane when I told them that I was going to open all the bottles at the party because they only had gathered 15 people for it.  It was a lot of wine, but in the end, only about a dozen bottles were worth drinking and most of them had been made by the hand of the same vigneron.  The truth is, most of what we importers taste is pure junk; the good wines ones are only good, and the great ones are rare. A couple of hours before the party started, I began pulling corks to taste them all before everyone arrived.  There were many that weren’t even fit for an outfit like Cost Plus.  Then, I put my nose in the first white wine from St. Just, and I knew, straight away, that if the rest followed suit, I would have to reconsider making the journey to Saumur.  I slowly worked through the entire range of his wines, looking for reasons not to go, but from top to bottom, they were all seamless.  My friend was dead on and I was sure that I had found my first producer.  I’ve been a fan of this area of France forever and these were some of the best wines I’ve tasted from there, period.  The Chenins were clean, expressive and straightforward –and they weren’t too Chenin-y, if you know what I mean.  Their Cabernet Franc wines from Saumur-Champigny were perfectly on par with what I wanted out of this grape: pure, clean, terroir-driven with charming bright red fruits.  Honestly, I was more excited about the reds than the whites because I feel that, not only is Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley one of the most authentic terroir wines in all of France, but it is also, in commercial terms, a little easier to sell than Chenin Blanc. The problem I have with this area, however, is that a lot of the highly revered producers make wines that can be a little funky, and that’s not the type of horse that I want to get behind. Arnaud sent another box of samples from a different estate, which was also from Saumur.  He put a note in the box telling me that he just started to work with this estate and that he’d like me to consider them as well, but because I was already sold on Arnaud’s wine, they sat in the box until the end of the tasting. In addtion, some of their labels were lousy and only served to further my lack of interest.  Without expecting much, I arranged these other wines for a quick tasting.  I didn’t expect to care much about them after I tasted the little gems from Domaine de St. Just –boy, was I in for a real shocker. I pulled the cork on the first white, and took a sniff that was loaded with minerals and high-strung citrus fruits.  I had no idea of what was about to hit my mouth.  When my brother Jon and I were kids, we dismantled a power cord and decided that it could be fun to stick the metal prongs into a wall outlet, with our bare hands.  We weren’t the smartest kids, and perhaps that moment in my life explains a few glitches in my system.  Anyway, this wine brought me back to that moment as it unleashed some serious liquid wattage into my mouth.  This little wine was more than an attack on the palate –it was an assault.  I was all puckered up and my head went sideways.  It felt like I just brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth out with a glass of Chablis.  After a few more tastes, however, it became clear that there was something magic inside this angry little wine.  I’ve always been a sucker for abuse, so this was right up my alley. I opened the second Saumur white, Clos David –it was like Meursault on crack.  The first wine was all tension; this second wine was also intense, but it was endowed with more body and finesse. It was a more tamed beast, but a beast, nonetheless.  Like the first wine, it tweaked my mouth in every direction, but that didn’t stop me from coming back for more.  Every sip felt like I was getting smacked in the face by a furious, but sublime, French girl –I loved it!  As I continued to taste, I kept thinking: “Are these wines just freaky good, or picked way too early?”  I didn’t know because I’d never tasted anything like them before.  They were somehow regal and barbaric at the same time; yet, it seemed like they came from a noble terroir.  The rest of the wines followed suit with overwhelming tension.  The reds had bright red fruit and flowers in aroma with an acidic backbone enviable even for a fine red Burgundy from a classic year.  Every one of them was intensely acidic and penetrating, but once you made it through the pain, they were deep and pure. Although it is hard to believe, it’s still possible to find nearly abandoned or chemically destroyed vineyards all over Europe that were once owned by the elite classes of the past. Many of these precious grounds have been passed down generation after generation, only to fall from grace at the hands of a few misguided, or opportunistic, bean counters who put profit at the top of their agenda.  They are the ones who manufacture cheap and industrialized imposters that are sold to tourists who think that they are walking away with a wine that, based on historical merit, was once suitable for a king.  These wines, in reality, are only paupers dressed in a king’s clothes.  There is a quiet hill and chateau with this story of abuse that has now lasted for over a half-century.  It could be the greatest forgotten hill of our time; the hill is know as, Brézé. I saw the name “Brézé” for the first time on a bottle of white wine made from a well-respected, but underground, producer best-known for their red wines from Saumur-Champigny, the wine is called Clos Rougeard.  I never paid their white wine much attention because it’s a rare bird and it's not usually hanging out at your local wine shop.  I remember having it once before, but it didn’t catch my attention, so I never took the time to taste it again.  The truth is, I visited Arnaud, not for the Brézé wines he had sent me, but for his Saumur-Champigny reds and his entry-level whites, which were much less physically taxing than the Brézé wines. The first time I visited Arnaud was January of 2011.  He first took me to his vineyards in Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg.  Nothing makes me happier than visiting vineyards.  He was proud to show me that, unlike his neighbors, his land was full of natural grasses and herbs that grew freely between his vines. Moreover, his soils were thriving because he treated them respectfully and spared them synthetic chemical treatments that kill most of the bad (and good) micro-organisms.  As we stood on this limestone hill, called Saint-Cyr, I remembered the energy I felt it in his wines the first time I tasted them.  We spoke at length about the appellation and he pointed out that, historically, these vineyards have soils that are more suitable for white wines but had been planted to Cabernet Franc before he and his dad bought them back in 1996.  Before their time, red wines were more profitable, so it became an economical choice to make the switch.  As we finished our tour of Saint-Cyr, he mentioned this “Brézé” wine again as he pointed south and insisted that we go there to look at the vines before we head back to the cellar to taste. We drove to this unsuspecting hill about three kilometers across the way from Saint-Cyr.  There was only a gently sloping alluvial valley that separated the hills of Saint-Cyr and Brézé, but I can assure you that the taste of their wines gives the impression that they are miles apart.  Our first stop was at the Clos David –the Meursault on crack.  Arnaud walked me into what appeared to be a clos; it had old broken down walls that I could easily jump over from a stand still.  It wasn’t an impressive vineyard to look at.  The vines were tired and seemingly unattended.  The vineyard seemed to be held together by a thread and it looked like a cemetery of old vines. Arnaud plunged his hands in Clos David's soil and pulled a pile of chalky white and brown soil full of small limestone fragments.  He put his hands full of soil close to my face for inspection.  He gave me a faint smile, and, quite embarrassed, he said: “I brought you here to show you what damage has been done to these vineyard over the last century.  Look at this topsoil… it’s dead, completely dead…”  He told me that it was going to take years for any noticeable changes to take place in the topsoil.  The underlying limestone, which holds the magic of these terroirs, had been penetrated long ago by these abused vines, and that’s what keeps them in the game. He pointed out, however, that through the years of abuse with chemical treatments, most of the development of the root systems had stayed close to the surface and didn’t have the power to dig much further than what they had done half a century ago.  We went to another special parcel called Clos de la Rue, where he told me stories about the trading of bottles between Chateau de Brézé and other estates like Chateau d’Yquem, bottle for bottle.  Each of these special parcels were, in the past, owned by France’s elite society and they were sent throughout the royal courts of Europe.  At the time, they were known as “Chenin de Brézé”, and they were considered to be of the best white wines in all of France. While on the hill, Arnaud emphasized the importance of a concept that I seemed to have overlooked; the uniqueness of old walled vineyards, called "clos."  Over centuries, vineyards change through erosion that result in a loss of soil.  With the case of a vineyard surrounded by a wall, however, the historic soil structure remains while the rest of the vineyards around them, through centuries of erosion, can lose a significant amount of their ancient topsoil.  That simple concept hit me like a ton of bricks.  These enclosed vineyards are a geological and historical time capsule.  They preserve the impression the wines had when they were regarded centuries ago as an important site. I was dumbfounded and saddened by Arnaud's story of Brézé.  I could sense his animosity towards the more recent owners of this once great land.  After the Second World War, they destroyed the life of their once magnificent terroirs.  As we stood in the vineyard, my mind went back to the wines I had tasted in Provence and it started to make sense.  The wines were taking only what they could find with the root systems developed as young vines over 60 years ago.  They mostly expressed the structure of their deepest, stark-white chalky limestone soils, and not much more.  The soil on top – mostly sand and clay – which usually feeds the wine with body, breadth and generosity had little to give.  They were on a fast-food diet, yet, somehow, the terroir still fought through.  As I walked between rows, looking at the damage, I began to recollect the staggering power my mouth felt a week before in Provence. I realized that what I had tasted were skeletons of what the wines used to be.  The vineyards seemed like they were on their way out as many vines were missing and the remaining survivors were fighting a tough fight.  I had only tasted their skin and bones –but what powerful skin and bones they were.  I looked at Arnaud with disbelief and disappointment.  A smile began to grow on his face.  He looked at me and declared with a contemptuous tone: “Now, with the children out of the way, we’ll see how great this hill is back in the hands of men.” That moment will stay with me forever and writing down Arnaud’s exact words sends a chill through my body. Hearing stories about the former glory of Brézé was exciting.  Arnaud explained that he had signed a 20-year lease on the vineyards.  He let a few more kittens out of the bag when he told me that this historic wine hill was once considered one of the greatest wine producing communes in the entire north of France, and one of the two best of the Loire Valley –the other being Savennieres.  He added that there were only three other producers bottling estate wines from the hill: Clos Rougeard, Domaine du Collier and France’s newest darling, Romain Guiberteau.  Arnaud is originally from Normandy, so these guys had to fill him in on the legend of Brézé.  He told me that there are records at the Chateau de Brézé of the historical affairs of the hill which likely give insights on the production of its wines throughout the centuries.  Arnaud and others have asked to see them, but the owner of the Chateau dismissed their request, likely out of spite for Arnaud’s growing success with the vineyards that their incompetence let go to pasture.  The history is there, but he won’t let anyone have a look at it. To add to this incredible story, Arnaud told me that the rest of the farmers who own quality parcels on the hill sell their grapes to the local co-op because they have no reason, let alone means, to produce commercial wines.  What goes on with this hill is unbelievable and Arnaud, at times, he had to stop his account to laugh with me about how absurd it all was.  Brézé had been neglected for so long that even the locals, who own a piece of this unique place, throw their grapes into a collective wine that is probably sold down the street at Super U for three euros.  What is this madness?!  Don’t they know what they have?  Clearly, they don’t.  The good news, however, that the story of this once glorious hill now rests in the capable hands of a man determined to resurrect this hill of historical vineyards.  Once the Chateau de Brézé rises again, so will the rest of the hill. After we finished our tour of some of the clos, we went back for a taste.  At this point, I was chomping at the bit to get some of these wines back in my mouth.  As soon as we got there, we tasted the St. Just wines, which I was already set on importing.  Then we started the Brézé bottlings.  On my first smell and taste, I better understood the electrical current that flowed through my mouth.  All that these unstoppable terroirs had to give once again began screaming in my face, calling attention their glorious past.  After 65 years of punishment and neglect, the wines made in these suppressed vineyards still shined.  I was all in. Not surprisingly, on my last year on my visit to Brézé, Arnaud had more things up his sleeve.  He told me that the fruit for both of the “entry-level” cuvées, that were simply labeled "Saumur," come from individual historical clos, the Clos du Midi for the white, and the Clos Mazurique for the red.  You’ve got to be kidding me!  He finally decided to reveal this to me on my third year of selling the wines?!  I almost flipped out at him.  I was beside myself that he didn’t put the name of the clos on the label!  Here, we are talking about this hill and it’s glorious collection of clos, and he’s got this cheap entry-level wine made from a historical site with historical pedigree that he puts into a generic bottling?!  I was flabbergasted.  “Arnaud, what else are you not telling me?” I demanded.  I felt like a death row lawyer dealing with a man who was keeping secrets that could exonerate him.  He explained that he had just acquired over 20 hectares of land that he did not have a market for.  He had to choose which vineyards to put in the most energy and money.  He simply chose to use the two largest crus as the entry-level wines.  Crazy…  Don’t get used to the cheap prices, they won’t last.  I promise you.   In 2009, Arnaud and his father Yves signed a deal with the Comte de Colbert for the rights to the vineyards of the Chateau de Brézé.  They knew what was needed to nurse the vines back to health.  The first trip to the vineyards with Arnaud felt like the sad beginning of an epic movie in which our hero would inevitably triumph as he humbly stood upon the hill after reinstating her glory.   Since the day they gained control, they started the process of converting to organic farming with the idea to eventually move into a biodynamic practice.  When I asked why he didn’t go straight to biodynamics, he explained that moving the vines into a real biodynamic culture within three years was simply impossible.  He pointed out that because the topsoils of all the vineyards were desolate and void of almost all microbial life, making such a bold move at an early stage wasn’t the right way.  He further explained that he didn’t want to fabricate the soils by introducing a bunch of foreign microbes to supercharge the healing process.  He believes in the terroir and feels that nature needs to find her way again into the vineyards.  He estimated that, in ten years, he would be able to assert with confidence that his vineyards were performing at the level of a healthy biodynamic environment.  Last year, six years after they started farming organically, he expected to finally see some natural grass growing again.  Each time Arnaud tells me something disturbing like that, he looks at me out of the side of his eyes, with a smirk, and his head pointed down as though he felt responsible for what took place before him.  Indeed, what happened here is embarrassing; sadly, it’s not uncommon. What makes it especially disheartening, in this case, is the negligence with vineyards that possesses such a rich history. Last year, I had dinner with Romain Guiberteau and Arnaud Lambert, both of whom I import to California.  We went down to Arnaud’s cave, below his house, to taste his 2012 single-vineyard wines from both hills.  After four years of organic farming, the whites were simply off the charts.  After we tasted, Romain needed a smoke, so he and I went outside and started to chat while Arnaud stayed in the cave to organize a few more wines to taste.  Romain took a long draw of his cigarette and leaned into me as though he was going to tell me a secret.  He quietly said in French: “Yes, I have ONE (Clos des Carmes) of the greatest vineyards on the hill…  He has the other EIGHT…”  He stared at me as he pointed his finger towards the cellar where Arnaud was and continued: “He’s a great winemaker and he’s just getting started.  My vineyards have been in organic culture already for over ten years and he’s just converting them now.  Just wait, he’s the one to watch.  He has them all…”  Hearing this confession from one of the hottest young vignerons in France was unreal.  It was a wonderful insight into the character of Romain Guiberteau.  He’s a selfless, passionate man interested in the success of his friend Arnaud, as are the other vignerons on the hill, Antoine Foucoult and his father and uncle from the Clos Rougeard.  I haven’t met anyone from the Foucoult family, but Arnaud told me that he feels like they are all in it together with him; like a band of brothers.  It’s impressive. Two weeks ago, I was in Saumur to pay another visit to Arnaud and Romain.  We further discussed the nature of the wines produced on this hill and my purchase of the 2010 basic Saumur white and red from Chateau de Brézé a few years ago.  I revealed to them that I only started to find success with the Brézé wines at the start of 2013 and that I hardly sold a single case the first 18 months as they sat in my warehouse.  I was a little afraid to show the wines at first because they were taut for so long, but when we unleashed Guiberteau into the California market last year, it helped prime the market’s palate for the wines of Chateau de Brézé.  The wines from Romain shocked (literally) everyone and, by that time, the Brézé wines finally relaxed and started to put their cards on the table.  They were a perfect follow after Guiberteau floored the market and were welcomed with the same enthusiasm.  That night, we all agreed that the wines from Brézé need much more time in the bottle before being sold.  That’s why Romain already sells his high-end cuvées three or four years after the vintage date.  The next morning, I could see anguish on Arnaud’s face.  He told me that, because of our conversation last night, he decided that he was going to ask the bank for more money in order to make the wines age longer before releasing them.  It’s this kind of stuff that makes Arnaud special.  He never ceases to impress me as his commitment to the success of this hill is inspiring. Two weeks ago – almost four years after my first visit – Arnaud and I walked the vineyards again.  I wanted to spend more time in the vineyards to get a better understanding of each clos.  As we walked through, the vineyards were showing signs of new life.  We reminisced what has happened over the last years that led up to this point.  As we bent over to admire new life emerging after a lifetime of abuse, we smiled and grabbed piles of dirt and rock from each sight to inspect its renewing quality. The natural grasses were popping and the life of the soil was being nursed back to health.  The vineyards are changing, so is Arnaud.  He is a different man than when I met him four years ago.  Since then, he’s had a rough patch with the tragic early passing of his wife and his father just a year after my first visit with him.  It's a hard story to hear from such a wonderful guy.  As we carried on, I realized that the dark cloud, cast over Brézé and Arnaud, is lifting more and more with the passing of each year. Four years ago, I stood with Arnaud at the Clos du Chateau vineyard on the very top of the hill without realizing that this place would become one of my most unexpected love affairs with wine.  It's heartwarming to see that the other great producers from the hill, rather than competing with Arnaud, act as his strongest supporting cast.  They all know of this almost forgotten history that has been silenced for decades inside this mysterious hill.  They are all anxiously waiting to see what Arnaud unearths as he nurses her back to health.  There is something stirring on this little hill, and soon, the wine world will remember her name; she is Brézé, the greatest forgotten hill.

