Cafes & Wineries

With just a quick glance at the bottle, you might think to yourself, “Oh, it’s just some random little white wine from somewhere in France.” After all, it’s just a Vin Blanc with some unfamiliar name on it.

But look a little closer, and you might start to get the idea that this isn’t just any wine. For starters, the bottle is somewhat unusual, resembling something you might see in Germany or Austria. Indeed, it would be easy to mistake this wine as coming from the Alsace region of France for that reason.

A slightly more studied glance at the label will reveal, however, that this wine hails not from Alsace, but from… Chateau-Grillet, which happens to be the name of both the winery, and the AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), or appellation, where the wine is made.

This place, the winery that provides its name, and the wine produced there are part of one of the more unique stories in French wine. Just ask Thomas Jefferson, who played hooky from his diplomatic duties while in France in order to make a detour to the winery and it’s 9 acres of vineyards and the little white wine that even then was regarded as one of the best in the world.

Just a few kilometers south of the village of Condrieu in the Northern Rhone valley lies the hamlet of Verin, backed up against some granite hills that have been worried at for millennia by the nearby Rhone river. Carved out of those hills, in steeply terraced rows, sits a small amphitheater of grape vines. People have been growing grapes in this spot as far back as Roman times. Presumably someone knows exactly when, but at some point someone figured out that the friable, sandy granitic soil was perfect for growing Viognier, the primary white grape of Condrieu, the wine region within which Chateau-Grillet sits.

Surrounded by the vineyards of Condrieu, Chateau-Grillet is its own separate appellation, and at 3.5 hectares, one of France’s smallest, and also one of the few that are farmed and owned by a single producer. Since the time that Jefferson visited in the late 18th Century, Chateau-Grillet has been owned by a single family whose modern day descendants, the Neyret-Gachet family, currently display their name on the label.

Chateau-Grillet is both Condrieu and it is not. Like the larger region in which it sits, the wine is made with 100% Viognier grapes, but both the qualities of the wine, as well as its making are different than its neighbors.

To start with, the estate has some pretty old vines, averaging about 40-years-old across the vineyard, some of which have been bearing fruit since before the Chateau-Grillet appellation was officially sanctioned in 1936. Like the rest of Condrieu, but perhaps even more thanks to vine age and very nutrient-poor soils, Chateau-Grillet’s yields are miniscule.

Needless to say, the fruit is harvested painstakingly by hand, and carefully destemmed and crushed. From there it is fermented and then aged in old oak casks for well over a year before being bottled. This cask aging is a significant departure from the relatively insignificant aging that most Condrieu gets, and is no doubt partially responsible for the character difference between Chateau-Grillet and those wines. Chateau-Grillet does not have the explosive intense aromatics of Condrieu, nor quite the intense honeyed fruit flavors. More reserved in character, Chateau-Grillet also tends to be longer lived than its neighbors.

Only roughly 2000 cases of wine are produced each year, to a demand that far outstrips the estate’s supply. It is one of those wines slavishly cherished by those who love the white wines of the Rhone, though thankfully with less fanfare and cash than the red wines of the region. Consequently it is not impossible to find, nor prohibitively expensive to buy, considering it is one of the wine world’s treasures.

Tasting Notes:
Pal gold in the glass, this wine has an electrifying smell of lemon… cocaine. Something ethereal and intense and distinctly lemony, but not exactly of this world, so to speak. On the palate the wine has a gorgeous, silky, texture and the viscous weight that often accompanies Viognier. The magic of this wine comes from its fantastic balance between a creamy lemon curd and lemongrass-scented richness, and a bright crystalline acidity that hang in a taut balance that resonates through a long finish. This interplay between fruit and mineral, lushness and crispness simply just makes you want to drink more, and more, and more. Which I highly recommend you do.

Food Pairing:
This wine will match an incredible array of foods, from shellfish to starch to salads. I drank this recently with cold antipasti plates and found it a stunning match with grilled octopus salad.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $85

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

There are two worlds of California Chardonnay drinkers in this country. There are those who continue to order their favorite white wine whenever they go out to dinner, and are collectively responsible for making California Chardonnay the most consumed wine variety in the country each year. And then there are those who consider themselves wine lovers, critics, and geeks, and the consensus in recent years seems to be that there are few California Chardonnays worth paying attention to. Put more bluntly, it’s getting easier and easier to find someone who hates California Chardonnay these days.

I’ve read several major wine columns in the past year decrying the sorry state of California Chardonnay, from the Wall Street Journal to the Chicago Tribune. And while I don’t necessarily fully agree that the grape has lost its way, there certainly are a lot of uninspired Chardonnays being made in the state, even among those who are trying to buck the past excesses of thick buttery oak. It’s a tough time to be a bottle of Chardonnay over $20 in this country, and an even tougher time to be a winery that makes several of them.

