When studying for my WSET Level 3 exam, we knew we had to buy some Greek wine in order to learn more about this new region (which was not featured in Level 2). So we picked up a bottle of Xinomavro from Kir-Yianni and opened it shortly after covering this country in the book.
While we definitely think this bottle is still quite intense in the tannin department (and could age well beyond its five years at the time of opening), it was an interesting one all the same!
For International Sauvignon Blanc Day (the first Friday in May), we were sent a bottle of this delicious varietal from Napa-based St. Supery Winery.
It didn't take long after pouring this estate-grown wine that we knew it was quite the representative Sauvignon Blanc!
Our quest here at The Grape Pursuit is to try every commercially available wine variety in the world, and you can imagine that we do whatever we can in order to taste new grapes. This includes ordering them online at places like Wine.com, browsing obscure stores and the “other international” shelves larger wine stores, and even ordering from wineries directly to name a few.
As part of our quest here is to understand flavor expressions in the 1,300+ grape varieties that can be found around the world, we're also all about tasting varietals in different geographies and terroirs as a tangent of that. Naturally, we experienced this quite a bit in our WSET Level 2 and Level 3 classes which focused on roughly 30 and 100 grape varietals respectively (many of which were new to us outright) and how they develop in different regions around the world.
Since we got to go on a deeper dive into select grapes in these classes, we started to appreciate a few unsung varieties as well as regions we didn't know very well at the time.
In this one, we wanted to highlight a few grapes and regions we learned that we loved (or for ones we liked prior to the start of the class learned why we love them) as the result of taking our WSET classes.
Uivo Renegado from the Douro Valley of Portugal is an interesting rose wine as it is a field blend of over 25 different grapes including Tinta Barro, Tinta Roriz, Malvasia Fina, Donzelinho, Gouveio, Rabigato, Rufete, and Viosinho to name a few.
The wine is macerated with whole clusters, spontaneously fermented, aged on the lees, and further aged in a mix of old oak and cement tanks.
This all comes together with a wine that has a lot going on, specifically in the aroma department!
I've always been fascinated by the Corvina grape as grown in the Valpolicella region of Italy.
Beyond simply making a delicious dry red wine, the winemakers do something a bit different here. They sometimes choose to dry the grapes prior to fermenting which gives raisinated and cooked/stewed flavor to wines that you may not otherwise get until the bottle is of sufficient age.
When fermented to dry or off-dry, this is known as Amarone della Valpolicella and goes wonderfully with game. But sometimes the grapes are so concentrated with sugar that fermentation stops naturally due to alcohol killing the yeast. In these instances, you get a wine that is much sweeter and can be consumed as a dessert wine much like you would a port wine (admittedly at a lower ABV and often in a 375 mL bottle).
This is Recioto della Valpolicella, and if you ever see one on the shelf for a reasonable price you'll do well to buy it.
Bloomer Creek is one of our favorite Finger Lakes wineries and part of the reason for this, beyond their wine simply being delicious, is that they do production techniques and blends that you don't normally expect to find in the region.
The Vin d'Ete 2018 was on the more traditional side of things and is 95% Merlot and 5% Gamay. This one produced a wonderful aroma and flavor profile but also came packed with a hit of Brettanomyces that was just a bit much for us.
Still, we're glad we tried this wine all the same.
When we normally think of Semillon, we often think of the botrytized wine it produces in regions like Sauternes in France.
But this grape is also known to make some pretty stellar conventional dry white wines, especially from regions like Hunter Valley in Australia. Naturally, we had to pick up a bottle of Silkman's blackberry Vineyard Semillon to try just that and thought it made for a rather interesting glass!
After taking my WSET Level 3 exam in Washington DC, I decided to take the long road back to Pittsburgh via a detour to Loudoun County, Virginia's wine region.
My first winery visited in the county was 868 Estate Winery which was making news for winning the 2020 Virginia Governor's Cup for their Vidal Ice Wine. While they were, rather predictably, sold out of the ice wine, I was met with a decent wine list available as well as stunning views at the vineyard.
Muga Rioja Reserva is an aged Tempranillo from Rioja, Spain, that has an intense and wonderfully complex aroma and flavor profile.
Unfortunately, this one was pretty strong in the vegetal and earthy department which, for me at least, was a bit too much for my palate.
I have a general rule that if a friend whose tastes I trust recommends a bottle of wine, I'll do what I can to find it. Agriolas Turriga 2016 was one such bottle, and my friend Strictly Sardinia recommended it as one of the most acclaimed wines from the island.
This one is a blend of Grenache (85%), Carignan, Malvasia Di Casorzo, and Bovale Sardo and can only be described as an intense wine. But even in drinking this one at five years old, for our next bottle I think I'd let this one sleep for another five if not longer!
