Events

Premium brandy aged in the traditional solera system of Spain using sherry-soaked barrels. A gently spiced nose leads to a warm body with a distinct smoothness. Well balanced flavor profile makes this brandy perfect when served straight.

Since "Whiskey" is made from grain, and buckwheat is technically not a grain, this is technically not a whiskey. But for "not a whiskey", this sure drinks like one. Notes of vanilla and a hint of smokiness accentuate the grainy and nutty character of the buckwheat, making for a "not whiskey" that will please every lover of "whiskey". One and Only Buckwheat is made by Catskill Distilling Co. in Bethel, N.Y. with Catskill Mountain water and New York grown grains. 42.5%abv.

Notes of caramel, toffee, vanilla, walnuts, cinammon and other spices, as well as a mouth filling sensation on your first sip, tell you that this is Rye Whiskey kicked up a notch. Produced from local ingredients in Bethel NY.

"It's good to see an official distillery bottling of Clynelish in the U.S. This one is very true to the Clynelish style: fresh, appetizing, and very drinkable. Notes of brine, fruit (lemon-lime), and vanilla-accented malt, are the foundation of this whisky. Delicate seaweed, peat, exotic pepper and a hint of citrus rind bitterness entertain the palate throughout, all the way to its appetizingly briny, seaweed-tinged finish. Perhaps the definitive aperitif whisky." Whisky Advocate

Nose: zesty, mandarin, tangerine. Smoky. Palate: quite light, great clarity. orange, soft acidity. dry oak. mixed fruits, vanilla, leather. Finish: quite long, bitter sweetness developing, spicy oak. Great balance with perfectly rounded mouthfeel. 46%abv - Fresh Fruit and Vanilla -

Aged seven years and bottled at 107 proof; uses a special strain of jug yeast which results in a silky smooth texture and consistent taste from batch to batch. Rich, intense and complex - an excellent Bourbon for after dinner sipping. 53.5%abv

Hand-crafted in the village of Las Milpas overlooking rolling pastures and nestled among cornfields. Agave: Espadin. Naturally fermented and twice distilled in wood-fired copper stills. Nose of slate and tropical fruit, palate of citrus, lavender and pea shoots, with a long dry finish. ABV 46. - Producer's notes

"1978 was a very short vintage for Rioja with "only" 78 million liters of wine produced (compared with 135 million in 1981 or 128 million in 1973). That year Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and in Italy the terrorist group Red Brigades kidnapped and killed ex-Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The Vatican saw Pope John Paul I succeeding Pope Paul IV and Pope John Paul II succeeding Pope John Paul I shortly after. ?????Grease????? opened in cinemas and cult TV series ?????Mazinger Z????? aired in Spain, surely the first (and probably the last!) super robot manga series that I watched on TV. The vintage was officially declared "Muy Buena" (very good), while at CVNE they were a little more conservative about the quality of their wines and considered it simply "Buena." The 1978 Vi??a Real Gran Reserva was bottled unusually late, in February 1987. That might explain why I found the wine exceptionally dry, with smoky notes." WA

I think context is very important in wine, and when I drink old bottles I always think how the world was when they harvested the grapes: what happened that year, how people lived and how they made the wine. It's sometimes mind boggling to drink some very old wines, a real privilege which, I often say, is as close as you can get to time travel. So I've given some context to all these wines. I'm told nobody reads the tasting notes and people only look at the scores, let's see if we get some reaction on these. Even though the tasting was excellent, I expected even more; we had too many corked wines and some vintages had shown better on other occasions. But such is the case with old wines, there are no great vintages anymore, only great bottles. Highlights of the tasting were 1959, 1947 and 1938. On top of those, there was one outstanding and perfect wine that day, and, as I might not find better excuse to publish a note on it than now, I've included it here. It's an historical wine, a one-off, semi-sweet white produced at the end of the Spanish Civil War, a wine impossible to replicate, fruit of impossible circumstances, a wine I've had the luck to drink and share with many people on a number of occasions and which never fails to impress everyone.

