Innehållsförteckning för April 30, 2018 från Wine Spectator

Visit www.winespectator.com/043018 to find links to all of the following resources. FREE RESOURCES FOR ALL OUR WINESPECTATOR.COM READERS: SPRING ENTERTAINING Celebrate the change of seasons with fresh new recipes from some of the country’s best chefs. Whether you’re celebrating Passover, Easter, a birthday or an anniversary, we’ll make it easy, with meals just right for milder weather and our editors’ picks of highly rated wines. PRIVATE GUIDE TO DINING Our twice-monthly, free email newsletter spotlights the best restaurants for wine lovers, from bucket-list destinations to perfect pizza places. Get great wine picks for dining out, keep on top of drinks trends, learn about new restaurant openings and more. Sign up! WINE SPECTATOR VIDEO Watch all our great wine tips, winemaker interviews and tastings on your desktop, laptop, tab-let or phone.…

WINE FOOD PEOPLE COLLECTING Wine lovers have access to more and better wines than ever before. Local selections have broadened, and wines carried by in-state distributors can be purchased online and delivered straight to our doorsteps by local retailers and national or regional companies like Wine.com and Total Wine. In most states, consumers can have wine shipped to them directly from wineries all over the United States. But what happens when no one in-state carries that special bottle of Burgundy we’re looking for? Buying it from out of state isn’t as easy as it used to be. In the past two years, some states have passed stricter retailer direct-to-consumer shipping laws, while others have tightened enforcement. That has retailers angry and consumers feeling caught in the middle of a fight.…

No self-respecting cowgirl would ride off into the sunset without leaving her ranch in good hands. Over a span of two decades, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith built theirs—Cowgirl Creamery—into a pillar of its community and a leading light of the American artisan cheese movement. So when it came time to cement their legacy, they proceeded with caution: In June 2016, just seven months shy of its 20th anniversary, they agreed to sell Cowgirl to the Swiss conglomerate Emmi, but not before receiving assurances of continued independence and community orientation. Starting with a 100-gallon vat and 10 employees in 1997, Cowgirl grew to its current staff of about 100 with an annual output of roughly 400,000 pounds of cheese and $20 to $25 million in sales. With the infusion of…

There’s as much excitement around the New World’s white wines as there is around the reds. With more producers moving into cooler-climate appellations, Riesling continues to improve in regions around the world, with Australia, Washington and New York all regularly delivering outstanding versions. Aromatic varieties are also on the rise: Torrontés from Argentina, Viognier from Australia and Virginia, and Chenin Blanc from South Africa are all hitting their stride. Rhône-style blends from California are making waves as well. As quality increases across these categories, more producers are jumping in the game and undertaking their own regional experiments. Leave it to a Calfornia winery, Tenshen, to add Chardonnay to its Rhône blend, yielding something rich and spicy and altogether new. 92 | $19 | FORGE | Riesling Finger Lakes Classique 2015…

Bolgheri is booming. Over the past 40 years, wine-loving dreamers, industrialists, globetrotting enologists and established Italian vintners looking to build on their portfolios have arrived in this emerging region in force, all wanting to leave their mark on a relatively new frontier in one of the world’s oldest wine countries. Home to only a handful of wineries four decades ago, Bolgheri now counts more than 50 producers. The hopefuls that have followed in the footsteps of the early pioneers were encouraged by the stunning results seen by landowning nobles such as Mario Incisa della Rocchetta and Piero Antinori, who planted Bordeaux varieties in the sand and clay soils a few miles from the Tyrrhenian Sea and went on to make landmark bottlings. The modern Bolgheri wine scene—like Bolgheri’s red, white…

Italy’s Marche wine region has flown under the radar of most U.S. consumers. Small and relatively isolated, Marche draws more Italian tourists than international travelers to its pristine beaches and hilly terrain, meaning the area’s producers have largely missed the chance to introduce outsiders to their wines. But it’s an area worth seeking out as quality continues to rise and producers explore export markets. The heart of Marche lies about 100 miles southeast of Florence as the crow flies, bordered by the Adriatic Sea to the east and the Apennine Mountains on its western flank. This varied topography is one of the keys to the region’s growing success with quality wine production. The Apennines form a protective barrier for vineyards against more aggressive weather, while winds from the mountains provide…

