Lamoresca ‘Nerocapitano Frappato’
Grapes 100% Frappato
Place Gigliotto, Sicily, Italy
Process Vines planted using vertical trellis system. Guyot pruning. Manually harvested. Fermented with indigenous yeasts, maceration on the skins for a max of 2 weeks. Aged in concrete tanks for 6 months.
Family Filippo Rizzo’s farm can be found hidden amongst the rolling hills of Sicily’s rugged interior, the only refernce point being the peak of Etna peering over the hills, somewhere in the distance.
Filippo grew up in the closest village to here, San Michele di Ganzaria. After having run restaurants overseas, in 2000 he returned home to purchase a small piece of land home to an ancient variety of olives that gives the farm its name. Today he farms a total of five hecatares of vines, planted amongst twenty five hectares of olive groves, prickly pear, fruit and almond trees over four hundred metres above sea level. The elevation results in large differnces between daytime and nighttime temperatures — a real boon in this typically Mediterranean climate.
The vineyards are planted over clay, sandstone and silex and have been worked organically from the outset. This is a farm where biodiversity is truly cherished and in recent years, Filippo has begun replanting forests of carob, eucalyptus and ginesta next to the vines. Believing that good wine is made in the vines, in the cantina Filippo’s work is decidedly unfussy, resulting in pure, rustic and nourishing wines which speak loudly of Sicily.
Bottle $47 | Glass $21
Division ‘Trousseau‘
Grapes 100% Trousseau
Place Willamette Valley, Oregon
Process Cap submersion fermentation on the skins, using a pied de cuve (Utilizing a small batch of grape must that has been fermented ahead of time to initiate the fermentation of the main batch). Aged for 12 months in neutral french oak barrels.
Family Kate Norris is the co-owner & co-winemaker of Division Winemaking Company. After cutting her teeth working in wine in France, Kate has since become a leader in Oregon winemaking. Working closely with organizations including the Oregon Wine Board and the Willamette Valley Wineries Association, Kate is often the one to encourage change and diverge from the path of sameness. Often found with her sleeves rolled up in her trusty Carharts, Kate’s approach to winemaking is open minded, always evolving and simple: drink good things with good people.
Bottle: $47 | Glass: $21
Le Puy Emilien
Grapes 85% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Cabernet Franc, 1% Malbec, 1% Carmenere
Place Bordeaux, France
Process Harvest is manual, the grapes are entirely destemmed and the cuvaison is long, continuing for two to four weeks. Only indigenous yeast is utilized, no chapitalisation is done nor is SO2 used during the fermentation. The “elevage” of the Le Puy wines is done according to the lunar rhythm. The two essential red cuvées of the estate, “Emilien” and “Barthelemy” are raised in barrel for 24 months.
Family The Amoreau family can trace its ancestors in le Puy back to 1610. The family lived here and in Coussillon, just 400 metres away. At that time, their main sources of income were vine and red wheat, and thanks to polyculture the family was virtually self-sufficient. For several generations a secondary activity was needed to ensure the family’s livelihood. A blacksmith, a weaver and a barrel-maker were also among our ancestors, but it is the passion for wine, passed down and continuously added to through the centuries, that has remained the driving force of the family.
In 1868, Barthélemy Amoreau (Jean Pierre’s great-grandfather), a winemaker of indisputable experience and expertise, began to question the necessity of using sulphur as an antioxidant to preserve his wines. After the end of the First World War, Jean Amoreau (Pascal’s great-grandfather) refused the use of chemical products and the le Puy vines continued to flourish without any artificial or additional aid other than agricultural fertiliser.
With the estate’s men enlisted in the army in 1944, Paule Amoreau, Pierre-Robert’s wife and mother of Jean Pierre, had taken over the winemaking since the start of the war. She produced a great le Puy vintage, with “a beautiful dark coffee colour. Aromas of sweet fruit and smoked almonds. An assertive palate with a lingering after-taste. An elegant and generous finish. The wine of a great woman which evokes a wonderful nostalgia.”
In 1990, Jean Pierre and Pascal worked to produce wines without any added sulphur, drawing on the foresighted observations of their ancestor Barthélemy in 1868. Building on the family philosophy, they also introduced new techniques based on the biodynamic method. By 2010, Le Puy has celebrated 400 years of a family legacy of wine-growing. Fourteen Amoreau generations have cultivated the land without ever using an artificial product.
Bottle: $73 | Glass: $32
Mauritson Zinfandel
Grapes 97% Zinfandel, 3% Petite Sirah
Place Dry Creek Valley - Sonoma County - California
Process Natural winemaking practices. 14 months in oak barrels 100% French
Family Since 1868, the Mauritson family has been growing grapes in the Dry Creek Valley. S.P. Hallengren, a grape growing pioneer in the Rockpile region, first planted vines in 1884, shipping every ounce of his wine back to Sweden. The family's Rockpile homestead and ranch grew to 4,000 acres by the early 1960s when all but 700 ridgetop acres was acquired by the Army Corps of Engineers in order to develop Lake Sonoma. The vineyards shown in many of their historical family photos are now under water! For the next 30 years, the Rockpile property would serve mostly for sheep grazing.
In the mid 1990s, Clay Mauritson returned from college with an unexpected longing to get back in the vineyards. This time, though, along with pruning and picking, Clay was determined to add winemaking to the family operation. Honing his winemaking skills and knowledge of winery operations at Kenwood, Taft Street and Dry Creek Vineyards, Clay was ready in 1998 to release the inaugural Mauritson Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel. Clay's wife Carrie soon joined him, leading our marketing and operations support.
Soon after that inaugural release, the Mauritsons took a fresh look at the potential for superior grape growing in the Rockpile region and planted 34 acres to vineyards in eight distinct blocks. The combination of low air moisture, poor soils and moderate temperatures was starting to turn heads. Six generations and more than 150 years later, they’re earning a reputation for outstanding winemaking along with our sought-after harvests.
Bottle: $55 | Glass: $24