Latest news with #Trimbach
Globe and Mail
11-06-2025
- Globe and Mail
Eight wines to enjoy in June, from $13-$100
It's time to freshen up my wine selections to enjoy at home. Having a good supply of vibrant but gently flavoured whites and rosés on hand to grab and go is the first order of business, rounded out by a mix of other bottles – timeless classics and rising stars – to enjoy throughout the summer. Canadian winemakers feature heavily in my seasonal drinking lineup, but this week's recommendations focus on international selections that are more widely available. More flag-waving favourites will appear soon. Value for money is another important mindset – this season more than most. The quality-for-money ratio doesn't just apply to top-notch bargain bottles such as Codorniu Brut Cava or the Beachhouse Sauvignon. It also factors into the selection of more expensive offerings, such as the Trimbach Réserve Pinot Gris and red blends from BLK + BLU and Oreno. You don't have to spend $100 to secure a great bottle of wine, but, for anyone willing, this high-quality, complex wine with aging potential from a family estate in Tuscany is worth the splurge. BLK + BLU Blend No. 4 Shiraz Cabernet 2023 (Australia), $39.99 Rating: 90 Produced by Australia's Aberdeen Wine Company, which also produces the Angus the Bull label, this cabernet sauvignon and shiraz blend from vineyards in Heathcote is designed to pair with richer, grilled meats. Made in a medium-bodied and balanced style, this offers a complex mix of berry and cherry flavours with spice, mint and American oak-derived coconut notes. This has 14.5 per cent ABV and 1 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2028. Available at the above price in Manitoba, $36.99 in New Brunswick. Codorniu Clasico Brut (Spain), $16.99 Rating: 88 One of the classic names in Cava, Codorniu is an intense and freshly focused sparkling wine. The bubbles are persistent and fine, while the lemony citrus flavour is rounded out by floral and chalky notes that carry through to a refreshing finish. It's enjoyable on its own and an affordable base for mimosas, bellinis or, in place of prosecco, for a drier Aperol spritz. This has 11.5 per cent ABV and 4 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2027. Available at the above price in Ontario and Manitoba, $17.99 in British Columbia, various prices in Alberta, $17.35 in Quebec, $18.59 in Prince Edward Island. Domaine Lafage Miraflors Rosé 2024 (France), $19.95 Rating: 90 A blend of grenache gris, grenache noir and mourvèdre from Roussillon in the south of France, Miraflors Rosé continually offers a pretty and peachy version of rosé that's made for mass appeal. It's made in a dry style with an abundance of fruit flavours, ranging from strawberries to limes to white peach, that may inspire some to trot out the trite expression that it's like 'summer in a glass.' The sumptuous taste calls to mind a taste of the Mediterranean as part of a rosé that's substantial enough to serve year-round. This has 12.5 per cent ABV and 3 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2026. Available at the above price in Ontario ($18.95 until June 22), $23.75 in Nova Scotia, $21.99 in Prince Edward Island. Ferzo Abruzzo Pecorino Superiore 2022 (Italy), $17.95 Rating: 89 This expressive and dry white wine is made by Ferzo, one of the brands operated by Abruzzo's largest winery, Citra. Made with the pecorino grape, it offers an enticing mix of floral, tropical, citrus, herbal and saline notes that are refreshing and easy to appreciate. This has 13 per cent ABV and 4 g/litre r.s. Drink now. Available in Ontario. Oreno 2022 (Italy), $99.95 Rating: 94 Tenuta Sette Ponti's flagship wine, Oreno, introduces cabernet franc into its blend for the first time in 2022. The vintage is comprised of 45 per cent merlot, 40 per cent cabernet sauvignon, 10 per cent cabernet franc and 5 per cent petit verdot from the family's certified-organic estate vineyards in Tuscany. The resulting style is richly concentrated with a core of dark fruit accented by savoury oak-derived flavours. The supple texture is supported by a polished structure, with a long vibrant finish. This has 14.5 per cent ABV and 2 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2035. Available at the above price in Ontario, $115.99 in British Columbia, various prices in Alberta. Umani Ronchi Vellodoro Pecorino 2024 (Italy), $17.95 Rating: 89 The family-owned Umani Ronchi winery in Abruzzo has been working to revive the fortunes of the pecorino