He’s a What?

Posted on August 25, 2018 by thewineraconteur

“He’s a Music Man” and that was the premise that brought half of the family up to Crystal Mountain for a get-away.  The Louisville clan’s twin children were both accepted to Interlochen Center for the Arts summer theatrical camp and the play that they were performing in for the 91’st Season was Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man.  I am sure that some of the students may have been disappointed with the selection of the play, as they have been brought up to appreciate funereal dirges that are the vogue for most Broadway productions, and yes that is my commentary.  I feel that the Fifties and the Sixties may have been the last Broadway musical productions that showed a wide range of music genres and had the ability to have the audience leaving the theater pumped up and singing show tunes.

It was a change of pace for my Bride and I to be in a group setting like we were.  I also felt like we were the Well’s Fargo man when we delivered tons of food up to the vacation home.  I felt sorry for my Bride, in one sense, because she took on the role of Mother Hen for her sister’s and family, making sure that everyone ate, as properly as we could enforce that concept.  My Bride and her one sister were the cooks for the week and her one sister can be very fancy in her approach to the culinary arts.  It did seem odd not to be choosing venues for dinner every night, but I have just always felt that my Bride is on vacation as well, and to me, that means away from the kitchen, but all in all it did work out well.

The third family did contribute to the food and beverage selection for the week, and it would be wrong of me to imply anything else.  It is just that the wine especially was a wine fest between the two brothers-in-law and trying to find some interesting wines for the week.  We were joking that even with me taking back a case of empty wine bottles, because I wanted to save the labels, there were still by the time the week was over, a couple of cases of empty bottles to throw out in the trash.  The good thing was that Crystal Mountain is known as a ski resort, so I am sure that the refuse collectors have seen their share of empty bottles, and at least our festivities were on the quieter side.  The last wine that I will discuss was a new one for the Louisville clan and a relatively new one for us, as we had bought this wine, with the intention of having it with them.  The Korbin Kameron Rosé Moon Mountain 2017 made by Moonridge Vineyards was a delightful wine.  Here was a Rosé wine that was made from Merlot grapes and from what I could gather the wine was made, because they were not sure about the grapes that had survived the major fire of that year.  Moon Mountain AVA was just granted in 2013 and it is a relatively new designation for Sonoma County.  The area is known for the iron rich volcanic soil and an elevation that is above the Sonoma Fog, so it has a warmer and a longer growing period compared to the areas lower down the slope; I also feel that this designation will see more play in the years to come.   A beautiful hued glass of wine with a freshness of fruit to the nose and taste of pomegranates to me, and this wine totally belied that it was Merlot, and I am a major Merlot fan, but then I have always been loyal to my old friends.  I will venture to go out on an easy limb and claim that this wine had a short aging period in Stainless Steel and there were one-hundred-fifteen cases of wine produced.  I think that they were surprised about this wine, but it was fun as we tried to find some special wines.  As for Professor Harold Hill, I am just glad that there is no “think method” for wine production.,

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White with Salmon

Posted on August 23, 2018 by thewineraconteur

While we up at Crystal Mountain, everything was geared around seeing our niece and nephew in The Music Man at Interlochen, after all that is what the whole trip was about.  Three out of five sisters made it up for the event.  While it sounded like all we did was drink wine that is not true, but the bias or the conceit of this blog tends to emphasize the beverages and there was four of us that really enjoy our wines.  We were scheduling dinner times a bit early, so that everyone could be dressed and ready to make the drive to Interlochen for the show.  One of the evenings we were going to have salmon and my Bride found an enormous side of salmon for the dinner.  I had brought some wood planks in anticipation of doing the salmon that way, but there was so many to feed and no one was quite sure, so we ended up doing them on the grill with a Bourbon sauce that my Bride has discovered and put to good use.  We figured that white wines would be better with the marinade of Bourbon, instead of our usual choice of Pinot Noir.

