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 past week included a couple of my favorite canned wines from Two Shepherds, their Bucking Luna and Natty Pets, both of which are sparkling. Luna is a very light red wine (indeed, 40% of the wine is a rosé of Cinsault), and Natty Pets is a sparkling orange wine, made from skin-contact Picpoul. Both are tasty and refreshing, and perfect for picnics or the beach, especially if you can keep them cold.
Next up we’ve got a tranche of unusual wines from an ancient grape variety most people have never tasted. Saperavi hails from the Republic of Georgia, where it has been used for centuries, perhaps even millennia, to make a dark red wine with robust tannins. Saperavi is one of the world’s few teinturier grapes, with not only red pigmented skin but also dark red flesh. Interestingly, it was one of the grapes that Dr. Konstantin Frank, who hailed from Ukraine, brought from Europe to plant at his estate near Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes region of New York. His version is dark and fruity with nicely restrained tannins.
Just by comparison, I’ve got three Georgian Saperavi to suggest as well. The Vinoterra and Schuchmann bottlings are actually made by the same company, Schuchmann Winery, one of Georgia’s prominent producers that also runs a wine spa and luxury hotel. Their two renditions of Saperavi have restrained alcohol and good tannin management, allowing you to taste the intensity of the grape without being overwhelmed by it.
My favorite of the three Georgian Saperavi this week comes from the Askaneli Brothers, another prominent Georgian wine company. This particular bottling is fermented and aged in the traditional terra-cotta qvevri vessels, buried up to their necks in the earth. As a result, the wine gets a bit more extraction but also has a freshness and some wild aromatics that add dimension to the overall experience.
Ridge Vineyards recently released a new single-vineyard Zinfandel from an old site near their Geyserville vineyard known as Stone Ranch, featuring 60-year-old vines. The last time they made a single-vineyard bottling from Stone Ranch was 2005, but in the 2021 vintage, the fruit stood out and prompted the team to vinify it on its own. Just released, the wine hasn’t quite made its way into retail channels, but it’s worth keeping an eye out for, especially if you’re a fan of old-vine Zinfandel.
Eduardo Chadwick has played a significant role in proving to the world that Chile can make world-class wines, first at his family’s estate Errazuriz, and then with his own projects Seña and Viñedo Chadwick, which he began in 1992 and released the first vintage of in 1999. The wines quickly became standard-bearers for Chilean wine, and today are among the most sought-after wines from the country. The 2015 I’m sharing with you today is in gorgeous shape, aging beautifully, and will please anyone who enjoys refined Cabernet Sauvignon.
Sticking with the southern hemisphere, I’ve also got a special bottling of Malbec from the Catena family. Made from a small 1.4-hectare (3.45-acre) vineyard situated at 5000 feet of elevation, this wine and the vineyard it comes from are named after Nicolas Catena’s youngest daughter Adrianna. The vineyard features ancient calcium-rich fossilized marine soils and has been planted with a massale selection of vines on their own roots, which are nourished by a healthy population of rhizobacteria, hence the addition of the Latin “mundus bacillus terrae” to the name.
If you kept your finger on Argentina but spun the globe, you’d end up relatively close to our next wine, the Octavius old vine selection of Shiraz from Yalumba in Australia’s Barossa Valley. Sourced from six different…
Source : https://www.vinography.com/2024/08/vinography-unboxed-week-of-8-4-24
