2007 Coppola Rosso
California
Suggested Retail Price $7.99

If people know that famed film director Francis Ford Coppola is also involved in wine, they probably know him as the owner of Rubicon Estate, one of Napa Valley’s famed Cabernet Sauvignons made from home vineyards that the legendary Inglenook founded in 1880. But in addition to these famed and rare wines, Coppola also makes wines that can be enjoyed and opened for everyday dinner. The Coppola Rosso is meant as an honest, frank and forward, ready-to-drink red wine priced so that wine lovers can enjoy it on a Tuesday night with pizza or a Saturday grill of babyback ribs marinated in an Italian-spiced tomato sauce, or your micro-waved lasagna on Wednesday after the gym.

It’s a casual wine yet has a bit more than just average, vinous flavors. The fruit aromas and flavors are filled with ripe, stewed cherry and plums as well as dried spices such as thyme and oregano and a hint of vanilla spice. The tannins are smooth and fully resolved in this full-bodied, supple and smooth wine made to be enjoyed now.

The Coppola winery uses fruit from several California districts including Lodi in the San Joaquin Delta area and Paso Robles on the central coast between Monterey and Santa Barbara. From these areas, the fruit used for the 2007 Rosso is 44% Zinfandel, 34% Syrah, and 22% Cabernet Sauvignon, one reason the wine shows such character in a modestly priced offering.

2008 Salviano Orvieto Classico Superiore
Orvieto, Italy
Suggested Retail Price $11.99

This Orvieto from the ancient Titignano estate (dating to 937AD and owned by the Incisa della Rocchetta family of Sassicaia fame) has to qualify as one of the best quality-price ratios for wine. It’s simply one of the most satisfying wines you can sip at a table of Italian seafood at this price. The 2008 is a testament to how these vinous war horses from the past can still be shown to have inherent flavor, character, and structure that makes one realize why they were picked out in the first place as characterful and satisfying wines.

The wine’s complexity is partly a result of its fascinating grape mix, blending indigenous Italian and international varieties: 30% Trebbiano Toscano (known as Procanico), 30% native, high-quality Grechetto, with 20% each Chardonnay (for body) and Sauvignon Blanc (for herbal aromatics and freshness). Each variety is fermented separately in stainless steel then blended before bottling.

The blending of these varieties adds up to a complex wine that is still true to its Umbrian roots. The color of the 2008 is a medium yellow, with a subtle, intriguingly delicate bouquet suggesting almonds and citrus peel freshness combined with mineral. On the palate the wine is supple and full, with strands of flavors balanced by a citrus-pith note that adds balance and a firm focus in an extremely long finish remarkable for a wine of this price.

This subtle, complex wine cries out for Italian-styled seafood such as shrimp scampi served over capellini or fettuccine. Or a grilled whole fish scented with fennel and rosemary. Or try with a pureed mushroom served spread on bruschetta. In either case you’ll be vinously travelling to the ancient Etruscan town of Orvieto.

2008 Laurenz und Sophie Singing Grüner Veltliner
Austria
Suggested Retail Price $13.99

Grüner Veltliner is Austria’s native, indigenous grape variety making — in the right hands and from great vineyards — the country’s greatest white wines...along with Riesling, of course. But Grüner also makes delicious, invigorating, satisfyingly fresh everyday white wines that can match many summer dishes hard to pair with wine: salads for one.

This 2008’s freshness and vivacity make it an ideal summer white wine as it’s moderate in alcohol (12 percent), dry but tender in texture, crisp with savory aromas and flavors mixing celery seed, discrete herbs and citrus flowers, as well as the piquancy of white pepper… you can see why it goes so well with green leafy salads and hard-to-match vegetables such as artichokes and asparagus. There’s in this wine an almost icy, herbal freshness that doesn’t come from serving the wine too cold but is simply the inherent nature of the variety when grown and vinified with care.

The wine is made by one of Austria’s most distinguished wine families — the Lenz Mosers, developer of the Moser viticultural vine training system. Fifth generation Laurenz V. and his daughter Sophie select Grüner grown mainly in the great Kremstal region on loess and gravel soils with a small amount of fruit added from the Weinviertal that stretches northwest from the capital city Vienna. The brand name ‘Singing’ applied to this cuvée (only one of several bottlings of Grüner Veltliner) reflect the wine’s freshness and ease.