We started off with a very crisp wine for the season with a very light white wine, from a winery that I have enjoyed and still have a bottle or two in the cellar. The Taft Street Winery Russian River Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2016 was a good choice. Originally the winery was known as Taft Street Garage, and they were what is now termed a “garagiste” and in 1979 they were making wines in a garage, and they gradually moved into an old apple processing plant in Sebastopol. Here was a wine where the fruit came from two estates, Bob Dempel Vineyards and the Giaquinta Valley Vineyard. The wine as would be expected for a Sauvignon Blanc was done in Stainless Steel to maintain the crispness and for the fruit forward taste. As much as I try to avoid descriptors the wine was a very pale and soft color, with good aromatics and the tartness that I enjoy from this grape.  There is just something wonderful about a Sauvignon Blanc when it is done perfectly and this is one wine that I think where this is true.

The other bottle was from a new winery that was established in 2015 by a band of artists, craftspeople, and lovers of life brought their wandering imaginations to a piece of land in Carmel, California. They named this location Folktale Winery and Vineyards. The Folktale Arroyo Seco Chardonnay 2015 has a whimsical label truthful to the image of the winery. The wine began in a vat and then was aged for six months in French Oak of which twenty percent was new. The wine was described as creamy with mineral notes drawing from the Le Mistral Vineyard on their estate when I first received this wine and I would agree with their description. This wine had a production of just under a thousand cases, and the aging potential is claimed for five to six years, though it didn’t stay in our cellar for that long, and that is the problem when you only get one bottle from your wine club.  It was a perfect Chardonnay, too bad that I only had the one bottle, but there were other wines and nobody wanted to be tired in the auditorium.

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Two from Mendoza

Posted on August 21, 2018 by thewineraconteur

There was plenty of wine transported up to Crystal Mountain for the week, and that doesn’t even cover the extra wine runs that were done, while we were up there.  For as many people that were up there, we didn’t run out of food, but the wine and the bottled water seemed to be neck and neck in the race for depletion.  We were all having a grand old time and while it seems that we enjoyed plenty of white wines, there were reds as well, because the dinners were all full bodied and grilled.  The Mendoza region of Argentina supplied us with a couple of good wines when we were having marinated pork tenderloins on the barbeque.

The first wine from Mendoza that I will mention is Vina Cobos Felino Malbec 2016.  This wine is a joint venture between Luis Barraud and Andrea Marchiori and the Californian Paul Hobbs; there inaugural vintage was 1999.  Paul Hobbs also has other wine ventures in other countries as well, in case you run into his name on the labels.  The fruit for this wine came from two famed sub-regions of Mendoza, Valle de Uco and Lujan de Cuyo, so it had to carry the more generic Mendoza, but Malbec is king of the district.  This wine was aged for nine months in American Oak, of which ten percent was new and it was bottled unfined.  This was a good deep inky violet colored wine with a good nose and very well balanced and very easy to drink with almost no decanting time.

The other wine from the Mendoza district was Finca Flichman “Paisaje de Tupungato” 2015 and this winery is over a hundred years of age.  Tupungato is the northern part of the smaller sub-region of the Valle de Uco and at the foot of Mt. Tupungato volcano.  The wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon with Malbec and Merlot.  The wine was aged in oak and some bottle time, before being released.  Just another easy drinking red wine with out a lot of fan-fare.  Another happy time for dinner.

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More Whites

Posted on August 19, 2018 by thewineraconteur

All the time that we were up at Crystal Mountain, there was a bit of The Thin Man that permeated the trip.  No there was no mystery and thankfully no murder, but the ambience in the vacation home was one of a good time and a constant flow of the nectar of the Gods.  There was an endless supply of food and that is a good thing, because the young ones ate on a different time zone compared to us, and they could not seem to enjoy what we were all preparing and enjoying.   Definitely different to the environment that I grew up in.  Some of it was because of the in and out adventures of all the things that could be done at the resort, so I guess I can excuse some, but not some of the diets.  While there were some excellent wines to be had while we were up there, some of the wines were just there to quench the thirst because of the heat and after long walks in the area.   We did go through an abundance of white wines.

