New BTG!
Hi All!
I'll keep this short and sweet since it was a holiday week, just the
new BTG wines. I hope everyone has a relaxing day off and you soak in
as much sun as you need.
Vino Rosso "Concrete", De Fermo - 2020
No one is buying much red wine these days so Uzzi and I decided to put
one the most exciting wines we've had in a while on by the glass. It's
a 100% Biodynamic Montepulciano from Abruzzo made in a light fresh
style (kind of Abruzzo Beaujolais). It's from a husband and wife team
who started recuperating their family vines as a way to escape the
crushing boredom of their legal jobs. They eventually left the city
and are now full time winemakers and thank god for that because we get
to drink this.
Olivier Minot La Boutanche Gamay 2022
Olivier Minot makes beaujolais in the far southern tip of the
appellation known as the "pierre d'orees". Whereas most of the
appellation is a unique granitic soil, the southern part is a golden
yellow limestone ("pierre d'orees' means golden stones). It's a light,
beautiful wine served in liters and we're pouring it chilled.
Domini Leone Pinot Grigio
Pinot Grigio/Gris is an odd grape. While most people think of it as a
white wine, the actual color of the grapes is a very unique grey/pink
color and what we know now as "pinot grigio", the light, white, cheap,
high acid summertime wine was an invention of the Santa Margherita
winery, a colossal wine consortium in the Veneto in 1961. Prior to
that pinot grigio was largely made into pinkish sweet wines in more
northern climates where it was much more difficult to grow. The light
concoction proved incrdibly popular in Italy, and in 1979 Anthony
Terlato, a distributor in Chicago began bringing it over. It proved so
popular that for several decades Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio was the
single most popular restaurant wine in America. The success of this
single wine, however, proved an immense detriment to anyone making any
Pinot Grigio of value. Pinot Grigio suddenly became a single thing,
and if you weren't making that you might as well not be trying. Later,
when the wine had become so saturated pinot grigio as a whole started
to become a byword for cheapshitty white wine. So find a wine like
this, a pinot grigio that has been farmed organically since 1974, made
with care and thought is a revelation. It's still a light beautiful
wine in style popularized in the 60s, but it has a soul and texture
and depth.