Amidst, and despite all of this, Steve MacRostie has brought a remarkable consistency and vision to more than two decades of making Chardonnay under his label MacRostie Winery and Vineyards. Even though Steve has recently handed over winemaking duties to Kevin Holt, MacRostie Chardonnays are still excellent reminders of why California Chardonnay can’t be written off as a failed experiment.

MacRostie got his start in the wine business after graduating from the U.C. Davis Enology program in 1974. Originally planning to be a doctor, a stint in the Army that took him through Europe exposed MacRostie to a world of food and wine that he hadn’t known existed, and he was hooked and returned home with dreams of being a winemaker. MacRostie spent 12 years starting and working at Hacienda Vineyards before striking out on his own in 1987 to start MacRostie Vineyards, which he focused on making wines from the region that had recently become known as Carneros.

For the next decade, MacRostie quietly bought small lots of fruit from some of the region’s top growers, which he made into excellent bottlings of Merlot, Pinot Noir, and the Chardonnay for which he rightfully became well-known.

In 1997, MacRostie forged a partnership with ranchers Nancy and Tony Lilly to develop a piece of their property in the Southern mountains of Sonoma county known as Wildcat Mountain. From this sustainably farmed vineyard MacRostie has been making Pinot Noir, Syrah, as well as this particular Chardonnay.

The grapes for this wine were pressed as whole clusters, and then after settling off the sediments, the juice was put into barrels for fermentation. The barrel regime, as always at MacRostie, consisted of only about 25% new French oak, with the rest a mix of used French and Hungarian oak. The wine aged for about 10 months in those barrels before bottling.

In addition to this vineyard designate, MacRostie makes a Carneros Chardonnay, a couple of Pinots, a Cabernet, a Merlot, and a Syrah.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Light yellow-gold in the glass , this wine smells beautifully of wet stones and cold cream. In the mouth it is unusually silky on the tongue with crisp, clean flavors of cold cream, lemon pastry cream, and wet stone. Impeccably balanced, seductive and subtle, the wine lingers in a gradually deepening finish. Outstanding and a great example of the form.

Food Pairing:
I’d love to drink this wine with a freshly made chicken pot pie from scratch.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $35

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Many of the world’s greatest wines are also the most unlikely. Unlikely because most sane, rational, educated, and professional winemakers wouldn’t be caught dead making wine in some of the strange ways and places that yield the truly exciting.

It takes a strong vision, or as some might suggest, a special breed of insanity to break all the rules of modern winemaking and winegrowing, but those who break such rules often follow their passions across the border without a moment’s thought to the uncharted territory they are exploring.

High on the slopes of one of the world’s most active volcanoes, Frank Cornelissen nurtures a few acres of vines to produce some truly astounding wines that tend to leave wine lovers shaking their heads in either respectful awe or confused disgust.

I’m in the first camp. Conelissen is one of the world’s greatest iconoclastic winemakers.

Born in Belgium, Cornelissen fell in love with wine as a young man, and eventually began a career as a wine sales representative that led him to the single defining moment of his life: his first taste of a wine made from grapes grown on Sicily’s Mount Etna. I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting Cornelissen, so I haven′t had a chance to ask him what he tasted in that fateful sip, but presumably, he tasted a terroir that spoke to him in a way that no other had before. Within little more than a year of that taste of wine, despite lacking any formal training, he had become a winemaker.

At first he rented some vineyards on the slopes of the volcano, but soon thereafter (2001), he purchased several small vineyard plots and other sections of land which he would plant himself. One of these plots was what may be one of the world’s most unique vineyards — a roughly three-acre plot of own-rooted vines that pre-date the Phylloxera epidemic that wiped out most of Europe’s vineyards. These near 140-year-old vines sit at about 3000 feet of elevation on the flank of Mount Etna. In the winter, they are buried under more than six feet of snow. During the summer they sweat through 100+ degree days, followed by nights that can dip down to below fifty degrees. The scraggly, head-pruned vines (using no trellises or supports for the vines) sit low to the ground and sink their roots through the shallow soil into nearly solid volcanic rock. Rock that was not so long ago, and may become any day again in the future, molten lava. Many of these vines yield only a single bunch of tiny berries, resulting in yields per acre that so miniscule as to be nearly commercially non viable.

Cornelissen’s farming methods make even biodynamic winegrowing seem unnatural. He adds nothing to his vineyards. No compost, no manure, no water, no copper, no sulfur, no herbicides, nothing. In between his rows and blocks of vineyards he has planted native fruit and nut trees, buckwheat, and wildflowers. Every vine is carefully pruned and managed throughout the growing season, and harvest is done on a vine by vine level, resulting in many multiple passes through the vineyards over the span of days.

