Inter alia, the winter holiday break is behind us and it is time to get down to business. Time to resume the empirical and experiential search for honest wine. Wines that satisfy at some necessary atomic level, avoid oaky embarrassment and hopefully fulfill basic human needs.

What we seek are bottles fashioned from grapes that are lucky to have been handed a benevolent evolutionary line, miraculously fortuitous in their ancestry, through categorical mutation and genetic modification. Varietal luck, pop and circumstance. That’s what we’re after.

The first VINTAGES release of 2016 makes an adjustment to previous editions with no less than a dozen really solid efforts below the $21.95 line to make Messrs. Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon proud. You too can save on quality wine this January. Read on to avoid getting lost in aught where unwanted wines are cast into a dull, scattered void.

 

Lingenfelder Bird Label Riesling 2013, Qualitätswein, Pfalz, Germany (568634, $14.95, WineAlign)

A return to entry-level glory out of a great vintage for this basic QbA with the acidity to thrive and the tannin to jive. Love the fruit mingling with mineral and the weight even when aridity is the key. A tropical note hits both the nose and the palate. What complexity for $15. Really. Best in many years with a beautifully bitter finish. Drink 2015-2018.  Tasted December 2015  @RobLingenfelder  @HHDImports_Wine  @germanwineca

Mulderbosch Chenin Blanc 2015, Wo Western Cape, South Africa (675421, $14.95, WineAlign)

Properly, distinctly, effortlessly Stellenbosch Chenin Blanc. Of tang and here in 2015, more heft than many though in retention of aridity and super salinity. Has real verve and presence. Drink 2015-2017.  Tasted December 2015  @MulderboschV  @WOSACanada  @WOSA_ZA  @AbconWine

Wakefield Estate Chardonnay 2014, Clare Valley/Adelaide Hills, South Australia (711556, $14.95, WineAlign)

Rich and reductive with some Co2 and piercing acidity. Solid Chardonnay that needs a year or two to settle. Last tasted December 2015  @Taylors_Wines  @ProfileWineGrp

Rich and dense, temperate in accessibility, splitting the Chardonnay mile. Works barrels with threadbare, throwback constituency and takes a comfortable trip down varietal, memory lane like predecessors in old world California. All in the name of proper and restraint. The palate is rich yet delicate. Good work. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted blind at WWAC15, August 2015

Valpantena Valpolicella Ripasso 2013, Doc Veneto, Italy (429928, $15.95, WineAlign)

Nice tidy little Valpolicella here. Enough richness marked by tension to make it a real drop. A bit flushed with thickness though the tang in food-gifting acidity and arid tannin is again, very real. Solid stuff. Drink 2015-2018. Tasted December 2015  @Cant_Valpantena  @MajesticWineInc  @RegioneVeneto

Honoro Vera Garnacha 2013, Calatayud, Spain (432997, $15.95, WineAlign)

Though playing a key of dusty and volatile minor, here Calatayud Garnacha from Bodega Atteca’s 60 year-old vines does its traditional duty in forthright varietal and regional honesty. Reinvents no wheels or identity with ripe fruit, early enough picked for preserving acidity and palate tension. The aridity and tang on the finish perform yeoman’s work in lieu of tannin. Drink now and for another year or two, preferably with cocina tradicional Aragonesa. Drink 2015-2017. Tasted December 2015  @docalatayud  @ProfileWineGrp

Sister’s Run Bethlehem Block Cabernet Sauvignon 2012, Barossa Valley, South Australia, Australia (360636, $15.95, WineAlign)

Very ripe, nearly, dangerously young and volatile, yet so very sweet smelling. Plums, cherries, Cassis, a hint of graphite and the wood from American stars ‘n bars. Good acidity burgeoning about with minor, kneeling, equitable tannin. Has a salty caramel taste that will require similar fare; a mole sauce would work. Good length on this varietal wonder. “All you have is memories of happiness, lingering on.” A shining light in the Sister’s Run stable. “Maybe the star of Bethlehem, wasn’t a star at all.” Drink 2015-2019.  Tasted December 2015

Donnachiara Irpinia Coda Di Volpe 2013, Dop Campania, Italy (434241, $16.95, WineAlign)

Here the no lo so of Italian white grape varieties, this Coda di Volpe, the fox vine “Alopecis,” a.ka. “tail of the fox,” with natural history recording creds to Pliny the Elder. A Campania concert of grape tannin and sea mineral melded together as one. A varietal happenstance where land meets the sea in a beautiful bond. This low-cost specimen is a friendship gift from Italy, with ripe fruit and even stronger feelings of subterranean impart, from fringe stone through the ambient abstraction of Roman mythology. Like a river Styx running through carrying the bravery of Herculean salinity. Drink 2015-2018.  Tasted December 2015  @DonnaChiara    @Reg_Campania  @TheCaseForWine

Penthouse Pinot Noir 2013, Adelaide Hills, South Australia, Australia (432864, $16.95, WineAlign)

The berries, cherries and plums are a vivid smelling bunch with a cumulative tone occupying airspace at the border of mercurial. A silent request asked of this undomesticated (with 10 per cent whole cluster bunches in the wild ferment) Pinot Noir is “when are you gonna come down, when are you going to land.” With time, the extreme brightness turns to density, of rustic earth and silky encrustation. Its answer sings to the tune of “you can’t plant me in your penthouse, I’m going back to my plough.” Walks well beyond the yellow brick road of the Adelaide Hills and the varietal, to a place in OZ occupied by the curious and the songline follower. There is a lot of Pinosity is this $17 wine. The mid-glass transformation is a true plus. A heel click finish would have really sealed the deal. Drink 2015-2017.  Tasted November 2015  @Nicholaspearce_  @AHWineRegion

