Madeira is one of my favorite fortified wines, and when it comes to a style that goes with just about everything, we almost always reach for a Boal.
This particular bottle from Cossart Gordon was an interesting one because it was perhaps the most aged Boal we've had yet. At 15 years it hit all the right notes of fruit, nuts, and more!
For wine fans, you likely are familiar with Sauvignon Blanc- the popular grape grown all over the world known for its high acid and lovely flavors.
But have you tried the rarer Sauvignon Gris- a pink skinned mutation of the popular grape? Truly, these are a bit harder to come by, and we were fortunate enough to find a bottle of Eric Chevalier's Fie Gris from the Loire Valley and what a find this one was!
We honestly would not be upset if more wineries planted this alongside their Sauvignon Blanc holdings!
I have to admit, my experience with Trentodoc sparkling wines has been fairly limited. My first time I think I ever had one was on my WSET Diploma D4 exam, and since then, well, that was it. Truly, it was a region of sparkling wines that I knew very little about!
So when I had the opportunity to try some sample bottles provided courtesy of Trentodoc, I was quite excited to learn more about their traditional method wines from the region.
Up first? Monfort's Le General Dallemagne Extra Brut from 2015. With 60 months of lees and a few more years of time in bottle on top, this was one stellar bottle!
Whenever we have dessert Muscats, they're often quite young, fresh, and vibrant.
Yalumba in Australia makes one that is a bit different as it comes with a great deal of age on it (at least 10 years, per the label). While this bottle itself is non-vintage such that we do not know its exact age, what it does come with is an impressive complexity of flavors that age provides.
Paired with a robust dessert, like miso cheesecake, and we enjoyed the bottle even more.
As our quest here at The Grape Pursuit is to try every grape varietal in the world, whenever we find a bottle with a new-to-us grape, we pick it up immediately.
This was the case of Zorah Voski from Armenia with an equal blend of two new grapes to us- Voskeat and Garandmak.
After opening this bottle, we appreciated just how complex the blend was, with aromas and flavors that reminded us a lot like a Champagne (minus bubbles). This one was a real treat we hope to try again in the future!
When we think of producers of high-quality Rieslings, our minds often go to cool climates like the Mosel in Germany or the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York.
But just because some cooler climate regions are famous for their Riesling doesn't mean this grape can't grow in warmer spots. On the contrary, it thrives all over! California-based Arista, known for some stellar Pinot Noir, has one Riesling from the Anderson Valley that we were hesitant about but fell in love with after the first sip.
If you prefer your Riesling ripe and with a robust intensity, this one is for you.
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!
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!
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!
