Wine Reviews: Mini Round-Up for July 29, 2024

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I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.

They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), so you can get right to the point and decide if they’re for you (or not). Cheers!

• 2022 Amaro Winery Saperavi (New Mexico): An earthy, juicy, and angular nose gives no quarter, while the supple red fruit palate is all open for business. $NA B+
• 2021 Zorzettig ‘Optimum Zorzettig’ Brut Ribolla Gialla (Friuli-Venezia Giulia): Delightful handfuls of chalky minerality and fresh lemons. $34 B+
• 2017 Berlucchi ’61 Nature (Franciacorta): Impeccably balanced, with plenty of biscuit and red and yellow apple action for you bubbly lovers. $80 A-
• 2018 Cantine San Marzano ‘Calce’ Spumante Metodo Classico Brut (Puglia): A delicate mousse, a lovely autolytic character, and a lovely everything else, in fact. $NA A-
• NV Nododivino Brut (Chieti): Biscuit, bruised apple and dried apricots, all trying emphatically to be nice, and succeeding. $NA B+
• 2023 Tenuta Meraviglia Vermentino ‘Botro dei Fichi’ (Bolgheri): A big, ripe, rich, tropical take on the V, with interesting herbal hints, and plenty of tantalizing voluptuousness. $25 B+
• 2020 Tenuta Meraviglia Vigna Pianali (Bolgheri): Pretty sexy stuff here—a smooth entry, ripe currants, ripping black fruit, dried herbs, and tanned leather, just to keep it a bit kinky. $NA A-
• 2019 Fattoria La Massa ‘Giorgio Primo’ (Toscana): Whoooooa. Let’s do more than justa little ‘mini’ for this blockbuster. Excellence is immediately apparent on the nose, with juicy red currants, plums, graphite, dried sage, cinnamon, cocoa, & vanilla. The palate is polished, modern, mineral, silky, floral, dark, leathery, brambly, elegant, long, and electric. A stunner. $110 A