Hello and welcome to my weekly dig through the pile of wine samples that show up asking to be tasted. I’m pleased to bring you the latest installment of Vinography Unboxed, where I highlight some of the better bottles that have crossed my doorstep recently.
This week included some heavy hitters—expensive, prestigious wines that all seemed to show up recently for reasons unknown. But I’m certainly not complaining.
First up are a couple of wines from one of Santa Barbara’s more impressive wine projects, Racines Wines, which is a collaboration between Étienne de Montille and Brian Sieve of Burgundy and Rodolphe Péters of Champagne. I tasted their very impressive sparkling wine last year, and was excited to see their newer still releases, starting with these two Chardonnays from the Santa Rita Hills. The first is their multi-vineyard blend which hits all the right notes. The second wine is a single-vineyard bottling from the Wenzlau Family Vineyard that vibrates with a fantastic stony minerality. Both are highly recommended.
Dominio Fournier is a relatively young winery project owned by Gonzalez Byass, producing a range of Tempranillo-based wines in the Ribera del Duero region of Spain. They sent me their Reserva blend from 2016 that remarkably might still need some aging before it can be fully appreciated.
I’ve long had a soft spot in my heart for Feudi di San Gregorio, which I was finally able to visit in person a couple of years ago on my first trip to Campania. Their Piano di Montevergine is their Reserva Taurasi Aglianico from a single vineyard of old vines interplanted with hazelnut and olive trees. It usually benefits from a lot of aging, and despite this being the 2016 vintage, it could use some more time.
I regularly buy the wines of Il Poggione in Montalcino for my own cellar, but a sample showed up out of the blue recently, it was a nice surprise. However, what was also surprising was that the wine felt a bit out of joint, much more angular and high-alcohol than I normally expect from this producer. The 2019 vintage was by any account an excellent one in Tuscany, so this isn’t a case of a wine made in adverse circumstances.
The folks at Yalumba in Australia’s Barossa Valley sent a few wines this past week, including a lovely pair of Cabernet-Shiraz wines, one of which, the 2019, is a current release, the other, a 2014, what they call a Museum release. It was fun to taste both side-by-side, each excellent in their particular point of evolution.
Speaking of “museum” releases, the PR folks representing Cos d’Estournel in Bordeaux recently sent me a press release about the offering of the 2010 vintage as a library release. I get a lot of press releases from luxury brands announcing their latest releases, and I always politely make it clear that the chance of me writing about some new luxury release without tasting it is about as close to zero as you can get. Usually, these responses are met with silence, or occasionally a “Thanks, but we don’t send samples.” In the case of Cos, however, they said they would be happy to send me a bottle. And I was just as happy to taste it. They’re frankly one of my favorite producers in Bordeaux (though this is from a guy who isn’t a massive Bordeaux nut). The 2010 is in perfect shape, and I think it is the age at which I most enjoy drinking Bordeaux.
Sticking with the luxury theme for a moment, I also received a bottle of Pym-Rae, which is the wine of the Tesseron Estate on the slopes of Mount Veeder. Tesseron, of course, is the name behind the superstar challenger estate of Pontet-Canet in Bordeaux. Tesseron purchased Robin Williams’ Napa estate, which he named Pym-Rae after the middle names of his two children. Tesseron retained the name out of respect for Williams.
I found this wine, my first taste of the estate, extremely high-quality, if a bit brash and brawny for the efforts of a Bordelais, even one with Michel…
Source : https://www.vinography.com/2024/12/vinography-unboxed-week-of-12-1-24