Eschewing any and all additions to his wine, including sulfur even at bottling, Cornelissen practices a form of “natural” winemaking in the extreme. The wines are fermented with ambient yeasts either in big plastic tubs in his front yard, or in buried terra cotta amphorae in the style of Josko Gravner from Friuli. The white wines (really orange) macerate for weeks, even months, on their skins, as do, in some cases, the reds as well. The wines are bottled without fining, filtration, or in some cases, even racking of any kind. As a result both reds and whites have a lot of beautiful, fine sediment, and some are just downright cloudy.

This particular wine is a blend of the varieties Grecanico Dorato, Coda di Volpe, Carricante and Cataratto. The grapes were mostly destemmed and crushed by foot. The juice stayed in contact with the skins for some months (I’m unclear how many) in plastic tubs before being transferred to tank for about five months before being bottled, without once being treated with sulfur dioxide.

Because of this lack of sulfur, Cornelissen’s wines are quite delicate, and anecdotally there seems to be a lot of bottle variation among the wines. To avoid such issues, Cornelissen suggests the wines always be stored and transported below 60 degrees fahrenheit.

Like many other orange wines, this one benefits greatly from at least a day’s worth of decanting in advance of drinking.

Tasting Notes:
Cloudy orange in the glass with noticeable clumps of sediment, this wine has a nearly otherworldly nose of orange oil, roasted nuts, ranier cherries, and pine sap. On the palate it has a wonderful texture that includes the light powdery quality of the sediment. Searing acidity that mellows as the wine opens to the air makes lively flavors of sarsaparilla, cloves, and a woody pulpy quality that morphs into a coffee-with-milk-flavor in the finish. This utterly compelling wine may freak some people out, but that’s OK, there will be more for the rest of us who know a great wine when we taste it.

Food Pairing:
I drank this wine with a good friend and a meal of basque specialties, and found the wine a fantastic accompaniment to everything from sardines in olive oil to oxtail croquettes.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $30

Unfortunately these wines can be tough to find. My primary source has been Garagiste in Seattle. This particular wine is not for sale on the internet, but a more recent vintage is available. Note that the wine’s name is sometimes spelled Monjebel, which was the original spelling in the first couple of vintages.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Many of the world’s greatest wines are also the most unlikely. Unlikely because most sane, rational, educated, and professional winemakers wouldn’t be caught dead making wine in some of the strange ways and places that yield the truly exciting.

It takes a strong vision, or as some might suggest, a special breed of insanity to break all the rules of modern winemaking and winegrowing, but those who break such rules often follow their passions across the border without a moment’s thought to the uncharted territory they are exploring.

High on the slopes of one of the world’s most active volcanoes, Frank Cornelissen nurtures a few acres of vines to produce some truly astounding wines that tend to leave wine lovers shaking their heads in either respectful awe or confused disgust.

I’m in the first camp. Cornelissen is one of the world’s greatest iconoclastic winemakers.

Born in Belgium, Cornelissen fell in love with wine as a young man, and eventually began a career as a wine sales representative that led him to the single defining moment of his life: his first taste of a wine made from grapes grown on Sicily’s Mount Etna. I′ve not had the pleasure of meeting Cornelissen, so I haven′t had a chance to ask him what he tasted in that fateful sip, but presumably, he tasted a terroir that spoke to him in a way that no other had before. Within little more than a year of that taste of wine, despite lacking any formal training, he had become a winemaker.

At first he rented some vineyards on the slopes of the volcano, but soon thereafter (2001), he purchased several small vineyard plots and other sections of land which he would plant himself. One of these plots may be one of the world’s most unique vineyards — a roughly three-acre plot of own-rooted vines that pre-date the Phylloxera epidemic that wiped out most of Europe’s vineyards. These near 140-year-old vines sit at about 3000 feet of elevation on the flank of Mount Etna. In the winter, they are buried under more than six feet of snow. During the summer they sweat through 100+ degree days, followed by nights that can dip down to below fifty degrees. The scraggly, head-pruned vines (using no trellises or supports for the vines) sit low to the ground and sink their roots through the shallow soil into nearly solid volcanic rock. Rock that was not so long ago, and may become any day again in the future, molten lava. Many of these vines yield only a single bunch of tiny berries, resulting in yields per acre so miniscule as to be nearly commercially non viable.

Cornelissen’s farming methods make even biodynamic winegrowing seem unnatural. He adds nothing to his vineyards. No compost, no manure, no water, no copper, no sulfur, no herbicides, nothing. In between his rows and blocks of vineyards he has planted native fruit and nut trees, buckwheat, and wildflowers. Every vine is carefully pruned and managed throughout the growing season, and harvest is done on a vine by vine level, resulting in many multiple passes through the vineyards over the span of days.

Eschewing any and all additions to his wine, including sulfur even at bottling, Cornelissen practices a form of “natural” winemaking in the extreme. The wines are fermented with ambient yeasts either in big plastic tubs in his front yard, or in buried terra cotta amphorae in the style of Josko Gravner from Friuli. The white wines (really orange) macerate for weeks, even months, on their skins, as do, in some cases, the reds as well. The wines are bottled without fining, filtration, or in some cases, even racking of any kind. As a result both reds and whites have a lot of beautiful, fine sediment, and some are just downright cloudy.

