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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

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.

(Download complete pdf here) 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.

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.

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?

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

(Download complete pdf here) Loire River with Montlouis-sur-Loire on the right and Vouvray on the left, November 2022 After a string of scorching summers, we had a lucky break in 2021 in what now seems like a season we’ve all been waiting for half of our lives. Some European regions were hit by spring frost but almost everywhere else in Europe was cooler and rainier earlier on than usual which continued into the early summer. The year showed a reduction in volume but the results are often excellent for those looking for a more elegant version from their favorite regions. The vineyards were heavy on fungus, which required a lot of sorting by hand long before harvest, and once the warmer weather finally came it was still cool and pleasurable, unlike the blistering pain of the previous summers and the one that followed. During the latter, it was uncomfortable just to go anywhere outside until the sun was out of sight, or to try to take refuge at home (few in Europe are set up with air good conditioning, even though it’s been available since 1942), or even to find relief at the beach, where, after three minutes out of the water, it was time to go back in. I remember four big heat waves that summer between June and September, and the spring was uncomfortably warm, too. Insuportable!—the sweaty Catalan gasp of summer 2022. Though the term is overused to describe many vintages, a true “classic” is hard to come by these days in European wine regions. I’ve come to understand that, at least for me, some growing seasons impart characteristics that remind me of the glory years in the most historic wine regions of the last century when the vines eked out ripeness just in time for the change in weather that comes with the earth’s tilting back the other way. Though some years hit a few of the marks and stir excitement when the wines are young, the complete package often comes up short after more time in bottle. It’s important to taste wines out of barrel every year to get a clearer read on what’s really happening, though I admit I’m sometimes distracted by the romance that comes with this being what I do for a living, and I forget to pay attention at times. Young wines seem much fresher and more tense in their early moments in bottle than they really are, making it sometimes difficult to assess if a vintage should really be described as “classic.” Even no-added-sulfur wines at bottling freshen up for a period before they regain their true characteristics, just like when wines get a good oxygen hit during racking in the cellar, leading to a short window of one of the most honest and pure moments of a wine’s entire evolution from vat to bottle. For many northern European wine regions, 2021 hits all the “classic” markers: a cool growing season with a good balance of cloud cover, rain and refreshing winds to provide a longer window than normal for the growers to meticulously select the best fruit and to harvest within the fruit and structural profiles they prefer. Harmonious and with graceful fluidity, the 2021s tend to have greater freshness and higher natural acidity and lower to more moderate alcohol than from an average season, so you can drink more of them! What’s not to love about a “classic” year? I was in Portugal for most of the summer after a solo six-week road trip that started in Portugal and cut across northern Spain, southern France, through the Alps into northern Italy and back up through mountains to Austria, cutting back through Germany’s Rheinhessen, across to Champagne and Chablis, down into Burgundy and the Rhône and finally back to Portugal. I remember my surprise in response to the soggy, foggy and gray middle of June when, between showers, I went on runs from Michael Malat’s Kremstal winery, up the painfully steep and will-shattering rise of over a hundred meters in a span of just a kilometer, on the way to the Stift Göttweig, the historic abbey. There I was met with towering views of the valley below carved out by the Danube—the glorious, viticultural dreamland of the Wachau, Kremstal, Kamptal and Wagram. (Traisenthal is very close too, but mostly out of sight.) After that last rainy period in June, things took a steady course until harvest. The rest of the season remained cool for some regions to pick earlier than others without any severe heat waves (that I can remember), but a late summer and early fall drought began in other regions (such as Italy’s Langhe) prior to the fruit ripening. A day after the rains at Stift Göttweig, June 2021 Many regions made what appear to be historic wines in 2021, and for a lot of northern European white wine lovers, this year is tailored for the classicists—those who remember (and dearly miss) the days of the fresh and the tense, the mineral-laden wines that barely made it to a natural 12% alcohol without picking before the phenolics were in the grower’s ideal balance. 2021’s natural acidities are typically high, mineral nuances tight, sharp, and finely textured, and fruit profiles more citrusy than tropical. Austrian 2021 whites are as good as those from more than twenty years ago, like the historic 1997, 1999 and 2001. (Sadly, this predates Peter Veyder-Malberg’s Wachau project; wouldn’t we love to taste his wines if they were made back then?) 2021 marks perhaps a perfect vintage fitted to my taste in both Grüner Veltliner and Riesling. It also stands as the undisputed best young vintage I’ve tasted with regard to depth from either variety, though, for me, 2013 is right there with it. German Rieslings seem to be a dark horse that will pay dividends for the believers and those experienced enough to know the merit of youthful austerity evolved after much time in the cellar; oh, how I love balanced austerity! Northern French and Galician whites had stellar years, though the 2022 Albariños may edge out 2021 by a nose, which didn’t happen in other European areas that had much hotter conditions in 2022. The white and red wines from the Loire Valley are superb, and it’s surely our Saumur-based superstar Arnaud Lambert’s best vintage to date! Vincent Bergeron This month’s featured producer keeps us close to Lambert country, only slightly more than an hour-long drive on a hilly country road to the Loire River and straight east from there to the more verdant and humid Montlouis-sur-Loire. There we meet again one of our newest treasured vignerons, Vincent Bergeron, and his emotionally moving and finely etched 2021 Chenin Blancs (bubbles and still) and his full-of-life and delicately nuanced ethereal Pinot Noir. Vivid is my memory of these 2021 wines out of barrel on my first visit with Vincent, and casually slurping them down with oysters, cheeses, patés, and bread on a wobbly, makeshift table in his driveway in front of the tuffeau limestone wine caves during my second visit shortly after their bottling. Though the wines have changed over the last six months, since they’ve been bottled, I can confirm that the ones I nurtured in Spain over the last week while writing this newsletter validated my memory of their allure and proved that my subsequent infatuation is not based on embellishment or fantasy. Vincent Bergeron is a vigneron’s vigneron, a human’s human, an uncontrived example of how to live and simply let himself be, spiritually, without trying to become “someone.” He only tries in earnest to be himself—not for the world to see and celebrate, but for his family, his comrades, himself, and his humble yet idealistic relationship with wine and connection to nature. Vintage is important with Vincent’s wines. With his concession to nature and commitment to honor the season, sans maquillage, ni compromise, he sets his wines on a direct course, showcasing each season’s gifts and its challenges, allowing his wines to freely express the mark of their birth year. Warm vintages like 2020 taste of a season’s richer fruits and have a softer palate while still being delicate and complex. Cold years like 2021 are brighter, fresher, more tense and sharp. Vincent explains that between Vouvray and Montlouis there have always been differences in soil structure, topography, and social hierarchy. While Vouvray maintains a more celebrated vinous history (as illustrated by the bougie houses across the river, so different from Montlouis’ more rural and less ornate neighborhoods), some of its historical relevance seems to stifle creativity and growth—as happens so frequently in many historically celebrated regions in the wine world. In contrast to Vouvray, Montlouis-sur-Loire is filled with young and finely aged winegrowers with a strong desire and capacity for kinship, the sharing of ideas, and progress. Many had widely varied experiences prior to choosing the vigneron life and together they’ve created a tribal environment where they help each other to push that rock further up the hill. Organics have become a way of life for many in this circle and the influence of this free-thinking community is expanding. Montlouis is exciting and there are so many talents emerging from this extremely praise-worthy appellation that’s up to now been such an underdog. Though the land was already worked organically prior to Vincent’s last fifteen years of ownership, it was certified as such in 2018, and biodynamic principles are followed in the season’s life cycle, though Vincent clarifies that they’re not followed closely in the cellar. Plowing is done mostly by horse or tractor every third year. The harvest begins with alcoholic and phenolic maturity in line with the chemistry of the grapes—pH, TA—and of course, the taste of their taste. Pinot Noir is the first to be picked, followed by Chenin Blanc for sparkling, and finally, the still Chenin. There is much more about Vincent on his profile on our website. Click here to read more. Emotionally piercing, Vincent’s mineral-spring, salty-tear, petrichor-scented Chenin Blanc wines flutter and revitalize; a baptism of stardust in his bubbles and stills—a little Bowie, a lot of Bach. Vincent’s bubbles, the 2021 “Certains l’Aiment Sec” started out as Bach last fall and rebelled its way over the last seven months into more Bowie. At the domaine we made short work of a bottle of 2021 that was delicate and fine, maybe too pretty and too easy to slurp down? And perhaps because there is never a lot of this wine made! The bottle opened at the end of last month was more gastronomic and quirkier in a good Chenin-y way and shares quite a lot of similarities to Pinot Meunier-focused Champagne growers with deeply committed organic and biodynamic practices. Not so flowery and ethereal as it was last fall, it developed into a much more aromatically gourmand and abstract wine with notes of yellow apple, lemon pith, yeast, wheat and wheat beer, fresh oregano, first of the season freshly cleaned artichoke hearts, and the sweet and tender heart of a celery stalk. It’s savory and finishes with a welcome bitterness and plenty of refreshing acidity to cleanse for the next bite in the early courses of lunch and dinner. It’s made with a simple method using early pickings from the Chenin Blanc young-vine parcel. (Here, in this part of the Loire Valley’s Chenin Blanc regions, many growers make numerous picks on their vineyards rather than just the one—a smart and utilitarian method to maximize quality with what yield nature provides, without being too forced.) Spontaneous fermentation takes place in fiberglass vats. Following malolactic fermentation, the wines are given their first and only sulfite addition of 20mg/L for its eighteen-month bottle aging. No fining, no filtration, no dosage. Vincent’s inspiring 2021 Chenin Blanc “Maison Marchandelle” grown in Montlouis-sur-Loire is a vintage tailored to his preferred style: helium-lifted, minerally charged, cold, wet rock and taut yet delicate white fruit. It comes from Vincent’s favorite single plot of 50-year-old Chenin vines called Maison Marchandelle. The bedrock is tuffeau limestone and the topsoil, calcareous clay and sand. The clay brings breadth and depth while the sand and tuffeau keep this wine in the clouds. My first impression out of bottle in June 2023 was one of a cross between a Meursault of old, and a cru from Brézé raised in neutral oak barrels. It’s rich in woodsy aromas, hazelnut, sweet chanterelle, fallen wet oak leaves, Devonshire cream and creme fraiche, acacia honey, magnolia, cherimoya, and pear. If tasted blind in its first hours, I might mistake it for a cold vintage Meursault (though perhaps not within a lineup with other Meursaults) if it wasn’t so gentle and less muscled up—think a light version of old François Jobard (I believe all under the label of Antoine Jobard now) aromas with some age but without the cut of the harder limestone, dense core, and the fat of Côte d’Or’s rich clay. I had to leave the house to go out for dinner so as not to guzzle it to the end. On day two, it continued on the same path, and the palate strengthened a little more and deepened in complexity. The pear went a little more apple with a welcome smidge of strudel and spice. Fully intact and even improving on day three, it began to shed its Bourgogne-ness and moved much closer to Brézé in style and weight yet it was still quite different from many Chenin Blanc grown in Montlouis or Vouvray. It’s absolutely delicious and seemingly indefatigable in its first year in bottle. This low sulfite dosed Chenin (20mg/L in total) is raised eight months in oak barrels (with some new to replace older barrels—beautifully woven into the wine) followed by four months in fiberglass tanks before bottling. Vincent’s Chenin Blanc is truly singular for this variety in the Loire Valley, so much so that it doesn’t even seem to be of this earth, but rather plucked from the heavens, angelic, virgin, pure, untainted. In recent years, I’ve terribly missed Pinot Noir that showcases the grape’s nobility and naturally bright, energetic, straight flush (hearts or diamonds) of red fruits and healthy forest with wet underbrush. I didn’t expect to find such a shining example outside of Burgundy, let alone in France’s Chenin Blanc country. During my first visit with Vincent, I was tempted to be impolite and drink down my entire generously large barrel taste of the 2021 Pinot Noir “Un Rouge Chez Les Blancs” grown on an acre of vines (0.17ha planted in 2017 and 0.27ha in 1978) instead of returning the precious amount left after my first two sips to whence it came. It was jaw-dropping out of barrel, a burlesque walk from glass to nose and mouth, and I could’ve nursed that first 500-liter barrel to completion. It was sensual, honest, captivating, pristine, and delicious; egoless Pinot Noir, crafted into a sublime balance between nature and nurture. As I write this the day after tasting my sample bottle on the longest day of the year, more than six months after bottling, it’s more relaxed and lower key but with the same seductive spirit. Delicately crafted, sans soufre and sans concerned-enological-brow-raising, the first two hours open tested our restraint, especially my wife’s, but we very much wanted to give it more time to reveal its full breadth on day one before gulping it down. After the first sips, we decided to open our fifth bottle so far this warm season of the gorgeous 2021 Jean Foillard Morgon “Cuvée Corcelette” to slow our roll, but as delicious as that was, it didn’t stave us off for long. We were only disappointed with the bottle size (standard 750 ml), and the wine was down the hatch in two hours, leaving us with what felt like unfinished business; like the power went out in the theater just before the best part of the movie. In those two hours, the wine could be described as a combination of the finest understated Sancerre Pinot Noir from a cool year and an elegant Richoux Irancy and Lafarge Volnay of old, with a dash of Yvon Metras’ subtle yet often intoxicating Fleurie nose and slightly stern, gravelly mouthfeel, you can imagine this lovely Pinot Noir’s aromatic color palette and pointed-yet-fine structure. Grown on limestone bedrock and calcareous gravel and sand, the first glass emits dainty, sweet, red flowers (think Beaujolais florals), crunchy wild berry fruit (not to be confused with the store-bought greenhouse variety), verdant pastoral greens, fine wine lees, strawberry skin, orange, citrus, fresh mint, fresh oregano, gravel, and wet dirt. The palate is delicate but has fine, pointed tannins and very fresh acidity. There’s no sulfite added, so the future of each bottle will be in the hands of the handler, though with its naturally low pH, high acidity, and low alcohol, and, most importantly, its balance, it should manage well over time. One pump-over per day in the early stages of fermentation and two later on, a year aged in 75% old oak barrel, 25% fiberglass tank, and it’s not fine nor filtered.

