Delectable Wine

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🇺🇸 Celebrating the fourth by launching @Jon Bonné's picks for #americanrebels. Nine winemakers, each with an independent streak and pushing boundaries. 🇺🇸 — 10 years ago

Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
Even if you know Washington wine, you likely don't know the Columbia Gorge. It’s a mostly undiscovered region and a magnet for talent like @Steven Thompson and Kris Fade, whose Analemma sits on the Oregon side (where they've planted what's apparently the first American vines of Spain's Mencia) but also taps one of Washington's oldest and most interesting vineyards, Atavus, to make very serious wines.

Atavus, now biodynamically farmed, was planted in the 1960s at the very birth of Washington's wine industry. No one expected it to ripen well (it's in the Cascade foothills, not warmer eastern Washington), which is why Thompson found nearly 50-year-old Gewürztraminer vines. This isn't a spicy and plump Gewürz. It's subtle, aromatic and driven by an intense mineral side.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

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Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
Yeah, yeah -- urban winery, purchased grapes. Heard it all before. What about in Traverse City, Mich.? Left Foot Charley works with more than a dozen small vineyards and farmers producing everything from Blaufrankisch to ice cider. Bryan Ulbrich's facility, in a former asylum that also houses galleries and a restaurant, is proof that you don't have to be in Oakland or Brooklyn to bring winemaking to the city.

Kerner is a cross between two cold-weather varieties, white Riesling and red Trollinger (aka Schiava). It's also a perfect choice for Michigan, which excels with dry Rieslings. LCF's caught my attention for the sort of green-almond and celeriac aspects you'd find in specimens from Italy's Alto Adige, but it leans a bit more fruit than mineral. Also: How often do you get to drink Michigan Kerner?

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

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Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
After leaving publishing to apprentice in a Sicilian winery, Brooklyn native @Dan Petroski found himself in Napa Valley. Cabernet was great, but he loved white wine too, especially Italian and of the blended sort. And so… Massican, one of the leaders of what I consider the second wave of Italian inspiration in California. (Do not, under any circumstances, call it Cal-Ital.) Dan’s work with Massican has proved transformative in making a case for serious Californian white wines.

Annia is a tribute to Dan's mother and to the great blends of Friuli. This latest combines the Friulian power couple Tocai Friulano and Ribolla Gialla with that California sweetheart, Chardonnay. The best characteristics of each: stony rigidity (Ribolla) and tree-fruit flesh (Chardonnay) all playing nicely. California whites should kill to have this degree of precision and depth.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

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Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
David Lett moved to Oregon in 1965 with 3,000 vine cuttings and effectively launched its history with Pinot Noir. His @The Eyrie Vineyards pioneered the grape in an era when it was barely known outside Burgundy. Lett also planted what's considered to be the nation's first selection of Pinot Gris after Prohibition. Today Lett's son Jason has refined his work, making true old-school Oregon Pinot (Noir, Gris and Blanc) and keeping Eyrie as an indie at a time when that state's industry is turning ever more pop.

This is Pinot Gris with more fealty to Burgundy or Alsace than the typical cheery versions. Lavishly textured and showing its savory bones: cracked coriander and pistachio skin. It's a contemplative wine, one that echoes both Oregon's seriousness and its lack of pretense.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

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Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
@Rory Williams has rebel blood. His dad John cofounded Frog's Leap (with Larry Turley), one of the rare Napa haunts to take the stuffy out of wine, and more poignantly one of the first in the valley to farm organically. In addition to his work there, Rory has turned his Calder label into a curation of sorts of California's vineyard remnants -- old head-pruned Riesling, forgotten Carignane vines and so on. It's a very modern take on some of the state's historic greatest hits.

Charbono has always been an outlier in California, but in the midcentury it had at least an occasional following, with bottles from Inglenook and others. Rory tapped an old parcel in Calistoga (northern Napa) for a quintessential example of the variety: a bit rustic, a bit savory (think poppy seed) and gutsy enough for a burger.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

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Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
Rebel cred is easy here: Caduceus' @MJ Keenan is known to anyone who survived the '90s as the lead singer of Tool. But his work in the mountains of Arizona is equally rad -- planting vineyards and experimenting with a panoply of grapes. Winemaking might be Keenan's favorite creative outlet, and his wines would be considered offbeat even in California. To make them in the desert Southwest is nothing short of radical.

The Nagual de la Naga is Keenan's take on a Super Tuscan -- part Sangiovese, part Cabernet, and often the most nuanced of his wines. That balsam note of Sangiovese stands forward, although there's ample oak and ripe, lavish fruit, too. It seems downright fashionable, until you remember its origins: Graham County, due east of Phoenix and far afield even from many Arizona vineyards.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

with Jon

Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
What exactly does Long Island wine want to be: A New York tribute to Bordeaux? A Chardonnay powerhouse? @Regan Meador and his wife Carey landed on the North Fork intending none of those things. They Kickstartered an effort for "weird grapes" but they also chose to interpret the island's current fare in novel ways. Really, this is about a simple question, and an essential one: What could New York be if it stopped trying to be everybody else? The Meadors offer some compelling answers.

Cabernet Franc from their neighbor's organic (a rarity on L.I.) vineyard. It's fermented with whole grape clusters to add aromatic lift and immediate fruitiness. While they quote the Loire and Beaujolais as inspiration, Fate strikes me as more unique than that, with a charcoal-like dark tone to its spicy flavors.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

with Jon

Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
@Steve Matthiasson is one of California's great Renaissance men: star vineyard manager on the clock, brilliant winemaker and farmer in his spare time, a combo that prompted me to name him the San Francisco Chronicle's winemaker of the year in 2014. (He's also a recovering bike messenger and skate rat.) He can finesse fine Cabernet, but he also asserts that wine is a populist drink.

Which brings us to Tendu, a project he conceived as an American response to the everyday 1-liter bottles found on Austrian shelves. From the hills of Yolo County, outside Sacramento, he harvested Aglianico, Montepulciano, and Barbera for what he likens to "Beaujolais with Italian grapes." (Again, ixnay on the Cal-Ital.) Tangy, decidedly fruity and relatively light-bodied, it's what you want with a slight chill at a July barbecue.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

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Delectable Featured Wine

Says @Jon Bonné:
Claude Thibaut took his sparkling wine skills all over the world, but in 2005 he and Champagne maker Manuel Janisson set sights on an improbable spot: Virginia. OK, not *totally* improbable: Virginia has been one of the East Coast's wine stars, with everything from Cabernet Franc to Viognier. (Sparkling wine too, although its other major sparkling label is now owned by ... Donald Trump.) What's crucial is this proliferation of bubbles taking place in states where no one expected: Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina. It's hugely important to me for the fact that it helps Americans to stop viewing sparkling wine as a fancy once-a-year thing, and more as a local product. Because we all need more fizzy drinks in our lives.

Debate Jefferson's rebel cred if you like, but the fruit here is all from the Monticello appellation, made with a classic Champenoise method. It's a slightly flashy Blanc de Blancs: lots of nutty and pastry (pie crust, and not just to be all-American about it) aspects to match opulent Chardonnay fruit.

#americanrebels — 10 years ago

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