Tasting Notes:
Inviting and elegant tropical aromas give this wine a stylish personality before even tasting it. A storyteller on the palate, this World Class Sauvignon Blanc has brilliant fruit concentration, rich texture, bright acidity with an entertaining long and smooth finish.

Winemaker Notes:
The 2014 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon has an opaque crimson color with a purplish hue. The alluring nose draws you in with notes of cassis, black cherry, pipe tobacco, salted caramel, cocoa beans, and fresh strawberry. This full-bodied wine enters with a depth of flavor and offers mouth-coating, velvety tannins, and flavors of cream soda and red fruit. Black currant and vanilla notes crescendo through the palate to the lengthy finish. This wine is drinkable upon release, but given proper cellaring conditions can be enjoyed through 2040.

Blend: 78% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11.6% Merlot, 6.7% Cabernet Franc, 2.1% Petit Verdot, 1.6% Malbec

"Firm, fresh and complex, with an array of glazed apricot, ginger, maple and cream flavors. Features notes of truffle and mineral on the crisp finish. Drink now. 200 cases imported." Wine Spectator

What: Sparkling
Where: California
"Korbel Sweet Rose is made from a complex selection of both red and white grape varietals. The blend is especially designed to have very bright fruit flavors and aromas of raspberry and vanilla. The harvesting of red varietals early in the ripening process helps achieve the desired style for this cuve. The varietal composition of Sweet Rose is Pinot Noir and Zinfandel with a dosage level of 6.0%.

Excellent With:
Fresh fruit or appetizers such as grilled prawns and mango salsa, or with a selection of ripe cheeses."

Soft and refreshing, with apple, lemon, fig and lime flavors that stay lively through the finish. - WS

#37 On Vinous Top 100 Wines Of 2025!

97 points Vinous
Remarkably fresh and perfumed in the glass, the 2023 Pinot Noir Maresh Vineyard Liminal wafts up with a collage of dried herbs, dusty earth, wildflowers and stemmed strawberries. This wine is a model of balance, seamless and silken in form with an energetic, lively core that offsets its crisp wild berry fruits, all elevated by tantalizing acidity. Citrus and spicy notes saturate the palate, along with a nervous feel that slowly recedes into a lingering harmonious inner sweetness. The 2023 is pure magic. Sadly, this will be the last vintage of Maresh from Kelley Fox

A blend of 50% Chenin Blanc, 25% Pinot Noir and 25% Chardonnay, this Champagne-method sparkler is a stellar value for the money! Lean and crisp with a fresh minerality, it shows green apple, pear, and white nectarine fruit with a gentle mousse and medium body. An excellent value that way over-delivers for the modest price!

#51 on The Wine Spectator's Top 100 Wines Of 2025

92 points Wine Spectator
A rock-solid Cab, offering a steady beam of warmed cassis and cherry reduction notes laced with a loamy accent to keep everything grounded. Dark tobacco and a flash of walnut husk add range through the finish, which hasn’t fully unwound just yet. Best from 2026 through 2036

Organic

94+ points Wine Advocate
The 2023 Kinki has to be the most perfumed, floral and elegant vintage for this bottling; it's a grownup wine, not a teenager anymore. It has very juicy fruit and is really elegant and balanced, more serious but drinkable. It was produced with the grapes from a vineyard that has up to 25% other grapes, not only Mencía but Doña Blanca, Palomino, Godello, Alicante Bouschet (more than usual, which provides freshness) and Estaladiña. It fermented with full clusters, all the varieties together, in and open 5,000-liter oak vat. It comes in at 12.7% alcohol with a pH of 3.4, aiming at contained ripeness, low extraction and high drinkability. The ripeness is more complete and more homogeneous this year in the zone of Cobrana, and the wines are more serious, with a core of bright red fruit, fresh and elegant. It's always bottled early, before the summer, and was bottled in May 2024. 4,378 bottles produced. Drink:2025-2032.