This particular wine is a blend of the varieties Grecanico Dorato, Coda di Volpe, Carricante and Cataratto. The grapes were mostly destemmed and crushed by foot. The juice stayed in contact with the skins for some months (I′m unclear how many) in plastic tubs before being transferred to tank for about five months before being bottled, without once being treated with sulfur dioxide.

Because of this lack of sulfur, Cornelissen’s wines are quite delicate, and anecdotally there seems to be a lot of bottle variation among the wines. To avoid such issues, Cornelissen suggests the wines always be stored and transported below 60 degrees fahrenheit.

Like many other orange wines, this one benefits greatly from at least a day’s worth of decanting in advance of drinking.

Tasting Notes:
Cloudy orange in the glass with noticeable clumps of sediment, this wine has a nearly otherworldly nose of orange oil, roasted nuts, ranier cherries, and pine sap. On the palate it has a wonderful texture that includes the light powdery quality of the sediment. Searing acidity that mellows as the wine opens to the air makes lively flavors of sarsaparilla, cloves, and a woody pulpy quality that morphs into a coffee-with-milk-flavor in the finish. This utterly compelling wine may freak some people out, but that’s OK, there will be more for the rest of us who know a great wine when we taste it.

Food Pairing:
I drank this wine with a good friend and a meal of basque specialties, and found the wine a fantastic accompaniment to everything from sardines in olive oil to oxtail croquettes.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $30

Unfortunately these wines can be tough to find. My primary source has been Garagiste in Seattle. This particular wine is not for sale on the internet, but a more recent vintage is available. Note that the wine’s name is sometimes spelled Monjebel, which was the original spelling in the first couple of vintages.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Visitors to Napa Valley, even those on their first trip, have a hard time missing the Grgich Hills winery, which sits prominently on the west side of Highway 29, its flower beds almost pushed right up against the edge of the blacktop.

Of course, when the winery was established in the late 1970s there was a lot less traffic on that same highway, and founder Miljenko “Mike” Grgich was a young man. But despite his youth, this Croatian-born immigrant did not lack for experience or acclaim. Indeed, it was partly based on his success as the winemaker for the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay which performed so well at the famous 1976 Paris Tasting that Grgich, his friend Austin Hills, and Austin’s sister Mary Lee Strebl chose to begin what has become one of Napa’s most frequented wineries.

Grgich Hills attracts a lot of visitors by virtue of its location on the beaten path, so to speak, but even if it were tucked away in some cranny of the valley, there would likely be a steady stream of traffic to its doors simply for its reputation as a consistent producer of well-priced wines of good to excellent quality.

Increasingly the winery draws traffic for another reason: its recent move to 100% estate grown, biodynamic fruit, processed in a facility run 100% on solar power. Grgich, who is now in his 80’s but still makes every wine and oversees operations at the winery, along with his nephew Ivo Jeramaz, who most actively manages the vineyards, were some of Napa’s earliest converts to Biodynamics, the increasingly popular farming regimen which is based on the teachings of Rudolph Steiner. Though the initial move to Biodynamics was simply a decision based on the assessment that it produced higher quality fruit, Grgich Hills has embraced its emphasis on sustainability, a move which pays dividends of many kinds, including the ability to market themselves as such, to the pleasure of a growing population eco-conscious consumers.

Like many proponents of Biodynamics, Jeramaz and Grgich maintain with incontestable conviction that they are making better wine as a result, and that’s pretty hard to argue with, no matter what misgivings I have about some aspects of the regimen. These guys, along with other prominent Biodynamic winemakers, certainly know “better″ wine when they see it.

Now in its 30th year, Grgich Hills makes a well known and widely regarded Chardonnay, a Merlot,, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, this Sauvignon Blanc, and in some vintages, a dessert wine that blends Chardonnay and Riesling. Total production currently sits at slightly less than 70,000 cases, of which this wine, which is called Fumé Blanc in the tradition established by Robert Mondavi, makes up about 12,000 cases.

In an interesting side note, in recent years Grgich has also started a winery back in Croatia, which forms a base for his prominent role in helping to promote the quality and long tradition of the region’s winemaking.

Despite being produced in substantial quantities, this wine is made in very old-school fashion, and quite differently than most Sauvignon Blancs in Napa. The fruit comes from the estate’s cool-climate, Biodynamically-farmed vineyards in Carneros and American Canyon. After sorting and destemming, the fruit is fermented in a combination of neutral French oak barrels, and huge 900 liter French oak tanks. After fermentation it is transferred to neutral oak barrels where it ages for about 8 months before bottling.

