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

Forteresse de Berrye and its historic vineyards (Download complete pdf here) The Dam Broke? There is a lot about to happen in the first quarter of this new year as we unexpectedly had ten containers arrive in November; normally, we receive two or three in a single month. Things had been running so late over the last year and a half that we ordered very early to try to get ahead of any delays, but now the dam seems to have broken (we hope). Imports sometimes stretched to as much as seven months coming from France right after the pandemic (less in other countries), and maybe now we’re getting back to something more manageable. November isn’t the best time to launch new producers into the market so with these nine new ones (three from the Loire Valley, two from Douro, and one each from Alentejo, Rioja, Etna, and Tuscany), we’ll be staggering them out over the coming months. This newsletter will introduce three of our new producers imported exclusively in the US by The Source. Because there’s so much material, it’s helpful to download the attached pdfs in order to read up completely on each of them; otherwise, this document would be a book. First is Forteresse de Berrye, the epicenter of a wonderful new renaissance within a historic commune of Saumur, ten kilometers south of Brézé, a place with similar potential for Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc as that now-glorified hill. The new owner (since 2019), Gilles Colinet, a former botanist, converted to organic culture straight away, and his first efforts are promising. You’ll then meet Giacomo Baraldo, a fabulous young producer from Tuscany with years of experience all over the world (including Burgundy) who’s crafting refined and distinctive Sangiovese single-site wines at high altitudes, and a diverse, exquisitely crafted and compelling range of white wines, most notably from Chardonnay vines planted on limestone and clay at high altitude with massale selections gathered from Corton-Charlemagne, Saint-Aubin, and Puligny-Montrachet. Finally, we’re proud to offer the wines of Quinta da Carolina. This quinta is run by one of Portugal’s young superstars, Luis Candido da Silva. He’s currently the head winemaker of the non-Port wines at Dirk Niepoort’s empire in the Douro. Under his own label, he crafts stunning white and red still wines from north facing, high altitude hills in the Douro. These three are a great trio to start the new year. Quantities from each are limited, so if something strikes your interest, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Quinta da Carolina vineyards in the foreground overlooking the Douro Download Forteresse de Berrye Profile Download Giacomo Baraldo Profile Download Quinta da Carolina Profile California Trade Events In February we’ll put on more sit-down trade tasting events showcasing some allocated, limited, and new producers. Please ask your salesperson to book your seat as they will be limited. We plan to schedule quarterly tastings because there is so much to show and because we’ve had a great response to them. On the billing: Wechsler’s 2020 Riesling crus, Veyder-Malberg’s 2021 Riesling and Grüner Veltliner, 2020 Artuke Rioja single-site wines, 2020 Collet Chablis grand crus, and some of our new producers, Vallée Moray (Montlouis), Vincent Bergeron (Montlouis), Tapada do Chaves (Alentejo), and José Gil (Rioja). February 7th: San Francisco at DecantSF from 11am -3pm February 8th: West Hollywood at Terroni from 11am-3pm February 9th: San Diego at Vino Carta from 11am - 2pm   New Terroir Map It seems that I’ve waited forever to finally release this terroir map of Portugal’s Douro. Now that we have two new producers from there, both truly special people (also very different, and making quite different styles of wine), we can finally put this one out there. The grape key was put together with the help of Luis Candida da Silva from Quinta da Carolina because I am simply not qualified to organize such things with so many complex and relatively unknown varieties as these! This map, as with all of our terroir maps, was also done in collaboration with Ivan Rodriguez, a PhD student and MSc of Geology from the University of Vigo, along with my wife, Andrea Arredondo, our graphic designer. Ivan has become a close and very special friend and also a part of our team. He is an incredible resource and helps with our many educational projects where science needs to be better understood. You can download the map by clicking on it which will take you to our website to download it with the three additional pages of support material. New Arrivals Ried Schön in the right front, Bruck on the next hill to the left, and Brandstatt in the upper left Veyder-Malberg 2021 Rieslings and Grüner Veltliner Crus Veyder Malberg’s 2021 vintage will also be trickling out over the next few weeks, starting with the entry-level wines and then the top wines shown at our tasting events in the first week of February. Austria continues to have slam-dunk vintages every other year with their Grüner Veltliner and Riesling. First it was 2013, then 2015, 2017, 2019, now 2021. A big fan of all, but more 2013 and 2019 than the others, it’s likely 2021 will be the best of the bunch. They are so fluid and tense, aromatically fine yet with the right pressure. Never did I think (with very strong lean toward Riesling) Grüner Veltliner would rival a great producer’s Rieslings in a top vintage, but 2021 is without question for me the best vintage for this variety I can remember—at least from the likes of our great growers there, Peter Veyder-Malberg, Tegernseerhof and Michael Malat. The top Veltliners seemed to have somehow swapped out the extra fluff and broad palate weight for finer, lacier, minerally profile, like a young prodigious progeny of Riesling and Veltliner. The Rieslings are as good as it gets. It’s simply a banner year, a throwback to the old days in overall structure and profile with a bright but tensile, sunny smile. Peter gave us the opportunity to go long on this vintage because he accidentally shorted us on the 2020. We were happy to make up the balance of what we would’ve normally gotten, and from this incredibly fantastic year. One could write a book of tasting descriptions for a year like this, but they’re already going to be in such high demand that I don’t want to promote too much. My advice is to get everything you can! Not only from Veyder, but all of your favorite producers. They will surely age beautifully and they do indeed sing gorgeously now. Jean Collet 2020 Chablis Premier and Grand Cru What follows is a commentary on the 2020 vintage from our July 2022 Newsletter, which was a preface to the offer of Christophe et Fils 2020s. I haven’t changed my thoughts on this vintage (though it includes a few editorial changes), only that I’m even more convinced of their quality. The 2020 season was not as hot as 2018 and 2019. While 2019 may have jumped a little further from being described as “classic” Chablis due to its riper fruit notes (but with a surprisingly high level of acidity for this warm year), some hail 2020 as “classic,” “early but classic,” and “a great vintage.” I don’t even know what “classic” means anymore with regard to Chablis, or anywhere else. Do you? I know what “great” means to me, personally (with emotional value topping the list), but my “great” may not be yours. Our current frame of reference and experience sculpts all of our preferences, and our formative years will always be present as well. People who’ve been in the wine business for decades have different associations with wine than those more recently seduced by Dionysus. Classic Chablis? I haven’t had a young Chablis that vibrates with tense citrus and flint, a visible green hue, shimmering acidity, and coarse mineral texture all in the same sip for a long time—so long that I can’t even remember the last vintage where I had those sensations with newly bottled Chablis. (Of course, a recently bottled wine still high-strung with sulfites can give that appearance but the wine will display its truer nature a few years after its bottling date.) Chablis is different now. Burgundy is different. Everywhere is different from a decade ago and obviously even more so than from two decades ago. With the composition of today’s wine lists and their one or two pages of quickly-changing inventory compared to extensive cellars of restaurant antiquity, most of us have developed different expectations—if not completely different perspectives—for wine now than what “classic” used to imply. (The idea of “classic” from more than twenty-five years ago when I first became obsessed with wine now conjures images of chemically farmed vineyards and their spare wines.) 2020 may be fresher and brighter than the last two years in some ways but maybe with less stuffing than the similarly calibrated 2017s, a vintage I loved the second I tasted the first example out of barrel at Domaine Jean Collet. Maybe we can call 2020 “classic,” but if picking started at the end of August, would that “classic” be graded on a curve? The artistic Romain Collet Snapshot of 2019-2021 Romain Collet says that both 2019 and 2020 were very warm vintages that experienced about the same losses of 10-15% from spring frost. The 2019s were picked in the first week of September, while 2020 began one week later—though the budbreak of 2020 was earlier than 2019, perhaps lending some credence to the use of “classic” when categorizing this year because the season was longer than it would otherwise appear if one only considers the harvest dates. 2021 was a cold year and this one will surely ring true as a classic Chablis vintage. They started picking at the end of September and finished on October 6th. Considering how late they picked with the loss of 30-40% of their 2021 crop to frost, this should make it quite a strong vintage for those in search of what’s considered a truly classic vintage style. We’ll see, but if the Collet’s 2021s are any indicator of what’s to come, the classicists will be very happy, even though there was chaptalization on many wines across the appellation to get them up past 12% alcohol. Chaptalization was always a known element with classic Burgundy wines but in the last warm decades we don’t talk about it much anymore; alcohol levels are naturally high because it’s gettin’ hot! Romain’s intuition for managing each year’s challenges continues to surprise—and pleasantly, of course. In cold years, the wines are classic, and with Raveneau-esque fluid sappiness and the element of attractive green notes—green apple skin, wheatgrass, green grapes, lime, sweet mint—though they’re also perhaps a little bonier and more square. (Raveneau is Romain’s inspiration in overall style and each year he creeps a little closer to it.) In warm years the wines maintain structure, though with rounder and more tropical fruit notes, while being more taut than one would expect. 2020 is indeed another successful year for Collet. The quantities produced are less than the years before, but the good news is that they’ve kept our allocation relatively the same. Arriving are the 2020 and 2021 Saint-Bris made from purchased fruit from one of Romain’s longtime friends. These are a good (and needed) counter for the low quantities of Sauvignon Blanc from Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, and their neighboring, less famous appellations. Saint-Bris neighbors Chablis but was planted to Sauvignon Blanc instead of Chardonnay because it’s extremely rocky, with less topsoil, better for Sauvignon and not so good for Chardonnay, which needs more topsoil. Despite the spare soils, the wines are full compared to others from the appellation, and they represent a great value from this talented producer. Butteaux at the bottom of the picture, Forêts where the road turns right, Montmains (though it includes the previous two lieux-dits) is further toward the village on this hill slope, grand crus all the way in the back and Vaillons on the hill just to the left along the forested top. Left Bank Premier Crus As usual, we have the star-studded lineup of premier crus, starting with Montmains, a selection of fruit from the original Montmains lieu-dit that sits closest to the village, on the rockiest soils the Collet’s have for this designation. As one would expect from this topsoil-spare site, this is one of the most minerally wines in their range and Romain exemplifies its character with a steel élevage. Part of the Montmains hill is subdivided into two more well-known lieux-dits (that can be labeled as Montmains as well but seem to rarely be these days) are Les Forêts and Butteaux. Here we find more topsoil in both sites compared to the rows closer to the village. Les Forêts’ young vines usually prove to be the most exotic of their range while Butteaux with its old vines and heavier topsoil with massive rocks in it is one of the stoutest, and in a blind tasting it could easily be confused for a grand cru wine on weight and power alone. Vaillons shot in Vaillons The long hill of Vaillons parallels Montmains just to the north, separated by Chablis village vineyards on the same Kimmeridgian marls as the premier crus but face more toward the north—the sole reason for their classification instead being appointed premier cru status. Vaillons is often my “go-to” Chablis in Collet’s range of premier crus when I want a balance of everything. It’s minerally due to the very rocky soil, and has good body because of its 40% clay in the topsoil. Tension is always there no matter the vintage because of the richer, more water retentive soil that makes for a longer and less hydric stressed season compared to other sites with sparer soils. The majority of the vineyard faces southeast with some parcels due east, bringing an advantage from the morning sun and less so the baking evening summer and autumn sun. Though not as hot as the right bank with the grand crus facing more toward the west, it shows its breed with a constant evolution rising in the glass due to the many different lieux-dits parcels blended into it. I believe that Collet is the owner of the largest portion of vines on this big cru hillside, making for that sort of MVP character without anything missing due to the large stable of parcels to choose from. Given its size, it is also the largest quantity of wine from any single Collet premier cru we receive. Montée de Tonnerre in the center and Mont de Milieu to the right Right Bank Crus The Collets are advantaged with a fabulous collection of vineyards from both sides of the river, though most of their premier cru land is on the left bank. While the left bank wines could be characterized as more mineral dominant than the right bank, there are indeed exceptions. I’ve often said that Mont de Milieu is one of those wines that, though it is on the right bank, is very left bank in style compared to the grand crus and many of the other right bank premier crus. There are also few who bottle Mont de Milieu. Over the years this wine was always good but less impressive than many in Collet’s range, at least for me. These days, I lament the small quantities we are allocated (based on past purchases) because the most recent versions are starting to fight for top billing in the premier cru range. There is no doubt that the 2021 version of this wine is one of the top of the vintage, if not the top premier cru (at least very early on during a tasting this last November at the domaine), and the 2020 is a great prelude to what will arrive next year. We only have ten cases to share, so they will be judiciously allocated. There is no greater call in the Chablis premier cru world than Montée de Tonnerre. Yes, it’s like a grand cru in some ways, mostly in how regal it is, but it is its own terroir as well. Positioned between Mont de Milieu and the grand cru slope, just a ravine away from Blanchots and Les Clos, it finds the balance with a gentler slope in many parts than the grand cru hillside which has many different aspects and greater variability between the crus. Collet also has (in very small quantities) the grand crus, Valmur and Les Clos. Their Valmur is situated at the top of the cru on its south side, facing northwest, which was less ideal for a grand cru decades ago but perfect for today’s shifting climate. Stout and minerally, I believe it to consistently be one of the greatest overall wines in our entire portfolio. Les Clos is its equal but perhaps more extroverted and even slightly more balanced, gilded with Chablis’ royal trim and the sun’s gold. The topsoil toward the bottom of the hill is deeper and richer, bringing an added advantage against the hydric stress of warmer years, though disadvantaged in fending off frost. Don’t forget to download the pdfs of Forteresse de Berrye, Giacomo Baraldo and Quinta da Carolina! We go deep!

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

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.

