The strength of my interests tends to take place in waves. One month I’ll be preoccupied with whiskey, tasting several and reading all I can about it, the next week my attention will turn to beer, perhaps blisteringly hoppy IPAs, then on to coffee, followed by scotch, followed by…you get the picture. Because my interest in these various delectable beverages is driven as much by intellectual curiosity as sheer enjoyment, what I end up tasting is very often driven by what I’m enjoying reading about at any given moment.

Recently, the pendulum has swung towards wine, and zinfandel in particular. This is due in part to my love of the zinfandel from Nalle Winery (whose mailer I received recently, and I have to say that it’s very well done and a great enticement to purchase some of their wines! Darn shipping laws!). Recently, I learned that this year they’ve bottled separately the wine made from grapes grown in the field directly in front of the winery. I remember visiting there a few years ago and walking amidst that small plot of vines. How cool to know that they’ve bottled that wine separately. Now if only their wine came out thisaways!

Anyhow, I’ve always loved Nalle’s zinfandel, and as a result I often get drawn back to this grape and the unique and exciting wines that certain producers make from it. During these digressions down the zinfandel path, I end up leafing through Stephen Brook’s California Wine for the umpteenth time, reading the section on zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley, Nalle, Ridge, Ravenswood, etc. I dig up interviews with Doug Nalle, Paul Draper, and others. And I stroll through the aisles of wine shops, admiring bottles of zin from Dry Creek Valley, Alexander Valley, Paso Robles, and other appellations on occasion (admittedly, those are my go-to appellations for zinfandel).

Alexander Valley Vineyards‘ Sin Zin has been one of my favorite zinfandels for many years now, and so when we ran across several bottles of the 2007 vintage at a bargain price, I didn’t hesitate to stock up. Sin Zin is made from grapes grown in the Alexander Valley appellation, adjacent to the Dry Creek Valley and Russian River Valley appellations. It’s one of three uniquely named zinfandels from AVV, alongside Redemption Zin (Dry Creek Valley appellation) and Temptation Zin (Sonoma County appellation). Ever since I first came across Sin Zin, nearly 15 years ago, the label has been the same. Black with red lettering and a drawing of someone imbibing languorously from a wine-filled horn.

As for particulars about the wine, there’s not a lot of information to go on. The wine spends 10 months in American oak barrels, 25% of them new, before being bottled. The 2007 vintage arrives at 14.4%, a not uncommon level of alcohol for California zinfandels.

Tasting Notes

In the glass, the wine is a deep, plush purple red with ruby highlights. The nose has loads of dark red fruits, raspberries, black cherries, and currants, along with warming notes of vanilla, oak, and cedar. The palate is densely textured, with soft, plush tannins and flavors of black cherries, raspberries, currants, oak, soft, vanilla and a whiff of smoky wood presence lurking in the background. The finish continues the theme of deep, dark red fruits with black raspberry sweetness lingering in a medium-length finish.

This is a wonderful zinfandel that captures much of what makes zin such a fun and fascinating wine. It’s rich with dark brambly fruits, has a wonderful texture, and just enough added vanilla and spice from the oak aging. And at this price point (~$20-$25) this is, in my mind, one of the best zinfandels out there.

When Eric Asimov wrote an article about Madeira several months ago, two forces combined. On the one hand, my curiosity was piqued by his description of this style of wine, once all the rage and now soundly out of fashion. On the other, the fact that dessert wines are one of my favorite styles, one I’m always excited to venture further into.

And so, not too long after his article, I found myself face-to-face with a bottle of one of the Madeiras that he had discussed, the Boston Bual Special Reserve from The Rare Wine Company. I was the lucky recipient of a bottle as a gift, and we wasted little time diving into its contents to see what all the fuss was about.

The Rare Wine Company was founded in 1989 by Mannie Berk, and has since risen in stature to become a highly respected wine importer. Their reputation regarding Madeira is unparalleled, as demonstrated by a recent tasting that they held of several very old Madeiras. Today, their list of old madeiras is quite stunning, and surely contains many bottles available nowhere else.

The Historic Series is their effort to recreate styles of Madeira that were common at the height of Madeira’s popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries. The series consists of three bottlings: Boston Bual, Charleston Sercial, and New York Malmsey. There is also a 4th, but very rare, bottling named Imperial New York Malmsey. The styles are named after the primary grape making up the wine and the geographic region where the given style of wine was most popular.

