The mountains of Sierra de Toloño, with their clay and limestone rocky-soils, are perfect conditions to grow Tempranillo. This is Sandra Bravo's "workhorse", the wine that points the way to some of the most elegant expressions of Rioja Alavessa we've encountered. Harvested by hand, mid-October, the...

A blend of young Calvados, distilled with extreme care in a copper column still. Aged more than 2 years in oak casks. Several generations of the Lelouvier family have sought to identify farms producing fine Calvados in the Ferté Macé and Domfront regions. 

In 2015, chateau owner Bertrand Gourdou was searching through an old desk when he came across a label that his grandfather had made in the early 1970's; that wine was called "Le pot-de-vin" which, in French, translates to "the bribe", which for that era was an audacious play on words for a wine...

This is a non-vintage blanc de blancs, blended from four different years and sourced exclusively from the Grand Cru villages of Avize, Oger and Cramant where the average vine age is an impressive 40 years. The base vintage is 2017 (with 2016, 2015, and 2014 reserve), with 30-35% reserve wines...

The terrible floods of the Maule River in 2023 hit Gonzales Bastias hard.  Their vineyards were flooded, although luckily, without damage to the plants, since their advanced age withstand such ocasional disasters.  But their cellar and winery were wrecked.  As a result they felt “headless”, and...

This wine takes its name from the vineyard from which the grapes are sourced. (The name of the vineyard comes from long ago, when to access the vineyard was through a big stone portal; the local people started to call it Viña El Portalón—literally, Big Door Vineyard—and the name stuck.) From sandy...

The mash bill is 65% rye, complemented by a mix of corn and barley; the grains are sourced from the nearby sixth-generation-family-owned Rusmar Farms.   

Merlot from the Pollard Vineyard in upper Yakima Valley. Of the 10 acres of land under vine, roughly 3 acres are planted to Merlot. Soils are a mix of sandy loam with a limestone subsoil. The 2023 Merlot is matured for 18-months before bottliing 20% new French oak. 14% abv. 

The “Handwerk” line is hand-crafted as the name suggests:  biodynamically grown, manually harvested and vinified in small quantities.  You want a dry white but don’t want to give up the fruit, ripeness or sex appeal of Riesling? BOOM. This is an explosively flavorful and energetic bottling, loaded...

25g/l RS, 9.8g acid, 10% alc. A red slate site like the Sonnenberg, picked from a single parcel of vines from 1969. Light and fresh with a keen phenolic texture on the palate, less yellow fruit and more granny smiths and crytalline fruit overall. Lightly sweet up front but serisously dry at the...

60% Malvasia di Candia Aromatica/20% Trebbiano/15% Ortrugo/3% Sauvignon/2% Marsanne. Massimiliano Croci refers to his steep, southeast-facing hillside vineyard as a “beach”: the soils (terre dei fossili piacenzano) are crumbly, sandy clay, full of disintegrating, limestone-rich marine fossils....