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

Ahh, Tuscan sunsets… (Download complete pdf here) Due to the lengthy content of our monthly newsletter and the desire to be more accurate on wine arrival timing, we are breaking it up into two segments each month, delivered on the first and third Fridays. Let’s dig in! Source Happenings We’re adding our trade and consumer events to the newsletter so you know what is going on! Austria’s Riesling and Grüner Veltliner wizard, Michael Malat, will be in California November 8-11. He will be at the following events/dinners: Thursday, November 10th, Austrian winegrower Michael Malat at Nari in San Francisco. Join Michael and Nari sommelier, Sam Zelver, and The Source’s Danny DeMartini at this fabulous contemporary Thai restaurant. Call to reserve at (415)-868-6274 Friday, November 11th, Austrian winegrower Michael Malat at Napa Valley’s Compline Wine Shop with sommelier/owners Matt Stamp and Ryan Stetins, and The Source’s Hadley Kemp from 6:30pm – 7:30pm. Tickets available for purchase at https://complinewine.com/collections/wine-education/products/fancy-flight-night-with-michael-malat Saturday, November 12th at Santa Barbara’s Bacara Resort, The Source’s Leigh Readey will be pouring donated wines at the Santa Barbara Vintners Foundation Gala Dinner and Live Auction benefiting Direct Relief and Community Health Centers. Tickets can be found at https://sbwineauction.org/ Wednesday, November 16th at The Anchovy Bar in San Francisco, The Source will be featured for their new dinner series with sommelier Adam Robins and The Source’s Danny DeMartini. Wines poured will include Galicia’s Manuel Moldes and Augalevada, and Piemonte’s Luigi Spertino and Monti Perini. Reservations at https://www.theanchovybar.com/ Navelli, Abruzzo New Arrivals Just in time for the holiday season, we have a load of great stuff to beef up wine programs. Our newest arrivals include Romain Guiberteau and Brendan Stater-West’s new Saumur releases, François Crochet’s cru Sancerres that show freshness is not lost on that entire appellation in the face of climate change, Pierre Morey’s statuesque Meursaults, and David Duband’s reliable and finely tuned terroir exposé. I’ve written exhaustively about these producers (available on our site), so they don’t need more plugging. Plus, their quantities are spare. Our main focus in the first half of this month is the arrival of wines from future Austrian legend, Michael Malat. Indeed, I’ve extolled his talents many times before, but his range is growing along with his experience! Weingüt Malat’s ancient cellar Special Feature Michael Malat – Kremstal, Austria Michael Malat has it all: affordable and spectacular, premium wines that exceed expectations, full of terroir and joy in every category: red, white, rosé, sparkling, and orange. Malat found his breakthrough with the 2013 vintage, six vintages after his father, Gerald, put him in the driver’s seat. Since then, notable years were 2015 and 2017, and now 2019. Michi, as he’s referred to in Austria (pronounced Mickey), who’s only a hair over forty, puts to bottle wines marked with a similar throughline: deliciousness, depth and terroir purity. Uniquely, he manages to get his Kamptal Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners to express fruit nuances of the same color as his deeply hued yellow capsules and labels. These exotic but discreet yellow fruit notes filled with Amalfi Coast-like sunshine makes their intellectual stimulation even that much more pleasurable. From the top of the range to the bottom there are few in the industry who deliver such serious wine with so much glee. The Vineyards Malat’s vineyards are mostly inside Kremstal (with some actually just inside of the Wachau), one of Austria’s most famous and equally geologically diverse appellations. All but his Pfaffenberg wine come from the Danube’s right bank (south side) where the hills slope more gently with multi-rowed terraces, while on the other side the hills are mostly treacherous, rocky sites facing south with more extreme exposure to the sun, similar in hillside structure to the neighboring Wachau. The flatter land on the south side has a greater level of loess (extremely fine-grained, calcareous, mineral-dense, wind-blown sand) in the topsoil. There are also sections on this side closer to the river on gravel and sand deposits where they grow some of the Pinot Noir grapes and others for the entry-level wines. Further upslope most of the vineyards in his top crus are usually covered to some degree with loess topsoil but are in closer contact with a solid bedrock of ancient acidic rock formations that date all the way back to Pangean times, hundreds of millions of years ago. Climatically, because of the tug-of-war between warm Pannonian winds and cold blasts from the Alps, it’s much colder than most of the rest of Austrian wine country, between the warmest and coolest areas of top Riesling and Grüner Veltliner production. Most of Malat’s vines were planted during his lifetime, despite the winery’s history dating back to the 1700s. This is largely due to his father’s ambition, which set the stage for Michael’s fabulous collection of vineyards in their middle age, perfect for wines of great balance. Bubbles We begin with bubbles. Michael’s father, Gerald, paved the way for Austria’s Sekt market in 1976. A straight shooter from the post-WWII Austria, post-Soviet occupation (until 1955) recovery generation, he pushed against the Austrian Republic’s law ordaining that only licensed producers could produce sparkling wines (Sekt in German). They also used local grape varieties, like Gelber Muskateller, Müller-Thurgau, Grüner Veltliner, and Riesling. After Gerald’s nationally followed fight and subsequent victory, it only took a few vintages for him to see that his wines were lacking in structure and finesse made from these local varieties when compared to those of Champagne. He already had Pinot Noir and Chardonnay planted but expanded his holdings during Michi’s childhood to provide his son with the superb material he uses to craft them today. Both the 2017 Brut Rosé Reserve, made entirely from Pinot Noir, and 2017 Brut Nature Reserve, purely Chardonnay, are aged in bottle on their lees for four years, while the law only requires nine months. Gerald used to add a small dosage but today Michael adds nothing because of the fuller flavor and fruitiness that climate change has imposed on the wines. The results are substantial, and many consider them to be the best of their kind out of Austria. Only a hair above the price of the least expensive organic Champagnes made from small-house producers, they’re a good blind taste for Champagne buffs. Orange Wines Curiosity, necessity, and keeping up with the times led Michael to develop orange wines starting in 2016, bottled now under the Malat label RAW. During the 2016 harvest the press broke when the Gewürtztraminer was perfectly ripe. Just as the “natural wine” movement was a topic of discussion and scorn in Austria, so was orange wine, but a decision had to be made to either leave the grapes on the vine until the press was fixed or give it a go with full skin maceration and put himself in the crosshairs of his colleagues. He explained that at the time in Austria there were only about ten producers making orange wines and only a few of them were good, at least to his Austrian winemaker’s palate. In classic Malat fashion, he was comfortable in the crosshairs. Grapes that seem to fare better for orange wines are often excessively aromatic whites with pungent floral and sweet spice notes, reminiscent of strong perfume scents that evoke generations of family gatherings. Toward the northeast of Italy and into neighboring countries, like Slovenia and further east to Georgia, orange wines have been a thing since antiquity, perhaps the way all white grapes were made into wine long ago. From a stability standpoint, orange wines would’ve outmatched a white wine due to tannins and polyphenols extracted from the skins in more low-tech generations. The yields are surely higher compared to white grapes pressed upon arrival at the winery that still retain some juice even with rarely employed high pressure at a quality producer. Being that orange wines are nothing new to the Old World’s older world, they deserve some attention, not solely as a trend but as a legitimate category. I, for one, love good orange wines, which are less rare than in the past. As with any category, many are lazily crafted and poured into the natural wine river, while on the other side, orange wines from big producers must be just as innocuous, soulless and uninteresting as others on their marketing team’s menu. When craftspeople with a level of mastery of fundamentals in wine chemistry and viticulture play with orange wine the results can be consistently compelling yet still framed in wine classicism: harmonious, reliable, and of utmost importance to this taster–intricacy. Michael has achieved a level of mastery with his craft, fundamentals all the way to a certain level of artistry, and though the orange wines are relatively new to him, it doesn’t appear so. Both of Malat’s orange wines are clean and elegant renditions with the 2021 Gelber Muscateller RAW more tense and bright by nature of the variety than the expectedly fuller and powerfully expressive 2021 Gewürtztraminer RAW. They spend between two and three weeks on the skins, age on their lees in large, old wood vats, naturally go through malolactic fermentation, and are bottled with low sulfur levels (given the greater natural stability extracted from the skins and seeds). The last batch we ordered evaporated, and though we tripled the order this time, it still won’t be enough. Classic Range – Entry Levels Malat’s starter kit on the classic range is second to none in Austria, especially when price is a consideration. Labeled Furth, after the main town in the area, they demonstrate what can be done on a medium scale in production with superb results. All come from the right bank with those close to the river on flat vineyards and the others with a slight northern tilt. The 2021 Riesling “Furth” is mostly grown at higher altitudes further upslope on terraces and in closer contact with rocky bedrock and topsoil, as opposed to an endless bedrock and topsoil of loess further below that much of the 2021 Grüner Veltliner “Furth” is grown on. An additional detail to highlight on these two entry-level wines is that they are aged entirely in ancient 5,000-10,000-liter wood casks. This type of aging vessel polishes them out into more of a friendly analog frequency than the digital-like renditions from stainless steel. I’ve asked Michael why his wines are so specific and unique from other wines in the area and have yet to receive a clear answer. My guess is that it has to do with these ancient barrels and the three-hundred-year-old cellar. I guess I could coin the term “The Rayas-effect,” where taste is so specifically linked to a winery, despite the origin of the grapes. When I visited Château Rayas it smelled like I was inside a glass of his wine the whole time. Malat’s old wooden vats The Riesling is as expected: sharper, fresher, more minerally, angularly nuanced, and with a subtle range of yellow fruits, spice and delicate flowers. Riesling can be so Germanically serious sometimes that it’s refreshing to slurp Michael’s down without thinking so much. The Grüner Veltliner has more body by comparison to his Riesling, though it’s not a full-bodied wine by any stretch. The variety is generally friendlier by nature than Riesling for most consumers, and under Michael’s hand it captures one of the most compelling profiles for this grape variety (re: my preferences) compared to much of the rest of Austria. Emitting Ischian Biancolella-like sunshine and smiles, this starter to the Veltliner range is generous and refreshing—a welcome departure from the densely spiced and almost overwhelmingly herbaceous, cloying nature of Grüner Veltliner taken far too seriously in the cellar. Many with less exposure to Austrian wine might be surprised to learn that Pinot Noir has been cultivated in Austria since the twelfth century. While it was initially grown in the warmer parts by the same order of monks that established Burgundy and Galicia, it crept into other regions as the climate warmed and made it possible to make solid Pinot Noir still wines instead being relegated to wiry rosés and sparkling wines. Grown further down the slopes closer to the Danube, the 2019 Pinot Noir “Furth,” comes from a fabulous year with sufficient ripeness for Pinot Noir to achieve its full robe of taut to fully mature red fruits while retaining its gorgeous and subtle florals. The soils here are largely composed of river alluvium with some in contact with loess. One cannot expect a Burgundian style wine here in the sense of texture and fruit notes. It’s simply impossible to completely replicate Burgundy outside of Burgundy, though there are many excellent Pinot Noir wines made in other parts of the world. Here, the textures are more pointed and slightly gravellier with aromatics that dance between the densely green north-facing hills covered in forest and bramble that borders all the vineyards to the south. Local herbs, flowers and berries, not the four-berry mix found in Côte d’Or Pinot Noir, but rather wild red and black currants, taut and bright wild cherries and blackberries, marked with a distinct Alpine quality. Classic Range – Cru Wines I admit that if given the opportunity to choose between a great Austrian Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, nine and a half times out of ten, it’s going to be Riesling. However, 2021 Grüner Veltliners might be the vintage that changes that, as it was an exceptional season due to the high ripeness of the grapes with an unusually high amount of acidity for this level of maturity. They are structured and deeply pleasurable. If you have a liking for Grüner Veltliner, don’t sit out 2021. Hohlgraben has been part of the Malat’s family vineyards since 1722 (think about that…), and for this reason, Michael describes it as the “classic Malat wine.” As with all years, the 2021 Grüner Veltliner “Hohlgraben” takes on its personality from a set of terraced vineyards at an altitude of 250-300m with loess topsoil on top of alternating layers of alluvium and loess—a consequence of cyclical erosion and deposition by way of Danube flooding and windblown loess depositions blown in from the Alps. Wines grown on loess tend to be more rounded and juicier than those from rocky bedrock, which, by contrast, usually imparts more angles and deeper mineral impressions. Grüner Veltliner doesn’t like to struggle in the vineyard, nor does it need to do so to find its happy place, unlike Riesling. Loess offers Veltliner optimal conditions due to its higher water retentive capacity and nutrient levels, which are also less favorable for high quality Riesling. The results are a spicy and easy-to-drink yet serious Veltliner with a medium body rather than the fuller ones often found across the river on the Wachau’s south-facing vineyards. Despite its immediate accessibility, it retains the interest of the taster with its palate-refreshing acidity and minerally qualities. A name from the Middle Ages that means “sharp ledges on the ridges,” Malat’s 2019 Grüner Veltliner 1ÖTW Gottschelle is their top site for this variety. This premier cru classified wine—abbreviated in Austria as 1ÖTW—sits atop a granulite bedrock with the vine roots mostly in contact with a deep topsoil composed of calcium-rich loess (fine wind-blown sand) and a layer cake of gravels further down, deposited there by the Danube during the most recent ice age, but the bedrock is so deep that most vine root systems may not make contact with it. Like all of Malat’s top Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners, Gottschelle is raised in 2000-2500-liter old foudres for six to eight months. This is the winery’s biggest Grüner Veltliner and expresses a forward spiciness and minerality with supporting notes of white and orange fruit, iodine, and dried grasses and grain. Malat’s Riesling Premier Cru trilogy is indeed special. First is the 2019 Riesling 1ÖTW Steinbühel, a name that dates all the way back to 1322 and means “stone hill.” Grown on a bedrock of granulite (a high-grade metamorphic rock similar to gneiss) with a loess-rich topsoil mixed with eroded bedrock, it’s perhaps the most elegant in Michael’s range of top-flight Rieslings, while the 2019 Riesling 1ÖTW Silberbichl has strength in its mineral impressions and broader power than Steinbuhl. Known as Silberbichl since the fourteenth century, which means “silver hill,” it’s named after the shimmering silvery reflection of the mica schist bedrock and topsoil best observed with the sun’s rays lower on the horizon. The newest member of the lineup is one of the rare wines made at Malat from someone else’s vineyard: The 2019 Riesling 1ÖTW Pfaffenberg is a glorious addition to the range and wonderfully demonstrates how structurally different and contrasting the mouthfeel of wines are from this side of Kremstal on the gneiss rock compared to those on bigger terraces with deeper topsoil on the south side of the Danube with dozens of vine rows on each terrace. Pfaffenberg’s terraces hold nearly a maximum of two or three vines per terrace because of the steepness of the hillside. A family friend with a small parcel offered her Riesling fruit to Michael for the first time prior to harvest. Of course, Michael had to accept on both the level of friendship and the curiosity to work with this celebrated vineyard perched on a massive hillside cliff that seems ready to fall right into the Danube below at any minute. The wine is simply spectacular and maintains Michael’s predilection for immediate pleasure with seriousness surely to be found, though further inside after some time open. Checkout Michael explaining his wines at https://thesourceimports.com/videos/ The Times They Are A-Changin’ It wasn’t just us. Everyone in Europe complained this year about the endless heat and massive mosquito invasion. It was a blistering summer, exhausting, a time when mosquitoes should’ve been hiding in cold basements waiting for cooler nights before pestering. Not this year. Shadows and corners in every hot room had one or two waiting, moving from one spot to another to keep you guessing. Mosquitoes all day. Mosquitoes all night. Hot days and hot nights. Humidity unlike any year before, according to locals. Can’t open the windows because few European rental homes have screens, and even fewer have AC. Open windows at night offered no relief. The Mediterranean wasn’t refreshing either. It was hot! One minute out and you want back in. REM sleep wasn’t possible until utter exhaustion. Blooming mosquitoes populations are only one of many consequences of climate change, like changing weather patterns, extreme flooding, which in some places, like Germany, some have increased mosquito populations tenfold (read more here). Here’s an obvious statement: Nature is out of balance. Some, often with a degree of condescension, say “We’ve had hurricanes and tsunamis forever. The planet has warmed like this before. It’s all a lie for x, y, z.” European wine producers are often conservatives too. They’re countryside folk. But they know the only lie is: it’s a lie. They’re seeing it firsthand. The moment of budbreak to harvest has completely changed. Everyone with a history in wine feels the new boozier norm, the richer and cleaner fruit, less earthiness and more solar power, a flatter, less fresh style. Yes, The Times They Are A-Changin’. Amended lyrics? Come gather ‘round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have gone And accept it that soon You’ll be dry to the bone If time to your kids is worth savin’ And you better start conservin’ Or they’ll be dry as a stone For the times they are a-changin’ Over the years I’ve posed the question to growers about the difference in time between budbreak and picking in an attempt to understand the actual differences in terms of growing-season days compared to the past. In theory, when it comes to complexity, the length of the growing season is more important than how late in the year the grapes are harvested. In many recent years budbreak was early and the entirety of the growing season (the number of days in all from start to finish) wasn’t as short as it is now, compared to even ten years ago. There were many seasons shortened by a week or two in total, but budbreak happens even earlier and the full length of the growing season is also short, very short—by as much as a couple months in some places, no foolin’. The impacts of these elements have many implications, and not all of them are negative. For example, fruit picked in the earlier side after drier months are less impacted by botrytis, leading to fresher and cleaner nuances. I’ve told my friends many times that my generation is the last who might ride things out without completely devastating consequences. None of us, ni moi, take enough measures to make a dent in the right direction. Little adaptations are important and helpful on some level, but we’re not going to save this sinking ship by only pumping the water out when there’s a massive gash in the bottom. At forty-six I still feel young most of the time. I suppose I’m about halfway to the end, but I hope I’ll have a little longer. When I enter partnerships with producers under thirty years old now, I don’t feel so young anymore. We visited one of our new ones, a young, twenty-something winegrower in Barolo a few weeks ago (who will remain nameless for the moment) who took over the family’s cantina after finishing her university studies. As I sent a mosquito to the next life from my arm in the cellar, the conversation began; she too had had an unbearable mosquito season. She started reeling off statistics of insect reduction and the decreased population of birds which has further opened the door for a mosquito explosion. When she brought up the birds my mind trailed off back to a few days prior when I made an unwanted contribution to the bird statistic just outside of Basilicata’s historic and gorgeous rock city, Matera. A tiny member of a flock of about a dozen bounced off my front bumper and tumbled behind us as I watched in the rearview, grimacing and feeling horrible. Immediately distraught, I told myself that I somehow didn’t have a choice in that event. My wife didn’t notice our involuntary birdslaughter, or that I immediately went from smiles to momentary devastation and remorse. It was probably chasing a mosquito but I killed one of ours. Damn. A few days later in Bramaterra, October 19, Andrea Monti Perini opened his cellar door and a swarm of mosquitoes charged. It was warm and dry, and they were thirsty. “Zanzare in late October in Alto Piemonte… That’s new,” Andrea quietly lamented. Their numbers were too great in vineyards to keep my hands on the drone remote. Like in Madonna’s Vogue music video, my wife elegantly and rhythmically maneuvered her hands around my face and hands warding them off, doing the modelesque gestures for me as I filmed, especially during our visit between to two lakes in Northern Piemonte with a new and exciting young producer in Caluso, though on the far northeastern edge of the appellation. Eugenio Pastoris, from Azienda Agricola Massimo Pastoris, focusses on Erbaluce and Nebbiolo—both excellent and with great promise, though the quantities are small. At only twenty-six-years old, he has degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Latin—an extremely clever young man (see, I even sound like an old guy now) with generously spirited and supportive parents. People complain about the younger generations, but what generation didn’t complain about the new ones? Today’s tepid efforts on climate change have diminished my faith in humanity, but these younger generations will be better than ours. Their eyes are open. They know they have everything to lose. It’s us older, more established ones who are the problem. We see the change and the need to react, but perhaps in our psyche we know our time is nearer to the end, so we talk too much and act too little. As I write this in late October, it finally feels like fall again. We’re happy to be back in Portugal in the cooler weather and this season’s welcome torrential rainfall. The reservoirs across the country were getting pretty low, especially with the rivers that originate in Spain where many Spanish wanted to cut off the river supply to Portugal, forgoing their bilateral agreements. Thankfully that didn’t happen and I think things might become more stable again, for the moment. San Casciano dei Bagni, Tuscany

