I do love the wines, though I think that you really have to go to their Valtellina Superiore wines to start getting much power. The Rosso is very elegant for sure, as expected, and very Pinot like. I still think one of the best values in the world of wine is Vallana. Their Boca and Colline Novaresi will outlive me and cost $25 and $40 respectively. ArPePe Rosso is about $30-35.
Just checked back in my photos. Had this last year at a great Italian place here in NYC and it was fucking sensational. Bless the somm who pointed me to it.
Hell yeah, stuff is delicious. My favorite restaurants to drink Italian wine in when we lived in Brooklyn were Popina, Locando vini e olii, and Saraghina.
That was at Caravaggio, an overpriced place on upper east. Pricey but the food and service is excellent, obviously wine is top as well.
I received an email last night from a winery in Willamette Valley (De Ponte Cellars in Dundee Hills) providing a harvest update. They will not make 2020 estate wines due to quality issues related to the fires and smoke taint and the air quality issues they would subject employees to harvest the vineyards. That is devastating.
It's heartbreaking. This is where my line of work interacts with the wine industry. Early estimates are half of the states vineyards to have smoke damage to their vineyards. The entire vintages' market will probably plummet hard. Napa worked their ass off a couple years ago to say they got to the vineyards before the smoke could damage it, but that was just a really well branded marketing effort to calm consumer concerns. A lot, and I mean, a lot of Napa grapes were tossed from that vintage. OR will have to do the same unfortunately. The smoke has cooled the region off so much, that this vintage, which had received pretty consistent temperatures and was expected to be solid, lost a whole lot of heat units from the smoke that the wine needed to fully ripen before harvest. Tl;dr: 2020 vintage will be small in OR.
That's terrible. I've half been following a thread on Wine Berserkers and a few there seemed a bit more hopeful, but I can't say I'm surprised. I'll continue to support the wineries I like there as best they can through this challenging time.
Yeah, so far four of our wineries have informed me they won't be making wine this year and I suspect the number of those making less than 60% of normal is much, much higher.
Good question, I'm not sure. While I believe growers themselves are covered by insurance, those on the other end of buying contracts I don't believe are. But again, not sure.
That makes sense. I was thinking of estate vineyards because that was the context with De Ponte. For contracted producers it would definitely be an issue.
At the vineyard level it is, but it's still elective. Less than a 1/3rd of growers in OR use it, compared to almost 80% that use it in CA and WA. Even though they make great wine, the agricultural business acumen of the average OR vineyard could be improved There are other types of insurance available at the winery level, but few participate in it. At the grower level, quite a bit of it is subsidized by the federal government to avoid having to pass disaster legislation and wait on congressional funds. The industry will ask congress for help, and they will ask why the industry doesn't buy crop insurance.
Broke down and bought 2 cases of DuPuis (20 Pinot 4 Chardonnay). Brings my pending delivery to close to 150
Target no longer carries the Riedel that was like $30. I’m a fan of things like this that are easy to clean and don’t take a ton of space. Riedel Cabernet Decanter
Drinking a 2010 Domaine Michel Magnien Vosne-Romanee Vielles Vignes. Not overly complex but I love the bright red cherries and forest floor. For some reason my wife took 2 sips and declared she hated it. I have no idea why. There was some barnyard smell upon opening that has left with air but I didn’t find it objectionable. Whole bottle for me I guess.
I have a “cooler” looking one and then the above is my actual workhorse that gets used most of the time.
I got into decanting pretty obsessively for a good couple few months in that I had four decanters, and I wanted to test different wines for each decanter. For example, I would chill the small decanter for a Pinot Noir because that's what I am supposed to do Cliff notes: I didn't have the palate to notice differences. Get something easy to clean. I have a baller ass swan decanter that I refuse to use because I don't like rotating it every hour for a day to try and get it to dry.
The Pinson wines are very good, though very modern. But god damn that's a markup. That wine is $40 wholesale in NY.
Thanks, that is great info. I will likely stick to stuff I know then. I didn’t even post the other 2/3rds of the list because they were all $250+. I just don’t appreciate whites enough to drop that kind of cash. On another tangent is the typical restaurant markup 100% on a bottle? Do most places do a straight markup across the menu or does it vary?
A pretty standard bottle list markup is 300%, with the more progressive places marking up higher on low cost bottles and going thinner on high end stuff--which averages out to being 2x retail. We used to do 350% for all Napa Cab and recognizable names but only 250% on Burgundy, Riesling, and funky shit.
In for more! This time William & Mary mixed case- mostly the proprietary red (60% merlot/40% cab franc)
No. It is a crapshoot and not a wine you would gift but for under$22 shipped/tax at the most they are some very good cellar defenders. WB site has a huge thread on it if you are interested in the venture. I was skeptical but dude that owns it seems well respected so I have bought some.
I just bought a case of the Alexander Valley Cab. I was just curious why some of those offerings in the spread sheets were labeled as a specific winery and others were not.
It depends on how specufic he is in the description. On that spreadsheet only very likely correct wineries are listed. I also only buy winery blends not ones where he has final blend. They aren't selling out as quickly as before.
If you are interested in some I bought I would be down to swap a few if we could get the shipping to an affordable amount.
After about 10 years or so of waiting, I've made it on to the Cayuse mailing list, which allows me to purchase two 3 packs of wine futures today that will be available for pick up in late 2021 or for shipping in 2022. I'm in.
I was just coming to post the same thing. I think my wait was 8.5 years/spring 2012. I'm already on No Girls and Horsepower and my preference is Cayuse amongst the 3.
Just started reading through some articles. Holy shit, the losses that are stacking up. On top of a pretty much lost 2020 harvest already. Just awful. Gallant Knight we were posting about Cain wines a few weeks ago. Reading unsubstantiated reports (below) that the winery may have been a total loss. Not sure if you had heard anything.