One of the wines that we had was in keeping with the area, the wine country of Michigan.  We had a bottle of Leelanau Cellars Tall Ship Collection Chardonnay NV with an American AVA, so the winery was Michigan, but the grapes were not.  Leelanau Cellars is one of the oldest wineries in the area and it had begun as a cherry orchard in the 1960’s.  In 1974 they first uprooted some of the orchard and planted some grapes and in 1977 they released their first commercial wine.  The winery itself has eighty-nine acres and they grow classic international vitis-vinifera, non-vitis-vinifera and hybrid grapes as well.  They produce around two-hundred-fifty-thousand cases a year and they basically only sell in Michigan and a few of the adjoining states in the Mid-west.  There was not much information to be gleaned about this wine, but Leelanau Cellars refer to this wine as “off-dry” and I guess that is as good as a descriptor as there could be.  I mean it was just a refreshing chilled white wine that was working with the cheeses and most of the other noshes that were constantly being pulled out of the refrigerator.

Another of the white wines that was being quaffed down was one that is better known, but still the winery is rather close-fisted about their proprietary production.  The Sterling Vineyards Vintner’s Collection Central Coast Chardonnay 2016 was doing an admirable job.  Sterling Vineyards was founded in 1964 with fifty acres in Napa Valley near Calistoga.  One of the side notes of fame for Sterling Vineyards is that they were the first to issue a vintage dated Merlot in their inaugural 1969 production, which also featured Cabernet Sauvignon and a Sauvignon Blanc.  In 1977 the winery was sold to Coca Cola Company during their period of being in the wine industry, it was then sold in 1982 to Seagram and then by Diageo in 2001.  One of the fun things is that there is a tram at Sterling Vineyards that one can ride, similar to the ski-lift at Crystal Mountain, and when my Bride and I were at Sterling years ago, we use up a whole panoramic disposable camera while on the tram, alas the camera was defective we learned when we arrived back from that trip, so we have no photos from Sterling.

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M22 Wine

Posted on August 17, 2018 by thewineraconteur

We took a little side trip while we were up at Crystal Mountain and went to Glen Arbor, Michigan.  The Glen Lake area is the home to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and before you ask, we did not do the dunes.  We are not the most “touristy” type of people, we go somewhere, but we tend to walk, shop eat and drink.  Glen Arbor was bustling with tourism, one of the hardest things was to find a parking space.  It was a very quaint eight or ten block area with shops and galleries and I was surprised to see, the walking zombies that have more interest on their phone, than the surrounding sights that they drove out to see, as they walked into traffic situations totally oblivious to the three-thousand pound automobiles that they just ignored, not to mention the people that they would bump into on the sidewalks, because their indifference to their surroundings were only the concern of others.

We discovered a shop called Crystal River Outfitters that had casual clothing, rentals of kayaks and bicycles and an outdoor and an indoor wine tasting room for M22 Wines.  I never heard of M22 Wines and the odds are that you hadn’t either, but the main road in Glen Arbor was M22.  We were there, so we were game, as one never knows that one may discover a great find.  The tasting room charged you six dollars for five tastings and if you desired extra tastings they were an extra dollar per tasting, and one left with the glass if they so desired.  The would also pour one large pour at different prices for different wines while you were in the tasting areas.  The wines were all made for the M22 location by Black Star Farms and Black Star Farms began in 1998 in Suttons Bay in the Leelanau Peninsula.  The first person behind the counter when we started the tasting found someone else to help us, as she wasn’t sure how to answer my basic questions about the wines.