The two prevailing names for zucchini suggest a split personality. The Italian name, which we obviously employ in the U.S. too, Zucchini, is a sort of silly word that sounds a bit like a clown who performs at kids’ birthday parties. (Oh, yes, there it is: http://www.zucchinibrothers.com/ ) On the other hand, the name favored by the French and English, Courgette, sounds gallant, like a courageous corvette or cougar with jets. Given this pointed discrepancy, I see two prevailing attitudes toward this summer squash: those who esteem and admire it (the courgettes) and those who are uninspired and go out of their way to avoid it (the zooks). Well, I’ve been a fairly vocal member of the latter group for most of my life. Outside of ratatouille and a dish I was once saw a recipe for but failed in my attempt to produce it (sun-dried zucchini), I just don’t see the point. At best its flavor is extremely mild, poised somewhere between faintly bitter and sweet. At worst, it’s insipid, with no flavor at all and a slimy, mushy texture. So what gives? So the other night I learned a much more compelling approach from an Italian chef, who was inspired to become a chef in part because of this dish. Zucchini, stand up and be proud. The zucchini hero was Antonio Giordano. During his eight years as chef of Terroni in Los Angeles, he earned raves for his perfect pizzas and meticulously handmade pastas. He recently quit to prepare to open his own restaurant, which will also be in Los Angeles. The dish is sometimes called Spaghetti alla Nerano for the town that inspired it on the Sorrentine Peninsula of Italy’s Amalfi Coast, where Antonio grew up. The story is that the dish was invented by Maria Grazia in 1952 in her eponymous restaurant in Nerano. With its azure waters, resplendent beaches, and towering cliffs to the sea, the Amalfi Coast is one of the most spectacular areas of Italy. But before its towns like Positano became popular with jet-setting Hollywood celebrities (Bogie, Sinatra) in the fifties and sixties, it was poor region. For summertime tourist traffic, the area is remote—its snaking roads cling to incredibly narrow, vertiginous cliffs that make for punishingly long journeys into the population centers. Instead of a steady stream of commerce, these spectacular cliff side villages had to rely on the fishing trade and carving narrow terraces out of the cliffs to establish flat spaces on which to grow produce and grapes. This Zucchini Spaghetti, an incredibly simple, but soulful dish is from the simple, powerful cuisine of necessity. “For me, this pasta says Amalfi,” Antonio said as he quickly sliced four medium zucchinis into thin rounds. “I grew up eating it, because it was a dish of the summertime. Zucchini grows like crazy in the bright sun on the coast, and every house grows a ton of basil.” Indeed, basil is the primary addition to the zucchini, as its incisive, minty edge provides a piercing counterpoint to the squash’s soft, mellow base tones. Besides the pasta, the only other additions are some grated cheese (Antonio used Parmesan), a dash of butter, and some olive oil. “This is the simplest, easiest version,” Antonio noted, “but it works pretty well.” While the pasta water is coming to a boil, Antonio begins cooking the onions in a large pot with the olive oil before adding the zucchini rounds. At first they sizzle, but he continues to stir them every few seconds as they start to release their liquid. “I’m cooking them down,” he says, “so the zucchini becomes the sauce.” He’s embracing the mushiness, turning weakness into strength, continuing to stir until about half the zucchini is broken down. He keeps the pot on low, letting some of the liquid boil off. When the pasta’s just before al dente, he pulls it out and adds it to the zucchini, along with the butter. A little bit of the pasta water goes in and the cheese, and he stirs it all until combined. The heat goes off and he stirs in the fresh basil, just before serving. With an Amalfi white, say a Falanghina, the dish is comfort food. This quick and easy dish is no place for a courgette—it’s all about the zucchini. Recipe for Zucchini Pasta Serves 4-6 1 Onion, diced 1/4 cup olive oil 4 medium zucchini, sliced into very thin rounds (equal to about 1 quart, when chopped) Salt and pepper 12 ounces (1 package) spaghetti 1/2 cup grated Parmesan 2 tablespoons cold butter 1 cup chopped Basil Leaves 1. Boil a large pot of salted water. 2. In another wide-bottomed pot, add half the olive oil and warm over medium-high heat and begin cooking the onion, until it has softened a become translucent. 3. Add the zucchini and stir until it’s all covered in oil. 4. When water is boiling, add the spaghetti and give a stir. 5. Keep sautéing the zucchini until it starts to break down, letting some of its water boil away. There will still be some chunks, but some of it will turn to purée. 6. Just before the spaghetti is al dente (when it’s still a bit tough against your tooth), use tongs to pull it out of the pasta water and place it into the zucchini. Alternately, drain the pasta into a strainer, while reserving about a half cup of the pasta water. 7. Turn off the heat under the zucchini, add the butter and cheese, and toss the spaghetti until well integrated. You’re looking for a nice silky coating with the cheese-zucchini-butter emulsion. If it needs a little water, dash in the reserved pasta water until the desired consistency is reached. 8. Finally, toss in the garlic, mix it up and serve with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of cheese. Wines that work Here are some options that will heighten your cooking and eating experience.  All of which Château Cremade - 2008 Palette Blanc: This top-notch pick for this dish comes from the tiny Provençal appellation, Palette, just within the city limits of Aix-en-Provence.  While this French wine is more often paired with courgette over zucchini, it will be a masterful pairing for this dish.  If you've ever been to the south of France, you know you will find just as much zucchini as you would in Italy.  $36 Domaine de La Vieille Julienne - 2013 Côtes du Rhône Blanc, ‘Clavin’: Following the theme from the south of France, this biodynamically-made white wine, principally made of Grenache Blanc and Clairette, is one of the greatest overachievers in southern French white wine.  We get only 20 cases for the entire west coast and they are a treasure to have around.  $26 Jean David - 2013 Côtes du Rhône Rouge: For a red, at only $17 retail, this complex and thoroughly delightful wine with a simple wine's price will be impossible to beat.  Like many great wines, this organically farmed (since 1979!) offering needs a ten minute warmup to begin its entourage of sweet red flowers kisses, cranberries, red currants, pastry spices and fresh mission figs. The palate takes on the seriousness of this wine showing that it is not a mere Côtes du Rhône, but a wine finely-tuned with fresh acidity and polished, but refreshing tannins.