Of the three bottlings, the Boston Bual lies squarely in the middle. The Charleston Sercial is a brighter wine with lots of citrus, whereas the Malmsey is allegedly sweeter and more viscous. The Boston Bual embodies a compromise between these two poles, with both citrus and nutty sweetness playing prominent roles.

The Rare Wine Company works with Vinhos Barbeito of Madeira to source and blend the wines in the series. While the Madeira industry as a whole has experienced significant decline during the last century, Vinhos Barbeito was founded in 1946 and has accumulated a remarkable stock of Madeira since then. The wines going into the Historic Series bottlings all range up to 30 years of age, demonstrating the remarkable longevity of Madeira.

Tasting Notes

The Boston Bual pours crimson brown with rich highlights, and heavy legs on the side of the glass. The nose has beguiling complexity, with notes of caramelized walnuts, sweet aged balsamic vinegar, raisins, almonds, and smoky molasses. The wine’s texture is mouth-coatingly viscous and heavily textured, with soft, warm flavors of walnut skins, molasses, brown sugar, and citrus. There’s an acidic core that wakes up the wine’s flavors, and highlights the note of complexity thrown in by the rancio character that grows as the wine warms in the glass. All in all, the palate is richly sweet without being cloying. The finish has well-blended notes of molasses, raisins, walnuts, and lemons.

The verdict? This is a rich, warming, complex dessert wine that should be in every wine-lover’s cupboard. The beauty of this wine is that not only does it taste delicious, but it stays strong for many months after opening the bottle. In fact, we’ve had one bottle open for nearly six months, and it’s practically as good as the day that we opened it.

We tasted this wine a little while back, and while it stuck in my memory, the post I had begun working on gradually fell farther and farther down the queue as other drafts accumulated in front of it. Thankfully, I had cause to revisit it after attending a tasting featuring Neal Rosenthal himeself at local wine shop named Brix. The tasting included several Montevertine wines, including the Pian del Ciampolo, Montevertine, and Le Pergole Torte.

Without doubt, Neal Rosenthal is my favorite importer of wines today. His selection focuses on France and Italy, and all of the wines he brings in are consistently wonderful. I particularly enjoy his Italian wines, and have had several from Piedmont and the Valle d’Aosta in particular. What I find so enjoyable about Rosenthal’s wine selection is the degree to which each wine is such a unique, distinct expression of the winemaker and the place in which the grapes were grown and the wine made. I don’t mean to wax overly poetic about terroir, typicity, etc., etc., but across the board I’ve found that these wines all say something different from one another. This certainly owes to Rosenthal’s explanation of what motivated him to begin importing wine in the first place,

The objective from the outset was to work as directly as possible with growers who were dedicated to producing limited quantities of the finest quality wines and who shared [our] passion for “terroir”, that ephemeral “sense of place”…We prefer to seek out other small sources of supply rather than work with a cooperative, negociant, or large commercial producer to keep the flow of wine coming.

The Montevertine Pian del Ciampolo fits this driving motivation to a tee. The winery was founded in 1967 by Sergio Manetti and produced its first vintage in 1971. From the start, Manetti focused production on the Sangiovese grapes. Because the then-rules governing production of Chianti Classico did not allow for using the amount of sangiovese Manetti desired, in 1981 the winery left the Chianti Classico consortium and began producing its own unique, regional wines.

The estate is small, numbering just 10 hectares of vines spread over 6 vineyards:

• Le Pergole Torte: planted in 1968, surface 2 hectares, exposed towards N-NE
• Montevertine: planted between 1972 and 1982, surface 2.5 hectares, exposed towards SE-S
• Il Sodaccio: planted in 1972 and completely replanted in the year 2000, surface 1.5 hectares, exposed towards SE
• Il Casino: planted in 1999, surface 2 hectares, exposed towards S
• Selvole: planted in 1997, surface 3.5 hectares, exposed towards SE-S
• Pian del Ciampolo: planted in 2003, surface 1.5 hectares, exposed towards W-NW

The winery’s website states that 90% of the grapes cultivated are sangiovese, with the remainder made up of canaiolo, colorino, and malvasia bianca. According to the site,

We have deliberately avoided cultivating other types of grapes such as Cabernet, Pinot Nero or Merlot because we want to distance ourselves from the worldwide trend. Some say that the aforementioned grapes reflect the current globalized taste. And what happens if one day, after an excessive production, we are bored by such grapes? Switching back to traditional grapes would take many years. And, after all, isn’t it altogether possible to make great wine from Sangiovese? Our own experience says “yes”, especially when the Sangiovese in question is Tuscan…

The Pian del Ciampolo is the estate’s basic red wine. It is composed of 90% sangiovese, 5% canaiolo, and 5% colorino. After a manual harvest, the grapes are pressed and the wine fermented in cement cuvees for at least 25 days. The wine is then aged in large Slavonian oak barrels for 18 months before bottling (without filtration), and is held in bottle by the estate for 4 months before being released.

