Spring Uploaded
Spring may now be in the air. A little bit of cloud cover is OK, even a little bit of rain but fingers crossed winter may be over. In anticipation of that we loaded up on some pretty good juice for the weekend. Take a look:
Villa di Corlo Lambrusco – the winery is a beautiful 16th Century villa with about 25 hectares planted to making only Lambrusco – and they don’t make a lot of it either. Many enthusiasts are familiar with the sweet lambruscos that dominate discount store shelves, but this is serious stuff. First off, it’s dry. The color is real, dark ruby red, almost garnet, the frizante is produced by interrupting the fermentation process by lowering the temperature in the steel tanks to around 32 degrees F, capturing the CO2 that is given off and then restarting the fermentation process – hence the really smooth frothy bubbles. It’s delicious and at only 11% alcohol it’s an easy drink if you are sitting on the patio staring at the sky. Love this stuff. $20.00
Alange Pardina – Pardina, also known as Pardillo is indigenous to the western most part of Spain where it borders Portugal, in that wonderfully named region called ‘extremadura’! The grape is also used to make some classic Sherries but here it’s all about the wine. Classic flavor profile of citrus and lime with notes of fennel and a hint of exotic fruit, but still really fresh and crisp. Its fermented in stainless steal tanks and bottled young to retain that crispness. This is a wine to pair with shrimp, lobster, some moules mariniere, possibly a clam linguini; a little mozzarella stuffed chicken breast….great wow factor on this wine. Wow…its only $13.00
Star Lane Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc – located at the far end of the Santa Ynez valley and at the highest elevation in the appellation. We like high because it also means cool, and cool means no extracted fruit with high alcohol and high nitro-glycerin levels. This is a lovely fresh sauvignon, not overly exotic – don’t expect belly-dancers to jump out at you. Its got a little of the grassy notes, some of that cat’s pee so prevalent in high end Sancerre and only a feint hint of gooseberry. Lovely jubbly. $18.00
Six Hats Viognier – from South Africa. Gets a wow factor rating just because its a white from South Africa that is highly drinkable. Viognier has a tendency to overpower. It’s typically a heavy-weight white wine, but in the hands of this winery they really brought it down to earth. Very fresh, very forward, without being over the top. Some pear notes, counter-balanced with quince, some exotic fruit, diluted with floral notes. I thought this was a standout wine and at the price it was downright silly. $13.00
Alkoomi Shiraz – at last. A wine from Western Australia. Why the high applause? Australia has been affected by a nine year drought on the East Coast. Remember the bush fires two years ago that burnt through whole villages? And then early this year the flooding? It’s a mess over there. But the Western region of Australia – Margaret River and Frankland River were untouched. They just continued to make great wine – problem was the east coast wanted it all because no one was buying their 18% fruit bombs. There have also been a lot of bankruptcies in the export business and many of the local wine exporters simply don’t exist any longer. Case in point here with Alkoomi. We picked it up off the distributor because they in turn are dropping the brand. Good news for us – we have a limited amount at $15.00 – down from around $25.00 before all this happened.
Poderi Roset Barolo – the Roset vineyards are planted along the hillside abutting the village of Verduno and overlooking the hamlet of Barolo – I was there last summer and its a magical place to stand and look out over the vineyards of Barolo. Even there though I rarely, actually never, had an opportunity to buy a Barolo at this price. Restaurants over there don’t mark-up wine by 300% like they do over here, but even when we went out and ate I rarely found a Barolo under 30 Euros ($45.00). We tasted this little baby 10 days ago. Its from an excellent vintage, excellent pedigree and excellent wine. Very approachable now, great fruit forward flavors, depth and brooding black currants at the end. If there is a tiny hesitation its only because I wouldn’t suggest this Barolo to the guys who are looking for the Steak House stuff. That’s a very different style Barolo at a very different price. This is a Barolo that should be bought by the case and taken to bed. At $35.00 I can almost afford to drink it every week. It has all the typicity of great Barolo without having to wait 10 years for the wine to get through the tannins. $35.00 – it’s a steal.
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