Quinta da Carolina vineyards to the left of the orange and pink house (Download complete pdf here) Last month we introduced some new producers, including the young Tuscan winegrower specializing in single-site Sangioveses and compelling experimental white wines, Giacomo Baraldo, followed by Forteresse de Berrye, a Saumur producer who bought a historical domaine (former military base) with a decorated vinous history who converted it to organic and now biodynamic culture, and finally, one of Portugal’s most promising talents, Luis Candido da Silva, who crafts a set of unique and gorgeously refined wines in the Douro with his father’s family estate, Quinta da Carolina. Now we have three more newbies represented exclusively in the US by The Source slated to be introduced this month, including wine coming from a historical Alentejo winery undergoing a complete renaissance, Tapada do Chaves. Often described by Portuguese winegrowers as one of the country’s most “mythical” producers of old wines; if you’re lucky enough to taste one from before the mid-1990s, it may surpass all your expectations for aged Portuguese white and red wines. Two more new arrivals are coming in from good friends in the Loire Valley’s Montlouis-sur-Loire appellation whose organic wines offer a beautiful juxtaposition of this underrated appellation where only the right minds are able to crack its code. Vincent Bergeron crafts ethereal wines, both Chenin Blanc and Pinot Noir, while Hervé Grenier, from Vallée Moray, produces Chenin Blanc of deep, controlled power, and a very limited supply of red wines from Gamay, Pinot Noir and Côt. California Trade Events Next week we’ll put on more sit-down trade tasting events showcasing wines that are already allocated, some that have limited quantities, as well as those from new producers. Please ask your salesperson to book your seat as they will be limited. We plan to schedule quarterly tastings because there’s 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 Rieslings and Grüner Veltliners, 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). I’ll be in attendance for each of these events, so I hope to see you there. 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 February 13th: Moss Landing (Monterey) at The Power Plant from 1pm - 4pm Visiting Producer At the end of the month, Katharina Wechsler will be making the rounds in California showcasing her top Rieslings. The eastern end of the Wachau New Arrivals A few 2021s from Tegernseerhof have arrived. As mentioned last month in the short on Veyder-Malberg’s 2021 releases, this vintage is truly one of the greats where everything on all levels of Grüner Veltliner and Riesling are absolutely top tier: full-on in complexity and range, but light on their feet—a perfect balance. Arriving is the 2021 Grüner Veltliner Federspiel “Durnstein,” a collection of different vineyards around Loiben, principally from Frauenweingarten, the former name of this bottling. Also are the big hits, 2021 Bergdistel Smaragd Grüner Veltliner and 2021 Berdistel Smaragd Riesling. These two wines are a blend of the many different micro-parcels they own, mostly further west of Loiben and into the central part of the Wachau, Weissenkirchen. They’re both showoffs, youthful, and energetic, complex but juicy and delicious. 2021 is the year, so grab what you can and know they’ll age as beautifully as how well they’re drinking young. Fuentes del Silencio’s new releases of the 2019 Las Jaras and 2019 Las Quintas are two wines we’ve been waiting a long time to arrive. 2019 was a special year and showcases the depth of talent in these ancient vineyards revitalized by Miguel Ángel Alonso and his team of passionate winegrowers. Miguel and María, his wife, are doctors (with María still an active surgeon) who set out to bring back the history of Miguel’s birthplace at the east end of Iberia’s Galician Massif. The altitude is high, with the vineyards starting at 800m and Las Quintas reaching above 1000m. This is believed to be the original location for Mencía in its most natural setting, where there’s no need for the acidification that’s done in most other regions that grow this grape prone to lose its acidity in too warm a climate with little temperature extremes. Here, in Jamuz, the harvest is late, usually in mid-October, and the wines speak of this place with its slate-derived soils, the occasional slate outcropping, wild lavender and thyme bushes growing everywhere in this high desert setting, as well as the many pre-phylloxera vines dug deep into the soil that they’re nursing back to health. They started the project in 2014 and now with the 2019s, the sixth harvest under their belt, the wines are finding the extra gears that were clearly imminent with their organic approach in the vineyard and cellar. Arribas Wine Company vineyards in Portugal’s Trás-os-Montes along the Douro River Arribas Wine Company has a few new (but late) arrivals. From their stockpile of extraordinary old vines scattered throughout Portugal’s Trás-os-Montes wine region on the border of Spain to the northeast and Douro to the southwest, they have some of the greatest bargain wines in the entire world. Imagine these ancient terroirs along the Douro/Duero River grown on gnarly slopes and rocks identical to those of Côte-Rôtie and Cornas, though they go for only a fifth of the price for even the cheapest of these French appellations. That’s what you get, but with over forty different varietals blended into some wines, and 10.5-12% alcohol… It all seems like a dream, but it’s as real as it gets. Arriving are the 2021 Saroto Branco and 2021 Saroto Rosé. “The 2021 growing season was nearly perfect as we witnessed very moderate conditions during maturation. In fact, because summer was not hot and nights were unusually cold, maturation was slow and gradual, contributing to excellent acidity in the wines. The grapes for the Saroto White 2021 (which is really like an orange wine) were harvest by hand on September 8th and were foot-trodden in a traditional lagar, totaling three days of skin maceration.” They were then aged in old French oak barrels for seven months. The vine age for this blend of different white varieties comes from 51-year-old vines on granite and clay at 650-700m. The 2021 Saroto Rosé is unfortunately in very low quantities. It comes from a blend of 50% white and 50% red varieties, mostly from the same vineyards as the white and drinks more like an extremely light red, like a Spanish Clarete—a wine somewhere between rosé and red without stinging acidity while being refreshing and in the full red-fruit spectrum. New Producers Tapada do Chaves Alentejo, Portugal I’ve had my eye on Tapado do Chaves for a few years prior to signing with them. We were introduced to the wines by one of my great friends and winegrowers in Portugal, Constantino Ramos. When asked about what old wines in Portugal I should get to know his first suggestion was Tapada do Chaves. Constantino helped find some old wines from the 1980s and early 1990s that were being sold by a Portuguese retailer, and my first experience with them was shocking. Though more famous for their historic red wines, the whites were just as good. Everything aged well, even though the bottles looked like they’d been on top of some Portuguese guy’s countryside fireplace for a couple decades and had low fills and corks barely clinging to the insides of the bottles. I bought another mixed three cases of old wines and shared them with friends from Galicia. Soon, the source of the old bottles dried up but I was convinced that I should investigate, even though I was told the most recent wines were not the same. It was true that they weren’t, but a visit to the vineyards showed what was coming. One of the many gorgeous old wines tasted over the last four years Tapada do Chaves’s legacy in Portugal’s Alentejo is legendary, though there were many speed bumps along the way, such as the Portuguese dictatorship (1933-1974) and the sale of the estate in the late 1990s to a sparkling wine company that faltered on quality of the Tapada do Chaves wines for decades. In 2017, with the purchase by Fundação Eugénio de Almeida, led by one of Portugal’s most celebrated oenologists, Pedro Baptista (known for the highly coveted Pera Manca wines), it began to regain its footing. Biodynamic farming was immediately incorporated on this unique granite massif on the side of Serra de São Mamade, which towers over the flatter lands more typical of the Alentejo. The whites grown in vineyards planted in 1903 and massale selections replanted some forty years ago are a blend of Arinto, Assario, Fernão Pires, Tamarez and Roupeiro (among others), and fermented and aged in stainless steel and old French oak barrels. The reds, from vines planted by Senhor Chaves in 1901 are a blend of Trincadeira, Grand Noir, Aragonez and Alicante Bouschet. All are aged in older French oak barrels, then bottled and released around seven years after the vintage date. Today, Tapada do Chaves is selling their new releases of white wines from when they first took over, but the reds still have some years to go before the change of direction into biodynamic culture and a fresh new take from Pedro Baptista. During a meeting with Pedro, he told me of the history of the winery and about how, when he was a little boy, his father used to take him to Tapada do Chaves to collect their yearly allocation. Though he’s new to Tapada do Chaves, it’s not new to him. This famous estate weathered the dictatorship and continued to work independently while few in Alentejo (and all of Portugal) did. Portuguese white wines may be the most underrated white wines in the world. Since moving to Portugal in 2019, I’ve had many examples of aged white and red wines for such a low price that have truly been astonishing, though the most interesting for me have been the whites. Tapada do Chaves is no exception. The old whites that didn’t fail due to bad corks were incredibly good—fresh, slightly honeyed, minty and medicinally herbal, salty, deeply textured like a very old Loire Valley Sancerre without the varietal nuances of Sauvignon Blanc. My first interaction with the 2018 Tapada do Chaves Branco was extremely encouraging. In a blind tasting with some other trade professionals along with some other wine samples from Portugal, it stole the show. It stands as another strong example of the talent of Portuguese white wines made from a blend of many grapes. Despite the wide variety of fruit, the terroir elements are always there, along with the high quality of the replanted vines from massale selections taken from the unique biotypes grown inside of Tapada do Chaves’ walled and gently sloping vineyard on granite rock atop the massif. After the tasting, I put what was left in the refrigerator for more than a month, uncorked. I forgot about it after tasting it once the day after the first tasting. Then I started to taste it again over the coming weeks to check in, a little here and a little there; it was bulletproof. I remain shocked at the resilience of this wine and its inability to be fatigued. Based on this and my experiences with the old wines from this estate, I believe that it has the potential to age very well—not only to be sustained, but to improve tremendously over time as so many Portuguese white wines do. The 2018 Tapada do Chaves Branco Vinhas Velhas comes from the ungrafted 120-year-old vines first planted by Senhor Chaves in 1901. This wine is profound but will greatly benefit from time in the cellar—a long time. It carries many similarities to the first white in the range, except that it’s denser and more concentrated. One could simply retaste this wine for a month and add, brick by brick, a new tasting note with each soft turn of its evolution. To drink it quickly would be to miss witnessing its splendor. There are few cases imported because there are few made from these historic, nationally-treasured vines. It is indeed a little expensive, but in twenty or thirty years you’ll be happy to have captured a few bottles to share with your kids or grandkids. Vincent Bergeron Montlouis-sur-Loire, France Timid and cautious yet gently charismatic, middle-aged (born in ‘78) but youthful and spirited, with a heart of gold and a deft touch with his craft, the gracious Vincent Bergeron discovered his calling to the vigneron life while walking the streets for la poste, trading in antiquities, and periodically working construction. These were simple trades, though perfect for young ponderers like Vincent, at least for the moment. He received degrees in Art History, Literature, and Agriculture, had many different work experiences that were capped by the viticultural mentorship of Jean-Daniel Kloeckle, Hervé Villemade, and Frantz Saumon. The latter gifted him with a tractor, a small Pinot Noir vineyard and part-time cellar job, and Vincent commercialized his first wine in 2016 (though he’d tinkered with various bottlings since 2013)—500 bottles of bubbles that all went to a Japanese importer. When he talks about his project, he always starts with his great appreciation for Frantz’s generosity, the man who gave him such a jumpstart. He and I were introduced by Montlouis-sur-Loire local, Gauthier Mazet, also a new vigneron (practicing since 2020) and wine industry connector, who lives by the river in the epicenter of Montlouis’ bloom of amazing producers. They’re all making deeply inspiring wines from an underdog appellation in minuscule quantities, most of whom sell almost everything to Japan and very little in France. This includes Vincent Bergeron, as well as two others who’ve also trusted us to be their US importing partner: Hervé Grenier, owner of Domaine Vallée Moray, a craftsman of densely mineral and emotional wines that embody the focus of a scientist maker in his second career as a vigneron, and Nicolas Renard, a forcefully independent and elusive natural wine wizard, a virtual ghost whose wines are nearly impossible to acquire. He transcends style and mode with no-sulfur wines, both white and red, that are simply in their own stratosphere, easily holding court with the best examples of x-factor-filled, dense, moving whites in the world, and reds that captures the essence of the earth and human in a bottle. I first saw Vincent on a cool and sunny spring morning in one of his vineyard parcels close to downtown Montlouis. With his thick mane of lightly salted pepper flowing in every direction, he wore casual well-worn clothes stained by hard work, and he shied away from the camera as I stole a few shots before our official greeting. His hands are those of a true vigneron; they were strong from a life of labor, dirty from the vines and caked with earth, swollen, scratched, scraped, gouged and bloodied. He seemed a little self-conscious to be shaking my hand, and I instantly knew I’d like him: it was impossible not to. Vincent is rare in today’s world of self-aggrandizing young vigneron talents—sometimes appointed by the wine community and often by the self, as “rock stars.” Many of them seek celebrity and membership in idealist tribes rather than going for truth and an honest view into this métier, this art, and above all, this craft, a marriage of homosapiens and nature. Vincent is a vigneron’s vigneron, a human’s human, an uncontrived example of how to live and simply let be, spiritually, without trying to be “someone.” He only tries in earnest to be himself—not for the world to see and celebrate, but for his family, his comrades, for himself and his humble yet idealistic relationship to wine and connection to nature. Though not an active provocateur, to simply be in his presence you might, like I do, contemplate life choices and motivations, what’s important to you and why it’s important, along with, “What the hell am I doing with my few short years on this planet?” Without effort or intent, he enriches others with his homage to his environment, a spirituality and open self-reflection in casual settings, drinking wine outside on a cold and sunny day in front of a tiny, wobbly table packed with cheeses, cured meats and oysters (also a favorite of his extremely young kids—only the French…), a perfect match for his bubbles and white wine. The talks are fresh and lively, more about life than wine, though in this context wine is life. His wines speak for themselves, and gently, as do his organic and biodynamic vineyards that are teeming with life. Sometimes he appears lost, even surrounded by his people, as he gazes into the world, into nothing, thinking, reflecting, wondering about his path. Perhaps he’s thinking less than it appears that he is, but it’s doubtful. Emotionally piercing, Vincent’s mineral-spring, salty-tear, petrichor-scented Chenin wines flutter and revitalize; a baptism of stardust in his bubbles and stills—a little Bowie, a lot of Bach. His Pinot Noir is earthen en bouche, and aromatically atmospheric, bursting with a fire of bright, forest-foraged berries and wild flowers, and cool, savory herbs rarely found in today’s often overworked, oak-soaked, and now sun-punished Pinot Noirs, the wines that were the heroes of the past millennium, but today are a flower wilting under the relentless sun. Advances in the spiritual heartland of Pinot Noir have been made, though I sure miss the flavors of the Côte d’Or from my earlier years among wine. Vintage is important with Vincent’s wines. With his concession to nature and commitment to honor the season, sans maquillage, ni compromise, he sets his wines on a direct course, showcasing each season’s gifts and its challenges, allowing his wines to freely express the mark of their birth year. Warm vintages (2020) taste of a season’s richer fruits and a softer palate while still being delicate and complex. Cold years (such as 2021) are brighter, fresher, more tense and rapier sharp with a gentle and welcome stab. The Vineyards On the east side of the fabulous but small and modern Loire city, Tours, across the Loire River from the historic splendor of Vouvray on a series of undulating hills with some dramatic slopes mixed with mellower hilltops, sits Montlouis. It’s a long stretch of vineyards between the rivers Loire and Cher to the south, on floodplains shaped by torrential flows over the eons. Vincent explains that between Vouvray and Montlouis there have always been differences in soil structure, topography, and social hierarchy. While Vouvray maintains a more celebrated vinous history (as illustrated by the bougie houses across the river, so different from Montlouis’ more rural and less ornate neighborhoods), some of its historical relevance seems to stifle creativity and growth—as happens so frequently in many historically celebrated regions in the wine world. Why change what already works so well? Furthermore, historic families often prefer to preserve their position instead of rocking the boat of a viticultural system that, after many generations in place, continues to provide wealth for those next in line. In contrast to Vouvray, Montlouis-sur-Loire is filled with young and finely aged winegrowers with open minds and a strong desire and capacity for kinship and the sharing of ideas. Many had widely varied experiences prior to choosing the vigneron life and together they’ve created a tribal environment where they help each other to push that rock further up the hill. Organics have become a way of life for many in this circle and the influence of this free-thinking community is expanding. Montlouis is exciting and there are so many talents emerging from this extremely praise-worthy appellation that’s up to now been an underdog. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride? No longer. Some earlier trailblazers opened the path, the most famous, perhaps Jacky Blot and François Chidaine, and others more quietly developing their names and furthering the reputation of the appellation, like Frantz Saumon, Thomas Lagelle, Julien Prevel, Ludovic Chansson and Hervé Grenier, all of whom Vincent admires and calls friends. Montlouis is mentioned in every wine book as being sandier in general than Vouvray, which is true, though there’s often great depth of clay (lighter on average than Vouvray’s) further below the surface of the topsoil, before the roots intersect with the famous whitish/yellow limestone bedrock of much of the Loire Valley’s best Chenin Blanc areas, and a slew of other elemental contributors have a say in the wine’s subtleties. Vincent has various plots in a few different zones of Montlouis, close to the bluffs that overlook the Loire River and others further away and closer to the Cher, both on classic limestone bedrock, with variations of perruche (fossils, lithified clay, flint/silex), sandstone, clay, and limestone. These structures are not independent of others but rather form a conglomeration and vary from one to the next and within the plots as well. To see the diversity, go to eterroir-techniloire.com Though the land was already worked organically prior to Vincent’s last fifteen years of ownership, it was certified as such in 2018, and biodynamic principles are practiced during the season’s life cycle, though they’re not followed closely in the cellar. Plowing is done mostly by horse every third year, or by Egretier plow, a fitting pulled by tractor. The harvest begins with alcoholic and phenolic maturity in line with the chemistry of the grapes—pH, TA—and of course, the taste of the grapes. Pinot Noir is the first to be picked, followed by Chenin Blanc for sparkling, then the still Chenin. The Wines Vincent’s bubbles, Certains l’aiment Sec “Vin de France,” is gloriously ethereal and fun to drink. Like all his wines, the vintage has a big voice in the overall expression, though the spirit is the same: serious but playful and easy to gulp down. It’s made with a simple method using early pickings from the Chenin Blanc parcels. (Here, in this part of the Loire Valley’s Chenin Blanc region, many growers make numerous picks on their vineyards rather than just the one—a smart and utilitarian method to maximize quality with what yield nature provides, without being too forced.) Spontaneous fermentation takes place in fiberglass vats. Following malolactic fermentation, the wines are hit with their first sulfite addition of 20mg/L for its eighteen-month bottle aging. No fining, filtration, or dosage. “Morning, Noon and Night,” is a perfect name for this exquisite, fine, platinum-hued wine labeled Matin Midi et Soir – Chenin Blanc “Vin de France.” This is Vincent’s inspiring still white wine, (especially the 2021), where the vintage seems tailored for his style: helium-lifted, minerally charged, cold, wet rock and taut yet delicate white fruit. All the elements from each vineyard parcel in his 3.4-hectare stable of 40-plus year-old massale selections (and .60ha of clonal selections) give it breadth and complexity while maintaining Vincent’s head-in-the-clouds Chenin Blanc. It’s hard to pick a favorite in the lineup, but this low sulfite dose Chenin (30mg/L) raised twelve months in oak barrels (with some new to replace older barrels, which aren’t noticeable) is truly singular for this variety in the Loire Valley, so much so that it doesn’t even seem to be of this earth, but rather plucked from the heavens, pure, untainted, downright angelic. The first taste of Pinot Noir out of the barrel, Un Rouge Chez Les Blancs, was jaw-dropping, a burlesque walk from glass to nose and mouth. In recent years, I’ve greatly missed Pinot Noirs that carry this grape’s nobility and naturally bright, energetic, straight flush (hearts and diamonds) of red fruits and healthy forest with wet underbrush. I was tempted to be impolite and drink down my entire barrel sample from this mere one acre of vines (0.4ha) instead of returning it (2021 vintage) to whence it came; I could’ve nursed that first 500-liter barrel to completion. By the end of my first visit, I wanted everything in his cellar just so my friends back home could bear witness to it. Given to him—yes, given—by Frantz Saumon, the land was organically farmed long before Vincent took the reins of the plow horse. Optimal for this young vinous artist to explore his direction with epic, terroir-precise and living fruit, he nailed it. It’s true Pinot Noir perfection: egoless, a balance of nature and nurture, sensual, honest, captivating, pristine, delicious. There’s no sulfite added to this wine, so the future of each bottle will be in the hands of the handler, though with its naturally low pH, high acidity, and low alcohol, and, most importantly, its balance, it should manage well over time. One pump-over per day in the beginning, two later on in the fermentation, a year aged in 75% old oak barrel, 25% in fiberglass tank, and it’s not fined or filtered. The 2020, tasted blind by our staff in January, blew them away—an Allemand-like Pinot Noir. There’s not enough of the 2020 to go around, so we’ll have to wait for the taut, red-fruited 2021 to come! Domaine Vallée Moray Montlouis-sur-Loire, France Endless curiosity and self-reflection are characteristics of the most compelling vignerons. Some are born into the métier, many of whom are children of the greats, and a select few reach for new heights never before attained in the family line. Then there are the industry’s most enlightened freethinkers who come from the outside, drawn in by revelation, romance, and occasionally, a healthy mid-life crisis. At forty-six, Hervé Grenier abandoned the life of a scientist and began anew when, in 2014, he had an epiphany that brought him to an old ramshackle cellar with beautiful, healthy, organically farmed vineyards, in the quiet countryside of the Loire Valley appellation, Montlouis-sur-Loire. Hervé explained, “During a visit with a winemaker I used to frequent, I suddenly thought, ‘I’d like to do that!’” Inspired by the excitement of a significant life change, Hervé left a career in academic meteorology research and underwriting, focused on agricultural climate risk in the States, then moved back to France with his American wife, Emmy. They started their new adventure, only a couple of solid golf swings away from and to the south of the Loire River, on the first significant left-bank alluvial terrace that runs in parallel to them, but 30-35m above the river. Over time they bought more parcels further south and closer to the river, Cher, as they reshaped and converted the land to organic farming. As of 2023, they maintain roughly 4.5 hectares, 3.2 of which are Chenin Blanc with an average of 60-70 years of age, a single hectare of Pinot Noir, and 30 ares (.75 acres) of Gamay. Tasting with Hervé in his long, dark, damp, and cold underground concrete tunnel lined with mold and wine-stained old French oak barrels, is thrilling. Impressive from the first sample, Hervé shares his perception of each wine’s strength and weakness observed through its journey from budbreak, to grape, to wine. Organoleptic vibrational overload builds with each thieved sip, sips that gush with vinous lifeblood along with the gifts extracted from unique soils that have been bolstered by the microflora and microfauna and minerals mined from the rock and soil. His dry Chenin Blanc wines are vinous with the sweet green chlorophyll captured from the sun, the alchemy of slow fermentation—very slow, never forced—and the stamp of healthy lees from happy plants that render his wines digestible and revitalizing. The truth-seeking Hervé seems in deep reflection with each taste, contemplating the wine, his own nature, his choices. Vacillations between bursts of joyous laughter and doubt and self-reflection are interrupted when he hits the mark. Inspired and utterly serious, he slowly chants, “Ça c’est bon. Ça c’est bon. Ça c’est bon.” On Terroir Montlouis has a different quality of soils from those of Vouvray, across the Loire River. Vouvray vine roots typically have closer contact with tuffeau limestone bedrock and more clay in the topsoil than most of vineyards in Montlouis-sur-Loire. Hervé believes that the wines on this side of the Loire River are typically less marked by minerality than Vouvray, he says, “So there’s room for other stuff!” The composition of Montlouis-sur-Loire soils from a general point of view (though each site is different) is a mix of perruches (fossils, lithified clay, flint/silex), sand, and clay, atop bedrock of tuffeau limestone with varying levels of topsoil depth. ‘Montlouis is sandier than Vouvray,’ is the usual summary in textbooks, but this depends on each parcel, because it’s much more complicated than that. Domaine Vallée Moray With a manifesto (adopted by artists like him) that espouses ‘terroir expression over all things,’ Hervé says, “I would not like that my wines mainly express terroir, even if it’s a beautiful terroir.” But what is interesting and even slightly contradictory to Hervé’s notion of Vouvray and Montlouis and the terroir influence is that his wines are wrought with a sense of place; perhaps not only in the perception of mineral nuance, texture, structure, and ripeness imposed by the site’s soils, exposure and grape, but his full commitment to the preservation of his full-of-life, organically farmed old vines, the quality of the soils, and, of course, his skill in capturing their essence. His whites are strongly mineral in impression, thickly textured and weighted on the palate and the nose; his Aubépin Chenin Blanc is like a magnum squashed into a half bottle. Early on in his newfound life as a vigneron he demonstrated (through his 2017 and 2018 Aubépin, the fourth and fifth vintages of his life) a precocious and keen understanding, maybe even a certain level of mastery, in his sculpting of wines with clean and fine reductive elements—no doubt an intended consequence of protecting and preserving his sulfite-free, naked wines until bottling. The body is fuller though the wines remain finely balanced between the earth and the sky. The deep clay underneath the sandy topsoils, the quality of farming and his personal calibration of fruit maturity is marked through his entire line of wines. Terroir aside, Hervé’s wines reflect his intuition, curiosity, and measured hand. White Wines (and Orange) Hervé says he wants his wines to deliver, “The quality of the raw material produced from my vineyards; that they should feel good when you drink them. Satisfying. Pleasurable.” And he goes well beyond his aim. The Chenin Blanc are spectacular, singular, emotional, honest, and heavy on x-factor. For this taster, they stand tall among everything from the Loire Valley; sometimes they even tower over well-known and celebrated wines overwrought by cellar technique and experimentation. Hervé’s simple and confident approach is to let his wines find their own way, which they do. His objective for them to “be satisfying and pleasurable” is easily achieved, even for the everyday drinker. One doesn’t need to be an expert, or a wine lover with a penchant for the esoteric to fall for them, though a wine insider may be needed to help people find a bottle. They’re also profound, brainy, finely etched, and swoon-worthy for wine experts in search of a new frontrunner in the world of natural wine. Though they indeed fall into this genre, they are sterling examples of sulfite-free reds and whites, void of fault and without explanation or excuses. The whites don’t usually have any sulfur added at any point of the process, though if a wine is in peril he has no reservations when it comes to giving some assistance. This leaves his wines unclipped, robust and true in expression, free flowing yet harnessed and directed. Hervé describes his approach in the cellar as “The simplest and most natural way to make wine. The only intervention is the topping up of the barrels until I prepare them for bottling.” Like the superficial tillage of his vineyards (light scraping in Hervé’s case), his winemaking hand is gentle and patient. The fermentation of the classically styled whites, Cailloutis and Aubépine, takes place in old oak barrels with the total lees from the press—no débourbage (wherein the lees are settled before the wine is racked off them). There are no finings and filtrations, nor additions of sulfites—though, as already mentioned, necessary exceptions can be made. Fermentations can last months, or more than a year before dry. The two Chenin Blanc wines are made in the same way, with Cailloutis a blend of many different parcels and Aubépine a specific site of old vines closer to the Cher than the Loire. Hervé also makes an orange wine from Chenin Blanc (80%) and Sauvignon (20%), called, A Mi Chemin. This wine usually undergoes a two-month maceration on skins (fully destemmed) and is sparingly punched down, pressed, then aged in old oak barrels. Though the Chenin Blanc wines are glorious, Hervé claims with a smile, “A Mi Chemin is my wine.” It’s more gourmand than the other wines, with floating tea notes, dried citrus, stone fruit skin and dried flowers as opposed to fleshy fruit notes—which is to be expected with orange wines. It, like many other orange wines, is a wine for all occasions, with great versatility when it comes to chosen fare. Red Wines Hervé’s reds sing a bright and merry aromatic song. They’re fun, and they achieve Hervé’s objective of pleasure-led, feel-good, crunchy reds. Pinot Noirs grown in Montlouis and made by the right grower are a fabulous surprise, as are the Gamay. He doesn’t commit the reds solely to single-varietal bottlings but likes to make blends, too. There is the Pinot-led blend with Gamay, Arcadienne, and the solo Pinot Noir bottling is Les Figurines—neither are imported yet as they are produced in very small quantities. Côt Libri is made entirely of Malbec from very old vines on extremely calcareous soils in Montlouis-sur-Loire. It was fully destemmed and after fermentation ages in 400l-800l old barrels. As expected with this variety, it leads with more purple fruits than red, and after quite a few years of cellar aging in bottle it shows a broad range of earthy, savory qualities.