Organic

93 points Jeb Dunnuck
Not yet bottled, the 2022 Châteauneuf Du Pape is liquid Provence in a bottle, offering a massive nose of mulled red and black cherries, peppery garrigue, leather, and smoked meat-like aromas and flavors. With medium to full-bodied richness on the palate, it has solid overall balance, a meaty, mouth-filling texture, and enough tannins to warrant short-term cellaring. The blend is 70% Grenache, 10% Syrah, 10% Mourvèdre, and the rest a mix of varieties, and this cuvée will spend two years in foudre before bottling.

Organic / Biodynamic

93 points Wine Advocate
The 2020 Intens Rosat was produced exclusively with Monastrell (as they couldn't use the Garnacha that was lost in that year of mildew) that macerated with the skins for six hours and aged in oak barrels for a short time. It was put to referment in bottle closed with a cork with concentrated organic must and was disgorged after 31 months. This is their youngest wine, and it has an intense pink color (a little paler than in earlier vintages). But going beyond the color, it has the subtle aromas from the red grape (translucent red berries) and is a gastronomical rosé with a balanced palate and abundant small bubbles. It has 11% alcohol, a pH of 3.21 and 4.5 grams of acidity from the year of rain and mildew (and Covid!) that delivered very low yields. Very tasty.

Recaredo’s uncompromisingly vinous, deeply colored sparkling rosé is produced from fully ripe Monastrell and Garnacha, pressed slowly and given six hours of skin-maceration, and given five years of lees aging. Bright, sappy, and bursting with salt-flecked fruit, this wine simultaneously expresses the verve of the vintage and the solar imprint of the terroir. If most still rosé from the French stretch of the sea straitjackets itself with overcropping, sulfur, and a rush to bottling (that salmon color so beloved by the market requires some coercion), “Intens” expresses the full luscious heat of the Mediterranean in typically Recaredo-esque visceral fashion, yet it remains scintillatingly vibrant and refreshing to drink.

Josep Mata Capellades founded Cavas Recaredo in 1924, naming the domaine in honor of his father, Recaredo Mata Figueres. Josep Mata Capellades built the cellars in his house, in the historic centre of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. Parts of the cellars are now over 80 years old and have been conserved in their original form.

Recaredo is a pioneer in the production of totally dry cavas, in working with oak barrels and in longer-aged cavas. Cavas Recaredo is currently managed by Josep and Antoni Mata Casanovas, the sons of its founder, with Ton Mata actively involved and representing the succeeding generation.Recaredo owns forty-six hectares of vineyards in the Alt Penedes district planted primarily to the Xarello, Macabeu and Parellada grape varieties, with smaller amounts of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Monastrell (Mourvedre).

Viticulture at Recaredo is based solely on dry farming; no herbicides or pesticides are used and only organic fertilizers are applied when necessary; grapes are harvested manually; and, production is limited to cavas that are completely dry. The estate strictly follows an organic viticulture regime.Vinification is carried out entirely at the Recaredo cellars in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. The musts from the oldest Xarello vines ferment in oak barrels, which give structure and greater complexity for longer-aged cavas. Some of the base wine is aged in oak barrels for some months. This wine will be used to add greater finesse and structure to the final blending. At Recaredo, the wines are aged in-bottle in continuous contact with the second fermentation lees; the bottles are closed with 100% natural cork stoppers. Disgorging is carried out on an exclusively manual basis, at the cellars' natural temperature, without freezing the necks of the bottles, a process that produces the most natural product possible. The cavas of Recaredo are disgorged totally dry with a zero dosage and all cuvées are vintage-dated.Effectively, Can Recaredo, as the domaine is known, is a deeply traditional producer of the finest Cavas available in the market. To visit the cellars and observe the process is to return to another time when artisanal, hand-crafted products of the highest quality were the universally accepted standard, the goal that all sought to achieve. Here, in brief form is the Recaredo commitment:Production of single-vintage cavas only.Production of completely dry cavas: “Brut Nature”.Vinification, production and ageing 100% in-house.Ageing in bottle inside our caves, with real cork stoppers.Remuage by hand, in traditional racks.Manual disgorgement without freezing the bottle's neck.