Tasting Notes

The bottle sports a simple, tasteful label, perhaps speaking volumes about the wine itself. It pours a velvety purple red, the color of rose petals. The nose is enticing, displaying a wide range of flavors, with notes of violets, cherry cordials, dark chocolate, damp earth. The palate is vibrant and fresh tasting. Initial flavors of flavors of sweet raspberries and cherries gives way to ripe strawberries, milk chocolate, and a touch of apple skin acidity. The texture is smooth and mellow, with soft tannins providing some additional body. The finish is bright with acidity, complementing flavors of early season raspberries and strawberries.

On the whole, this wine was utterly delightful. Flavors of ripe fruit and chocolates were supported by a sweet, lithe body. Definitely try this wine if you have the opportunity.

At the tasting Rosenthal held, we also got to try the Montevertine and Le Pergole Torte. Montevertine is the estate’s middle-level wine, and their year-in, year-out premium bottling. In complexity and nuance its a step above the Pian del Ciampolo. The Le Pergole Torte is the estate’s reserve wine, only made in exceptional years. It is certainly an exciting wine, displaying more power and depth than the other two reds. All three are very good, highly recommended wines.

I’ve recently become very interested in the wines from France’s Rhone region. There are a number of famous appellations from this region – Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Hermitage, Cote-Rotie, and the list goes on – but wines from the most notable of these tend to fall into a price bracket that turns them into special occasion wines. Not the weekday bottles that are nice to have around, and really not even the Friday or Saturday night “yay, we made it through the weekend!” bottles.

So in lieu of those more famous appellations, we’ve been focusing our attention on the real value wines from the Rhone – the Cotes-du-Rhone, Cotes-du-Ventoux, Minervois, Vin de Pays. That’s the nice thing about the Rhone region, there are loads of smaller, lesser-regarded appellations that produce great wine. There are loads of these available today, and while they may be of varying quality, if you can find a shop whose judgement you trust, then you know you can try most any of their Rhones with confidence.

This was the case when we bought this bottle at South End Formaggio. This small, very small, cheese, wine, and other delectable knick-knacky-type-foods shop in Boston’s South End is one of my favorite places to buy wine. They stock bottles ranging from $8 to $100, generally focus on smaller, more traditional or artisanal style producers, and we’ve never had a bottle from there that has disappointed us. And so they’re the perfect wine shop, one where you can buy a couple of wines right between $10-$20 and expect them to be good and interesting.

This particular bottling is a Vin de Pays from Domaine La Guintrandy, a small Rhone producer located in the southern Rhone that has been a family-owned estate since 1850. Today it is run by Marie-Claude and Olivier Cuilleras and produces a range of Cotes-du-Rhone appellation wines, the most prestigious of which bear the “Cotes-du-Rhone Village Visan” appellation.

This bottling is their Vin de Pays de Comté de Grignan, a red wine made from grapes grown on vines residing in the commune of Tulette. It is made up of 50% Syrah and 50% Grenache, and all of the grapes are harvested by hand. After harvest the grapes are left to macerate with the skins for 8 days before being pressed. The wine is then aged in stainless steel tanks until being bottled, without filtration.

The wine pours a very light, translucent, purply red. The nose is fresh and vibrant, with notes of racy black cherries, cocoa powder, and apple skins. The palate is lightly textured with a buoyant mouthfeel. Flavors of Macintosh apples, tart cherries, stone fruit, and an earthy, flinty minerality are well-balanced, and enjoyably refreshing and intriguing. The finish is sweeter than the palate, with sugared black cherries and a hint of raspberries.

This was a $10 bottle, and was well worth it. I really love light, refreshing, complex red wines, and this fit the bill. Not super complex, but interesting and very enjoyable. I only wish they’d had more bottles, I would’ve run right out to pick up a couple more to have on hand.

