Innehållsförteckning för June 30, 2017 från Wine Spectator

Free resources for all WineSpectator.com readers: WINE SPECTATOR’S 11TH ANNUAL VIDEO CONTEST Share your wine story to compete for great prizes! Submit your shorts to Wine Spectator’s annual Video Contest and you could win tickets to our spectacular Wine Experience week-end or a Grand Tour tasting. Entry deadline is Monday, Sept. 4. Check out the rules and previous years’ finalists online. OUTDOOR ENTERTAINING It’s time to take your party to the backyard, beach or park, and some of the country’s best chefs are here to help. We share their cooking tips and deli-cious make-at-home summer recipes along with great-value wine matches chosen by our editors. WINE SPECTATOR VIDEO Watch all our great wine tips, winemaker interviews and tastings on your desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. Tune in each week for…

With a handful of out-of-town cheese pros in tow, Emilio Mi-gnucci ducks into the original Di Bruno Bros. shop on South Ninth Street in Philadel-phia. He’s greeted by a white-jack-eted cheesemonger with, “How ya doin’, Emilio?” and shoots back his habitual response: “Fantasssstic!” If an art director called for “old-style Italian-American deli,” it couldn’t get any better than this place. Anchoring the city’s famous Italian Market section, it’s a cozy, 700-square-foot temple to comfort food and gastronomy. Glistening soppressatas, thick legs of pro-sciutto and bulbous caciocavallos dangle enticingly from the ceiling. Scores of fine cheeses, imported and domestic, are stacked in front of the counter. Sweet, savory and funky aromas fill the air. Mignucci, 50, patrols the aisles of his family’s stores with the cheerful swagger of the star high-school…

CONTINENTAL DIVIDE Though neighbors on the continent, France and Spain are very different when it comes to wine styles. This selection of reds and whites shows those differences, with some typical ex-amples from each country. The Coca i Fitò Montsant is a blend of Grenache, Carignan, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. DOMAINE DESMEURE Crozes-Hermitage Domaine des Remizières Cuvée Particulière 2015 (91, $25) Ripe, energetic; dark plum, blackberry confiture, bramble, toast BODEGAS GODEVAL Valdeorras Viña Godeval Cepas Vellas 2015 (91, $22) Peach, quince, ginger, herb, mineral; powerful BODEGAS VALDUBÓN Ribera del Duero Reserva 2011 (91, $24) Compact, graceful; black cherry, red plum, floral, mineral, licorice BODEGAS DEL MARQUÉS DE VARGAS Rioja Reserva 2012 (91, $26) Black cherry, licorice, leafy, cocoa; elegant, polished DOMAINE DE BEAURENARD Rasteau 2015 (90, $23) Racy; raspberry, blackberry…

This Buying Guide contains ratings of new releases from around the world and the results of special tastings reported on in greater depth elsewhere in the issue. Complete tasting notes are provided for all new releases scoring 85 or more points (on the Wine Spectator 100-point scale, explained below); notes for wines scoring 84 points or less are included at the discretion of the taster. Additional reviews appear on our website, www.winespectator.com. Each review carries the initials of the Wine Spectator editor who blind-tasted and scored the wine and wrote the review, based on the regional specializations indicated below. If no reviewer’s initials appear, the wine was tasted by a panel of Wine Spectator editors. James Laube California Harvey Steiman At large Thomas Matthews Spain Kim Marcus Argentina, California, Chile…

Lapsang souchong is dark-roast coffee’s equivalent in the world of tea. Imbued with the aroma and flavor of pine smoke, this Chi-nese leaf is not subtle, and some delicate tea-sippers hate it. But for others, drinking a strong cup of Lapsang is the equivalent of sipping a peaty Scotch or dark rum by a campfire. Count me in that category. The cup I’m drinking now is the perfect complement to a piece of rich dark chocolate. Lapsang souchong was accidentally created in 1646 when an army invaded the misty Wuyi Mountains in northwest Fujian Province, fa-mous for its fragrant large-leaf oolong teas. As one version of the story goes, regional tea-factory owners, in a panic, decided to bury their in-process leaves. But first they had to dry them quickly over…

John Skupny came to Napa Valley from Kansas City by way of San Francisco in the early 1980s. His love of wine began while working in res-taurants, where he met his future wife, Tracey. The two Francophiles eloped to France in 1977 and were married in the Loire Valley. They soon set their sights on California, where he shifted gears, working in wine sales and marketing, hitching a ride on the Caymus Caber-net bandwagon. He longed to make his own wine and eventually did, but it took time since he was so well-suited to selling other people’s. Back then, Caymus was hardly the juggernaut it is today. Charlie Wagner’s Rutherford winery, morphing from a modest mom-and-pop ranching opera-tion, was still seeking a toehold in the wine industry. Charlie and his…

Business Model We enjoyed James Laube’s column “Na-pa’s Big Money” (April 30). We are one of the Napa “mom-and-pop ventures that succeed on slim margins,” and we have experienced this phenomenon of rising land costs for several decades. It is one of the reasons we opted to produce our Napa/Oakville wines outside the Napa area [in Sacramento]. Our business model: Find the best Napa grapes available (we are one of the few that source from To Kalon) and produce the highest quality boutique wine, with low overhead. Stuart Spoto Spoto Family Wines Oakville, Calif. Soil Analysis I enjoyed the California Rhône report (“Progress & Promise,” April 30) and ap-preciate you spotlighting our neighbors in the Willow Creek District. I did want to address one part of the piece. The author…

