Winter Wines for a Wet January

Not everyone is dry this month, so what should we be drinking? Here are a few of our current favorites perfect for winter.

 

Rose of Pinot Noir, Scribe, Sonoma

Rose is always a good idea. This high acid porch pounder is perfect with brunch, lunch or a day drinking session. Scribe founders Andrew & Adam Mariani practice their motto of “Forever Wild Farming,” integrating their harvests into the existing ecosystem of the land. No chemicals on the property and only using natural methods of vinification.

 

Pinot Noir, Hirsch San Andreas Fault Sonoma Coast 

An American vigneron you should celebrate is David Hirsch, who fell in love with an abandoned sheep farm isolated along the Pacific coast almost forty years ago, where the roads are so dangerous it's questionable how he trucked the bottles down to your table, nonetheless essentially planted one of California’s greatest vineyards. San Andreas Fault is a bottling produced entirely from estate fruit. Today, Hirsch is run by his daughter Jasmine who also will take the role as Executive Winemaker. She takes no bullshit in the industry, runs the show, and is more well-versed and knowledgeable in the world of wine than most, so drink up.

 

Mencía, Raúl Pérez Bierzo Tinto Ultreia

Raúl, with his marxist beard, is intuitive to his vines and his cellar. His demeanor is from another time, and he makes one of the purest wines from the northwest corridor of Spain. While Mencia is the main grape, this wine also has a chunk of other varieties that originate to Bierzo’s stop along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. If you’ve been digging Syrah and Cabernet Franc, you’ll love this wine.

 

Cabernet Franc, Domaine de la Butte Bourgueil Le Haut de la Butte, Loire

Domaine de la Butte could potentially be one of the greatest vineyards in France, and if you drink Burgundy, its limestone caked soils and south-facing orientation perfectly distanced from the Loire River, breeds one of the most structured and silkiest wines in Bourgueil. Jacky Blot was a caviste, an entitlinging term for a wine shop owner, in Paris, who migrated out to the Loire in the ‘80s. He’s one of the vignerons that put Montlouis and Bourgueil on the map. 

 

Online Wine Shops 
Verve NYC- www.vervewine
Chambers St. Wines, NYC- www.chambersstwines.com
Tribeca Wine Merchants- www.tribecawine.com
K&L Wine Merchants- www.klwines.com
DomaineLA- www.domainela.com