Ted comes from a deeply religious background and after he left the fold, he shifted his faith to that in nature, and he believes that the most conscious winemakers cede control to this bigger force. But as Masson had touched upon with his need for flexibility during tough times, this clearly presents a quandary when people need to pay the bills. If they encounter a bunch of problems, it’s sometimes necessary to work against nature, even if for only a moment during a tough year. Ted sympathizes, yet still preaches the virtues of working in accordance with nature as much as possible. He’ll never stop being surprised and dismayed when people choose the four dollar bottle from Trader Joe’s without realizing that the only way to produce it so cheaply is with the use of chemical farming and production that leave the wine nothing more than water and alcohol that kind of tastes like a wine—all a sort of cheating, really. There’s just no way of getting a bottle of wine at that price and have it free of chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Even some health nuts he knows still get fired up about a cheap bottle. He said, “they’ll buy fresh organic produce and grass-fed beef and eat it with one of these TJ’s specials. What many don’t stop to think is, while avocados can be sprayed in the field, they can be washed, and at least the fruit inside ends up relatively free of chemicals since they are one of the 'clean fifteen'—the fruits and veggies with the least amount of pesticides that penetrate their outer layers. Grapes on the other hand, are not washed off before they are processed, so everything makes it into the tank, and much of that goes into your glass. “A six dollar bottle just isn’t good for you,” he added. He’s more interested in promoting purity in winemaking techniques than a wine that just tastes good. When he brings on a producer he always thinks, “would I want my wife and friends drinking this?” This is one of the primary reasons he visits all his producers, to see how they do things, to verify their honesty. The primary objective of The Source is to create a model for a lifestyle of clean living. With that comes paying a little more for a wine that's healthy, while supporting the producers who make that possible. He went on to describe how the quality of the fruit is gauged: “When I worked as a consultant at a vineyard and winery the grape harvesters asked, ‘how can you tell if it's good?’ And I said, ‘how does it taste? Would you put that cluster in your mouth? Good ones taste incredible. If you won't put the grape in your mouth because it’s too sour or partially rotten, why would put it in a wine? If you wouldn’t eat it, throw it on the ground.’” Many winegrowers tell him that most importers who visit them go straight to the cellar to taste, that he is one of few who wants to see the vineyards—though Ted says this is starting to change. He actually spends much more time outside than in the cellars; his priority is to see the condition of the vines and soil. You can visit a tasting room at any number of producers in the states, but most of them don’t do regular tours of the vineyards. He said, “If vignerons spend the majority of their time in the vines, don't you think that’s where we should be too? I can taste their wines anywhere, but I go to visit them to see if they are working well in both the cellar and the vineyards. "There are a lot of importers, sommeliers and the like who consider themselves proponents of natural wines but who then stop beside vineyards to post selfies on social media, oblivious to the fact that the vines behind them have clearly been chemically treated." Ted has his buyers’ trust, and he wants to be true to that; the wine needs to be as honest as he’d like to think he is. As we drove north, further into the Alps, he exclaimed, “Look! Look! The swoop of the stone on top of that mountain, a completely different stone than the one below it—it’s incredible. You don’t see that. It’s usually either schist or limestone, not one on top of the other.” I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at his continued childlike glee when it comes to the rocks everywhere that the rest of us take for granted. Next: Ted's Friend Nico

I woke at seven thirty and had finished demolishing a fresh pile of baguettes by eight, when we hit the road. Our destination for the day was Domaine du Pas de L’Escalette, in the Languedoc, a major wine producing region in the south of France that stretches from Provence up to the Pyrenees Mountains, with Spain along one border. Many of the predominant varietals there, such as Grenache, can yield a lot of fruit elsewhere, but in the cool weather where Pas de L'Escalette is located the yields are low and the wines more fresh and high-toned. The Languedoc actually produces a huge proportion of French wine, but since a lot of them are high octane, it’s not a largely desirable source for some segments of the US market, where low alcohol is the current trend. Ted had met Julien Zernott and his wife, Delphine Rousseau, of Domaine du Pas de L'Escalette, a few weeks earlier, an event that left him wanting to give the wines another taste. Nicolas Rossignol made the introduction when they all happened to visit his cellar in Burgundy at the same time. Ted hesitated to further the conversation with Julien after an invitation to the domaine because they were already represented in the states and he didn’t want to step on the other importers’ toes. But when as they departed, Zernott gave Ted a couple bottles and they agreed to talk. Ted had been asking himself, “Am I doing the right thing?,” but after wrestling with the possibility of working with Zernott a little longer, he decided, “why not?” He would go into the meeting with no expectations and simply view it as an opportunity to learn more and meet up with an interesting vigneron who had given him a great first impression. We passed through the Camargue river delta, a marshy land where the Rhône River meets the Mediterranean Sea. Camargue Horses, one of the oldest breeds in the world, are indigenous to the area, and a lot of sea salt is harvested there as well. The vineyards around us were flat and thin and Ted remarked that they generally produce cheap and unremarkable table wine. There were many Roman ruins along the road, the remnants of walls and structures from that fallen empire. I was yet again struck by these remnants of ancient history scattered all over France and how the majority of it was vandalized with colorful graffiti. Little red and yellow flowers danced in the Mistral along the shoulder as we passed, and the sky was a shock of dark blue, the thin white clouds distant smudges on the horizon. Though it’s tucked away a little inland from the coast, the Languedoc has long been thought by many to be to underrated in its beauty, and it's free of the tourists that flock to better-known destinations. Further to the north and west we entered the Costières de Nîmes AOC, a huge area also known for inexpensive wines, usually blends led by Grenache and somewhat similar in style to other appellations in the Southern Rhône Valley. Ted works with a domaine from the appellation, Terre des Chardons, and thinks other wines in the AOC would be better if people would make just a few changes, such as adopting organic and biodynamic standards similar to what Terre des Chardons uses. Another producer he used to import from further north in the Languedoc uses natural techniques and sometimes their wines are really solid, while others (as with many natural producers who are more at the mercy of nature), not so much. We bent south around the sea toward Montpellier, where beige, orange and yellow stucco buildings with terra cotta tiled roofs spread out from each side of a highway lined with dense stands of trees. The city was heavily bombed in WWII so most of the structures are more modern than in many other places we had visited, and there was lush greenery and graffiti crawling across every wall on the underpasses. The road turned north and inland again through rolling hills with huge white limestone boulders scattered among the scrub, a landscape similar to that around the 118 between LA and Ventura. We passed the town of Mas Lavayre, situated in an area chock-full of uranium ore, and continued toward the ancient commune of Lodève, which dates back to the Gauls and where the hills are all red with iron rich soils. We were getting into a new territory for Ted, geographically and geologically, and he was clearly excited. “What's getting interesting here is that we're living in an era where the greatest producers in Burgundy, Champagne, the Loire, Germany, Austria, etc, are all in a window to make incredible wines in the increasing heat; they used to have a good season every few years and now five out of six are good or great, but that’s about to change. Right now, it’s much better for consistency in these colder areas, yet as the heat continues to rise, they’ll start to get inconsistent again because of heat instead of the old problem of the cold.” It was strange to think that there could be areas of the world that might actually be benefiting from climate change—the perfect ammunition for deniers. But most of us know that it’s a serious problem, and the beneficiaries won’t be such for long. The navigation system kept giving us poor directions, and after taking a few wrong turns on some narrow side roads, we finally found our way to the driveway of Domaine du Pas de L'Escalette. The winery building is a striking piece of modernism with a limestone tile façade, plain but for three four-by-fifteen-foot glass slots, the center one with a door at the bottom. The structure’s shape, with one rectangle and two symmetrical windowless wings on each side, gives it the appearance of a temple from another world. The delays had us running late, and Julien Zernott was already waiting in the parking lot with his father-in-law and a young couple who were also related in some way that I missed, and who didn’t speak English. Julien is at least six four, and built like a linebacker (another ex-rugby player like Jean-Claude Masson back in the Savoie), with broad shoulders and the belly of a man who likes the finer things. He has cherubic cheeks that pinch his small eyes almost closed when he smiles his gape-toothed smile, which he does constantly. He shook my hand and almost crushed it in his bear paw, introduced his family, then gestured for everyone to jump into his old and dusty SUV. We tore off down a narrow road through some of the most beautiful scenery we had seen yet. The vineyards rolled across wavy land in a long valley between steep hills of the deepest green, with jagged sandstone pinnacles stabbing upward from the ridges all around. The sky was spotless and rich blue, and a cool breeze kept the air under the bright sun mild and dreamy. The space between the vines was pure limestone scree, with thin grasses and weeds poking through on Julien’s parcels. Some of the sections belonging to other makers were bare of green—clear signs of the herbicide that he shuns. The limestone was scattered in every direction, from the tiniest pebble to the billiard ball rocks to the brick and cinderblock-sized pieces used to build the walls winding all over the land. Some were four feet tall, and some were eight, and every stone was stacked and locked together with puzzle-like precision, with no mortar in sight. Julien said that they were built partially to block the wind, but mainly they were just a way to clean up all the extra stones without just piling them into unsightly mounds. In the middle of some of the walls there were little stone huts called Bergers, also built without mortar; they look like igloos constructed with carefully stacked rocks instead of ice blocks. Inside, there were large stones to sit on around a fire pit in the center under a ventilation hole in a ceiling propped up by wooden beams. Apparently these were used by shepherds who worked the sheep in these hills in a distant past, before they were vineyards. And in the decades since, they’ve been used to warm the fieldworkers on the coldest days. In any case, there was no way I could look at a stone hut and not think, “Middle Ages,” and maybe even, “Bring out your dead!” When Ted inevitably brought up the extremely rocky soil under our feet, Julien said that it was remarkably easy for the vines to get down into it, to squeeze through the tiny spaces in the scree. Julien pointed at a few hectares of vines that he had planted in 2003 and said they were yellow because of a recent cold snap; he has planted twenty hectares of different varietals since 2013. He then nodded at more of his parcels nearby, some sixty-year-old Grenache and eighty-year-old Carignan. Andrea took photos of the landscape from every angle, and I would bet that they were almost all keepers. She and Ted got shots of Julien as he spoke, and he was camera friendly, smiling and allowing for countless candid action shots as he made gestures all around. Ted noted that all the biodiversity of grasses coming up between the rows made it clear that they were employing organic and biodynamic techniques, Ted's ideal conditions for healthy fruit. “But we live with the animals,” Julien added. “Small deer and boar eat the grapes. People hunt but don’t kill them all, so there will always be more. The grapes are always in danger.” As with every vigneron we had met so far, Zernott is always walking a fine line to preserve his crop, in one way or another. He took us over to a corner of his property that comes to a point at the top of a hill where two of the tallest stone walls meet. I turned around and was struck by a stunning view of the entire valley that opened out from where we stood in the tip of a giant, inverted V. There were countless patches of different greens of grass and vines, and the mix of deciduous and pine trees growing from the scattered pastures below the towering crenulated hillsides that cradled the valley around us. There were two square sitting blocks arranged around a cocktail table fashioned from one long stone. He showed us a small branch protruding from a nearby tree. It looked different from the others around it and was braced to a limb with some sort of tape; though it was grafted to a wild plum tree, in a few months it would produce cherries to snack on. He walked over to one of the walls and pushed on the edge of a big block, which was really just a thin stone façade, actually a small door that swung open on a hinge that revealed a hidden cubbyhole behind it. He reached inside and pulled out a bottle of rosé and a clutch of glasses. We all gathered around the stone table and tasted the crisp and refreshing wine, still cold from its chilly stone storage, despite the bright sun and warmth of the day. It was the perfect accompaniment to the herbal breeze. We returned to the winery and were greeted by Julien’s wife, Delphine. She smiled warmly and shook our hands from behind a sleek modern marble bar in a tasting room with cork-tiled walls. Julien told us that she runs the business side of things, raising his palms in a playful, “I have no idea what that entails,” manner. She also created all of the labels for the wines, which Ted immediately complimented for their simplicity. One series that I found particularly charming had tiny recreations of their children’s footprints walking up the side of the bottle. As she poured tastes, including a beautiful blend of mostly Grenache with some Carignan and Syrah, followed by their Syrah dominant blend, Julien said, “you need to learn enology so you can forget it. It’s important to just observe the wines. It’s fine to know how yeast works, but we don’t add commercial yeast to anything but the rosé, where it’s necessary. Everything else is naturally occurring yeast. You have to work with your heart and not with your head. We honor the terroir. We look for the holy grail.” Ted nodded vigorously with a big smile on his face. What Julien might not have known was that it could have been Ted himself who had spoken these words, verbatim, all the way down to the “holy grail” comment—one of his favorites. It was no wonder that they had hit it off back in Rossignol’s cellar; this guy was totally speaking Ted's language. Then Julien said, “I prefer elegant wines over power,” to which Ted responded with a wry grin, “I do, too. I prefer a woman in my glass, not a man.” It took a quick moment for the words to sink in, but once they did, Julien released a loud chuckle and nodded in kind. Julien led us through a tall sliding door to a big room lined with relatively new, wooden Stockinger barrels, then through another door where there were some older barrels and his steel tanks. We tasted a few of his aging wines from his pipette as he and Ted broached the subject of import. After this visit, Ted was all in, and Julien sounded interested as well. They agreed on pallet allotments for the coming vintages and that was that: they were in business. We were out of time and needed to get on the road again. When we asked Delphine where we might pick up a sandwich, she quickly said she’d make us one herself and invited us up to the house, a low slung annex to the winery that seemed certain to have been designed and built by the same people. The glass front was almost entirely open to the view of the valley, and eight or so friends and family sat around a long table on a covered patio, playing cards. They smiled and waved and beckoned us to join them and asked us where in the states we were from. It was a beautiful picture of the incredible life that Julien and Delphine have crafted for themselves. Inside, a teenage girl offered me some almond brittle from the oven, which I gladly took and instantly devoured, then silently wished for more the second it was gone. Delphine cut into a big loaf of rustic bread, spread gobs of fresh butter on the slices, grabbed from a thick stack of jambon de Bayon and pieces from a wheel of local cheese and piled it all together. She gave us each big hugs and sent us on our way. A quarter mile down the road, I tore into the sandwich, which was, of course, glorious (Hallelujah! Another ham and butter!) and I had finished mine before Ted even unwrapped his. He would remark—not for the first time, or the last—that I eat way too quickly. I don’t know why he kept harping on it; he knows I was raised by wolves.

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.

An Incomplete Collection of Observations and Considerations. Round One. The Ribeira Sacra is complicated. There is so much more than what is readily apparent beyond the breathtaking imagery of vertigo-inducing vineyard terraces towering over the silvery, slow-moving rivers far below. Broken up into five general wine regions, it has a greater diversity of grapes, expositions, altitudes, slope angles, bedrock types and topsoil compositions than many other wine regions. This subject is expansive and thankfully, there is now increasingly more useful information about it, thanks to Spanish wine journalism that has begun to focus more heavily on Spain’s backcountry. Luis Gutiérrez, from the Wine Advocate, the team at spanishwinelover.com blog, and the website of importer, Jose Pastor Selections, are some of my go-to references written in English. One challenge of delving deep into this region comes from the fact that much of its history has been lost for generations to hard times and nearly complete abandonment. The bulk of the historical and cultural details are in Spanish, or even the far more challenging Galician—also called Galego, a regional dialect that combines elements of Spanish and Portuguese with its own individual twist. My goal here is to offer a better understanding of the Ribeira Sacra by highlighting some unique elements within each of the five subzones from a broad, terroir-oriented perspective. Climatic Considerations The Ribeira Sacra represents Galicia’s climatic middle ground, with a large variation throughout the appellation that ranges from one extreme side to the other. The climate dictates the “success” of grapes’ growth with regard to the degree of balanced phenolic ripeness they attain. It may seem unusual, but in Galicia there are many different grape types that find balanced phenolic ripeness in a great range of potential alcohol levels, some as low as 10.5%, and others well above 13%. This leads to a multitude of different expressions of wine here, as well as elsewhere in Galicia. Satellite 3-D imagery has been a game changer, but it may be easier to reference topographical maps rather than Google Earth when it comes to climate, since they better and more simply illustrate in the physicality of the landscape, and therefore the source of potential climate influencers. On the west and north end of the Ribeira Sacra the climatic influence is more impacted by Atlantic winds and precipitation due to the absence of any significant mountain range. Toward the west, between the Atlantic and the Ribeiro and Ribeira Sacra regions, some small mountains curb the influence of oceanic winds. Over where the Miño river valley flows south through the Chantada and Ribeiras do Miño subzones of the Ribeira Sacra all the way to the Atlantic, the northern Atlantic winds are freer to blow through the river valley and into the region. Then, toward the south and east the mountains rise to higher altitudes and maintain a much stronger continental influence. None of the mountains in Galicia would be considered big, like the Rockies, Alps or Himalayas—although the Galician range is believed to have been comparable, hundreds of millions of years ago. Now they’re short and rounded, topping out at 2,124 meters (6,969 feet) at Peña Trevinca, perhaps just a dozen or so kilometers to the east of Quiroga-Bibei, the easternmost subzone of the Ribeira Sacra. It snows in the higher elevations in winter, a possibility I hadn’t considered until I found myself driving through an unexpected blizzard from Bierzo to the Amandi on my way to an appointment. It can be downright cold here in the wintertime, and blazing hot in the summer. And the differences between the seasons in the Ribeira Sacra have become particularly extreme of late, with some years overburdened by drought, while also suffering unmanageable mildew pressure, and even torrential hailstorms at the worst possible times, often just before harvest. A Land of Many Rivers The influence of the main rivers in the Ribeira Sacra is not quite the same as it used to be. Since the introduction of hydroelectric dams as early as the 1940s, when Central Hidroeléctrica dos Peares on the Miño River broke ground in ‘47, and with dam construction continuing today along some watercourses, each river’s influence on vineyard microclimates has changed. In the past, rivers brought the advantage of faster moving airflow, especially during spring runoff that likely helped curb frost issues around bud break by basically pulling the cool air further downstream before it could settle in the vineyards. These dams have also brought notable change to the landscape where the deepest sections of the river now run through areas once covered with vineyards, farmland and housing. This modification also undoubtedly altered the local flora and fauna to some degree, as well as untold other factors in the surrounding microclimates. The river currents of old also likely helped to balance temperatures during summer months with their continuous flow of cooler water and fresh mountain air through the valleys on hot days. In some locations rivers now resemble thin, meandering lakes, or mini-fjords, where the water is mostly idle, particularly on the reservoir side of the dams. Today, this dynamic along with the fog it creates increases humidity and encourages mildew’s free run into vineyards on the river valley hillsides, often forcing frequent intervention from growers, inhibiting more efficient and ecologically-sound methods. Rivers alter the topography and create diversity by cutting hundreds of meters deep into the earth, exposing complex geological formations that would’ve otherwise been buried far below the surface. Flatter vineyards have less dramatic variations, and the topsoil often doesn’t correlate exactly with the underlying bedrock as much as it may on steeper hillside vineyards. With other nearby geological formations, the topsoil of vineyards below them can be easily altered with sedimentary deposits from those at higher altitudes. But in the Ribeira Sacra’s river gorges it doesn’t take but a meter or two to shift back and forth from igneous bedrock to metamorphic, just as it does in so many other Galician vineyard areas further into the countryside, away from the Atlantic and the Rías Baixas wine region. What’s more is that inside river gorges like most of those in the Ribeira Sacra, there is an abundant supply of exposures and slope angles. This may be a saving grace for the vineyards near these rivers because as the climate changes the growers can shift from the hottest exposures to cooler ones, while maintaining the same superb bedrock, topsoil and all other characteristics imparted by the local terroir. This practice has already taken hold in the area, with many growers exploring potential vineyard sites that in the past would not have been advantageous. But in the coming decades, these more sheltered sites may provide enough refuge to keep businesses afloat instead of being choked out by the sun. The Grapes There is a lot more insightful information out there on the grapes of Galicia, so I won’t spend too much time in this section. However, I would advise that any interested parties do their research with a wide variety of sources, as I’ve found some inconsistencies in places that I thought would have been more accurate. (Perhaps Jancis Robinson’s book on grapes is the most ideal source.) I will focus on just a few grapes that I find particularly compelling options that regularly demonstrate that they can compete at a very high level. In the right hands and the right terroir inside the Ribeira Sacra, Mencia can render a high- quality wine. The proposed descendant of Caíño and Merenzao (a hard parental pair to imagine, given how dramatically different those two grapes are to Mencia from a finished wine standpoint), it can be dark in color, depending on the vineyard exposure: when well-exposed it can get darker, while with greater protection from the sun the grapes tend to be more red than black—as with most red grapes. It can be suave, supple and convivial; it can also channel the terroir with clarity, as demonstrated by so many examples from the better producers in the region. While Mencia is the most commonly planted grape in the Ribeira Sacra, it is also the most commonly criticized by winegrowers. Their beef with it seems to revolve around its inability to maintain acidity when it reaches its optimal phenolic balance. I’ve been told that its point of origin is likely on the other side of the Galician mountains in the Castilla y Leon, an area where it seems to thrive and maintain solid natural acidity at much higher altitudes. It’s around the Jamuz area where the vines are ancient (more than eighty years old) and grow at altitudes of eight hundred to over a thousand meters, similar to in some higher-altitude areas of Bierzo, where it can also do very well to maintain a decent amount of natural acidity. It’s commonly said that Mencia was not planted in the Ribeira Sacra before phylloxera, but gained ground because of its reliability as a grape, year in and year out. And in a wine region historically as poor as the Ribeira Sacra has been for more than a century, it made complete economic sense—just as when many low-producing grape varieties were ousted all over Europe for other grapes that could generate crops worth growing during hard times. Sadly, many growers feel obliged to manage the low natural acidity of Mencia by adding tartaric acid from a bag—no thanks. The clever ones dose the blend with other quality grapes naturally high in acidity; or maybe they do it the old-fashioned way and work diligently to find the right hour in the right day to catch the grapes in a moment of perfect natural balance. Best to stick with the top growers to get the real deal. If natural freshness is a cornerstone in one’s wine preferences, look for those grown in cooler subzones and microclimates. Other Glorious Ribeira Sacra Grapes We begin with the reds, those with a naturally lighter hue, resulting more often in wines with brighter red tones. They are grapes with greater natural acidity and aromatic lift that when blended with Mencia can take it from a wine on the border of being drab and turn it into a real symphony, with great lift and complexity—that scene in the movie “Amadeus” comes to mind, the one where Mozart makes changes to Salieri’s composition, transforming it from something melodic but also mediocre, to a much more invigorating composition. (watch here) First we will just touch on the whole of the Caíño family, of which there are numerous biotypes, all with the prefix, Caíño. Caíños are intense. Sometimes they can be snuggly acidic when bottled alone (and even more aggressive in cooler areas, like Ribeiro and Rías Baixas) and will serve well when added to a wine that is missing strength in its acidic spine. That said, I believe this grape has serious untapped potential, and in the face of climate change—coupled with a better understanding of how to grow it—it will surely rise up in the ranks and find more balance. It has everything a truly great family of grapes possesses: naturally good if not obscene acidity in some cases, a fullness in the palate, good core concentration, quality phenolic maturity at lower alcohol levels, and a rare talent for not only channeling its terroir, but giving it thrust. Then there are the dazzling Brancellao and Merenzao—exciting prospects with a more inviting and gentler acidity than the Caíño clan. Brancellao is perfumed and subtle while maintaining a mouth-filling freshness on a delicate frame; it’s also known in some parts