New Wines In
A quick wrap up of a few new arrivals, and whatever is on our btg list
Parajes del Valle Orange
Maria Jover is an oddity in the wine world. At only 28 years she's had a career that started at Spain's most legendary wineries Vegas Sicilia, an aristocratic winery meant to emulate the legendary estates of Bordeaux, and has now taken her to the tiny appellation of Jumilla in southern Castilla where she owns a tiny natural winery that makes wines light years away in style from where she started. Jumilla is mainly known for two things, being one of the hottest wine growing regions in Spain, and for maintaining an ancient farming system known as "Terraje" where vineyards are rented out to farmers who then pay the landowner back in a small percentage of grapes. It's a mutually beneficial system, encouraging good farming practices and has traditionally meant more money for the people who actually work the land. It's also a system that is dying out, as modern landowners realize they can simply exploit farmworkers and keep all the profits for themselves. Maria Jover is deeply committed to maintaining this system, and these wines are the result of that. This wine is 100% macabeo, one of the few grapes suited to making light wines in a climate this hot. It spends 15 days on the skins before going being racked off, and sits comfortably in the middle of an orange wine,being not too tannic but having enough interest to separate it from a white wine.
Domaine Rimbert Petit Cochon Bronze Rose
This is our first 2022 wine, coming from Jean Marie Rimbert in the south of France. There isn't much to this wine, and there isn't meant to be. It's a rose that is meant to be drunk fresh. There's a million roses that are in thsi exact same style, but this stands out because Jean Marie is a true pioneer in natural winemaking, starting in 2006 in St. Chinian in the Roussillon in France. It's always a pleasure to find winemakers putting ethics, hard work and good farming practices into a simple everyday wine such as this.
BRUT J’OSE LES FINES BULLES
I can't say enough how much I love the chenin blanc grape. A long time ago over a dinner in North Carolina a friend asked me what I thought the greatest of all the grapes were. The table, wine geeks all, went back and forth. Was it gamay, with it's ability to make truly special and unique wines from across France and into Italy? Pinot Noir for the legendary wines of Burgundy? Riesling for it's amazing sweet and dry wines? But eventually we settled on Chenin Blanc. Truly great Chenin Blanc is only grown in the Loire Valley, but in the right hands it can make truly outstanding sweet wines, dry wines and in this case, sparkling wines. For the price this is one of the most thoughtful, deep sparkling wines you can find, and has been that way since I first tasted it 15 years ago.
Marinov Babic
Lastly, our first wine from Croatia, Josipa Marinov and Neno Marinov's Babic. Babic is an indigenous variety grown on the Dalmation coast. And when I say the coast, I mean it, the best vineyards in the area grow right to the coast, where the grapes are planted in small stone pools that make working the vines with any type of machinery. Babic itself is a variety that is easy to overcrop and get a thin, dilute wine in fertile soil, but the magic is here is the extremely poor soil, which produces grapes with thicker skins and more concentration. The result is a wine that's still light, but has some depth and drinkability.