The results of both excellent fruit sources as well as fermentation and aging in neutral oak make this wine a wonderful balance between the crisp qualities that make Sauvignon Blanc so wonderful, along with some deeper substance that makes the wine command some attention. I’ve had many, many vintages of this wine, and I believe this to be the best I’ve tasted.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Light gold in the glass with hints of chartreuse, this wine smells of tart unripe apples and citrus zest. In the mouth it is explosively zingy, with crackling acidity and bright pink grapefruit, lemon zest, and unripe apple flavors that linger in a nice finish. Dynamic and refreshing. One of the better examples of the form from Napa.

Food Pairing:
A great food wine! I’d love to drink this wine with steamed mussels in a garlic, bacon, shallot and white wine broth.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $25

This wine would ordinarily have been released by now, but with the economy as it is, it hasn′t hit the shelves yet. The winery is no doubt waiting to let some of the remaining 2007s sell. Keep an eye out for it.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

There are more legends, stories, fairytales, and fables than anyone could count that all involve some guy up on a mountainside somewhere. Sometimes a hermit, sometimes a wizard, sometimes a troll — sometimes just an old man who went to sleep under a tree for a long, long time. No matter what the story, there’s always something a little different about the guy on the mountain, something that is both scary and alluring at the same time.

Stu Smith might be living out yet another version of one of these tales. The fact that Stu sports a big gray and white beard under a wizened and kindly face helps to reinforce the possibility that he might belong in some ancient tale. His start as a winemaker certainly sounds like it belongs in a storybook somewhere: a lone hiker in the early Seventies, stomping through the forests on the mountainside above St. Helena discovers the remains of ancient vineyards and is struck then and there by inspiration.

In deciding to purchase that long forgotten parcel of land, and turn it again into a vineyard, Smith began a thirty-five year odyssey as a pioneer, an iconoclast, and what looks to be a permanent fixture on Napa’s Spring Mountain. The venture, begun in 1973 with money from family and friends, is now one of the most established, and perhaps most under-appreciated wineries in the Spring Mountain District.

If you were going to start a Napa winery, even back in the Seventies, what would be the first kind of grape you’d plant? Certainly not Riesling. Yet that was the very first grape that Smith planted. Smith Madrone winery has produced one ever since, and even more surprisingly, especially to those unfamiliar with the winery, it’s quite good. To those who have known about Smith Madrone for some time, this small production Riesling is one of Napa’s best kept secrets.

Over the years, the winery has grown to a modest thirty or so acres, and after as many years in production, only makes around 4000 cases of wine, split between Cabernet, Chardonnay, and Riesling. Smith, along with his brother, and occasionally his two sons, like to keep things manageable for a small family who choose to do a surprising number of things by hand.

The winery facility was built using stones and lumber from the property. As the winery was gradually built over the years, Smith and his brother Charles discovered the remains of rock walls, caves, and old carriage roads created by the farmers who last ran the vineyards on the site, sometime before the turn of the century. Some evidence of the former tenants was not so hard to notice — the property boasts a carefully planted line of 22 olive trees, most of which are over 100 years old.

Perhaps it was inspiration from the 19th century vintners whose traces could still be seen on the land, or perhaps it is the only way Smith could ever have operated, but the winery operates very much on the model of small European cellars. From the small volume of low yield fruit that is hand harvested each year, to barrel fermentation in small lots, Smith Madrone wines are hand-crafted from start to finish.

The winery’s Riesling is grown like its other varieties, in dry-farmed hillside vineyards of modest to considerable age. The average age among the Riesling vines is about 32 years. The naturally small yields produce enough fruit for only about 600 cases of wine per year.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Light gold in the glass, this wine smells of wet limestone, white flowers, and fresh pears. Bright and cheery in the mouth it tastes of pears, wet stones, and unripe apples. Nicely balanced with excellent acidity, incredibly easy to drink and delicious, the wine finishes with a hint of candle wax. Certainly one of my favorite Rieslings made in this country.

Food Pairing:
Though it does not taste sweet, the wine has a tiny bit of residual sugar that will make it an excellent match for intense, even spicy flavors. I had some Indonesian corn fritters today for lunch with a chili garlic sauce that would have been an interesting combination.

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $25

This wine is available for purchase on the internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

As you know, I think wine reviews should be more than just tasting notes and scores. They should be the stories of the people and the places behind the wines. While the people quite often bring the most life to the story of a wine, sometimes the place, even the vineyard itself, can be the most prominent character in the drama.

In the case of this wine, the story consists of the inextricable link between a family and a vineyard. By most accounts, the Prüm family has owned vineyards in and around the town of Wehlen in Germany’s Mosel river valley since the early 12th century, and they have lived in the area even longer. I’m not entirely sure when the Prüm name first appeared on a wine bottle, but the name became famous in conjunction with wine when in 1846 Jodocus Prüm painted a sundial on the face of a rocky outcrop in the center of a steeply sloping vineyard that would henceforth be known as the Wehlen Sundial vineyard, or Wehlener Sonnenuhr.