I was recently listening to a talk given by wine importer Neal Rosenthal during which he remarked that what motivates and excites him about a wine is when it has subtlety, nuance, and uniqueness. I found myself thinking of this when we opened a bottle of Domaine Berthet-Bondet’s Tradition, a wine produced in France’s Jura region where some of the most remarkable and unique wines in the world are being made. In my mind, the Jura region is the home to producers of wines that speak volumes about the place they come from, the unique production methods that have been handed down by generations, and that challenge both your taste buds and your expectations. Not to mention that they are delicious wines as well.

This bottle from Berthet-Bondet is a perfect example of all of those facets. The Tradition is a blend of 70% Chardonnay and 30% Savagnin that is aged for two years in oak casks without topping up. This period where the wine ages sous voile imparts an exciting range of flavors that no other white wine (other than those produced similarly in the Jura) captures. This approach is unique to Jura producers where it is used to great effect to produce a range of white wines.

Berthet-Bondet does not have the long history of other Jura producers, but they have gained a solid reputation in a relatively short amount of time. The winery was reopened in 1985 by Chantal and Jean Berthet-Bondet after having lain dormant for nearly 50 years. The hectares that comprise the winery’s holdings cover 10 hectares, 5 in the Cotes du Jura appellation and 5 in the very prestigious Chateau-Chalon appellation (where only Savagnin can legally be grown, and only Vin Jaune can legally be produced). From these 10 hectares, Berthet-Bondet produce several wines including a Chateau-Chalon Vin Jaune; a 100%-Savagnin wine that is aged sous voile for three years before bottling; Rubis, a red wine made from Trousseau, Poulsard (the Jura’s two unique red-grape varieties), and Pinot Noir; and a Vin De Paille made from a blend of Chardonnay, Savagnin, and Poulsard.

This particular bottling, Tradition, is the only wine of theirs that I have come across, and we’ve now finished our second bottle, which makes me a bit sad if only because both bottles were quite good, and I’d love to try others from them. Of course, it goes without saying that I’d go nuts to try their Chateau-Chalon*.

What struck me about this wine was how much it had changed in the bottle. The aromas and flavors were all much more pronounced and sharp compared to my memory of previously tasting it. One recurrent theme encountered when reading about Jura white wines regards their aging potential. Vin Jaune is said to age gracefully for 50 years and more, and most producers recommend waiting until they have reached at least 10 years of age before drinking them. And other sous voile whites are said to age well for 20-30 years. In this case we’re only talking about an additional 2 years in bottle, but it is clear that even this amount of time made a difference in the wine in the glass.

The wine pours the color of unpolished brass with a deep, golden luster and glinting amber highlights. The nose has aromas of walnuts, burnt sugar, and nutmeg with hints of citrus. After some time in the glass a creamy, sweet note of custard enters the mix. The wine has a soft, velvety body with a strikingly acidic current running through it. The flavors are similar to the nose, with walnuts, hazelnuts, and burnt sugar accompanied by flavors of creme anglaise and caramel. Notes of walnuts and burnt sugar predominate on the finish, underscored by a citrus acidity.

I was surprised to find this wine had much more sous voile character than I had expected. The nutty, burnt sugar notes that were present throughout the glass were delicious, but admittedly not what I had expected. That being said, this wine confirmed my enjoyment of Jura white wines, which I find to be some of the most exciting and challenging wines (and whites in particular) that I ever have the chance to drink.

This was also a challenging glass temperature-wise. We originally drank it cool, but as time showed, it really needed to warm up for the spices and creaminess to come out. Before that, the acidity was bracing and overwhelmed many of the other flavors. The ideal temperature was somewhere between white wine and red wine temps.

This was a very good wine, and like I said it’s a shame it was our last bottle. Hopefully we’ll stumble across some of their wines again at some point. In the meantime, my eagle eyes will remain alert for the sight of any other Jura white wines.

*Perhaps the most exhilarating “wine dream” that I harbor is to someday try a Chateau-Chalon, the reputed pinnacle of Vin Jaune. Wines from this appellation only began being imported into the U.S. during the last year or two. From that start Chateau-Chalon has fascinated me with its miniscule acreage (~90 hectares), and law permitting the growing of only Savagnin, and the production of only Vin Jaune. With such small acreage, production of Chateau-Chalon is very small, and the wines very hard to find.

The ultra-rarefied version of this dream is to try a Chateau-Chalon from Jean Macle, the Chateau-Chalon winemaker with the highest reputation. But alongside Macle are fine producers such as Berthet-Bondet, Domaine Philippe Butin, and Domaine Durand-Perron. When it comes right down to it, I’d be ecstatic to have the chance to try the Chateau-Chalon from any one of these four producers!!