I went down to the kitchen on the morning at La Fabrique and there was a huge pile of baguettes that Sonya had brought from the baker’s long before I woke. It was a heaven of the best bread in the world and I wanted to just hug all the loaves to my chest like a cluster of little friends. Half of them were the thinner version known as ficelles, and she said these were her favorite; the smaller diameter changes the ratio of crust to inner bread flesh, for a chewier, crispier bite. I took large samples of each and ate them with a pile of scrambled eggs. Again I was met with quizzical looks from the locals and razzing from Ted, as I continued this morning ritual throughout my trip. Ever the gracious hostess, Sonya made sure I always had enough eggs for every breakfast and even showed me to a distant third kitchenette where she had a stockpile in the fridge. I ate alone in a small second dining room full of dark wood and family heirlooms. It was right next to the second kitchenette with the Nespresso machine, from which I took four or five shots, and it was clear of smokers, who preferred the sitting room across the hall or the big table outside. The patio was crowded with the same people who were at dinner the night before, in the same seats, as if they had never gone to bed. Cigarettes smoldered in fingers and in the ashtrays clipped to the table edges, as bottomless cups of Nespresso were emptied and refilled again and again. The smoking never stopped and took a little getting used to; I laughed when I went into the bathroom the first day and saw an ashtray on a small table beside the toilet, two bent white butts protruding from its center, under a window with a view of a green field where pranced three beautiful horses. Everyone was busy at work prepping for dinner. I took a seat beside Pierre and he showed me how to cut the stems off small violet artichokes then pull off the outside leaves so that only the hearts remained. Three of us did this for about half an hour, dropping each one into a huge bowl of lemon water. I was glad to be part of the process, even though Pierre kept gently admonishing me for cutting off too much of the vegetable until I finally got the hang of it. Roman unloaded ten boxes of white asparagus and Sonya and Nicole set to prepping them and after which they started peeling the husks from the long artichoke stems we had cut off (nothing was to be wasted). The French folk rock group Louise Attaque blared through a Bluetooth speaker, and I picked up snippets, including a chorus that sounded something like “do you love me?" We were a quiet, efficient team in a meditative zone, with some of whom wer clearly a little more hung over than the others, though I don’t think anyone would admit it. I went to retrieve Ted in the guesthouse and found him and Andrea resting after another run. They were discussing some sort of snafu with business back home and she was at the breakfast bar typing frantically into her laptop. As I joined Ted over by a wardrobe where he was absently looking for a sock, he started a diatribe on something that was bothering him: the need for self-promotion that is necessary in his business but requires a level of vanity and intrusion into his personal time that he just doesn’t feel capable of or drawn to. Some of his peers love to post selfies all over social media, spouting empty aphorisms with piles of hashtags. These are the guys who get the most attention with all of their self-aggrandizing, when what Ted most wants to focus on is the promotions of his producers. His company now works with well over one-hundred domaines between France, Italy, Spain, Austria, German and Portugal, and he goes far and wide to taste wines made by vignerons that nobody in the states has heard of. He shouts their attributes from the rooftops and sometimes it takes a while, but almost all of his bets have paid off. The wine industry is filled with some pretty big egos, and a lot of these people are afraid to take risks to protect their reputations. Ted regularly goes out on a limb and is often dismissed outright, like when he started to focus on dry Riesling from Germany in California and pitched them to a restaurant in Beverly Hills, the wine director laughed at the prospect like he was crazy. The following year the same buyer began to ask for allocations of a bunch of the same wines. One of Ted’s favorite finds so far is the Beaujolais producer Jean-Louis Dutraive, which happened when Ted visited his friend Eduardo Porto Carriera, a sommelier who left Los Angeles for another opportunity and a newfound love in New York City. Eduardo blind tasted him on a bottle of Dutraive’s wines that had just been imported to New York by one of his role models in the importing business, Doug Polaner. Ted went nuts and at 1:30 in the morning after that night of eating a drinking, he impulsively sent a drunken email in French to Dutraive, a cold-call in his still broken but improving French, and said he’d buy everything that Dutraive would be willing to send him. He said he woke up six hours later with a response from Jean-Louis Dutraive that said he didn’t have much, but he’d be happy to sell him something. Ted has since gone to visit him numerous times each year and they’ve become good friends. His work is harder than it looks most of the time, "but," he added, "it’s sometimes just that easy." Ted, Andrea and I went out to the communal table and everyone had moved on from coffee to pre-lunch aperitifs: pastis and water, scotch and water and scotch and coke (mainly for Roman). I sat back and listened to the wind through the trees and the sonorous French. It was cool and sunny and the air was filled with the sweet smell of camphor the nearby Eucalyptus and the cigarette smoke that I had begun to find more comforting than toxic for reasons I couldn’t explain. Lunch came and it was as delicious and rich as dinner the night before; there was a salad of walnuts and crisp endive in balsamic, lasagna with veal and lamb, and the much anticipated white asparagus, lightly steamed and chilled with three types of Mousseline sauce (like Hollandaise with whipped cream folded in): tarragon, fennel and garlic. The last one was incredible, like eating an entire garlic clove in creamed form. There was some talk that it got more garlicky each time, spurred on by a challenge issued by someone or another. Then Sonya brought out a huge tray of tiramisu, this time Roman’s favorite. It was fluffy cream, Madeleine cookies, rum, coffee and cocoa perfection. The chocolate mousse came out as well, the huge bowl still plenty full. I, for one, was about to explode, but I watched in amazement as Ted put away a big pile of it after finishing a healthy portion of tiramisu. After lunch we were off to do some sightseeing. We left the party refreshing their cocktails under a low hanging cloud of smoke and drove toward Avignon. As we passed through the city, I marveled at the wide expanse of stone buildings surrounding a massive palace, once home to popes needing a break from the Vatican. Only a few miles away was Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the commune where Pope Jean Paul XXII had another palace built during the schism of the fourteenth century. We continued on toward Les Baux-de-Provence, a tiny commune in the Alpilles mountains. “Mountains” seemed generous; they would be hills in Colorado, where I come from. The narrow road wound through scraggly trees and fields of tall light green grass bending in the wind, with stone blocks like castle battlements standing in for guard rails along the shoulder. We pulled over at a crest and surveyed a small valley known as Val d’Enfer (the Valley of Hell), pocked by countless square caves carved into the rocky cliffs across the way. There was a pile of stone structures on another tall hill far off to our right, topped with the crumbling ruins of a fortress: the tiny township of Les Baux, a tourist destination that was once home to four thousand and has a current population of twenty-two. It took us a while to find a parking spot beside the road, now packed with tourists in cars (okay, tourists like us—funny how sometimes only others are silly tourists, while we belong there). Once we got up into the little town, we were swept into a river of gawking families and couples buying trinkets, candy, ice cream, crepes and every other manner of sightseer money magnet. We took in the dusty paths and buildings, all a monotonous, dusty wash of the same yellow beige sandstone, like the whole place was carved right into the mountain—and much of it actually was. The remains of the fort were out of sight, but Ted and Andrea had been there many times before and I felt no need to fight more crowds to see some ruins. At the bottom of the hill, we found something that I had never seen or heard of: the giant caverns in the cliffs known as Les Carrières de Lumières, or The Quarries of Light—some of the caves we had seen from across the Valley of Hell. Once bauxite quarries from the 1800s, the scale of the place was hard to process. Huge overlapping rectangles had been carved into the solid stone face and the ceiling above the entrance reached to fifty feet. Inside, we were dwarfed by spaces hundreds of feet long and wide, with forty-five-foot tall walls. Every surface from top to bottom acted as a screen that displayed over 2,000 colorful and dizzying images and animation cleverly constructed from stills, thrown there by countless digital projectors. Everything moved in time to sweeping classical music that then built to a crescendo of a French cover of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven at the end of the half hour show. The exhibition for 2017 was titled, The Fantastic and Marvelous World of Bosch, Brueghel and Arcimboldo, and was a retrospective of fifteenth and sixteenth century Dutch painters. It was all the title promised, with a huge dose of surrealism, and apocalyptic enough at times—with piles of the dead and dying and mounds of skeletons—that I worried the many children around us might be traumatized by the experience. The whole situation was one of the most unusual and impressive things I’ve ever seen. Afterward, we hopped in the white wagon and rolled over the other side of the mountains and through the vineyards of Les Baux, picturesque fields but for the dead and dry soil between the green rows—clear signs of chemical farming. Ted said there was nothing produced in the region that he’d want to import that wasn’t imported already, but it was lovely landscape nonetheless. A little further on we came to signs for the St. Paul Asylum where Van Gogh stayed for extended periods, and where he produced some of his most famous works, including The Starry Night, known for its spiraling skies, so we pulled off and walked around the grounds. The facility was closed for the holiday weekend, but the property was enough; it was an incredible sea of tall grasses rolling in waves like ocean water under gnarled and bent olive trees that we wanted to believe were the same ones Vincent painted almost a hundred and thirty years ago. The way the grass moved in the wind under the swirling clouds above evoked so many pieces I’ve seen, the reversal of the experience of seeing the work evoke a place. I don’t think I was alone in feeling like I had walked into a picture of history, and it all brought to mind some recent research I had come across that suggests that Van Gogh’s illness somehow let him see the spiral patterns that occur in nature, was actually able to observe the way the wind moves and light in a night sky swirls, things that are there and we may sense, but are invisible to the rest of us. As with so many other disciplines, it is these masters who are put here to show us everything the vast majority cannot access on our own. Our plan for the next stop was to visit the nearby town of St. Remy-de-Provence, but we ran out of time; we had to get back to La Fabrique for dinner and we rushed to make it. La Fabrique, however, works on its own schedule, and by seven, dinner was nowhere in sight. I grazed in the fridge and worked out with my TRX tied to an olive tree, garnering yet more quizzical looks from those on their seventh cocktail of the day. It was Easter weekend; what was this crazy American (so different from Ted, who could easily pass for French) doing? I went to lie down and doze in my room as the sky turned pink outside my window and a horse whinnied in the field across the way.

I meant to write something about my experience in Corsica last year, but I was overwhelmed and couldn’t get it together. I went with my wife, Andrea, and Emmanuel (Manu) Gagnepain, a very well-respected enologist and viticulturist who quietly consults with a large helping of top clients in Corsica—Abbatucci, Vaccelli and Sebastian Poly are a few highlights. We made twelve visits in three days and covered a lot of ground on the island the first time. Just when I began to grasp one thing, we sped off to the next. It was an intense trip, so this time around I knew what to expect; my wife did too, which is why she turned down the opportunity to go back. This year’s trip was going to be a mix of tasting the 2015, 2016 and 2017 vintages. 2015 was a solid year, with bigger, solar-powered wines. The 2016s were more elegant and high-toned (aérien, a terribly difficult word to pronounce correctly, even for the French), and 2017 was a ripe vintage that created some unique challenges. It was going to be an interesting tour. After a day and half of rest at La Fabrique, my usual place of respite in Provence, with my friends, Pierre and Sonya, I had just enough time to do my laundry and pack it up again for another five days out. I’d just spent twenty days travelling through Burgundy, Champagne and the Loire Valley with visits to just over thirty domaines, eating way too much meat, bread and cheese, and very little vegetables, so I was desperate for some greens. Luckily, Pierre and Sonya filled the weekend with the season’s first artichokes, white asparagus, and loads of greens and strawberries, along with mussels, fish, and the usual intake of secondhand smoke from my nicotine committed friends. I jumped into Manu’s new blue VW pickup truck and within the first minute, we made an agreement: I would speak French while he spoke English. (My wife and I are planning to relocate to Italy in September and I wanted two solid weeks of French practice before I moved on to Italian and the next leg of my life.) Immediately we picked up the wine talk where we left off last year and it didn’t stop during every waking hour over three days—another reason my wife wanted sit this one out. I was introduced to Manu’s wines by a well-known French sommelier, Fabrice Langlois, who visited me at La Fabrique last year. I loved them and asked for an introduction, so Fabrice and I went to Manu’s house in Avignon right after lunch. Manu looks more German than French; he’s tall and blond with fair skin that only finds different shades of red and pink from the sun. He speaks softly yet is always intensely focused. His French comes out quietly but at a blistering pace. I speak and understand French reasonably well but I can hardly understand anything he says, though I’m sure that my being half deaf in one ear doesn’t help. Manu works with many producers in the south of France, but he’s fanatical about Corsica and has a love affair with the island, its people and its wines. His dream is to live there and have his own domaine, a dream that has started to come to fruition through a partnership with his most famous client, Jean-Charles Abbatucci. He told me how many producers he worked with in Corsica, and after only two hours after meeting him, I mustered up the gall to ask him if I could come along sometime to learn about it. I was surprised when he happily agreed. Four weeks later, Manu and I were en route to Bastia, Corsica, after my wife and I had spent some time in Austria and Italy. We had a good feeling about each other; it felt like I’d known him for years and I think he felt the same. After our previous trip I realized I didn’t know as much about him outside of the wine culture as I wanted to. I scoured the internet and came up with next to nothing. The only thing I found was a mention in a small piece Kermit Lynch wrote when he began to import a lot of the best Corsican wines to the States. Later on, Manu told me that he consciously avoids social media because he thinks it creates problems when his clients don’t get equal attention on his feed, and he’s right, I’ve experienced that firsthand with some of our producers. So he prefers to do things the old-school way, relying on word of mouth; the wine world is small and word travels fast when wines are great. Over the years he’s amassed a client base of more than seventy domaines (with a long waiting list) and earned a tremendous reputation amongst top scientific thinkers of the French wine world. I’ve never seen someone sustain his level of consistent intensity and he does it all alone. Manu was born in Beaune, the heart of Burgundy and perhaps its most famous historic village. Originally he wanted to be a doctor, but there was a timing issue with his application to medical school. His second choice was wine, so he moved to Dijon after he finished his Baccalaureat (the French equivalent of a high school diploma) and attained the highest degree of formal education given in the country for enology and viticulture. His scientific knowledge about wine and the vine are as impressive as they are intimidating, and he approaches the subject like a doctor with his patient. He has an inexhaustible palate; he smells and tastes with tremendous speed and focus while rattling off his diagnoses, which is quickly followed by his suggestion for the remedy (if one is needed). He visits his domaines once a month to follow the wines more closely and to avoid making decisions based on one moment of each wine’s evolution. To spend three days with him analyzing wine is enough to make me feel I’ve learned a lot, while at the same time is deeply humbling. We boarded our Italian-run ferry in Toulon, a somewhat rough military town in the Côte d’Azur that had seen better days. It’s not the nicest town in Côte, but the beautiful landscape reminded me of why people lived there in the first place. It’s just a pity they had to put a military base in the middle of it all. We drove Manu’s truck onto the ferry and checked in to our rooms. After a marginal but acceptable dinner in a fancy restaurant on the ninth floor of the ferry, which included a bottle of Italian Barbera d’Alba—my first Italian wine in over three weeks, and not worth the wait—we settled into our cabins. After a couple of hours of tossing and turning I finally went to sleep. I figure I’d caught only about four hours before there was an announcement from the crew that we needed to get it together for our arrival in Bastia. We had our longest day of the trip ahead of us and Manu was anxious to hit the road. Next Week: Of Corse, Part 2 of 9: Patrimonio and the Rebirth of an Old Domaine

After a great first week in France, we continue with another solid day in Burgundy. Anne Morey (of Pierre Morey) gave us a preview of the 2017 vintage. According to her father, the legendary Pierre, it could be one of the best white vintages of his lifetime. That sounds good to me! Plus, it was my first time setting foot in her Volnay Santenots plot. My visit with Caroline Lestimé at Jean-Nöel Gagnard included a refresher course on Chassagne-Montrachet terroirs with a tasting of the 2016s—a good vintage, though with minuscule quantities thanks to Jack Frost. Our last visit was in Santenay with David Moreau and his 2016s, along with a blind tasting of five different closures on some of his grandfather's 2009 vintage—that was a trip! It was also a good reminder to store your coravin'd wines on their side! David mentioned to us that he's had a lot of dried out wines if they are kept upright after the coravin. That tiny little hole created by the needle makes way for oxidation if the cork isn't touching wine. Yes, it might leak but it should keep better, and these were the proof. Dinner with the Wasserman family was a fitting end. I had snails for the first time tonight since I got slightly ill from them about 10 years ago, and I ate strawberries, which I usually have an allergic reaction to. Today, I progressed unscathed. Up next, the 2016s from the Côte d'Or with Maxime Cheurlin, Amélie Berthaut and Bruno Clair…

  Remington Norman’s book, Rhone Renaissance, hit the shelves in 1995, at the apex of wine’s age of extraction—a time when bigger became better and subtlety was drowned out by the dark and unnaturally dense. I recently dusted it off and smiled as I thumbed through the names and pictures of producers whose legends have since skyrocketed. Then I came across a producer I had never paid any attention to before, one who unexpectedly took center stage when I unearthed his connection to a great wine I had discovered five years earlier. Research is one of the most satisfying aspects of a wine importer’s work—the thrill of the chase, you know—and historical books like Norman’s are gold, filled with minute details (the greatest producer had a young cousin who inherited some vines? there are interesting vineyards on the north side of the hill?) and unintentional clues to what might become the next great discovery. While talented winemakers will continue to spring up everywhere, great terroirs are limited.  If you believe in the supremacy of terroir as I do, you know that places where great wines were once made may be destined to rise again.  At least until climate change obliterates the historical winescape as we know it. Norman includes terrific accounts of producers like Trollat, Verset, Gentaz, Grippat and Roure, who have either disappeared or retired. Finding out what happened to them and their prized vineyards often requires some snooping.  As with his equally fantastic books on Burgundy, he chooses his focal points carefully; he doesn’t cover everyone in depth, and misses (or chooses not to write about) some important figures from the past.  But instead of being an encyclopedic bore, he spotlights each producer’s philosophy and personality, which makes the piece as pleasurable to read as it is enlightening. Norman wrote the book when Northern Rhone produced a lot of  pretty culty wines over here in the States.  He has a lot to say about guys like Jamet, Rostaing, Guigal, Chave, Chapoutier, Graillot and Clape, and there’s even a surprising nod to Thierry Allemand—just before he became the winemaking guru he is today.  But you won’t find today’s hot little favorites like Pierre Benetiere, Jean-Michel Stephan and Pierre Gonon, as many of them were only whispers at the time. In the last page of the Crozes-Hermitage section of Norman’s book, there is mention of Domaine Raymond Roure, an estate that no longer exists.  Roure is one of only seven producers mentioned in the seven pages dedicated to this vast appellation—the largest in the region.  Norman’s first line reads, “Raymond Roure used to make the finest Crozes-Hermitage bar none—the red especially.” He expounds on the extraordinary quality of Roure’s vineyards in Crozes-Hermitage and references Roure’s wife, Madame Roure, who once exclaimed, “we are the only ones to make Crozes from coteaux [a reference to the terraced granite hills],” and, “our Crozes is better than many Hermitages.” Norman explains that most of Roure’s vineyard sites are a near match for one of the best parts of Hermitage, the granitic western flank.  I’ve never had the wines, but I suppose that Norman wouldn’t print Madame Roure’s claim if he wasn’t in agreement. The Roures sold their vineyards in 1995, mostly to Paul Jaboulet, a large producer who thought enough of Roure to buy exclusive rights to have his name put on their Crozes-Hermitage red from these historic parcels.  Jaboulet wasn’t the only one to get some of Roure’s vineyards, a fellow named Robert Rousset picked up a few as well, most notably a piece of the lieu-dit, Les Picaudières. A few years ago while doing research on the wines of Stéphane Rousset, the son of Robert Rousset, I saw mention of Roure for the first time.  My initial encounter six years ago was Stéphane’s striking and honest 2009 Crozes-Hermitage Les Picaudières, from that same vineyard his father had purchased from Roure. For a warm vintage, it was impressively restrained, thoughtfully crafted, and maintained a strong sense of place, from start to finish.  I could tell it was no ordinary Crozes, but I didn’t know just how special it was until I opened John Livingston-Learmonth’s 2005 edition of The Wines of the Northern Rhône. Livingston-Learmonth’s book is the most extensive I’ve read on the Northern Rhône.  It’s twice as thick as Norman’s book and just as fun to read, yet it’s a far more thorough overview of the region; it seems to cover every commercial winery and important vineyard with compelling historical context. I’m a bit of a rock junkie (the dirt kind) and when I began to read about Rousset’s granitic vineyards in the communes in the northern sections of Crozes-Hermitage (Gervans, Erôme and Crozes-Hermitage, the commune the appellation takes its name from) my interest intensified, as the did wine in my glass. Livingston-Learmonth dedicates a lot to the terroir profiles of each commune, highlighting their best sites.  As he explores the northerly granite lands of Crozes-Hermitage, there’s as much written about Les Picaudières as on a number of lieux-dits sites from the great hill of Hermitage. An equal amount of ink is dedicated to Robert Rousset in the Crozes-Hermitage section as to anyone else in the region, save Crozes’ most famous producer, Alain Graillot.  About a third of Rousset’s profile is about Les Picaudières. According to Livingston-Learmonth, he is obsessed with the vineyard. Livingston-Learmonth’s first observation about the vineyards of Gervans reads, “Of the three granite villages [of Crozes-Hermitage], Gervans holds the most renowned sites.”  As I continued my way through that first bottle of 2009 Les Picaudieres it began to show what Livingston-Learmonth called its “genuine breed and character.”  Then in the second paragraph, there it was, the piece of the puzzle that Norman had missed: “the most noted red wine site at Gervans is Picaudières.” I went back into Norman’s book to see if I had missed anything about Rousset and Les Picaudières and to my surprise, I found no mention of them anywhere in the text. Click here for Part 2 of this 3-part series: Of Trends and Tribulations

