Montesco ‘Agua de Roca‘
Grape: 100% Sauvignon Blanc
Place: Uco Valley, Medoza, Argentina
Process: The grapes are harvested in 3 - 5 batches over the course of about a month, all with varying levels of ripeness depending on how early during the harvest they were picked. The wine is fermented in concrete eggs using native yeast fermentation. Aging happens in the concrete eggs as well and lasts anywhere between 5 -12 months on the lees. Unfined and unfiltered.
Family Matías grew up in Mendoza, Argentina’s viticultural heartland. Even though the region is dominated by vineyards and wineries, his early life wasn’t defined by a family winemaking empire. Instead, he came from a family where agriculture and the land were part of daily life, but the modern “Michelini winemaking dynasty” (Matías + his brothers) only emerged later.
Matías eventually graduated as a winemaker from the Don Bosco School in Mendoza, one of Argentina’s most respected enology programs.
But this is the first concrete milestone in his professional life — meaning everything before this was formative, exploratory, and not yet tied to a specific winery.
Before founding Passionate Wines, he worked at several established wineries, including Luigi Bosca, Doña Paula, Finca Sophenia, and Zorzal (his brother Juan Pablo’s winery). He built his career step by step, learning from some of the most respected producers in Argentina before starting his own project more focused on exploration rather than tradition.
Bottle: $35 | Glass: $15
PoderiCellario ‘E‘ Bianco
Grapes Arneis, Moscato
Place Piedmont, Italy
Process Hand-harvested into small bins. De-stemmed, pneumatic direct press. Spontaneous fermentation in stainless steel. Aged in stainless steel tanks. Bottled with minimal sulphur (~10ppm) and without sterile filtering or fining.
Family Fausto and Cinzia Cellario are 3rd generation winemakers in the village of Carru` on the western outskirts of the Langhe. The family believes in only working with local, indigenous Piemontese grape varieties and fiercely defends local winemaking traditions both in the vineyard work and the cellar practices. The Cellario vineyard holdings cover some 30 ha between 5 different vineyard sites covering the southern Langhe. With holdings in Novello and Monforte, the Dogliani plot is arguably the family’s most prestigious land and I would consider them Dolcetto specialists. Vineyard work is organic (soon to be certified) and all the fermentation take place with indigenous yeasts. Sulfur is only added in tiny quantities at bottling if necessary (a practice not common with a winery in this mid-size range).
Bottle: $25 | Glass: $11
Domaine de la Combe
‘
Vendange Nocturne’
Grape 100% Melon Blanc (Melon de Bourgogne)
Place Loire Valley, France
Process: The grapes are harvested late at night and immediately crushed upon arrival in the cellar. After 12 hours of maceration on the skins, the grapes are pressed and transferred to concrete tanks for spontaneous fermentation using naturally occurring indigenous yeasts. The wine undergoes full malolactic fermentation before a low dose of sulfer (50ppm) is added.
Family Descended from the Bourgeois family (Domaine Henri Bourgeois) in Sancerre on his mother’s side and the fifth generation of the Gadais family (Gadais Père et Fils) to produce wine from the rolling hills surrounding Saint-Fiacre-sur-Maine, Pierre-Henri was perhaps destined to be a vigneron. In the Muscadet region the Gadais family has long been synonymous with high quality production, with legendary importers Frank Schoonmaker, Robert Chadderdon, and now Peter Weygandt bringing the wines of Gadais family to the United States.
Growing up in the vines and cellar of his father and grandfather, Pierre-Henri received quite the education from a very early age. It would have been easy to return to the family Domaine after earning his Viticulture & Enology degree in Burgundy, but Pierre-Henri chose a different path. To gain a better understanding of the international wine trade, he studied Wine Business in Bordeaux for 2 years, followed by a year in California working in wine distribution. After the completion of his studies, Pierre-Henri worked for several years as an apprentice winemaker in Australia, Switzerland, Burgundy, Pomerol, Sancerre, and back in Muscadet at Domaine de la Pépière.
Finally in 2016 he returned to Saint-Fiacre-sur-Maine to work with his father Christophe at Gadais Père et Fils.
Bottle: $29 | Glass: $13
FAAA! Albarino
Grapes 100% Albarino
Place Canelones, Uruguay
Process: Certified sustainable farming practices. 7-day fermentation in stainless steel tanks. Aged in stainless steel on the lees for 5 months. 3000 cases produced.
Family The Deicas Family moved to South America from the Alpine town of Bormio, Italy and founded their winery in 1978. They first started planting Albariño in 2009 and now have approximately 12 acres of Albariño under vine. Juanico is a coastal region that benefits from a temperate climate and well drained soils that allow for a slow ripening period which enables the fruit to develop a natural acidity and salinity.
Bottle: $25 | Glass: $11