We started off with the M22 Late Harvest Riesling NV, as that is a popular varietal for the whole Northwestern corner of Michigan.  I might add that all of the wines were NV or “non-vintage” and I didn’t see any AVA on the labels, but I will presume that they were Michigan wines and grapes.  The Late Harvest Riesling was not a sweet as I was anticipating.  The next wine was M22 Chardonnay NV, which was stressed that it was pure Chardonnay and our host made it sound like the wine was made “Sur-Lie,” but no other information was forthcoming and it did taste like a Chardonnay.  The third wine was M22 Pinot Noir Rosé NV and this wine had a pretty color, a soft nose and short aftertaste.  We then tried the M22 Overlook Red NV which was a blend of Dornfelder and Marechal Foch, two distinct Cold-Hardy grapes which were very popular in the early days of winemaking in Michigan.  This wine was a sweeter red, but thankfully it did not have that foxy taste that some of those grapes can offer.  The fifth wine of the tasting was M22 Red NV which was a blend of Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Syrah.  With all of the grapes that I enjoy this wine was pleasant, but not worth taking a bottle home.  We splurged and had a sixth tasting and tried the M22 Vintners Red NV which was a blend of Cabernet Franc and Merlot.  Once again pleasant, but it did not give me or my Bride that Cabernet Franc taste that we were looking for.  There were another seven wines that we did not try, and while we have enjoyed Black Star Farms we left only with the tasting glass and not a bottle.

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Dinghy’s

Posted on August 15, 2018 by thewineraconteur

“Work is the curse of the Drinking Class” is one of the favorite expressions of a club member of mine, and sometimes it is so true.  Here we are, up in the serene setting of Crystal Mountain and my Bride has to make a business call.  I guess it wasn’t too bad, as it was not that far out of the way and we have gone to Frankfort on a couple of different occasions any ways.  After her business call, we had the chance to explore the area again.   Frankfort is a charming boating community with a large marina, in the old days there was a ferry service to the two states across Lake Michigan, but that service has been shuttered.  We walked up and down the downtown district, which is quite a good size and one of us did a bit of shopping and one of us was looking for some place new to have lunch at; and I think that the two roles are pretty easy to decipher.

We ended up having lunch at Dinghy’s Restaurant and Bar on the main drag of the road, but not on the water side.  Just from the name of the establishment, one can figure out that they are taking a nautical approach to the theme and to the décor.  The restaurant had hanging from the ceiling the signs from the Pilot Houses of the old ferries that use to ply Lake Michigan, there were also nautical maps and lighthouses featured.  We were just going to have a quick and light lunch and get back to our group, so we skipped what Dinghy’s is really noted for, and that is their smoked food dishes.  My Bride had a Caesar Salad with chicken, as if she doesn’t eat that dish enough in her life.  I went with a burger with Cheddar and sautéed onions, which I really don’t eat that often and I had an order of sweet potato fries, because I knew that would make my Bride happy.

As for our libations, our orders can sometimes get mixed up and it is understandable.  My Bride had the big robust wine, while I had the light white wine and they were both against the usual norms of pairing with our dishes.  My Bride had the Trapiche Oak Cask Malbec 2017 from the Mendoza region of Argentina.  I have found out that Trapiche uses Oak Cask or Reserve for the same wine, depending on the market.  Trapiche is one of the largest wine producers in Argentina and they now produce about one-hundred-thirty-three-million cases of wine a year, with multiple labels and categories, but Malbec is almost half of their output.   I went with The Prisoner Wine Company “The Snitch” Chardonnay Napa Valley 2016 and I think that I enjoy their wines as much as I enjoy their tongue-in-cheek attitude especially for the labels.  This wine company was originally made by Orin Swift Cellars, but they were sold to Honeeus Vintners in 2010, who later sold to Constellation Brands in2016.  Here is a Napa Valley Chardonnay with just a touch of Roussanne that is affordable and enjoyable, as the fruit came from Oak Knoll and Carneros.  What a fun way to spend a couple of hours with my Bride, because of her work.