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

(Download complete pdf here) Led by the desire to rediscover the culture and vinous knowledge lost nearly a century ago in the wake of two world wars (though Spain was officially neutral in both), Galicia has emerged as a center point among the many pockets of today’s European wine renaissance. The Spanish Civil War, the ruthless Francoist dictatorship through to the mid-1970s, and the mass exodus from the countryside to industrial centers of Vigo, A Coruña, Ferrol and others throughout the 1900s, all played parts in the Galicians feeling a sense of desperation to reconnect the link between today and generations past. The tip of the Galician spear is Rías Baixas’ Salnés Valley, where an unusually motivated and tightly knit community of winegrowers and restaurateurs, who are exposed to the entire world of wine, analyze their work with Albariño and strive to evolve and perfect the expression of this grape. Yet another Rías Baixas wellspring destined to be a new Salnés Valley Albariño superstar is the project and property known as Acios da Xesteiriña, owned and operated by the sharp and thoughtful wine guru, José Manuel Dominguez. An Agricultural Engineer by trade with a university education, José Manuel comes from three generations of winegrowers in Salnés. When not focused on engineering or reading science books and articles (especially on plant science and soil biology), traveling and hiking, following architectural and landscaping developments, or consulting for other winegrowers who want to farm as naturally as possible without any foreign inputs in the vineyards, he’s focused on the work in his own vines and contemplating (though not altering) his wines in barrel as they find their way before bottling. When asked what he would like for people to experience with his wines, José Manuel says, “Without a doubt, I hope for comments about my work in the vineyard with the management of the soil so that the microbiological activities interact to obtain minerals and deeper textures and nuances. I also want them to be perceived as authentic, and for this work to be valued because there are no vineyard inputs, like composts, soil amendments, or unnatural treatments, and in the cellar no added yeast or bacteria, with the ultimate target to forgo sulfites every year.” White wine without sulfites is a much taller order than it is with red, though today there are many shining examples that don’t contain a single part per million of added sulfites and yet seem almost bulletproof, even days or weeks after being open. Two decades ago this would’ve been unimaginable. In his first official commercial year, 2020, José Manuel bottled a single Albariño from his small vineyard, which was replanted in 1986, north of Portonovo only two and a half kilometers from the Atlantic. Now there are two Albariños from this 1.1-hectare plot: one with added sulfites capsuled with blue wax and one sin sulfuroso in a red wax capsule, with a tiny red star on the label. Despite Xesteiriña’s multidimensional terrain with a soft incline on the south side, and a deep dip on the other side that climbs again to the forest and a neighboring vineyard, the grapes for both wines come from the same fruit across the entirety of this tiny vineyard. They are vinified partially in steel and old oak, with a maximum temperature of 24°C (75°F) to encourage a greater focus away from fruitiness (while colder fermentation temperatures highlight fruitiness), raised in old French oak barrels, and are neither fined nor filtered. The added sulfur Albariño (the one with the blue capsule) takes its only sulfur dose just before bottling. Xesteiriña’s bedrock is unique for the Salnés Valley. A mining and geological institute surveyed the property and classified it as granodiorite, but it appears more complicated than that. Numerous rocks unearthed from the site could be classified as gneiss or schist (both metamorphic rocks), while granodiorite is an igneous rock. They likely contain the same minerals because any metamorphism here was likely related to this granodiorite, but the accessibility for the vines of these minerals and the soil grains developed once the rock is eroded is slightly different. Here, the extremely spare topsoil looks similar to the dark brown, dusty, dirt-like erosion of many terraced gneiss vineyards in Austria’s Wachau, rather than the sandy, gravelly, and clayey erosion from granite and granodiorite sites of Salnés. We often observe that the textural components and shape of wines are influenced by the rock type, its contribution to the topsoil composition, and even the rock’s hardness, where the harder the rock the more square and powerful the wine; one could cite a few examples of the hard rock versus soft and the resulting monovarietal wines, like Burgundy’s Nuits-Saint-Georges hard rocks of the south hill compared to many other Côte de Nuits appellation, Sancerre’s extremely hard silex wines versus the many grown on softer calcareous rocks, and various crus in Germany’s dry Riesling epicenter, Rheinhessen, with the hard and blocky limestones of Hubacker compared to the softer loess formations of Kirchspiel, among many other examples. The extremely dense bedrock of Xesteiriña may shed some light on Xesteirña’s unique shape and densely concentrated core when compared to many other Albariños grown in Salnés. Salnés is largely granitic—Manuel Moldes, another luminary in the appellation says Salnés is 99.99% granite, though he now has quite a few single-site Albariños from schist (A Capela de Aios, Peai, and As Dunas)—though a lot of the rock classified as granite may be mistaken, and technically classified as granodiorite. These two igneous rocks are very similar and it’s difficult to distinguish between them without the help of a geologist. Until the Salnés vineyards are properly mapped, granite will likely remain the conclusive local rock for the growers; a relief, since it’s so much easier to say than granodiorite. With the help of geologist, Ivan Rodriguez, we modified the diagram below to illustrate the differences between these two igneous rocks. The unusually spare topsoil of Xesteiriña is only partially derived from the bedrock and has a greater proportion of organic matter, some of which José Manuel brought in from the surrounding forest to encourage more of the site’s original microbial life, flora and fauna prior to the 20 ares (one half of an acre) planted in 1972, and more vines in 1986, to reengage and contribute more quickly to the site. This extremely thin topsoil, only a few centimeters in some spots while barely over ten in others, may help explain the absence of fluff and the dominance of dense mineral impressions and texture. Organic and biodynamic methods are part of José Manuel’s principles, but no-till, regenerative farming is a more apt description. Despite his close proximity to the ocean—a hostile environment for mildew and vine diseases—he remains one of the few who refuse to utilize systemic treatments against the mildew, applying only the minimal amounts of copper and sulfur sprays that all Europeans use in their vineyards, regardless of philosophy or high level, eco-friendly certifications. In the difficult growing season of 2022, during a walk through his vineyards, he explained that he had just a few clusters per vine (which were already picked) while his neighbor’s site was endowed with so many clusters it seemed like a vinous Promised Land of biblical proportion. But for José Manuel, it’s not about money or production levels; it’s about finding the least intrusive way to allow his terroir to speak its truth.

