Happy New Year – Let’s Try Some New Wines

By Tom Marquardt And Patrick Darr

Heading into a new year can challenge the psyche. We don’t know what the year will hold for us personally or for us as a country. Who knows? In January of 2023 did you predict anything that actually happened? We hope for the best, of course, because being an optimist is much less painful than being a pessimist.

As our friend Shelly says, if you don’t like the mood, have another glass of wine.

If politics and fate are unpredictable, maybe your choice of wine should be as well.  Shelly drinks La Crema pinot noir – nearly all the time. We offer her red and white alternatives. She indulges us, but privately we suspect she retreats to her La Crema.  It’s a good wine at least, but there is a sea of wine out there, ready to be discovered. Life’s too short to drink bad wine but it’s also too short to drink the same wine. Shelly has a good palate; we just need her to challenge it.

We often hear from our readers who cannot find the wines we recommend and that is regrettable. But we have no idea what stores in your community carry other than Barefoot and Menage et Tois. But, don’t get hung up on wasting gas going from store to store in search of one particular wine.

Think about the grape variety or the region we’re suggesting.  If we find one particular producer making a great wine in a specific region, chances are there are other producers of equal value.

With that, let’s launch a collaborative effort to get out of our La Crema pinot noir box and discover new regions in 2024.

We’ll give you a couple of ideas.

Our newest discovery zone is Portugal.  Once exclusively associated with port, Portuguese winemakers are becoming equally known for its other wines that until now have been absent on the U.S. market.

Some of the most complicated red wines come from the northern areas of Douro, Vinho Verde and Dao where alvarinho, touriga nacional and tinto roriz reign. Farther south in the rolling and sun-drenched plains of Alentjo, you will find fruity wines made from aragonez, antao vaz, alicante bouschet and other unfamiliar grape varieties. These represent some of the best values in wine today.

Just on the other side of the Pyrenees is Spain, an entirely different region with another bevy of great values. The most widely planted grape region in the world, Spain plays host to fewer grape varieties than Portugual – 20 in all – that include tempranillo, garnacha, monastrell, albarino, and verdejo.  We love some of the blends from Priorat, the tempranillos from Rioja and Ribera del Duero, and the monastrells from Jumilla.  The white wines from Galicia are perfect accompaniments to seafood.

We all love Italy, right? But maybe you should stray farther away from your chianti hangup. You will be floored by the body and complexity of montefalco sagrantino from Umbria or the fresh greco di tufo from Campania. Sicily is exporting more and more nero d’avola and the fruity frappato that are often medium-bodied and versatile with food.

You know the burgundies and bordeaux of France, but when is the last time you tasted a wine from Roussillon or Languedoc? Southern France is our new favorite. While neighboring Provence is known for rosé, Languedoc uses the same grape varieties – syrah, grenache, mourvedre, cinsault, carignan – to make boisterous, dense red wines. Taste a Domaine Tempier from Bandol and you will want to find more gems like this.

If you like Australian shiraz, get out of the Hunter Valley and try the wines from Victoria.  They are vastly underrated and largely undiscovered.  We tasted a bunch of them recently and wondered why we had ignored this region for so long.

This is hardly a comprehensive guide to unique wine-growing regions – but it should give you a start as you head to the door. Get out of the wine run. There’s a next-favorite wine just waiting to be discovered. We’ll be working on Shelly.

Happy New Year.

Trentodoc sparkling wine

Discussing sparkling wine with wine lovers most consumers can reel off champagne, cava, prosecco and a variety of domestic producers.  If you mention Trentodoc you’re likely to garner a blank stare. Given the small production and paucity of selections available in the U.S., this sparkling wine producer in the northeastern region of Italy has earned its reputation for obscurity. Before World War I this mountainous region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Following the war, Italy achieved dominion over the area.

Only white and rosé sparkling wines are produced using this appellation in the region. Sparkling wine is produced from the same grapes used to make French Champagne and uses the same production process. The result is remarkably high-quality sparkling wine

that in some cases compares favorably with the French version.

Only about 2,800 acres produce grapes for Trentodoc champagne and remarkably 80 percent of their production is consumed in Italy.

We recently tasted 3 rosés from the region to familiarize our palates with this sparkling wine. Our two favorites were the 2016 Rotari Trentodoc Rosé ($25) which is 75 percent pinot noir and 15 percent chardonnay. The sparkler presented a yeasty bready nose with strawberry and cherry flavors. A bright very complete wine.

Next was the Ferrari Trentodoc Brut Rosé N/V ($35-40). Made from 60 percent pinot noir and 40 percent chardonnay. Again, the appealing yeasty nose with creamy berry notes. A very nice sparkler that is easy to drink.

We found the Montfort Trentodoc Rosé Brut N/V ($30-40) a bit too tart for our taste. The wine presented citrus and cherry notes and was made from a 50/50 blend of pinot noir and chardonnay.

Wine picks

Alois Lageder Terra Alpina Pinot Grigio 2018 ($16). Fresh and crisp with floral aromas and mango, citrus flavors.

Riff Pinot Grigio delle Venezie DOC 2022 ($12).  From the Veneto region, this crisp and distinctive pinot grigio is a good buy. Light-bodied and refreshing, it is a good quaffing wine or one to serve with simple fare.

Cormorant Cellars Grenache/Marsanne 2021 ($27). New to us, Cormorant is making several impressive wines in Dry Creek Valley and Monterey. Winemaker Charlie Gilmore likes to make wine in an old-world style: no pesticides or fertilizers in the vineyard, no fining or filtering, few additional sulfites. The result, as evident in this blend, is purity of fruit, fresh acidity and bright flavors.  The blend showed green apple and citrus notes.