Julien Braud Muscadet-sur-Lie
Varietal: Melon de Bourgone
Region: Loire Valley, France
A beautiful September wine!
When mid-day is over 75 degrees but the nights are chilly, this is a perfect wine to grab from the fridge. Aromas reminiscent of the beach- seashells, saline, citrus, and green apple skins with a strong flavor of fresh orchard apples and minerality to back it all up.
Julien Braud began with just 3 hectares of vines, aiming to highlight the beauty of the region he grew up in. He now works just over 13 hectares of vines and has converted to entirely organic practices. For the Braud family, a minimalist approach to winemaking is how you truly let a wine shine. With these practices, they never apply synthetic chemicals to their vines, all fruit is hand-harvested, and all wines undergo spontaneous fermentation. They are alongside many vineyards that also use horses, rather than heavy machinery, alongside their vines so that they do not compact the soil too much.
Chris Kissack sums up these methods well when he writes, “When one vigneron makes a recommendation about another it is often based on how they work rather than the quality of the wines. I find vignerons to be very good judges of how their peers manage their vines – whether they work the soil, whether or not they are organic or biodynamic, if they prefer horses to tractors, and so on – but are perhaps less willing to voice opinions on the quality of the wines, which is of course a more personal and less objective judgement. And Julien Braud works in all the ‘right’ ways, with a manageable vineyard facilitating a quality-orientated approach and the production of small-volume cuvées. He was quick to convert to organics, works the soil by horse to reduce soil compaction, and picks by hand. It is perhaps no wonder his peers and neighbors have noticed this young addition to the local viticultural scene. “
Clos Fornelli Rouge
Varietals: Nielluccio (Sangiovese in Italy)
Region: Corsica, France
A wine made for a night when you’re cooking a comfort meal. This wine is rather fragrant, with a bouquet of violets, cherries, wild herbs, blackberries, and black pepper. The dark fruit carries over on the palate, along with earthy undertones and a nice minerality. Bright with acidity and finishing with silky tannin, which lends to the overall elegance of the wine.
If you have never seen photos of Corsica, France…this is your sign to look it up. Magical! No wonder this wine is so beautiful! The Clos Fornelli Vineyard is located next to the Tyrrhenian Sea, which serves as a perfect microclimate for fresh and complex wines. The Mediterranean sun during the day and the cooler air at night from both the sea and the Castagniccia Mountains.
Wanting to get the full expression of the terroir, winemakers Josée Vanucci and her husband, Fabrice Couloumère, use minimal intervention practices. The estate's vineyards are meticulously farmed, with practices designed to keep yields low and grapes ripe. Their soil, composed of ancient alluvium and pebbles, is not very fertile but deep, providing optimal water management essential for the dry Corsican climate. The vines' average age is 25 years, with the oldest reaching 35 years, making them well-established and thriving in their Mediterranean microclimate. The winemaking process at Clos Fornelli is gravity-fed, with fermentations carried out naturally and only minimal sulfur additions.
Susucaru Patos
Varietal: Catarrato Extra Lucido
Region: Menfi, Italy
This wine compliments this time of year as the sun is going down; When the tension of fall is right around the corner. On the nose, some wild herbs, honeydew, and stone fruit are all mingled together. On the palate, bruised apple and honeyed pears burst through. Super easygoing and light, but holding a great structure till the end.
One night, when going to harvest the last grapes left on their vines, Frank Cornellisen and his team were in disbelief; There were no grapes on the vines. Someone yelled “susucaru!” which in the Catania area means “they have stolen or robbed it” or “they have swallowed/eaten/drank it!” The incident was eternalized through wines.
While today Etna is considered a worldwide top area to grow red wine, Frank moved in before the rest of the world knew how special it was. They have woven in some beautiful systems in their vineyards to ensure they live as close to the rhythms of nature as they can.
Frank states,“The surface area of our estate is approximately 24 hectares, of which 13ha are old vines in the classic free standing alberello training system (Gobelet or bush-vine), 9ha of old vines transformed into modern rows with various width, approximately 2ha of olive growth and the remainder are fruit trees, vegetables and bush. Although Etna has a tradition in high density plantation of vines, we search to reduce monoculture and have interplanted various local fruit varieties and keep bees to regain a complex ecosystem. The new vineyards are planted without grafts, using a selection of our original, ungrafted vines. The training system used is the alberello. Buckwheat is used for rebalancing soils low on organic material without recourse to industrial compost, especially important when preparing land for a new vineyard plantation. We avoid soil-tilling as much as possible, although this depends on the vintage and the quantity of water over the winter (recovering of the vines after the production cycle). Our goal is to avoid all treatments whatsoever in the vineyard, orchard and surroundings, in which we succeeded even in difficult vintages such as 2004 and 2005. Unfortunately there will always be the vintages where treatments with copper sulphate and sulphur are necessary to avoid vines from dying like 2013 and 2015.”