Enjoy with summer seafood salads or sauteed shellfish.

2009 Benziger Sauvignon Blanc
Sonoma County/Lake County, California
Suggested Retail Price $13.99

The Benziger family story is quite a mixture of entrepreneurial starts and stops, leaps of faith, luck, and lots of hard work that has resulted after more than 40 years in the Benziger wines being some of the few American biodynamically-certified wines, and if not biodynamic at least sustainable and organically certified as a means of producing superb fruit by preserving the health and integrity of the vineyards that grow this fruit.

So for the long Fourth of July weekend we’ve selected a certified sustainably grown crisp, lively white wine that you can serve at your backyard feast of grilled seafood or chicken or as an elegant aperitif to your holiday dinner. Benziger’s 2009 Sauvignon Blanc blends fruit from late-harvested Sonoma County and early-harvested Lake County vineyards into a stylish, elegant, and freshly crisp white wine of uncommon nuance and subtlety. A bright, silvery straw, almost ‘water-white’ color in the wine leads to a bouquet that is a subtle, intriguing blend of herbal notes — tarragon, rosemary, verbena — with a lime-citrus tone. The palate of this full-bodied, supple but crisp wine reflects the mixture of herbs and citrus (grapefruit and lime) adding a bit of passion-fruit accents. What is notable is the harmony of all these discrete elements making for a particularly elegant Sauvignon Blanc, which is not always something one can say about a wine that can be aggressive if not brash and loud in its expression of varietal character.

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2008 Leasingham Riesling
Clare Valley, Australia
Suggested Retail Price $10.99

Don’t expect soft, fruity generic Riesling here! This is bracing, vivid world-class Riesling from the New World — in this case, from Down-Under. Australian Riesling, especially from Clare Valley, is the source for the third of the world’s classic Riesling styles. If Germany is the home of garden-fragrant, delicate, fruity-style Riesling balancing on a knife edge between acidity and sweetness, Alsace, France is the origin of vinous, stony-dry Riesling (even though many of its wines have moved away from that style). And Australia is the source of dry, almost razor-sharp but broad, full-bodied Riesling mixing mineral, earth, and an intense lime-peel aromatic. Clare Valley with its cold nights alternating with warm to hot days is where many of Australia’s greatest examples of this style hail from — not forgetting Eden Valley with its grapefruit and floral scented Rieslings.

And what a remarkable value in the $10 range is found in the form of the Magnus Riesling 2008 from Leasingham, named after one of the winery’s late 19th century founders Magnus Badger. (Though the winery has closed, its brand name still exists — owned by Hardy’s — and it is hoped that it will continue to be a source for characterful, Australian wines stamped with the unique qualities of Clare Valley vineyards.)

The brilliant, green straw-colored 2008 Magnus Riesling is filled with a floral, lime-peel, racy fragrance. On the palate, the wine is firm, medium to full-bodied with intense aromatic and flavor notes of apple-blossom, talc, and mineral highlighted by a juicy, succulent lime-peel accent. Completely ready to enjoy now, this will continue to hold if not marginally improve for a couple of years thanks to its Stelvin closure: another one of the wine world’s signature improvements, arguably given legitimacy when all of Clare Valley’s Riesling producers changed to bottling their wines under screw cap closures because of the unpredictability of corks and TCA taint. We shold be grateful for this while enjoying this bracing Riesling with a lime-juice ceviche.

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2008 Sherwood Estate Sauvignon Blanc
Marlborough, New Zealand
Suggested Retail Price $14.99

Here’s a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that is a marvel of balance and delicacy while preserving those vivid and bright varietal characteristics that helped to make New Zealand’s style a new classic expression of this grape variety. Owner Dayne Sherwood first planted his vineyards in the late 1980s in both Marlborough and Waipara Valley on the South Island and all fruit comes from these areas where he also grows Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Riesling.

Sherwood Estate’s Sauvignon Blanc 2009 shows in its quality and character the careful handling of grapes from three Marlborough vineyards. Harvested at night to bring fruit in at a very cool temperature, the grapes are transported to the winery in small bins where they are whole-cluster pressed in order to have the finest, least phenolic juice, which is then cool-fermented. After fermentation the wine is held for three months on its lees before being blended and bottled.