We headed south toward Mâcon, where we would sleep for the night before continuing on the next day to the Savoie department, up in the French Alps. It was a straight shot and about an hour to our destination, through mostly flat and featureless fields. A high point came when we reached a tollbooth and Ted achieved a small and comical victory when he said, “How much do you think this is? Eight bucks?” (as if bucks were now Euros); he was dead right, and quite pleased about it. It was a game that he would continue for the rest of our travels and he was almost always on the nose. Andrea’s keyboard keys clicked quickly as she filled orders, answered questions and put out fires with input from Ted, and by dusk we rolled into Mâcon, a little city on the Saône River, just north of the hills of Beaujolais. We zigzagged our way through narrow streets between simple, mostly gray, prewar four story walk-ups. We found our Airbnb in just one of these, across the street from a huge, ancient limestone edifice with two towering spires, like some citadel straight out of Lord of The Rings. The front door of our building had a big tarnished brass knob in the center that clicked loudly once the tricky lock was cajoled by the oversized key. Two turns up the switchback staircase brought us to another door with a center knob and a rope-pull doorbell. Inside, we found another space that, like in Puligny-Montrachet, was incongruously decorated with modern flourishes straight from the pages of Dwell magazine (some of which could be found on a rack in the bathroom). After a quick refresh in said water closet and the obligatory sign-in to the new wifi to feel a brief connection to the real world back home, we set off for dinner. Ma Table en Ville was a hot little restaurant a block away, with killer reviews on the web and a good wine list. But when we got there, we found a room with ten tables at most, all occupied. Three huge multi-colored fiberglass globe lights hung in a cluster over sleek wood tables and Hans Wegner Wishbone chairs (yet more modern). The Maître d’ summarily told us that they were full for the night; it was Château-Chalon all over again. It’s not that we weren’t prepared; it was just that most of these little places don’t take reservations, so if you don’t get in early you’re just out of luck. Only slightly perturbed, we set off through more narrow alleys between low stone buildings, paved down the center with polished limestone tiles—a promenade open to cars where rivers of people move out of the way as drivers plowed through. The walls of these small canyons were lined with slick modern cafes and clothing stores full of well-dressed mannequins, prices in big stickers on the windows. We could have been in one of the urbane little corridors of the Marais, in Paris. Our destination was another restaurant recommended by the Internet, located in a building covered with green webbing over repair scaffolding, which might have explained why the place was completely deserted on a Thursday. (As with lunch that day, I’m going to withhold the name). We took our seats at a cold steel table under severe floodlights beside half of the space that was closed off and dark. I was a little disappointed that the menu was all beef, except for a few side dishes and appetizers. I’m not a big meat eater, but I was willing to make a go of it, while Andrea put together a bunch of a la carte sides to keep it light and vegetarian. The serveuse (whom I’ll call Maude) was a beleaguered matron in an oxford and slacks. She seemed wary of us and more than a little impatient with my choppy French. Relief immediately washed over her features once Ted stepped in and took over communication. He ordered a bottle of 2013 Chiroubles Beaujolais, produced by Christine and Gilles Paris. It’s one of the few wines that use no SO2, no filtration and no fining, and maintains a cleanliness that many “natural” wine producers seem to leave in the vineyard before the grapes even ferment. The wine was delicious and understandably one of his favorites. Throughout the meal, Maude seemed to resent us for being the only table in the big space (sure, I could have been imagining this and she was just cranky); not a single other party came in while we were there. But the result was some surprisingly prompt service, especially for France and considering Maude’s age and physical condition; she brought and cleared all the dishes with hands severely bent and knobbed by arthritis that pulled on my heart. But she also had a quick command of the menu and accommodated some changes we requested with a proprietary air. I had a rich sampling of mini-appetizers including a lobster bisque, a tiny waffle with chorizo on it and a tomato tart, followed by a large flavorful marinated flank steak, and then some homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert. It was overall quite adequate. To be honest, I thought both meals that day were misses, after four possibly better places had shut us down. The food in France is mostly amazing, but you can’t win them all and I had just arrived—it would soon get much better. Though I heard murmurings from the kitchen, she was the only member of staff we saw the entire time, which fed a story I continued to tell myself that she was the owner, a thought that gave me comfort yet elicited even more pity. It was only as we were leaving that she finally exhibited an effusive gratitude that reinforced my suppositions. At least we had showed up that night. A walk east through the sleepy town brought us to the Saône river with its cobblestone quays on a tier below street level. Thin white clouds crisscrossed the moon over the smooth water like knife slashes on a dark painting. Ted and Andrea spoke low a few feet away, like the newlyweds they were. We got back to our street, went over to the towering citadel and read the placard. It informed us that we were staying across from the Old Cathedral of Saint-Vincent de Mâcon. Built in the eleventh century to replace an original structure from the sixth century, it shows the wear and tear of countless religious and revolutionary wars. The two octagonal Romanesque towers were extended to nearly twice their original height in a gothic style in the 14th century and still showed an outline of external staircases that spiraled upward. I thought of stoic monks with bowed and tonsured pates and hands tucked into the opposing sleeves of their brown robes, slowly tromping up the steps without a second glance down from the dizzying heights, as soldiers slaughtered each other at the gates. A huge arched entry in the front was sealed with a wall of glass like that of some modern museum. Around back, scratched up Plexiglas windows closed off the dark, crumbling, cavernous chambers inside, where the shadows seemed to shift. Apparently there was some sort of restoration underway, so the current state was one of shabby modernity shielding haunted places. The pillow back at the Airbnb fit my face perfectly and quickly pulled me on to morning, as again, jet lag-induced snoring choked my breathing into a grind all night long.

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

It may have taken all year for us to finally arrive at a silver lining of gratitude for a unique year that continues to serve up one piece of humble pie after another. Finally some good news arrived that we can all be thankful for—the arrival of a potential vaccine, as well as… a few other things… So many in the wine industry push Beaujolais as the perfect wine for Thanksgiving, and they’re right to do so! But there are so many other wines in the world that fit the bill and also deserve a shot at the crown on this annual day of gratitude. While we’ll focus on some new talent from different places, there is indeed a Beaujolais in the mix that will confidently check the boxes of serious and delicious, and we’ve thrown in a white perfectly suited for the occasion as well. There’s only one white here because most people tend to buy more red wines for this day, despite the fact that white wine has a natural affinity for this kind of food, too. But let’s face it, I’m not trying to change your ways! I’m here to sell you the wine you want and deserve! Back to the Beaujolais thing… One of the reasons Beaujolais is touted as the perfect pairing for Thanksgiving is due to its softer tannins that don’t crush the food; big tannin wines are definitely for meats other than Turkey! Beaujolais’ fruit forward qualities match up with some of the sweeter dishes such as yams and cranberries, ones that seem to appear for this specific meal and rarely any other time of the year. This wine’s minerally texture and freshness do wonders for making each bite taste as fresh as the first—one of the original tasks for which a wine is to be relied upon for meals like this. Bojo simply goes with the flow. But so do so many other superstar performers that seem to get benched on this occasion for no other reason than they don’t say Beaujolais on the label! Today, it’s time to consider bending tradition a little, and try something different that will be equally as rewarding, if not more so. What is listed here for the big day are six wines that concede to the food and rise to the jovial nature of the occasion. We start with a single white from Austria and move on to reds from France, Italy and Spain, which are listed in order by weight and power, starting with the most delicate and leading to the fuller-flavored wines. Wine Details If there was ever a single white wine from Europe that fits Thanksgiving, it has to be Austria’s Grüner Veltilner. It’s a grape variety built of savory characters that go right along with the food, which makes sense, considering the fact that there are a lot of similarities between Thanksgiving and Austrian countryside fare. Also, it’s hard to dispute that the Mittelbach Federspiel Grüner Veltliner is likely the top-value wine in this region among its list of stellar winegrowers. What’s more is that it comes from some of the region’s most revered terroirs (for the geeks: Loibenberg, Kellerberg and Steinriegl). So why is the price so much less than the going rate? The grapes come from mostly young vines from a set of recently purchased vineyards for Weingut Tegernseerhof, the producer of this wine. Martin Mittelbach, the winegrower, wanted to observe how these new wines performed for some years in the cellar to determine what sections would go into his top wines, and what should go into his entry-level wines. For now, it's all in one cuvée and it's classic Mittelbach style: crystalline, energized, fresh, pure, and gulpable. Cume do Avia’s 2019 Colleita 7 Tinto is a total knockout and is the most common wine on my table since I took my cases home from Cume’s winery just an hour and half north of us in Portugal. This is a red wine that lands right in-between a red and a white in structure, finesse and energy. With the higher yield in 2019 (which was still only about 70% of what they hoped for in any case) the team decided to make an even more meticulous selection of grapes than usual for this blend, resulting in a more serious Colleita red, which it is, but it’s still so delicious and easy to quaff. It’s principally a blend of 49% Caíño Longo, 37% Brancellao, 10% Sousón, and Merenzao (known in France as Trousseau), all grapes that lead with perfume and vigorous freshness. Aged in an extremely old, large foudre, and at a mere 10.5% alcohol, this wine can be sorted out as fast as one wants, without morning repercussions… This makes it a worthy consideration for numerous bottles, all of which will certainly deliver. There isn’t a better Beaujolais we have on offer for the price than Anthony Thevenet's Morgon. It comes from organically farmed vineyards on gravely granite topsoil that range in age between sixty and eighty years, within the minuscule commune of Douby, combined with some from the famous lieu-dit, Courcelette, with Anthony’s parcel completely made of soft, beach-like granite sands. The result is a substantial Beaujolais predicated on elegance and grace, even from the 2017 vintage, where the alcohol level of many of the wines from top producers breached 14% and even went beyond 15%. At a mere 12.5% alcohol, it may even be too easy to drink. And for that reason you might need a few of these for dinner… No short list of wines from us should ever miss a wine crafted by the talented Arnaud Lambert. His Saumur-Champigny “Les Terres Rouges” is a charming and utterly delicious Cabernet Franc from Saumur-Champigny’s southernmost hill, Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg. The fragrant dark-earth notes of Cabernet Franc give the impression of black soils unearthed from a thick overlay of wet forest moss, grass and bramble. However, despite the impression and name (which translates to “the red earth”), the soil is light brown clay with alluvial sands atop white tuffeau limestone. The cool harvest conditions, the soil and bedrock, and a life spent in stainless steel tanks renders this wine medium bodied with a clean and refreshing finish. Indeed, the sand plays its part as well by elevating the fruits and flowers in the bouquet to the ethereal realm. This privileged location makes for consistent ripening, lending the final wine flush with an array of black and red fruits. Truly another total win for Thanksgiving. Undoubtedly one of the greatest jack of all trades for food pairing beyond fish has to go to Chianti Classico, especially those done in a way that they don’t obliterate the food, meaning: less new oak and extraction please, and thank you! The Riecine Chianti Classico is well above the cut for the price, and will, like the others on the list, be a top performer with food. This wine is for those who do want a little more oomph to their reds, but not a sledgehammer. Fruit forward with a seamless and refined texture, Riecine’s first tier Chianti Classico is serious Sangiovese, but with glou glou immediacy upon pulling the cork. Not solely a one-trick pleasure-pony, this wine has extra gears and demonstrates its versatility and depth with more aeration (if it can be resisted long enough). More classically savory characteristics of Chianti Classico begin to unfold after a little time open in its youth and surely with more maturation in the cellar, and are supported with the acidic snap from its high altitude and endowed with a sappy red fruit core. It’s grown on a limestone and clay vineyard and is aged in large old oak barrels to further highlight its purity and high-toned frequency. Get this one open early so it shines at the right moment. Fuentes del Silencio's Las Jaras is simply a bombshell for the price. Hey, who can boast a wine as serious for the price as this that comes from 80 to 150-year-old vines?! The blend is Mencía, Prieto Picudo and Alicante Bouschet, and this makes for a wine of unusual depth, concentration and surprising freshness. At an altitude of more than 2,600 feet (extremely high by wine region standards), the growing season is long and results in a wine of wonderful tension, texture and freshness. Once the cork is pulled, the wine immediately begins its vertical climb and builds from one strength to the next, and even day after day. It seems that this wine can easily last for a week after being opened and still deliver freshness and bright fruit. This is the bigger mouthful in the range, but it still stays the course with gentle tannins that don’t squash the meal.

Before the 2014 vintage, I suggested Arnaud begin to isolate the most interesting parcels of Chenin Blanc that haven’t yet been made into single cru wines to explore for new and previously overlooked talented parcels. The plan was to make two barrels from each site, observe and taste them through their élevage, and if we were both pleased with the results, I guaranteed that I’d buy and sell them in California. There are four in total: the first was in 2014 and bottled under Domaine de St. Just, simply labeled Brézé, followed by a barrel-aged Clos du Midi bottled only in magnums, and finally we have today's Bonne Nouvelle and Montsoreau which in 2016, their first vintage, were a great success. There are only two barrels of each of these wines made for the entire world and all the wines are in California. The Wines Lambert’s vineyard area in Montsoreau is largely planted up on a plateau that sits above the Loire River on flatter sites with deeper clay composition—often between sixty centimeters to a couple meters deep, preferential topsoil depth and composition for Cabernet Franc. There is also a special, nearly pure tuffeau limestone site within his familial Montsoreau vineyards with almost no topsoil from which he makes this superb Chenin Blanc. While inside the Saumur-Champigny appellation, to bear the appellation name “Saumur-Champigny” a wine must be made exclusively from Cabernet Franc, and it’s for this reason that this wine is labeled as a Saumur appellation wine. Arnaud’s Montsoreau Chenin Blanc is a wine with more opulence and flash than usual. Balanced out by a dense core and somewhat gently polished square edges, when compared to Lambert's white wines from further south of the appellation in the colder zones, like Brézé and Saint-Cyr, the Montsoreau is more upfront and rich in body. Aged similarly to Bonne Nouvelle, in order to preserve the voice of the vineyard terroir, it’s aged one year, in two 228-liter old French oak barrels. Like the Bonne Nouvelle in quantity, there are only roughly five hundred bottles produced for the entire world. Rarities? Indeed. Bonne Nouvelle comes from the now famous Saumur commune, Brézé. The topsoil here in this commune varies greatly, even within sections of the same clos (enclosed vineyard), but the bedrock is tuffeau limestone, a sandy, very porous white rock. Generally speaking, Arnaud’s Chenin Blanc sites on Brézé have a larger mixture of sand and clay than the Cabernet Franc sites, which prosper more from deeper clay topsoil with less sand. The sandy soils of Brézé render white wines with more high tones and the wines tend to demonstrate a strong lead of polished and straightforward mineral impressions with less quirky characteristics than many other Chenin Blanc grown in the Loire Valley. In French, Bonne Nouvelle means good news—a suitable name for this wine. Originally this single clos on Brézé was used for sweet wines, and in 2016 Arnaud committed to our experiment of making a still wine from the vineyard, and we’re so glad he did! The vineyard is just next to Arnaud’s top Cabernet Franc vineyard, Clos de L’Etoile, and is on a uniquely coarse, rich, deep orangish-tan limestone sand derived mostly from small seashell fragments and the underlying tuffeau; interestingly, it looks a lot like the topsoil composition of Château Rayas. The result is a white wine of aromatic lift, deep texture and savory characteristics. As with Montsoreau, there were only two barrels made (roughly forty-five cases) and all are sold exclusively to The Source.