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

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

This month’s shipment is perfect for August, and, no, it’s not crisp whites or juicy rosés. Rather, it’s all red wine. Hot as the days may be, if you’re like us, you’re keeping your kitchen cool by cooking outside and these reds are the kind of savory, spicy, meaty wines that perfectly accompany grilled or barbecued foods with a little bit of char and smoke. We’re calling this month, “A Study in Côtes du Rhône,” with four bottles from four places, each representing a different facet of what is an intricately faceted gem. The wines are: 2015 Domaine la Roubine Sablet, 2015 Jean David Seguret, 2015 Terre des Chardons Marginal, and 2013 Vieille Julienne Cotes du Rhone Rouge “Clavin.” So, what exactly is Côtes du Rhône, besides a generally cheap wine from France available at practically every store that sells wine? Côtes du Rhône, which means slopes or hillsides of the Rhone, is simply the biggest appellation of the Rhone. The first official use of this term goes back to 1737. Today, basically, any wine in the entire Rhone—North and South—made from accepted grape varieties can be called Côtes du Rhône. However, the name is only used if the wine is not from somewhere that fetches a higher price, which is every other appellation, from Châteauneuf du Pape to Hermitage, and so on. So Côtes du Rhône is the lowest level of wine in the Rhone, but that doesn’t make it a low, bad, or undesirable wine. As we shall see, there are often hidden bargains in the basest places. More than two-thirds of all Rhone wine is released as Côtes du Rhône. And, given that almost all of the Northern Rhone is covered by higher appellations, simple math tells you that almost all Côtes du Rhône is from the Southern Rhone. There’s also a Côtes du Rhône Villages appellation; it’s allowed for 95 different communes and isn’t all that common, but marks a slightly higher quality (and price) than the basic CDR. And, finally, there are 18 villages allowed to append their name to Côtes du Rhône Villages, and, we have two of those in this shipment. So let’s get to the wines! Two of those 18 aforementioned villages are called Sablet and Seguret. They’re right next to each other, just north of Gigondas and also right below the steep slopes of the legendary limestone cliffs, Les Dentelles de Montmirail, which jaggedly protrude into the sky in a memorably awesome way. Sablet and Seguret often produce fairly unmemorable wines, but the ones we’re sending are no ordinary Côtes du Rhônes. Sablet is a gorgeous little hilltop village atop a big, sandy hillside, which is where the name comes from, as sable is the French word for sand. Soils are of decomposed limestone, gravelly pebbles, and crumbly red clays. Luckily, our wine is the 2015 Sablet Rouge from Domaine La Roubine, run by the honorable Eric Ughetto, a former Parisian fireman who also happens to be mayor of Gigondas. Eric’s wines are generous and robust, never shying away from making a statement. It’s a good approach to Sablet, which can often benefit from the personality. In 2015, a big, powerful vintage, the result is nothing less than extraordinary. This wine—70% Grenache, 25% Syrah, and 5% Cinsault—is as big and rich a Côtes du Rhône as you’ll ever see. Even Ted felt compelled to write on the website more than he usually does for a humble wine, and he summed this one up perfectly. “The Sablet is an extraordinarily powerful and rustic red,” he wrote. “Usually when people say rustic, I feel it implies that it’s “funky,” if you know what I mean. This is not the case here with this absolutely pure and focused wine. The fruit falls back to a tertiary role behind the earth and floral aromas. This blend of grapes, dominated by Grenache, comes out of the glass with power that is perfumed with lavender, thyme, spice and meat. Yes, meat, dried meat, like jerky or French saucisson, as well as grilled beef. If this sounds like a bull in a glass, it is.” The word Séguret means “secure” in the Provencal dialect, and it’s easy to see why one could feel safe from attackers here. A striking little town that’s been called the most beautiful in France, stony Séguret hugs the sides of a mountain, making it a steep walk from below, where the vineyards lie on broad terraces. Seguret’s wines are known for being less burly than the neighboring villages’ and more elegant and fresh. The 2015 Jean David Séguret (55% Grenache, 25% Carignan, 20% Counoise ) captures this beautifully, despite the warmth of the vintage. The limestone and sandy soils give the wine a lift and a grace rarely found in these parts, yet the wine doesn’t lack for concentration or drive. Jean David, a weathered, humble vigneron who runs the domaine entirely with his wife, Martine, does everything by hand, which accounts for the gentle feeling they have in the mouth. This wine is highly savory, with dark fruits embroidered with a bouquet of herbs from fennel and thyme to rosemary and lavender. Completely delicious. Something altogether different is the 2015 Terre des Chardons “Marginal,” which comes from near the town of Nîmes, about 50 miles southwest from Sablet and Séguret. Nimes is the southernmost region and right above the line where Provence meets the Languedoc. The are no cliffs here, just rolling hills covered in what are known locally as “gress”— large, gravelly stones deposited by ancient rivers. The gress reflect stored heat back to the vines in the evening and allows roots to plunge deep in search of water. The Chardon family moved from the Loire Valley in the 1980s in search of the sunny good life, and they found it. Originally growing fruits and vegetables, it was their son Jerome who caught the grape bug, planted vineyards in the early 1990s and is the author of this wine. The big difference you’ll note about this wine is that it’s 80% Syrah (the rest is Grenache). Unlike many Syrah’s from the Southern Rhone, though, this one captures the brooding, savory dark fruit you get in the north. But the climate here also helps to ripen those tannins, resulting in a wine that’s wonderfully easy to drink. Have it with the kinds of foods you imagine eating in this region: olives, goat cheese, lamb roasted with rosemary. Finally, we get to the outlier wine, the 2013 Vieille Julienne Cotes du Rhone ‘Clavin.’ Why call it an outlier? Well, the vintage, first of all, was cool and challenging, resulting in a leaner, more elegant style that worked perfectly for the hands of Jean-Paul Daumen. Second, it’s a literal outlier, as the Clavin vineyard lies just outside the borders of Châteauneuf du Pape. In this area, that small difference in geography takes a steep toll: in a matter of feet vines go from living in the most renowned, expensive zip code to becoming humble Côtes du Rhône. In the case of Vielle Julienne, the Châteauneuf du Pape vines are just across the street from the Côtes du Rhône vineyard, which makes a wine that commands less than a third of the price. Anyway, Daumen may have only his ancestors to blame for this, as it’s said that in the 1930s his grandfather, not wanting to seem greedy, recommended that the Châteauneuf du Pape appellation not include Clavin. Their loss is our gain, as Clavin’s vineyard holds Jean-Paul’s oldest vines, some well over 100 years of age. In some years, Jean-Paul says Clavin can exceed his Châteauneuf du Pape. You’ll see the complexity in this red made from 80% Grenache and 20% Mourvedre and Syrah. Its peppery, spicy notes highlight a tight core of brambly red and black fruits. The structure is easy and free flowing, with thick, but gentle tannins—a lovely wine. So get out on that deck and light up the grill. These four wines will beautifully accompany pretty much anything you can cook over fire (yes, even fish)! Happy drinking, The Source

Years ago, one freezing February in Friuli I pulled into the town of Gorizia, near the Slovenian border. I was bundled up tightly, as the temperature hovered around forty degrees, which made me all the more surprised to find the town square packed with people, eating, drinking, and making merry. I approached, curious to find out what could be causing this improbable, wintry revelry, only to discover just as unbelievable a source: Radicchio. I had happened on the festival for Rosa di Gorizia, a highly prized version of radicchio, which, when its leaves are pulled back, resembles a rose. Hundreds of people, wrapped in coats, scarves and hats drank wine as vendors tending outdoor kitchens couldn’t grill and fry these lovely magenta vegetables fast enough. Italians revere what we fail to appreciate in America, where radicchio languishes primarily as a streak of color in green salads. They revel in its versatility. They roast it, grill it, deep fry it in batter, caramelize it, cut it into ribbons and toss it with pasta, they stir it sweetly into risotto. Radicchio perfectly articulates Italians’ famous predilection for bitterness, which we simply don’t share. Cookbook writer Barbara Kafka explained more about it than I ever could back in this 1988 Times piece. So, I won’t belabor its culinary genius. Rather, I’ll mention something that never gets brought up: Radicchio is brilliant with wine. Simultaneously sweet and bitter, tender and crunchy, Radicchio is remarkably able to be two things at once. This ability to resolve contrasting elements not only provides a native complexity, it makes radicchio an ideal intermediary between plate and glass. Many wines, red and white, have a tinge of bitterness. Often we fail to note this or comment on it, because it usually expresses itself fleetingly in the finish, and we tasters tend to focus more on sweetness, fruit, spice, acid, and tannins. Unsurprisingly, Italian wines, more than any category, consistently express a bitter note. Look for it in most wines, but to give a few examples: Verdicchio and Vermentino, Sangiovese and Nebbiolo, Fiano, Aglianico, Nerello. The list could go on for pages. French wines are no strangers to bitterness; see Loire wines, red Burgundy, Beaujolais, Alsace, Rhone reds and whites. In pairing food and wine, we love to connect to a wine’s fruit. But having something on the plate which reaches out to a wine’s slight bitterness completes the relationship. Radicchio is that liaison. Cooking it also brings out its sweetness, making the match doubly appealing. While strong in flavor, radicchio is lighter in texture, making it, in my opinion, ideal for wines at the lighter end of the spectrum: red Burgundy, Nebbiolo, and Cabernet Franc from the Loire. I prefer the Old World versions of these wines with radicchio, simply because New World ones, in their joyful emphasis on fruit, lack that bitter note. Below find a simple recipe for pork chop and radicchio, both grilled. This is a dynamite meal to have with a red Burgundy or any Nebbiolo from Piedmont. Look for thick-cut pork, with meat as purplish and dark as possible, which indicates more flavor. While the pork marinade calls for a habanero, have no fear; it doesn’t really introduce heat, more just a hint of chile flavor. But as delicious as is pork, the magenta-hued chicory is the real star here. Two thick-cut Pork Chops, the darker the meat and fattier, the better 1 Large Head of Radicchio (or two smaller ones) Pork Chop Marinade: 1 Habanero Pepper 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves 1 clove of garlic, minced Juice of 1/2 lemon—about an ounce Radicchio marinade: 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar 2 tablespoons olive oil Salt and Pepper Finely mince the habanero and mix it with the thyme leaves and garlic then stir in the lemon juice. Toss the pork chops in this mixture and let sit for 1-2 hours. Whisk a tablespoon of white wine vinegar with two tablespoons of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside. Cut the radicchio into thick wedges, leaving the core intact so the leaves stay together. To prepare the grill, create a coal bed large enough in area to match the area of the pork chops. The coals should be hot, but not too hot—aim for no-hotter than a four-count with the hand above the coals. Salt the chops before placing them on the grill. Grill on both sides before standing them on their edges to brown the outer ring of fat if there is one. Finish by standing on the bones and grilling for another 3-4 minutes. Internal temperature should be about 130° F when you remove from the grill (for medium rare). Allow the meat to rest by standing the chops together on their bones. While they rest, toss the Radicchio in the vinaigrette and spread them out over the coals, which should be slowly cooling down. Don’t move the radicchio sections until you turn them (to keep them from falling apart). They are finished when a bit of char begins to appear, but don’t let them get thoroughly burned. Arrange the two on a plate and serve with a Burgundy or a Nebbiolo from Piemonte. Wines to pair this dish with: 2014 Alain Michaud Brouilly - Beautifully combining serious Beaujolais' ability to merge cheerful fruit with a more structured, mineral character, Alain Michaud's Brouilly sets the standard for that cru. Here, it brilliantly picks up the hints of char and smoke, nestling them in its earthy/fruity embrace. 2013 Demougeot Bourgogne Rouge - One of the rising new talents of the Côte de Beaune, Rodolphe Demougeot makes both white and red wines of impressive quality. This Bourgogne Rouge delivers exactly what such a wine should—buoyant red fruit on a smooth palate that goes down with delightful ease. A hint of leafy earthiness in the finish is what will bond with the radicchio's mild bitterness. 2012 Poderi Colla Nebbiolo d'Alba - Tart cherry, orange zest, floral high tones—this basic Nebbiolo from the Colla family has all the seductive flavors and aromas we expect of the grape. Pleasantly round and mid-bodied, it brings some gentle tannins into play, perfectly complementing the pork and radicchio.  

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?

Everyone in the wine business got their start with a few memorable bottles, and believe it or not, mine were from California, back when I was nineteen and had just moved to Arizona from Nowhereville (Kalispell), Montana. It doesn’t matter where you start, you’ll always have a soft spot for the wines you got to know in those early years. One of those wines happened to be Zinfandel from great producers in California, like Williams Selyem, Ridge and Rafanelli. Back in the mid-90s, Zinfandel was hotter than Pinot Noir, Syrah, and probably only fifth in the fine wine division behind Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, with Viognier having a temporary uptick. The trends in California seem to change from one season to the next, probably more frequently than in any wine region in the world. But as a standalone economic global power, California residents consume enough of the state’s wines to keep it booming regardless of what trends come into play. One of my closest friends, psychiatrist Reuben Weinenger, once told me, “when you are surrounded by chaos, you need to stand still.” Wine trends can be chaotic, and there are producers who follow them and those who stay their own course. These producers who work in the eye of the storm make small changes along the way, but instead of executing radical alterations to fit the market, they focus their energies on mastering their craft. This way, they’re able to grow while keeping their identity intact. The Rafanelli’s are one of those rocks from the annals of old-school, traditional California wine. They’ve hardly changed a thing over the years, and every bottle brings me back to the first time I tasted them in 2001, when I started working at Spago Beverly Hills with the late, legendary Master Sommelier, Michael Bonaccorsi. Smack dab in the middle of the age of extraction, Mike remained committed to that old California taste and Rafanelli filled the Zinfandel department perfectly. Zinfandel’s reputation needs a reboot from its association with over-extraction, monstrous alcohol and marmalade fruit, not to mention good ol’ White Zinfandel, a trend that has thankfully come and gone from the fine wine world—in the 90’s even the very best restaurants had it on the list. If you’re going to add Zinfandel to your list then you should double down on your Aussi Shiraz selection too, right? No, not really. (From what I understand there is a reboot is happening Down Under too.) California Zinfandel remains California's unique heritage grape and some of the younger winemakers who’ve gone from one trend to the next are starting to quietly play with it again. (I won’t name names so they can surprise everyone when they’re ready to announce it themselves.) To better know the future we need to be conscious of the past and there is a reason why legendary California producers like Joseph Swan, Burt Williams from Williams Selyem and Tom Dehlinger—to name a few—made Zinfandel from Sonoma County alongside their great classically-styled California Pinot Noirs, long before Cali Pinot went sideways. And of course, we cannot fail to mention the fabled Zinfandel wines from the Paul Draper era at Ridge—some of the most compelling wines I’ve had from California. At The Source, we’ve picked a few fights in our market this last decade. I was literally laughed at by a future Master Sommelier for telling him that dry German Riesling was going to become a hot commodity—at the time we were selling Keller, Schönleber and Clemens Busch. We fought the good fight as we pitted the elegant Nebbiolo based wines from Alto Piemonte against the behemoths of the Langhe’s Barolo and Barbaresco back in 2010 with Tenuta Sella, when Cristiano Garella was in control of the estate and the wines had a short but remarkable run between the 2004 and 2008 vintages. Now there's a gold rush to Northern Piedmont, and dry German Riesling is on every well-rounded wine list. So, here we go again… Rafanelli is clearly a legendary Zinfandel producer, with the distinction of being fourth generation winegrowers in the Dry Creek Valley, and they’ve been making Zinfandel since the 1950s. When we agreed to work together, Shelly Rafanelli (the winemaker) brought me a couple bottles of old Zinfandels (1992 and 1989) her father dug out of his personal stash for me, and they were of the last bottles I drank before I moved to Italy this September. I was instantly transported back to the earlier years of my love affair with wine—the perfect sendoff to the country his ancestors emigrated from four generations ago. This summer I had dinner with Burt Williams, the long since retired wine alchemist of the historic Williams and Selyem winery, and told him that we started working with the Rafanelli family. His face lit up and he said, “That’s great. They were always one of the best.” ______________________________________ We sell the Rafanelli family's wines only to our top restaurants in California, but if you are not in the restaurant business and want the wines you can buy them directly from them at https://www.arafanelliwinery.com/, or go to many of California's top restaurants and enjoy them over dinner. (They are not usually sold to retailers anywhere in the country, except those that buy directly from the mailing list themselves.)

