Browse Tag

garganega

Just one more thing…

[pieropan recioto]Pieropan 2007 Recioto di Soave Classico “Le Colombare” (Veneto) — Sweet cloudberries, crystalline minerality, finely honed acidity. A beautiful, beautiful dessert wine. Like drinking the palest most tranparent gold. (9/16)

Oysters

[ca'rugate]ca’ Rugate 2002 La Perlara Recioto di Soave (Veneto) — Bronzed sucrosity. Incredibly dense. Old and powerful.

Maule-ing

Maule “La Biancara” 2010 “I Masieri” (Veneto) – 100% garganega. A beautiful wine that sneaks up from behind, at first showing little other than a thinly floral note, but really broadening as it rests and warms. There’s terrific minerality here, vastly more complex flower-shop aromas than at its outset, and something honeysuckle-like in its insistent appeal to sweetness-without-sucrosity. (8/12)

Maule-dy lay

Maule 2010 “I Masieri” (Veneto) – Garganega (not 100%, I believe, but mostly…though I don’t have recent data at hand). Salted lemons, bold and weirdly compelling. More precisely, compelling and weird, and compelling in part because of that very weirdness. There’s a bit of a stale note that emerges later, whether from exposure to air (Maule tends to be very low-sulfur even amongst the low-sulfur crowd). Drink quickly, is what I’d say, though there’s every chance that other bottles will be different. (7/12)

Peterpan

Pieropan 2007 Soave Classico (Veneto) – This has always seemed like drinking pure liquid essence of some gritty white-powder mineral, reserved to the point of austerity but with a certain majesty…a bit faded, but still proud. What “fruit” there is shows leafy and easily-blown by the wind. (8/11)

Horses in Nevada

Pieropan 2006 Soave Classico Calvarino (Veneto) – Chalk and powdered sugar minerality with dried leaves and not-minor oxidation, in the manner of this wine from many – not all – vintages. Experience says this will age, developing its minerality. On-the-spot assessment says it will not reward that aging. Which is right? Probably the former. (5/11)

Anything you want, Rugate

[garganega grapes]ca’Rugate 2006 Soave Classico San Michele (Veneto) – More jagged than cohesive, showing more seams, cracks, and edges than is typical for this wine, its green plum, honeydew, and tart watermelon rind core are given the usual (for the appellation) dusting of powdered sugar in solution, though the wine doesn’t come of as more than anecdotally off-dry, and may in fact be analytically sugar-free. In a way, the discontinuities lend the wine appeal, but it’s not everything it could be. (1/09)

Siffredi’s mom

Pieropan 2004 Soave La Rocca (Veneto) – Melon and metal. All primary – pre-primary, actually – and promise, with absolutely nothing indicating current drinkability except in the pursuit of academic curiosity. (9/08)

Alan

Corte Sant-Alda 2005 Soave Vigne di Mezzane (Veneto) – Sandy, dusty, lithe, cute…and a little boring. Soave needs something – either Pieropan-style minerality or Anselmi-style richness – that this wine doesn’t deliver, in order to be other than wan. (8/08)

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