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Baia’s Wine Tsolikouri 2021 – Light on Skin Contact Notes

When it comes to skin-contact Georgian white wines (often referred to as orange wine outside of the country), we'll be the first to admit that some can be quite intense.

For those looking to try this style of wine for the first time, the notes of prolonged skin contact can be a bit surprising as it is unlike most notes you find in traditional white wine. For some, this can be overwhelming.

Baia's Wine Tsolikouri is an excellent introduction to skin-contact Georgian wine because this element of winemaking was limited- only 30% of the wine touched skins and with nominal time in qvevri, too. Some of the best flavors of skin-contact without an overwhelming intensity? Sign us up!

As part of our quest to try dealcoholized wine during our dry-ish January, we stumbled upon Noughty nonalcoholic Syrah at a local bottle shop that came highly recommended.

Although this wine was not ideal for our tastes, we were given a trick to add bitters into this one to add more barrel-like notes that are often lost in NA wine, and we have to admit that it helped this bottle significantly.

Every January, we try and participate in what we call a dry-ish January. We don't fully cut out alcohol, but use the month to give ourselves a period of reset.

But during this time, we decided to take a look at more dealcoholized wine and other NA products to see if any are of the quality we expect from their alcohol-forward counterparts.

Naturally, this interest led us to a bottle of Fre Sparkling Brut, a faux bubbly that has been dealcoholized and sweetened to increase the body that the alcohol has removed.

So, was this one worth it? In a sea of disappointing NA wines, we have to admit, this may have been the best one we tried all month.

As far as Italian red wines are concerned, Dolcetto is typically not the first bottle we reach for. Most entry-level bottles of this grape are made to be easy drinking, fruity wines which, while tasty, have not been for us.

It wasn't until we traveled to some excellent wineries in Piedmont, particularly in the Dogliani region known for world-class Dolcetto, that we became converts.

This is where we stumbled upon Pecchenino and their stellar lineup of ageable Dogliani. We brought several bottles home with us, and their Bricco Botti Dogliani Superiore 2019 was the first bottle we opened.

This is the kind of bottle we're glad to have bought extras of to age!

Hondarrabi Beltza is a rare red grape from northern Spain that we do not see all too often. So when we had the chance to pick up a bottle from Doniene Gorrondona, we knew we had to give it a try.

As it turns out, this red wine was quite intense and reminded us a lot of a Cabernet Franc!

It should be no surprise that Arista was one of our favorite wineries in Sonoma from our last visit, and since then we have been building a cellar of their stellar Pinot Noirs as club members.

One of our favorite vineyard plots, Perli Vineyards, was one of our favorites and we have a modest collection that is sleeping for some age.

We decided to pull a bottle of this gem from our cellar from the 2019 vintage to check how it was doing at approximately four years old, and this one, naturally, still had a lot of youth in it while just starting to show signs of age!

We do not see wines from Switzerland available all too often, and for the varietal Chasselas, we were intruiged.

Would the cool climates of the region produce a high acid, simple wine? Is there a microclimate we do not know about that would cause the wine to ripen more than we expect? We had no clue, truly.

While this wine was admittedly somewhat straightforward, it had a nice minerality and phenolic texture that made this one an easy drinker all around.

We always love taking reader suggestions when it comes to delicious wine, and Champagne Vilmart & Cie Grand Cellar was one such bottle.

This beautiful Champagne was nicely balanced and had a decent hit of lees character while starting to show some tertiary development. Although the price for this one was a bit higher than what we'd prefer (particularly in the USA), it was a great one to try all the same.

Some wines are such classics that their association with a region goes hand-in-hand. Burgundy for Pinot Noir. Mendoza for Malbec. Marlborough for Sauvignon Blanc.

The Sauvignon Blancs that come out of New Zealand are some of the most popular in the world, and one producer that we see all over showcasing this grape is none other than Kim Crawford.

Naturally, we wanted to see what this one was about and picked up a bottle to enjoy. Varietal typicity? This one checks all the boxes.

In our never-ending quest to try new grape varietals, we come to Cederberg's Bukettraube from South Africa.

This white grape was created in Germany as a cross between Silvaner and Schiava and grew in popularity in select regions, including South Africa.

While this grape reminded us of an aromatic Muscat in many respects, the balance of acidity, sugar, and flavor kept us coming back.

Baia’s Wine Tsolikouri 2021 – Light on Skin Contact Notes

Noughty NA Syrah Review – Just Add Bitters

Fre Sparkling Brut Non-Alcohol Wine Review – Approachable NA Wine

Pecchenino Bricco Botti Dogliani Superiore 2019 Review

Doniene Gorrondona Beltza Txakolina Tinto 2019 Review

Arista Winery Perli Vineyard Pinot Noir 2019 Review – A Gem

Schenk L’Alpage Chasselas 2021 Review – A Crisp Swiss White

Champagne Vilmart & Cie Grand Cellar Review – Nicely Balanced

Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc 2022 Review – Classic NZ Wine

Cederberg Bukettraube 2022 Review – Aromatic and Sweet