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Back to Spain for Mourvèdre Monday. This one’s from Bodegas Castaño, one of the biggest producers of Monastrell in Yecla, in southeastern Spain. This wine got 90+ points from Parker for 5 straight vintages, including this one. Let’s see what’s up.
Producer: Bodegas Castaño
Grapes: 100% Monastrell
Appellation: Yecla
Vineyards: From 30+ year old vines in two vineyards: Las [...]

I’ve never really gotten in the habit of drinking much German wine. Partly because I’ve always drunk more red than white. And partly because of all the uncertainty around sweetness, especially in my early wine-drinking days when I turned my nose up at any hint of sweetness, thinking that made me more sophisticated. More than [...]

Here’s another Slovenian wine for the Oddball series. This one blends Welshriesling with Sauvignon Blanc. Welshriesling is not Rielsing with a funny accent. It’s an unrelated (and inferior) grape grown in places like Austria, northern Italy, and a bunch of old Iron Curtain countries: Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania and Czech Republic. According to Oz Clarke’s Grapes [...]

A few days before the big #SauvBlanc twitter tasting a few weeks back, I found myself without any Sauv Blanc in the house (a pretty rare occurrence). I didn’t have time to make a run to one a proper wine shop, so I picked up something on my weekly grocery shopping trip. I don’t recall [...]

This is the tenth installment of Mourvèdre Monday. Click here for the other posts in the series.
We return to Spain for this week’s Mourvèdre Monday post. And not only back to Spain, but back to the producer of Week 1’s wine: the Barahonda 06 Monastrell. This is another wine in their lineup – this one blended [...]

Aussie Shiraz is approaching Merlot-backlash territory in terms of becoming a wine style that some people wouldn’t be caught dead drinking (à la Sideways). Maybe that’s just in wine geek circles (not sure I have the most objective perspective on these things), but that’s where it starts, right?
But there’s usually a reason a wine style becomes [...]

Producer: Hanna
Grapes: 100% Sauvignon Blanc
Appellation: Russian River Valley (AVA, California)
Vineyards: From estate vineyards across RRV: Slusser 53%, Ricioli 11%, Brooks 11%, Gann Family 9%, Chalk Ridge 8%, Jensen Lane 3%, Crinella 2%, Mirabelle 1% and Gianquinto 1%. (I know all that vineyard detail doesn’t tell you much about the wine, but I can’t resist including [...]

This was just a random pickup at Whole Foods one day. The label design caught my eye, then I noticed the blend, then “Catalan” on the label. Wait, doesn’t Catalan refer to Spain… as in Catalonia? But this is French. That was interesting enough for me to plunk down my $11. I wasn’t sure when [...]

artezin (I think they prefer no caps) is a part of the Hess Family of wineries. The label is focused on Zin, Petite Sirah and Carignan. In this wine, they “strive for a classic varietal, fruit-forward, ‘Zinny’ Zin.” Let’s see if they hit the mark for me.
Producer: Artezin Wines
Grapes: 91% Zinfandel, 9% Petite Sirah
Appellation: Mendocino County [...]

This is the fourth installment of Mourvèdre Monday, VINEgeek’s yearlong deep-dive into the Mourvèdre/Monastrell/Mataro grape. Check out the other posts in the series here.

After I announced that 2010 would be The Year of Mourvedre here at VINEgeek Enterprises, I got lots of great recommendations from my fellow winos. This bottle was suggested by @Sonadora of Wannabe [...]