Onward to Oregon

And like that, Summer of Rosé 2016 is done. (We may still have a handful of “Never Mind the Bollocks” tees in the basement if you failed to pick one up.)

"We hereby claim this valley in the name of the Allegheny Wine Mixer."

Pinot Noir on the vine at Four Graces

So what’s up for Fall? If you follow us on social media, you probably know that the staff spent the week after Labor Day (our annual closing week) on the West Coast, checking out the Portland scene by night, tasting in the Willamette Valley by day — hard prep for our Fall Focus, Oregon.

You might think this will simply boil down to a tale of two Pinots, Noir and Gris, and no one would blame you if you did. The former, especially, is the grape to which Oregon has hitched its star, and for good reason: the cool, wet Willamette Valley offers optimal growing conditions for this notoriously difficult grape, producing wines with an elegance and structure that only Burgundy can surpass. (The local relationship with Pinot Gris is far more ambivalent, but more on that in a future post.)

But to dismiss Oregon as a two-trick pony overlooks not only some exciting developments in the warmer climes of the Rogue and Columbia River Valleys, but more diversity in Willamette than it typically gets credit for. We tasted plenty of Willamette Rieslings, Syrahs, Muscats, Chardonnays, Viogniers and other less common varietals throughout our trip. Many were real revelations.

Some of these wines will start hitting our list in the coming week, and they’ll change often throughout the fall. We’re looking forward to sharing them with you and telling their story.

Housekeeping: Wine + Swine, Father's Day and wrapping up Sicily

If you've yet to grab your tickets for WINE + SWINE, the pig roast we're throwing with Butcher on Butler to kick off our second annual Summer of Rosé, you might want to get on that. It's going down at Bayardstown Social Club (3008 Penn Avenue in the Strip) one week from tonight  — Tuesday June 21 —  and it promises to be a blast. Tickets are $45 and include:

• 2 glasses of rosé (cash bar for additional glasses)
• pork + two sides from Butcher on Butler
• ice cream from Millie's Homemade
• tunes from J. Malls
• unlimited stump, cornhole and all the other questionably named tomfoolery you can normally get up to at Bayardstown
• tax and gratuity 

We may have a handful of tickets available for walk-up sales the night of, but we highly recommend you pre-purchase your tickets for this event — which you can do at www.showclix.com/event/AWM-wine-swine.

Come join us at Bayardstown on June 21 and help us, as they used to say in the early days of MTV, paint the mutha pink!

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WINE + SWINE tickets would make a great Father's Day gift, but on Father's Day itself, why not bring him down to AWM? Upper Lawrenceville will be rocking the 10th 3rd block party, which means we open at noon, and we'll be pouring off all the wines from our spring focus on Sicily ... and there may even be an impromptu showing of a famous flick about a certain Sicilian-American patriarch. Cannoli may also be involved.

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As much fun as Summer of Rosé is, we're a little sad to say goodbye to Sicily, whose wines continue to surprise and delight us. There's still plenty on the list at the moment, including Tenuta della Terre Nerra's 2010 Etna Rosso "Feudo di Mezzo" — a single contrada (sort of the Etna equivalent of a grand cru) bottling that we're pouring via Coravin for just $15/glass. (Trust us, that's a bargain.) We've noticed a tendency with higher-end Nerello-based reds from Etna to adhere either to a Barolo or a Burgundy template, and Feudo di Mezzo definitely favors the former with tightly focused aromas of strawberries, balsamic, rosehips, nutmeg and loamy earth, fine-grained tannins and exquisite balance. It's the sort of wine that makes us sad we can't serve it to you alongside a dry-aged porterhouse, but que sera sera. DJ's beef jerky will do in a pinch.

Again, buying dad a glass on Father's Day would show him he raised himself one classy kid.

Scaling the Heights of Etna

Europe’s largest volcano and one of the world’s most active, it dominates Sicily both physically — on clear days, it’s visible more than 200 miles away in Erice — and psychologically, too: a constant, sullen threat that could, on any given day, wipe out half the island and a chunk of nearby Calabria. It’s a mythic, almost sentient presence: home of the Cyclops Polyphemus in The Odyssey, the mountain itself is a sort of one-eyed giant that’s been known to hurl a boulder or two into the sea on occasion.

Mt. Etna is an extraordinary, singular place, and it yields extraordinary, singular wines. Sandy, mineral-rich volcanic soils, obviously, play an enormous role, as does altitude — Etna boasts some of the highest vineyards in the world. Taken together, these two factors allow for yet another extraordinary circumstance: the existence of very old, pre-phylloxera vines on its upper slopes. (The phylloxera louse can’t survive in sandy volcanic soils.)