as Albarello. There is mega promise with this grape, as with Caíño. Merenzao is the same as Trousseau, one of the Jura’s fuller-bodied reds (but only fuller within the context of the Jura) and it thrives well in Galicia. Merenzao seems to me more pungently perfumed than the Caíños and Brancellao. It renders extremely inviting wines that are well balanced and lively in freshness. It’s another grape that deserves a big share of land inside a quality vineyard. The darker grapes such as Garnacha Tintorera (one of the rare grapes with red pulp), Mouraton (a big, dark cluster), Tempranillo (Spain’s most famous red grape, responsible most famously for the wines of Rioja and many of the Duero River appellations), and Sousón are an interesting bunch. Sousón has become a favorite of mine within this category for its virile, beast, dark berry and spicy characteristics; it seems like a giant in waiting for someone to fully unlock, if they can also control its intense power. Known in Portugal as Vinhão (and probably a number of other different names within Iberia), it makes a slightly sparkling, mouth-staining, delicious wine traditionally served cold. This wine is not for everyone, but I happen to love it and believe there is a tremendous potential in parts of Galicia and Northern Portugal if it’s done with great care, higher viticultural precision and with some financial motivation—that is, a good selling price! (There are plenty more red grapes out there that I have little or no experience with, and when more information comes my way, I will work it in.) Outside of Albariño, many of Galicia’s white grapes have a hard time standing on their own; some would argue that the same is true for most of the reds too. Without the addition of complimentary grapes in a blend, many expose gaps in the overall balance of single variety wines. Thus far, Ribeiro and to a much greater extent, Rías Biaxas, seem more suitable than further east appellations in Galicia (save the fabulous white grape Godello), and this likely has much more to do with climate than anything—in the Ribeira Sacra, we have to accept, at least in this moment of the region’s evolution, that not all wine regions are endowed with red and white wine of equal talent. Admittedly, I have a relatively limited personal experience with the white wines of Ribeira Sacra, so I’ve yet to find an abundance of compelling examples to warrant in-depth exploration or explanation. If I have the option I always tend to gravitate toward wines largely composed of, or reinforced by, grapes with higher natural acidity, such as Godello, Caiño Branco, Agudelo (Chenin Blanc), or even Albariño, but the latter finds its peak within sight of the Atlantic, especially in Salnés. Perhaps the challenge is that many of the great red wine producers grow white wines in the same vineyards with reds instead of more suitable terroirs that naturally retain freshness without too much trouble. On the optimistic side, maybe it’s just a matter of time before they really begin to hit the mark. Geologic Setting and Considerations As I frequently mention in my wine exploration writings, geology is an extremely important factor, and once we are able to isolate specific characteristics in the taste and texture, and perhaps to a lesser degree, aroma, the similarities between geological formations become more apparent. However, it’s important to keep in mind that many of these specific nuances may subtly exist, and sometimes are abstract and personal for most people. These nuances often rest in the background, acting as a secondary support to more pronounced wine traits coming from the grape(s), the conditions of each particular season, and the stylistic influence of the winemaker. That said, in Galicia the geologic setting seems to strongly mark the resulting wines as much as anywhere in the wine world. Galicia is geologically diverse and home to some of the oldest rock formations within Europe’s wine regions. This range of rocks is credited with what is known as the Variscan/Hercynian orogenic belt—an apt description of how this geological formation is shaped. Hundreds of millions of years ago a somewhat small but long continent called Armorica (which makes up today’s European massifs: Iberian, Armorican, Central, Rhenish and Bohemian) was sandwiched between the two mega continents Laurasia (home to today’s North America, Europe and Asia, minus India) and Gondwana (Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, India) in a forceful collision that lasted for tens of millions of years. The bottom of the ancient oceans of the larger continents were driven below everything (geologists call this subduction) as they lifted and mangled Armorica until it resembled a partially uncoiled snake, or belt. During orogenic processes (mountain-building events), preexisting rocks can be lifted, subducted, twisted, deformed, and altered in mineral composition due to the extreme heat and pressure in what geologist refer to as “violent events,” although, with the exception of volcanic eruptions, these processes are extremely slow. Those rocks altered by severe heat and pressure are categorized as metamorphic rocks. Depending on the type of metamorphic rock, they may have a particular influence on viticultural and enological practices. On color-coded geological maps of the Iberian Peninsula there is a unique curvature in the northwest and western parts that starts in the direction of the north and nicely curves toward the east; this is the result of the Variscan orogeny. This collision that joined these three continents created Pangaea, the last of Earth’s supercontinents. Pangaea began to separate about two hundred million years ago. A Brief Explanation of the Ribeira Sacra Formation from Master of Science in Geology, and PhD student at the University of Vigo, Ivan Rodriguez The formation of the Ribeira Sacra began about two hundred million years ago. During this period, the northwestern part of Spain and northern Portugal were part of a large island, while what would be the rest of today's Spain and Portugal didn't yet exist. During the Alpine orogeny, the Cantabrian Mountains—a range that extends from Galicia across the north coast of Spain to the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate Spain and France—began to form sometime between forty to sixty million years ago. These mountains produced changes in the landscape of the surrounding areas resulting in the formation of new watercourses that developed along old tectonic faults. These watercourses, today's Miño and Sil, are the main rivers of the Ribeira Sacra. Interestingly, granite and slate, two contrasting rock types with very different levels of hardness dominate the Ribeira Sacra landscape and influence the topography of each river valley. In areas dominated by slate, the far softer of the two rocks, the watercourse eroded the landscape to create wider valleys with less steep hillsides. By contrast, the sections of river composed of granite eroded into deeper valleys with steeper, more abrupt rock walls. The Geologic Connection with Wine As one might imagine, a lot has happened since the breakup of Pangaea. Some of the Variscan Mountains remain above the water line but are severely eroded, and while we don’t see them named on today’s global maps, their remnants connect many European wine regions in France (Muscadet, Anjou, Alsace, Beaujolais, Northern Rhône, Corsica), Austria (Wachau, Kamptal and Kremstal), many western German wine regions, and Western Iberia (Portugal, and parts of Western Spain, including Galicia and the Ribeira Sacra). The geological connection between wine regions (not only those remnants from the Variscan orogeny) often shares specific characteristics regardless of the influence of the grape(s) and winemaking. There are indeed likely more characteristic differences between wines grown in different regions, but there are some unique similarities as well. The most notable connections being—at least for myself and many of my wine professional cohorts—the intensity of mineral/metal impressions expressed through palate textures and weight, and the perception of residual pressure and potency of textures on specific locations of the palate. For example, wines grown in granite-based bedrock and topsoil often carry more strength and localized textures in the frontal area of the palate on the finish, while metamorphic bedrock and topsoil can often be the opposite, with textures more weighted toward the back palate. Both of these influences in one wine can bring balance to these perceived strengths, likely making for a wine with a more diverse array of palate textures, and perhaps a perception of greater complexity. The Ribeira Sacra bedrock is less uniform than what is found further to the west, close to the Atlantic in the Rías Baixas, a wine landscape dominated by igneous rocks, most notably granite and granodiorite, and topsoil derived from these bedrocks. The Ribeira Sacra bedrock is principally composed of igneous (those most common here are granite and granodiorite as well) and foliated metamorphic rocks (most common, from low to high grade, are slate, schist and gneiss). This ensemble of mixed bedrock and soil types can render wines from one place to another quite different, while still remaining true to the overarching regional characteristics of their terroirs. And within these wine regions, there are varying degrees of soil grains, from clay, silt, sand, and gravel, to much rockier terrain. The soil grain seems to influence the shape of a wine (whether it can be described as round, or angular) in a different way than the influence of the bedrock and topsoil mineral composition. Indeed, in the science world ideas and theories that link taste to rock type are considered pseudoscience. But perhaps one day someone will be able to coherently and scientifically explain the mechanics of these perceived differences. The makeup of the dirt that grapevines are grown in is complicated and there are few regions as complicated in both bedrock and topsoil under a singular cohesive appellation as the Ribeira Sacra. Thanks to the complexity of each microclimate and geologic setting, and the conundrum of Galicia’s lost knowledge for what grapes are most suitable within each specific spot makes for a fun adventure that we have the privilege to watch blossom in our lifetimes. MsC Geologist, Ivan Rodrigues, in the Valdeorras D.O. Terroir Overview of Ribeira Sacra Subzones There are five Ribeira Sacra subzones and each one is as internally diverse as it is expansive. With these subzones the climate is perhaps much more easily understood than the geologic setting. There are no concrete differences from one subzone to the next, rather gradual changes. In fact, much of the geographical separation is based on their respective monastic histories. Because of the chaotic arrangement of different rock formations and the overall size of the entire appellation, specific vineyard sites within each subzone takes greater precedence (a general rule to follow in the entire wine world rather than adhering to broad generalities, not only with the Ribeira Sacra) because even within many vineyards the bedrock and topsoil can completely change only a few meters apart, especially inside river gorges with deep complexities as those of the Ribeira Sacra. And the difference between wines made from the same grapes and techniques in the cellar on differing bedrock types can be starkly clear to more experienced tasters, but this is nothing new to the wine world. Starting in the furthest east of the appellation, abutting another Galician wine region, Valdeorras, is the subzone Quiroga-Bibei. This subzone is the most influenced by what can be described as either a Mediterranean sub-humid climate, or a continental one, due to its predominantly mountainous terrain. It has drier and hotter summers, cold and even potentially snowy winters, high average altitude, and a multitude of rock types between granite and a large range of metamorphic rocks, with the dominant one slate, and to a lesser degree black schist, quartzite and the glandular gneiss known as Ollo de Sapo—named after its appearance like a “toad’s eye.” There are also four notable tributaries (Bibei, Jares, Lor, and Navea) to the Sil River. Within these five river valleys and the surrounding lower altitude hills offer a large range of ideal exposures and quality viticulture land. This subzone seems to be a sleeping giant within the Ribeira Sacra; its only real challenge is that it’s even further into less charted territory and far away from a strong commercial center. Amandi is the most famous subzone in the Ribeira Sacra. Here, this central subzone has a concentration of successful bodegas that started to garner greater global attention in the mid-2010s. Its notoriety is a combination of breathtaking vineyard land inside the Sil River gorge and high quality production due to a lot of consistent ripening (at least historically), with an assortment of privileged positions compared to other areas in Galicia. This makes for a large range of wine styles, many of which are surprisingly accessible. But the most important element is the strong and energized collection of progressive winegrowers with a desire to create clear identities, along with a history of proactive local commerce handed down through generations. These restaurants and stores make a concerted effort to sell and deliver their wines directly to the main non-wine producing city areas, like Santiago, Lugo and A Coruña. Ribeira Sacra wines still maintain favorable commercial positions in the larger urban areas because they had already established their wines in those markets before global interest in the area increased significantly. This extra effort from the previous generation gave the Amandi a head start over the other subzones. Located only on the north side of the Sil River, the Amandi is slightly farther from the mountains than Quiroga-Bibei. However, the continental climate still prevails in the extremes of the season, with big summertime temperatures that can bring dryness and more treacherous weather, and at the worst times of the year. Spring frosts and summer hailstorms can clip the region’s already naturally low potential crop. And the Atlantic can force its way in, increasing mildew pressure by bringing in more humidity and rain. Climatically, this subzone is on a two-front battle with nature, and these growers undoubtedly feel the fiscal brunt as a result. Like all of the subzones of the Ribeira Sacra, Amandi has a variety of igneous and metamorphic rocks—Ollo de Sapo (gneiss), slate, quartzite—but doesn’t have a large presence of schist compared to other areas in Ribeira Sacra. Inside the Sil river gorge many terraces are precariously steep. The topsoil depth is shallow, making for greater susceptibility to the effects of drought, but in wetter years it has an advantage over vineyards with deeper topsoil that may have naturally higher water retention. It’s also harder to work, not only because of the physical difficulty, but the lack of help; if people are even available, few are willing to participate in the backbreaking work on the hard hillside vineyards—a common problem in all steeply pitched wine regions, everywhere. Not all of Amandi’s vineyards are on such precarious hillsides. In fact, only about 40% are inside the river gorge, while much of it is outside on more manageable land where mechanization is easier—or at least possible—and those vineyards still worked by hand can be a little less backbreaking. The range of altitudes in this subzone varies greatly, somewhere between two-hundred-and-fifty to six hundred meters. Deeper topsoil vineyards are often at higher altitudes on flatter areas—a relative term for the area. For comparison, think France’s Northern Rhône Valley appellation, Saint-Joseph, where there are many vineyards on steep hillsides, but there are also those within the appellation at higher altitudes on much flatter terrain. These diverse vineyard settings create a greater variability in the overall impression of Saint-Joseph. Those on steep, rocky hillsides are typically more concentrated, muscular, dense, angular, and “vertical” (one of the few common and abstract ways some use in the wine trade to assign an actual sensory impression descriptor that often relates to vineyards grown on very rocky terrain with little topsoil, like a steep hillside). Wines grown on deeper topsoil and higher up on the hills behind the main slopes are likely more “horizontal” in shape, and often render rounder wines with softer lines and less angularity. But once again, the specific site and the skill and stylistic choices of the winegrower take precedence over all things here, just as it does in the Ribeira Sacra and elsewhere. Amandi on the left, Ribeiras do Sil on the right Across from Amandi on the Sil is the subzone, Ribeiras do Sil. As one might expect, much of the geological terrain in this subzone is the same as Amandi on the other side of the river, except for its largely northern vineyard expositions inside the river gorge. Also, there may be a greater degree of erosion on the Amandi side of the Sil because of thousands of years of cultivation. Today, as in the past, the Ribeiras do Sil side is often at a disadvantage when it comes to ripening, compared to Amandi. However, it may become the place to be, what with the unrelenting temperature increase and extreme weather patterns due to climate change. Many of the great producers within the Amandi also have vineyards here—undoubtedly a smart move for the future. Farthest west and north, on the opposite side from Quiroga-Bibei, are the subzones, Chantada and Ribeiras do Miño. With headwaters around seventy kilometers north of Lugo, the Miño River meanders through this old Roman settlement and continues toward the southwest, finally spilling into the Atlantic after its final eighty-kilometer stretch as a natural, physical border between part of northern Portugal and Spain’s Galicia. Only thirty or so kilometers south of Lugo the subzones, Chantada (on the right/west bank) and Ribeiras do Miño (on the left/east bank), follow the Miño south and end near the merging point of the Sil and Miño. Just as it is with the Sil, the Miño has many hydroelectric dams and is one of those places where some spots have the appearance of a long lake rather than a river. Fazenda Prádio vineyards in Chantada Adega Saíñas’ vineyard, O Boliño, with Pablo Soldavini What is most notable about these areas compared to the other three subzones of the Ribeira Sacra is the increased influence of the Atlantic Ocean. This results in cooler temperatures and much more precipitation, with an average of about two hundred millimeters of rain more than Amandi and perhaps even more than Quiroga-Bibei. The wines here should have a greater potential for higher tones and fresher acidity with fully ripened grapes than the other subzones—leaning in style more toward the neighboring appellation to the west, the Ribeiro. However, much of this depends on the stylistic choices of the winegrower and what limits are imposed by any given year. The cooler areas are in the north, but the temperature differences inside this fifty-something kilometer stretch of land are not dramatic, and again have much more to do with each specific terroir. Both generalizations and concrete truths are difficult to make in the Ribeira Sacra, and Chantada and Ribeiras do Miño are no exception. While a lot of the vineyard land snugs up to the Miño, there is an abundance of factors that can change the overall impression of the wines: the proximity to rivers, the rock and dirt, mildew pressure, grape selection, slope, altitude, topsoil depth and composition, ripening due to exposure advantages (which in some cases can now be disadvantages with the chaotic weather from one vintage to the next), bedrock and topsoil composition. Yes, a lot to consider, but it all shows up in the wine. The Miño traverses a series of diverse geological systems. And with one look at a color-coded geology map it’s easy to see that it’s a complex topic, which helps us to avoid generalizations in any of the subzones (beyond “it’s complicated”) when it comes to bedrock composition. Perhaps if all the land were planted it would be easier to say what dominates, though there does seem to be the potential to find just about every metamorphic rock (with a great diversity even within each category of slate, schist and gneiss) and intrusive igneous rocks (granites, granodiorites, etc) under the sun with a lot of sedimentary depositions (sandstones and perhaps even some limestones from the Cantabrian mountains) along the Miño, but it depends on each specific location. To make things more complicated, most geological maps are color-coded by different geological time frames, not actual rock types. Sometimes the only option in determining a general idea of what rocks were most likely created during a given geological time period in a specific location is to make an educated guess. Final Thoughts, For Now When in pursuit of quality wine, there is one simple suggestion to follow in the Ribeira Sacra, as in the rest of the world: Follow the producer. By following specific producers you will begin to understand the story of each wine’s vineyard or vineyards, how, and even more importantly, why the winegrower made the specific choices they made in their vineyard and cellar work. Compelling wine is made by serious people, period. Every vineyard has its own unique setting, and serious growers take into account as many factors as possible, from the big picture down to its molecular mechanics. The problem in the Ribeira Sacra is that there are not yet very many serious growers like there are in the world’s most famous and well-established wine regions. However, this renaissance has just begun, and those who are at the forefront are some of the wine world’s most interesting minds. What is most interesting and exciting about Galicia wine is that there are no laurels to rest on. Like so many wine regions being rediscovered, these curious Galegos have returned to a wild backcountry to rediscover lost ancestral knowledge. They must enter with inexhaustible diligence and perseverance to continue learning and growing to even achieve economic survival on this path. They have to live with open minds, and to think deeply about what they are doing, and why. This is why we are in a special time for Galicia. This is why I am drawn to these people and this ancient place. They are living their dreams and they do it with infectious and relentless energy and enthusiasm.

As we drove Manu’s truck off the ferry we began our ascent from the base of the mountains to the west of Bastia. A crooked road led us up and out of the town with high walls of deformed schist to our right, black from the previous night’s rain, bent in every direction. The fog was dense and flowed like a river in the strong and unusually cold wind. We hit the top of the pass with nothing to see but a dark, wet road and softly brightened fog. It was a stark contrast to last year’s welcoming first sight of the ancient village of Patrimonio and the dramatic limestone ridges of Monte Sant-Angelo, framed by a bright blue sky and the sea in the background. As we descended the western side of the ridge, we passed a graffiti tag on a schist guardrail that read, “tourists go home,” in thin red spray paint. I remembered it from last year—apparently, the locals are okay with keeping it there, and ironically, I kinda was too. The unmistakable limestone ridge that sits between the beach town Saint Florent and Patrimonio finally popped through the fog. As we entered Patrimonio, we saw the old church tower and passed a red trim white village sign that read, Patrimonio, which had been blacked out with spray paint. Patrimoniu, the Corsican name for the village, was spelled out below, tag free—a common mark of the village signs on the island. Patrimonio may be the most geologically complex wine region on Corsica. The vineyards are a mix of limestone, schist and granite—three of the greatest bedrocks and soil types for wine growing—with a range of soil grains from clays, silts, sands and gravels. Vines are planted on soft sloping hills, down in former riverbeds and up on extremely steep hillsides. This massive variation makes for a broad patchwork of smells and tastes that usually combine under one name, Patrimonio, the first AOC (1968) established on the island. Patrimonio white is made exclusively from Vermintinu, the island’s top white wine. It’s a salty, minerally, spicy textured wine that smells like the sea. The lovely and complex rosés are a blend of Niellucciu (75% minimum to call it Patrimonio) with other red grapes as well as Vermintinu. Red Patrimonio is always led by the powerful and rustic Niellucciu, often blended with small quantities of Sciacarellu, a red grape that makes the most complex elegant reds on the island, and/or Grenache to bring more charm. Our first visit was with a domaine that still had problems with “stuck fermentations” on some 2017 reds. This can happen when there is too much sugar in the grapes, which results in high alcohol levels, and the yeast begins to die before all the sugar is converted to alcohol and CO2; there are many studies and opinions as to what the threshold of a wild/natural yeast is, but it seems that over potential alcohol levels of 14% the risk is high. With too much leftover sugar and no active yeast, other microbes start to eat the sugar, and one of the more famous “bugs” is the spoilage yeast, Brettanomyces, which smells like an old barnyard with all its less than desirable nuances. Volatile acidity, unintended premature oxidation and many more challenges can arise, potentially making the wine more unstable, less attractive and scarred by these early problems. The winemaker didn’t have much time so we went through only the most difficult wines, and none of the good ones. Some were ticking along, while others were dead in their tracks, exchanging freshness for early fatigue. This is one of the big challenges of 2017, and Manu was there to advise his vignerons on how to navigate these kinds of problems. Our second visit at Muriel Gaudicelli’s tiny biodynamic domaine was more convincing because their 2017s seemed to be going just fine. We tasted with her husband, Stéphane, who works with her every step of the way. The wines of the past were already very good, but it seems the newer vintages have taken a leap forward with Manu on board. The new results show a great balance of power and elegance, enough for them to be picked up by Kermit Lynch, a US importer who seems to nearly have a national monopoly on Corsica’s best. It was an enlightening tasting compared to the last year, which I partially attribute to my lack of experience with the wines of Corsica up to that point rather than simply the jump in quality. We stopped for a quick lunch in Saint-Florent, a charming village that sits on the Golfe de Saint Florent. I was again desperate for veggies and fish but the only thing that seemed worthwhile on the menu (at a reasonable price!) was the cannelloni stuffed with Brocciu, a local fresh cheese similar to ricotta. Turns out, it was the perfect kind of warm comfort food for this relentlessly cold and windy day. Our stop after lunch was with Lisandru Leccia. He took over his family’s estate, Domaine Leccia, in 2014 and has already made large strides in the right direction. We had an appointment at two o’clock and arrived early. Out in the vineyards we saw some guys operating a tractor, with one driving and two directing the plow blades behind it. Manu said that even though he’d never met Lisandru, he knows his father and that the bald guy out behind the tractor was likely him. As we started out to the vineyard, we were met by Lisandru’s aunt, Annette Leccia, a woman with an unforgettable smile and warm energy. Lisandru is a near carbon copy of his father, Yves. Both have sharp features, a shiny bald head and dark, thick eyebrows, a quiet demeanor and in Levi’s blue jeans. I met Yves Leccia in Paris two years ago while on tour with my friend, Nicolas Rébut, his sales agent there. We had dinner two nights in a row and I was immediately fond of him. Yves is gentle and hospitable, and meeting his son Lisandru was like meeting him again, when he was younger. Lisandru took us for a tour of his simply designed cellar and talked about the changes he wanted to make to the domaine, including more work with biodynamic principles, starting with the incorporation of higher level organic farming. The wines we tasted out of tank (2016, 2017) showed clear promise and the red was a lot more elegant than what I associate with Patrimonio, despite it being 100% Niellucciu grown on clay and limestone soils—three ingredients that can easily make more of a beast than a beauty. I have no doubt that Domaine Leccia will rise again and become one of the top domaines in Patrimonio. Lucky for us, Jerome Brenot, The Source’s resident Grenouille, sniffed that one out at the beginning of the domaine’s renaissance and we’re now importing his wines. Next Week: Of Corse, Part 3 of 9: Josée and the Alérian Plains

