Raising the Stakes Catalunya’s Young Producers Turn to Indigenous Varieties and Single-Vineyard Expressions to Reveal the Soul of the Region in Spain’s Northeast + In-Store, All-Day Saturday Tasting

Homage to Catalonia: Join Us for Saturday Sips to Celebrate “La Diada de Sant Jordi’ ‘La Diada de Sant Jordi’ falls on April 23 in the Catalan holiday calendar, a day of books and roses, and it is a great reason…

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Posted on 2025.04.22 in Spain DO, Penedes, Wine-Aid Packages, Cava  |  Read more...

 

Rioja Alavesa: Going Its Own Way New-Generation Viñadores Emphasize Vineyard Over Cellar Treatment and Show the Specialness of Thier Sub-region.

There are no philosophical mandates in winemaking, but there are certain truisms that seem to arise regardless of appellation and country of origin. That is, low-end wines tend to emphasize immediacy; they display linear, fresh fruit notes unhindered by the…

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Posted on 2025.04.07 in Spain DO, Wine-Aid Packages, Rioja DOC  |  Read more...

 

Wine Like Any Other: Small Scale Vignerons Unlock Champagne and Catalunya Sparkling Wine’s Full Depth and Diversity of the Regions’ Terroir

Saturday Sips: In-Store Tasting: Bubbles (What Else?) to Ring In the New Year It’s easy to think of Champagne as a spiritual substance; after all, it was created by monks and the very airiness of its identity seems celestial. The cornerstone of…

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Posted on 2024.12.27 in Saturday Sips Wines, France, Spain DO, Wine-Aid Packages, Champagne, Cava  |  Read more...

 

Wine Matchup for Thanksgiving Feast: A Pack of Ten Picks to Enhance the Food, Reawaken the Appetite and Renew Weary Taste Buds ($279) + Recent Arrival Traversing Burgundy in Six Wines with Domaine Manuel Olivier (6-Bottle Pack $459)

A true masterpiece is composed of many elements, and all the details must be in precise balance: The forearm musculature on Michelangelo’s ‘David’ for example—the intake of breath in the nostril of Sanmartino’s ‘Veiled Christ.’ This is as true for…

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Posted on 2024.11.21 in Fleurie, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Vosne-Romanée, Gevrey-Chambertin, Hautes-Côtes de Nuits, Cidre, France, Wine-Aid Packages, Cava  |  Read more...

 

Spanish Viticultural Polygamy: Pioneering Producers Explore Galicia’s Wealth of Ancestral Varieties, Transcend Boundaries and Make Transformative Wines.

Given a coloring book, Michelangelo would probably have stayed within the heavy black lines and Picasso would have redrawn all the images and colored them with the blunt end of the crayon. The charm in either approach depends on the…

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Posted on 2024.11.14 in France, Misc Spanish, Wine-Aid Packages, Ribeira Sacra  |  Read more...

 

A Sense of Where You Are: The Burgundification of Catalunya’s Priorat in Three Villages by a Trio of Talented and Ambitious Producers

Priorat has been making serious wine since Roman ‘vinitors’ started carving terraces into the Spanish landscape, but its history as a DOQ (DOC) is much shorter. To be precise, Priorat only received this status in 2000. The advantage to being…

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Posted on 2024.10.17 in France, Priorat DOQ, Wine-Aid Packages  |  Read more...

 

Mining the Minerality in Riesling: Dry Alsatian Wines Demonstrate Transparency and Express the Distinctive Character of Vineyards in Which the Grapes are Grown. Twenty-One Wines by Ten Outstanding Producers.

There’s no reason why the term ‘minerality’ should be controversial in wine descriptions, but since it is, maybe it’s better to think of it like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart did pornography: “I may not be able to define it,…

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Posted on 2024.06.27 in France, Wine-Aid Packages, Alsace, Costers del Segre  |  Read more...

 

Meet The Introverted Extroverts Of Spanish Wines: Galicia Winemakers Render Modern Interpretations By Learning The Intricacies Of The Land And How It Is Expressed Through Its Heritage Varieties.

Contrast has always animated the soul of wine; the subtle way that sugar plays against acid while fruit notes wrangle savory undercurrents. Wine is about transformation—fermentation is a pretty radical transmutation, after all—a metamorphosis of grape juice from the plebian…

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Posted on 2024.05.16 in Spain DO, Wine-Aid Packages, Ribeiro, Ribeira Sacra, Rias Biaxas  |  Read more...

 

Redefining Spanish Wines: Catalunya’s Deeply Rooted, Daringly Innovative Wine Culture In The New Age Four Neo-vignerons (9-Bottle Red, White & Rosé Pack For $285)

All Things Catalunyan:  Join Us for Saturday Sips To Usher In “La Diada de Sant Jordi’ ‘La Diada de Sant Jordi’ falls on April 23 in the Catalan holiday calendar, a day of books and roses, and it is a great…

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Posted on 2024.04.23 in France, Saturday Sips Wines, Penedes, Priorat DOQ, Wine-Aid Packages, Catalunya, Costers del Segre  |  Read more...

 

Fanfare For The Uncommon Grape: Visionary Spanish Producers Explore The Capabilities of 23 Heritage Varieties’ and Demonstrate Their Potential For Complexity. A Dozen: 7 Red, 4 White & 1 Rosé $296

The wine world’s equivalent to the dinosaur-destroying Chicxulub meteor is a microscopic louse called phylloxera. By the end of the nineteenth century, the bug had killed most of the vines in Europe, and when they were replanted (often using louse-resistant…

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Posted on 2023.09.08 in La Tierra de Castilla, France, Spain DO, Penedes, Wine-Aid Packages, Catalunya, Cava, Arribes, Tierra de Leon, Ribeiro, Ribeira Sacra  |  Read more...

 

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