Gamble Family Vineyards 2019 Rosé Napa Valley: Composed of 51% Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon with 43% Napa Valley Cabernet Franc, 4% Petit Verdot and 2% Merlot, all aged 5 months in stainless steel, this wine is ready to be enjoyed. Only 575 cases were made this year, so make haste to pick up some soon!
Read MoreWhatever format I receive a wine in, I always taste it in a tasting glass. After all, I mostly receive 750-ml bottles. (No, I don't take swigs from the bottle or employ a straw.) What was full-on astonishing to me was the difference in tasting this wine from my glass versus tasting it from the can. The perceptions were smashingly different. Going forward, I'll definitely be tasting wines packaged in cans both ways.
Read MoreJoachim Splichal collaborated with his sons, Nicolas and Stéphane, and the winemaking team of rosé specialist Bruno Tringali to craft the fourth vintage of this estate-grown and decidedly Provençal pink. It is a highly inviting and complex blend of Grenache 48%, Cinsault 35%, Rolle (a.k.a. Vermentino) 6%, Syrah 5%, Carignan 4% and Grenache Blanc 2%.
Read MoreThe last time I tasted the Khareba wines, I was standing in the winery's chilly cellars in the Alazani Valley on a boiling hot August afternoon. The winery and its almost 8 kilometers (five miles) of tunnels are carved into the Caucasus Mountains, like a bunker. I appreciated the inadvertent symbolism, as Russian troops just over the Georgian border recently had been seen patrolling. However, deep in the earth, the wines were cool and safe.
Read MorePerricone Guarnaccio Sicilia DOC 2017: I have been excited knowing this unusual red was waiting in my wine cellar to be tasted. (I thoroughly enjoyed tasting the 2016.) There's not a lot of Perricone out there, and there is even less of it bottled solo. A victim of phylloxera, it's remained mostly the mainstay grape of Ruby Marsala and the blending partner of varietally labeled Nero d'Avola. However, this bottling shows just how much we're missing when it's not showcased on its own.
Read MoreWe're connecting digitally more and more these days, and now we're often doing so over a glass of wine. Bubbly lifts the spirit, making this post on a wide array of sparkling wine styles rather timely. Here's to you and yours!
Read MoreAiming to work in lockstep with nature, the Lageder family pursues environmental responsibility with the same fervor that it pursues great winemaking. They farm biodynamically and work with their contract growers to try to transform partner vineyards into organically or biodynamically managed ecocenters. This means little if the wines don't deliver, but they do with every vintage.
Read MoreIn my experience, the FEL wines are made to emphasize freshness and varietal expression. The 2018 Chardonnay continues this theme. Blended from picking dates ranging just over a month from several vineyards planted with a wide variety of Heritage clones and Dijon selections, the wine is whole cluster pressed, fermented in neutral French oak barrels, limited in malolactic fermentation and aged on lies with no stirring for ten months.
Read MoreWinemaker Todd Graff has been making the wines at Frank Family Vineyards since 2003. The family calls him "our magician", which is a pretty endearing - as well as appropriate - term for a someone who orchestrates the production of about twenty very different wines every vintage. Not only does Todd utilize a wide array of varieties, he makes four sparkling wines, a port and a late harvest wine in addition to all of the still wines!
Read MoreThough this wine's name, Dinotte, translates to "at night", this is a wine that could be enjoyed any time of day OR night. Bursting with peak-of-ripeness berries and plums, this is enticingly delicious. his is so fun and so packed with primary fruit kissed by a lingering dark chocolate finish that it's hard to ask more than what it already offers! And, I'll double down on that statement given this wine's SRP of $10.99.
Read MoreIt’s hard to believe that this is the 30th Anniversary bottling of the Don Melchor Cabernet Sauvignon. I've had the pleasure of drinking it fairly often for about half its life span. Watching its development over time, I have no doubt that this vineyard site - despite being about a century old when this wine debuted - is only getting started!
Read MoreA chance to taste the Rebo grape? Yes, please! I love tasting wines made with relatively new grape varieties, especially when they are hard to find. Rebo is a crossing of Merlot and Teroldego created in 1948 in Trentino by Rebo Rigotti. (I might name a grape this cool after myself, too.) Through this deeply colored variety, the broad suppleness of Merlot meets the raving acidity of Teroldego.
Read MoreThe 2018 vintage in Germany gave whites and reds alike a patina of grace and elegance. These wines are ready for immediate - and unreserved - enjoyment.
Read MoreI have tasted an assortment of wines within the Tenuta Sant'Antonio range several times. I'm disappointed to say that, overall, these were rather lackluster. That's not to say that they aren't drinkable or pleasant enough. They mostly are.
The vintage is not the culprit as each of the four wines comes from its own growing season. The style - or at least the vinification and aging - is different for each wine, too. Moreover, I tasted these wines several months after they arrived at my door, so shipping was not the offender.
Read MoreI remember trying my first Sagrantinos back in the very early aughts, while working in a Manhattan wine store that sold exclusively Italian wines. These Sagrantino wines have evolved with time, taste and climate change. These wines are more approachable than I recall those early aughts wines to be, even though those Caprai wines were overall highly accessible vis-à-vis the otherwise fiercely grippy Sagrantino situation. Today, it is easy that taste that these two wines will provide pleasure now and in years far beyond. Moreover, their age-worthiness-to-price ratio is downright striking considering the price of peer-worthy Piedmontese and Tuscan gems that could age as long.
Read MoreJustin Vineyards & Winery - a pioneer in the Santa Lucia Mountains well before the Paso Robles AVA was even thought of - is known for its charasmatic, gusto-filled wines. Nearing its 40th anniversary celebration, the Justification and Cabernet Sauvignon Paso Robles, especially, show the gravitas of their legacy.
Read MoreThe Lilliano Chianti Classico wines are crushingly good in two senses: they are so delicious that they are drinkably crushable, and they give so much value-for-money that they are crushingly good values. This applies to all three DOCG levels: Chianti Classico, Riserva and Gran Selezione. Everyone likes a good value year-round, and everyone particularly appreciates one after the holiday season.
Read MoreMi Sueño Winery 2016 Syrah Napa Valley: This full-bodied, opaque wine carries its weight with style. This is hardly surprising for a Mi Sueño wine; they typically show very good balance. This Syrah is a textbook example of its Napa origin as well as its single grape variety.
Read MoreI recently tasted through several higher-end duos of varietal Paso comparisons. Between the different soils, climates, elevations, grapes and winemaking techniques, I couldn't come to conclusions on terroir distinctions via the selection below. However, I certainly can say that the wines are dependably good - as evidenced by the scores - and that there is a style for just about everyone.
Read MoreI've been visiting Guillaume for four or five years, and his wines are scintillating every time. He easily makes it into my 2018 Top 10 List. Guillaume's wines are made with as much TLC as his vines are tended. Guillaume finds the 2018 to be a "pretty vintage with good structure", adding there was no need to acidify. Moreover, he never has, not even in 2003. The wines below are listed in the order of tasting.
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