Boca Vineyards of Davide Carlone located in the Alto Piemonte foothills of the Alps (Download complete pdf here) Prelude to our New Italian Arrivals Scene I Wines from Sicily, Campania, Liguria, Abruzzo, Lombardia, Valle d’Aosta, and even many parts of Piemonte, like Alto Piemonte, existed in relative obscurity up until less than a couple of decades ago, even for those considered “Italian Wine Specialists,” most of whom seemed to be from Italy. It was a time when boutique Italian wine importers found limited success in fine wine retail stores but couldn’t (and still can’t) break into the big-brand Italian restaurant wine lists. Slowly, they began to chip away at traditional restaurants run by Italians and the French-dominated import wine programs in restaurants outside of the corporate mold. Many restaurants that were already working heavily with boutique French wines had few openings in their small Italian section for something interesting. And of course, there were exceptions that were already ahead of the game. I remember pre-millenium sommeliers and wine-trade pros making fun of backwater areas in Italy that grew food-producing crops in-between vine rows (“what fools,” most of us blinkered wine pros thought), and that much of Italy was still nearly medieval. Many of Europe's great terroirs of that time were finely manicured dirt and rock vineyards with not much else that resembled anything natural. Cover crops were around, but we know that’s no substitute for a region’s natural biodiversity. Winegrowers that produced actual, edible food inside their vineyards for their family and animals were thought to be simple-minded. Many of us wondered how these rural Italians could possibly think they’d make high-quality, authentic, terroir-focused wines with all that mixed agricultural input from so much life and biodiversity between their rows taking energy away from the vine’s productivity. Most of us don’t think like that anymore at all.  Creative chef culture began to play with more Italian products and recipes mixed into their largely French-influenced food. These changes ever so slowly shucked sommeliers from the outdated Court of Master Sommeliers study program traditions that had little to do with indigenous Italian wines other than their glut of data-filled flashcards. The doors had finally started to creak open for small-house Italian importers to focus on this new terrain, and the momentum quietly began.  Recession in the late 2000s forced restaurants with deep cellars into a selloff. Furthering the movement toward smaller producers were the reduced budgets restaurants now had as they tried to return to normalcy and refill their cellar bins. They also shifted to much shorter lists with constantly changing selections, which not only opened the doors for those who had previously tried and failed to break in, but also for young and hungry new importers, like us. To support the uprising and force customers to venture away from Chianti, Brunello, and Super-Tuscans, some Italian restaurants even purposely began to leave them off of by-the-glass lists (and a few off their lists altogether), explaining that if they had a Chianti by the glass with the other nine reds poured, Chianti would sell 80% of the time, leaving some of the others to deteriorate before the last glass was poured. The indigenous Italian wine market cranked into full boom and it’s no longer a movement, it’s now an establishment. In 2004, after eleven years of bouncing around between more than a dozen restaurants and working three harvests in Santa Barbara wine country, I quit my final restaurant gig at the then famous Santa Barbara wine outpost, Wine Cask, where I was the Sommelier and Restaurant Manager. I sold all my possessions (except my small wine collection and some childhood collectibles) and headed off to Europe for a six-month bicycle trip through its famous cities (and hit their museums), and worked through just under a hundred wineries throughout Austria, Germany, Northern Italy, France and Northern Spain. I don’t know how many times I paged through A Moveable Feast during that time, and I finally felt like I was living that bohemian life for those six months—in a tent one day and a winegrower’s guest mansion the next; it’s a life that I often crave to reenter today. I haven’t been able to just up and quit a job like I used to, sometimes a couple times or more a year, ever since I started our wine brokerage and import company fourteen years ago.  My lengthy bike-powered pilgrimage that brought me through Barolo and Barbaresco kicked off a new beginning (or more accurately, obsession). Already lightly seasoned and interested in the epic Nebbiolo wines of the Langhe, it was the painful biking up Barolo’s steep and windy hills for visits with many famous vignaioli that gave me an even greater respect for these wines. We were often gifted with bottles from our tastings or managed to buy wines directly from the growers at a poor-bicycler discount to take back to our campsite and infuse ourselves with the intoxicating fog of Nebbiolo.  Most of the dozen or so restaurants where I worked before my time at Spago Beverly Hills and then Wine Cask had sparse selections of Italian wines but were flush with French and Californian, along with dashes from other countries here and there. Burgundy was, even in the early 2000s, still a slightly esoteric category for the general population. Often unaccounted for is the 2004 movie Sideways as one of the pivotal turning points of Burgundy’s move into the mainstream. With Pinot Noir’s place in the story as the protagonist and Merlot the antagonist—which was just too close to Cabernet for it to avoid collateral damage—it became the new global trend, absolutely crushing Syrah’s rise and bringing Merlot drinkers to an existential crisis. With many of these new Pinot enthusiasts (Noir seemed to be globally dropped from the name outside of label requirements, like Cabernet no longer needed its partner Sauvignon) with bigger budgets eventually graduating to Burgundy. It may be hard to believe for those who walked in the door in the last ten years, but wines like Beaujolais were not a significant category for even the mainstream wine enthusiast, and Jura was frightening for all but the fully committed Francophile with a high tolerance for the unusual. I admit, I myself took a while to come around to Jura wines too, but I certainly did. A Burgundy saying that must have gasped its dying breath about a decade ago that went, “Bought only on presell and closeout,” seems ridiculous now. The “presell” part of the saying remains truer than ever while the latter couldn’t be further from today’s market demand. Perhaps the start of the twenty-teens marked a turning point (at least for our company) where Burgundy importers no longer had to discount to finally get them out the door—with the exceptions of 2011 and 2014. Believe it or not, around 2009, a Beverly Hills wine merchant closed out some 2005 and 2006 wines from Jean Grivot, D’Angerville, and even some Roumier, among many other producers represented in the US by Diageo. I paid about $30-$60 per bottle, depending on the cru.  The wine world has gone completely mad on pricing. Elite and micro-producer prices are embarrassingly stupefying and never worth the price, and the great secrets once whispered only among the trade are a thing of the past, seemingly for good. Only ten or fifteen years ago you could find truly amazing deals, or at least easy access to just about every top wine from Burgundy without any additional and unusually high markups. In Southern California (surely elsewhere too, but this is where I used to snag them), D.R.C. could be found inside grocery store glass cabinets in Santa Barbara with standard markups (including La Tache and Romanée-Conti); Rousseau’s Clos Saint-Jacques and Clos de Bèze collected dust at Wally’s; Clos Rougeard and Thierry Allemand were kicked around the concrete floor at Wine House for probably an entire year before the last bottles found a home, and gray market Fourrier and Raveneau sat across each other bored for months in different corners of Wine Exchange, waiting for me to drop in and fill an entire grocery cart for $60 or $70 a bottle—a little extra on top for the time, but pennies compared to today.  Piemonte’s Langhe wine regions have also had a severe uptick in interest and investment in the last years. Like all the other great wines, I could walk into those same L.A. retailers ten years ago and get just about anything I wanted: G. Contero, G. Rinaldi, G. & B. Mascarellos, Burlotto (which had an outrageous climb from $60 to about $300 in two years), etc. The greats of Barolo (more than Barbaresco) seemingly snuck right out of reach in only a couple of years for those of us with modest and medium budgets, just as Burgundy did more than a decade ago. These unwelcome departures left many of us unquenched for the noble tastes and particular house styles. Truly great Barolo and Barbaresco can still be found at fabulous prices (just look at Poderi Colla), but there are so many with medium to high prices that are more likely to underdeliver than live up to expectations.  Fret not, dear reader! It’s not a time solely for lamentations for our past access to today’s elites! The horizon is always full of new arrivals from forgotten or overlooked lands that once shined with success before falling out of sight, many of which were showered with praise by the royalty of the past, their noble grapes preserved by generations of working-class heroes who kept them alive. But with the price increase crisis of the Langhe and soon Alto Piemonte, how can any other Piemonte region compete in quality with Barolo, Barbaresco, and the wines of Alto Piemonte? Where in Piemonte could possibly be next? My hunch might surprise you, or maybe it won’t because you’re already on the trail… La Casaccia’s Monferrato vineyards in Cella Monte Prelude to our New Italian Arrivals Scene II The Monferrato hills are filled with untapped potential. Yeah, I know what some of you are thinking: “Come again?” (Long pause) But please, allow me to explain. How exciting can Monferrato possibly be? Does the market even take this region seriously? These were regular thoughts when we first began to focus on importing Italian wine in 2016. Prior to then, my company that predated The Source brokered Italian wines in California for almost a decade with a few different Italian importers. The importers we worked with played a quiet but influential role in the emergence of backwater Italian wines. One was strong in Italian and French “natural” wine producers before natural wine stormed the market. (Eventually he went out of business, partially because he was way ahead of his time, and the other part was that in the end he was a crook.) The other continues to successfully run a collection focused on clean craftsmanship with most of the selection from the Italian road less traveled. Each had their token price-point Monferrato producer or two, usually a couple Barbera d’Asti, but not much more.  I never set out to plant a big flag in the Monferrato/Asti area. Like the Italian wine importers I once worked with, I was in search of a token Asti producer to supply us with some value Barbera. Then something happened, something that has happened many times before: I witnessed potential that needed a strong and friendly nudging. Sette’s Vino Bianco Exciting Potential? How? Why? Who? Monferrato’s first advantage starts with the fact that they have few expectations for the wines they produce. (Probably the most pertinent is the expectation that they should have good prices and be cheaper than Langhe wines.) Most importantly, many don’t play the Nebbiolo game, so they don’t have the burdensome weight of navigating today’s grape royalty. Nebbiolo-land comes with familial and regional baggage. The iron-grip of the most recent generational lines that built the family up from the poorest area of Italy to one of its wealthiest isn’t keen to let the kids wander too far off the path. Ok, they can tinker with Dolcetto, or even Barbera, but Nebbiolo used for their Barolos and Barbarescos? The vignaioli of Barolo and Barbaresco are no longer just grape farmers and winemakers, they’re bigtime businesspeople, and their task now is to push the same rock, the same direction, every vintage. Monferrato’s fewer expectations can lead to freer thinking as a community. Freer thinking leads to greater experimentation. Experimentation leads to breakthroughs. Breakthroughs change the game. When games change, people follow. Monferrato has their own historical grapes, which means they won’t always be second or third division Nebbiolo land. They can be first division Barbera, first division Freisa, first division Ruchè, and, what I believe could be the most significant category uptick, they undoubtedly will be first division Grignolino—a variety that was considered grape royalty for centuries.  Another advantage is that they have the terroir with enough talent to go beyond “good value wine” and into the world-class. The ingredients are there: limestone and chalk with extremely active calcium, sandy limestone, gently sloping hills (preferential to steep ones with looming climate change toward hotter temperatures) with great variations of soil grain to put grapes on their most favorable soil types (Grignolino on sand, Freisa on clay, Barbera in the middle), tremendous biodiversity with swaths of indigenous forest between vineyard parcels and sometimes right in the middle of them along with a multitude of intended crops (well beyond the occasional hazelnut grove as seen in much of the Langhe’s prized vineyard areas where grapes aren’t suitable), and a climate that’s conducive to organic and biodynamic vineyard culture. Vineyard soil cut demonstrating the layered geology at La Casaccia of limestone, chalk, limestone-rich clay and siliceous sands The x-factor here is that Monferrato’s growers surely include ambitious and creative kids with dreams to build. Their parents and grandparents lived in relative isolation in this Italian backcountry while other nearby regions went from poverty to wealth in a single generation. Most of the Gen Xers are in the family driver’s seat, the Millennials are working side by side with mom and dad, and the Zoomers are at school, and all three of these generations are exposed to the world around them through their social media feeds. They have witnessed the incredible success of Langhe. They see that their northerly wine neighbor Alto Piemonte is not only rising, but it has also arrived in a big way. They realize the potential of the natural wine movement and many will want a piece of it. (But do it cleanly, please!). There are now openings to make whatever style of wine they want because there are fewer shackles; they can stay and improve on the traditional course passed down for generations and/or get creative in their own way and veer from tradition. Whatever the path they choose, I think they will have more freedom than the average kids of Barolo or Barbaresco, in fact, more freedom than any other Nebbiolo-focused region. Another factor is immigration, and I don’t mean people from other countries, but those from neighboring Langhe. With the increase in frequency of the Piemontese selling their most prized vineyards to foreign investors for fortunes nearly impossible to recoup in the wine business (that is, without flipping the property to the next high-bidding trophy hunter), how does any financially challenged Langhe youngster filled with inspiration and great knowhow (from a family that works for the landowner or in the cellar) get out of first gear? They have to move.  This is what happened with the young Gianluca Colombo and his business partner, Gino Della Porta, with their new Nizza-based winery established in 2017. Gianluca is a consultant for many reputable Langhe producers, and he also makes his own small production Barolo wine. Gino is a mastermind, connected throughout the wine world, responsible for helping develop one of Italy’s most important importers, and helping to manage some of Italy’s most recognizable small cantinas. Only minutes into meeting this two-person comedy act, with their incredible proficiency and ambition for their project, I knew they would be a force; not only a force for their own project, but I am sure they, and others walking the same road into Monferrato, will inspire other producers in the Monferrato hills to break through the glass ceiling of their own making.  