Saint-Aubin vineyard facing Chassagne-Montrachet (maybe En Remilly?) Containers are finally landing As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, wines from Hubert Lamy, Simon Bize, Guiberteau, Brendan Stater-West, and Justin Dutraive are here. Due to the unpredictable delays at the port, Berthaut-Gerbet’s 2018s will unexpectedly arrive in June ahead of many others that were ordered a month earlier! The quality of Amelie Berthaut’s wines continue their ascent, and 2018 will be no exception. As usual, quantities are especially limited on all the wines except the first three Fixin in her range: the Fixin appellation wine, and the two lieux-dits, Les Clos and Les Crais.  Also on the docket are a few Italian goodies. Poderi Colla’s 2017 Barolo Bussia Dardi le Rose is still the Barolo to beat for classically-styled wines with higher tones and a trim but substantial palate feel and structure. While in very close proximity, there is often some separation between Barolo and Barbaresco in overall style and level of success in each vintage. For any of you who already experienced Colla’s 2017 Barbaresco and its beautiful Nebbiolo perfume and quick-to-evolve tannins that everyone is ready for with this vintage, the 2017 Barolo is right in the same line. It was a warmer year, especially toward the end, which these days just means delicious earlier on with producers like Colla, whose sharp winemaker, Pietro Colla, appropriately adapts the program by working around any specific “recipe winemaking” agendas when the grapes are received. It also helps that his father, Tino, carries the family’s three hundred years of passed-down knowledge about how to manage the vineyards to achieve great results no matter what Mother Nature throws at them. And once again, the critics acknowledged the consistency of the work these days at the cellar and have rewarded them with complimentary reviews that continue to demonstrate Colla’s knack for consistency and reliability.  Riecine’s 2016 single site wines (Riecine di Riecine and La Gioia) are here too. It’s a vintage not to miss from the team at Riecine. Once Alessandro Campatelli was given the reins to do as he felt he needed, starting with the very clever move to bring back Carlo Ferrini, the enologist who put Riecine on the map in the 1970s and 80s. He also completely removed any new wood from the Riecine di Riecine wine and went all-in on concrete eggs for three years of cellar aging to preserve and also showcase all that beautiful fruit supported with nuances of savory characteristics. La Gioia is the bombastic wine in the range with unapologetic big red fruit and a sappy palate. The team has a lot of fun with their work and it shows in the wines.  Another real highlight is Chevreux-Bournazel (La Parcelle) is also finally reaching the shores of California. We’ve decided that we will call this Champagne “La Parcelle” because the pronunciation of the last names of Julien and Stéphanie are pretty difficult for most Americans. Rachel Kerswell, our National Sales Manager and New York Lead Salesperson, has the most experience with La Parcelle, outside of the many bottles I’ve been able to drink over the last two years here in Europe. My first taste was while I lived in the Amalfi Coast, in 2019. I asked Stéphanie to send some samples over, and there are few wines in the history of our company that were such obvious no-brainers to add to our list. Rachel has written a teaser on the wines, the allotment of which is extremely limited: 48 to 120 bottles of each of the three wines imported for the US. Champagne La Parcelle by Rachel Kerswell “Biodynamic rules seem simple for us. Working without chemical products, without mineral fertilization, without products in the wine and with life, with our animals, with the wild plants of our land, with cosmological influences …” – Stéphanie ChevreuxAmong the multitude of producers who have been looking beyond Champagne’s initial grower-producer movement—a movement of growers that began to break free of the big houses and to produce their own wines, typically focused on single plots—are two young and enthusiastic winemakers, Stéphanie Chevreux and Julien Bournazel, of Champagne La Parcelle. Since their debut vintage in 2012, they have been laser-focused on a more homeopathic approach, not only in the vineyards, but in the cellar too. Upon the acquisition of their first vineyard, a 0.4 ha parcel on the Côteau du Barzy,  Stéphanie and Julien immediately began the conversion to biodynamic practices, and to the naked eye it’s evident their land is happy and thriving. The cover crop is verdant with an array of wild thyme, carrots, tomatoes, fruit trees and all things life. The grapes are manually harvested during the cool, early morning hours, when it’s eleven to twelve degrees Celsius, before the short trip to their tiny cellar where they undergo a gentle press, followed by spontaneous fermentation in old tonneaux. Following the lunar calendar, battonage is performed regularly throughout the winter months to give the wines more “gras,” a welcome layer to balance the naturally high acidity. The wines are never racked (outside of the necessary moment just before bottling), filtered or fined, and SO2 levels are kept extraordinarily low (between 12-37 mg/L) and added just before bottling. 2017 La Parcelle, La Capella La Capella is a 0.38 hectare parcel on a very steep 45-degree slope planted predominantly to Pinot Meunier (90%). The vines are dense, at 5000-6000 per hectare, with small amounts of Chardonnay and Pinot Gris interplanted throughout. Deep layers of clay cover chalky subsoils at the bottom portion of the slope, while silex (chert), marne and limestone dominate the upper slope, where you can find just 10cm of topsoil in some sections. The vineyard is situated in a small meander that gets some of the most intense and direct winds within the valley, likely contributing to the natural salinity, yellow citrus and wild herbs, supported by a substantially vivacious and linear palate. The dosage is 4g/L. 2017 La Parcelle, Connigis Connigis is Stéphanie and Julien’s second and, so far, latest acquisition. Luckily, it has never been touched by chemical treatments and has been thriving since they bought it in 2016. The subsoil of this southwest facing, 0.28-hectare parcel on a 30-degree slope consists of hard limestone, chalk and marne, and has deeper clay topsoil throughout compared to its counterpart, La Capella. It is protected by natural borders and therefore benefits from more temperate conditions, resulting in a wine that shows more opulence and roundness upfront. After about thirty minutes open, the palate begins to show a fine sea-spray salinity that balances out ripe orchard fruit aromas, keeping this wine straight and delicate. It is composed entirely of Pinot Meunier and finished without any dosage. 2018 La Parcelle, Côteaux Champenois We have anxiously anticipated this wine from Stéphanie & Julien since we began importing their wines two years ago. Their production hasn’t grown since they acquired their second parcel, so it’s been a give-and-take to bring it to life. The give is 850 bottles of 2018 Côteaux Champenois, while the take is from Cuvée Connigis, which will now be even less available than it has been previously. After the must from Cuvée Connigis is racked into bottle for the secondary fermentation, a portion is left in tonneaux for an extra ten months. This extra time in wood brings just enough finesse to balance the natural electrical charge of this purely Pinot Meunier Côteaux Champenois, while maintaining impeccable balance. Pre-phylloxera vines in the Carremolino vineyard of César Fernández July Arrivals We are expecting a slew of Spanish wines to make their way in. From Galicia’s Ribeira Sacra, Fazenda Prádio should be the first in line in July with a microquantity of his top red wine from 2018 called Pacio. Wines from Adega Saíñas, another Ribeira Sacra producer from one of the colder zones, will follow shortly after Prádio. We’ll have a very small reload on some wines from Manuel Moldes, which evaporated in the first rounds in the bag with our sales team in California and New York. César Fernandez will hit too. César is the guy I’ve talked about in the previous newsletters who spent the last five years working with Comando G, in Gredos. He’s definitely one to watch, but the quantities of his wines from Ribera del Duero are minuscule at twenty cases for the entire country. Fazenda Pradio vineyard in Chantada, a colder sub zone of Ribeira Sacra Arnaud Lambert’s wines will be resupplied in July. Arnaud is killing it with his entire range and it’s honestly hard to keep them in good supply. First in will be the new vintages of Saumur wines from Clos de Midi and Clos Mazurique, and the Saumur-Champigny Les Terres Rouges. He continues to set the bar for price/quality/emotion with all three of these, and we have some of the cru wines arriving in the following months. In the past it was an all-we-could-buy supply, but he’s become more famous now (I guess we shouldn’t have done so much promoting!), so while we still get a great allocation because we were the first to bring his Brézé wines into the US, the world has caught on and the demand is very high. Plan for these when they arrive, or you might be waiting another year for the next vintage to hit. Anne Morey, of Domaine Pierre Morey Pierre Morey’s 2018s will also arrive, and the white Burgundies that I’ve had so far from this vintage have been a great surprise. We often think about the relationship between red and white in the same year, but in 2018 the whites fared very well and not too far off the mark from the previous year. I recently spoke with Paul Wasserman about it and he shared that many vignerons have vacillated between different theories about why the wines are so fresh compared to the reds, like the influence of the high dry extract and a year that somehow favored tartaric acid much more than the usual proportion of malic, which made for very little acidity loss during malolactic fermentation. Also, the higher yield slowed ripening enough and may have created a better balance of phenolic maturity with fresher acidity, and, finally, as I’ve been mentioning for a few years now, the vines may be somewhat adapting to climate change. Lifelong Road Warrior I hit the road again for a long trip through Spain, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany the day after my birthday on May 25th and will return home to Portugal just before the third week of July. I’m going solo since my wife decided she doesn’t like these lengthy marathons anymore, which means lots of windshield time with my own thoughts, on my own timeline, things I’m rarely afforded. I think better when I’m walking or driving and often wish I could be writing at the same time! I’m surprised that I can even put together coherent stories (which is still debatable, anyway) having to sit still for hours at a time. I’ve always needed to keep moving, which made going to school six or seven hours a day and two hours of church every weekend hard for me. Which might be part of why I didn’t do any more of that stuff after I turned eighteen… As elementary school kids, my two older brothers and my sister, Victoria, the youngest (who’s worked with us at The Source since the beginning), and I would find ourselves in the back of mom’s early 80s maroon Chevy station wagon (a color choice of which I’ll never understand) driving from Troy, Montana, an extremely podunk, thousand-person mining town in the northwest of the state, down through South Dakota and on to Minneapolis where we’d sometimes stop to see our uncle, Tom. Our terminus was in Eagle Grove, Iowa, for weeks with our other, much older half-brothers, and the rest of mom’s side of the family. It was on one of these trips when we stopped once for the view at Mount Rushmore and the Badlands National Park that I discovered my interest in rocks.  I always saved my money, which I mostly earned by sweeping the floor of my dad’s carpenter shop, for $0.10 an hour; I was clearly cheap labor, and seemingly not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I spent every dime on little boxes with rocks glued to pieces of thick white paper, their names written below them, and every one of these were precious to me. They were my own personal little treasures that no one else seemed to care about. I especially loved fool’s gold, known in the science world as pyrite. It’s a beautiful mineral, worth nearly nothing, and more attractive to me than gold because I liked its angles and shine. Maybe I was a fool. Or maybe I just saw the value in things that others didn’t.  We passed through the Dakotas and what at the time seemed to be a strange desert landscape to kids who grew up in thickly forested, mountainous Montana countryside with wildlife literally at the front door, and then on into the endless cornfields of Iowa and what the folk musician Greg Brown referred to as “butterfly hills” in his live version of Canned Goods, where the car would go weightless for a second like a boat hitting a big wave while we all screamed and laughed and sometimes got nauseous. They seemed to go on forever and we eventually calmed down as they lost their appeal. I once played that Greg Brown song for my mom and by the end of it she had tears streaming down her face; his stories about Iowa in the days after the last Great War really hit her hard. These eidetic on-the-road memories are also fleshed out by a playlist that included Neil Diamond, Pavarotti, Hooked on Classics Part 1 (and 2 and 3 and…), Julio Iglesias, and Willie Nelson, especially Willie’s song, On The Road Again. Also, too many Hall and Oates songs to recount amid a blur of DTV—Disney’s 80s cartoon version of MTV for kids. My mom was a true romantic, and I’ve come to understand that more as I’ve gotten older. The music on those trips is a unique mix for me, and when I spend time with my wife’s mother, Nancy, down in Santiago Chile, we sometimes get a little sauced together late at night and drift back with Spotify to those deeply nostalgic musical moments. Sometimes I have to fight hard to keep the alcohol-induced tears from welling up, and I think she does too. They were such innocent times when we were kids, when our parents were the age I am now, and I’m sure they’re part of the reason why I’m always ready for the next trip. I like to relive those moments in the back of that ugly station wagon with the backseat always down so we could fall asleep whenever we got tired. We had to play games all day to keep busy so mom could stay focused on these long drives of death. At nighttime on the road, out in the pitch-black countryside with only the car’s headlights and the stars above to light the sky, we would rub our heads against pillows to create static electricity to watch the sparks fly in the dark. My brothers are pretty far along in balding, and I’m not terribly far behind them. Maybe we unknowingly created electrolysis with those pillows…  I don’t know how mom did it, but she’d sometimes drive 1,400 miles during endless summer days with these four unruly kids in the back, only stopping so we could go to the bathroom; other than Rushmore, there was hardly a stop along the route. Sometimes mom wouldn’t even make pit stops, she’d just pass back a cup for us to go in… Hungry? Drink a glass of water… She was pretty hardcore on trips, and some who’ve travelled with me on the wine route have accused me of being somewhere close to that—except that I have a lot more fun along the way and don’t hand over cups instead of a proper bathroom break. Sometime before mom passed away in 2017, while Andrea and I were on our honeymoon in Spain (there’s no good time for your mother to die), she made her final, long journey from California to Iowa in the middle of a winter storm, at age 78, alone. Afterward, she casually told us how she had been blown off the highway by a semi and into a ditch during a blizzard. It was freezing and a complete whiteout. She couldn’t see anything. Thankfully she was close to Iowa, so my oldest brother, Steve, went to get her out. Mom always excelled against unfavorable odds; I suppose having six kids in the world can be useful sometimes. Victoria was furious with her and made her promise not to do any more long trips alone. I don’t think she agreed to it, but it very soon lost its relevance, anyway.  About the time this newsletter is published I will have just arrived in Barbaresco to stay at Dave Fletcher’s rail station turned winery. I will have already passed from Portugal across Spain’s Ribera del Duero and Rioja, up into western France’s Madiran for a visit with a very interesting producer (more on that later if everything works out!), across to the Langedoc to visit Julien and Delphine from Domaine du Pas de l’Escalette (always a mouthful to say that name), and a long overdue visit to my friends, Pierre and Sonya, and their massive Provençal country home outside of Avignon, known to the locals as Mas la Fabrique. Surely, I will have eaten loads of white asparagus during my two-day respite there before heading north to say hello to the Roussets, in Crozes-Hermitage.  After La Fabrique and Rousset, I’ll have cut across the Alps, through the Mont Blanc tunnel, popping out into Italy’s Valle d’Aosta and over to Northern Piedmont to visit with our group of four producers there: Monti Perini, Zambolin, Ioppa, and the new one, Davide Carlone. My old friends Daryl and John, Willie, Luciano, and Greg will surely have made many appearances through my Spotify feed before reaching Alba. (I usually save Julio and Neil for those nights with Andrea and my mother-in-law.) You’ll get the rest of the trip’s scoop over the next two months when it starts to get even more interesting as I make my way through Lombardian foothills, Alto Adige, Austria, Germany and back through Champagne, Chablis, Cote d’Or, and finally Beaujolais to conclude my French leg. In the meantime, I’ll post a few things on our Source Instagram @thesourceimports, as well as my own, @mindfullofwine, about things I’m learning along my trip. Until then, drink well! You never know what your last glass will be until after you’ve had it. Better make them all good ones.■

The Source is the first importing company (we know of) and perhaps the only one to have a staff geologist, Brenna Quigley. And now she’s off to Burgundy to put in a month of scratching and digging and surveying (or whatever geologists do) with the Wasserman family, who are bringing her over to get a worm’s eye view of some of the great vineyards of the Côte d'Or. On the eve of her departure for what will hopefully be a great month and a big step in her own career evolution, I conducted a little interview with Brenna to check in. With a newly minted masters in geology from UCSB, Brenna joined the team last year mainly because founder Ted Vance has an insatiable interest in geology and believes at least some of the answers to wine’s mysteries are contained in the rocks and soils in which vineyards and regions are rooted. Brenna had a budding interest in wine herself, so at the beginning she and Ted traded lessons in wine and geology. There’s a small but perhaps growing tradition of geologists working in wine. Some notable books have come out of this dynamic: Land and Wine by Charles Frankel; The Winemaker's Dance: Exploring Terroir in the Napa Valley by Jonathan Swinchatt; Terroir by James Wilson; and Great Wine Terroirs by Jacques Fanet. Likewise, I remember the estimable “Dr. Dirt” Daniel Roberts, whom I met years ago with the late Jess Jackson, and Françoise Vannier, who is currently working for many vintners in Burgundy, helping them understand their vineyards. While the ability of geology to explain anything about wine is still in its infancy, the attraction of people like Brenna to the field can only help. Lots more of the wonderful work she and Ted have been doing on geology and French wine will be posted on the Source website in coming weeks and months, so stay tuned!  — Jordan Mackay JM: So you’re going back to Burgundy! For someone who’d never been before last year, it’s now like your second home. What’s the agenda for this trip? BQ: We’re going to do what we’ve done in the past on my trips with Ted, where we go on vineyard walks, explore the land, and talk to winemakers, but this time the goal will be to get a more in-depth geological impression of each individual vineyard. We will combine all of the information we can get from geological, soil, and vineyard maps with my observations, and with the observations of the vigneron. The final product will be a short paragraph on each vineyard summarizing all of the components that we feel contribute to its unique terroir. JM: You come from a geological family, right? Your dad is a geologist with a company that carries out geological explorations for various industries and your brothers and sisters are geologists too, right? BQ: Yes, but my oldest brother is an artist. JM: So how does your family feel about your going off into the barely existent field of geology and wine? BQ: They’re all very jealous. [Laughs.] JM: They’re not dubious about it? They don’t think this is geology light? BQ: They’re definitely not dubious. I guess when I talk with other geologists, I’m always careful not to overstate what the field of geology can offer wine. But for the most part they seem just as excited about there being a connection between place and wine as the wine experts I deal with. I actually even got that in grad school: On weekends a group of us would go wine tasting, and you’d have field geologists, geochemists, and geomorphologists all tasting wine together, and we would hypothesize about what geologic components might exist. JM: At that time, I’m sure you had no idea you would be able to dip your foot into this professionally. BQ: No, it was something we all talked about, like “wouldn’t that be great? There has to be a way to understand these things more.” And that’s before I even knew what the word terroir was. I didn’t even know that side of things existed. JM: It’s interesting, though, because you had the intuition. As you so eloquently described at The Source geology seminars you and Ted put on, geology impacts everything in one way or another. So why wouldn’t it impact wine? You could see that instinctively as a student. BQ: Yes. I just gave a little talk to a geology class at UCSB the last time I was in Santa Barbara, and the way I presented it to them was to say that it’s natural to be a bit skeptical the first time you mention terroir or say a wine is reflecting a specific place. I like to introduce the idea by starting with the biggest, broadest concepts and then keep zooming in. For instance, you wouldn’t grow bananas in Minnesota. If you tried, you might find it rather difficult, and if you were able to produce some bananas, they probably wouldn't taste very good. So even if this sounds obvious, it’s a starting point to then look at all of the factors that make it obvious. JM: And as soon as you project that forward, you can say, well, if you can contrast Ecuador with Minnesota, why not look at this hillside versus that one for grapes? So, sure the logic follows. On the one hand, we know there’s a great and important connection between geology and wine. On the other hand, we also know the current limits of geology’s ability to explain what’s in the glass. Will this project further that or are you still basically working to describe vineyards geologically? BQ: I think the latter. For me, observing and beginning to understand the vineyards is still the most valuable thing I can do, for now. I believe it’s a great step because the vignerons have been working in these vineyards and making the wines for years, or even decades. They understand the place and the wines more intimately than I ever could in just a couple of days. Gathering observations from these people is an excellent source of raw data. It’s getting a very diverse set of opinions and experiences that have been collected and honed over years and years. So before I’d want to do anything more directly scientific, I’d first want to do exactly this—understand the current state of thinking and what ideas stick out as the most successful. The next step will be to start testing these ideas. JM: If you could push forward the relationships between natural sciences and wine growing, making, and drinking, what breakthroughs would you like to see? And how could you imagine your job in the future? BQ: One thing I would like to see is a push towards being a little more systematic in the way we think and test these potential processes. This includes systematically testing the physical and chemical components of terroir—like, soil structure and chemistry, topography and hillslope aspect, to see how they are working together, and how small changes may influence the wine. But I would also like to extend this thought process to the tasting side of things as well. I think that talented tasters could provide a whole new dataset on the impressions that different terroirs can impart to a wine, but for this to be significant we would have to make it a little more structured, and a little more anonymous. JM: You mean rather than just sitting in a room and nodding their heads in agreement at each tasting note before calling it a day and finishing the bottle? Yes, I get that. So things like oil industry geologists or mineral geologists have existed for generations. But until just a few years ago the idea of a wine geologist was a fairly new concept and there are only a handful of people in the world that do this. But all of a sudden it’s starting to sound like a viable profession. You’re only 26 years old. Do you feel you’re starting down the path of a real profession and one that’s desirable to you? BQ: Absolutely. I can't imagine being more passionate or excited about a subject than I have in the past few years with The Source, and I'm excited to see how the work itself will mature. I would love to one day contribute to the way we think about terroir, and maybe one day make some progress in understanding the mechanisms that control it. JM: So you leave in a couple of days for, what is it, a month in Burgundy with the Wasserman family? BQ: That’s right. It will be great to have more time to focus on one specific region. Other trips have allotted only a few days in a number of different places. I’ve seen a lot and gotten to understand the big geologic picture of several wine regions. But my thought when I first visited Burgundy was, this is going to take way longer than a week! It’s very complicated. There’s a bigger story to tell, and we were just scratching the surface. This will be a deeper dive. JM - Well, Burgundy is still a massive mystery to those of us who’ve been there many times. I can’t wait to see what comes out of your work and I look forward to reading more of it at the Source and the Wasserman sites. The more knowledge, the better for everyone. We’re all excited to see what sort of things you may be able to add to the field, whether this year or over what we hope will be a long and fruitful career. Bon Voyage!

After four solid days of wine tasting, great hospitality and excesses (mostly with the Collets) in Chablis, we are off to the Loire Valley tomorrow to visit François Crochet and a new producer in Pouilly-Fumé. Chablis was as great as usual and the group we visited is optimistic about 2018. Why optimistic so early? Because it’s still cold! The last two years the vegetative cycle began too early with too much heat at this time, which left the tiny new baby shoots open for that sneaky little Jack Frost. This year the buds haven’t broken out yet because a cold front came in (just before we arrived to France, of course) after a couple weeks of hot weather in early spring. Everything is still tucked inside the vine and safe from this early spring frost. Fingers crossed for a classic vintage with some quantity! My takeaway from our visit is that our guys here are getting better at managing the heat, like most in France. I can’t speak for all in Chablis but our two producers, Romain Collet and Sebastien Christophe, have found ways to not get caught with their pants down. They’ve accepted the inevitable and are now planning for it with adjustments in the vineyard. Even in warmer vintages (2015, 2016) their wines maintain a strong sense of place with freshness that’s not burnt out by the sun. 2015 is good drinking—not especially for those of us who like a little punishment with our Chablis—and 2016 is a cusp vintage with a lot more fresh energy than we expected. 2017 seems promising as well, although we only tasted a few examples that were being bottled at Sebastien’s place when we visited. All of our producers are up to good things, but none more thrilling than what’s happening chez Thierry Richoux. He already makes fantastic wines but apparently he’s not satisfied yet. Now at age 57, he’s knee deep in experiments with his sons, Gabin Richoux and Félix Richoux. A few years ago, he planted a high density Pinot Noir parcel with 23,000 vines by hectare, as shown above. He only has a tiny quantity planted, but it was enough to make a single barrel in 2015. None in 2016 or 2017 survived Jack Frost and the erratic hailstorms. We had the privilege of tasting the 3rd bottle he’s opened since it was bottled. It is one of the single most fascinating young wines I can remember tasting, and J.D agreed. It’s both abstract and noble, and smells and tastes like everything grown in its soil: fresh mushrooms for days, wild grasses, aromatic herbs, tiny little purple flowers, dirt, minerals, crushed rocks, bramble and wafts of cherry from the trees that grow just across the way. I know I won’t be able to buy it (so don’t even ask me for any ;) but my request was that every year when I visit I want to drink a bottle with them. He agreed to it and I'll never let him forget that! Right, Thierry?? His 2014s are classic Richoux: structured, taut, aromatic and pure Irancy Pinot Noir. His village Irancy just hit the water now along with 2013 Veaupessiot (which I’ve been waiting impatiently for!). His 2015s are, well…, stupidly good. One could easily pound them by the pitcher but it’s a vintage for the ages—monumental and epic written all over this one. Wait, there’s one more! In 2012, Thierry made a special wine for his grandmother. It’s from Irancy, but it ain’t like any Irancy I’ve tasted. It’s a shocker and will put top—and I am not blowing this out of proportion—Côte d’Or wines from the same vintage to the test. It’s vinified and raised more like a wine from the Côte d’Or and won’t be released for another couple of years (cause that’s how our boy rolls sometimes) but when it is, you MUST find as much as you can get. What a pitch, eh!? Thierry Richoux has gone mad in the best sort of way and there is not a more exciting producer within our portfolio.