  Pedro held out a slab of granite that had decomposed almost completely into some kind of dense mudstone. Each mineral crystal was in place as if it were still solid rock. It was amazing; the soil was completely eroded in place. The rock bent a little before breaking with very little effort. It was a fragile soil that was completely available for the vine to plunge its roots as deep as they could go. When the vines dig this deep, Pedro calls it the vine’s “200-million-year-old Michelin three star tasting menu.” “Everyone talks about their soils and how their vine roots plunge deeply into them. How can you really know what your roots are doing if you don’t dig holes to observe them directly? Really... how do you know?” he exclaimed. “People have it wrong,” he continued. “They say meager topsoils will be too nutrient deficient. But there is a feast here,” pointing to the fissures, “that awaits the roots deep in the soils.” We jumped into the car and headed back to have dinner with his family in the coastal village, Pingueral, a town with an entirely rebuilt center, after a tsunami destroyed it in 2010. Pedro said it would take forty-five minutes to get back, but it took an hour and a half. Time got away from us because I threw a flurry of questions Pedro’s way, and he seemed to prioritize answering them over making good time to his family’s house. Unlike the hungry people following us, I didn’t mind. Pedro explained a theory on the vine’s relationship with soil that has gained momentum in the last decade or so. The idea (largely promoted by the well-known French soil scientist, Claude Bourgignon) is that the life and magic happens in the top soils and not deep in the bedrock; perhaps meager topsoils in granitic vineyards, like those in the Itata (similar to France’s famous granite soils of Cornas and St. Joseph) weren’t sufficient for the vine to get all it needed to thrive and develop a deeper range of complexity. Although Pedro acknowledges the logic of this theory, he doesn’t completely subscribe to it. As we drove toward the coast, I asked Pedro more about subsoil fractures and their relationship with vine nutrition. I threw in a concept I’ve heard many biodynamic producers talk about: the need to build up microbial activity in topsoils as a major key to unlock a wine’s terroir. The concept of “building up soils” was always a little strange to me; it seemed the opposite of a terroir wine. Before it was a vineyard, if the land never had particular microbes and all of the sudden these new alien microbes were introduced, wouldn’t that be changing a vineyard’s natural terroir even further? If a topsoil is rich in everything the vine needs, it’s like the vine is eating fast food “If a topsoil is rich in everything the vine needs, it’s like the vine is eating fast food,” Pedro quickly stated. “For example, in clay top soils they have a “full meal deal”: easy to get, quick to give, but no [real contribution to the wine’s] taste.” “Granite topsoil [unlike clay] is a low calorie meal, like a lean but nutritious dinner with only something like chicken and lettuce. But the vine can plunge deep into the granite’s vertical fractures,” he continued, “and while the topsoil’s portion of chicken and lettuce isn’t enough to sustain the vine’s nutritional needs, each foot below the surface gives another serving of chicken and lettuce, and further down more and more portions of chicken and lettuce,” he said, looking at me over the top rim of his glasses. He pushed them up his nose and continued, “this is enough to keep the vine fed, but only on lean and clean food. I want my vines to dine on a healthy multi-course Michelin-starred tasting menu, not fast food.” Pedro’s chicken and lettuce analogy was funny, and it made sense to me. At Pedro’s family’s house we were greeted by his two kids, his wife, Camila, and her mother and stepfather. There was also an innocent and quiet-looking, overgrown short-haired puppy that, when given the chance, mauled you with an endless flurry of jumping, biting and bullying, leaving you with slobber and needle-sharp hair all over your hands and clothes. The family was ready for us with typical Chilean appetizers like shrimp cocktail, crab claws, and abalone baked in cheese. We were handed glasses of sparkling wine from a project of Pedro’s, which was wonderful surprise. Then we tasted through a few white wines from another one Pedro’s Chilean wine projects, Clos des Fou. After a fantastic salmon dinner with a series of international wines, including a magnum of Saumur blanc (Arnaud Lambert’s 2014 Clos de la Rue, which I brought), a Barolo from a lesser-known, but great producer, Marco Marengo, and many more international wines one wouldn’t expect to find in this remote part of Chile, we were ready to hit the sack. Early the next day we were off to Cauquenes, the location of Pedro’s winery. After a two-hour drive, we entered an old, run down, but charming hacienda-style government building that he was able to use as their winery. Pedro brought us into his vat room full of concrete, stainless steel and large oak tanks, to taste through his single-vineyard Cinsault and Carignan wines.   Once you visit a wine’s vineyards and see the soil and rocks it comes from you begin to really understand what you are tasting. After seeing Pedro’s pits and the ancient, newly unearthed stones, they become burned into your memory, giving a perspective on the wine you can’t have unless you’ve been there. The first Cinsault was elegant, like a beautiful Beaujolais. I was pleasantly surprised by how different each Cinsault was. They all went through the same winemaking process, with very little intervention or styling. Each wine had a clear voice, unique to each vineyard. The first Cinsault was elegant, like a beautiful Beaujolais; the second’s exotic and richly perfumed character evoked a strong emotional response; the third was gritty and structured with loads of peppery spice, like it was mostly made of Syrah; and the fourth was dense, with high-toned aromas of damp, green forest floor with wild, tiny black and red berries. I was taken by the unexpected, intensely mineral nose of each Cinsault grown on various granite soils with different physical structures. I later proposed to buy and import them to California as separate cuvées instead of all blended into one, which Pedro currently does. In the palate, all were earthy, mineral and textured with flavors I usually associate with Old World style wines. Embodying the intense, honest, pure and humble spirit of Pedro, I felt like I finally had my first uniquely Chilean wines. At some point in my wine career I wasn’t sure that I would find New World wines with this level of x-factor (metal, mineral and texture), while maintaining the character of a noble wine commonly found in the Old World. I’ve had my fair share of New World wines and so few are as raw and authentic as these. Unfortunately, many New World wines from interesting terroirs are tinkered with so heavily they often need to be psychoanalyzed to find their terroir imprint.   After the Cinsaults, we tasted Pedro’s two Carignans. They seemed to subtly express the scent of pine and eucalyptus that we had smelled at the vineyards the day before, something we didn’t pick up in the Cinsaults. But from this, a dynamic set of richly scented, earthy and spicy reds emerged. It seemed obvious where the forest notes came from, and I asked him to weigh in on that perception. He agreed that it was likely from the trees. The topic of a vineyard’s surroundings and its effect on a wine’s aroma and flavor is another (true) story, but that’s for different article… After a quick sandwich in the laboratory and a tasting of Pedro’s newly bottled wines, we were on the road again to our final spot, Guarilihue. We had only three more hours with Pedro, but they would prove to be some of the most interesting hours of our trip. Part 5 of 6, "Los Reconquistadores" will post next week. Find Pedro Parra Wines here To keep up with this story you can sign up to our email list, or check in next week at the same time and you will find part 5.

We again found ourselves at Les Trois Bourgeons for dinner, at a table further away from the constant, freezing draft coming from the front door. Ted sat at the head of the table between Andrea and Sébastien Christophe, looking forward to the arrival of Arnaud Lambert, another one of his favorite producers, who was on his way over from his domaine in the Loire Valley. Ted had been wanting to introduce him to Sébastien for a long time; he thought they had a lot in common in how they do things, and it gives him great pleasure to bring vignerons together. Arnaud appeared in the courtyard outside the restaurant, and Ted said, “Yup, there he is in one of his signature pink sweaters.” He came in with his wife, Géraldine, a tall brunette who looks like a model. Ted made introductions all around, and Arnaud offered us a shy smile. Then, much to Ted’s chagrin, he and Géraldine took seats at the other end of the table. Ted ordered another bottle of Rousset’s St. Joseph. The one we had the night before was totally different. He said, “last night it was perfect. Tonight it’s all over the place. Sometimes this stuff smells like gold, sometimes it smells like dog. But when a wine is alive, it can be like that!” He ordered a couple of others and didn’t bother to send the off bottle back, as he continued to make an effort to be as unobtrusive as possible at that restaurant. After a few minutes, Ted leaned over and spoke softly with Andrea, who then went to the other end of the table and asked Arnaud if he’d like to switch places. She took his seat so she could catch up with Géraldine, and so Ted could make proper introductions between Arnaud and Sébastien. With the two vignerons finally across from each other, Ted waited for a connection to be made, and there were a few moments of them looking elsewhere, like they had just been set up on a date. Finally, after a couple glasses of wine had warmed everyone, a serious conversation ignited between the two men, and they leaned forward and hashed something out in rapid French. Ted smirked and nodded in my direction, quite pleased with himself. I got the œuf en meurette that I had passed on the night before and had ordered at that day for lunch in Le Soufflot. It was a simpler and more traditional style, the eggs visibly poached in the bourguignonne sauce, without the tangle of wild mushrooms and frisée on top. It was less vegetal and earthy, but hearty and delicious, nonetheless. Sébastien maintained a mischievous look in his eyes at all times, mostly making jokes about himself and always at the ready for Ted to rip on him for something, playing into each attack with feigned martyrdom. He would get increasingly animated as he told a story in fast French, then would start to hunch down and get quiet, cover his mouth in a stage whisper, then pop up with a punchline that set everyone to laughing. It was yet another time when I found myself laughing at one of the characters in Ted’s world, even though I only understood every other word. He was bleary-eyed from sleeping only two hours the night before, after tending to the frost-fighting fires. He knew he would probably be doing it again that night and had showed up to dinner anyway, cracking everybody up with his antics. But underneath all the joviality, the tension of the threat to his premier crus, and to everyone throughout the region, was palpable. Arnaud broke away from conversation with Sébastien to chat with me a bit. He has a mop of straight salt and pepper hair with bangs that constantly fall into his eyes, a boyish face with matching scruff and a polite and humble affect. He told me how he had met Ted in 2010, at a time when everyone held a negative opinion of wines from Brézé. But, he said, for some reason when Ted tried them, he saw something, their true potential. Arnaud never thought he’d be making the wines he’s making now, but Ted seemed to know he would, he had believed in him completely, and now his business has taken off. As of April, 2017, he had forty organic parcels and twenty-five traditional. Back when he first met Ted he had forty traditional and eight organic, and is continuing to switch everything over to organic farming. Things are going so well that he has fifteen employees and spends less time in the vineyards than he'd like. The subject of frost came up and when I asked how he dealt with it, he offered another surprising answer: he blows the cold air away with giant fans. When I asked if it worked, he shrugged and said, “it’s hard to tell.” After dinner broke up and we all ventured outside, nobody wanted to spend another moment in the cold, and the temperature was dropping fast, which clearly didn’t bode well for any of the makers. So we quickly said our goodbyes and see you soons, and jumped into our cars as fast as possible. Ted, Andrea and I made our way back on the darkest of country roads and crashed hard in the funny little modern townhouse with the heater that didn’t work nearly well enough for my liking.

As evening approached, we were on our way to see Ted’s good friend Nico Rebut, a former sommelier of great talent and repute who has since become a very successful wine distributor in Paris. Each week, he makes the five-hour drive or train ride from the Alps to Paris, his primary market and where he also consults quite a few restaurants on the development and maintenance of their lists. He and Ted met through a connection with one of Ted’s favorite French sommeliers in Los Angeles, Emmanuel Faure and they became fast friends. Back when Nico was working at Alain Ducasse, the Michelin three star in Monaco, he was well on his way to being a top contender for Le Meilleur Sommelier de France, an annual competition with one champion. But Ducasse himself forbade him from pursuing the goal, insisting that he concentrate on his work at the restaurant instead of other accolades; Ducasse clearly wasn’t a fan of sharing the limelight. Nico moved on to Maurice, another three star, where his fame grew. Ted has met sommeliers as far away as Austria who know him personally, or at least by reputation. Nico’s house in the Alps is a stylish, newly constructed modern structure with a minimalist front and glass back, on a hillside overlooking a stunning view of the long valley in the Savoie commune of Mercury, just outside of Albertville. The mountains across the way were still snow-capped in late spring, and a snowy Mont Blanc was visible about thirty miles to the northeast. We were greeted at the door by Nico, a wiry man of medium height, with a characteristically French aquiline nose and thin lips, and an intense but friendly gaze. His wife Leticia, charming and cute, with big surprised-looking blue eyes, beckoned us in as their two daughters danced about in pajamas. The little girls shyly waved hellos before Leticia ushered them upstairs to bed. We sunk into a couple of white modern sofas that were much more comfortable than they looked, as Nico poured big glasses of white Burgundy. There was some local cheese on the table next to a big bowl of spicy Doritos, which I thought a peculiar accompaniment and laughed at, then immediately started to inhale. Ted and Nico caught up and talked shop as I took in the lovely view and well-appointed modernist surroundings. There was a huge wine scent essence kit open in display on the fireplace mantle and I wondered if Nico could nail them all, then immediately assumed that of course he could. I have a set a quarter that size and regularly get half of them wrong when I practice. Nico said that he was having some difficulty with an employee and lamented the difficulty of firing someone in France; it can only be done after multiple egregious events, not for lack of performance. The laws there are so on the side of the employee that if someone gets hurt or sick, the employer still has to pay them for as long as they are out. They went on to talk about how very few salespeople (like Nico’s guy) make commission in France, that almost everyone is on salary. As with restaurant servers who don’t work for tips like they do in the States and service suffers without the incentive, the same thing happens with salespeople who end up coasting for their paycheck. Then employers like Nico are stuck with the dead weight for the duration. Leticia joined us and I remarked on the snow on the surrounding mountains and asked if they skied. She said they do, a bit, Chamonix on Mont Blanc being so close and a great resort. But though there was still some visible snow, very little had fallen during the season, so the conditions weren’t great. Of course I was asking about this, since skiing is a major preoccupation of mine and I’ve read about Chamonix since I was a kid. It’s definitely on my bucket list. Night had fallen and I watched Nico throw some big steaks on a grill on his expansive deck, in the dark, as Ted and Andrea chatted with Leticia inside. It was cold and windy, so there would be no eating at the nearby patio table. There was a tiny vineyard on the hill beside his house from which neighbors made small batches of their own wine. He leaned over as if the someone might be listening and whispered, “of course it’s terrible.” Leticia had put out sautéed squash, a couscous salad, some local sausage and yellow potatoes. It was a simple, rustic meal accompanied by some great wines that I gulped to help soothe my jetlag-induced delirium; I was fading fast. But it was fun to watch Ted and Andrea chat with these close friends so far from home. Whereas I’m somewhat introverted and can count my good friends on two hands, they’re so socially active that they have a huge network of people all over the world who would gladly have them over to dinner at a moment’s notice. I asked Leticia how she and Nico met and she said it started when she was a teller at a bank in Paris. He always made sure to go to her window and it became a regular occurrence, with their conversations getting longer and more intimate each time. When he finally asked her out, she agreed, in large part (she joked, that night in their home) because she had seen his bank balance. Everyone had a big laugh and of course I thought this sarcasm-tinged honesty charming as hell. But then I shuddered at the thought of any woman I was interested in seeing my own balance. (Don’t pursue a writer for their money is a cardinal rule.) I finally caved to fatigue and excused myself before desert. Ted and Andrea would stay the night at Nico’s, while I headed over to an Airbnb in the nearby town of Albertville, the host site of the 1992 Winter Olympics. I took the rental car and it was my first time driving in France. The last time I had driven in Europe was in Italy, back when it was all rumpled paper maps in my navigator’s hands. Tired as I was, I was in no mood for any of that and was incredibly grateful for the guidance of the droning navigation lady in the dashboard. My room was in a stone and concrete cottage guarded by an arched iron doorway in a narrow stone-walled tunnel. It was one of many offshoots from a rutted dirt road just wide enough for a one horse cart that wound through more stone and concrete structures, some with cylindrical sections and conical roofs, all enclosed by a towering stone wall with a huge iron gate for an entrance. Basically, I was staying in some sort of medieval fortress; the only thing missing was a moat. As I plugged in my phone and shivered in the chilly and dim room, I realized that I had no cell reception or wifi. But being in the Dark Ages was fine. I was asleep inside of five minutes. Next: A Rude Awakening and Pierre Bénétière, a Hermit Full of Surprises

We left the city center and went to the east about fifteen kilometers for our last stop of the day. The dirt in this part of Corsica is grainy and sandy granite. Our visit was with Laurent Costa, a bear of a man and the owner and vigneron of Domaine A Peraccia. Laurent came in from the cellar as we entered the front door. He smiled through his manicured salt and pepper beard and his 80s retro style metal-rimmed glasses, wearing solid green army pants, an army belt with a sheet metal facade for a buckle, a black t-shirt and a jacket that hid his massive upper body. He approached us with a huge smile and the energy of a bull about to charge. He extended his big meat hook of a hand and thundered, “Comment vas-tu, Ted, tout va bien!?” Just as fast as he came in he went back into the winery and yelled back at Manu about which samples he wanted sent to the lab. The samples were out of the tanks within five minutes, labeled up and in Manu’s hands. We went to his tiny tasting bar set in the middle of his tasting room, newly adorned with wood panels and trim, and it felt like an alpine trinket shop in a national park. He grabbed the most recently bottled 2016 reds and the one 2017 white, pulled the corks, slammed a few glasses down on the table and stared at me with his big Disney cartoon-like smile. Like an old cowboy pouring whiskey, he hit the bottle on the lip of the glass and poured our first tastes of his Vermentino white wine. Last year, I thought the wines were a little too big and ripe; the vintages had been the 2015 for red and 2016 for white, yet they were both also somehow elegant. I wasn’t really into them then, but this 2017 white was very different. Despite the heat of the vintage, this had more tension, freshness and lift than his 2016, a cooler vintage. I really liked it, and not just a little bit. Laurent began to cut into some Niulincu, a local Corsican cheese that was on the table. When aged, this rustic cheese made with sheep and/or goat milk becomes a bit grainy but has a good salty flavor. He cut some more and looked at me to try a piece. I resisted as long as I could so I could taste through the wines without changing my palate with the cheese. He poured the second wine and thundered again, “Ted! Tu aimes ça!?” I responded in French, “Yes, maybe... , but you don’t have any to sell me, so maybe not…” He laughed and bellowed as he recalled that last year when Manu had introduced me as an importer, the first thing he said to me, in French, was, “I don’t have any wine for you, sorry! Hah-hah!” The first red was good, very good. A 2016 made of pure Sciacarello, it was deep and lithe, brightly toned, fresh and charming. I was surprised at how different it tasted from last year’s wine. Laurent stared at me again, his nostrils flared to take in as much air as they could, “Tu aimes ça, Ted?” This time his tone was a little softer and his head tilted up so he could see me better through his glasses. I smiled and said I did. He poured wine three, his prestige cuvee, and his eyes grew even bigger and more curious. “It’s good. I like it a lot,” I said. It was a very good wine, more complex than the first and one of the top reds I would taste on the trip. Laurent broke his façade and quietly asked me if I was seriously interested in his wines. I jokingly told him to let me think about it. It was true though; I had to process my reaction this year compared to last and ask Manu to help me understand what was happening with Laurent and where he was going with his style. I asked Laurent for a couple of sample bottles to retaste them more slowly to see if what I tasted was as good as I thought. He happily obliged, bid us farewell and charged back into the winery. We jumped into the car and began our journey back toward Propriano. I told Manu the wines surprised me and that last year they weren’t my thing. I didn’t ask Manu much before this visit with Laurent because I hadn’t loved the wines last year, but after our tasting I needed to know more. Laurent is ex-military—no surprise there. He took over his domaine about ten years ago and has a very successful business selling his wines direct in Corsica to a strong following of locals and tourists. He doesn’t need to export and only has with an importer in Japan. In the vineyards, he practices organic and biodynamic farming and does all the vineyard work by himself on all eight hectares. That’s a lot to cover for one guy, but seeing how fast he moves and how powerful he is, I thought that if anyone could do it, it would be him. For many years Manu tried to convince Laurent to make more elegant wines, but he didn’t want to change because he believed that his customers wanted bigger wines. Manu said that for years he encouraged Laurent to harvest earlier but he wouldn’t do it. He happened to pick his red grapes early in 2016, which explains why they were so different. In 2017, for the first time, he asked Manu when he should pick. If his 2016 reds are any measure of where he may go he will be one of the most exciting small producers on the island—at least for me. After hearing the story, I asked Manu to call Laurent to find out if he was willing to sell me something. Manu said that Laurent was happy to hear that I liked the wines and that he’d let me take some off his hands—“but not too much.” I was happy to take whatever he’d sell me. As we drove away from Ajaccio, I knew that it wasn’t possible to (nor did I have the illusion that I could) amass a portfolio such as Kermit Lynch with the caliber of great domaines they have from this island. He and his team came to Corsica after decades of doing great business with French and Italian wines, and in a time when the competition got more intense, he blazed a new trail in front of everyone and swallowed most of Corsica’s best whole. It was impressive. Some people lead, some people follow. My resolution was that it should be my work to try to find some of the island’s second-generation of exciting producers and make the investment now. It’s a long game approach and a little like what’s happening in southern Italy and Northwestern Spain for us as well. There are a lot of good producers but not so many unknown great ones. We have to keep our eyes on the future, which is exactly what we’ve done with the majority of our most successful finds throughout our first eight years of importing. Like professional sports scouts, we have to sniff them out when they’re young and before word gets around. I shared my realization with Manu. He agreed and said there are few domaines on the island and not many more that will come along that will be very good and still available to import. Manu put the pedal to the metal again as we twisted our way south. We were supposed to have dinner with Jean-Charles, but he rescheduled his meeting with Manu for the next morning at their property; it was a pity because we lost a dinner opportunity at Le Chemin des Vignobles, back in Ajaccio. Once we were in range to call Una Stonda to reserve a table we received the same message as the night before that it was unexpectedly closed. Tough luck for us turned out alright when we found a restaurant that served up some sausages from organically grown veal made by Jean-Charles’ brother Pierre, along with a simple green-leaf salad and pommes frites. We ordered a couple of beers and watched the first half of a football match between Barcelona and Roma. We didn’t have it in us to stick around for the second half, so we went back to our apartment and crashed. Next Week: Of Corse, Part 7 of 9: Sartène, A Granite Land with Big Potential