Two New Monferrato Producer Snapshots (Their wines covered in greater detail further below) Sette's Gino Della Porta and Gianluca Colombo Sette, Nizza Monferrato The Monferrato/Asti area is Piemonte’s new wine laboratory, and experimentation is extensive at Sette, where they’re looking to expose new dimensions of their local indigenous varieties. The comedic and talented duo of the experienced wine trade pro, Gino Della Porta, and well-known enologist, Gianluca Colombo, founded Sette in 2017 with the purchase of a 5.8-hectare hill in Bricco di Nizza, just outside of Nizza Monferrato. Immediately, a full conversion to organic farming began, followed by biodynamic starting in 2020, the latter being a vineyard culture still considered somewhat radical in these parts. The wines are crafted and full of vibrant energy with focus and only a soft polish. There’s the slightly turbid and lightly colored, juicy, fruity, minerally Grignolino, and their two serious but friendly Barberas, among other goodies that will trickle in with time. Sette’s game-changing progressive approach and delicious wines (with total eye-candy labels) should ripple through this historic backcountry and bring greater courage to the younger generations to break out of the constraints of the past and move full throttle into the future. La Casaccia's Rava family, Elena, Margherita and Giovanni La Casaccia, Casale Monferrato Even in Italy it may be impossible to find a vignaiolo who emits as much bubbling enthusiasm and pure joy for their work than La Casaccia’s Giovanni Rava; la vita è bella for Giovanni and Elena Rava, and their children, Margherita and Marcello. Working together in a life driven by respect for their land and heritage, they also offer accommodations in their restored bed and breakfast for travelers looking for a quieter Italian experience. Their vines are organically farmed and scattered throughout the countryside on many different slopes with strong biodiversity of different forms of agriculture and untamed forests teeming with wild fruit trees. Their traditionally crafted range of wines grown on soft, stark white chalk with layers of eroded sandstone are lifted, complex and filled with the humble yet exuberant character of the Rava family. New Italian Wine Arrivals Monferrato Reds Grignolino is coming. I don’t just mean that we have some arriving this month (which we do), I mean Grignolino is coming. We have seen a considerable increase in interest since our first batch arrived from Luigi Spertino, followed by Crotin’s—the latter of which easily fits into the by-the-glass range, while the former does not. We went from about a hundred cases between the two each in our first years to more than triple that this year with none left in stock six months after their arrival. Grignolino is coming, I say! This year, with the addition of our two new producers, Sette and La Casaccia, we have doubled that quantity just for the California market, and it's only double because that’s all the producers could provide. Grignolino is the perfect Piemontese grape variety for today’s market. Its pale color is enticing and reminiscent of fresher vintage Nebbiolos with those unique Giuseppe Mascarello-red tones but with an even lighter hue. Seduced by their constant emissions of pheromonal scents fluttering out of the glass, accented with dainty, sweet red and slightly purple flowers, tart but just ripe berries and a little flirt of that indescribable but inimitable Piemonte red wine spice and earth, I remain smitten, if not completely infatuated. Superficially, simply made Grignolino is invitingly poundable, delicious fun, but in more intimate encounters its interior strength reveals firmness, respectability, nobility.  Mauro Spertino’s Grignolino, labeled with his late father’s name, Luigi Spertino, is what spurred my crush on this grape. Mauro (pictured above) has the magic touch surely mostly learned from his father, who revolutionized the method in which to navigate this charming grape that has a thin skin but more tannin-rich seeds than other Piemontese grapes, including Nebbiolo. Mauro is a bit of a magician in the cellar, so there’s no doubt that he took it to the next level to where it is today. Many think his Grignolino leads the category in Piemonte, and I agree. One answer for tannin management with this seed-heavy grape is to employ shorter macerations with pressing once the interior grape membranes break down, but prior to fully exposing the seeds to the alcohol when the extraction of these harder tannins can happen. With this approach, one can also pick earlier to highlight the variety’s natural charm with an even redder, crunchier spectrum of fruit ripeness—for me, the hallmark characteristics I think serve this wine better than those with more wood contact and ripeness on the vine. All of this makes for a wine with a lot of pleasure while retaining its regional DNA. Grignolino seems to me to be close in its ethereal characteristics to Nebbiolo. Grignolino’s time in the sun is on the morning horizon. Ideal for today’s consumer in search of lighthearted but authentic and terroir-rich wines, it offers the classic cultural tastes and smells of the Piemontese wine, but under the right touch with much less pain. Piemontese reds are known to beg for food, but despite Grignolino’s naturally high acidity and Dolcetto’s bigger tannins (another underrated, delicious Piemontese grape) they don’t need food to deliver harmony and are quite fun to drink alone. Both are immediately accessible and fair well when made with a simple approach in the cellar, unmarked by wood aging if wood is employed at all.  According to Ian D’Agata in his book (a must for anyone serious about Italian wine, or just simply interested), Italy’s Native Wine Grape Terroirs, the Grignolino wines were prized as far back as the thirteenth century but lost favor in the last thirty years and were replanted with other grapes that had a stronger market value in the Langhe and elsewhere. D’Agata pushes the merits of Grignolino in his book and loves the wines, and I understand why. I’m only a little disappointed that it took so long for me to see its light! It seems to have all the ingredients to really thrive in today’s market that’s more than willing to pay for the highest levels of nobility and extremely fine subtlety in the sip. I would even venture a guess that if Grignolino had held court in prized Langhe vineyards that with today’s swing for many from power to elegance, it may have held the number two spot just below Nebbiolo, leaving Barbera and Dolcetto to duke it out for third. I think Grignolino can be that good but clearly within the more gentle wine context, it can have big tannin and acidity. What brave soul would dare rip out Nebbiolo in a prime position in Barolo or Barbaresco to see what happens with Grignolino in its perfect spot? Any takers?? Maybe many would need to get over their addiction to the smell of money first… In places like north Monferrato, under the labels of Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese, they can be gorgeous and with, on the average, a little more substance due to their greater limestone marl content mixed in with sand than Grignolino d’Asti’s sandier soils, without losing their freshness and charm. Of course, these regional soil elements vary from plot to plot, so broad generalizations often need to be thrown out the window. Between the Grignolino from our first producer from the area, Crotin, followed by Spertino’s game-changing wines, and now wines from both La Casaccia and Sette, we have a very special collection.  Starting with what I perceive as the most elegant and light of all these perfumed and somewhat dainty Grignolinos is Luigi Spertino’s Grignolino d’Asti. About as lithe as a red wine can be, its light red, slightly orange-tinted hue is pale enough that in a dimly lit room you might think there’s nothing in the glass until you hold it up to a light to illuminate its striking color. Despite the lightness of the wine, a rosé it is not. The palate is a showcase of fragrant classic varietal notes of fresh berries and subtle but sweet, darker-hued flowers, and its light but firm texture marks the separation from what a rosé would maintain, as do the complexities of the grape skin phenols forged through the fermentation with a longer skin contact (which is about eight to twelve days, depending on the year). After four or five months in steel, the wine is bottled.  All four are elegant, but perhaps next in line for the most elegant is Sette’s Grignolino Piemonte DOC, a wine that will not arrive until some months from now. Its delightful turbidity and time spent in Tava amphoras for eight months coupled with its sandy soils brings a more lightly creamy texture and body resulting in a more playful interaction. (Tava amphoras are cooked at extremely high temperatures which tightens the porosity significantly over those cooked at lower temperatures, leading to customized micro-oxygenation level for Sette’s amphoras that have similar porosity to that of a 15/20hl oak barrel and also impart no taste to the wines.) My first bottle of their 2020 convinced me that I could easily make it one of my weekly pulls from the cellar. Riding the line between well-polished, medium structure and texture, this finely tuned Grignolino is bottled fun, just like the owners of their project, Gino and Gianluca. Unfortunately, similar to Spertino’s Grignolino, it will be in short supply when it arrives in early fall.  La Casaccia’s Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese “Poggeto” could be viewed as sharing the middle spot with Sette on the elegance chart. There may be no region more historically famous for high quality Grignolino that still focuses on this grape as a category leader than the areas around Casalese. I’m newly addicted to the style of the La Casaccia wines crafted with the mind, big heart and happiness of Giovanni Rava and his wife, Elena, and their charming, contemplative daughter Margherita. Always grown on the top of the hills on the sandiest soils loaded with chalk, the wines are filled with the spirit of deep joy and generosity of the family delivered with impeccable craftsmanship. La Casaccia’s style may be the most classical in the sense that they don’t go to the extremes as Sette with their modern touch of turbidity coupled explosive aroma, or Spertino’s sushi-style Grignolino, but rather an ode to the traditional craft in search of a spherical balance throughout the entire wine.  Crotin’s Grignolino d’Asti “San Patelu” may be the most glycerol and full-colored but bright red for this naturally pale variety between the four. The Grignolino at this cantina always shows the nuances of the vintage but typically leads with dense but bright perfumes of the grape’s classical notes, a little Ruchè-like in perfume and weight, in a Burlotto-esque, Verduno Pelaverga way, senza le note di pepe bianco. Crotin’s Grignolino usually shows the greater structure between the group, likely a hallmark of their comparatively colder region, and the direction of the family with the advice of Cristiano Garella, their consulting enologist with a sharp eye for detail and an unflappable commitment to finding the truth in wine without applying any greasepaint for the international market. Ruchè caught me off-guard. I don’t recall tasting this grape prior to a few years ago at the cellar of Crotin with some of our staff and the other co-owner and General Manager of The Source, Donny Sullivan, and I don’t think anyone who tasted some would forget it. I saw a bottle of Ruchè sitting around in the restaurant of their agriturismo with a label on it I didn’t recognize, so I asked about it. Federico Russo, the eldest of the brotherhood (and seemingly their leader), happily pulled the cork as he told me that they made the wine for that winery. As explosive as any wine can be out of glass, it had an array of perfumed bright red berries, red ripe stone fruit and spice brightened my face with delight. My first thought wasn’t whether I liked it or not, but was a realization that today’s market interested in unapologetically perfumy and delicious wines could blister through a wine like the one in my glass, wowing first-timers with its pleasure bludgeon. (This especially applies to winebar by-the-glass programs.) About two minutes later I blurted out, “This wine is delicious,” with Donny nodding his head in time with mine, scrunching his eyes and giving me his half-smile that says, “This is a no-brainer.” So I asked Federico, “Can you make some for us?” Shortly after returning to Portugal, Federico sent me a six-pack of the Ruchè producers he thought were best representative of the region to give me a better context. Most of the wines were quite high in alcohol, which made them harder to appreciate than the one he made, which was 13.5%. Crotin’s 2021 Ruchè di Castagnole Monferrato “Monterosso” is the second year they’ve bottled the wine that they had already been making, this time in their cellar under their own label. Our first year we brought in fifty cases to test the market and, after a strong showing that made short work of the 2020, this year we have more than double the quantity, though we could’ve easily bought a couple hundred cases more if they’d had the stock. The grapes come from an organically farmed site mostly on an alternation of contrasting red soils with a lot of iron and chalky limestone. The wine is raised in stainless steel vats until the following summer for bottling. Crotin’s style contains this flamboyant variety; it’s nuanced rather than pushy, and it’s easy to say yes to a second glass, unlike five of the six he sent me that clocked fifteen degrees or more of alcohol. I believe Ruchè has an opportunity in today’s market, but from a long-game perspective, the other producers may need to reel in the punchy fruit and spice, otherwise the grape may burn brightly on the market for a minute only to fizzle out just as quickly. After Grignolino, Freisa slowly worked its way into my favor, and one day I met the one I wanted to marry. I never paid much attention to it other than being privy to its genetic relation to Nebbiolo but being known for lacking the same level of finesse, depth and ageability. What put Freisa into my radar initially were the ones from the great producers like G. Rinaldi, G. and B. Mascarellos, Cavallotto, Brovia, and Vietti, who all keep it in their ranges still. (They must still have them for a good reason, no?) It’s true that youthful Freisa can approach with the grace of an angry bull, but in the right hands, it’s untamed nature can at least be harnessed and led toward a gentler appeal so that maybe it ages into something unexpectedly wonderful. I have a hunch that Freisa will eventually gain the respect of the general international community of Italian wine lovers. It just needs the right ambassadors, although the mentioned Barolo producers are not a bad start! However, it’s merely a guess because I don’t know, but I bet the Freisa still grown in Barolo and Barbaresco is positioned on the vineyard in subordinate locations to Nebbiolo. Few winegrowers can justify keeping Freisa in a prime time Nebbiolo spot, if not only for historical preservation, then for financial reasons. I don’t plan to stand on the hilltop to shout the universal merits of Freisa as I will with Grignolino (although there is one that swept me off my feet), but at the very least I’d say it’s an inexpensive entry-ticket to authentic Piemontese reds that covers all the bases and can under the right shepherding and prime vineyard position yield very special results. In a Decanter article I read about Freisa, Ian D’Agata is quoted as saying that aged Freisa is sometimes hard to distinguish from Nebbiolo. Despite my lack of experience with this, I believe him. Crotin’s Freisa d’Asti is one of those wines crafted in a traditional way, despite spending all of its time in concrete and stainless steel. What I mean by traditional (which I don’t think was specifically concrete aging for a short period as they do) is that the wine is not vinified to embellish the fruit. It’s built on structure and subtle aromas and in context within the full range of Crotin’s other reds—Barbera, Grignolino, Ruchè, and now some Nebbiolo—it’s the most savory and least fruity wine in the range, although it still has plenty of fruit that comes through more when enjoyed independently of the other wines. This version is for the old-guard Italian wine lovers, and for the price it makes it all the more attractive for the same seasoned buyer who gets sticker shock around every corner of the Italian section of the wine shop now; well, except with wines from the Monferrato hills! I don’t know what Giovanni Rava did with La Casaccia’s Freisa Monferrato “Monfiorenza,” but it swept me off my feet. Their Grignolino is lovely and one of the best concrete-aged, fresh, beautiful, and substantive wines in the Grignolino world, but their Freisa rendered me speechless with an ear-to-ear smile the first time I drank a bottle of the 2019 last summer with the family on a breezy and warm summer night. I didn’t know Freisa could do that! I went to La Casaccia to ask Giovanni for their Grignolino’s hand in marriage but left the alter with his Freisa! That day I also had the best wild cherries in my life—clearly a day to remember. I’m not sure about this wine’s ageability, but who cares; it’s a wine to feast on in its youth and wait as patiently as possible for the next scrumptious batch. We received only 60 boxes of the 2019 vintage but a lot more of the 2021 is in route soon. I think the 2021 is going to be just as good. Despite its non-native status in Monferrato, Barbera is the local sheriff and the breadwinner. Apparently, the variety originated in southern Italy centuries ago (perhaps Sicily or Campania, but the debate about its origin and actual arrival to Piemonte is still alive) and began its mass proliferation sometime after phylloxera hit. Today, it’s ubiquitous in much of Piemonte and there is a lot of it in the marketplace, which, thankfully, keeps the prices down, even from producers in Barolo and Barbaresco. Barbera is indeed a bit of an outsider in Piemonte. It’s easy to spot in a blind tasting of Piemontese wines because of its abundance of acidity and lack of tannins—the exact structural inverse of Dolcetto. It also typically requires a greater alcohol potential to achieve phenolic ripeness that moves it away from hardened tannins (the few that it has) and the potential for unbalanced high acidity. Barbera is also uniquely suited for its best results with warm summer weather during the daytime and nighttime, the opposite of the others Piemontese grapes that need the daytime heat but colder nights to reach their heights—another clue to its possible origin from the south where day and nighttime temperatures don’t fluctuate like those in the north or deep inside the Apennine range.  