From your friend who stopped drinking for Lent to the cowork-ers who asked you to join them for Dry January, it may seem like abstaining from alcohol for a set period of time has become a full-fledged health trend. Whether you’re the type to join in and see what all the fuss is about or prefer to sit back and watch the spectacle from over the rim of your wineglass, it’s important to know what these personal Prohibitions can do for your health. When it comes to the short-term ef-fects, New York–based registered dieti-tian Jessica Cording is all for banishing the booze. “When you’re talking just biochemistry, alcohol is a really selfish macronutrient,” says Cording, who has guided many of her clients through brief periods of abstinence. “It impacts the…

The 1964 New York City World’s Fair was alluring enough for my Midwestern cousins to drive east and join my family for a visit. De-spite featuring the Unisphere—a symbol of global interdependence—the exposi-tion’s attractions split our clans along gender and age lines. The kids wanted to brave the Log Flume ride. The teen-age boys craned their necks for the Ford Mustang debut. The ladies headed for the Crystal Palace of Fashion. But for my uncle, the Spanish Pavilion was the draw. He’d heard it was serving a refresh-ing new drink—sangria—that was pre-dicted to conquer the cocktail world. It turns out my farmer uncle wasn’t just a hick; he was on to something. As well as showing off El Grecos, Goyas and Picassos, Spain wanted to highlight the quality of its…

One of the benefits of civilization is that it affords the luxury— the irony, really—of longing for simpler, even cruder, times. The French, of course, have a phrase for this: nostalgie de la boue, a longing for the mud. I couldn’t help but think of this evocative expression upon reading a methodically elaborate article about wineglasses published this past March in the New York Times. The headline said it all: “One Wine Glass To Rule Them All.” The lengthy article detailed tasting wines in a boggling array of more than 80 glasses, seeking a golden mean, the single glass to fit all wines and styles. (One glass was ostensibly crowned the winner, but its victory was weakened by endless caveats; a host of other pre-tenders claimed competing legitimacy based on…

Priorat is a small Spanish wine region tucked into the coastal hills about a two-hour drive southwest of Barcelona. It has been growing grapes and mak-ing wines for centuries. But its modern wine history began in the 1970s, when two young outsiders—René Barbier and Carles Pastrana— staked their claims. “In the 1970s, there were only 10 Spanish wines that were really seri-ous,” reflects Pastrana. “Priorat was known for powerful wines, but rustic. Our goal was to keep the power, but make them elegant.” The two men began purchasing and planting vineyards and, over time, drew other adventurers. The group made their first wines together in 1989, and then went their own ways. Barbier’s Clos Mogador, Josep Luis Pérez at Mas Martinet, Daphne Glorian at Clos Erasmus and Álvaro Palacios now…

ARGENTINA Red 92 Bodega Colomé Malbec Salta 2014 $25 See Smart Buys, page 99. 92 TriVento Malbec Luján de Cuyo Eolo 2014 $79 A polished red, with plush, spicy accents to the rich, ripe flavors of blackberry, mocha and plum pudding. Finishes with notes of cocoa powder and cream. Very suave. Drink now through 2021. 650 cases made.—K.M. 91 Bodega Colomé Malbec Salta Auténtico 2015 $25 Juicy, powerful and pure-tasting, with bram-bly accents to the raspberry tart, dried blueberry and dark plum flavors, supported by fresh acidity and firm tannins. Drink now through 2022. 4,000 cases made.—K.M. 89 Altocedro Malbec La Consulta Old Vine Reserva 2014 $34 Lots of peppery notes accent the juicy cherry and plum tart flavors. Details of chocolate and spice linger into the rich finish. Drink…

DR. VINNY Dear Dr. Vinny, What makes a good Cava? —Bronnum, from Twitter Dear Bronnum, For starters, it’s in my glass! I’m a big fan of Spain’s sparkling wines. Cava is a Spanish Denominación de Origen (DO), or classification, of spar-kling wines made in the traditional Champagne method. By law, Cava can only be produced in six regions of Spain and primarily uses the grape varieties Macabeo, Parellada and Xarel-lo. Cava was once dubbed Spanish Champagne and is still sometimes re-ferred to locally as champaña or xam-pany, but those terms were outlawed when Spain joined the European Union in 1986. (Under E.U. law, the term Champagne is reserved for sparkling wines from France’s region of the same name.) Since then, these wines have of-ficially been known as Cava, a Catalan…

1 Spain’s Santiago Calatrava created a rippling roofline of aluminum over wood panels at Rioja’s Bodegas Ysios, completed in 2001. Ironically, perhaps, the roof’s undulating waves have been plagued by leaks. 2 British firm Foster + Partners clad Ribera del Duero’s trefoil-shaped Bodegas Portia in shin-gles of weathering steel (2010), which over time will take on the color of the surrounding soils. 3 In the shadow of Ribera’s Peñafiel Castle, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners employed large-scale terra-cotta tiles for Bodegas Protos’ sloping vaulted bays (2008). 4 “Modern” design is nothing new to Spain. Modernist architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch’s towers and cellars at Codorníu (1920) were de-clared a National Monument of His-torical and Artistic Interest by King Juan Carlos I in 1976. ADVANCED AGING Spain’s labeling laws dictate three…