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Chateau D’Issan

Posted on August 13, 2018 by thewineraconteur

I guess it will go down in the annals of The Wine Raconteur as a moment of serendipity.  It was kind of funny, a mixed case of wine from Louisville meets a mixed case of wine from Detroit up at a resort at Thompsonville, Michigan.  Both of the cases were mostly for the enjoyment of the moment, but we each brought one special wine for the dinner that we would have before we went to see The Music Man featuring family members who were accepted for the summer theater program at Interlochen.  By this day the balance of the family members that were coming up had appeared, but the actual number of wine drinkers had not changed, but there was still an electricity in the air and it had nothing to do with a billiard parlor table in River City, Iowa.

Well friends, let me tell you what I mean.  We were making a dinner that evening of two awesome sized beef tenderloins that had been marinating in olive oil, vinegar, garlic and fresh rosemary.  My Bride was making her Caesar Salad, she had premixed the dressing before we left, and had prepped the Romaine lettuce, to make her life easier.  She was also making Armenian Pilaf, but it came out a little different because the vacation home came with an electric stove.  The tenderloins were so large that after being on the barbeque, we actually had to bring them in, carve them into medallions and put them back on the grill to finish them off properly, and the good news is that they came out perfectly, as it would have been a shame to over cook a couple choice cuts of meat like that.

Here is where the serendipity moment came.  My Brother-in-Law and I like to bring out some very interesting wines at times, and while I think that I have a decent cellar, it pales in comparison to his.  That is just the way of life, there is always something better, unless maybe you own the Hope Diamond and then you have total bragging rights.  I brought up Blason D’Issan Margaux 2015 that we had just found and I wrote how we were so impressed that we bought a six pack of the wine.  Blason is a French word for “coat of arms” and I guess that is a nice way for them to list the second label from Chateau D’Issan.  The wine was a blend of sixty percent Cabernet Sauvignon and the balance was Merlot.  The wine is aged from fourteen to sixteen months in French Oak, of which a third is new.  The major difference between the first label and the second label, is a little shorter aging period and the fruit is harvested from younger vines.  The best way that I could describe this wine was “silky” and it was very impressive.  We were looking forward to this dinner, because when we were comparing wines that we had both carried up, he looked at the label of the Blason and thought it looked familiar and it should have.  He had brought a bottle of Chateau D’Issan Margaux 2005, a Troisiemes Grand Cru Classe en 1855 or in plain English a Third Growth from the great classification of the Medoc, and the labels are quite similar.  Chateau D’Issan is a legendary estate in Margaux, just south of Chateau Margaux and next door to Chateau Palmer, I mean some great real estate especially if you are into terroir.  The blend of the two grapes were the same, but because this was fruit from much older vines, the wine was aged for eighteen months in French Oak, of which fifty-five percent was new.  I kind of let a promotion of the dinner out a little early on Twitter showing the tops of the two capsules.  I said that Blason was “silky” and I thought it was the ideal way to describe a great wine from the Margaux, which if you bother to check, I have to admit, that I have had my share of these wines over the decades.  The Chateau D’Issan was ten years older and it still had the deep color and nose that was so impressive about the Blason, without any signs of age and probably way too early to have been disturbed.  I will add two more ethereal words to “silky” as I am not of this new generation that adores finding unique descriptors, but I will add “opulent” and “elegant.” Those three words just all go together after a full tasting of this wine, especially paired with a properly prepared filet.  Who would have ever thought that the two would be united that evening.  Then off to the opening night of the play.

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Pasty and Wine

Posted on August 11, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Our first night of getting situated up in Crystal Mountain in our vacation home for our Michigan adventure.  After schlepping all the groceries into the house, the sisters took it upon themselves to make sense out of the larders for the next couple of days.  It is good that we brought up our auxiliary electric car refrigerator as we ended up needed the additional space for a couple of days.  On our trip up, we had to make an extra stop and not even out of our way to Cadillac, Michigan to pick up an order that the Louisville contingent could not pick up, because they arrived too late in Cadillac to pick up it.  We picked up an order of Pasty, and not the glittery or tasseled pasties that the dancers in Burlesque used to wear while performing.