Monferrato is a Piemontese territory that dates to medieval times and includes much of today’s provinces of Asti and Alessandria. It’s a little confusing how they separate the region out, but think Toscana with its two main wine provinces, Siena and Firenze (although there are ten Toscana provinces in total). We have delicious Barbera wines coming in from all four of our producers, but they are also all quite different. Both Crotin’s Barbera d'Asti and La Casaccia’s Barbera del Monferrato “Guianìn” are classically styled Monferrato Barbera without much “hand in the wines.” Both are raised in neutral, non-wood vessels and grown on calcareous sands with Casaccia’s a higher content of chalk. Perhaps Crotin’s is more defined in acidic profile and slightly denser body with darker fruits only nuanced by red. La Casaccia’s is gentler and less compact but with the same depth as Crotin’s. Our two Asti producers of Barbera, Sette and Spertino, make two very different wines inside its most revered appellation, Nizza, the newest member (since 2008) of the Italian DOCG family. Nizza is special and what many consider to be the leader for this grape variety for the entire globe. As many writers add to that shared belief, the Langhe could be the top spot were it not for the prized exposures reserved entirely for Nebbiolo—and rightly so! Sette produces two different Barberas, both grown inside the Nizza DOCG, within the commune Nizza Monferrato, from the same 5.8ha plot in conversion to organic (2017) and biodynamic culture (2020) on a south face composed of calcareous marls and sandstones: one bottled as Barbera d’Asti, made from vines with between 20-40 years old on chalk and sandstone, and the Nizza (also composed entirely of Barbera; pictured above), from mostly 80-year-old vines on limestone, chalk and sandstone. For both Barbera d'Asti and Nizza they use an old Piedmontese winemaking technique of waiting for the must to reach 10-11 degrees of alcohol and then use a wooden grid to submerge the cap for a more gentle infusion approach for the latter two-thirds (or more) of the maceration time to softly extract while the wines reach their textural balance as it is tasted daily. This process lasts between 30 to 50 days, depending on the vat and the year, with Nizza always a bit longer than the Barbera d’Asti. Following the pressing, the Barbera d’Asti makes at least a year of aging in the cellar with concrete vats prior to bottling and release, while the Nizza is aged for a year in 30hl Stockinger barrels followed by six months in concrete. The result for both of these wines is their softer structure than the typical Barberas from the Langhe, but also with more savory notes and more profound depth. Sette’s Barberas are extremely serious wines with massive potential. They are on the more technically tight craft side without sacrificing their approachability and friendliness. Sette is an extremely promising new cantina. Spertino’s Barbera “La Bigia” is another demonstration of Mauro’s alchemistic touch and the unique signature on his wines. I never imagined that a Barbera could taste and evoke such emotion as his, and in this fuller style. He somehow manages to create duality between bright light and deep darkness in the same wine. Its twenty-year-old vines grow in sandy calcareous soil and the grapes spend around twenty days fermenting, then the wine is aged in the cellar for half a year in old 5000-liter botte. Aromas of a dense, fresh wet green forest, with taut but mature wild black berries, black currant and a potpourri of underbrush swirl out of the glass. The palate is powerful, supple and refined, like the final polish on a marble sculpture. The naturally bright acidity inherent to Barbera keeps this brooding wine that tips the scales in alcohol content toward modern-day Barolo while remaining in perfect harmony. Like all of Mauro’s wines, this is singular unto itself and must be experienced. Monferrato Whites I didn’t realize it until I began to write, but the only three white wines we import from Monferrato are all very different and a little atypical for the region.  Mauro Spertino’s range is unique in that he has both wines that are full, powerful and still graceful, while others are ethereal, subtle and as light as can be while still maintaining a clear voice of their terroirs. Spertino’s Metodo Classico fits into the latter realm. Mauro’s 2018 was a thrilling start for his first try at it (but still not surprising with this guy’s golden touch), and the arriving 2019 is a natural step up for a few reasons: it was a better year for Pinot Noir than the hot 2018 vintage, and he had one more year under his belt to make his preferred micro-tweaks. The vines were recently planted toward the top of his extremely steep, sandy calcareous vineyard in Mombercelli, but cleverly placed on its north face to preserve as much freshness as possible. The wine is vinified in stainless steel and spends twenty-four months on its lees before disgorgement. It’s very pretty wine. La Casaccia’s Chardonnay is grown on almost pure chalk and it tastes like it. It’s a fabulous alternative for those in search of terroir-dense limestone Chardonnays with a smile-inducing price tag. It’s probably true that no one is rushing out in search of Monferrato Chardonnay, but if zippy, fresh, and minerally Chardonnay is your thing, you should give it a go. It’s loaded with all of that indescribable magic imparted by extremely calcareous soils—think Burgundy’s stainless-steel Chablis, or Hautes-Côtes Chardonnays. I expect our first batch to evaporate at its bargain price.   We know Moscato as a still wine is one of the hardest sells. Once I received Sette’s Bianco entirely from Moscato, I was skeptical as I pulled the cork. (Though its gorgeously inviting label, pictured further above in the newsletter, could sell just about anything inside.) I tried so hard not to like it before tasting it because I could already imagine it on our closeout list. However, once in the glass you may share my same surprise. The annoying, cloying characteristics of Moscato are absent and all that’s left are its most flamboyant traits, toned down by its eight-hour skin contact before fermentation, its aging in Tava amphoras, and its light leesy haze. There are so many pleasantries it’s hard to dislike, even if it’s not your typical style. Stylistically, there may not be a much better pairing for nigiri sushi with its floral and gentle spice notes, and texture similar to unfiltered sake, a perfect match for sticky rice under raw fish with ginger and wasabi. Alto Piemonte Fabio Zambolin, Costa della Sesia/Lessona My visit last year was business as usual, nothing particularly new to report, just another good time with Fabio and his delicious wines. But a couple months ago during our visit, I found him and his tiny production overwhelmed by orders from all over Italy. Restaurants were asking for unusually high quantities of both wines—apparently the result of a series of tastings in Rome and Milan. Last year we took greater quantities before the demand went through the roof and we have the same this year despite the newfound fan base. Lucky us!  Both of Zambolin’s new arrivals are 2019s, a Piemontese vintage we’ve all waited for since the grapes came off the vine. It lives up to the hype and I suggest if you want these you should speak up soon. We are not yet sure if that frenzy from Italy will carry over into the US too. As many of you who already follow Fabio, you know that his garage-sized operation and his tiny plots of land are in and around one of Alto Piemonte’s most historically celebrated regions, Lessona. Fabio has a bureaucratic challenge in that his winery is out of the Lessona appellation but his vineyards are inside its borders. This makes his wine only qualify as Costa della Sesia appellation. His Costa della Sesia Nebbiolo “Vallelonga” is purely Lessona from a terroir perspective. The overall style here is finesse over power, a combination offered to the wine because of its sandy volcanic soils, and, of course, Fabio’s stylistic preferences. Zambolin’s Costa della Sesia “Feldo” is also grown inside of Lessona but doesn’t adhere to the grape proportions required to fit within Lessona’s DOC rules. A field blend of old-vine Nebbiolo, Vespolina and Croatina, I never imagined this blended Piemontese wine without a dominant grape variety would be one of our top sellers; Feldo continues to prove my first instincts wrong with every delivery. It has gobs of festive aromas and flavors (at least compared to other wines in an area known for often producing more solemn, strict wines in their youth), with even a dash of pretension—it’s well-made Northern Italian glou glou. There’s a lot of seriousness tucked in there too—not surprisingly considering the perfectionism with which Fabio organically farms his vineyards and his meticulous work in the cellar. David Carlone, Boca We finally have our second batch of Davide Carlone’s wines arriving. The first set was gobbled up in a craze during my visit to California in November, when I showed them on three different occasions with our teams between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. (Big shout out to SD! The restaurant scene down there is happening; I was impressed.) Most of the buyers looked bewildered, like “Where have these been all my life?” I thought the same thing the first time I tasted Davide’s new wines too and was convinced he is the real deal; someone to contend with, and someone to know. His newest releases will not disappoint. When we first started to work with Davide only a little more than a year ago, there was plenty of wine to buy—post-Pandemic stocks. But since then we’ve already been moved into the allocation game because of the high demand.  We were able to circle back for some more of the very successful 2018 Croatina, but the rest are new vintage wines. The 2019 Vespolina was one of the stars of our first showing and for many tasters it was their the top single-varietal bottling of Vespolina. The follow-up vintage, 2020 Vespolina is strong despite tough competition from the glorious 2019. The 2019 Nebbiolo is a shoo-in: it’s one of best vintages on record with an ideally lengthy season (with the well-known Alto Piemonte enologist, Cristiano Garella, claiming it was the best of his professional life that started in 1998); it is perhaps the world’s most compelling red grape among only one or two contenders for top spot. It delivers high-altitude freshness with full solar exposure contrasted by cold Alpine nights grown on volcanic rock, a multitude of special biotypes (about eight or nine in this vintage with more to come), and utterly pure Nebbiolo goodness raised in steel. The 2018 Boca is a spice rack of Nebbiolo biotypes (minimum of 85% Nebbiolo at Carlone) with 15% Vespolina. Both go through spontaneous fermentations on the skins (fully destemmed) for around a month for the Nebbiolo, and the Vespolina for 14-18 days. The wine is aged in 25hl Slovenian oak botti for eighteen months and then prepared for bottling. The different biotypes from all over Piemonte give this wine a great breadth of complexity, allowing it to hit a broad chromatic range of octaves from tenor to baritone to bass, all in wonderful harmony. However, the biotypes with bigger structure (mostly from the south, in Langhe) are reserved for this wine, while the more delicate ones are used for Adele. The 2017 Boca “Adele” prompted me to personally get in the game with Carlone by cellaring some wine in the US and Portugal. Boca Adele, named after Davide’s grandmother and his niece, is the higher toned of the two Bocas. It is made the same as the Boca appellation wine and is also a blend of 85% Nebbiolo and 15% Vespolina but is mostly composed of the picotener family of Nebbiolo biotypes which typically impart more elegance and softness to the wine than the clones from further south. Adele’s final blend is decided by blind tastings, but Davide and Cristiano tend to favor the picotener biotypes (particularly 423 and 415, which they describe as having wild fruit with a greater retro nasal finish and a stronger vibrancy that lingers longer on the palate). It’s a refreshing hallmark of some producers in Alto Piemonte, particularly many who work with Cristiano, that the top wines are often the most elegant and sometimes the lowest in alcohol, whereas many regions continue to place the “bigger” wines at the top of their hierarchy. Ioppa, Ghemme Ioppa continues their steady rise under the direction of enologist Cristiano Garella who was asked to work with the family in 2016 just prior to the unexpected passing of their visionary owner, Gianpiero Ioppa. Cristiano made an immediate impact and today we benefit from more than five years of his contribution to help them sculpt their wines. The 2021 Colline Novaresi Nebbiolo Rosé “Rusin” is one of the most consistent and refined, pure Nebbiolo rosés out of Piemonte, and their extremely pretty and upfront 2021 Colline Novaresi Nebbiolo makes these two incredibly good for by-the-glass programs, or when slightly chilled down for a warm summer night when Nebbiolo beckons you but the big hitters are too much. It’s often that I comment with many new arrivals that there are severe limitations, but I am happy to say that we have a good supply of these two wines that should last two or three months—perfect for the second half of the warm season. We have anticipated the arrival of Ioppa’s 2016 Ghemme for a long time. As mentioned, it was the first year it had Cristiano’s full attention and he and Andrea Ioppa applied some slight adjustments, the smallest of which can change things immensely and up the game. Prior to his arrival Ioppa already made very good and extremely ageable wines but their rusticity and unbridled tannins called for a decade in the cellar before release. Today, those rustic tannins are curbed earlier on, but still the Ioppas are clever enough to hold back their top wines for so long before release. We all know that 2016 was a banner year for Piemonte, especially for Nebbiolo, which makes up 85% of this blend with the remainder 15% Vespolina. After a mere four years of aging in large 25-30hl Slavonian botte, it spends an additional two in bottle prior to release. Their Ghemme cru sites, Santa Fe, composed of a deep clay and alluvial soil, and Balsina, a light mixture of clay with more sandy alluvium deposited by glaciers, are mixed together from a larger portion of younger vines, resulting in a brighter and more vigorous Ghemme than the two single-site bottlings. As always, Ioppa’s top wines need a good aeration before digging in to find their best moments. Lombardia Togni Rebaioli, Valcamonica A two-and-a-half-hour drive east of Alto Piemonte lies Erbanno, the village of the super “natural” winegrower, Enrico Togni (pictured above). One of my new favorites, Enrico dances to the beat of his own drum.  To say this, and to add that he’s“a true original” is perhaps a bit cliché, but for some who carry their full meaning, it’s perfectly fitting. A deep lover of nature and animals, he names his sheep and considers them his friends and visits them every morning and night. His verdant, terraced limestone vineyards tucked underneath sheer cliffs are lush with nature from the constant rain, filled with a cornucopia of vines, fruit and nut trees, potato rows, and grains with various garden spots scattered about. He believes that his other agricultural outputs are as important to him as his wines, explaining that as a farmer it’s silly that one should make only wine and no other products, and that once one focuses on a large grape production they move too far away from a healthy, natural ecosystem. But with Enrico and his mostly controlled chaos comes unexpected things, like the first vintage we imported with many labels on the wrong bottles—cases of three different wines with the wrong labels… I knew him personally at that point and the quantity of mislabeled bottles wasn’t enough to create a big problem, and it brought his Loki-esque touch straight to the market, even from afar. Enrico crafts some of the most delightfully fun and beautifully etched examples of lower alcohol wines with real substance—wines that glide smoothly on the palate but leave the mark of their terroir in the wake of each sip. First to discuss in the batch of new arrivals is his  2019 Vino Rosato “Martina.” Made entirely of Erbanno, a wine considered part of the Lambrusco family (an extremely large and not entirely related umbrella of grape varieties), there is no doubt that it’s one of the most captivating and uniquely complex rosés I have frequently imbibed. During a visit to Enrico’s cellar, some of our staff, JD Plotnick, Tyler Kavanaugh, and I were wowed by the 2020 rosé we tasted out of concrete. For Tyler, it made his top five list of the entire trip, and it made my top fifteen wines of my spring trip covered in last month’s newsletter. A rare rosé worth seeking.  Enrico also makes a regular red wine version of 100% Erbanno labeled as Vino Rosso “San Valentino.” The incoming vintage is 2020, a clearer and finer expression of Erbanno than the 2019. Dark in color but zippy and lightly textured, it's earthy, brambly and woodsy, with foraged dark berries and welcoming green notes. Erbanno, also known as Lambrusco Maestri, has thick dark skin and is very resistant to fungus, a built-in protection needed in this rainy part of the world. Interestingly, Enrico says that it rains more here in the Valcamonica during the summer than the winter. Last is Enrico’s 2020 Nebbiolo “1703.” I adore Nebbiolo—top billing in the world of grapes for me—and I especially love the ones that don’t knock me out with high alcohol. Enrico’s sits at 13.2%, and it’s the only one of its kind to be found commercially in his area. Enrico found some Nebbiolo in his father’s old vineyard and decided to propagate. Like us (and I mean you, too), he’s infatuated with the variety but also struggles with the rising alcohol levels and easy access to the good ones. He needed some for the house, so he planted. (At the time, he didn’t know what biotypes were but later learned they are lampia, michet and chiavennasca.) Fortunately for us, he has far more than he can drink with his family—including his partner, Cinzia, and their young daughter, Martina, who apparently has the best palate in the house! Valcamonica is a glacial valley with limestone cliffs on one side and volcanic hills on the other. Enrico’s terraced vineyards are on limestone, facing south. The style speaks to this rock type with its full but balanced and elegant mouthfeel, that matches the cooler climate and the green of the countryside. It’s as elegant and subtle as Nebbiolo comes, and highly expressive of its landscape with its cold stone, refreshing demeanor, and all the telltale notes of classic Nebbiolo.