Today such an act might be seen as anything from artistic to prankish, but in those days it was merely pragmatic - the equivalent of erecting a clock in the town square. The winegrowers of the region needed a way to keep track of time, and the steep face of the vineyard seemed as good a place as any.

Jodocus Prüm’s health began to fail in the late 1800’s and so he began to split up his lands among his seven children, several of which started their own wineries. The Prüm family is to German wine what the Hearst family is to publishing in the United States. Today there are at least seven wineries that bear the Prüm name several generations later: including J.J. Prüm, Alfred Prüm, Dr. F. Weins-Prüm, Jos. Christoffel Jr. (formerly Christoffel-Prüm), Studert-Prüm, Weingut Steffen Prüm, and S.A. Prüm. Several more Prüm intermarriages and mergers are also responsible for several more prominent names in German wine, including Dr. Loosen.

Many of these scions of Jodocus Prüm still make wine in and around Wehlen, and several continue to own portions of the famous Wehlener Sonnenuhr vineyard (which at last count was parceled out into 200 different separately owned holdings).

One of the largest parcels in Wehlener Sonnenuhr is owned by the S.A Prüm estate, which has been continuously operated by descendants of Jodocus Prüm, since his eldest son Sebastian Alois Prüm began his own winery with his portion of the vineyards bequeathed by his father.

S.A. Prüm has been run for the last 33 years by Raimund Prüm, Sebastian’s grandson, and more recently Raimund’s daughter Saskia Andrea. The winery continues to produce Rieslings from their portion of the Sonnenuhr vineyard, as well as other nearby vineyards totaling about 40 acres.

Grown on the region’s decomposed blue slate soils, at incredibly steep inclines, the own-rooted (non-grafted) Riesling vines in the Wehlener Sonnenuhr average 80 years of age. The non-irrigated vines are, for all intents and purposes, grown organically, though the estate is not certified.

Grapes are meticulously hand harvested and destemmed before being gently crushed into steel tanks where they fully ferment at their own pace before being moved into 50-year-old, 1000-liter oak casks where they age until bottling.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Palest gold in the glass, this wine has a heady nose of candle wax, candied tangerine zest, and honeysuckle aromas. In the mouth it is soft and lovely, with less acidity than I would expect (or desire), but nice flavors of beeswax, honeysuckle, ripe pears, and hints of lychee on the finish. Almost completely dry, with a touch of sugar, it is delicate and delicious.

Food Pairing:
Chilled down, this would be a lovely wine to drink with some homemade macaroni and cheese (which I happen to be craving at the moment — go figure).

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $23

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

When it comes to winemaking there’s New World, and there’s Old World. There’s new school, and of course, there’s old school. And then there are a select few people and wines who make the old school winemakers look like young tykes with newfangled toys.

In a world where “traditional” or “natural” winemaking has now become a self imposed designation of the most extreme proponents of biodynamic and non-interventionalist winemaking, Josko Gravner puts them all to shame. These people proclaim how in touch they are with the “traditional” methods of winemaking, but they’re still using what Gravner would call modern technology: wooden barrels. The iconoclastic Gravner eschews wines in wood, in favor of the original stuff: wines aged in huge clay amphorae sealed with beeswax and buried in the ground.

Gravner, a small winery near Oslavia in Northern Italy, straddles two appellations: Fruili and Venezia Giulia. It is run by the occasionally enigmatic and always driven Josko Gravner, who has been making wines in the same spot for more than thirty years.

While Gravner may have stuck to his beloved Fruili region for this long, he has not been making wine the same way for all that time. Indeed, at one time he was a celebrated “modernist” who brought new French Oak barrels into a region whose white wines were always made in steel. But in what can only be described as an inspired drive to explore all the possibilities for making the best wines he possibly could, he eventually started using a combination of old oak barrels and terra cotta amphorae, a winemaking vessel that was believed to be pioneered by the Georgians between four and five thousand years prior.

The Gravner estate sits on about 45 acres of land straddling the Italy Slovenia border, and grows Ribolla, Riesling Italico, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Pignolo, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Ribolla and Pignolo stand out of that list as varietals that most Americans, indeed, most people in general have never heard of. Ribolla Gialla, as this green skinned white varietal is also known, is grown only in this region of Italy (even rarely at that) and is mentioned in municipal documents from the area dating back to before the 13th century. Pignolo is also a native variety to the region, which was cultivated by the local monasteries in the region starting in the 17th century.

