The wines for the New York Cork Club's March 2009 shipment left Greene Grape today, so I wanted to tell you a bit about them.
I always have a lot of fun when I pick the wines that we send out to our members, but this month's selections are two that I'm particularly happy that we were able to get for the club. I wouldn't call them hard to find per se, but you have to go to the winery to get them when we did.
First is a wine from Anthony Road Wine Company, their 2007 Martini-Rienhardt Selection Riesling ($22), a wine that I tasted during my visit last month. The M-RS wines are only made from certain estate vineyard blocks in years when the fruit shows something truly special and unique. This isn't some bs alternative to "reserve" labeling. Trust me.
This riesling is just beautiful. It has floral, lime and pear aromas and flavors, amazing balance and has such great acidity that it tastes less sweet than the 2.1% residual sugar might indicate. Why was it kind of hard to get? Well, they don't make much of it and it isn't sold wholesale anywhere. To get it, we had to convince John Martini to bring a case down with him when he visited New York City last weekend.
I was lucky to taste our second wine, Bedell Cellars 2007 Merlot ($25) a couple weeks ago during a visit to the tasting room (post coming soon). It had actually just been shipped to their wine club as a pre-release. As you probably know if you read this blog very often, 2007 was a warm, dry and long growing season on Long Island and this wine shows amazing intensity in its mouth-filling dark fruit flavors, firm-but-ripe tannins, and long finish. If you want to drink it now, decant it for at least an hour. Or, hold it for up to 10 years I'd guess.
Comments