The world calls those from Galicia, Galicians. The Spanish call them Gallegos. They call themselves Galegos. Fazenda, a name associated with the Portuguese and Galego languages is rooted in the Latin faciendus, and parallels the Spanish hacienda, a term that today implies an agricultural homestead, or farm. Both names are extensions of their respective verbs for “to do”: hacer in Spanish; fazer in Portuguese; facer in Galego. Our focus this month is on two of our top Galego growers and they happen to be close friends, former teammates in Spain’s professional league futbol, and fazenda owners: Xabi Soeanes’ Fazenda Prádio is from the far western end of Ribeira Sacra’s Chantada subzone. A windy hour-long drive further west along the steep and rocky Miño River gorge, across the former Roman settlement, Ourense, in the softer-sloped Ribeiro is Iago Garrido and his Fazenda Augalevada. The two share the same organizational mentality, intense work ethic, and regional identity, but their wines are stylistically worlds apart and connected only through the similarities of their Galician terroirs and culture. Sometimes wines reflect their maker’s physical stature and personality. Xabi’s are robust, powerful, and muscular. They’re also just fun, like the guy, though Xabi is a hungry pirate until he’s had dinner, his first and last meal of the day; he’s fully committed to extreme intermittent fasting. Iago’s wines, on the other hand, are more slender, horizontal, wiry, compact, deeply contemplative and contain their own unique, Neil Gaimanesque fantasy world. Both focus on indigenous varieties, though Xabi is trying to move away from Mencía, the hard-to-quit cash cow he’s famous for, in favor of more historical local varieties. (Mencía is not believed to be indigenous to Ribeira Sacra but was brought in from Castille y León due to its uniformity, higher yields, and higher consistency compared to most indigenous grapes.) Xabi and Iago Challenging vintages are full of surprises and are usually good ones with intuitive growers. Understanding the details about a vintage is helpful to better understand why things turn out the way they do, but measuring sticks are less important for those of us who like different shades from the same terroir. Critics often give too much credence to vintage conditions early on when establishing their point scores, and while they’re sometimes not too far off, they can be overly cautious with those that don’t check their ascribed weather-condition boxes for greatness. (And in some regions like Burgundy they often don’t break from terroir hierarchy, even if a wine from a lesser terroir is better crafted than one with a higher assumed pedigree.) If the terroir has a strong character, it may show even better in challenging vintages than the supposedly universally “balanced” ones. But isn’t balance subjective? Indeed, there’s no room for subjectivity with a person balancing on a highwire, but with wine there is, and it seems to be more than ever. Our perfect isn’t everyone else’s. One may believe that Italian espresso is unparalleled in average quality (even Italy’s Autogrill freeway stops offer legitimate coffee), but it’s not everyone’s favorite. Each vintage has its own balance regardless of whether it fits our idea of what that means. With a cold spring and summer and a long dry spell before a rain-plagued harvest, Galicia’s 2021 season fit the bill as a challenging one. (Though what year in Galicia hasn’t been?) 2021 once again tested the already hard-working Galicians who habitually lose more crops than most regions, courtesy of constant mildew pressure. It was a cooler year, and it was drier. But when harvest arrived, the fast-moving Atlantic systems moved in and rain darkened the skies and the spirits of the growers. Galicia has come a long way over the last decade, having gained valuable experience in rising to their typical challenges. Some remain unsure about their results, but many are quite good. At the early stages of their evolution, the wines seem generally fresh and fluid, with a welcome touch of austerity. Northwestern Iberian wines are often slightly lower in alcohol than the average, and the overall style of the 2021s seems, at least at this moment, tighter and less exuberant on fruit than in recent years—not a troubling characteristic in an ever-increasing alcohol and fruit-heavy wine world. From our growers, the wines are a little tighter and more focused: qualities we seek. Xabi Soeanes’ vineyards were planted in 2000 by his father, Manuel, on a carved-out, steep hillside of schist and granite. Eventually, Xabi grafted some Mencía vines (which initially covered the entirety of their vineyards) to the indigenous varieties Caíño Longo, Brancellao, Merenzao, and Espadeiro, though the latter is not allowed in Ribeira Sacra D.O. wines. He used to make single-variety wines but because the historical way of making them here involved blends, he came to believe that the sum of multiple parts makes a more complete wine. It’s lovely to taste all the grapes vinified and aged separately in the cellar, and I can’t help but push him with my mono-varietal mind (which is changing…) to bottle some separately, but he’s right: combinations are more complex, and when properly unified they produce dynamic wines with strength and the right amount of lift and tension in all directions, with few gaps in fluidity. Fazenda Prádio Prádio’s 2021 Mencía is vinified and aged similarly to Pacio but it’s entirely Mencía. It’s uncommon to find Mencía planted west of Ribeira Sacra, and Prádio’s is one of the furthest west in his appellation. His vineyards are inside Ribeira Sacra’s subzone, Chantada, one of the most Atlantically influenced of the region’s five subzones. Mencía is not gifted with high natural acidity, so the stronger Atlantic influence helps maintain freshness. It’s darker and more profoundly textured and mineral than most Mencía wines, which is also influenced by the shallow topsoil on hard bedrock. While other top wineries in Ribeira Sacra bottle wines from grapes grown throughout the appellation, Prádio has one large vineyard of contiguous parcels with a multitude of southerly exposures. The 2021 Pacio Tinto is the blend of Xabi’s best barrels. The grapes are fully destemmed, kept separate and ferment naturally over 7-10 days in granite lagars (shallow and wide rock vats, like a kiddie pool). The wine, composed of a blend of Caíño Longo and Brancellao, is only free-run wine prior to pressing and it’s aged in older 500L French oak barrels for about a year. Normally Pacio has Merenzao in it too, but Xabi wasn’t satisfied with the results in order to include it in the 2021 Pacio. It’s a pity because Merenzao, known as Trousseau in France, is aromatic and delicate and adds more lifted fruit and floral elements; it’s always vying for everyone’s top pick during the barrel tastings. 2021 appears to be a massive success. It’s strong on all points, with a profound depth in texture to an expansive range of floral, fruit and herbal aromas tied together with a marine-like iodine saltiness and wet green-forest freshness. In 2014, Iago Garrido buried an amphora filled with Treixadura in his newly replanted biodynamically farmed granite vineyard inside Ribeiro’s Avia River Valley. Initially convinced he made a mistake with the discovery of a flor yeast veil, he later realized this errant shot actually hit a vein of gold that went on to define the direction of his wines. And while Prádio’s wines are equally compelling, they are more straightforward than Iago’s off-the-grid, fully liberated wines that need a more thorough examination (and explanation, if even possible). Iago continues the quest for his uniquely undefined and mysterious holy grail. In a constant state of experimentation, his wines meander off the normal path in search of their identity and voice only to return to form in time for bottling, or sometimes a year or so later. Some tastings with Iago out of his amphoras and old oak barrels (now with some ancient sherry barrels in the mix along with the large old French casks) are of the most authentic and emotionally stirring I’ve had out of vat. Each wine presents a winding and limitless narrative of its season’s idiosyncrasies and the grapes’ year-long journey of alchemy under the veil of flor, gently guided by his nose and hands in his frosty, toe-numbing cellar. From purchased grapes in rented vineyards that Iago works himself along with those of trusted organic farmers, Iago’s Mercenario range remains his main testing ground. This season we find the experiments bottled under a single white and red. (What doesn’t make the cut often ends up in a proprietary blend for some of his restaurant clients.) The 2021s strike me as a return to the 2018 vintage in style, though the vintages are quite different. They are eccentric but engaging—even though the 2018 Albariño from Salnés was lightning-bolt extreme, it was also as pure as spring water. The 2021 Mercenario Blanco’s extensive complexity is thanks to a combination of young and old Treixadura, Albariño and Godello vines scattered through many microclimates in the unofficial Ribeiro subzones of Arnoia, Avia, and Miño. Grown at altitudes of 100-300 meters on a multitude of aspects with a geological diversity that includes igneous (granite, granodiorite) and metamorphic (gneiss, schist, slate) bedrock with shallow to deep sand and clay topsoil, the result is wine with great depth. In the cellar, it was cleverly fermented in steel at very low temperatures to encourage a greater presence of fruit in what are often extremely savory and overly mineral-led wines; in Galicia, it’s possible to be over the top on mineral and metal notes. Its cellar aging after fermentation lasted ten months partially under the naturally developing flor, split between amphora and 500-600l old French oak barrels. Tasted in late September, this Ribeiro white led with lightly oxidative citrus and yellow apple notes that quickly freshen up in minutes to pure white flesh of green pear and green apple. The flor was present but not dominant, and it was a rollercoaster of finely etched nuances inside explosive framing. Other micro nuances present were white grass, cherimoya, preserved lemon, orange zest, melon, and sweet celery (a classic Treixadura note). This wine was a journey and would be perfect with salads, seafood, and fish. I had the 2020 Ollos de Roque over the last month, once at home and again in Santiago de Compostela’s back-alley speakeasy restaurant, Pampin. (Make sure to have the anchovy toast!) With living wines, every bottle has its own distinct life. Upon opening, the first bottle at home was aromatically snug while the second at Pampin came out hot as fireworks. They were both vivacious curiosity magnets with the first a little backward initially but with a dreamy and seductive reductive/mineral aroma that eventually fell in line with the extremely extroverted second bottle when it had more time open. Stationed in my fridge for days with periodic visits, it was bulletproof, always on point after the first twenty minutes open, and forever positively evolving. The Pampin bottle was an immediate supernova and didn’t let up. Consequently, we finished it before our first course was over. Ollos de Roque comes from Iago’s estate vineyard and is the sole biodynamic wine in his organic range, though there are some gifted terroirs he keeps even if he hasn’t yet convinced the growers to fully commit to organic ways. Its Christopher Nolanesque evolution is finely detailed and musical storytelling: liquid Inception and Oppenheimer. (I don’t think I blinked more than a few times or felt I was in my body for more than a few seconds over the three epic hours of Oppenheimer.) Both unveiled notes of flor yeast, yogurt and a pizzicato of mineral, metal, white fruits and Treixadura sweet celery hearts. Originally planted entirely to Treixadura in 2008, he grafted and replanted some vines to Lado and Agudelo (Chenin Blanc). Treixadura is a low acid variety but it captures the gentleness of Ribeiro’s verdant pastoral setting, while Lado and Agudelo are the wine’s livewire current and cross-eyed citrus bombs. The bedrock and topsoil here are entirely granite/granodiorite on south-southeast facing terraces at 205-245 meters. (Check out our regional geology maps, including the Ribeiro map, to learn more about the differences between these rock types on page 3 of the map download.) In the cellar, it’s fermented at very low temperatures and aged for ten months in one-third 400l amphora and two-thirds in old 330-600l French oak barrels and an ancient 500l Jerez American oak barrel. The 2021 Crianza Biolóxica is intense and densely phenolic—perfect for hearty and very flavorful food. Made from Salnés Valley Albariño purchased from winegrower, Xurxo Alba (the generous superstar owner and winegrower of Rías Baixas bodega, Albamar), grown on granite soils at nearly sea level next to the Atlantic, it’s completely under flor for ten months in old 600l French oak and 500l Jerez American oak barrels. (Unfortunately, Iago lost the “flor mother” to a cellar flood this year.) Over the first hour, the juxtaposition of the Jerez barrel’s olfactory patina and the granitic Albariño picked early compels a double take after each sniff and sip. Like a Champagne base wine, it’s incredibly minerally, salty, austere, powerful, and salivation-inducing. We have so few bottles to offer with only five cases imported to the US, but they are a completely unique experience and it’s worth seeking a bottle or two. The 2018 Mercenario Tinto is a gloriously fine and uniquely harmonic wine. It was, and remains, so close to a Pierre Overnoy Poulsard-style wine (granted the Galician terroir is about as different as you can get from the Jura in geology and culture, and Overnoy is indeed one of a kind, though not an untouchable reference point). I bought numerous cases and have nursed these dainty, minerally, 11% alcohol reds heavy on x-factor since their release four years ago and it remains one of the most consistently thrilling wines I frequent. The 2019, 2020 and 2021 reds had more extensive experimentation with stem inclusion, and they departed from the more filigree, fruitier style of the 2018 into darker wines (but still relatively light hues for reds) with a longer awkward stage after bottling. After tasting the 2020 in barrel, we spoke about stems and their amplification of savory notes in this more Atlantic-influenced area of Galicia, which risks leaving them with even less fruit for wines that are not fruity to begin with, unless they’re intentionally fruity as a result of cellar techniques. Red wines made in a region that naturally lead with big rocky, metal, mineral notes, make finding the balance tricky. And if one wants to break out the mineral measuring stick, be prepared to be humbled by Galician reds. While many regions try to curb the overt fruitiness of their wines, Galicians need to work to preserve it. (Perhaps the exception may be the non-indigenous and most famous red grape of the region, Mencía.) One key to Galicia’s success with red wine in the global market may be to encourage a greater presence of fruit in their densely mineral and sometimes screechingly acidic wines. Indeed, earlier in this newsletter I mentioned the subjectivity of balance, but these Galician red wines can be extreme in mineral and metal characteristics and very spare on fruit. They are not for everyone, and even some wine geeks have been slow to take up the challenge. A bottle of 2021 Mercenario Tinto opened in September growled and sneered at first. Reductive elements and animal notes put up an aromatic fight, but with time open they released their grip on the fruits and flowers. A second bottle opened only a few days before we published this newsletter, was softer from the start and more open. The knowledge gained from the 2019 and 2020 stem experiments brought greater integration of the full stem maceration of 2021, and perhaps built in what he thought to be missing in the 2018. The 2021 is not as a pure as the 2018, but it’s in the same line of elegance. Iago still finds my enthusiasm for the 2018 amusing, or perhaps an attempt at flattery. Or maybe after all this time of experimenting and progressing he’s annoyed that I continue to remind him that he nailed it in 2018. Perhaps he finds the 2018 too simple or it’s hard for him to believe that he did something so special so early in his career, something that wasn’t the sort of direction-defining accident that burying the amphora in his vineyard was, developing the flor that’s now known to be the Ollos de Roque prototype. But the simplicity of the 2018 hit the mark, even if I don’t believe it’s a simple wine. I think it was Iago’s second vein of gold, and after sharing more than thirty bottles with my wife it remains one of my most consistently compelling red wine experiences out of Iberia. There are moments when this whole cluster, 35-day fermentation blend of Caiño Longo, Brancellao, Espadeiro and Sousón aged for ten months in amphora and old French oak drops you into the ancient Variscan Mountains, the same geological structure of granite and schist formed some 300 million years ago found in some western European wine regions. The first bottle had moments where it seemed to be Côte-Rôtie from a cold vintage and without new wood, or a jump to high-altitude Beaujolais on granite. The second was like a light Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir from the 90s with that barnyard appeal and charm but the pointed palate textures of the Ribeiro and immediate appeal. Both were compelling and alive but like so many of the world’s most interesting wines, it needs time.