Since the 2001 vintage, Gravner has decided to make his wines exclusively in amphorae, leaving oak behind, just as he left industrial yeasts, sulfur, and even temperature controlled fermentation behind years before. Of all the winemakers I have ever heard of, Gravner seems to have one of the likeliest claims on the label “non-interventionalist” but he will shrug off such a label if he hears it, insisting that all winemaking is intervention in a natural process that leads to vinegar. Gravner has deliberately not adopted the principles of organic or biodynamic winemaking, instead opting to just do things “his way.”

If his way produces wine like this, then I’m more than content to sit back and let him work. This is his first vintage of Ribolla made entirely in amphorae, and tasting the way it does, it’s not hard to understand why Gravner has given up wood entirely. Gravner’s formula for this wine involves an incredible amount of extended skin contact, sometimes more than six months, which produces the incredibly gorgeous and distinctive orange color of this wine, not to mention its heady aromatics and tannic structure.

I’ve been tasting Gravner wines for two or three years, and have had wines dating back to 1991. I have come to appreciate them as literally some of the best wines made on the planet, and unfortunately, so have some other people, resulting in rapidly climbing prices for these wines. What you used to be able to get for $40 you will now pay $90 for. Even at these dramatically higher prices, there’s no doubt in my mind that these wines are worth it.

Tasting Notes:
A distinct and vibrant medium orange color in the glass, this wine smells of something otherworldly — a concoction of roasted nuts, bee pollen, orange blossom honey, and an elusive floral aroma. In the mouth the wine is unusually silky, without being heavy on the tongue. Awash with a myriad of flavors ranging from wet dirt to orange creamsicle, tangerine zest, and pine sap, this wine is a technicolor dreamcoat of flavors that all but forces a smile. Despite being made from white grapes, the wine has a distinct, light tannic structure that gives it a muscular quality. Excellent acidity and a minutes-long finish seal the bargain. Outstanding.

Food Pairing:
Because of the tannic structure of this wine, it will actually pair well with meats, and the acidity means it’s delightful for lighter dishes as well. In my experience it does exceptionally well with anything that has a little bit of a salty tang to it. Wood grilled sardines anyone?

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $90

This wine can be purchased on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Despite all kinds of advice to the contrary, we continue to judge our books and our wines by the label. As humans we find it quite hard to turn off the part of our brains that rushes to judgment based on the surface of things.

Presumably our lightning-quick opinions were advantageous to us at some point in evolutionary history, to the point that our first impressions are often so powerful we can’t move past them. From racial stereotypes to celebrity obsession, we’re often captives to our own psychology, whether we like it or not.

So tell me, what comes to mind when you hear the phrase “celebrity wine”? My head immediately reconfigures into a mode of skepticism. I′d like to think this is because I′ve actually had a number of wines that bear the names (or the backing) of a number of Hollywood movie stars, musical icons, and sports legends, and on the whole I haven’t been impressed. But I′m sure not all that skepticism is borne out of true reflection. Much of it probably lives in the same zone of my brain as the disdain I carry for the latest commercial antics of any number of stars who attach their name to something as a means of brand extension and bankruptcy prevention.

This wine is a doubly refreshing antidote to the commercial cult of celebrity and all of its (usual) mediocrity — it tastes great, it’s not yet another Cabernet with a celebrity name on it, and it’s not just a movie star wine, it’s a porn star wine.

Savanna Samson is the adult film persona of Natalie Ontiveros, who grew up in Rochester, New York, in a family of five sisters with Italian roots. Her career in the adult world started as dancer at the Scores gentlemen’s club in New York, where she was “discovered” by Howard Stern.

Perhaps by virtue of her Italian roots, Samson always had an interest in and passion for wine, but as her fortunes grew in the porn business, she began spending her spare time traveling around Europe tasting wine, and even began dreaming of owning a vineyard. In the course of her travels around Italy, she met Roberto Cipresso, one of the country’s most prominent consulting winemakers.

Perhaps most famous as the partner and winemaker of the superstar La Fiorita estate in Montalcino that rocketed to prominence in the late 90′s, Roberto Cipresso first made a name for himself making Brunello wines for the likes of Poggio Antico and Ciacci Piccolomini. Since then he has made wine in most of Italy’s major wine regions including Veneto, Friuli, Piemonte, Toscana, Marche, Sicilia and Sardinia as well as further abroad in places like Croatia, Spain and Argentina.

Around about the time that Samson encountered him, Cipresso had been laying the groundwork for a commercial venture for making private label wine for various customers using the vast network of growers he had come to know over the course of his career. The enterprising winemaker already made private label wine for the Vatican, so when Samson asked about getting her own wine, apparently it was an easy decision — no irony involved.

The two began with a red, named “Sogno Uno” or “Dream #1″ which was a blend of several red grapes, made to Savanna’s taste (rather than to any specific regional regulations). After a surprising commercial success, partially fueled by a 90-91 rating from Robert Parker, the two released the first vintage of this wine, Sogno Due. More wines are in the works.