The result is a bright, very pale straw color, almost water-white leading to a bouquet that is intense but elegant and harmonious. Grapefruit and lime citrus notes mingle with passion fruit and subtle herbal notes of guava and tarragon. Though the alcohol is listed on the label as 13%, in fact it’s only 12.5% according to the winery’s tech-sheet, a welcome change from the increasing weight and alcoholic power of some examples. This lower alcohol contributes to the feather-like weight of the palate, a silky, shimmering, rippling combination of texture and flavor. Crisp acidity, reflecting Marlborough’s cold climate, carries flavors of grapefruit, passion fruit, and herbs that finish with a completely dry, mouth-watering savoriness. What could be better with oysters? Or cold shrimp? Or sliced scallops with a few drops of fresh lime juice?

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Week of June 14, 2010

2008 WillaKenzie Pinot Noir Estate Cuvée
Willamette Valley, Oregon
Suggested Retail Price $24.99

The WillaKenzie Estate Cuvée is another superb example of what makes 2008 such an exciting vintage for Oregon Pinot Noir. It was a season to make grape growers concerned as a cooler than usual summer had them worried the vines wouldn’t be able to ripen their crop before a cool fall that always has the potential for quality-spoiling rain — a problem they faced in 2007. But as September changed to October, the sun shone all through the month into November, finally ripening grapes. The raw materials were some of the most exciting growers had seen in years as acid was high to give vibrant wines and with adequate sugar for alcoholic balance and complete phenolic ripeness.

The 100 acres of sustainably farmed vineyards provide all the fruit for Willakenzie’s wines: grapes or juice are never purchased. After harvest, the juice underwent a Burgundian-style vinification: cold-soaked to extract color and more delicate aromatic and flavor components, then a 20-day fermentation and maceration on the skins in open-topped vats before being moved to French oak (20% new) where it aged for nine months.

The 2008 Estate Cuvée is a beautifully fragrant, stylish and elegant Pinot Noir that showcases Pinot’s delicacy and richness. A vibrant, glowing ruby color leads to an intense bouquet showing vivid kaleidoscopic red fruit — cranberry, raspberry, cherry — combined with floral accents of rose and violet along with subtle cinnamon spice. The wine is medium-bodied, silken, with an ‘energetic’ feel to the texture, no doubt due to the enlivening acidity which gives the flavors a juicy, succulent quality. As delicious as the flavors are now, this is a wine whose structure should allow it to develop at least for another five to eight years.

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2008 Apremont Pierre Boniface
Savoie, France
Suggested Retail Price $16.99

Here is one of the wine world’s great originals, a white wine of deliciously fresh and disarming simplicity but with character. On a warm spring evening as you enjoy your grilled or baked trout, this is a wine that reflects the cool landscape where it grows in the foothills of the French Alps near Geneva and Grenoble. This part of France is the Savoie (SAH-voy), a fresh, unspoiled hinterland east of Burgundy filled with meadows, streams, and growing some of France’s best — but for Americans still relatively undiscovered — wines.

This is a wine as close to the character of a fresh mountain stream as one can imagine. Dry, with the satisfying deliciousness of cold water mixed with the scent of delicate wild flowers and green apple, Apremont has a direct and almost bracing character. Apremont is the name of the cru or vineyard site where the Jacquère grape grows and is considered along with Abymes as producing the most characterful expression of this rare grape. Pierre Boniface founded his estate, Les Rocailles, where he owns 40 and leases another 40 acres of 40-year-old vines for this wine. Fermented at cool temperatures in stainless steel, the wine never sees any oak thus preserving the wine’s direct freshness and minerality. And given the youth of the wine, there’re tiny bubbles clinging to the glass when first poured.

Of real note in this era of increasingly ripe and powerful wines is the modest 11.5% alcohol in the wine, which is essential in expressing the delicate quality of the wine’s aroma and flavor. Serve as a delicately refreshing aperitif or with the freshest, simply prepared river trout, or with cheese.

This wine is selected and imported by Dan Kravitz of Hand-Picked Selections who has built a reputation on discovering distinctive wines of value and quality throughout France, Spain, Greece, Argentina, and California.