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

Almalfi Coast’s famous and quaint fishing village, Cetara. (Download complete pdf here) We used to look forward to summer, but now we can’t wait until it’s over. Summer used to be much more fun, but these days it’s a game of hide and seek shade. Where we are in southwestern Europe is not prepared for this type of heat. Most of the buildings and houses in historical areas (without massive new apartment buildings) aren’t equipped with air conditioning window units because most are constructed with side-hinge windows instead of the sliding kind. Sure, mobile units are everywhere, but one must be an architectural engineer or builder to install them into a swinging window or door, and even then, they are obnoxiously loud and produce as much heat from the tubing inside the room from the unit to the window that makes them a disaster in efficiency. We love living in Europe, but my wife and I admit that we miss the simple luxuries living in the US, including but not limited to having cooler rooms in the summer. This year has been a roaster over here, with three (maybe four) different major heat waves in Iberia in about six weeks. Most of Europe has experienced the same, and as one would expect, with the drought has come major water shortages. Occasionally a desert-like deluge blows in with strong winds, with rare thunderstorms and lightning that showed up in late July and August. We were passing through Rioja in the first week of August and as we parked at our hotel the temperature and ambiance changed dramatically in no time. It was a relentless 100°F until a system moved in from the north and in a few minutes it was pouring rain and the temperature dropped into the 60s. In other regions, like Piemonte, which is having one of its driest seasons on record, they finally got temporary relief with the arrival of some water, but the temperature hasn’t wavered. Despite the dire situation for many global wine regions, this year in much of Europe looks to be a bumper crop—that is, if nothing crazy happens in the last moments before harvest! Most of the year’s losses are a result of dried out and burned sections of clusters and clusters entirely exposed to the sun, or some small issue with powdery mildew (though not much downy mildew this year because it's reliant on the moisture that’s been so lacking). Pablo Soldavini, an Argentine winegrower in Galicia who has many projects brewing, like Adega Saíñas and his new eponymous label to come later this year, says than another factor is that many days in Ribeira Sacra got above 40°C (104°F), resulting in smaller berries and a shutdown of the plant, which will delay the harvest. With so many recent hot years with low yields, it will be interesting to see if or how these higher yields can counter the heat and normalize the balance of the wines—whatever normal even is these days. We should at least expect lower alcohol levels than we’ve had in most recent years. New Terroir Map We have a new map this month. There are quite a few more in the queue, but I’m behind on my must-dos and these things tend to end up at the bottom of the priority list. This month it’s a unique combination of appellations in Spanish and French Basque country and some neighboring Southwest France appellations. Imanol Garay, a grower we work with, jumps the borders each year to play around, sometimes resulting in wines labeled as generic European wine. There are a lot of grapes in common in this part of Spain and France, but sometimes quite different geological, topographical and climatic settings between them. It’s easy to overlook that where national borders are does not signify an end to their commonality. I hope you enjoy the map! A list of the Summer Euro Tour Top 5 Wines from our staff is at the bottom of our newsletter. I highly recommend taking note of their picks. They know our wines well and the measure of what truly stands out. Don’t miss it! New Arrivals: Rías Baixas, Spain Manuel Moldes’ Albariño vineyard for the new single-site wine, Peai. 2019-2021 Salnés Vintages Adrián Guerra, a partner in a new Albariño project in Salnés, Xesteiriña, and a former partner of one of the top drinking spots in all of Galicia, Bagos, in Pontevedra, offered an explanation of these three vintages. For our purposes with regard to whites, we’ll just cover what happened with Albariño. As for the reds, given that the red grapes of the area need higher temperatures than more “classical” years to develop balanced tannin and acidity, one can speculate their general disposition on ripeness. The reds from 2019 and 2020 will be very good. We expect the same for the 2021 reds, but they’ll likely be even more racy and intense than those from riper years, like 2017 through 2020. Adrián says that Salnés has been impacted less by climatic temperature increases than other areas and that the 2019, 2020 and 2021 vintages were all quite similar throughout the growing season. Where vineyards are as close to the Atlantic as those of Salnés, the influence of temperature extremes is less drastic than those further inland in places like the Rías Baixas subzones, Condado de Tea and Ribeira do Ulla, and many more so than other Atlantic-influenced interior Galician appellations, like Ribeiro and even parts of Ribeira Sacra. A lot of the vintage variation in Salnés is largely influenced by mildew pressure and rain. Those losses greatly affect yields, which also influences the final phenolic ripeness of the grapes. 2019 and 2020 are slightly more similar to each other than they are to 2021. Both of the former vintages allowed most winegrowers to take their time harvesting as they wanted. The alcohol level of Albariño in these two years hovers around and just above 13%. Adrián also pointed out that critics speak of these two vintages as warmer seasons, but when compared to years like 2017 and 2018, they are much fresher. 2021 was similar regarding annual temperatures and rainfall but was marked by lower alcohol levels closer to 12%. Adrián credits this more “classic” Salnés Albariño with lower alcohol in this similarly dry season to 2019 and 2020 to rains just prior to harvest. He believes the slightly higher yield and the rains restored a certain balance to the fruit. New Producer: Xesteiriña, Salnés Things are coming along for us in Rías Baixas these days and the addition of the micro-producer, Xesteiriña, will be yet another superstar in this appellation that we’ve added to our collection. Xesteiriña is in Salnés and comes from a single vineyard just west of Portonovo, very close to the Atlantic. The project and property is owned and operated by the extremely sharp and thoughtful José Manuel Dominguez, an Agricultural Engineer who comes from three generations of winegrowers in Salnés. The vineyard is a unique geological location largely composed of granodiorite and what may be some transitional materials similar to gneiss. In any case, the rocks are hard as heck, and the vineyard topsoil is incredibly spare, composed almost entirely of organic matter. José Manuel’s approach in the vineyard is one of caution and respect for the ecological environment. Organic methods guide his work, despite being so close to the ocean—a hostile environment for mildew and vine diseases. The vineyard is surrounded by forests of mostly indigenous Galician trees that are rare in these parts, and José Manuel wants to keep them for the biodiversity of the vineyard. Raised in a combination of old oak barrels and stainless steel, the 2020 Xesteiriña Albariño’s core is strong, dense and mineral, like two bottles of wine crammed into one. While its body is full and seemingly ready to supernova any moment, it remains serene and focused, vibrating with what feels like the life force of the rock and the crashing waves not too far from its birthplace. The lab numbers are impressive at 12.7° alcohol, pH of 2.92 and ta of 10mg/L, and will provide some insight on how this wine strikes and rests in the palate. It was raised in 70% stainless steel and 30% older French oak barrels over ten months. Xesteiriña has few bottles for world export, and they are worth getting your hands on. Only twenty cases were imported to the US. Pedro Méndez and his tree-like Albariño vines New Producer: Pedro Méndez As often happens while he’s on vacation or touring in Spain, our Southern California superstar salesman, JD Plotnick, fires text messages to me of wines he’s tasting as he moves through his favorite European country. One of the most recent was a photo of the Albariño by Pedro Méndez, cousin of local viticultural legend, Rodrigo Méndez. Luckily for us, he had not yet chosen his US importer, though there were many in line. After a short drive to Rías Baixas from our Portuguese apartment in Ponte de Lima, I had lunch with Pedro at Casa Aurora, owned by our mutual friend, Miguel Anxo Besada, also the owner of the famous local wine spot in Portonovo, A Curva. Like Miguel, Pedro is in the restaurant business. His family owns a small restaurant in Meaño, in the Salnés subzone of Galicia’s Rías Baixas. During the summer tourist season, their restaurant, A Casa Pequeña, keeps Pedro completely busy, and attends to bare necessities in the vineyards. The rest of the year he is solely focused on his vines and the cellar. After our lunch we had a tour of his vineyards where the highlight was the ancient, pre-phylloxera Albariño vines that are nearly two-hundred years old and look more like trees than vines. These ancient plants make up the composition of, As Abeleiras, the wine JD first had and a wine that floored me the first time I drank a bottle with Pedro. It’s a sort of Raveneau-esque Albariño in body and structure but with a pure citrusy, salty, minerally, high acidity power that only Albariño possesses. His entry-level Albariño doesn’t list the grape on the label and is aptly called Sen Etiqueta (without label). Its grapes are harvested from his family’s other vineyards scattered throughout Rías Baixas, mainly in Meaño, a three or four mile flight from the Atlantic. It’s snappy, minerally, pure and a fabulous deal for the quality. Pedro is young, talented and extremely humble and hospitable. I’m sure he’ll soon become one of the most recognized names in Rías Baixas. Manuel Moldes, Salnés While it seems like we’ve already worked together for a decade because we spend so much time together, it’s only our third and fourth vintages working with Manuel (Chicho) Moldes. Rías Baixas is a special place, and Chicho is right in the middle of its movement onto the world’s wine stage. Chicho is a busy man with no time for English, travel or kids; he only has time for wine, his wife, Sylvia, and his local friends and outsiders like us who visit regularly. I’ve pried him out of his shell on occasion to do some traveling through wine country to Chablis and the Loire Valley, but he otherwise remains laser focused on his gradual expansion. This year he completed a new winery next to the garage where he crafted all his wines prior to the 2021 harvest, and he continues to grab little parcels here and there in Rias Baixas; in all, he has more than fifty miniscule plots now, many of which are the size of a large backyard garden. Arriving this month is his 2020 Albariño “Afelio,” a wine grown on a collective of dozens of parcels on granite bedrock and topsoil (with only a tiny amount of schist, if any at all). The grains of soil vary highly from fine granite sand to gravel, some with a shallower depth and others with much deeper topsoil. This makes for a good mixture of palate textures and balance of muscularity and finesse, and an all-around great representation of Salnés Albariño. With the Afelio bottling, he started with some partial aging in old oak barrels but he’s inching closer and closer to using almost all older barrels. This vintage spent its first months in stainless steel and its last in old barrels. The 2020 Albariño “A Capela de Aios” will always be in short supply and high demand. Grown on ancient and nearly fully decomposed schist, with the rock formations on the upper sections of bedrock completely rotted in place, and it’s aged entirely in 500l-600l old French oak barrels to complement its fuller body than the crisper and tighter Afelio, this wine has greater depth and more complexity and perhaps a slightly more rounded character than the next wine, Peai. The 2020 Albariño “Peai,” (pronounced like P.I.) is the newest in Chicho’s range. Grown on a shallow topsoil of decomposed schist derived from the hard schist bedrock below, it’s the most muscular and angular in the range. Big textures and metallic/mineral notes dominate the palate, yet the nose is brightened with delicately salty sea spray, sweeter white and yellow citrus, and the cleansing petrichor of a fresh rain in a rocky countryside. Already gathering a cult-like following, the 2020 Albariño “As Dunas” is grown entirely in extremely fine schist sand, ground down by ocean waves when it was a beach millions of years ago. This is the most elegantly powerful Albariño in the range, displaying an incredible duality of finer, more nuanced points delivered with tremendous thrust, energy and structure. This group of vineyard parcels was divided between Chicho, Raúl Perez and Rodrigo Méndez (again, the cousin of Pedro, one of our new producers)—the latter two, local luminaries of the Galician wine trade. Chicho’s two arriving red wines have diametrically opposed characteristics and are from different regions, with 2019 Acios Mouros hailing from Rías Baixas, and 2019 Lentura from Bierzo. Only a three-hour drive away, they are completely different terroirs in every way (except that they share acidic soils), from dramatically different climates, exposures and surrounding ecosystems. The landscape moves from Rías Baixas’ rainy, humid, and wet Atlantic influence at low altitudes, to Bierzo’s Mediterranean/continental climate of snowy winters and boiling summers. Bierzo is arid and barren with vines grown at altitudes as high as 1000m. Acios Mouros is tensely loaded with an acidic, goose-bumping freshness. It’s grown on mostly granite soils close to the Atlantic and raised in old 500l-600l French oak barrels for about a year before bottling. Fermented and aged separately, it is a blend of 70% Caiño Redondo (the high acid, energy, red fruits, flowers, and light balsamic notes), 15% Espadeiro (the rustic, floral and lightly fruity medium-bodied contribution), and 15% Loureiro Tinto (the beast with all the black hues and wild notes). The Bierzo is a blend of 60% Garnacha Tintorera (dark red and black color, power, acid, juiciness) and Mencía (elegant, body-softening, red fruits and flowers). Lentura is notably fleshier and richer than Acios Mouros, a wiry, sharp and minerally wine. Lentura comes from the vineyards of one of his dear friends, José Antonio García. It’s a mixture of grapes from vines on the lower rolling hill areas on deeper white and red topsoil mixed with river cobbles, and vineyards higher up on the extremely steep and slippery slate hillside of Corullón. New Arrivals: Ribeiro, Spain One of Augalevada’s many organic vineyard sources for the Mercenario range Our Rías Baixas game is now equal to that of our Ribeiro. However, our Ribeiro group is very special and with a unique array of wines between El Paraguas, Cume do Avia and Augelavada. Cume do Avia’s wine will come later this year, but in the meantime the other two have wines arriving this month—or at least we hope so, depending on supply-chain issues… Bodegas El Paraguas Marcial Pita and Felicísimo Pereira continue their ascent to some of the higher levels of Treixadura wines from Ribeiro, the spiritual and historical center of Galician wines. Most of their vineyards are granite/granodiorite, with one specific parcel on schist. The style is, and I apologize in advance for this overused comparison, more Burgundian than most whites from Galicia. It’s not the nuances that match Burgundy, but rather the corpulence and broader palate weight of the wines. Aromatically, they are nearly everything but Burgundian and express their terroirs with great clarity, led with honeyed citrus blossoms, saltiness and fresh white fruits like yellow apple and pear. Ribeiro’s ace up the sleeve on white wine is Treixadura, a grape that thrives better here than anywhere else. In the right hands (like Paraguas’), it appears to have the chops to stand tall in complexity within the world of more full-bodied white wines. Their first wine in the range, El Paraguas “Atlántico,” is roughly 92% Treixadura and 8% Albariño—the latter addition to improve the wine’s acidity levels, mineral freshness and a citrusy zing. Made from a blend of their three different vineyards, one on schist and two on granite, it’s a powerhouse of quality and breed. Like all of their wines, it’s aged in 600l French oak barrels, a clever choice for this variety, and perhaps my favorite non-foudre-sized wood barrels. Although the difference between a 500l and 600l barrel seems negligible, it’s the stave thickness between them that makes the difference. The 600l barrel is typically about 30% thicker, which greatly influences the oxygen intake ideal for Treixadura, a variety in need of slower maturation in a tighter grain if aged in wood to preserve its finer nuances. La Sombrilla is grown entirely on schist, and this rock and soil type tends to make fuller and slightly more expansive wines in the palate, with metal and mineral notes that are deeper in the back palate than granite’s commonly front-loaded power. They chose to age La Sombrilla in some of the newer barrels (along with older ones too) because it wears it better than wines from granite soils—an opinion I share. It is not their objective to work with much new wood, but they prefer to buy new instead of used barrels. La Sombrilla needs time once open to express its best traits. There is always a little nuance of newer oak upon opening (as it is with almost every serious white Burgundy outside of Chablis) and with a little patience it will begin to reveal its full hand. Fazenda Augalevada Iago Garrido continues to lead a singular path in Ribeiro with his game-changing, flor-influenced wines. Iago explains that in the past flor was part of Ribeiro’s success, and that in Ribeiro, wine was often sold as full barrels to restaurants or for transport. There was surely a thriving BYO bottle (to fill) private-customer base who took directly from the cask as well. If flor yeast didn’t develop its protective layer in these large barrels as wine was slowly drawn from them, it wouldn’t last—it was essential for preservation at that time. So, if you see it from that perspective, Iago’s wines may be some of the most “traditional” of the entire region! Everything Iago makes has its own personality. Most, if not all the wines, are aged in a combination of larger old barrels (300l/500l/600l) and amphoras under flor yeast. Even if one of the particular wines was not under flor, it still carries the aromatic specificity of a cellar where flor is present, which adds nuanced complexity. The 2020 Mercenario Blanco is a mix of Treixadura, Albariño, Godello and Palomino. All grapes are sourced from various spots inside of Ribeiro on the banks of its main tributaries, Avia, Arnoia, and Miño. The average vine age ranges between 15 and 50 years and is on a mixture of igneous (granites/granodiorites) and metamorphic bedrock (Iago suspects mostly gneiss) with clay-rich topsoil. It’s aged in very old 500l and 600l barrels, glass carboys and amphora vats. This is the lightest white in the range and sometimes opens quietly but always picks up momentum with each passing minute, evolving very well for days after opening. 300 cases are produced. The flagship white wine, 2019 Ollos de Roque, is made entirely of Treixadura from the biodynamically-farmed, granitic Augalevada vineyard, tucked back behind the historic San Clodio monastery and the property of the fazenda. This is the wine that guided Iago into his flor yeast life by accident in 2014 when he buried an amphora in his vineyard that naturally developed a flor covering. At first he was mortified, but thinking it was a mistake to throw it out, with some time in bottle it developed a profound quality. Today it is indeed the most intense wine in the range, despite its very young vines, and delivers a beautiful balance of restrained power and elegance. The nuances of flor are present but folded in as to not overpower the terroir and Treixadura’s subtle qualities. It’s aged in a mixture of 840l, 500l and 330l old wood barrels and 400l amphora vats. 120 cases were produced. The first red in his range is the 2020 Mercenario Tinto, a blend of the powerhouse local varieties (from most elegant and fruity to the most rustic with deeper color) Brancellao, Caiño Longo, Espadeiro, and Sousón. Iago works with a plethora of small parcels scattered around Arnoia, Avia and Miño river valleys on mostly granitic soils with vines between 15 and 30 years old. With a very light and almost no-touch approach, the fermentations in these various vats lasted between 32 and 45 days. 80% of the wines are aged in 500l barrels and one 400l amphora vat for ten months. This is a very special wine indeed for Iago and it brings great pleasure to those seeking lower alcohol reds with depth and texture while maintaining interesting aromatic components tucked in behind its beautiful red fruits. My wife and I have consumed at least 30 bottles of the 2018 vintage (likely closer to 40, but I shy from possible hyperbole…).  The 2019 was also very good but was more of an experimental vintage for Iago. In 2020 there was more stem inclusion, which made a fair exchange of fruitiness for more upfront earthy, savory, spicy and deep mineral notes. 300 cases were produced. 2019 marked the first vintage of Iago’s Mercenario Tinto Selección de Añada, something I requested he make when we were tasting the 2018 reds out of barrel. The 2018 was so utterly special and remains one of the most distinct barrel tasting moments of my career as a wine importer. There was a single 500l barrel out of three that year that completely rocked me. The other two were also impressive, but the third was like a long lost relative of Pierre Overnoy’s red wines—big praise I know, but worthy of the comparison. It was so special that I wanted the world to know it and taste it, but he blended it with the others to make an extraordinary wine in any case. I can still taste that single barrel folded in with the other two in the 2018 Tinto. 2019 was a very good first Selección de Añada, but, in my opinion (and I believe in the opinion of Iago as well), it didn’t reach the same level it didn’t reach the same level as the 2018 Mercenario Tinto. The 2020 version has a different agenda than the 2018 Tinto and the two 2019 Tintos. This year, he’s going for a more “meaty” style than in the past—likely an inspiration from the style of wines of two of his Galician heroes and local icons, Luís Anxo Rodríguez (Ribeiro) and José Luis Matteo (Monterrei). It comes from 15–40-year-old vineyards in the Arnoia and Avia valleys on granitic soil. In the cellar it was macerated for 45 days and then aged for a year in a 600l and a 500l barrel. 120 cases were produced. New Arrivals: Italy Andrea Piccioni’s Buttafuoco vineyards Andrea Picchioni, Oltrepò Pavese Andrea Picchioni is a historic producer of great distinction. There is no better winegrower in the world than the one who is energized by his vineyards, in love with them, and wants to live in them and learn from them, instead of being the one to teach them what he thinks he knows. This is Andrea Picchioni, a man on his own path, inspired by one of Italy’s iconic vignaioli, the late Lino Maga, second to none in the Oltrepò Pavese, a man who was Andrea’s spiritual leader, mentor and friend. Picchioni is the Mega to Lino’s Maga, and since they were so close I am sure that Lino felt the same. We had the great pleasure of meeting Lino the year before his passing and he graciously invited us to visit again. Lino and Andrea’s bromance was on full display, which led to a series of fabulous photos snapped by our team on the visit. What a special memory. Andrea works in the home of the original Buttafuoco vineyards in the Solinga Valley, with only the kind and joyful human war tank, Franco Pellegrini, to keep him company (a man responsible for giving me the most rustic wine and cheese I can recall daring to put in my mouth). Andrea is a solitary vignaiolo with no benchmark other than that of Lino’s Barbarcarlo, to which his equally original wines overflow with tremendous depth and unapologetically full-flavored richness. Andrea grows his grapes on some of the steepest unterraced vineyards in Italy, with vines that run from top to bottom rather than side to side. The calcareous components of his vineyard topsoil keep the conglomerate bedrock cobbles below cemented into place so these vineyards don’t slide right down these treacherous hills and fill the steeply V-shaped ravine below. During our summer trip this year, Tyler Kavanaugh, our San Diego company representative, fell even more in love with Andrea’s wines. We were treated to a series of older vintages of Riva Bianca and Rosso d’Asia, some ten years old and others back to the 90s, all of which seemed like they’d hardly aged at all in the bottle except for the fact that the x-factors were more clearly defined. Picchioni’s unabashed style of wine is committed to the historical Buttafuoco blend of Barbera, Croatina and Ughetta di Canneto (a regional Vespolina biotype). He also has some Vivace wines and we’ve added one to our shipping container. The 2021 Bonarda dell’Oltrepò Pavese is a fabulous, dark and full-flavored, semi-sparkling red. Made entirely of Bonarda (Croatina), it’s fermented on the skins (fully destemmed) for four to five days, then pressed and racked into autoclaves where it continues its fermentation under pressure. There are few wines so perfect in the world for cured meats and fatty animal cuts than a sparkling, cold red wine from the many areas of Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna. This wine is a true highlight compared to most others that are mass produced under chemical farming. Here at Picchioni, it’s organic all the way and the wines feel more alive than any bubbly Italian red I can remember. Into the more serious range of still red wines we find Andrea’s two big hitters, 2018 Rosso d’Asia & 2018 Riva Bianca. These two powerhouses come from nearly adjacent vineyard rows but are composed of a different grape blend. Rosso d’Asia is 90% Croatina and 10% Barbera, and the Riva Bianca plays within the rules of the Buttafuoco dell’Oltrepò Pavese appellation with a blend of Croatina, Barbera and Ughetta di Canneto, and Andrea doesn’t keep track of the exact proportions of these grapes. Rosso d’Asia is macerated on skins for more than 60 days, while Riva Bianca’s maceration lasts between 90 and 120 days—a long time in each case! Both are aged in large wood vats for two years before bottling. Trying to describe the flood of generous nuances from these two wines would take an entire page of new notes written every thirty minutes as they evolve after opening. In general, the Rosso d’Asia could be described as the straighter, darker, more peppery, brooding wine. Its muscle, spice, acidity and tannin are on full display and seamlessly woven together. Riva Bianca could be described as having a greater range of x-factors—similar to Lino Maga’s wines in spirit, but much more precise and cleanly crafted. I’m confident that the bacterially related “funk” in Maga’s wines was deliberate, and likely (based on his polarizing reputation) an attempt to rock the boat of enological correctness, perception of hygiene, bacteria’s role in authenticating a regional wine’s taste, the homogenization of the wine world, and the disruption of cultural histories and regional tastes. But of course, this is just speculation on my part. On the other hand, his student and friend, Andrea, is more rooted in craft along with his immense respect for nature, which is on full display in his organically farmed vineyards. Nature is truly Andrea’s guide (which is evident in each of his wines), but he respects the craft and works to fine tune it without any loss of authenticity. His wines display a clear intent to reveal their highest highs without straying too far off into the bacterial wine vortex. If there was one rogue in the bunch that forages deeper into the world of bacteria, if only as a supporting nuance, Riva Bianca would be the wine with that wanderlust. This is why it’s also his most spellbinding wine. Dave Fletcher, Barbaresco Most of us get one coming out party in our life (I think…) and 2019 will be the year for Dave. Since our first tastes of any of his 2019 Nebbiolo wines out of barrel, we knew they would be more than just special; they were going to be a breakthrough. From the Nebbiolo d’Alba all the way to his top Barbaresco crus, there is magic in the entire line, and he’s already made some head turners, especially in 2016. However, there is almost no chance that any wines prior to 2019 will rival this banner year. A description that seems to be finding its way around the wine community to best describe what sets Barbaresco in 2019 apart from other great vintages is elegance. For such a profound vintage with tremendous depth and guts, this is one factor that may help it to rise in stature higher than 2016 and 2010. 2019 has everything, and for this taster, there is no greater achievement for a wine with “everything” than to be led by gracefulness, even if it’s just slightly ahead of its strength and depth. I asked Dave to give us a rundown of the five most recent vintages in Barbaresco. Many people, including the critics (and even I) tend to lump Barolo and Barbaresco into the same sort of vintage bullet points. Indeed, they have more similarities than differences, but as slight as they may be sometimes, the subtleties separate wines; the separation of true greatness from excellence is a game of nuances from one season to the next. Not necessarily regarding temperatures, but rather the timeliness of rains, hails and frosts, and other things that can dramatically change the yield and health of a season particularly built to develop those nuances. If you lose to frost, it changes the grapes immensely; if it rains in one place and not the other, you have wines of different fruit components, alcohol levels and structure; depending on the time of year, hail can ruin an entire field, while the one next to it remains untouched. In Piemonte, it’s all the luck of the draw. Dave’s Barbaresco Vintage Notes 2017 was warm. A frost in July lowered the yields but the resulting wines had good density and mild structure making them approachable early. I harvested all of my Nebbiolo grapes before the 22nd of September. 2018 had a late snow in March, which was a welcome delay for the vegetative cycle, thus extending the maturation period to later in the season. Some rainfall in September and October delayed the harvest, but less so in Barbaresco than Barolo. The wines tend to have a delayed expression. They’re also tight in tannic structure but with prettiness and a lot of elegant fruit. I like this vintage a lot. All of my Nebbiolo was harvested in early October. 2019 was a perfect season with ideal weather. The ripening was slow and progressive—Nebbiolo’s calling card. They are wines of elegance and finesse on the nose with great supporting structure and acidity for long aging typical of great vintages. For me, it’s the best in the last decade. I harvested my Nebbiolos just before mid-October. 2020 was another warmer season, but not as warm as 2017. The wines are very approachable with softer tannins. The tannins are also not as dense as 2017 and are more in the direction of great Pinot Noir and its supple nature. 2021’s slow ripening season is similar to 2019. Cool nights and heavy rainfall came in early September, which brought a welcome extension of the season where Nebbiolo was picked up until mid-October. The wines have great structure but maybe more density than 2019. At this point, I think it’s an exceptional year but I don’t think it will reach the heights of 2019. However, it’s too early to say. Cellar Work All of the Nebbiolo-based wines are made the same except for their time spent in barrel. Everything is destemmed, the extractions are gentle and sparing with typically one punch down every other day, and only pumped over if needed. Fermentation time can run from two weeks to two months, and is made without temperature control. “Tannins need to be managed in the vineyard, not the cellar, so if they take a long time, I’m not worried about over-extracting them because they were picked when the seeds were ripe.” The first sulfite addition is made after malolactic fermentation is completed. All are aged in 300-liter, old-French-oak barrels with a minimum of ten years of use. This is interesting to note because the wines have a woodsy quality that appears to be an influence of younger barrels, but Dave explained that sometimes Nebbiolo and Barbera naturally express this characteristic, and it’s hard to say why; perhaps it’s somehow organoleptically linked to their ingrained balsamic-like nuances. The use of smaller, more-porous barrels instead of larger botte would increase their oxygen and could accentuate this characteristic. The Langhe Nebbiolo is aged for 13-14 months (as were the Nebbiolo d’Alba wines before the 2020 vintage) and the Barbarescos for 26 months. He does no fining or filtration. Dave’s 2020 Langhe Nebbiolo, formerly labeled a Nebbiolo d’Alba, is a blend of 90% Roero Nebbiolo inside the Nebbiolo d’Alba appellation, and 10% from young vines in Barbaresco territory around Neive. This 10% addition from Langhe, outside of the Nebbiolo d’Alba appellation, forced his hand in using that appellation instead of Nebbiolo d’Alba. The tannins here are a little softer in profile and require less aging in wood to reach a good evolution. The result of the shorter aging with Roero’s much sandier soils makes for an upfront, delicious, red-fruited Nebbiolo with gentle leathery rustic notes. Fletcher’s 2019 Barbaresco Range The starting Barbaresco “Recta Pete,” (a name taken from Dave’s historical Scottish family clan name that means Shoot Straight) is sourced from the younger vines of three different powerhouse cru sites and is a blend of roughly 55% Roncaglie, 25% Starderi and 20% Ronchi—the latter likely to be bottled in 2022 as its own cru. The marriage of these three exceptional sites with their variations in temperature, exposure and soil, along with the younger vines makes for a wine with great energy and earlier approachability. But all of Dave’s 2019s are quite approachable early on due to their elegance. The outlier between the three crus, Starderi is the warmest of Dave’s Barbaresco sites and has the highest percentage of sand mixed in with calcareous marls. He describes these influences on the wine as driving it toward the expression of red fruits, like strawberry, raspberry, and cherry. The tannins from these 45-year-old vines are finer than the other two crus in a sort of chalky Pinot Noir way, which he also attributes to the sandy soils. Dave views Faset as a quintessential classic central-zone Barbaresco grown on middle-aged vines (35 years or so) with a stronger clay component to the soil and a direct south-facing exposition. It’s the richest in pallet weight of the three and has a stronger tannin profile when compared to Starderi. There is less of the red and lighter fruits as they have moved further into darker, perhaps more developed maturation with more layers like plum and fresh, dark fig. Dave feels that Roncaglie has the best of both Starderi and Faset. The tannic structure is like Faset and its similar clay soils which also increase its core density. The fruit’s profile flaunts hallmark Nebbiolo notes with violets, cherries and rose petals, all of which can be attributed to it being in a cooler position than Faset. Dave buys his Roncaglie fruit from the Colla family from a variety of different spots and vine ages. In my tasting of these three wines from Dave, Roncaglie is the standout in pure breed and finds the next level of regality. It’s one of the truly epic crus of Barbaresco and it’s a treat to see a different but equally thrilling rendition of it alongside the Collas’ 2019 Roncaglie masterpiece. The Source Team Summer 2022 Tour Top 5 Wines Leigh Ready, Mateus Nicolau de Almeida (Douro producer for Trans Douro Express), Hadley Kemp, and Victoria (Vance) Diggs. Iberian Tour I promptly got Covid on the Iberian trip this summer and was ejected from the tour, so I missed almost all the visits. For this reason, there is less commentary from me for their choices because I wasn’t there to taste these new wines! Believe me, I was jealous… We start with some input from our own Leigh Ready, a Santa Barbarian deeply in touch with nature. She spent a lot of time in the restaurant business and selling wines for import companies, but she also worked many years for an organic produce farm. Leigh’s top five Iberian wines were the Spanish wines Javier Arizcuren’s 2021 Rioja Solo Garnacha Anfora (grown at 550m on calcareous soils), Pedro Méndez’s 2019 Viruxe, a rare and unusually fabulous Salnés Mencía (maybe we’ll get an allocation with the 2021 vintage). In Portugal, her favorites were the Constantino Ramos 2019 Afluente Alvarinho grown in Monção y Melgaço’s higher altitude areas around 300m (most of Monção is quite low in altitude by comparison), and finally from our two producers in the arid and high altitude (600-650m) Trás-os-Montes, 2021 Menina d’uva Rosé and 2021 Arribas Wine Company Rosé. Hadley Kemp, one of the newest to our team is based in San Francisco. Also a former restaurant pro as a General Manager and Sommelier, she was well-trained on wine and is one of the few of her generation (Millennial) afforded the opportunity to work with extensive wine lists loaded to the gills with the world’s greatest blue-chip producers. Despite this special experience, most of her choices were perhaps less “classical” in style, an indicator that she is not stuck on the past but loving what today and the future have to offer! She also chose the Javier Arizcuren Sol Garnacha Anfora, Constantino Ramos’ Afluente Alvarinho, and Arribas Wine Company’s Rosé. Her other favorites were Constantino Ramos’ 2021 Zafirah, a blend of Vinho Verde red grapes, and Pedro Méndez’s 2021 Albariño Sen Etiqueta (100% monovarietal but not labeled as an Albariño) from Rías Baixas’ Salnés area, which is arriving this month! Italian, Austria and Germany Tour Magdelena Pratzner, from the Sütirol winery, Falkenstein, with JD Plotnick and Tyler Kavanaugh. JD Plotnick and Tyler Kavanaugh, two of our Southern California salespeople, joined me on a tour through Italy and Germany. JD also started the trip with me in Austria, so Tyler’s top five won’t include Austrian wines. I was Covid-free through this trip, unlike the Iberian leg, and was there to watch their emotional reactions to the wines, which made it a little easier to guess what their top picks would be. JD Plotnick works with us in Los Angeles. A former cook at one of Chicago’s great restaurants, Schwa, and a classically-trained musician, his relationship to wine closely relates to these precisely tuned and harmonious arts. His list included four wines that also made my top 15 list posted in our July 2022 Newsletter. Bookending the trips through the German-speaking countries, he included Veyder-Malberg’s 2021 Riesling Bruck, a truly spectacular wine from one of the wine world’s greatest alchemists from one of the best years known in the region. Next is Katharina Wechsler with her wine labeled, 2021 K. Wechsler Riesling Schweisströpfchen. This wine borders between Spätlese and Kabinett (52g/L residual sugar) and is grown in the great limestone cru, Kirchspiel, in one of its warmer sections. (It could have easily made my top 15 list too, but I already chose a different wine from Wechsler—check out Tyler’s choices to see which one!) Just across the border of Austria and into Italy’s Südtirol, the young Martin Ramoser’s 2020 Fliederhof Sant Magdelener “Gaia,” made entirely of Schiava, also made my top 15 list (posted in our July Newsletter). What a special wine! A super breakthrough performance that will arrive in minuscule quantities (only four cases!) this fall. Poderi Colla’s 2019 Barbaresco Rocaglie predictably made everyone’s top five of the trip. Thus far in its youth it shows glimmers of perfection from this mighty but very elegant vintage. Finally, Davide Carlone’s 2018 Boca “Adele,” represents the heights of quality for Nebbiolo in Alto Piemonte. It deserves a full-length article to describe its depth of complexity. When Aussie native Tyler Kavanaugh isn’t surfing the famous waves of San Diego County in-between tasting appointments with our restaurant and retailer customers, he’s cooking and spending time with his wife and their new baby north of San Diego. He’s an Italian wine specialist, so all of you listen up! First on the list, and no surprise, is the 2019 Poderi Colla Barbaresco Roncaglie; again, near perfection. I knew the next wine would make his list because his eyes barely remained inside their sockets when tasting the the 2010 Andrea Picchioni Oltrepò Pavese “Riva Bianca.” We have the 2018 version of this arriving this month and it has the potential to match the extraordinary 2010. Tyler was a big fan some years ago after I tasted him on the wines when he was posted up as the buyer at the fabulous San Francisco Italian boutique wine shop, Biondivino, prior to onboarding with us. Enrico Togni’s “Martina” Rosato/Rosso (depending on what label you get!) tank sample also made my top 15. Simply too good to be labeled a Rosato, it’s as good as it gets for this Italian category—think an Italian version of López de Heredia’s Viña Tondonia Rosado in style, though much younger upon release! Andrea Monti Perini’s 2017 Bramaterra out of cask was superbly emotional and deserving of a top five list, as were the 2018 and 2019. So much life and energy in his wines! Finally, Tyler chose Katharina Wechslers’ 2020 Riesling Kabinett, which also made my top 15 and was ultimately positioned as my own official summer house wine of 2022. It comes entirely from the world-class cru, Kirchspiel., and it’s simply gorgeous Kabinett, with wiry acidity and the elegant beauty of its great limestone terroir.