You may not know what a Pasty is, but in keeping with the theme of Michigan, it is relevant.  Historically it is Cornish and recorded from the 1300’s, originally a dish for the Royalty, but it ended up as a dish for the masses, and especially for miners, as the dish would remain hot for a long time and could be reheated on a shovel over a flame if necessary.  A Pasty is a self-contained savory pastry dish that does not require a pot or a pan to make and is filled with beef, potatoes, onions, spices and rutabagas, and some wags claim that the pastry shell will not crack even if it falls out of the pocket of a miner and falls to the bottom of a mine shaft.  You may ask what a Cornish Pasty has to do with Michigan, and you would be right, except that it was widely used by the Finn immigrants that ended up in the Upper Peninsula as miners in the 1800’s.  My Brother-in-Law’s family is Finnish from the U.P. and he is a maven on them.  These were from one of his two favorite Pasty shops in the Lower Peninsula and we were having them for dinner the first night.

We certainly did not have any problems pairing wine with our dinner.  Actually, we started enjoying our dinner wines, while dinner was baking.  The first bottles that we opened that evening was Bonterra Chardonnay 2017, a California Chardonnay with a touch of Muscat and Viognier to add some aromatics and an extra layer of nuance in the taste.  Bonterra is part of the much larger Fetzer Wines and the Bonterra line is crafted from Certified Organically Grown Grapes.  Seventy percent of the wine was aged in a combination of French and American Oak, of which fifteen percent was new, and the balance of the wine was done in Stainless Steel for a nice balanced wine that was great on its own and with our Pasty dinner eventually.  We then went with another tried and true friend to finish the evening and that was the Rodney Strong Vineyards Chardonnay Sonoma County 2016.  The winery was founded in 1959 and originally used bulk grapes under the label of Tiboron Vintners.  Then in 1962 they bought Windsor Vineyards and then in 1989 the Klein Family bought the winery and kept Rodney Strong on, until he retired.  This basic wine of theirs is also a blend of French and American Oak (fifty/fifty) with the wine on the lees for six months, and also some aged in Stainless Steel.  Our first night was just some easy drinking and then we called it a night and looked forward to the next wave of family to join us the next day.

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Up North Again

Posted on August 9, 2018 by thewineraconteur

When you live in the Detroit area, when you say up North, you are covering a lot of territory, not just the Lower Peninsula, but the Upper Peninsula as well.  We found ourselves going back to Crystal Mountain Resort and this time for a non-business trip.  With a trip like this, I also have to apologize as I am behind in my readings of my fellow Bloggers, but I will eventually get caught up again, as it was enough keeping up with the writing.  Since I have mentioned the resort often on these pages, I guess that I should mention a little bit about it, it located near Thompsonville, but to make it easy, it is near the wine country of Traverse City.  The resort was founded in 1956 and in the winter, it maintains fifty-eight downhill slopes, with seven chairlifts and two surface lifts, and is the only location to have an Alpine Slide in Michigan.  During the summer it maintains two eighteen-hole Championship golf courses and is the site of an annual LPGA tournament.  Conde Nast rated it one of the best “family ski resorts in the U.S.A.” and ranked it #1 for “family reunions.”  The accommodations include hotel rooms, suites, condominiums, chalets, townhouses and vacation homes.  I tagged along with my Bride and we met up with two of her other four sisters and their families in a vacation home that had four bedrooms, plus a huge loft for additional space, a full kitchen, dining, living areas, laundry, barbeque site and fire pit, not to mention a garage and a still unfinished basement.

