One of my favorite pastimes is to stop at my local wine shop, The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan to pick up the monthly club selections.  Of course, the great news is that they were having a curated wine tasting from one of their vendors, and I ran into many familiar faces, and it was a most pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. 

As always, the wine club features one wine from the Old World and this is one that I just recently wrote about from an earlier tasting, but a new vintage, with the winemaker the Podere Ciona “Ciona Rosé” Toscana IGT 2021.  I was reading the history of the winery on their website “Franca and Franco Gatteschi were looking for a place in the countryside to retire to, after many years of working in Italy and abroad, when they came across a small, beautiful, albeit run down property: 100 acres of land, mostly wooded with 10 acres set aside for cultivation, of which 2.5 acres already had vineyards; a house from the 18th Century, abandoned for more than 40 years; and, above all, a view without equal on the Chianti hills, with Siena in the distance.”  It really sounds idyllic and makes one ponder how this property was neglected and ignored for years.  “They purchased the estate at the beginning of 1990 and they immediately started the reconstruction work on the main house (it took nearly three years). They also set up a small but well- equipped wine cellar for making wine. In 1996 they permanently moved to live on the estate and the following year, the great 1997 vintage, saw the birth of the first “official” wine of Podere Ciona: A Chianti Classico DOCG Riserva.” The Rosé was made entirely of Sangiovese in the saignée method.  The vines are from six to nineteen years of age and planted on quartz, clay schist and marl.  The fruit is harvested manually in small baskets and then de-stemming, berry by berry for a slight crush in Stainless Steel vats for ten to twelve hours of skin contact and no Malolactic Fermentation. The wine is then aged for about six months in Stainless Steel and then further fined and bottle aged for six months before distribution. There was about one-hundred-eighty cases produced of this wine.  A pretty salmon-pink color with notes of fruit and spices, just a well-balanced light and easy drinking wine with a nice medium count finish offering terroir.

Tortoise Creek Zinfandel Clement Hill Lodi 2018 represents the New World and we have had several wines from this company and they are part of Winesellers Limited.  Winesellers Limited was founded by Yale Sager in 1978 and began as a one-man operation selling wines in the Midwest and over the last forty years has become a recognized importer and marketer of family-owned wineries produced in both well-known and unique regions of the world. The concept of Tortoise Creek is to work with small farmers who focus on sustainable farming in California.  The wine is a blend of eighty-five percent Zinfandel, then percent Petite Sirah and five percent Tannat.  The grapes are sourced from sustainably farmed vineyard in the Clement Hills region of Lodi where the soil is clay and loam of volcanic origin.  The grapes are crushed into Stainless Steel fermentation vats for ten days and then extended maceration for an additional ten days on the skins.  The wine then under goes Malolactic fermentation and then aged for six months in American Oak.  The wine is described as having deep color with notes of spicy aromas of dark berries and plums.  On the palate a big round wine with tones of red fruits and the Petite Sirah and Tannat add additional complexity and nuance to the finished product.