Pre-phylloxera Nerello Mascalese vines at Firriato.

Contrada on Etna's northeastern face — a cross-section of millenia's worth of volcanic activity.

But it’s Etna’s thriving existence as an active volcano that make it utterly unique. Other notable volcanic growing regions like Santorini or Aglianico del Vulture are perched on the remains of extinct volcanos, but Etna is in an almost perpetual state of eruption, which means the growing environment is in a constant state of flux, if not outright peril. Ultrafine pumice and ash rain down over the slopes almost daily. Steam vents can cause unexpected cloud cover or temperature spikes. Most drastic of all, lava flows, known locally as contrade, can incinerate acres of vineyard at a time, leaving behind layers of incredibly rich, fertile soil. During our trip, a winemaker from Vittoria told us that when he drinks Etna wines, he tastes lava. He meant this as high praise, and he was not wrong.

Etna’s principal red grape is Nerello Mascalese, a relative of both Sangiovese and Gaglioppo. It is incredibly sensitive to site and is rarely found outside of eastern Sicily. Comprising at least 80% of Etna Rosso blends, Nerello is remarkably pretty in the glass: brilliant ruby when young, acquiring some orange tints with age. It’s often compared to Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo, but its sour red cherry, hibiscus and tobacco profile is uniquely its own. (Most Etna Rosso also sees a splash of another native Nerello, Nerello Cappuccio, that adds color and body to the blend.)

Carricante is the white cultivar of note in Etna Bianco blends. Grown at extreme altitudes — between 3100 and 3500 ft. above sea level — on Etna’s northern and eastern slopes, it produces high acid, medium bodied wines with distinct minerality that, for point of reference, are often compared to dry Riesling, a comparison that doesn’t fully do the grape justice. Not nearly as aromatic as Riesling, Carricante can also have undertones of ginger, chamomile and sweet marjoram that are quite unlike any other white grape that comes to mind.

As long as we’re being so profligate with words like ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unique,’ we might as well mention something else truly extraordinary and unique about Etna: fine wine production here is a very recent development, really only, umm, erupting within the last 10-15 years. But in that time, the Etna DOC (getting the G tacked on is an inevitability, one would think) has leapfrogged to the top echelons of prestige Italian wine regions, in the process swinging an overdue spotlight on other great Sicilian appellations, like Cerasuola di Vittoria and Noto. It’s our privilege to be among the first generation of wine drinkers to witness the ascent.

Mt. Etna, seen from 30,000'. Squint really hard and maybe you'll see a Cyclops! 

Currently we’re pouring Valenti’s Enrico IV 2013 Etna Bianco (100% Carricante) as well as their 100% varietal Nerello Mascalese Norma 2011 Etna Rosso. Via Coravin, we’re also pouring Pistus’ I Custodi 2013 Etna Rosso, which contains some Nerello Cappuccio. These two make a fine comparison; the differences are pronounced!

On Etna

The view that greeted us as we arrived at Firriato Cavanera Etnea Resort this evening:

Etna Sunset

 The last stop on our trip, and the most anticipated, Etna requires a certain amount of patience and nerve to get to. If we've learned anything over the past week, it's that there's a lot more to Sicily than Mt. Etna — but tonight it's pretty hard not to be excited that we're sleeping ON A VOLCANO.

On the Road, Sicilian-Style

Hey, all, Jamie & I are about halfway thru our trip, with a few hours to kill at Planeta's Foresteria Resort before heading into town for yet another stellar seafood meal. We hear Pittsburgh is having an early April cold snap, and it was a little chilly here near Menfi as well — down to about 68°, though it felt cooler with the constant breeze off the Med.

We'll be on Mt. Etna by end of week, with stops in and around Cerasuola di Vittoria and Noto along the way, but our visits to Abbazia Santa Anastasia and Planeta have already given us plenty to chew on, figuratively and otherwise. There's palpable excitement about the wine scene here, the people are incredibly generous, and the food is, well, otherworldly. We can't wait to tell you all about it!

— John

Ciao, Sicilia!

It seems like only yesterday that we were all atwitter over Portugal . . .  and, well, our winter focus on Iberia's best kept secret did just wrap up last week. Thanks to Wines of Portugal for their generous support, and to everyone who came out on March 20th for our Best of Portugal tasting, too. 

But now it's time to reveal our spring focus region (a poorly kept secret, especially if you read the headline above): we're headed to Sicily!

Literally — in about 48 hours, Jamie and John are going to Sicily. With noted importer Marco Scapagnini (who just turned up in a recent Saveur article on the Arab ancestry of Sicilian cuisine) as their host, they'll be visiting some of the island's top producers, traveling from Trapani, with it's gorgeous Carricantes, to the slopes of Mt. Etna, where Nerello Mascalese is emerging as a rockstar grape of the first rank. 

