February delivered a landslide of Champagne discovery and liquid treasures from a heretofore unknown producer in Northern Spain. The month’s top three wines represented such immense drinking pleasure that they will linger forever in my palate’s memory. Not mentioned here, and to be completely fair, is the 2005 Clos Rougeard Saumur-Champigny. This cult-like Loire Cabernet […]
Avanthia Godello and Mencia: Valdeorras Magic in a Bottle
Avanthia is a knockout, compelling young project unveiling itself in the Galician mountains of Valdeorras in Spain’s extreme northwest. I remain in awe of Avanthia’s interpretation of Mencia and Godello after discovering these wines in complete serendipitous fashion. Magic in a bottle flows from this collaboration involving Jumilla’s established Monastrell-proficient Gil family, venerable importer Jorge Ordonez, […]
A Blind Mencia Tasting
Gathered around a few white cloth-covered tables under brighter than usual Saturday night lights, I hosted a group of 17 New England tasters to evaluate a dozen wines made from the Mencia grape. Finally, the opportunity to examine Mencia in a critical environment presented itself and I looked forward to validating my developed preference that I have unleashed on restaurant wine lists across the […]
Courting Mencia: How Have I Lived Without You?
Bear with me, I am falling in love again. I have been peripatetically traversing the Ribeira Sacra and Bierzo regions by tasting every Mencia wine I manage to unearth and then blabbering away about the new discoveries here at WineZag. A byproduct of utter submission to my new Mencia tick, I recently met up with Joe Austekewicz, wine director at Yankee Spirits, who just returned from a foray through these very regions alongside Eric Solomon . […]
15 Wines in Simple Format Unlock Path To Wine Apprecation
Hosting less experienced wine drinkers to easily replicated and structured tasting formats appeals to my ritual instincts for making wine more accessible to more people. On the one hand, it’s a refreshing personal break from the usual “club” and a way to strip away the bravado and bias brought to tasting tables by hardened wine aficionados. On the other hand, it is a chance for me […]
Declaring Mencia King
My love affair with the Mencia grape is officially out of control. Tasting through more of these wines at Toro (which is by the way Ken Oringer’s restaurant serving very serious food in a relaxed but energy charged atmosphere…sitting on my top ten all-time list for “simply delicious” and a winning choice for Beantown foodie indulgence) convinced me that my first […]
Spain Boiled Down
Amidst some good trivia in this cool ten point summary of Spain and its wine at Enobytes, the top two points on “next big red” and “next big white” are worth paying attention to. With all the attention I have given to Albarino and Tempranillo, I was blindsided by the amazing quality of Mencia first […]