Ancient Roman/Medieval bridge (ponte) of Ponte de Lima, Portugal (March 2022). April-May Arrivals We all share the belt-tightening sensation of tax season, or at least most of us do, and I’ve made it a habit to be on the wine trail during this time to avoid the stress as much as possible. Without my team back home, spearheaded by my sister, Victoria, my escapades around European wine country would be impossible, and taxes usually make April our slowest sales month. We don’t expect that to change, so we ordered somewhat less a few months ago in hopes that we would time things just right (an almost impossible task with these months-long delays) in order to have only a few gems to show around while budgets are reduced. Somehow, the timing worked out, so we don’t have much arriving, though I’m very excited about the wines that are coming into port. France Anthony Thevenet, Beaujolais While I was tasting through Anthony’s range in his cellar last summer, I was caught off guard by how little bottled wine there was inside his new stockage, next to his new house in Villié-Morgon. Despite the pandemic, global interest in Anthony’s wines increased immensely in recent years and his cellar was nearly cleared out. There wasn’t a line out the door waiting to put in their reservation, or the phone ringing with others that would squeeze me out, but I couldn’t get through our tasting fast enough to jump into securing a sizable allocation on the spot. Some wines, like the 2020 Côte du Py, weren’t even released yet, but I pushed to get on the boat before it sailed. This resulted in us acquiring four different vintages at once, a good opportunity to explore some insight on his development, from four warm seasons in a row that experienced different circumstances. I’m not surprised by the increased demand for his wines. From our first meeting and tasting, his imminent rise to Beaujolais stardom seemed obvious. Anthony Thevenet started out on the right track; prior to his first vintage, he worked a few years in the cellar of the natural wine luminaries, George Descombes, followed by a half-decade in the cellar with Jean Foillard. While still working with Foillard, he made his first domaine wines from the 2013 vintage, a lovely year for those of us who adore fresh, taut and bright Beaujolais wines. Anthony’s gorgeously subtle 2013 Morgon Vieilles Vignes and the 2014 that followed were a fabulous omen for the future of this kid crazy about motorbike sports and wine. The 2014s seemed to be a shoo-in for everyone in Beaujolais due to its beautiful balance and clean and pure perfumes. Anthony Thevenet Thevenet’s third year, 2015 was filled with behemoth wines and this harvest tested the efficacy of picking teams to get the fruit off the vines as fast as possible. The fundamental challenge of logistics remains the difference in some years from good to very good, to great, even with top growers. Often, nuances that stick out from a wine today, like desiccation of fruit, discreet green notes, austere tannins, or a lack of acidity are the result of challenging logistics during grape harvesting by hand and the need to collect as much as possible before the problems are really exacerbated. When the grapes are ready to go, you better be ready with a committed team that knows what to do! 2015 was a big year for everybody, but for some, it was a banner year. With a higher-than-expected alcohol and ripeness level, the grapes inexplicably maintained balanced acidity with a good mixture of red and black fruits. While roaming the streets of Los Angeles, before the release of his 2015s, I pressed Jean-Louis Dutraive about his honest opinion on the vintage, and, to my surprise, he said that 2015 may be the greatest year of his lifetime. (If you’ve not spent time in Beaujolais with the growers, at least in Morgon and Fleurie, you should know that these guys like to drink, and many, even the top growers, often don’t seem to concern themselves about alcohol content as much as they do about balance in their wines with whatever the season dicatates.) Overall, in Beaujolais, it’s all about what you, the consumer, wants from the wine. Some vintages can produce monsters, while others are dainty and flutter. I have not yet tasted better 2015s than Anthony Thevenet’s, but I stopped tasting many of them once the 2016s came around. 2016 was hit or miss, and the hits were solid ones, at least for me. Then it was back to the heat with 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, with varying differences between these hotter years. The Northern Rhône, being just across Lyon and toward the south, shares great similarity to these years, as do the lands of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir further north. With climate change, the hot years, especially in continental Europe, are predictably similar to each other, as are some of the cold years, like 2021, where mildew pressure across the west of the continent was insanely high and had a severe effect on yields and quality potential. Today, the difference between vintages teeters on a knife’s edge between too much and too little of what’s desired. With extreme changes in very short periods, wines can easily overshoot their mark in just a matter of a day or two. Quick Thevenet cellar notes: All the wines are vinified with a carbonic maceration without any sulfur added until just before bottling, and they ferment at temperatures no lower than 16°C. There are no added yeasts, and the fermentations are done in a gentle, infusion style, and can last between eight to thirty days, with the latter more rare and only employed for the top wines. There is no fining or filtration, and the total sulfite levels are under 15mg/L (15ppm). The purity and clarity of each wine’s terroir expression under Anthony’s supervision due to very spare sulfite inclusion are a testament to his laser-sharp attention to detail and instinct in the cellar. The 2020 Beaujolais-Villages presents an opportunity to see the merit of Thevenet’s lovely Beaujolais range from a year that is often (at least with our producers there) more expressive of red than black fruits. 2020 is a great followup to 2019 in that it was similarly warm, but the wines are more delicate and less decadent and full than the 2019s. There’s everything to love about the 2019s too. They are full-figured and strong in concentrated red fruits compared to the previous years, 2018 and 2017, which both show greater sweet licorice and slight balsamic notes accompanying the mix of red and dark fruits. This Beaujolais is a small parcel grown just outside of Morgon with vines of an average age of fifty years, grown on granite sands and raised in concrete tanks, leading to lifted aromas, a gentle palate, and bright fruit. In the next tier are the Morgon and Chénas appellation wines. Both wines are made the same in the cellar with 5-8 months (depending on the vintage) in 60hl concrete vats without sulfur until bottling. They also sit lower in the slope areas, which makes for a fun side-by-side comparison of these terroirs. Anthony and his father rent the Chénas vines and do all the work themselves. The slope is soft and slightly tilted toward the north, but still relatively flat. The soils are a combination of completely decomposed granite with different soil grains that either decomposed in place or are alluvial depositions. There are few rocks in this vineyard planted in 1970, except for some large, rounded ones. An interesting consideration between his Chénas and Morgon is that the Chénas granite is much pinker than the grayer granites of his Morgon vineyards. Thevenet’s Morgon appellation wine comes mostly from Douby, a zone on the north side of Morgon between the famous Côte du Py hill and Fleurie, and the lieu-dit, Courcelette, which is completely composed of 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, but generally the vineyards are sandy, leading to wines of elegance and subtlety, also endowed with great length and complexity from their very old vines. The average vine age here is around sixty years, not too shabby for an appellation wine! Jumping into the upper tier are the domaine’s two flagship wines, the 2020 Morgon Vieilles Vignes and 2020 Morgon Côte du Py “Cuvée Julia”. The general vinification method for these two is the same as the others but often for a longer maceration time, and the cellar aging is also different. Both are aged for seven months in old, 600-liter barrels, but sometimes 225-liter when the crop is too low to fill a full 600-liter barrel. The differences between these two wines are a result of their terroirs. Both have very old vines, with the Morgon Vieille Vignes being from 90–100+ years old, grown on granite bedrock with gravel and sand topsoil derived from the bedrock, while the Morgon Côte du Py “Cuvée Julia” (named after his daughter) is from 90-year-old vines grown on extremely hard metamorphic rock with a spare topsoil also derived from its underlying bedrock. 2020 is a special year for these wines where they return to a brighter style with a little more tension than the 2019s. Of special note is that the 2020 Côte du Py is the last vintage before these old vines were pulled out in preparation for a new plantation. It’s unfortunate, but the vineyard was difficult to farm and needed to be replanted because it was not tended to very well prior to Anthony taking over and converting it to organic farming. Côte du Py rock collection atop hard bedrock In 2015, I asked Anthony if he would consider making a wine exclusively from the ancient vines in his Douby property just above the D68 on the north side of the hill across from the fields surrounding his family’s home and old cellar. With wide eyes he said, “why not?” And then he did it! The vines that make up the 2017 & 2018 Morgon Vieilles Vignes Centenaire date back to the American Civil War! What an opportunity to taste vines with such history! Like the Morgon VV and the Côte du Py, it’s also aged in 600-liter demi-muids, but for around ten months. It’s spectacular wine and offers a different view into how vine age can truly influence a wine’s overall character. Vinous wine critic, Neal Martin, says about the 2017 version that it “would give many a Burgundy Grand Cru a run for its money.” And there’s only one way for you to find out if this is true, and while the 2018 was not reviewed, it is just as good as the 2017. As one would expect, supply on these two legends-in-the making is very limited. Ancient Gamay vine planted in Morgon at the time of the American Civil War Domaine la Roubine, Southern Rhône There are few southern French wines that have come in and then blown out of our inventory as quickly as those of Domaine la Roubine. Located in the famous wine village, Gigondas, Eric Ughetto and his wife, Sophie, moved back to their family’s region in 1990, where they took over the family domaine and converted it to organic farming. Roubine’s style of wine represents the best of the rustic-but-clean vein of European wines. Each are fermented with their whole clusters (already quite different from most growers working with these varieties) for at least a month on the Séguret and Sablet, and for a month and a half for the Vacqueras and Gigondas, an even greater step into the rustic realm! One of the many interesting elements of their wines is that they’re exquisitely crafted, despite all opportunities for them to get too loose in their framework, with higher volatility among other possibilities with this kind of extended fermentation. The pH-increasing whole cluster inclusion with Grenache, a grape with an affinity for oxidation and higher alcohol levels, can often result in brettanomyces, a wine fault (at least in my book) that seems to be almost forgotten in the face of the new rodent in the cellar, mousiness, which is most often found in wines left to their own devices following the natural wine movement dogma. Starting with the entry-level reds are the 2020 Sablet and 2020 Séguret, two very serious wines at not-so-serious prices raised only in concrete tanks. Sablet, named for its vineyard’s dominant soil type, sand, is a beautiful and quiet satellite village of Gigondas. Perched up on a small hill, its sands were principally brought in by the Ouvèze River coming from further east, through the hillsides at the base of Mont Ventoux. Roubine’s parcel is up off the river valley floor, tucked into a forested hillside on terraces, giving it its own unique personality, and, I would add, its own deeper complexity with its likely deeper connection to bedrock below instead of an endlessly deep sand bed. The grape blend is 70% Grenache, 25% Syrah and 5% Cinsault. The main difference between the neighboring vineyards, Sablet and Séguret, is that the latter has a greater mix of calcareous clays with the same sands of Sablet, resulting in a topsoil that has a yellowish hue and is notably chunkier and whiter with than Sablet’s canvas-brown sands. Both wines are a true bargain for those looking for a middleweight that punches a few classes up, and one would be hard-pressed to find wines from these appellations of such note as these. The Séguret appellation as a whole seems to have a greater possibility for more significant wines, but will likely always be overshadowed by Gigondas and Vacqueras, two powerhouses of the Southern Rhône Valley that can often match the complexity of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, without overpowering it. Roubine’s Séguret is composed of 70% Grenache and 30% Mourvedre, an alliance that imparts a slightly more exotic expression compared to Séguret’s more classically-nuanced savory characteristics. Indeed, both wines are rooted in the savory world, which makes them and Roubine’s upper division wines great for nights of grilling salty meats. Eric Ughetto et moi The 2020 Vacqueyras and 2020 Gigondas are, as mentioned, vinified in the same way in the cellar and aged in a mix of mostly neutral medium-sized oak barrels, which leaves their terroirs to do all the talking. Vacqueyras has a little diversity in topography with some vineyards perched on higher terraces on the western side of the Dentelles de Montmirail, with a gradual slope downward in a series of undulating alluvial terraces of reduced steepness. The Vacqueyras, like the Gigondas, is a mixture of terraced vineyards upslope and some in the middle terraces, and is usually the more rounded of the two wines. Often it can steal the show between the two because of its more upfront appeal, while the Gigondas showcases a more serious profile; it really depends on what you want from the moment! The Gigondas comes from two different areas, one up into the mountains on white and gray terraces of limestone, quartzite, clay and sand, and the other on a flatter terrace of iron-rich red clay mixed with galets roulés, the rounded quartzite river rocks most famously associated with Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and which is otherwise ubiquitous in the Southern Rhône Valley. Roubine's terraced Gigondas vineyards The result of this combination is a Gigondas of immense depth with all the things we hope for out of this historic appellation filled with many good vinous addresses. It has the freshness of the vineyard high up into the dentelles surrounded by all the herbs of Provence, wild lavender, thyme, rosemary, and many more wild, aromatic shrubs and trees, along with the ferrous-rich palate seemingly imparted by its red soils from the parcel further down above the river plains. If Southern Rhône wines are a part of your annual interests, don’t miss these. They’re truly a bargain for their pedigree and craft, and have their own unique expression from Eric’s choices in the cellar. Germany Weingut Wechsler, Rheinhessen More Riesling Trocken from Wechsler is hitting our shores, as well as the Scheurebe trocken wine (a big hit despite a historic lack of interest in this unique grape variety, though we’re not surprised at all), and more of the Scheurebe Fehlfarbe, one of Katharina’s orange wine experiments that has gone very right! The new wines for the market start with Wechsler’s 2020 Westhofener Riesling Trocken, a wine made entirely from her many parcels in Kirchspiel and mostly from the younger vines. This wine bridges the gap between the Estate Trocken and the Kirchspiel Trocken. It’s friendlier straight out of the gates than the Kirchspiel Trocken and a bit less intense than the Estate Trocken. Like others in this region who have a “Village Trocken” wine, it’s worthy of attention and may be the better for larger parties of people rather than Katharina’s bigger hitters, like the next wine, which simply need more time after opening to show everything they have. There’s more to be discovered about the setting of Kirchspiel in the next paragraph! We have waited quite a while for the Katharina’s 2019 Kirchspiel Riesling Trocken to arrive. It’s a non-Grosses Gewächs (GG) classified though Grosses Gewächs-level wine from one of Germany’s most talented dry Riesling sites. For those familiar with the range of Klaus-Peter Keller’s GG wines, his Kirchspiel is often the most upfront and immediate compared to the rest of his big hitters. The same is true here with Katharina’s two top trocken wines, Kirchspiel and Morstein. Kirchspiel is a great vineyard and screams its grand cru quality (Grosses Gewächs) upon opening. Shaped like an amphitheater facing toward the Rhine River, which is roughly five miles away by air, its southeastern exposure has an average of around a thirty percent gradient, with bedrock and topsoil composed of clay marls, limestone, and loess. It’s a warmer site than Morstein because of its lower altitude (between 140m-180m), and the small topographical feature of the curved hillside helps shelter the vines from the cold westerly winds. Katharina has three different parcels in this large vineyard with reasonably good separation, giving the resulting wines a broader range of complexity and greater balance. After opening, the wine lasts for days with a constant evolution that develops more and more layers over a three-day period (if you can let it last that long). It seems relentless, the way a great Riesling should be! We will never have enough of this wine to satisfy everyone, but we will do our best. There are also micro quantities of the single-crus, Benn and Morstein, but both are in extremely limited quantities. However, next year we will have more of those two wines to satisfy the need! Ribeira Sacra subregions: Amandi in the foreground and Ribeiras do Sil across the river (once covered in vines!) Travel Journal Mindful Meandering in Northwest Iberia Most growers in the northern hemisphere have finished pruning by now. There are exceptions, of course, with those who test the limits of late pruning before bud break in hopes of a later start to the vegetative cycle. This increases the chance of avoiding frost while potentially extending the vine’s growing season to pass the peak of summer heat and into a gradual cooling of autumnal weather—sometimes just two or three extra days can make a difference of a degree or two of alcohol, and slightly more balanced phenolics. Late pruning is mostly a theoretical practice and doesn’t always yield the desired result at the end of the year, but it seems to delay the start of the season. Here, in Northern Portugal and Galicia, just up the freeway from us, bud break began weeks ago with some varieties. So far, it’s a strange year (what’s new?) with a big scare early on due to extremely dry weather in Europe. At the beginning of last month, I spoke with Tino Colla over in Piedmont’s Langhe wine regions (Barolo, Barbaresco, etc). He said that it was still bone dry over there and the topsoil in their vineyards was simply mounds of fine dust, which will lead to a lot of erosion when the rains finally arrive. In northern Portugal and Galicia, some reservoirs have nearly dried up, an unusual and almost unimaginable occurrence in a place that usually has a lot of annual rainfall. Just as the panic set in across Green Spain and Northern Portugal, a deluge arrived and reset the course of the season, ameliorating the stress levels of the local growers, farmers and ranchers. They still need more water, but it appears to be on the way. It’s strange to think that where we are in the north of Portugal will probably closely resemble the climate of Lisbon in thirty years, or sooner. In February, my wife and I followed the Lima River from Spain (Río Limia, in Galego) back home to Ponte de Lima, passing through the elevated countryside just before the start of the Peneda-Gerês National Park. Things began to take on an eerie apocalyptic feel. The sky was hazy and gray with the platinum shine of an indistinguishable sun straining to break through the thick web-like covering of clouds. We stopped for a little roadside break above a drying reservoir and in the distance saw that Aceredo, a Galician ghost village that had been submerged under a reservoir that was dammed up in 1992, had reappeared. (Two days later, there was a big story about it on the news.) Thanks to the recent drought, the entirety of the ruins emerged from the depths of the then shallow body of water, with recently dried crusts of concentric rings encircling it. Along the steep edges of the reservoir and on terraces were what looked like gnarled tombstones on hillsides but were actually vine stubs whose last harvest was three decades ago. Of course, being the sentimental wine lover that I am, my first thoughts were how tragic it was that I would never know the taste of the wines those vines produced, that the history and the future of the terroir is gone forever. Aceredo; Photo credit to Miguel Vidal/Reuters It’s around mid March as I write this in a hotel room in the center of Ourense, a small, former Roman settlement, famous for its thermal hot springs, which separate the Galician wine regions, Ribeira Sacra and Ribeiro. I was taking a moment after having just passed through Ribeira Sacra’s Sil River gorge with one of our producers, Pablo Soldavini, the winemaker at Saíñas, a bodega in Ribeira Sacra’s Riberas do Miño subregion. The forecast for the day of our journey was purely clear blue skies with a ten-degree (F) spike from the day before, but what we all woke up to was an air thick and dirty brown with an orange tint. It was a dust storm brought in all the way from the Sahara Desert that blew fiercely into southern Iberia and other parts of Europe, dropping orange/brown rain filled with clay particles in some parts of Spain. I was skeptical as Pablo explained the reason for the truly eerie and strange sky, until I checked a few news sources and they confirmed the tale. After a slightly harrowing start, the road became bumpy but wide enough and far enough from the edge for me to loosen what had up until that point been a Kung Fu grip on the handle above my window. We were on the south hill, opposite the picturesque cliff-side vineyards in Amandi, Ribeira Sacra’s most famous subregion, with the Sil River (really a reservoir now because of the dam further downstream) sitting still below us. On the principal aspects of the south side are north, west and east faces, all officially part of Ribeira Sacra’s Riberas do Sil subregion and curiously, vineyards no longer exist on most of its slopes. We suspected that it may have to do with the easier access of the other side to the northern towns of Galicia, but that surely they will be good spots for future investment, considering the imminent scorching of the other side of the river due to climate change. The hillsides are completely covered in beautiful, dark forest, with a thick covering of oaks and naked, leafless, gray trees poking out from the thick bramble, waiting for their new foliage to emerge in the coming weeks. The hillsides would seem untouched by humans if it weren’t for the many nearly hidden rock terraces tucked inside the forest, abandoned generations ago during the vineyard pandemics, dictatorships, wars (and their aftermath), etc, of the first half of the twentieth century. As we drove along the recently reawakened road that meanders along a hillside made of a variety of metamorphic rocks, we were surrounded by at least a dozen kilometers of hillside running east to west, with a range of about four hundred meters of altitude (1300 feet) from hilltop to the Sil far below, with countless more hills in the distance. The scale of it all is hard to convey in words, another wonder of the world, especially when you’re in it. Pablo Soldavini The vinous history of Galicia and Northern Portugal is a dreamland for terroirists with a knack for Indiana Jones-style fantasy, but instead of golden statues and legendary things that possess supernatural power, it’s the wines from these sacred places we seek. I drift off in thought on how it used to be there and who brought to life what are today ruins, lost vineyards, remnants of ancient granite buildings and completely abandoned and clearly once thriving countryside homesteads. Even the churches are falling apart, and some are actually for sale. It’s overwhelming to imagine the scope of how much they used to produce there, even more, what the wines tasted like so long ago. The thing about Ribeira Sacra and the Sil River gorge that separates Amandi and Ribeiras do Sil is the overall emotional impact when inside of the region. Not just from the wines themselves, but also from the clear signs of a lost time, a lost people with a strong and what seems to have been a fanatical culture to even attempt to continue to work hillsides like those, let alone build them from nothing in such a treacherous landscape. Over lunch in the middle of nowhere in Ribeira Sacra with Pablo, we crossed paths with a guy named Pepe. He’s either in his late 60s or 70s (hard to tell with winegrowers sometimes because they often look older than they are from their toils in the sun and vines), and he owns some land in the steep areas of Ribeira Sacra. After lunch, on our sometimes white-knuckle drive on the edge of cliffs in the Sil gorge, Pablo recounted to me some of Pepe’s stories about when he was a teenager, packing grapes out of the river gorge on a donkey. Pepe said he could make only one trip each day with as much as the beast could handle. But how much weight could they actually carry? Apparently a lot, and it occurred to me that that’s probably where the phrase, “an ass-load” comes from. His story seemed like something from ancient times, but he’s still getting around just fine and making time to regularly shoot the breeze and drink beer and wine at lunch time with his buddies. The people of Ribeira Sacra were not born into the same posh culture as those of Bordeaux or Burgundy. The people there were dirt poor for many generations and are only now making a few bucks with wines, a similar story to Piedmont’s Langhe, sixty or seventy years ago. It surely was a hard life that paid little to nothing, with commensurately impoverished living conditions. It’s these kinds of stories that energize my motivation and give greater meaning to my work as an importer. I want to not only bet on our industry’s most recognized champions, but also to fight for history’s underdogs. Ribeiras do Sil abandoned vineyard terraces taken back by nature Extraordinary terraces are hidden under nature’s impressive return everywhere in these parts, even along the Lima River where my wife and I walk on the river path on weekends and come upon countless abandoned terraces (presumably former vineyards) peeking through the greenery. I think the local Galician winegrowers (more so than the northern Portuguese, who always seem to be just a few years behind Galicia) have visions of rebuilding on their region’s past glories, similar to what’s happening in Piedmont’s Alto Piemonte wine areas (Ghemme, Lessona, Gattinara, Boca, Bramaterra, etc.). None of the Galicians I know have ever been to Alto Piemonte, but they have so much in common with their recent histories and even many aspects of their terroirs. The task is incredibly immense, and today, almost impossible because of the labor shortage: if you don’t own it and it’s not your dream, why would you want to work on these treacherous hills where one wrong move could lead to calamitous injury or even death? The massive financial investment needed and the quickly changing climate seem to make it a fool’s errand. Perhaps… But with a world distressed in so many ways at this moment, we continue to move forward.