Greetings from Europe! J.D. Plotnick (my travel partner for the next three weeks) and I arrived in France and had a good first day back on the wine trail. First, we had two enlightening visits in Champagne, one with Sébastien Mouzon (Mouzon-Leroux) and another who shall remain nameless until we can get him to sell us some wine—fingers crossed! We tasted some intriguing unfinished and experimental wines out of tank and barrel that we've not experienced before. The next day we had two great visits in Champagne with Guillaume Sergent and Vincent Charlot. As usual, the wines from these producers never cease to impress. After our visits in Champagne, we made our way down to the Côte d’Or. David Duband, Nicolas Rossignol and Rodolphe Demougeot put on a stellar showing of their 2016s before we finished up our week in Beaujolais with Jean Louis Dutraive, Justin Dutraive, Anthony Thevenet and the Chardigny boys, Pierre-Maxime Chardigny and Victor Chardigny. In Beaujolais they are struggling to stay afloat after two vintages of hailstorms that knocked out the majority of their production each year; Jean-Louis was hit the worst with a loss of 90% in 2016 and 95% in 2017. They have high hopes for a successful 2018 vintage but they believe the threat of regular hailstorm strikes will be a new normal occurrence for them. J.D thanked me for taking the time to go back into the vineyards again to give him a more complete view of the domaines we work with. I told him that no matter how many times you go to the same place, each visit provides new perspective and contemplation about this infinitely vast subject. It's my pleasure! After six days of cold weather and a maximum of four hours of sleep each night, I finally kicked my jet lag. It was 28 degrees this morning with a light snowfall, but I'm happily resting in bed at our apartment in Puligny-Montrachet. There is nothing on the schedule today but paying a visit 200 meters from our front door at Le Montrachet, one of Burgundy's most civilized lunch spots. Next week it's more Côte d'Or and then off into Chablis, Irancy and Epineuil.

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