Specials

93 Points! Moving to the Chardonnay, the 2018 Chardonnay Sonoma Coast is a terrific appellation wine that does everything right. Buttered stone fruits, toasted almonds, brioche, and honeysuckle notes all emerge from the glass, and this puppy is medium to full-bodied, has bright yet integrated acidity, and delivers a clean, lengthy finish. Drink it over the coming 4-5 years. These are terrific wines are now made by Joe Nielsen, who previously made the wines for Donelan. - Jeb Dunnuck

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95 Points! The effusive sliced-pear and white-peach aromas introduce you to this extraordinary, contemporary interpretation of this grape, which is so often dismissed as old-fashioned. The abundant fine tannins remind me of natural wines, but there’s a level of brightness here that’s totally Alpine and gives it remarkable drive at the very long wet-stone finish. Drink or hold. - JamesSuckling.com

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93 Points! The 2019 Winemaker's Cuvee is 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Merlot, 5% Malbec, and the rest Cabernet Franc and was aged for 15 months in 50% new French oak. It is rich with aromas of lavender, tobacco, and boysenberry compote and delivers ripe fruit through the mid-palate, with notes of blackcurrant, leather, and baking spice. This red has immediate appeal, but it will continue to evolve over the next 10 or more years. - Jeb Dunnuck

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93 Points! Notes of pastry, roasted pineapple, minerals, cashews and fine lees on the nose. This is a flavorful and round verdejo, but subtle and tactile, with a bright streak of acidity passing through the palate and leaving a broad but fresh-toned mouth-feel. From organically grown grapes. Drink now or hold. - JamesSuckling.com

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92 Points! The 2019 Cap de Faugères has tightened up a lot on the nose, showing dense black fruit, tar and graphite scents, quite Left Bank in style. The palate is much more expressive, featuring fleshy red berry fruit mixed with allspice, clove and white pepper. Persistent and quite convincing on the finish. Give it time for those aromatics to get their mojo back – which they will. - Neal Martin, Vinous Media

91 Points! The 2019 Cap de Faugeres is terrific, just as it was from bottle. Rich and expansive, the 2019 is so expressive right out of the gate. Succulent red cherry, spice, leather and tobacco all kicked up in this attractive entry-level offering from Silvio Denz. - Antonio Galloni, Vinous Media

 

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94 Points! The 2019 Chardonnay Sevens Bench Vineyard was barrel fermented and matured for 14 months in 38% new French oak. It offers pure, delicate tones of brioche and toast, lemon drops, beeswax, chamomile and green herbs with an underpinning of shimmery crushed stone character. Tangy and focused to begin, it unfurls from preserved lemon to plusher, perfumed orchard fruits, and it finishes with tremendous length and energy—this is a great candidate for the cellar. 260 cases were made. - Erin Brooks, robertparker.com

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94 Points! Like the Steinmassel vinified in stainless steel, the 2019 Ried Heiligenstein 1ÖTW Kamptal Riesling was bottled in late June 2020. The wine opens with herbal, minty notes of bright yet finely concentrated and even dried fruits. Full-bodied and enormously concentrated yet still very tight on the palate, this is an ambitious and grippy Heiligenstein that needs some years or a lot of aeration to sing. 12.5% alcohol. Tasted at Schloss Gobelsburg in June 2021. - Stephan Reinhardt, robertparker.com

 

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95+ Points! A wine readers should snatch up is the 2019 Cornas from Johan Michel, a majestic, full-bodied, incredibly seamless beauty that does everything right. It certainly shows the ripe, sunny style of the vintage and brings ample fruit, richness, and power, yet it still has incredible focus as well as purity and freshness. Black raspberries, cassis, blueberries, violets, bacon fat, and peppery notes all emerge from the glass, and it has no hard edges and a sensational mouthfeel that keeps you coming back to the glass. It will evolve for 15 years or more, and I doubt it will ever close down. Those who like ripe, sexy, yet still pure, focused, and flawlessly balanced Cornas should back up the truck for this sensational wine. - Jeb Dunnuck

 

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93+ Points! The regular white 2018 Manda Huevos Blanco Carramainas was produced with grapes from the single vineyard that is mentioned on the label. There is a skin-contact version of grapes from this same plot, but these grapes were harvested 12 days earlier than those destined to ferment with the skins, as the aim here was to achieve higher acidity and freshness and let the lees rather than the skins be the ones defining the style of the bottled wine. This is 95% old-vine Macabeo with only 5% Garnacha Blanca, with good ripeness and bright acidity. It fermented after a slow pressing and one night of settling in 500- and 900-liter oak barrels, where it was kept with the full lees for two months. It was then racked into Flextank (plastic) eggs with fine lees and then matured for another 12 months. It has a Burgundian profile, going back to the style of the 2014, in a leesy and smoky style, still very young and undeveloped. There's also something that reminded me of old-style white Rioja. The palate is vibrant and has pungent citrus acidity. It feels like a white to lay down, as it should develop nicely in the bottle. - Luis Gutierrez, robertparker.com Learn More

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