Wine Tasting Spotlight…

Join us Friday Feb 26th & Saturday Feb 27th for our weekly wine tasting, featuring a lineup of Small Estate wineries:

Tedeschi Soave Classico 2013

The winemaker Ricardo and his family have been making wine for over 400 years. It started with family owning a restaurant/tavern. It was then his family said, “Hey, why don’t we make our own wine and sell it in the tavern!” This whimsical idea led them to become one of the first and oldest wineries in Valpolicella.

So what does the Classico mean? For most Italian wine regions, it signifies the specific region of the vines origin – like Chianti Classico. And what about Soave? Most Soave’s are a blend of several grapes and rarely made of 100% Garganega, but this wine is made with 100% Garganega grapes harvested in vineyards, located in oldest area of origin.

Tasting Notes:

Bouquet – strongly and complex fruity bouquet. Very clean and with notes of dry fruits such as almonds. Rich and elegant.  Flavor – good body and good acidity. Relatively warm, rounded and well-balanced. Pleasing and elegant. The after-taste confirms the notes in the bouquet.

Bonaccorsi Santa Rita Hills, Melville Vineyard Chardonnay 2010

Bonaccorsi Wine Company produces limited quantities of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah rendered in the style and spirit of a small Burgundy domaine. Grape sources are selected carefully from cool areas of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties in California’s South Central Coast. Current grape sources include Sanford & Benedict Melville, and Fiddlestix Vineyards in the newly created Santa Rita Hills appellation. Bonaccorsi’s objective is to produce wines that combine concentration with delicacy. The wine is sourced from a single acre at the Melville vineyard.

Tasting Notes:

This is the last of Jenny Bonaccorsi 2010 Chardonnay and it is drinking perfectly right now. Rarely, do you get the chance as a retailer to buy older prestigious small production Chardonnays (only 250 cases were produced), but the winery decided to release 5 cases from their wineries library and we got the last 25 bottles! Great Chardonnays like this are so much better with a little age. This is a real gem and a rare opportunity to drink a wine that taste’ twice its price!

Chateau de Massiac Sentinelle 2014

Bernard and France Boudovresques’ farm sits at the extreme southern end of the Massif Central, in the heart of the Minervois.The estate has been in existence since 1667 and their land is full of green trees, thyme, rosemary, and lavender.  A combination local geology and climate makes Minervois capable of producing some of the best value wines in the Languedoc – fragrant, less dominated by hot alcohol and with fresher fruit.

The “Sentinelle” cuvée is the more precocious of the two reds produced at Massiac. The tannins are more supple and the fruit more forward and less rustic than its companion. Fermentation and elevage are in tank. The wine is bottled within a year of the harvest, and the blend is usually two-thirds Syrah and one-third Carignan

 Tasting Notes:

Élevage –  a French term for the progression of wine between fermentation and bottling. Comparable to the term “raising” in English; think of élevage as a wine’s adolescence or education. The raw fermented juice is shaped during this period into something resembling its final form, through techniques such as barrel or tank aging, filtering and fining.

Row 11 Santa Maria Valley Pinot Noir

The grapes for Row Eleven Pinot Noirs come from four special vineyards from three distinct appellations, all sustainably grown. Each vineyard brings its own distinct flavors and characteristics. The winemaker prefers to use multiple clones from different vineyards to make wines complex in texture and taste.

Tasting Notes:

The aromatics and flavors of this Pinot is concentrated, dark red fruit, spice and sweet hickory bacon. How good is this Pinot? Well, it’s The Four Season’s “Wine By the Glass Pinot Noir” nationwide!