Featured Wines - July 2013

Girard’s winemaker Glenn Hugo and the wonderful weather that befell Napa Valley throughout the 2010 vintage conspired to produce a plush, beautifully balanced 2010 Girard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that’s deeply colored, hauntingly aromatic, and well-endowed with plenty of ripe, smooth fruit. Intense blackberry, cherry, and cassis fruit flavors join with deft touches of chocolate, mocha, cedar, freshly cured tobacco and ripe tannins to make the 2010 Girard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon very hard to resist.

Girard’s ability to fashion balanced, flavorful wines comes through loud and clear in this classic Russian River offering. Beautiful ripe fruit combines with subtle, complex spice tones reminiscent of sandalwood and clove, deft touches of butter and oak, as well as a fresh, lingering finish flecked with citrus tones. This youthful offering greatly impressed our tasting panel, and even an “anything but Chardonnay crowd” to which we subsequently offered this wine could not get enough of it – an auspicious statement indeed.

Pietra Santa doesn’t release the estate’s Signature Collection Cabernet Sauvignon until it is ready to drink, a practice we wish more producers of top end Cabernet would consider. Bright, juicy, and nicely polished, it offers up savory scents of blackberry, cherry, and dark chocolate. On the palate, full ripe fruit flavors infused with the soft patina of wood from 45 months in barrel positively glide across the tongue. Fresh, deep, and utterly satisfying, this tasty Cabernet can rest several more years in bottle before it reaches its apogee.

Austrian Rieslings contain all the flavor and complexity of the finest German Rieslings but without the residual sugar, and our featured wine is no exception. For starters, the 2011 Domäne Wachau Federspiel Terrassen Riesling glows with a bright sun-kissed robe. Moreover, it offers a light but seductive aroma reminiscent of freshly picked apricots, golden apples, and liquid minerals. On the palate, Domäne Wachau’s 2011 Federspiel Riesling offers a subtle balance of fresh fruit and crisp acidity that lends itself to the wine’s dry, refreshing finish.

Painted Wolf’s 2010 Guillermo Pinotage is the finest example of Pinotage we’ve tasted in years. It’s produced from organically cultivated, dry farmed grapes on South Africa’s Western Cape, and its fermenting must is entirely hand punched and basket pressed, with the resulting wine matured for 14 months in American and French oak. But best of all, the 2010 Painted Wolf Guillermo tastes great. It offers up a wealth of savory scents and flavors in the form of deep berry fruits, violets, Asian spices, and wood smoke, all wrapped beautifully in soft, ripe tannins.

The 2012 Yali Lolol Valley Sauvignon Blanc, like many of Chile’s best Sauvignon Blanc wines, captures the best of both traditional Sancerre and New World Sauvignon Blanc. Bright, juicy, and pleasantly herbaceous, the 2012 Yali offers up plenty of fresh melon, herb, fig, and zesty lime scents, but better still, Yali’s captivating aromas flow full throttle into the mouth with rich fruit flavors imbued with herb and citrus twists. Medium-bodied, balanced and immensely fresh and clean, the 2012 Yali Sauvignon Blanc outshines many Sauvignon Blancs at twice the price.

The 2009 Tridente Tempranillo greets the taster with scents of ripe black fruits mixed with incense and sweet balsamic notes that foreshadow the broad voluminous flavors that await. In the mouth, concentrated crème-de-cassis flavors infused with deft touches of graphite and toasted oak produce a concentrated, powerful, yet silky smooth wine with nary an edge. Tridente’s hedonistic Tempranillo is one persistent, smooth, fine drinking wine that provides ample testimony to the glory of old vine Tempranillo from Zamora.