A study analyzing the impact of last year’s wine-country wildfires by Sonoma State University’s Wine Business Institute shows that the blazes’ long-term effects on the wine industry should not be as bad as feared, though the toll on many area residents has been severe. The fires burned across seven counties in Northern California in October, killing 44 people and burning close to 9,000 structures. Rebuilding will take years, and the loss of homes has exacerbated an existing housing shortage. For recovery to take hold, the region will need local businesses to remain strong. The SSU group surveyed more than 200 vineyard and winery stakeholders in Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Lake and Mendocino counties and found that most of the damage to wineries was marginal. According to the findings, 99.8 percent of…

New World winegrowing regions have become a hotbed of experimentation. Unconventional blends, untapped appellations, indigenous grapes, unexpected transplants, rediscovered styles. It can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to the many new bottlings on the market each year, especially when they’re made from unfamiliar grapes or from unfamiliar regions. That’s why value-priced wines offer the perfect introduction for those looking to break out of their routine and try something new. You won’t find any of the usual suspects here. Unless they’re minor players in unorthodox blends, mainstream varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc were all excluded from this selection. So too were established categories such as Zinfandel or Syrah from California, Shiraz from Australia and Malbec from Argentina. What’s left…

From north to south, east to west, Italy is a wine lover’s dream. Yet within that overarching allure, each part of the country has its own inimitable character. Winegrowing thrives along the coasts, in hilly inland terrains, in rugged mountain landscapes. Terroirs and grapes vary greatly from region to region, and winemakers take myriad approaches to expressing them in the bottle. In this package, our editors take you to the emerging coastal regions of Bolgheri, in Tuscany, and Marche, on the Adriatic, the former excelling with international varieties, the latter offering native grapes and beautiful beaches. We close with our annual report on venerable Piedmont, whose 2013 vintage is of classic quality.…

It can be difficult for the stars to align in a wine region such as Piedmont, where multiple vintages come into play over a range of different grape varieties. But that’s exactly what’s happened in this famed Italian region, with the 2013 through 2016 vintages producing excellent wines across the board, from Nebbiolo in Barolo and Barbaresco to Barbera in Alba and Asti to Dolcetto in Dogliani. That makes this a great time for fans of Piedmont reds. Fruity Dolcettos and sleek, vibrant Barberas deliver more immediate gratification on an affordable budget, while the current-release Barbarescos and Barolos offer future promise. And though the latter wines are more expensive, there are values to be found. If you want bragging rights—and budget is no consideration— the current crop of Barolos, from…

The April 30 Buying Guide features 26 classic wines and more than 425 outstanding wines from among reviews of nearly 600 new releases. Members can access tasting notes and scores for those wines, along with hundreds of additional wines reviewed since our last issue, using the Wine Ratings search at WineSpectator.com.…

Just two weeks after the flames of the Thomas wildfire subsided, heavy rain fell on the scorched hillsides above the Santa Barbara community of Montecito, Calif., sending a river of mud, trees, rocks and debris cascading down. The mudslides, which began on Jan. 9, killed at least 21 people, with two others missing, and destroyed dozens of homes. San Ysidro Ranch, a historic resort and the home of Wine Spectator Grand Award–winning Stone-house restaurant, sustained heavy damage. A gas line ruptured during the mudslides, starting a fire that destroyed half the resort’s buildings. Several other buildings were buried by mud and debris. Fortunately, the resort staff had been evacuated the day before. U.S. Highway 101 was closed for several weeks as state officials cleared it, cutting off Santa Barbara from…

Website en.ponant.com Small-ship luxury seafaring is an emerging trend in the cruise industry, and French expedition company Ponant is among the leaders. In 1988, three years after graduating from France’s National Merchant Navy School, a 23-year-old Jean-Emmanuel Sauvee teamed up with fellow graduates to start a luxury sailing company. Today, Sauvee is CEO of Ponant, which gives tours around the globe in vessels that feel more like yachts than cruise ships. French pride seeps into the offered goods: The menus are curated in conjunction with chef Alain Ducasse’s consulting firm (Ducasse Conseil), Veuve Clicquot is the bubbly of choice and you’ll find Laduree macarons in abundance. On April 11, Le Soleal departs from Lisbon for an eight-night “Gastronomy, Vineyards & Grands Crus” cruise. After sailing along the coast of Portugal (including…