In between, who knows? Frappato, Greek ruins, COS and their amphorae, seriously great food, and Marsala that isn't just something your nonna douses chicken in. There are few wine regions causing quite as much stir as Sicily at the moment, and we're lucky to be able bring it to you in such an up-close-and-personal way. (That is, if we can figure out how to update the blog without completely zeroing out our international data plan.) 

Back on Butler St., though, Lisa, Sean and the gang will be ably holding down the fort, so, please, make sure they don't get lonely.

We'll talk to you again from Sicily!

Goodbye Finger Lakes, Hello Portugal!

Woah! Has it really been more than two months since our last blog update? 

We've blown right through the Finger Lakes and moved on to our winter focus, Portugal. Yes, in Porto and Madeira, the Portuguese make some of the world's greatest dessert wines — but you should also get to know their table wines, many of them blends made from an array of obscure indigenous varietals. Reds and whites both show a lot of character and, we're learning, can be quite sensitive to the country's unique and more-varied-than-you-think terroir and climate. They also represent great value for the money.

We'll be starting up a Sunday tasting series once the NFL season is over, and have some other special Portuguese-centric events in the works too — more on those later! 

We can tell you now about our Valentine's dinner with our friends at The Vandal, featuring guest chef Jamilka Borges, formerly of Legume and Bar Marco. Or, rather, we can link you to more info. If you missed our NYE collaboration with Joey & Csilla & company, you'll definitely want to get in on this one!

Map courtesy of Wines of Portugal

ICE COLD ICE

And then one afternoon in February, the lake began to freeze.

This may not sound like such an unusual circumstance, especially in 2015, when February made history as the single coldest month on record for much of the Northeast. But when the lake in question is nearly 650’ deep — and moreover, whose inclination to not freeze in winter is the only thing that allows a fine wine industry to flourish along its shores — a freeze is a dire and unwelcome nail-biter.  

Seneca Lake freezing over, February 2015. Photo courtesy of Lou Damiani.

In fact, a Seneca Lake freeze-up hadn’t happened since 1912. The Finger Lakes wine industry was booming then, too, with world-famous méthode champenoise sparklers made from winter-hardy native cultivars like Catawba and Delaware. Prohibition would soon put an end to that. It would be another 50 years or more before visionaries like Konstantin Frank and Hermann Wiemer figured out how the Finger Lakes’ unique thermal effects might provide winter protection for higher-quality but tender vitis vinifera vines. 

Riesling at Bloomer Creek, September 2015.

This isn’t Chile or Sonoma, where weather conditions are as reliable as death and taxes. And the Lakes’ insulating halo only stretches so far — go a mile or two inland and the winters are as brutal as anywhere else in the North Country. But with careful site selection and smart vineyard management, amazing things can happen in the shale and limestone soils that hug the shoreline: Rieslings with a focus and minerality not easy to find outside of Germany or Austria. Gewürztraminer with finesse instead of flab. Some of the best sparkling wines in the United States. And along Seneca’s famed “Banana Belt” — a twelve-mile stretch along the eastern shore between Burdett and Lamoureaux Landing that absorbs enough reflected sunlight from the lake to extend the growing season into October or even early November — sleek, chiseled reds in the hands of dedicated winemakers have started to come into their own: Cab Franc and Pinot Noir at first, but also Merlot, Cab Sauv and Syrah.

By no stretch of the imagination are these stereotypical New World fruit bombs, and they’re bound to disappoint those who would expect them. They show vintage and site variation like no other North American region. (A tasting of single vineyard Rieslings in any number of Finger Lakes tasting rooms is a genuinely instructive experience.) For those who buy into the concept of terroir — and who doesn’t, at some level? — the Finger Lakes fairly burst at the seams with it.

All that flies out the window, however, if the lake freezes. The growers are perhaps most keenly aware of that risk, and so hedge their bets: for all the accolades and burgeoning hype, 85% of the acreage currently under vine in the AVA is still planted with native labrusca grapes and French-American hybrids. Some high profile investment may nudge that number downward in the coming years, but there’s a finite amount of land that falls under the lake effect bubble, where vinifera vines stand a fighting chance of surviving the winter.

The February 2015 freeze was mercifully brief. A thin crust formed that spanned the lake from east to west, but after a few hours a breeze kicked up and open water was soon rippling again over Seneca’s deepest channels. It was the second consecutive harsh winter, and this year's yields are predictably down despite an ideal back half of the growing season. Farmers and winemakers alike are anxious about rumors of a milder, wetter winter in 2016, fueled by El Niño. And let's hope they have it. The vines, and the people who rely upon them, could use a break.