Perhaps even better than this estate’s 2000 or 1996, one may have to go back to the monumental 1990 to find a Grand-Puy-Lacoste this classic and well-endowed. It is a beautiful, dense purple-tinged effort displaying a sweet, pure perfume of creme de cassis, flowers, and wet stones, fabulous ripeness, a full-bodied, fleshy attack, mid-palate, and finish, and gorgeous length as well as richness. There is not a coarse, hard edge to be found in this well-endowed, tannic beauty. A fabulous value in the scheme of 2005 Bordeaux prices, it should be at its peak between 2014-2030+. - WA(93-95)

Organic

Organic

Organic

Dry farmed, sustainable/non-certified organic. Azahar is officially certified as a “vinhos atlánticos,” which guarantees the vineyard must be within close proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, and see direct maritime influence. Viticulture is a combination of single cordon and traditional pergola style.

Hand-picked fruit is destemmed and crushed and pressed. The juice is fermented, some lots are co-fermented in cement vats and others in stainless steel. 100% fermentation and aging on the lees in concrete vats with no battonage. Native fermentation traditionally lasts 1 month, after which the wine rests on lees for 6 months. After racking off of lees the wine is filtered, and no CO2 is added. Minimal SO2 is added before bottling.

Green figs coated with sea spray, tart granny smith apple and hints of lemon verbena. Azahar is a serious departure from traditional, stylized VV, packing complex texture and bracing acidity on the palate. Given the varietal composition and fermentation style, the wine should age well for 5-6 years

The Sea Sun 2023 Chardonnay, made by the Wagner Family of Caymus fame, brings a golden glow to the glass with its coastal California charm. This dry, medium-bodied white glides across the palate with notes of lemon curd, baked apple, ripe apricot, and a whisper of toasty oak. Its creamy texture is beautifully lifted by bright acidity, making it a polished yet generous pour. Sourced from sun-soaked vineyards hugging the Pacific, its a wine that speaks of sea breezes and warm evenings.

Organic / Biodynamic

94 points Vinous
The 2022 Garnacha Navaherreros hails from Gredos, a subzone of San Martín de Valdeiglesias. It delivers pure ripe guinda with gentle herbal notes, pomegranate, grenadine and a background of cinnamon. This light-bodied red is delicate and enticing with tannic grip and a touch of ripeness. Richness meets whole-bunch tannins to create a compact palate.

96+ points Wine Advocate
The nose of the 2023 A Cesteira transported me to the Albariños from yesteryear, fragrant and developed, open, expressive and nuanced, mixing notions of freshly cut grass with flowers, yellow fruit and pollen. It's Albariño from a single plot on schist and clay soils from vines averaging 45 years of age, fermented in stainless steel and matured in 2,500-liter oak foudre for 10 months. It has fine granularity, an incredible texture, sleek and polished, smooth and elegant. All the whites show contained ripeness and around 13% alcohol, like this one, which has a pH of 3.36 and 7.7 grams of acidity. 4,600 bottles produced. It was bottled in August 2024

100% Albariño • sourced from a 0.7-hectare parcel in Villalonga on decomposed schist, 60 years of age on average. The parcel originally belonged to a family of cesteiros, or basket-weavers • whole-cluster pressed and fermented spontaneously • no malolactic • raised for 11 months on the lees in neutral 2500L French-oak foudres • 400 cases produced

Organic

90-92 points Jeb Dunnuck
Moving to the reds, the 2020 Gigondas La Gille is the base Gigondas and has a medium-bodied, supple, seamless style as well as classic spice, peppery herbs, and red and black fruits. It’s well worth seeking out and should easily be an outstanding wine.

The grapes for this cuvée (95% Sauvignon Blanc, 5% Sémillon) come from a four hectare hillside parcel of clay and limestone soil with a full southern exposure that overlooks the Garonne River in Sainte-Croix-du-Mont. The vines have an average age of 25 years. After a manual harvest, the grapes are fermented in temperature-controlled vats and left on the fine lees for six months prior to bottling.