After more than six months, Andrea and I finally had an opportunity to get out of Portugal and into Spain. It’s been strange to be only twenty minutes away by car but unable to go for so long! Over the last three weeks we found our way through Galicia, Ribera del Duero, Rioja, Navarra, and finally, Txakoli—what a bunch of beautiful places! Of course we had to stop in San Sebastían for a weekend and got out just as the city was beginning to close its entry ports. We originally intended to go to France for two or three weeks in the middle of what was supposed to be a much longer trip to visit our friends and finally share some good news in person about the US market’s rebound, despite the unexpectedly long delays at the US ports. However, that good news would’ve been offset by another hard-hitting reality delivered by Jack Frost. Many crops were devastated throughout much of France and other parts of Europe, a couple of weeks ago, and the outlook for recovery this year is grim. Can we catch a break, please? It’s been pretty tough for everyone over the last eighteen months. Of course, we’re happy about the recent progress in the US, but over here in Europe the stress level continues to rise, despite the improvements happening abroad where it seems like things are in fact rebounding, but because of the excruciatingly slow vaccine rollout, the light at the end of Europe’s tunnel still seems quite distant and immobile. Spanish Trip It’s an exciting time to be in Iberia and I am personally humbled by the open welcome we’ve received by the Spanish and Portuguese wine communities. Most of the producers we’ve met have no historical laurels to rest on, something that many of us can relate to. As I’ve said in previous writings on our experiences on the Spanish wine camino, we here at The Source are grateful for the inroads carved by other importers who waved the Spanish flag long before we did, back when few were interested in more backwater regions, and we hope that our effort to spread the word will help their businesses as well. At the beginning of our trip we made stops to visit our guys in Galicia, and there’s so much to say about the Galicians and their inspiring wines. Things are constantly moving there, with a ceaseless rise of new, conscientious producers sprouting up nearly every month. The last leg of our trip was in Txakoli, yet another wine region that I know next to nothing about. I regularly step back to look at what is happening and come to the conclusion that this is such an exciting time for all of us in the wine world. There are so many lost, forgotten, and abused vineyard areas being nurtured back to health, one vine at a time, through a steady rebirth of old ideas and wisdom lost to the distant past, before global industrialization. There is an abundance of new tastes and smells, not just by way of tinkering in the cellar, but also terroirs that have been overlooked for generations in regions with less opportunity over the last century stifled by post-war economics, or the dictatorships that severely oppressed Portugal and Spain for decades after the last great war. Grapes and regions unknown to most of us from the States are suddenly coming into focus, and many local winegrowers even admit it’s hard to dig up historical information about their own region and its indigenous grapes. Blended and co-fermented white and red varieties are making a dent in the mono-varietal wine world, even for me! Many growers in Spain and Portugal regularly discuss the large, often multi-generation gap between them and the growers in the past and they continue to move forward by looking at their broken vinous history. The biggest whale in this area that seems on the path to breaching has to be Rioja. A Rioja Revolution?? Looks like it’s happening… Rioja was a central focus of our trip. We had a few visits set up there prior to going and we unexpectedly stumbled into a few more. One thing seems certain: Rioja is likely to no longer be a wine region that, beyond López de Heredia, only old-school wine people know anything about. Now there is a group of young, idealistic and revolutionary-minded growers there who, like in other uprisings in the wine world, are striving to do their best to bring their own historic wine region out of its dark age. The children of grape growers are ready for change and they’re taking it into their own hands by braving new enterprises, with the full support of their families and the strong work ethic inherent in grape farmers everywhere. All sparks start small, and while in other regions one could light a bonfire, a spark in Rioja might just detonate a bomb. So, what is my motivation for digging into Rioja and its confusing story, while very few, if anyone, in the restaurant market seems to care about putting anything on their list besides López de Heredia? It’s simple: Rioja is Spain’s most historic red wine region. It has been known for centuries to be the flag-bearer of Spanish wines, and eventually these things have a way of coming back around. We don’t do this kind of importing just for the money and a good time. The intense effort we put into our work gives us all a sense of purpose, working to help the little guy make his way into the fold, because we’re little guys too. And while López de Heredia is responsible for producing some of the world’s most compelling and historic wines—with well-aged bottles that only ten years ago sold for a fraction of what they go for today while still seeming underpriced—there is far more to this region than some of these bigger bodegas that make their living on ratings. While I am a virtual Rioja rookie (the last time I visited a vineyard here was on a bicycle trip in 2004), and new to much of the rest of Spain as well, I have clearly become accustomed to visiting Europe’s most talented and historic vineyards. Rioja is not even close to being a second-rate wine region, if one considers its historical reputation along with the obvious quality and diversity of its terroirs. It’s one of the top regions in all of Europe! Spain’s equivalent to France’s Burgundy and Bordeaux, Italy’s Piedmont and Tuscany, and Germany’s Mosel and Rheingau. It’s clear that Rioja is the real deal, a wine region with an unlimited potential to achieve the highest of the highs in wine quality. I’m writing this today after having lunch at Rekondo, a Basque institution of fabulous food and without a doubt one of the world’s greatest restaurant collections of old Spanish wines at unbelievably low prices, where we had a bottle of 1970 Viña Albina Gran Riserva. Recommended by the sommelier, it was a total winner. The wine list price was 99€, so only 2€ per year—what a deal! This winery is now known for inexpensive wines, and back then, as demonstrated by this bottle, they could produce enormously emotional wine that was also inexpensive at the time. It was gorgeous and memorable, with the umami aromatics of Spanish food culture and an enviable finesse that most Burgundies with this much age would have a hard time equaling let alone outshining them, on their best days. Rioja, promising? Sí, claro, tio! While visiting a vineyard in Rioja Alta, just north of the historic medieval hillside village, San Vicente de la Sonsierra, the young and pleasantly idealistic pair, José Gil and Victoria (Vicky) Fernandez, explained their terroirs and the overarching climatic conditions with the cold winds from the Sierra Cantabria Mountains on the north side of the appellation. I was caught off guard when these winegrowers (whom I started to think of as young Jedi) explained that a major influence from the regional characteristics they hope to capture in their wines, aside from the obvious talent of their sandy, calcareous soils and ancient vines, are the matices (nuances) of the aromatic herbs running wild on the mountainsides and just on the edge of many vineyards; herbs like lavender, thyme, rosemary, and a slew of other high-desert plants whose aromatic resins and oils seem to stick to grape skins in micro doses and possibly infuse the wines with subtle notes of their scents. These micro doses—which may be aroma and flavor enhancers in wines—are likely absent in monoculture vineyard environments, particularly those in vast, flat areas where mechanization is easiest and far away from forested or untamed land. This duo’s vineyards are all above 500m, high for the region, which test the limits to achieve full phenolic maturity in most years. There is less Grenache planted in these colder parts due to its significantly longer growing season than Tempranillo—the early, little one. This altitude and proximity to the Sierra Cantabria Mountains just to the north also puts them in the direct path of these aroma-filled winds that rip up and down the mountains with the rising and setting of the sun. Whether or not they come from the plants directly, these aromas are evident in their wines, and many other Rioja wines, too. Their fabulous wines are bottled under the label José Gil, and we have the good fortune to represent them in the US. On the subject of herbs, in our first in-person visit with the Jon and Pedro from their exciting new project in Navarra, Aseginolaza y Leunda (their last names, respectively), I was able to procure some wild thyme from a few of their vineyard areas—yes, I’m telling a story about thyme; it’s my favorite herb… The most aromatic of the plants seemed to be a cross between lemon-thyme and lavender and was undoubtedly the most intoxicatingly exotic and ridiculously aromatic fresh thyme I’ve ever put under my nose. Perhaps it was because they were flowering and the flowers took it to a completely different level. These particular plants were growing in an ancient vineyard named Otsaka, not too far from Pamplona, which also had rosemary and lavender that were left to grow freely everywhere, even right next to the ancient vines—real biodiversity! The other thyme, a wild one growing on the opposite side of Navarra in the west, more than an hour away by car, was marked by a deep, frosty green and somehow emitted—believe it or not—the umami of many Spanish foods; it was like the thyme absorbed the smell of Jamon Ibérico and grilled Galician beef without having met them yet! I snipped a full bag’s worth as the guys laughed at my enthusiasm for this ubiquitous herb (or weed, as they see it) and promptly dried and picked them when I got home last week. We visited a few other up-and-coming producers in Rioja working to redefine and restore the region to something similar to what it was like before phylloxera. It is possible that vines will grow in many parts of Rioja without American rootstocks, but sadly, it is now forbidden to plant without them. Maybe things will change. Today, it’s a region that suffers overwhelmingly industrial wine production, like many places on the Iberian Peninsula. A drive through much of Rioja reveals flat alluvial terraces littered with vines in some places with hardly any space left for a road to access the vineyards. But up on the hillsides there are greater separations between parcels due to the erratic erosional patterns of the sandy hills. Higher up, there are typically small plateau-like sections planted while the steeper sides of the hills surrounding them are uncultivated and wild; many are filled with aromatic brush, quite similar to what the French refer to as garrigue. Still, because of the enormity of Rioja, there are many secluded spots with a lot of natural biodiversity, as well as forests that were vineyards in the mid-1900s, including some that we visited with producer Javier Arizcuren, a very well-known Spanish architect with an obsession for wine and the recovery of nearly lost vineyards. He has a project where only his father helps in the vineyards, in the far eastern end of the region, Rioja Oriental, formerly known as Rioja Baja. On very high altitude sites, some above 800m, they grow a lot of Mazuelo (Carignan), Garnacha and some prephylloxera Garnacha vines. He has aerial photos of vineyards taken in the 1950s by the US Army that showed an entire ridge at very high altitudes (near 1000m) that were once cultivated and are now completely overtaken by thick forests. We will soon have the good fortune to also represent Javier. The rebellion seems to manifest itself in their working mostly among these higher-altitude zones that have more complex soil structures and an easier time to achieve the phenolic results they want without big alcohol levels and riper fruit qualities. Alcohol aside, perhaps the shared agenda of these rebels, who seem to have rightly renamed their movement from Rioja’n’Roll to the Rioja Revolution, is to make single-site wines. Arturo Miguel, from Artuke, a bodega that seems to be front and center for the Rioja Revolution and for whom everyone in Spain with knowledge of the uprising holds in the highest regard, explained that prior to the 1960s almost all of Rioja red wines were vinified by carbonic fermentation because efficient destemming machines weren’t around yet. This style of wine was simply a consequence of not having enough time, too small a labor force (partially due to the restriction of immigrants under the dictatorship of Franco) and too little money: the family picked it and pitched it into a vat and hardly touched the grapes until they were pressed. They couldn’t sell it for much with this method of winemaking, so they made some changes to the system—and not good ones. This kind of thinking that prioritized economics led to the removal of ancient vines and replacing them with more productive biotypes (not at all an unfamiliar story!), and of course, young vines themselves are far more productive than old ones. The growers didn’t have to care if the grapes were good, they just needed to reach high-alcohol levels to fetch the highest prices from the big producers in control of the grape market. This resulted in the loss of what would’ve surely been some of Europe’s most prized vineyards, and no doubt Spanish national treasures. There are still some ancient vines to be found from this era, but they are not so common. José, Victoria and another just-turned-forty revolutionary, Miguel Merino, ventured a guess that vines over a hundred years old probably make up less than one percent of the vineyard surface area of Rioja. What a terrible loss for this generation! I’ve seen some of these ancient vines in both Javier Arizcuren’s and José Gil’s vineyards. They are gorgeous, and most continue to look surprisingly healthy. Many other European wine regions have emerged from virtual obscurity over the last couple of decades, places like Alto Piemonte, Etna, Beaujolais and Jura, as well as many parts of France’s Loire Valley. Rioja’s terroir diversity, with its expansive coverage of over a hundred kilometers east to west, as well as a broad range in altitudes may have given it the ability to withstand climate change, possibly more than many other wine regions, since the vines have already adapted to such extreme conditions. It’s obvious that Rioja is a sleeping giant, and it appears to be en route to an awakening—perhaps not tomorrow, nor too far down the road, either. Maybe to some it seems like a long shot with the region’s current obsession with sun-soaked, American oak-scarred wines, but to state something that seems obvious, if you believe in terroir—as many of us wine junkies claim to—you cannot ignore the inevitable reemergence of this region in the global marketplace. Rioja is no less historically important in the wine world than other sleeping giants, such as Chianti Classico, which also suffers from confusion about its identity and what it’s supposed to taste like. If you couldn’t already tell, I think Rioja is an incredible place and it’s going to be fun to continue to learn more about this historic region. Discovery and learning are the best parts of our business because they yield constant humility along with a never-ending excitement for new things. And for those of you who are a bit in the weeds on this region, as I am now, we can slowly walk down this path together. I’ve got a lot of work to do before I really discuss this place with any great confidence. There is just too much information to reduce Rioja to a bite-size piece. But we plan to be a part of this rising tide by helping these new arrivals bring power back to the families who need to break loose of the grip of the big companies that cornered the market some decades ago. As is happening across the globe, it is plainly obvious inside many wine regions that the disparity between financial classes continues to widen. One of the answers for the wine business that winegrowers need to know is that there is a market out there waiting for them. They don’t need big and costly marketing teams, they just need to focus on quality and authenticity, and the market will reward them. New Producer: A German On The Horizon While we have very few German wines these days compared to when we used to work with the importer Dee Vine Wines, it’s never strayed far from our minds. Through some unlikely “sources” (my old German volleyball buddies who are nuts about Klaus Peter Keller’s wines) we were introduced to an exciting young producer, Katharina Wechsler, who has vineyards in the famous Kirchspiel and Morstein vineyards… She’s also a biodynamic practitioner… got your attention?? I thought so. Obviously the combination of this caliber of vineyards and the philosophy of biodynamics indicates that something special must be happening at Weingut Wechsler. Katharina is crafting exceptional dry Rieslings from these two famous GG sites—although she is not part of the VDP, so you won’t see any reference to “GG” on the bottle—along with some entry-level Rieslings from the same parcels that are total knockouts with very familiar profiles to those who know the wines of Keller, if only in that they are neighbors and their terroirs speak the same language. And then there is her less traditional line of wines, including an orange Scheurebe and other interesting goodies that contrast her classically styled dry Rieslings. I’m really excited to get these wines into the US to show what she is up to. Hopefully they will arrive around July or August. May New Arrivals The biodynamic Champagnes of Chevreaux-Bournazel “La Parcelle” will finally arrive in California. We received only a minuscule allocation in our first year of working together before the pandemic hit, but they didn’t make it past Rachel Kerswell, our company’s New York goalkeeper (who’s also an extremely talented striker!). Stéphanie and Julien have an interesting story and approach to their wines since both have seen more harvest time in more places throughout Champagne than probably any other vigneron working in the region over the last decade. Their first enterprise (which is still going today) is a company that organizes harvest help throughout all of Champagne’s regions. It’s given them a lot of perspective on their own biodynamic project out in the middle of nowhereville, in the Vallée de la Marne, which prompted an interview that we’ll post soon about how they view the wine world through their experiences and how they’ve incorporated the best of what practices they’ve seen throughout the various Champagne areas and its top producers, who are now their friends. They have around a single hectare of Pinot Meunier vines grown in a couple of different places on extremely steep, beautiful limestone and silex (chert) bedrock hillsides. The wines are stunning. It’s just too bad they don’t make very much. A good chunk of Viñateros Bravos is arriving soon from Chile and our staff is beyond excited about them, which indicates that some of our customers must be too. We were finally able to place a much larger order than anytime in the past, improving the prices for everyone. Leonardo Erazo, the owner and winemaker, has really cranked it up over recent years due to his newfound time and focus solely on his own project instead of those in Argentina and France. These wines are “natural” in the best way in that they are straightforward terroir wines from a sunny but windy and cold climate on either ancient granite bedrock or volcanic soils. Wines from Hubert Lamy, Simon Bize and Guiberteau will be here soon as well. Nuff said… I did an interview last month with Brendan Stater-West that will be posted online right about the time the wines arrive later this month. It’s a good time to get to know what Brendan is up to now that he has a few more vintages under his belt. He’s stayed the course from the beginning but now things have come into greater focus for him, as in, what he wants to offer in his range in comparison to the wines of his mentor, Romain Guiberteau. Stay tuned for the interview and get ready for the wines. Riecine is finally hitting the States. It’s been a long wait for these charming but serious wines grown in vineyards in the high altitude areas of Gaiole in Chianti’s Chianti Classico region. Their top 2016 bottlings, Riecine di Riecine and La Gioia, are arriving along with the 2018 Chianti Classico. I was curious how these wines would do when we first signed on with them, and I’m not surprised that they are one of the producers whose wines sell fastest upon arrival. As usual, Poderi Colla continues to crank out the goods. The 2017 Barolo Bussia Dardi le Rose is landing and will be on the docket toward the end of the month. Like just about every vintage since 2002, 2017 is another Colla success story. The wines are notable for their upfront tannins due to their quicker ripening during the summer months, but given the deliciousness of the Colla’s 2011 Barolo from a similarly warm year, this should shape up quickly over the next months and drink quite well with twenty or thirty minutes open—just like every good Barolo! Justin Dutraive’s 2019s are finally coming. They’re the lightest vintage yet in color and extraction with some closer to resembling a richer rosé hue than a red wine. This is a welcome approach for Justin’s many Beaujolais Village appellation wines that seem to carry greater mineral and metal textural profiles than his dad’s. The wines were clearly less settled in the tank before bottling in the past, so when you get them, sit them upright for some days (if not at least a few weeks) before popping and go gentle on the pouring to keep those sediments in the bottom of the bottle instead of the glass. Staff write-ups Cume do Avia Colleita 7 Tinto Leigh Ready, The Source Santa Barbara One of the things I love about these up-and-coming, reviving regions, such as the Ribeiro and Trás-os-Montes, is the discovery of grapes that are new to me. When I’m out in the market showing the Colleita 7 Tinto from Cume do Avia, I explain that it’s a blend of Caiño Longo, Sousón and Brancellao, and this is our third Colleita imported, derived from the Portuguese word, colheita, meaning harvest, aka vintage, which can’t technically be referred to as such, but that’s another story. Unless someone is versed in Galician indigenous varieties or already familiar with Cume do Avia, I’m usually met with raised eyebrows and bulging eyes. “So, what’s it like?” they ask, to which I usually reply, “You just have to taste it.” Please do read The Story about Cume do Avia on our website; it tells a leap-of-faith tale of epic proportions. The wine though... Upon first swirl, this wine emits a sense of liveliness that instantly intrigues, and at around 12%, one can enjoy a couple of glasses sans fog. Crunchy red fruit gives way to tart cranberry compote with a vein of minerality searing through the mid palate to finish. I find myself going back sip after sip to further investigate. It’s deliciously light bodied yet persistent and finding what seems to be imprints from their granite, schist and slate slate soils is a dreamy addition. By trade, I know I’m not supposed to be partial to label design, but theirs is just darling. Serve slightly chilled if you prefer. Salud!  

After a quick visit to try the new vintages at a winery in Épineuil (where the vigneron was out of town), we headed back toward Chablis and passed through Fleys, a village maze of tight canyons between crumbling stone and limestone brick buildings. There was no evidence of stores or commerce of any kind, and though there were some signs of life, on that day the place seemed completely deserted; I didn’t see a single soul. It felt like the French version of a western ghost town. As an outsider, it seemed romantic to me, the idea of getting a flat or little house in that empty place, settling in and working without interruption. But in truth, like with so many little French hamlets, it seemed sort of like a beautiful slum, a place where migrant farmers go to sleep during harvest. Many of my favorite buildings in France continued to be the ones that looked like they were about to fall down. To the southwest of Chablis is the town of Irancy, home to one of Ted’s favorites, Thierry Richoux, and we were meeting him for lunch at a bistro called Le Soufflot. We got there and were immediately greeted by a friendly, energetic guy who sat us and took orders from other tables; he was running the whole show. The restaurant space is bright and airy, with white tile floors, blonde wood tables and chairs, rough sandstone finished walls covered with colorful wine region maps, and a glass ceiling webbed over with thick green grape vines, just out of reach. Ted studied the list while we waited for Thierry to break away from work to join us. He was excited; the place is known for its amazing selection, and he ordered a bottle of the 2014 Saint-Aubin 1er Cru from Hubert Lamy, and this was our second bottle in two days (we had one the night before at Les Trois Bourgeons). Ted imports and sells many of Lamy’s wines, but he’s only allotted a dozen or so of this one for all of California. Thierry came in, full of apologies for being late. He’s wiry and deeply tanned, with windblown, longish brown hair, a sculptural aquiline nose and smiling eyes like horizontal commas. His handshake is firm and leathery, his fingers as strong and callused as a mechanic’s. The server/maître d’, greeted him like an old friend and poured him a glass of the Lamy. He settled in and caught up with Ted for a while before I was able to ask him some questions myself. He told me that he had just come from a small parcel with buds that had succumbed to the frost of the night before; it did turn out that Collet and others had to light the fires again. Thierry was grateful for how few he had lost, but he knew they weren’t in the clear just yet. Some of the other producers were employing another technique to stave off the frost, the polar opposite of fire: though irrigating grape crops in France is illegal, it is permitted to spray the vines with water on nights when the temperature plummets, so that a thin layer of ice forms on the buds or shoots. Counterintuitive as the practice might sound, this shell can actually provide protections from freezing. But Thierry remarked that the jury is still out as to whether any of the methods people try actually work. He has two sons who’ve worked with him since they were twelve and thirteen years old. Now they’re twenty-two and twenty-five, and they assist him along with only one other employee most of the year, pruning and pegging his twenty-three hectares of Pinot Noir. From May to July they bring on six more people, and of course many more for harvest. He’s been making wine since 1979 and says, “it’s always different. There isn’t a recipe.” Whatever he’s doing, it’s working; his wines are some of Ted’s favorites. Ted said, “He sells seventy percent of his output straight to customers who come for tastings from as far away as Paris every weekend. At retail prices!,” with an enthusiasm that deepened the color on Thierry’s face. Yet, as humble as he is, he also smiled with pride. Talk turned to the growing popularity and demand for biodynamic farming, for which Thierry is known. He noted that “a lot of producers use it as a selling point while the priority of quality comes second.” Despite his success, it’s clearly very difficult to cede control of the process to nature and still achieve consistency. “Many of these guys talk a lot more about bio than they practice,” he added. Ted said, “that’s exactly why I visit all of the producers I work with, to see they’re practicing what they preach." So far, everyone who’s told him up front that they work this way appear to be telling the truth. For a starter I ordered their “œuf parfaits” with red wine and mushrooms—a variation on the Bourgogne specialty, œuf en meurette, that I had passed on the night before at Les Trois Bourgeons. What came was a beautiful bowl of eggs poached in red wine and layered with chopped mushrooms and frisée, and it was an incredible mélange of flavors and textures, earthy and decadent. My plat principal was a breast of goose with caper and celery purée topped with crisp cheese disks. The meat and accompaniments were asymmetrically placed like little modernist park sculptures, among dabs and lines of colorful sauces from an abstract painting, all sprinkled with yellow flower petals. It was so fun to look at that it seemed a pity to ruin it. But as with a lot of the meals I ate on the trip, I was less caught up in knowing the minutia of composition, and more concerned with being well fed (I was hungry), and Le Soufflot did not disappoint. After lunch, Thierry took us to the wounded field he had come from earlier. As we walked up and down the rows, everyone was respectfully quiet; the air carried the mournful feeling that something unfortunate had just happened. He reached down and gently cupped a cluster of buds, but his careful movements were unnecessary; they were all dead. Healthy buds are green and fuzzy, with a purplish hue, whereas these had gone white-gray and brought to mind cigarette ash. We nodded solemnly as he gestured to the other places that had been hit, which seemed completely random in their spotty placement. Frost is mercurial like that, striking at random and infuriatingly difficult to ward off, despite all the wild techniques people try. Luckily—or rather, more from experience, Thierry had not yet tied the vines down to the wires, which allows them to remain upright and further from the ground where it gets the coldest. Vignerons who did this prematurely were making a big mistake, a bet they were likely to lose in seasons like this; many of the vineyards in the surrounding areas had already suffered huge losses on recent nights. Again, Thierry expressed gratitude that he had been relatively spared so far. Knowing that we would see him again soon, we said à bientôt, and left for our second business appointment of the day.