Susucaru Patos is a collaboration with Franks’ friend and importer from Norway. For a while, this wine was only available in Norway, which is one reason why we are so excited for you to have it! It’s pretty exclusive, as they only produce about 6,000/year.
I Costodi Aedes Etna Bianco 2023
Varietals: Carricante
Region: Etna, Italy
Opens up with lively citrus and floral notes, which extend to the palate, accompanied by zippy acidity and subtle minerality.
I Custodi Aetneus Etna Rosso 2019
Varietal: Nerello Mascalese, Nerello Cappuccio, Alicante & Friends
Region: Etna, Italy
A beautiful nose of black cherry, grilled herbs, cocoa, and tobacco. Luscious, complex, velvety, and with very intentional volcanic spice and minerality.
I Custodi, meaning “guardians”, is both the name of this vineyard and its mission statement. They have really but it very well when they say,
“Ancient legends, accounts of travellers and naturalists, works of art, poems and stories are evidence, since the most remote times, of viticulture on Etna. Here the very particular microclimate and the fertility of the volcanic soil offer the vine an ideal setting. Since the time of the Siculi, three thousand years ago, the vine and wine have always been at the centre of the life of the men of Etna. And little has changed from the dawn of history to the twentieth century, in the gestures and ways of the winemakers. The lever presses used until a few years ago seem the same as those described by Cato in 160 BC. The cultivation of the sapling has remained unchanged for thirty centuries, and everywhere we still find the quincunx planting pattern - each vine has an equal distance from those surrounding it - which was dear to the Greeks and Romans. In the 19th century, Etna was the most important wine-producing area in Sicily: vineyards occupied more than half of the land and reached altitudes above 1000 meters. Wine continually shaped the landscape: the black lava stone terraces allowed the vines to climb in increasingly inaccessible places. The Circumetnea railway was built to facilitate the transport of wine to the port of Riposto. From there, it left, in bulk, for all of Europe and the world.
Phylloxera, an unfair tax regime, and the emigration of many farmers have almost managed to put an end to this story with such ancient roots. Only in the last twenty years, the work of a few enlightened people like our winemaker Salvo Foti, has allowed the rebirth of wine on Etna, thus allowing it to conquer the place it rightfully deserves among the great European terroirs.
Etna constantly regenerates itself, and generates new life and culture: the frequent eruptions never make it the same as it was, and the work of the men who persist in inhabiting the Muntagna has the same strength. The lava flows that have followed one another over the millennia have left a very variable terrain. As much as we are helping them with our work, the vines have to fight to survive. Some can sink their roots into fertile soil, others only find bare rock. The microclimate is marked by extreme variations; we have rigid temperatures in winter, almost alpine, but in summer the hot Sicilian sun brings us back to the South. And the drought is felt in the volcanic, sandy soils. Only with great effort can we retain that little bit of humidity in the earth that allows the plants not to have to give up.
The vines suffer from the drought of the volcanic soils, but the suffering is a stimulus for the plants: they produce little fruit, but very rich. Not sweet and concentrated, but always in great balance with the right acidity. Carricante, Minnella, Grecanico, Malvasia, Visparola for the whites, and then the reds Nerello Mascalese, Nerello Cappuccio, Alicante are the vines that have always been grown on Etna. We usually find them planted next to each other, in promiscuous vineyards.
Vineyards where primordial viticulture is practiced, and producing an Etna wine costs time, resources and effort. But we cannot imagine shortcuts to make our life easier, because only by respecting traditions can we make wine as we want to make it. The vine is trained as a sapling, at high density, up to almost ten thousand plants per hectare. The manual care that the Vigneri reserve for each individual plant makes very few treatments necessary during the year, using only sulfur and Bordeaux mixture. We harvest late, and only healthy and naturally grown bunches of grapes, to give life to great, truly Etnean wines.”
Like Frank Cornellison, Salvo Fati really helped Etna put wine back on the map. Again, pretty allocated since they make about 5,000 bottles of each wine a year!
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