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750ml
Bottle:
$26.90
12 bottles:
$26.36
Passion fruit and Bing cherry come off the nose of this wine with a distinctive, wet gravel minerality. As you look...
750ml
Bottle:
$21.96
$24.40
12 bottles:
$19.76
Notes of fresh toast, graham cracker and cream, blend with ripe orchard and stone fruit on the nose. On the plate...
750ml
Bottle:
$91.94
6 bottles:
$90.10
The Carneros Cuvée is our Tête de Cuvée. It represents the best fruit from our 335 acre estate as well as our...
750ml
Bottle:
$39.55
$45.20
A bubbly with richness and verve, this cuvee offers lilting apple tart, creme brulee and lemon verbena flavors that...
750ml
Bottle:
$47.94
12 bottles:
$46.98
Finesse, detail and elegance make this wine outstanding from the first whiff to the lingering finish. Subtle aromas...
750ml
Bottle:
$45.20
12 bottles:
$42.94
Richly structured yet refreshing and lively, with lemon tart, nectarine, fresh brioche and spicy ginger accents that...
750ml
Bottle:
$43.94
$45.20
12 bottles:
$43.06
Succulent and seductive, with festive raspberry and lemon crème brûlée flavors accented by fresh gingerbread and...
750ml
Bottle:
$35.64
$39.60
12 bottles:
$34.20
#11 ENTHUSIAST 100 2022. With an inviting, fruity nose, this is a crowd-pleasing, well-made and memorable sparkler...
750ml
Bottle:
$22.40
$23.58
12 bottles:
$15.02
KORBEL Natural’ is a very dry, delicate California champagne – a true representation of KORBEL’s fruit-forward...
750ml
Bottle:
$17.60
$19.56
12 bottles:
$13.58
This frankly sweet sparkler smells like toasted almonds and pistachios, and tastes rich, round, floral and nutty. It...
750ml
Bottle:
$18.97
$20.40
Steely and refreshing, with appealing green apple and kiwi flavors. Drink now. 2,000 cases made.
750ml
Bottle:
$28.08
12 bottles:
$14.25
Vibrant and narrowly focused, with steely pear and strawberry accents that linger on a creamy finish. Drink now....
Champagne Blend Colombard Mavrodaphne United States California Sonoma Valley 750ml
The sparkling wines of Champagne have been revered by wine drinkers for hundreds of years, and even today they maintain their reputation for excellence of flavor and character, and are consistently associated with quality, decadence, and a cause for celebration. Their unique characteristics are partly due to the careful blending of a small number of selected grape varietals, most commonly Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. These grapes, blended in fairly equal quantities, give the wines of Champagne their wonderful flavors and aromas, with the Pinot Noir offering length and backbone, and the Chardonnay varietal giving its acidity and dry, biscuity nature. It isn't unusual to sometimes see Champagne labeled as 'blanc de blanc', meaning it is made using only Chardonnay varietal grapes, or 'blanc de noir', which is made solely with Pinot Noir.
In the Archaea region, high in the Northern Peloponnese mountains, the predominant grape varietal grown is the prized Mavrodaphne. Meaning 'Black Laurel', the Mavrodaphne grapes have extremely dark skins, and ripen slowly under the Greek sunshine, helped by the mineral rich soils the vines thrive in. This grape varietal is mostly used to produce the opaque, inky fortified wine of the same name, which is popular all over Greece and elsewhere in the world. This fortified wine allows the grapes to really show off their complex and fascinating flavors, which range from a rich marzipan to flavors of bitter chocolate, sweet coffee, dried figs and prunes, as well as plenty of jammy fruit notes.
Mavrodaphne is produced in a traditional method which involves leaving the grape juice exposed to the sun in large vats, before having its fermentation halted by the addition of various distillates taken from previous successful vintages. This mixture contains plenty of residual sugar, which gives the end result its characteristic sticky sweetness, and also helps with the next fermentation process, which typically takes place in large underground cellars. The final product is a heady drink, absolutely bursting with unusual, rich and sweet flavors and carried in a dark and slightly viscous Port-like liquid.
Mavrodaphne grapes are also used for the production of still red wines, but are generally blended with varietals such as Agiorgitiko or imported grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon. Mavrodaphne grapes are excellent for mellowing more acidic varieties, and producing deliciously rounded wines, which have taken the international market by storm in recent decades.
Additional Information on Greek Wines
Greek Wines
Ancient Greek Wines – A Brief History of Wine in Greece
The Myth of Dionysus, Greek God of Wine
What is Retsina?
Of all the New World wine countries, perhaps the one which has demonstrated the most flair for producing high quality wines - using a combination of traditional and forward-thinking contemporary methods - has been the United States of America. For the past couple of centuries, the United States has set about transforming much of its suitable land into vast vineyards, capable of supporting a wide variety of world-class grape varietals which thrive on both the Atlantic and the Pacific coastlines. Of course, we immediately think of sun-drenched California in regards to American wines, with its enormous vineyards responsible for the New World's finest examples of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot based wines, but many other states have taken to viticulture in a big way, with impressive results. Oregon, Washington State and New York have all developed sophisticated and technologically advanced wine cultures of their own, and the output of U.S wineries is increasing each year as more and more people are converted to their produce.
California as a wine producing region has grown in size and importance considerably over the past couple of centuries, and today is the proud producer of more than ninety percent of the United States' wines. Indeed, if California was a country, it would be the fourth largest producer of wine in the world, with a vast range of vineyards covering almost half a million acres. The secret to California's success as a wine region has a lot to do with the high quality of its soils, and the fact that it has an extensive Pacific coastline which perfectly tempers the blazing sunshine it experiences all year round. The winds coming off the ocean cool the vines, and the natural valleys and mountainsides which make up most of the state's wine regions make for ideal areas in which to cultivate a variety of high quality grapes.
California's beautiful and remarkably fertile Sonoma Valley has grown over the decades to become one of the United States' most respected and profitable wine regions, with wineries within the region benefiting from the superb Californian sunshine, low rainfall and wonderfully rich soils. Because of this vital combination of excellent conditions, the region is able to grow a wide range of grape varietals for use in the production of an impressive array of wines, with many different red and white wine grapes flourishing each year and producing excellent and characterful results. The soils have been enriched by volcanic activity, and the presence of geothermal springs, which make this region a unique one, and very much the beating heart of California's ever growing wine industry.