Terra D’uro Finca La Rana Toro 2011, Do Toro, Spain (424135, $17.00, WineAlign)

Terminable Toro, firm to juicy, earthy to mulled plum and liquorice fruity. Acidity rips in the short term and whatever tannin was gifted is quite resolved. Early 2016, in the dead of a northern hemisphere winter is the right time to settle in with a braise and Toro at five years of age. Very solid. Drink 2015-2017.  Tasted December 2015  @VinodeToro

Gustave Lorentz Réserve Riesling 2014, Ac Alsace, France (641639, $18.95, WineAlign)

Bergheim terroir in a nutshell to the result marked by the essential, distilled down to this very base and necessary example of what dry Riesling just has to be. Along with Trimbach and in this price range brought to this market, the act is exemplary and export defining as citizens of the genre. From flint to citrus and back by way of ripe fruit. With weight and such a dry, to the point finish “and a crackling in the air.” What it is. Drink 2015-2021.  Tasted December 2015  @GustaveLorentz  @AmethystWineInc  @AlsaceWines  @VinsAlsace  @drinkAlsace

Pupillo Cyane Moscato 2010, Igt Sicilia, Italy (156430, $18.95, WineAlign)

Wholly Sicilian metallurgy of a character absorption in ode to Alsatian Muscat. That and the weight of the sun bearing down on sugaring fruit. With eyes closed picture this heading into a 20-year honeyed and mineral territory, with ground nuts and fresh cracked pepper foil. Oxidative but just on that dangerous edge so that it can continue to develop for years without losing sight of the prize. Drink 2015-2025.  Tasted December 2015  @loyalimportsltd  @WinesOfSicily

Familia Zuccardi Cuvée Especial Blanc De Blancs, Tupungato, Mendoza, Argentina (435438, $19.95, WineAlign)

Bready, heady and lees elegant from years of yeasty rest towards an end marked by lactic sour mixed into lemon citrus. The tightest wire-wind of Chardonnay tonic with bitters running here and there. The nearly five years on the lees has made the texture thick and the mousse replete with bubbles popping left, right and centre. Much in the way of complexity for Blanc de Blancs from Argentina blessed with lots of altitude. You’ve not not likely been blown away by South American bubbles as you will be by this Mendozan, from Tupungato to Llullaillaco. Drink 2015-2020.  Tasted December 2015  @FamiliaZuccardi  @SebaZuccardi  @ZuccardiWines  @DionysusWines

Gundlach Bundschu Mountain Cuvée 2012, Sonoma County, California, USA (397521, $19.95, WineAlign)

The fruit is ripe, there can be no argument there and the treatment is careful, calculated, restrained even. Exit stage left blend, running all the way. Sneaky, deft, stealthy, cat-like in behaviour. Always landing on all fours. Like a pink anthropomorphic mountain lion sporting an upturned collar, shirt cuffs and a string tie. Red blend with a great desire to be a stage actor, available to please all kinds of folks. “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” Sweet finish. Drink 2015-2019.  Tasted December 2015  @gunbunwine    @LeSommelierWine  @sonomavintners

Domaine Saint Roch Vacqueyras 2014, Ac Rhône, France (437194, $21.95, WineAlign)

Some heat in the nose and even more spice with balance achieved by a lively to energetic, creeping up on frenetic palate. Earth crusts play in to the fray as much as the fruit, the posit tug working with one another in equal and opposing directions. The wine lingers on with grace in magical persistence. A pinch of dusty espresso and wishful fennel marks the back end. The reality check to imagine and realize a real Vacqueyras. Great value. Drink 2016-2021.  Tasted December 2015  @VacqueyrasWines  @VINSRHONE  @RhoneWine

Foris Pinot Noir 2012, Rogue Valley, Oregon, USA (937128, $24.95, WineAlign)

A deft and reeling charmer, easy to drink and well-priced. Dark red fruit of the black cherry realm occupied by the ripe and fashionable Pinot Noir. That it so successfully woos with that kind of Oregon fruit to this kind of advantage in the absence of available underground salinity and tension is a Rogue Valley win. At 13.9 per cent it creeps comfortably under the hot radar gun and many will enjoy the uncomplicated style. Recommended for those who like it fun and unencumbered. Drink 2015-2017.  Tasted December 2015  @Foriswine  @SouthernORWine  @Oregon_Wine

Caiarossa Pergolaia 2008, IGT Tuscany, Italy (424333, $34.95, WineAlign)

A satisfying and handsomely rustic biodynamic Sangiovese-led IGT blend with lead, graphite, dusty cherry and plenty of hide to leather antiquity. The firm vintage has evolved to this copacetic point, the expatriate meets endemic union no longer obtuse or extreme. This has settled really nicely, thanks to what was and lingers as solid acidity and once grippy tannin. Life from energy persists and though I would imagine there will be some who think it common or non-descript, there can be no denying the solid winemaking and balance struck. The older oak barrels have done their job, even if the fruit was a bit on the riper side of the rows. Drink 2015-2018.  Tasted December 2015  @Caiarossa  @3050imports

Good to go!

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WineAlign: Michael Godel

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