Spain’s Asturian Coast Maybe I’m just imagining it because I’ve been gone for so long, but everyone here in California seems to smile more and is generally more friendly than I remember. Perhaps it’s because I’m so happy to see people out and about, or maybe it’s because I can finally see people’s mouths again! On the other hand, I am sorry to see the prices of everything climbing so much. It’s been two years since I was last in the States, and I didn’t have a personal American pandemic experience, but the changes that have come about since 2019 are incredible; I hope that the quickly rising inflation will be curbed soon and return closer to a more manageable level. We’ll see… Wine News: The good, the bad, and, well, a touch of the rest… The prices of European wines in general haven’t yet seen any unpredictable increases, aside from those caused by the freight woes that have thus far been counterbalanced by the dollar’s increased strength against the euro over the last quarter. We should also expect some shifts given the increased cost of basic materials like bottles, labels, and corks. These are only a few of the factors that might increase prices, which are proportionately negligible for expensive wines, but for wines of lower price points, the differences will be more noticeable and may push some of them up into the next tier; those $20 retail bottles might soon be $23/$24, and the $9.99s might hit $11.99. Thankfully, we’re not there yet. Prices in regions like Burgundy are always on the rise, while most others remain more stable. Burgundy has for many years suffered greatly on many fronts, what with the Côte d’Or’s hailstorms of the early 2010s, the massive heat in 2018, 2019, and 2020, followed by the terribly difficult 2021 vintage yet on another front was cold and wet, a paradise for fungus. The expectation of fresher and tighter wines with lower natural alcohol that are sometimes paler and even harder in their youth are showing signs of possible irreversible change toward a bolder style, despite the efforts of gentler handling and earlier picking. Many regions that are known and counted on for their snappy, fresh wines seem to be hanging on by a thread to their past iterations, and it’s hard to know how long they will be able to hold the line. Continental/Mediterranean climate wine regions furthest from mountains and oceans seem to be suffering the most. Eventually we will have to accept that our expectations for what was and even for what is, at this very moment, will have to shift. Some regions who in the past could barely find market-friendly ripeness in their wines are finding new success, while others seem to be experiencing a very different style of wine than in the past, or are in a concerning and heartbreaking decline. There are a couple of solutions, including the obvious dramatic change in the way humanity goes about its daily life by making the necessary adjustments to curb climate change (which in itself would be a paradoxical goal for a wine importer to fulfill). Another approach, like any other investment, is to explore a greater diversity with our wine choices in search of newly emerging talents in incredible terroirs that have been lost to the economic crisis of generations past, many of whom work toward the goal of environmental preservation. Anyone who has followed us for a while knows that we’ve greatly expanded our European foothold. Our adventures have led us to a wider range of wines outside of France (our traditionally strongest country) and further into Spain, Portugal, Italy, with a dab here and there in Germany and Austria. Wines from the latter three countries were long supplied to us by other importers, whereas today we import them all directly ourselves. New Terroir Map – Trás-os-Montes, Portugal I’m holding onto many geological maps that we’ve finished so we can release them as nice support material for the arrival of new wines from those regions, and this month we have one for our releases from Trás-os-Montes, in the far northeastern region of Portugal. It’s a remote place near the border of Spain to the north and east with gorgeous earth colors from orange to red to even yellow earth, a rainbow of wild shrubs, and a vast open blue or star-pocked sky, framed by rugged and severely-eroded mountains that are now big hills and short mountains, at best, but are thought to have once been as tall as today’s Himalayas. This is an agricultural land with a massive output of olive oil, grapes, vegetables, fruit trees, and animal products. For our growers there, Menina d’uva and Arribas Wine Company, it’s a land endowed with a natural talent for wine from ancient, indigenous vines that often have dozens of names for the same grape variety. It’s a colorful map because this is a land of great geological variety in a very arid landscape. Enjoy it and read further into this newsletter for more about wines arriving this month from our producers in this region. The Best News: Containers are arriving now! Some of our long-awaited new producers are finally touching down after the first batch of enormously delayed containers, along with some wines that are nearly a couple of years late. A few orders on this boat were dispatched more than six months ago! Last month it was Italian arrivals, this month they’re all from France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. France is the slowest of all countries door-to-door, and our container from France was launched almost two months before the Iberian container, and they’re landing at the same time. Crazy days... Portugal I know of no other producers in the wine world with a greater commitment to finding extraordinary terroirs in the middle of nowhere than our two from Trás-os-Montes: Arribas Wine Company and Menina d’uva. Most winemakers want at least a little contact with inspired restaurant cooking and access to a good market. Here, there is nothing of the sort for hours by car, and these two are even separated by a forty minute drive, even though they rely on each other when they need to borrow winery equipment and materials. I tip my hat to their pursuit, funded solely by their own pocketbooks and a sincere desire to make something special in the isolation of what appears to be a dying wine region. Menina d'uva's "Ciste" Menina d’uva The new arrivals from French transplant with Portuguese heritage, Aline Domigues, under her Menina d’uva label are the same three cuvées that blitzed through our wholesale channels last year. Her white wine, Líquen, is deeply textured (a classic white profile from the top to the bottom of this country) raised in stainless steel and mostly composed of Malvasia, along with a field blend of ancient varieties grown on her area’s mix of metamorphic rocks—various slates, schists and gneiss. Líquen’s characteristic aromas evoke the sense of highland grasslands with dried flora, rock outcroppings, and open blue skies. It’s overtly savory, which makes it ideal for food; in fact, it’s kinda like food, with its attractive aromas of dried pasta, bread dough, and dried herbs and grasses. The fruit is in the white-flesh spectrum, with pear, apple and cherimoya. Texturally, Líquen is a mouthful despite no intentional skin contact outside of a gentle crush by foot prior to pressing. The high amplitude metal and mineral sensations in its youth are palate staining and resonate with a streak of fresh acidity down the center and back into the throat. The finish is lengthy and activates all points on the palate, from the front, sides, middle, and back. Overall, it’s an extremely pleasant wine and its freshness is a welcome surprise from this region known for its weighty, less interesting, white wines. Aline holding a ciste, the image used for her Ciste label. The first red-colored wine in Aline’s range, Ciste, is a mixture of 70% Bastardo Preta (Trousseau, in France and Brancellao in Spain, among its many other names) and Negreda (known in Spain as Mouratón, Tinta Gorda, and Juan Garcia), and 30% white, with Malvasia, Bastardo Branco, Formosa, and others in minuscule amounts. Here in the two villages of these vineyards, Junqueira and Matela, the soil is more clay-rich and alluvial, which makes for a supple wine despite its high aromatic lift, fabulous textures, and unexpected palate weight—it looks like a lightweight but feels like a middleweight. The grapes are completely whole bunch and co-fermented for only four days and aged in stainless steel. The short time on skins is intended to achieve good fruit and floral extraction without digging too far before carbonic characteristics overwhelm the wine. Aline wants to keep this one truer to the expression of the place without using fermentation techniques that push too much fruit and fermentative aromas to the forefront. The first vintage, 2018, was lights-out delicious. The following vintage was the same, and this year should be even better. In its youth, it’s aromatically effusive and bright, and carries the scents of this arid countryside and its moorland brush and sweet, poppy-like aromas. The fruit characteristics are concentrated around reds, oranges and yellows—think wild and snappy-to-the-tooth cherries, pomegranate, and the bright flavor of early fall Fuyu persimmons. Menina d’uva's vineyard that produces her wine, Ciste. Menina d’Uva’s Palomba is made of 90% Negreda, a vine known to produce big, juicy, dark-colored berries but with surprisingly very little tannin. It’s mixed with other red grapes few outside or even inside of Portugal have heard of, like Uva de Rei, Moscatel Preta, Moscatel Roxo, among others. It comes from five different plots located in the villages of Uva, Mora and Vale de Algoso, and is grown on a mixture of schist and quartz scattered about on the surface of the vineyards. However, a walk through many of the plots revealed stone walls made with gneiss, slate, and schist—a clear indicator that it’s not so easy to say precisely what the bedrock is underfoot in the area, even in small parcels. In the cellar, Palomba was about one-third destemmed by hand, the fermentation lasted for two weeks and was gently extracted throughout by foot. Negreda has a tendency for taking on reductive characteristics and often needs more time in the bottle before it’s time to dig in. Aline’s wine, Ciste, by contrast, is off to the races upon opening. The pressure points within Aline’s wines are deep and fully mouth filling while remaining ethereal and tense. Both red wines mirror their maker and are filled with generosity, joy, calm, energy, and subtle wit. Arribas Wine Company The guys over at Arribas Wine Company, Ricardo Alves and Frederico Machado, continue their reclamation project in the far eastern edge of Trás-os-Montes, always within sight of the Douro River and the Spanish border. Never have I seen two people so committed in mind, body, soul, blood, sweat and youth, to their massive project to protect what remains of this landscape and its more than fifty indigenous grape varieties (and counting!) from big-business wine companies. All their wines are co-fermented field blends from dozens of parcels with so many geologically different spots (mostly igneous rocks and to a lesser degree, metamorphic) along the Douro River where a short length of river acts as the physical northeastern border between Spain and Portugal. Arribas Wine Company parcels scattered below with the Douro River in view. These guys don’t know the proportion of grape varieties that make up their wines because it’s simply impossible to ascertain, but there are few blended grape wines in the world with such terroir distinction as theirs. These wines taste and feel of the summer sun and its freezing summer nights that can swing more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Some wines are bright red and with 11.5% alcohol, like the seventy cases produced of Quilómetro; others are inky black and animal but with 12% alcohol and raging freshness, like Raiola, with just over a hundred cases made. Their starting red, Saroto Tinto, is a perfect balance of high and low tones—the result of more than fifty different ancient, indigenous, old-vine varieties farmed in different plots picked together and forged into one masterful and profoundly complex wine that should fall within any curious wine drinker’s budget. The reds of Arribas are tremendous, and while Quilómetro and Raiola are spendy, they are well worth it for the experience. Drone selfie taken in the Trás-os-Montes Arribas Wine Company has new additions arriving on this boat for which I had to push their buttons to increase our allocation: Saroto Branco and Saroto Rosé wines. This dizzying duo is extremely low production—considerably smaller than the already limited Saroto Tinto—with loads of familiar, beautiful nuances, and with characteristics that may be a first for many, even those with a lot of experience with Portuguese wine. Like the rest, both are field blends of uncountable grape varieties and made in a very simple way using a mix of barrel and concrete aging. Interestingly, the rosé is an equal blend of red and white grapes. It’s easy to see that neither of these Saroto wines are fined or filtered, and they represent extremely well made natty (not nasty!) wines. Given the overwhelming demand for orange wines (Saroto white is really an orange wine) and the drastic limit on the rosé, these wines will evaporate quickly, so reach out as soon as possible if you are interested. Spain Manuel Moldes Things would be a lot easier with Manuel Moldes’ wines if we could buy them by the container. The reality is that we can’t, and what we do get disappears in a flash—which is only fun if you're fast on the draw. We cut our teeth some years ago with a good Albariño producer in the south of Rías Baixas, in the subzone of Contado de Tea, just across the Miño River from Portugal’s most renowned subzone of Vinho Verde, Monção e Melgaço. Salnés, home to Manuel’s Albariños, is ground zero for the top wines and producers in the entire region. Most vineyards are within sight of the Atlantic, and its regulating effect and generally cold temperatures supercharge its Albariños with high acidity levels rarely equaled in still white wine, the world over. Manuel (whose friends and family call him Chicho—same nickname for his father and older brother…) is not just a fortunate producer who benefits from the magnificent terroirs of Salnés, he’s also widely considered one of its very best, along with wineries like Albamar, Nanclares, Zárate, and, perhaps most of all (at least for me), Forjas del Salnes’ Leirana wines, a collaboration of the Spanish luminaries Raúl Pérez and Rodrigo Mendes. Manuel’s white wine range is a sure thing, and 2019 is a perfectly-suited vintage for his style: intense mineral, zippy freshness, citrus for days, and gobs of subtle complexities. The first Albariño in his range, 2019 Afelio, comes from a collection of different parcels (more than twenty) mostly grown on granite soils and a smidge of the rare and prized vineyards grown on schist. It’s aged in a mix of tanks and neutral French oak barrels. For those of you who know Arnaud Lambert’s gorgeous Saumur Chenin Blanc, Clos du Midi, from Brézé, this is a solid answer to it from Rías Baixas. It’s simply far too good for its price, and its limited quantity makes it hard to spread around too far. Coming from a very rare bedrock and topsoil composition of severely decomposed schist, 2019 A Capela de Aios is serious business. In contrast to Afelio and its quasi-Clos du Midi characteristics floating high in the ether, this wine has substance that could easily be compared to other Chenin Blancs we work with from Patrick Baudouin, in France’s Anjou, an area with many vineyards on the same rock type developed during the same series of geological events that took place around three-hundred million years ago: the Variscan orogeny. This wine is aged solely in old 500-liter French oak barrels for a year or so before bottling in order to sculpt its powerful body and dynamic power. Even more limited than Afelio, it’s simply a must for anyone seriously into dry Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Chablis, and the Savoie’s ripper, Jacquère. A mighty wine with seriously fine trim. Last in the range of Manuel’s Albariños is the 2019 As Dunas, perhaps the newest and most important unicorn in the world of serious white wine. Manuel, Raúl Pérez and Rodrigo Mendes discovered this small collection of vineyards grown on extremely fine-grained beach sand derived from schist, in the far south of Salnés, overlooking the Ría de Pontevedra and the Atlantic. With an almost entirely new and exciting face of Albariño, these three winegrowers are splitting the parcels and bottling them under each of their own labels. Its combination of fine schist sand and the open face to Atlantic winds renders an Albariño with extremely refined nuances of citrus and slightly golden-brown sweet spices, and an explosive pallet supercharged by acidic freshness and deep salinity. As Dunas, translated as the dunes, is as rare as it is special. With only 120 bottles of this wine imported for the entire US, there simply won’t be enough to go around. Manuel and the As Dunas sands Manuel’s red 2018 Acios Mouros comes from Rías Baixas and is composed of 60% Caiño Redondo, 20% Espadeiro, and 20% Loureiro Tinto. The first two of these grapes have more acid than tannin and bright aromatics, while the latter is darker with an equally high level of matching tannin and acidity. In Rías Baixas and Northern Portugal’s Monção e Melgaço, red wine historically had a majority share of vineyard land, whereas today it’s the opposite. Red wines of Rías Baixas are often terribly acidic and intense with bright aromas, but there are those that manage to wrangle what may have been beasts in another cellar into something more pleasant, aromatically addicting and much more inviting—while still maintaining the vigorous energy of a white wine. Grown on a mixture of granite and schist bedrock, many of the vines are ancient, with some of them on pre-phylloxera rootstocks that are as old as two hundred years. The average age of vines is around fifty, which helps curb what may be excessive energy from the youngest of them. The old and ancient vines also impart a richer mid-palate with sappier fruit—both welcome flesh enhancers for this otherwise straight-shooting red that feels every bit as much a white, save the tannins, red and black fruits, and earthy savory notes accentuated with nuances of bay leaf and spice. 2018 was a much warmer vintage than the surrounding years, which makes this year’s Acios Mouros a standout from any iteration bottled before it. It’s special and as rare as the others in Manuel’s range. Salnés subzone of Spain's Rías Baixas A long-time friendly connection with Bierzo producer José Antonio Garcia resulted in the creation of Lentura, a complete outlier in Manuel’s lineup. In this land known for its rustic, heavy wines, 2019 Lentura is a Bierzo wine led by vibrant natural tension and freshness, red and black fruits, pointed mineral textures, and medium-to-low-weight alcohol compared to most of the wines made in this region. Alcohol and power are easy to achieve in Bierzo; it’s finding balanced elegance that presents the much greater challenge. A little more than three hours toward the east from Rías Baixas, the climate in Bierzo is extreme with a much more continental/Mediterranean influence and very little influence from the Atlantic. The summer days can be as hot as 45°C (113°F) while the nights can drop to 15°C (59°F), making for one of the most extreme diurnal summertime shifts in the entire world of wine. During winter it often reaches temperatures as low as -8°C (18°F), or maybe even colder. Bierzo also claims the distinction of the oldest average vine age within Spain, and quite possibly all of Europe. The mix for the 2019 Lentura is 70% Mencia and 30% Alicante Buschet (the 2018 was 60% Alicante Buschet and 40% Mencia), making for a more elegant version than last year’s Lentura, which was already a delicious, fuller-bodied wine. Its altitude and geologic setting are as broad as its diurnal shift. On the valley floor at an altitude of 300 meters, the vines are grown on clay, sand and large cobbles, while high up on the hills toward the west, the altitude can exceed 1000 meters and is grown on pizarra (slate) bedrock and topsoil. Manuel’s Bierzo is rendered from vines with an average age of seventy years and comes from both the valley floor and high up on the slate hillside. In the cellar it is fermented with 20% whole bunches for five to seven days, followed by aging in an equal balance of stainless steel and old, 300-liter barrels. Manuel really hit the mark in 2019, making this his best yet. Germany Wasenhaus vineyards for Am Kreuz wines, official vineyard name: Staufener Rotemberg. Wasenhaus The much-anticipated new vintage from Wasenhaus is finally arriving! There are a half dozen or more new cuvées added to our roster this year and the problem is that the quantities are so minuscule that it will be hard to satisfy the demand. Despite their obviously superb and game-changing quality, I am so surprised by how well these wines have been received by the market; who would’ve thought that German Spätburgunder and Weissburgunder have become some of the most coveted wines in our entire portfolio? Apologies in advance that we won’t be able to satisfy all requests. For those of you who will acquire some, enjoy this glimpse into the bright future of non-Riesling German wines. There’s a video on our website of Alex Götze taking us through their entire range. Don’t miss it! The boys of Wasenhaus, Alex Götze (left) and Christoph Wolber (right). Weingut Wechsler In recent years, there haven’t been many more exciting new arrivals to our collection than Katharina Wechsler, a superstar-in-the-making German Riesling producer with ridiculous vineyard holdings in the epicenter for dry German Riesling, Rheinhessen’s Westhofen and Flörsheim-Dalsheim. This organic (certified since 2021 vintage) and biodynamic winegrower is the owner of enviable holdings of the vineyard, Kirchspiel, and a small chunk of perhaps the most coveted of all, Morstein. With not only Riesling in play, Katharina loves concocting wines that range from pure pleasure and fun, like Sexy MF, her Pinot Noir rosé that is too delicious to be true, her savory orange wines, to her classically-styled dry wines, like the knockout Scheurebe Trocken, also arriving on this container. However, the most important wine arriving this month (the big cru wines will come on the next container) is her entry-level Riesling Trocken. It will give any of Germany’s top entry-level dry Rieslings a run for the money, but highlights the lifted and elegant exotic characteristics of Riesling only found in this part of the world. There’s a good first batch of it, but we expect it to quickly disappear. Everyone at The Source is happy to finally have German Riesling as a part of our portfolio once again, and we’re so lucky it’s this one! Two of Wechsler’s famous German Riesling crus, Kirchspiel on the left and Morstein on the right. France Rodolphe Demougeot Rodolphe Demougeot’s 2018s and 2019s have both arrived on our French container, and a double-up of Burgundy vintages on the same shipment has never happened for us before (Duband’s incoming wines will repeat the phenomenon!), but we have no choice if we want to get back on track with the normal release schedule and without missing anything. Demougeot’s wines are extremely reliable—dare I say it, predictable, in the best possible ways: overall quality, very measured bandwidth, and no extremes. He has committed to organic farming since the early 2000s and shortly after that his interest leaned toward a sleeker wine profile. This is great news for his 2018 reds, which don’t follow the vintage’s trend of heavier weight. All the wines remain aromatic, with ripeness kept in check and a much higher degree of fresher fruits than can be found throughout much of the Côte d’Or in 2018. 2019 red Burgundy is also a fuller year with perhaps a touch of redder fruit in the mix with the dominant darker fruit notes. The vintage is touted yet another great, but it’s very early to know how great it might just be. In any case, there is plenty of freshness to be found with Demougeot’s wines (as with Duband’s 2019s) and we feel fortunate to have Demougeot on our team; he fits in perfectly. Inside Pommard's Grande Combe, Les Vignots sits on the upper slope in the middle of the picture and the premier crus, La Chanière and Les Arvelets, lower on the slope and in the foreground. Domaine Chardigny Despite their very successful first vintage in 2016, the movement in overall quality of the wines crafted by the brotherhood at Domaine Chardigny has known only one direction: up. Initially, Pierre-Maxime and Victor Chardigny took the reins from their father, Jean-Michel, a French cartoon-character-of-a-man, with his exaggerated French accent, sweetness, accommodating nature and perennial smile. Then the middle brother, Jean-Baptiste, who spent quite a few years as the vineyard manager for Joseph Leflaive’s biodynamic Mâconnais domaine after he finished enology school, finally rejoined the ensemble of this joy-filled family. The quality from the Chardigny boys in the 2019 and 2020 vintages is a notably different level than their first three vintages, 2016-2018, which is partly due to the better balance of these seasons compared to the previous ones, but even more so to their rapid development as winegrowers. Despite the rise in quality of their Beaujolais wines, it’s Chardigny’s white Burgundies that have made the greatest strides. We have taken a stronger position with their Saint-Véran “Vieille Vignes” (from 50-year-old vines) and Saint-Véran “Bois de Fée”, named after the hill itself, facing directly south toward Beaujolais and on the other side with Saint-Amour and Juliénas in view. It’s right at the divergent point of the acidic igneous and metamorphic rocks of France’s ancient Massif Centrale and the limestone and clay that begins precisely at the bottom of Bois de Fée and moves north into Burgundy. What was missing in the past—the complete package from bright fresh notes balanced with the charm and roundness of good white Burgundy—has come into full view with these two. While Côte d’Or whites continue to vault further out of reach for those of us on a wine budget (yes, I too stick to a “realistic” budget despite my fortunate access), these wines raised for a year in 500-liter to 228-liter oak barrels are even more valuable to Chardonnay seekers with a great appreciation for Old World wine. Victor Chardigny thiefing their 2020 Saint-Amour À la Folie 2019 Beaujolais is a wonderful vintage reminiscent of the early 2010s. The fruit is redder and the wines less sun-drenched than 2015, 2017 and 2018. There are certainly many successes to be had between 2017 and 2018, but we are happy to see this more familiar face of Beaujolais once again. Chardigny’s 2019 Saint-Amour Clos du Chapitre continues to dazzle with its trim figure and subtler notes than its counterpart, the 2019 Saint-Amour À la Folie. À la Folie has won over so many with its unabashed, bodacious curves, middleweight texture and big but trim flavor. It was always the greater potential production between these two Saint-Amour crus and was the one they ran most of their experiments on with different aging vessels between concrete, stainless steel, foudre, and small oak barrels (called fûts de chêne, or simply fût, in Burgundy). In 2020, the boys—they all always have such boyish charm, just like their father—really figured this wine out. Tasted out of barrel with Victor and Pierre-Maxime this summer, the 2020 Saint-Amour “À la Folie” was stunning. I asked to taste more barrels to see if it was only the first that was so glorious, and all were the same emotionally invigorating experience. More precise and gorgeous than ever before, all the barrels felt more like Burgundy than Beaujolais! There is a new bottling from the Chardignys that we will begin to import with the 2020 vintage labelled Beaujolais-Leynes, named after their hometown. It’s a Beaujolais-Village appellation wine sourced from vineyards at the previously mentioned geological convergence between Beaujolais and Mâconnais. It’s made entirely with carbonic fermentation with 100% whole clusters in concrete and stainless steel with almost no intervention over its two-week fermentation. Given the shortage of fabulous Beaujolais at affordable price points, we’re bringing in more of this wine to try to fill some of the massive demand. It will easily fall into the right range for many restaurant by-the-glass programs and should hit wine retail shelves at only a hair over $20. For organically certified Beaujolais from a small domaine, that’s a steal. You’ll see…