We were getting together, because the Louisville part of the family had their youngest children who are twins that were accepted to the Interlochen Center for the Arts for a summer theater camp program that was culminating in a presentation of Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man.  Interlochen was founded in 1928 and works with children from grades three to twelve as well as programs for adults as well.  The school is for music, theater, dance, visual arts, creative writing, motion picture arts and comparative arts.  The campus and grounds are located between two lakes on a very idyllic setting with two major theaters, one enclosed and one semi-enclosed and we were basically there between performances by Reba McEntire and a show featuring Steve Martin and Martin Short.   The twins are very honored and accomplished to have both been accepted for the program, as the students that were performing were from across the country, and two were international students.

We got there the night after the Louisville clan got there, and a day before the others.  Our catering company (well we should be) arrived with bags and bags of food and beverages, not to mention our clothes.  With all of the goods we actually were bringing with us for the week, we had to stop by for more food, as her Sister had an order of food to pick-up that they could not get to in time.  With all of the driving and everything else, it was now time to kind of relax before dinner.  We now switch gears and head to France for the wine that we were drinking that evening, and after a four-hour drive, not to mention all the schlepping of the grocery bags, we needed some wine.  We were enjoying some M. Chapoutier Belleruche Rosé 2016.  The Chapoutier family goes back to 1808 in the Rhone, but it was in 1879 that they stopped being farmers and began making wine and becoming negocient.  In 1988 Michael Chapoutier modernized the concern and switched from large Chestnut foudres to Oak casks for quicker aging.  He also began to become biodynamically and organic in the vineyards that he owns or oversees.  The wine that is made for immediate consumption is Grenache with Cinsault and Syrah.  It is aged from three to six months in Stainless Steel to keep the youthful fruit finish and it was very easy and refreshing and it was perfect to let us begin to rest.

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Two Italians

Posted on August 7, 2018 by thewineraconteur

I guess from almost the start of my wine appreciation journey, the wines of Italy have always been one of the cornerstones of my education process.  I mean there is not one country that I will ever know completely and even though I may have drunk my share of wines from Italy there is always something new to discover and to appreciate.  While I was at The Fine Wine Shop in Livonia, Michigan I had a chance to try a couple of interesting Italian red wines and through the use of the Coravin system they can pour some very exotic wines from time to time without the wine going bad waiting for the next individual that will appreciate the wine.

The first wine is one is from a region that is famous not only in Italy, but the world, as everyone enjoys a Barolo wine from the Piedmont.  I did a tasting of Cordero di Montezemolo Monfalletto Barolo 2013.  We have here a family that for nineteen generations since 1340 have been taking care of the Monfalletto Estate.  The Nebbiolo grape reigns here and this winery also makes a special wine during spectacular vintages of only their oldest vines, and they have some very old wines on the estate.  This particular wine that I had is one of their classics and depending on the grapes and vintage the aging period could be from eighteen to twenty-four months in a mix of French and Slovenian Oak barrels.  This wine had a great nose and a big full taste, the kind of wine that one wants to keep refilling the glass with.  That is appreciation.

The second wine had me intrigued and I had to discover it, because as I was learning about some other wines, I kept seeing the staff grab bottles of this wine and then return the bottles to the shelf and return with magnums.  The Isole e Ollena Cepparello Toscana IGT 2015 was very popular.  Here is a winery that is from the Tuscan region, made from all Sangiovese and is entirely in the boundaries of the Chianti Classico zone.  You may ask, why isn’t the wine using the more prestigious and readily known Chianti Classico appellation, and it is because they make the wine strictly with Sangiovese and do not blend it, as Chianti laws require.  Since 1980 when they started the Cepparello label they originally had to use the basic Vino da Tavola designation and even then, it was recognized by those in the know, that this was not a table wine, and when the laws changed in 1992 it became a Toscana IGT or popularly now known as Super Tuscan wines, because they do not play by the traditional rules of the region.  My immediate note that I wrote down for this wine was “FULL” and “CHEWY,” which I realize is very terse, but for me and my normal disdain for descriptors, it was plenty of information for a future purchase.

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