Sogno Due is 100% Falanghina grown near Capri in Italy’s Campania wine region. Falanghina is one of Italy’s ancient indigenous grape varieties, and possibly one of its most storied, as it is believed to possibly have been used to make Falernian, a world famous wine popular in Roman times. Today Falanghina is being used to produce very tasty aromatic white wines like this one.

This wine is made from vines that average between 70 and 80 years of age. It is carefully fermented at low temperatures in steel, and I do not believe it sees any oak before bottling. 400 cases were made.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Pale gold in the glass, with a bright mineral nose of Asian pears and wet stones, this wine tastes of raw quince, old paper, and the soft tones of vanilla. Smooth and silky on the palate, with a lightly smoky incense quality on the finish, this is a classic southern Italian white wine, delicious in its simplicity.

Food Pairing:
Properly chilled, this wine would be a lovely accompaniment to various antipasti or fritto misto.

Overall Score: between 8.5 and 9

How Much?: $18

This wine can be purchased on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

For anyone who drinks Alsatian wines on a regular basis, let alone someone who considers themselves a fan or an aficionado of the unique wines from this narrow slice of northeastern France, it’s pretty much impossible to have a discussion about the area without the name Zind-Humbrecht coming up. While everyone is reticent to pronounce any one winery “the best” no matter which region you′re talking about, many people would be hard pressed to find a reason why you couldn’t say that Zind-Humbrecht has the position fairly well covered for Alsace.

The Humbrecht family has a long history in winemaking, stretching back to 1620 or thereabouts, but in terms of the current domaine, this father and son operation has been in existence since 1959 when the marriage of the Zind and Humbrecht families brought together a passion for winemaking and some of the best land in Alsace under one roof. Leonard Humbrecht and his son Olivier (notable for being France’s first Master of Wine and ) painstakingly create a staggering number and variety of wines of exceptional quality from their various Grand Cru and name designated vineyards.

The family has about 70 acres under cultivation, split among dozens of small vineyards which they have acquired over the years, and from this land they produce somewhere between 13,000 and 16,000 cases of wine each year. Zind Humbrecht keeps yields in these vineyards extremely low, sometimes half as much as the legally permissible tonnage for the appellation. This is helped by the fact that many of their vineyards are very difficult to work except by hand, having steep rocky slopes that permit only humans and horses to pass. The domaine employs more than twenty workers to manage the harvest, as well as to manage their growing operation which is fully biodynamic. Olivier Humbrecht was for a time (not sure if he still is) the president of the S.I.V.C.B.D (sparing you the acronym, a prominent organization of biodynamic producers in France).

This wine is a single vineyard designate from the Brand vineyard, one of the few vineyards of the region that holds the Grand Cru designation, and one of the most famous sites for growing Riesling that is not in Germany or Austria. Brand, and its neighbor Clos Jebsal (a stellar Pinot Gris vineyard also owned by Zind-Humbrecht), occupy one of the warmest sites in Alsace, a protected amphitheater that faces south-southeast and soaks up the sun. The Brand vineyard is planted to both Pinot Gris and Riesling and spreads upwards to the crest of the hill on fractured granite.

The fact that this vineyard collects the heat and sun most likely assisted greatly with ensuring the quality of this wine in the 1994 vintage, which was, as winemakers like to say “mixed” in Alsace. This is code for: not so great. Many producers had a hard time getting their Riesling ripe. The hallmark of a truly great winemaker seems to be the ability to produce a stellar wine in even the most difficult of conditions, and Olivier Humbrecht most certainly seems to have done so here.

The grapes for this wine were picked carefully by hand, totally destemmed, and lightly crushed in small amounts. Fermentation took place in large oak barrels (foudres) using native yeasts, with extended contact to the lees (the sediments left after crushing), and was allowed to ferment until it stopped naturally, somewhere after about 3 or 4 months. It was bottled without filtering or fining of any kind.

On occasion, Zind-Humbrecht also makes a late harvest version of this wine, which is quite extraordinary.

Tasting Notes:
A light amber color in the glass, this wine has a miraculous nose that vibrates like a plucked violin string between the pungency of paraffin and diesel fuel on the one hand and orange zest and candied papaya on the other. In the mouth the wine is beautifully satin in texture, quite sensuous on the tongue, with incredible balance and poise. The paraffin continues in the flavor profile though more like a side note to the explosive lemon zest, kumquat, and crystalline mineral qualities that make up the core of this delightful wine. The endless finish is spectacular.

Food Pairing:
I often find myself thinking that truly great Rieslings like this one should be drunk on their own, accompanied by little more than silent contemplation. However, I wouldn’t mind nibbling on some pate? on toasted brioche with this wine in hand.

Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10

How Much?: Current vintages are around $80, but the 1994 now sells for anywhere between $90 and $110 if you can find it.

It can be difficult to find the 1994 vintage online, but other vintages can be purchased on the Internet.

Original post by beatrice.russo