Arista is one of our favorite wineries in Sonoma, and makes some of the best Pinot Noir we’ve had in the USA.
Naturally, we became club members and regularly add bottles to our cellar to age.
Arista’s Perli Vineyard Pinot Noir is one that we have the most of in our collection. Now that our first bottles, from the 2017 vintage, are now entering their drinking window, we thought we’d pull one out and see how they’re stacking up!
We always like to find great wine stores when we travel to see what life could be like if we didn’t live in the lovely controlled state of Pennsylvania.
When we made a weekend trip to New York City, we knew what store we had to check out- Astor Wine & Spirits.
This one had a reputation as one of the finest wine stores in New York, and we had even ordered deliveries from them from time to time. So as (admittedly infrequent) customers, we knew this would be a pilgrimage-style spot for us.
As much as we liked the wine selection here, the spirits were also just as, if not more, impressive!
As a Pennsylvanian, you can imagine that I have some pretty strong opinions about our state-managed wine and liquor stores. They are, well, not that great and leave us yearning for more.
This is perhaps best felt when we go to other states that have massive entities selling all things wine and spirits, and in the USA, we get this feeling the most when visiting Total Wine.
A giant grocery store of wine, and some even with a huge spirits selection as well? This one really should be in all 50 states.
El Pino Club’s Sea Floored is a nod to the ancient sea floor where Sta. Rita Hills are now found, which enjoy a breeze from the Pacific to help keep these light reds refreshing and crisp.
For those who like a lighter style Pinot Noir from California, this is a bottle to consider!
Hybrid grapes are often quite interesting, as they typically are crosses between a European vinifera grape and an indigenous North American varietal.
Baco Noir is one such grape which is considered to be a cross of Folle Blanche (French) and an unknown species from the Americas. It is growing across many US states and Canada, and is one you may see pop up from time to time in the Finger LAkes region of upstate New York.
We found a delightful bottle of Heron Hill’s Reserve Baco Noir during one trip to the region and promptly forgot about it in our cellar for six years. Thankfully, a bit of age on this one ended up being a great thing!
During our exploration of wineries near Seattle, we stumbled upon Latta and immediately fell in love.
First it started with a bottle we picked up at a wine shop to take to dinner. Then we visited the winery the very next day. And now, of course, we are converts and try to enjoy their wines whenever possible.
The Dana Dibble Syrah was one such bottle that made our way into our collection (courtesy of our friends in Seattle who brought it for us as gift knowing how much we like them), and this one hits some great notes for a Rhone-forward style Syrah from Washington!
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.
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.
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!