Vinography Unboxed: Week of 11/8/26

Hello and welcome to my weekly dig through the pile of wine samples that show up on my doorstep, 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 arrived recently.

This past week included wines from the X Novo project in Oregon’s Eola-Amity Hills, so named because it represents something of a new start for proprietor and winemaker Craig Williams, who spent more than three decades making wine at Joseph Phelps in Napa Valley before acquiring a vineyard in Oregon and launching his own brand. Williams’ X Omni vineyard has been the source of a number of top Oregon Chardonnays, but this is the first opportunity for me to taste what he does with it himself. The Chardonnay is excellent, and the Pinot Noir is very good, though not as much of a clear standout as the Chardonnay. I do recommend them both, however.

It’s been some time since I tasted the wines of Papapietro Perry, a project of two friends and their families based in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley that got its start in a garage in San Francisco. This week they sent through their Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir and their Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel, both of which are well made and balanced. I thought the Pinot Noir was slightly more compelling than the Zinfandel.

I was pleased to see a bottle of Wölffer Estate wine in the samples pile this week, as I’ve enjoyed their wines in the past, and that proved true of this, their latest release of their “Caya” Cabernet Franc. It’s got the lean, herbal-and-slightly-vegetal note that Cabernet Franc from cool climates can offer. Some people find that note unappealing, but when backed by bright fruit, as in this wine, it comes across as a grace note of freshness.

Santa Rita is one of Chile’s oldest and largest wine producers. While the brand owns thousands of acres of vineyards and produces a wide range of wines, its Pewen Apalta brand represents the company’s flagship bottling of Carménère, sourced from vines planted in 1938 in the granitic soils of the Apalta sub-region of the Colchagua Valley. This week I tasted both the 2021 and 2024 vintages of this wine, both of which are made in a restrained style, picked early enough to preserve the herbal and bell-pepper notes that often characterize this grape. I thought both were tasty, but the 2021 seems like it needs some more time to develop, whereas the 2024 seems friendlier and more accessible at this point. I wish the winery would adopt lighter-weight bottles, as the glass they are using is heavier than the wine it contains.

There’s nothing particularly rapid about the process of growing and making wine. That said, Donnachadh Estate wasn’t wasting much time when, after only a few years, they decided to pull out a block of Grenache they had planted on the estate. So while you’ll be able to taste this wine they sent me, and two more vintages of the fruit in future releases, the vines that produced this 2023 Grenache are no more. Unfortunately, they just didn’t yield enough fruit to make them economically viable, despite offering an interesting, even compelling flavor profile. This very savory, earthy side of Grenache is intriguing, and I look forward to the next incarnation of the wine from the estate, when they find a more suitable location to plant the grape.

Finally, I’ve got a few more wines from the Adair Family Wines portfolio to share with you, starting with the 2022 vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon from Clos Pegase, which has the ripeness you would expect from a warmer vintage, though perhaps more oak influence than I would like. From Girard Winery, their 2021 Girard Cabernet from Calistoga is also ripe and muscular, not to mention being stuffed into a gratuitously heavy bottle that hurts the environment. It will appeal to those who like big, brawny wines from Napa, as will its sibling, the Girard Petite Sirah, which delivers the dark, black…