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Red
750ml
Bottle: $12.57
12 bottles: $12.32
Colour: Intense bright red colour with violet reflections. Nose: Flavours of prune, tobacco and vanilla. Taste: Dry,...
White
750ml
Bottle: $35.88
12 bottles: $35.16
Delivers attractive pear, melon and chamomile notes that turn creamy on the medium-weight palate, with crushed stone...
12 FREE
WS
91
Case only
Red
750ml - Case of 12
Bottle: $14.25
Alta Vita embodies the spirit and purpose-driven lifestyle of the Sardinians. The wine is full-bodied, robust and...
12 FREE
White
750ml
Bottle: $15.87
12 bottles: $15.55
Bright and juicy, with good energy to its mix of apricot, peach and nectarine flavors. Fresh acidity carries the...
12 FREE
WS
89
Sale
White
750ml
Bottle: $26.89 $27.59
12 bottles: $26.35
Grilled Pineapple, Citrus Blossom, Olive Oil, Stone Fruit, Butterscotch.
Red
750ml
Bottle: $19.93
12 bottles: $19.53
Ruby red in color with aromas of wild blackberry and ripe plum. Intense and elegant on the palate with notes of red...
12 FREE
Red
750ml
Bottle: $15.00
12 bottles: $14.25
Intense aromas of marasca cherry and redcurrant with hints of blackberry jelly. Dynamic and enveloping on the palate...
Red
750ml
Bottle: $38.50
12 bottles: $37.73
Pignolo is very late harvested and aged over two years in 100% new french oak barrels. It does need years to mellow...
12 FREE
Red
750ml
Bottle: $24.90
Cannonau is a typical grapevine in Sardinia that here in Usini assumes unique organoleptic nuances that are found in...
12 FREE
Sale
White
750ml
Bottle: $13.94 $14.73
• Clairette, Grenache Blanc, and Roussanne. • From two parcels – One in the village of Montfrin and one in...
Red
750ml
Bottle: $22.95
12 bottles: $22.49
The 2022 Nero d'Avola is dark and woodsy in the glass, with dried blueberries and exotic spices lifted by sage hints....
12 FREE
VM
91
White
750ml
Bottle: $40.94
12 bottles: $40.12
Attractive and nervy nose with white pepper funk, wild berries and grapefruit. Full-bodied and flavorful for a rosé...
12 FREE
JS
94
WA
93
White
750ml
Bottle: $24.00
12 bottles: $23.52
• 100% Listán Blanco (Palomino). • Sourced from ungrafted centenary vines at 500-600m altitude in the village of...
12 FREE
White
750ml
Bottle: $45.00
• 100% Palomino. • From a less-than-one-hectare parcel of 80-year-old vines planted in slate at high altitude....
12 FREE
White
750ml
Bottle: $29.94
12 bottles: $29.34
Color: Straw yellow with golden highlights. Nose: White flowers and white-fleshed stone fruits evolving into notes...
12 FREE
White
750ml
Bottle: $11.70
12 bottles: $11.12
Color: Pale yellow with green hints. Nose: Aromas of exotic fruits, white flowers and citrus fruits. Palate:...
White
750ml
Bottle: $14.94
12 bottles: $14.64
Color: Pale yellow with green hints. Nose: Aromas of exotic fruits, white flowers and citrus fruits. Palate:...
White
750ml
Bottle: $14.20
12 bottles: $13.92
The effusive nose of apple, sliced pear and white peach pulls you into this bold dry white that has some positive...
JS
90
Sale
Red
750ml
Bottle: $11.94 $13.01
An excellent deep, spicy, intriguing red wine from Sicily, the 2023 Nero d’Avolo is a tank-fermented and aged, dark...
Red
750ml
Bottle: $16.25
12 bottles: $15.93
Known in France as Grenache, this classic Cannonau is full-bodied, pure and authentic. It is a brilliant Ruby red and...

Grenache Nero D'avola Sherry Other Italian Reds White Rhone Blend

The Grenache grape holds the honor of being the most widely planted wine grape varietal on earth. It has a long and impressive history, and has been the backbone of the some of the planet’s most respected and famed wine regions, blended with Syrah in regions such as Chateauneuf du Pape, and in certain other Loire and Languedoc regions where it reigns supreme as a single varietal wine grape. In other key areas, such as Spain’s La Rioja (where it is known as Garnacha Tinta), it is blended with Tempranillo to make that country’s signature red wine, and is widely used as a blending grape in other old and new world countries, due to its unique character and jammy, fruit forward character.


For a long time, the Grenache grape was somewhat looked down upon as an ignoble varietal, incapable of producing wines of any particular interest. However, times are very much changing - in the right hands, Grenache grapes result in astonishingly intense and complex wines, full of fascinating features, and capable of achieving plenty of expression. For a while now, Grenache has been a major player in Australian wines. While not yet quite as extensively planted down under as Shiraz is, the Barossa Valley is bringing out some of the finest examples of this grape’s wines in recent years.

Italy’s largest island, Sicily, has a wine producing history that can put most other European regions to shame. It was producing quality wines before the days of the Roman empire, and even the Ancient Greeks were not the first to cultivate vines on the island. For as long as anyone knows, the key grape varietal of Sicily has been Nero d’Avola, the beautiful, deep blue skinned grape which produces the region’s characterful, powerful red wines. While in the past, Nero d’Avola was mainly used as a blending grape, due to its deep color and intensely full body, it is today being increasingly celebrated as a single varietal wine grape, and is perfect for those who like their wines boisterous, loud and strong.



Nero d’Avola is grown pretty much everywhere on Sicily, as demand for wines made from this grape have never been higher. Despite its power and body, it is quite a versatile grape - it can be aged in oak barrels, which produces a dense and dark wine which puts its intense characteristics to good use, but it is also often drunk quite young, which allows its jammy, plummy character to come forward. It is also used to make rose wines in some appellations of Sicily, demonstrating a softer side to this otherwise heavy, deeply flavorful grape.

Sherry is made in a unique way using the solera system, which blends fractional shares of young wine from oak barrels with older, more mature wines. Sherry has no vintage date because it is blended from a variety of years. Rare, old sherries can contain wine that dates back 25 to 50 years or more, the date the solera was begun. If a bottle has a date on it, it probably refers to the date the company was founded.

Most sherries begin with the Palomino grape, which enjoys a generally mild climate in and around the triad of towns known as the "Sherry Triangle" and grows in white, limestone and clay soils that look like beach sand. The Pedro Ximenez type of sweet sherry comes from the Pedro Ximenez grape.

Sherry is a "fortified" wine, which means that distilled, neutral spirits are used to fortify the sherry. The added liquor means that the final sherry will be 16 to 20 percent alcohol (higher than table wines) and that it will have a longer shelf life than table wines.

The Rhone region of France has been producing superb quality white blended wines for centuries, and is a region highly respected and esteemed around the world, with plenty of New World countries keen to emulate the styles and techniques displayed by the historic wineries and skilled vintners of the area. The secret to the Rhone's success when it comes to blended white wines is the careful and expert selection of certain grape varietals, which each lend special features to the blended wine and bring balance and harmony to the bottle. Most commonly, blended white Rhone wines feature no more than two grapes of either the Viognier, Rousanne, Marsanne or Grenache Blanc varietals, and are renowned for their exceptional flavors and highly aromatic, floral character.