Our good friend, guru and professional skipper, Dino Giordano, in the Amalfi Coast Every year it’s the same story: How did summer fly by so quickly? It really is hard to accept that it’s already September. After a long road trip visiting friends/producers, I’ve returned to an overload of work, yet I still manage to find time to sit down and work on our newsletter. The truth is, this is my favorite of all the pieces I write. Well, here we go on number seven, and I haven’t missed one since the first rolled out in March of this year. There’s always so much to share and since I rarely get to see anyone other than our producers face-to-face anymore, this is one of the ways of keeping you apprised of what’s going on. I was on the road for six weeks through Northern Spain, Southern France, Northern Italy, Austria, Germany, and back through Champagne, Chablis and Côte d’Or, and then on to my final work stop in Beaujolais—always a good place to have the last bash. It’s hard to keep going after visiting those guys because they often prefer to drink during the day more than work, with the first glass poured at lunch and the river of Beaujolais still flowing well past midnight. During the trip I started a travel journal that I’ve appended to the bottom of the last few newsletters where I recount a bit of the play-by-play. It was one of the best work trips through Europe I’ve had, and with these entries I enjoy sharing my experiences and the things I’ve learned along the route. Nevertheless, the tradition of including the journal with each newsletter will be short-lived. Instead, it’ll be published separately and probably around the middle of each month to help keep these notices shorter and more purely focused on the new goodies we have coming in from Europe. However, there is one addition to this newsletter introducing a new companion I had with me on my trip in the form of a drone. I started filming from the sky this year (and of course I’ve crashed a couple of times already, though I’m getting better) and it’s brought me a fresh perspective on our wine world. It’s totally different from anything I’ve experienced over the years and it’s prompted some new lines of thinking. I’m editing the footage to make videos and aerial photos available for you to browse on our website and an introduction to the endeavor, A Drone’s Eye View, can be found at the bottom of this issue. This month I will release the first in-flight video that covers the right bank of Chablis. Like every other importer, we’ve had to push and shove our way into the line to get our boats full of goods across the Atlantic, and the ocean journeys are only the first half of the problem. The second occurs once shipments enter the domestic freight system, which has been moving just as slowly as the shipping lines. So, what’s happening? Well, prices are now obscene on some fronts (even with our local wholesale delivery services), with cost quotes that are sometimes downright offensive. However, many of our producers have been real champions in their understanding of the global predicament. They have problems too, like simply getting the glass and corks and boxes they need to finish the job with their wines. It’s comforting to know—and more importantly, to feel—that we are all in this debacle together, and we need to make it as easy on each other as possible. We’re all on the mend, but each of us seems to have to work twice as hard as we claw our way back to something that feels like the good ol’ days (of not even two years ago, though it seems like decades), as are all of you who are reading this right now. We can never thank those who support what we do enough. But here’s one more: Thank you for staying with us. Every order we receive means we get to continue to move forward, and we appreciate all of them, no matter how small. Here’s another one of our new terroir maps. This time it’s Spain’s most historically important Galician wine region, Ribeiro, and it’s for that reason that we have more producers there than in any other appellation in the country. You can see the entirety of the map and its support materials on our website at https://thesourceimports.com/terroir-maps/  New Arrivals Chablis premier crus, Montmains (below) and Vaillons (to the far left), and the grand cru slope beyond the village France We have a good-sized shipment coming from both of our Chablis producers. We try not to overlap them but we’re playing catch up with everyone and it’s currently necessary to consolidate orders from single zones. Those who know the wines from Christophe et Fils and Jean Collet know that their styles illustrate a considerable contrast from within this same appellation. I love 2019 Chablis. Why? Because I like to drink bottles of it and this vintage overflows with the things I want out of good Chablis. The 2019s seem closer this year in some ways to the wines of Côte d’Or than in the past. It’s a fabulous freak of a vintage with full ripeness, while still maintaining classic Chablisienne characteristic fruits (citrus, stone fruit pits, a welcoming slight bitterness), yet from a Côte d’Or perspective, I find them closer to pre-sunburn era Corton-Charlemagne, minus the big body. Despite the vintage’s strength being heavier on the thunder than on the lightning, the acidity is still electric and balances the wines out surprisingly well. Some 2019s may even need a few years to really find their groove, a good sign considering some of the previous years (excluding 2017) where the ripeness of the fruit springs out of the glass but the lack of acidity clips its wings. Domaine Christophe et Fils, the more angular and vertical house style between our two Chablis producers, works in a very minimal way with the full range. His 2019 Petit Chablis and 2019 Chablis are arriving while the premier crus will follow later in the season. Christophe’s entry-level wines highlight the striking differences between the left and right bank of Chablis. All his Petit Chablis grapes are sourced from the right bank (east side) of the north-flowing Serein, just above and around the grand cru slope and the hill of Montée de Tonnerre. The vineyards are super rocky, but their wines are generally stouter than those from the left bank. In general, the right bank—and this is to include most of the best premier cru sites and the grand crus, too—are generally less angular while being softer in mineral impressions than the left bank wines because there’s most often a greater topsoil depth and less root contact with the Kimmeridgian marls below, leading to a bigger, flatter punch. This is obviously true when tasting Christophe’s Petit Chablis because it could easily be mistaken for a notch (or two) above its classification on palate weight alone. The Chablis appellation wine from Christophe is always one of the more compelling inside the appellation, and like the Petit Chablis, it comes exclusively from the right bank. In contrast to Christophe’s Petit Chablis grown on the harder Portlandian limestone bedrock, those Kimmeridgian marls from the underlying bedrock in the Chablis classified vineyards come through with more lines and angles, a more intense aroma of that Chablisienne gassy flintiness, and greater texture and core power. I’ve been to Christophe’s vineyards every year since we started working together and my favorite parcels are those found around Fyé, inside the valley that separates Montée de Tonnerre from the grand crus. These Chablis village vineyards are steep and composed of Kimmeridgian marls with nearly microscopic oyster shells that, other than a modicum of organic matter, make up the entirety of the topsoil. It’s interesting that in Chablis many vineyards classified as village appellation sites have just as compelling soil and bedrock structure as many of the premier cru sites, but they are downgraded from premier cru status because of their historically unfavorable exposure. Surely that will change when the previously advantaged vineyards may not be able to produce balanced grapes in coming years. It seems that in the last decade, half the vintages have been on the riper side without the acidic snap present to maintain the freshness expected from this region. Also, those vineyards on the historically unfavorable positions often benefit from their later budbreak than the more exposed sites, as this helps them to miss some of the season’s frost. Domaine Jean Collet continues to knock it out of the park and the list we have coming in looks so good! Here’s the star-studded lineup: Chablis Vieilles Vignes, a single 90-year-old parcel with deep soils—perfect for warmer vintages; 1er Cru Montmains, the most minerally beast of the range due to an almost complete absence of topsoil; 1er Cru Vaillons, usually in my top three of the range of premier crus because of its impeccable balance year in and year out; 1er Cru Les Forêts, the most exotic and alluring of the bunch; 1er Cru Butteaux, the biggest of the premier crus in weight and power from the right bank; 1er Cru Montée de Tonnerre, commonly considered the king of the premier crus, with which Romain Collet always has an unexpectedly light touch; Valmur Grand Cru, a privileged northwest-facing section of the cru that renders wines with a massive body and great freshness and minerality to match; and, finally, Les Clos Grand Cru, sourced from the bottom of the slope on a steep angle, producing perhaps the most well-rounded wine in the range—it truly lives up to the expectation of this celebrated grand cru, though Valmur is its equal, at least at Domaine Jean Collet. The only problem with this much Collet arriving at once (if it could be called a “problem”) is that there are almost too many choices! And every year Collet continues to ratchet up the overall quality of the range. Most of them are certified organic, and for the price, they are a total steal. It’s crazy that Chablis remains so modest in overall pricing compared to Côte d’Or because the quality can be so outstanding on the average with the right year, and 2019 is no exception. Moving further west to the Atlantic seaboard, we have another young vigneron (at least younger than me!) doing wonderful things: Alexandre Déramé’s Domaine de la Morandière, located in Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine. This month I revamped his profile on our website to bring more context to these quietly mighty wines that have silly-good prices. Unfortunately, Muscadet seems to go in and out of fashion more than other famous French appellations and I can’t understand why. They offer so much for so little, especially when you find the right producers. None of them break the bank, even the most revered from the appellation. And for all the mineral-heavy appellations in the world, Muscadet ranks in the top tier. We have two coming from Morandière, but we should have bought a lot more than what is arriving. (We’re already working on that one…) First, there is the 2019 La Morandière, which is no ordinary Muscadet, although it maintains an ordinary price. The vines are old, mostly around fifty years, and grow on loamy topsoil atop gabbro, a super hard, pale green and black intrusive igneous rock. This nearly unbreakable rock seems to build almost unbreakable wines, and to support this idea one only needs to recall the ageability of those from Michel Bregeon before he retired, which were also grown on gabbro. Next is Morandière’s 2014 Les Roches Gaudinières, Vieille Vignes. This is the crowning jewel and one of the most formidable wines from the entire appellation. It’s a total powerhouse, grown on gabbro bedrock and clay with a lot of gabbro rock in the topsoil. The vines are a mix of massale selections and old biotypes with three-quarters from 80-year-old vines and the rest about fifty years old. This magnesium and iron-rich rock, the clay-rich and rocky topsoil, the old vines and their extremely low natural yields of 25-30hl/ha at most in any given year, imparts dense power that needs extensive aging before being enjoyable to drink. L.R.G is a vinous marvel that needs to be experienced to be understood. Next, we jump to France’s Southern Rhône Valley for a few goodies from the very user-friendly Côtes-du-Rhône appellations. Some from Domaine Pique-Basse are finally coming back in and this is one of our producers whose wines evaporated with their initial arrival prior to the onset of the pandemic. It’s taken a while for us to get some back in stock, but don’t wait if you’ve got a slot to fill in the cellar with CdR, because there is very little available on this container. If Pique-Basse’s owner/vigneron, Olivier Tropet, had vineyards in appellations like Côte Rôtie, Cornas or Châteauneuf-du-Pape, he’d be more likely to garner wide acclaim, but he lives in Roaix, the Southern Rhône Valley’s tiniest Côtes-du-Rhône Village appellation. It’s hard to believe what he achieves within this relatively unknown village with his range of wines that have been organically certified since 2009 and are as soulful as they are exquisitely crafted. The reds are savory, deeply flavored, trim, and laced with a surprising degree of subtlety for the power they possess. Pique-Basse’s La Brusquembille is a blend of 70% Syrah and 30% Carignan and shares the same position around the family domaine as the entry-level Grenache, along with the other that just arrived, Le Chasse-Coeur. Syrah from the Southern Rhône Valley is often not that compelling because it can be a little weedy and lacking in the cool spice and exotic notes that come with Syrah further up into the Northern Rhône Valley. However, La Brusquembille may throw you for a loop if you share this opinion. Without the Carignan to add more southern charm, it might easily be mistaken for a Crozes-Hermitage from a great year above the Chassis plain up by Mercurol, where this appellation’s terraced limestone vineyards lie and are quite similar to the limestone bedrock and topsoil at the vineyards of Pique-Basse. It’s not as sleek in profile because it’s still from the south, but the savory red and black nuances can be a close match. I love Grenache, and I think it’s a real pity that this extremely noble and versatile grape has lost favor in the current market trend. Olivier picks the grapes for Le Chasse-Coeur on the earlier side and farms accordingly for earlier ripeness with the intention to maintain lower alcohol and more freshness. It’s a blend of 80% Grenache, 10% Syrah and 10% Carignan, and is more dominated by red fruit notes than black—perhaps that’s what the bright red label is hinting at. It’s aged in cement vats (and sometimes stainless steel if the vintage is plentiful) to preserve the tension and to avoid Grenache’s predisposition for easy oxidation. Both Le Chasse-Coeur and La Brusquembille offer immense value for such serious wines. A wine from one of our favorite characters in the southern Rhône area, Jean David, is back. All of Jean’s vineyards have been farmed organically since 1979, making him one of the region’s natural wine OGs. These days everything is made by his son-in-law, Jean-Luc, but they remain true to form with Jean still looking over his shoulder. We only brought in the Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge this time, but we also have the Seguret coming in later this year, or early next. The inside scoop is Jean David’s Côtes-du-Rhône is made completely of Seguret fruit but comes from the younger vines (those with more than fifty years are the only ones he allows in his Seguret appellation bottlings) and for me, is just as thrilling as their range of Segurets. It’s fresh and bright and offers much more on the complexity meter than expected. It’s elegant and lighter than most from this part of France due to the combination of the vines on limestone and sedimentary rock terraces inside the Ouvèze river valley, the cold winds from the mountains to the east, the vigorous and energetic nature of younger vines, and the extremely sandy soils. Typically, it’s a blend of 55% Grenache, 20% Carignan, 10% Syrah, 10% Counoise, and 5% Mourvedre Austria As expected, Peter Veyder-Malberg (pictured above) continues his upward trajectory in quality, but with less quantity than in recent vintages we’re ready with a flurry of apologies that will likely accompany our allocations this year. 2018 was an exceptionally short crop for Veyder-Malberg due to hail, so we decided to bring in his 2018 and 2019 wines at the same time. What many in the industry may expect as a hotter version of Veyder-Malberg’s typical style will be pleasantly surprised by the elegance and freshness of the 2018s. Difficult vintages challenge winegrowers and often turn out to be some of the most compelling wines they make in their lifetime. Peter is proud of his effort here and it shows in the wines. The virtues of the 2019 vintage are clear across all of Austria: it’s unquestionably a banner year for most of the country. It started out warm and dry in the winter, moving into cooler weather with rain in the spring which slowed the vegetative cycle, and in the late summer it cooled again after warm weather conditions in June and July. By September things stabilized and Grüner Veltliner ripened quickly, but the Rieslings benefited from additional hang time with consistent enough weather for the growers to pick when each parcel found its optimal balance. I’ve had the opportunity to taste Peter’s 2019s a few times and drink a bottle of each of the Rieslings and I’ve concluded that 2019 is not to be missed. Dürnstein Castle I have more great news! After many years of contemplating the move while already farming in a higher quality, eco-friendlier vineyard culture than most of his buddies in the Wachau, Martin Mittelbach, the owner of Tegernseerhof, began full conversion to organic farming a couple of years ago! Everything that’s arriving now is from the fabulous 2019 vintage and Tegernseerhof’s lineup already represents perhaps the best value from one of the Wachau’s top growers working exclusively with fruit grown themselves. In the Grüner Veltliner (GV) range, there are three: Dürnstein Federspiel, named after the ancient and extremely charming medieval village, Dürnstein (with its famous castle perched on a rocky crag where King Richard the Lionheart was once imprisoned—yes, the one in the Robin Hood tale), formerly labeled Frauenweingarten (a wise marketing decision to move away from that tongue twister), and grown mostly on the loess terraces between the Danube and the steep hillsides; Superin Federspiel, a single vineyard wine grown just next to the ancient city walls of Dürnstein and the river, on a gentle slope composed mostly of the famous gneiss bedrock thanks to Danube flooding that kept the site mostly clear of loess depositions, making for a more minerally GV; and Bergdistel Smaragd produced from a series of small vineyard parcels scattered throughout the Loiben and Joching areas of the Wachau. The first two are well-known to our historic customer base, and the latter has been a total knockout as an affordable GV Smaragd that’s been gobbled up in by-the-glass programs listing wines at higher price points. Bergdistel demonstrates that blends of great vineyards can be equally, if not more interesting and dynamic than the single-vineyard bottlings (and they’re always priced better). We also have a few Rieslings arriving from Tegernseerhof in 2019: Dürnstein Federspiel, a blend of earlier-picked grapes from all of their top sites (Kellerberg, Loibenberg and Steinertal) making it an absolute bargain bottle of zingy, minerally Riesling for the quality and price; and Bergdistel Smaragd, like GV Bergdistel, it’s Smaragd level grapes taken from vineyard parcels in Loiben and Joching, and offers the fuller array of deliciously complex fruit characteristics that can be achieved by perfectly ripened Wachau Riesling. Malat Vineyard Kremstal wines from the right bank (south side) of the Danube offer some of the best terroir-rich values in the world, and the entry-level range from Weingut Malat stands next to the best. Like the Malat family, the wines are friendly, but also extremely serious when expected to be. This is the first vintage we’ve imported directly from the Malats after working through another importer over the last six or seven years. On this boat, we have the entry-level Grüner Veltliner, Riesling and Pinot Noir (which may present a pleasant surprise for many Pinot Noir fans), all labeled as “Furth” (formerly labeled Furth-Palt). The whites come from the 2020 vintage and express Michael Malat’s style led by freshness and tension. His 2020s are reminiscent of his 2013s, one of Michael’s earliest vintages and may have been his big entrance onto the Austrian scene. It may be hard to find better Austrian Riesling and Grüner Veltliner for the price (of course there are many truly great producers with entry-level wines in this range) from a grower working exclusively with their own estate fruit and who is not a behemoth producer by comparison. The devil is in the details and it’s easier to lose track of that fact, the bigger a company gets. The Malats exhibit focused presence in the vineyard and cellar, and their production is modest when considering much of it is for the two entry-level whites. There’s also a small batch of 2019 Grüner Veltliner Höhlgraben, a wonderful wine from an excellent vintage grown on shallow loess topsoil on granulite bedrock, a high-grade metamorphic rock similar to the gneiss found in other nearby regions. We’re happy to have the Malats back on board after missing most of the last two years. They are such a pleasure to work with and are in constant pursuit of bettering their previous bests. On our website there is an interview I did in Austria with Michael Malat during my summer trip. In typical fashion, as was done with the Thierry Richoux video, I try to stay out of it as much as possible (an impossible task for most of the painfully arduous Zoom videos created during the pandemic) to condense the material and make it as time efficient as possible. Italy Falkenstein vineyards in Italy’s Südtirol Staying on the Austrian Riesling theme is Falkenstein, an Italian cantina with Austrian heritage, both in familial history and the greater influences on their wine style. Borrowing from last month’s newsletter travel journal section on Falkenstein (in case you missed it), it’s a winery located in Italy’s Südtirol/Alto Adige that produces many fantastic different wines (Weissburgunder, Sauvignon, Pinot Noir—all grapes that have been cultivated here for centuries) and many consider the Pratzner family the most compelling Riesling producer in Italy. The vineyard and winery are in one of the many glacial valleys in the north of Italy’s alpine country, with a typical relief of a flat valley floor surrounded by gorgeous, steep mountains, which creates starkly contrasting shades and colors throughout. All the vineyards in these parts must have the correct exposure on northern positions that provide some angle of a south face, otherwise there is no chance of achieving palatable ripeness. The vineyards here are some of the world’s most stunning, and it’s surprising how many are tucked into the valleys of Trentino (the bordering region to the south) and the Südtirol. Arriving from Falkenstein are small quantities Riesling, Weissburgunder, Sauvignon, and Pinot Noir, the latter a surprisingly fantastic alpine version of this celebrated and talented grape that has called Südtirol home for centuries. I recently had a sampling of their range, including a bottle of the 2017 Pinot Noir arriving this month, with a few growers here in Portugal (from Quinta do Ameal, Constantino Ramos, and the guys from Arribas Wine Company) and they were stunned by the spectrum of complexity in all the wines, especially the Pinot Noir. The Pinot Noir is not Burgundian in style (how could it be if grown on metamorphic rock on a mountainside glacial valley?) but it unearths the best quality of the grape: freshness, layered complexity, finesse, and beautiful bright fruit aromas. Sometimes, depending on the day, it shows a little bit of oak upon opening (I suppose that may be the most predictable Burgundian thing about it), but after a little while it’s gorgeous and pure, tucking the wood so far back inside that it’s unnoticeable. Unfortunately, we only have seven cases on the container. Last but certainly not least, and likely the first to fly out the door upon arrival, is the 2019 Riecine Chianti Classico. While it may not be a classico Chianti Classico for the staunch traditionalists, it’s for wine lovers who love delicious things. I’ve visited the cantina a couple of times, and it’s taken all the time in between my first tour and the very moment of writing this for me to realize why their wines are so joyful: it’s the people who work at the cantina! Riecine is a collective of youngsters (again, at least mostly younger than me!) who I’ve literally heard whistling while they work. The setting of this place in one of the higher altitude zones of Tuscan wine country has workers (mostly Italians but I think some foreigners too) who constantly show a welcoming smile and have pep in their step as they work in their sun-filled bubble tucked back into their forest in the Chianti hills. Optimism is in their eyes and ingrained in the company spirit. The possibilities afforded to each staff member to make a personal contribution is apparent in their energy and comradery led by the open-minded and very progressive leader, Alessandro Campatelli. They’re a crew on a mission, working as one to free Chianti Classico from the constraints of its traditional introversion(!), to show that Sangiovese can be exuberant, sexy and sophisticated as it heads for a party instead of a stuffy dinner. Just look at the landing page (pictured below) for the winery’s website and you’ll see the origin of the illumination in these wines: it comes from inside its company’s culture; they’re happy and they’re having fun! Do you care about reviews? I don’t. But some people do, and that’s a bad thing if you like Riecine and you’re not up to speed with what the critics are saying; Riecine gets very good reviews, sometimes great ones, and they keep coming every year. But the 2019 Chianti Classico grabbed the attention of a lot of new buyers who have come out of the woodwork asking us for quantities we simply can’t supply because of the latest press from Decanter (95 points and a gold medal in the 2021 Decanter World Wine Awards, if you must know…). Don’t sit on your hands, especially if you’ve followed this producer already. If you want some, please tell us soon. Riecine Team

Little in the world of wine was more exciting than the recent news that cable giant USA Network is producing a show that may be inspired by wine forger Rudy Kurniawan. According to Variety, “Connoisseurs” will center “around Clay Park … a brilliant con artist who dupes the wealthiest, most powerful people in the country into paying millions for fake wine, but his hustle forces him into a deadly bargain with an organized crime syndicate, puts him in the cross-hairs of the FBI, and unearths the details of a tragedy that fractured his family years ago in Korea.” Attached to the show as lead is Korean-born actor John Cho, best known as Sulu in the recent Star Trek movies. Producers deny that Rudy was the inspiration (issuing the statement, “It’s clear that this show is not based on the real life story of Rudy Kurniawan. The real Kurniawan was born in Indonesia, not Korea.”) Nevertheless, newly found documents make it clear that USA must have been exploring tv shows featuring Kurniawan-inspired characters for a while. The documents, rescued intact from stacks destined for the shredder, were made public last week. Below are concepts that were clearly rejected for one reason or another. The Ducs of Burgundy: Brothers Rudy (John Cho) and Luc Duc are wine hustlers in Burgundy County, Louisiana. They drive around in a custom-fitted red Tesla— the General Leroy—hustling rich wine buyers with their country concoctions. All the while, they barely elude the snorting, stomping French expat Boss Frogg, commissioner of Burgundy County. The fake wines are expertly blended by their overall-clad uncle, while their short-shorts wearing sister Rose, a local sommelier, can always be relied upon to distract the police with a little sex appeal as well as free-flowing glasses of forged wines. This action-packed series features lots of fast paced chases, hilarious wine scams, and slow-motion spraying of Champagne over Rose. Many episodes end with Boss Frog screaming, “They got away again! But at least we got the 1945 Mouton.” With a wink at his deputy, Frogg uncorks a bottle to make sure it’s the real deal. Dagnamit! Two Buck Chuck again! (Spit take, roll credits.) Faking Bad: John Cho plays Walter Blanc, whose career as a brilliant cult winemaker in Napa Valley fell apart after a dispute with a greedy vintner. Exiled, Blanc ends up at a backwater wine college in dusty Eastern Washington, teaching wine to indifferent farmers who have planted wine grapes in their former wheat fields. Blanc’s life is a disaster—he can’t pay the bills and is diagnosed with a serious sulfite allergy. Enter Jesse Drinkman, a local sommelier and former student, who Blanc one day observes duping some customers who ordered 1961 Haut Brion with fake wine. After confronting Drinkman, Blanc says he wants in on the scam, but insists on doing it right. From various locations, including a garage, a trailer, and even a custom crush facility, Blanc brings his expertise to creating new bottles of legendary old wines that even experts have a hard time authenticating. In wine cellars across the country, rumor gets out about a mysterious mastermind known only as Kaiserberg. Tense drama ensues as the pair of forgers find themselves navigating an increasingly dangerous world, pursued at every turn by adversaries, including crusading master of wine, Maureen Frowney and vengeful hacker Don Cornas. Winos: Pablo Echezeaux is a humble vigneron of the Hautes Côtes de Bourgogne. Every day he looks down at the vineyards of Vosne-Romanee, seething with envy about the fine lives those privileged, aristocratic producers have. At some point, he gets the idea that he can blend his own inferior wine with older stuff from the local villages and pass it off to hungry American auction houses as DRC or Leroy. Soon the Americans can’t get enough! Echezeaux expands production, creating huge outdoor bottling facilities in the middle of remote vineyards and ruthlessly dealing with rivals, who include gray marketeers and negociants. As the Feds try to shut him down, Echezeaux must find increasingly creative ways to smuggle his fake wine into the US. He grows rich and, with shocking ease, is invited into Burgundian high society. Here he is at lunch with Jean-Charles Boisset. There he is in photo ops with Burghound. All the while, the village of Vosne-Romanée is turning into one of the most violent places in the Côte de Nuits. Vineyard workers find a severed head in Richebourg. A white van burns on the Route de Grands Crus. Meanwhile, special agents begin to close in. Rudy Donovan: Rudy Donovan (Jason Cho) is wine ‘fixer.’ When Hollywood’s elite needs that fancy bottle, he is on call, and somehow always comes to the rescue with the perfect wine. While Rudy is clothed in a certain hardboiled glamour, he has a darkly criminal past, and no one knows exactly where he gets all this old wine. His two brothers, one an alcoholic sommelier and the other a washed-up wine writer, alternately complicate and animate his life. It’s all copacetic, however, until Rudy’s father, Hardy Rodenstock, just released from 20 yrs of hard time comes to town to get in on the action. The Trellis: Set in gritty Lompoc ghetto, a Rudy-led gang of wine forgers battle against other gangs for control over the fake wine trade, while the well-meaning but dysfunctional Lompoc PD struggles to bring them to justice. Honest wine ghetto winemakers struggle to keep their nobility amid a growing epidemic of fake Pinot Noir and wanton violence. Orange is the New Rosé: This show takes place inside the maximum security prison for wine criminals, including Rudy (Jason Cho). Watch as the characters navigate the complicated, dangerous environment of a wine prison block, trying desperately to survive, much less make parole. See them navigate the turf war being waged by the ruthless prison gangs—Special Club, IPOB, VDP—while at the same time fermenting fruit cocktail into fake Sauternes, selling fraudulent wine futures, and pairing cellblock hooch with prison food.