We're
entering the last week of our Wine ABCs and we've saved some good
things for the end. Today, it's all about the letter
S as in Sangiovese, which could also include SuperTuscan.
To order any of the following WineFinds offers, you must email your request to winefinds@corkwineshop.com and specify Lovejoy or Alberta for your pickup location. We will confirm your order is available and coordinate payment and pickup at that time.
Thanks for reading,
Darryl |
2006 FELSINA Fontalloro (Reg. $55.50)
cork club $47/bottle or $270/six-pack · $50 nonclub price
 I
guess we could have decided that S was for SCORES, as in big press
scores from the national wine writers at publications like the Wine
Spectator. Last week, the Spectator named their Top 100 Wines of
the year. Strangely, many of the Top 10 were wines that have been
sold out more than one vintage, meaning they haven't been on a retail
shelf since sometime in 2008. Why this happened is anyone's
guess, but one of our favorite Super Tuscan bottlings of Sangiovese
that is due to arrive in a few weeks did place pretty highly at #13,
having received a 95 point score when it was reviewed earlier this
year. I'm not sure how to take all this scoring stuff, since it
is so highly subjective.
What I do know is that
Fontalloro is consistently one of my favorite bottlings of Sangiovese
from the heart of Tuscany, and that 2006 is considered to be the first great
vintage since 1997. Winery owner Giuseppe Mazzocolin purchased a
couple of prized vineyards just outside the Chianti Classico zone,
technically within Colli Senesi, intentionally giving him an excuse to
make a wine that was not labelled as Chianti Classico. Working
with reknowned enologist Franco Bernabei, they blend the Fontalloro
vineyard (which is inside the Chianti Classico zone) with these 2 other
vineyards to create this historic wine. The first vintage was
1983 and there have been at least 6 remarkable releases since
then. The winemaking technique follows closely the methods used
for their top single-vineyard Rancia bottling of Chianti Classico, so
what you are tasting here is really soil differences between the Rancia
and the Fontalloro. We expect 2006 to match the intensity and
complexity of 1985, 1988, 1990, 1997, 2001 and 2004. Some expect
it to surpass all of those!
Given our recent enjoyment of the
2004 and 2005 Fontalloro and my personal experience with 1993 that
developed amazingly well with 15 years in the cellar, I am excited for
the 2006 vintage to land. When 2004 was highly rated, Oregon
(which is one of the few states that direct imports this wine from the
winery) had its allocation cut drastically and we only scored a couple
six-packs of this wine. This year, I'm jumping out ahead of the
pack and pre-selling it so we can get all the wine we need to fill your
requests if we put the order in now before it lands. Let me know
what you want and I will confirm with our supplier and do my
best. This should be a Required Cellar Addition for anyone who
loves Italian wine.
2007 VIOLA Sangiovese
cork club $21.60/bottle or $244/case · nonclub price $24
 As
previously announced, I am releasing my latest creation today.
This
2007 Sangiovese is under the VIOLA wine label, named after my Italian
great-grandfather Giuseppe Viola. The wine was made from grapes
grown by Mike Neufer
at his vineyards surrounding the Nicolas Cole winery in Walla Walla (he
later sold the winery but still farms the vineyards). The grapes
were
harvested on October 12th and trucked overnight to Apolloni winery in
Forest Grove on a refrigerated container, where we unloaded the morning
of October 13th, sorted and destemmed the fruit and began a week-long
cold soak. Despite my desire to try a natural fermentation of
wild
yeasts, the lack of control in a winery with multiple fermenters
going led me to innoculate the must with a strain of Brunello yeast
known as BM45. Fermentation started quickly and maintained a
steady
rate for 9 days. After an additional few days on the skins, we
pressed
the wine off and transferred it to one and two year old used
French
barrels. The wine aged in barrel for 14 months, getting racked
once
after secondary fermentation was completed. We bottled the wine
in
March 2009 and the wine has started to settle and integrate now that it
has more than 6 months bottle age. While it is still quite young,
the
wine is bold and flavorful. You can enjoy it now, but I recommend
plunging it into a decanter to aerate the wine and help the flavors
come out. I've had it a few times recently, and the unconsumed
half of
the decanter that I put back into a bottle and recorked was showing
really nicely on the second day! So that tells you this wine should age
well, at least for 5-8 years. It is sure to please those
lovers of the big hearty reds we often see out of Walla Walla.
You can
buy some now anytime, as it is available at both stores. I'll be
pouring it on Friday night at the Alberta shop if you want to come
taste it with me! Just 75 cases produced!
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