Multiple trends have converged in recent years to push the boundaries of New World winemaking. Grape varieties used only sparingly in the Old World have thrived in new terroirs and taken on lives of their own. Bonarda in Argentina, Carmenère in Chile, Tannat in Uruguay and Cinsault in South Africa have all shown that they can excel in the right environment. At the same time, vintners around the world have continued to focus on Rhône-style reds, from varietal Syrah and Grenache in places they hadn’t appeared before to regional takes on the GSM formula, some more reliant on Mourvèdre and others mixing in a range of different grapes. And then there’s the push toward even more surprising combinations, yielding new flavors and styles. How to define a Washington blend that…

It all began with Sassicaia. When Marchesi Mario Incisa della Rocchetta relocated his family to Bolgheri from outside Rome in the 1940s, the coastal plains were planted to vegetables and legumes and the hills clad with thick Mediterranean scrub and forests roamed by wild boar. Incisa della Rocchetta had developed a taste for the wines of Bordeaux. But the wines produced in the coastal plains surrounding the village of Bolgheri, made from high-yielding Trebbiano and Sangiovese vineyards, fell far short of the clarets he had sampled with his maternal grandfather and the Bordeaux-inspired wines introduced to him by family friend Duke Francesco Salviati from the duke’s vines just north of Bolgheri, near Pisa. In 1944, armed with Cabernet Franc cuttings from Salviati’s vineyard, Incisa della Rocchetta set out to plant…

Marche, a small province on Italy’s Adriatic coast, is one of the country’s least-visited regions. All the better, then, for adventurous travelers. With more than 100 miles of coastline, Marche (pronounced “MAR-kay” and sometimes referred to as Le Marche) features a range of beaches, from rugged natural preserves to sandy city lidos. The warm, emerald-hued waters, among Italy’s most abundant in terms of sea life, produce a dazzling variety of fish and crustaceans that are served up in abundance at local beach shacks, trattorias, and fine restaurants with long wine lists. In the sparsely populated interior, softly rounded hillsides planted to patchworks of wheat, olives and vineyards climb up toward medieval and Renaissance towns perched high, some harboring artistic treasures. The agricultural bounty includes artisanal pastas, deep-green olive oil and…

California Rhône winemakers are a stubborn bunch. As consumers puzzle over the category’s range of grapes and styles, sales can be sluggish. Add to that a five-year drought that stressed vineyards in Paso Robles and Santa Barbara, the heartlands of leading Rhône varieties Syrah and Grenache, and you might wonder why these winemakers keep at it. “I just love Syrah,” explains winemaker Jeff Cohn. “I really believe it is one of the most interesting varietals in California.” For his part, Denner winemaker Anthony Yount shrugs off challenges such as the drought, saying, “I think challenging vintages can make compelling wines.” After reviewing nearly 400 Rhône-style reds in blind tastings at our Napa office over the past year, it’s hard to argue with Yount and Cohn. The latest releases of Syrah,…

Highly Recommended The issue’s most impressive wines. Includes top-scorers and wines that represent optimal purchases based on their combination of score, price and availability. 96 G.B. Burlotto Barolo Monvigliero 2013 $72 ITALY A perfumed style, exuding rose, sandalwood, cedar and cherry aromas, joined on the palate by berry, tobacco and spice flavors, all matched to a lightweight, ethereal frame. Complex, building to a vibrant, mineral- and spice-tinged aftertaste. Best from 2022 through 2038. 700 cases made.—B.S. 95 Capraia Chianti Classico Effe 55 Gran Selezione 2013 $30 ITALY This red combines pure Sangiovese flavors of cherry and berry with earthy, savory and wild herb notes, making for a complex mix. These elements are matched to a dense, tannic structure that some may find on the dry side, but this will come…