grape variety since 2005. The grape is widely cultivated in Abruzzo, where it produces stylish, dry white wines with a crisp and refreshing character that's tailor-made to serve with seafood and fish dishes. The focused flavour suggests a mix of citrus and apple with nutty and saline notes that are simple and satisfying. This has 12.5 per cent ABV and 5 g/litre r.s. Drink now. Available at the above price in Ontario and Quebec (2023 vintage), various prices in Alberta, $21 in New Brunswick, $20.79 in Nova Scotia. The Beachhouse Sauvignon Blanc 2024 (South Africa), $12.95 Rating: 87 A slight addition of 15 per cent semillon contributes weight and texture to this appealing South African sauvignon blanc. The focus is squarely on the grape variety's riper tropical personality, offering a mix of passion fruit and pineapple with some citrusy freshness and a tease of herbal notes. It's a great style and price for summer entertaining. This has 12.5 per cent ABV and 3 g/litre r.s. Drink now. Available at the above price in Ontario, $13.99 in British Columbia, various prices in Alberta, $14.99 in Manitoba, $15.99 in New Brunswick, $13.85 in Nova Scotia, 15.59 in Prince Edward Island, $17.99 in Newfoundland. Trimbach Réserve Pinot Gris 2018 (France), $37.95 Rating: 92 Family-owned Trimbach, which has been producing wine in Alsace since 1626, bottles its wines with a classic, understated label that speaks to the winery's timeless appeal. The Réserve Pinot Gris is produced with a mix of estate-grown and purchased grapes, which contribute to the complex mix of pear and peach fruit flavours with honey, spicy and nutty notes. Released as a seven-year-old wine, this is a delicious white that displays the rich and rewarding side of pinot gris. This has 13.5 per cent ABV and 8 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2028. Available at the above price in Ontario, $32 in Quebec.
New Statesman
22-05-2025
- New Statesman
Alsace's wines defy its turbulent history
The taste of wine is the taste of fermented grape juice: diverse, distracting, shockingly beautiful. And there's more. Wine's flavours, famously, can convey origin with great precision, though the mechanisms at play resist easy definition. Behind that, underwriting both our understanding of wine regions and the ability of those working in them to prevail on the market, lies history. History is wine's forgotten ingredient. Historical trauma may control commercial cycles (and with them the destiny of wines) centuries after an event. Alsace is the proof. Alsace's fermented grape juice offers, in my opinion, France's finest value white wine. Our home staple is Alsace Sylvaner, produced by the Wolfberger cooperative: sappy, vinous, textured, affable with food, as refreshing as it is satisfying. It outclasses brittle Sauvignon Blanc and gestural Chardonnay from all other sources at the same modest price. Alsace's greatest hillside vineyards will, within a century, qualitatively rival the Premier and Grand Cru white wines of Bourgogne. Alsace should be Burgundy writ large. The region's leading growers include some of French wine's deepest and most daring thinkers (notably Olivier Humbrecht MW of Zind-Humbrecht and Jean-Michel Deiss of Marcel Deiss), as well as its most fastidious craftsmen (such as Jean Boxler of Albert Boxler and the Faller family of Weinbach). Its two great merchant houses (Trimbach and Hugel) stand on the verge of exciting quality transformations – thanks to a new generation now prepared to embrace great single-site viticulture for its own estate wines. Alsace is almost ready to outgrow its history. It had a slow start in Roman times (the Rhine, this far upriver, was less navigable for freight than at Koblenz and Köln). In the Middle Ages, though, Alsace came to rival Bordeaux: by now this was the Rhine's most significant vineyard zone, supplying Germany and England from Strasbourg, and Switzerland from Colmar. Then came catastrophe. The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) was chaotic and savage. This conflict killed perhaps 20 per cent of Europe's population, but a far higher percentage of Alsaciens. Marauding, half-starved bands of mercenaries roamed unchecked, firing villages and destroying vines and crops; corpses swung from trees. These decades brought ruin. They also left a legacy of religious and political conflict that was to endure for 300 years in this much-contested zone. Imagine being born in Colmar in 1869. You never once leave the town; you die, 75 years later, in your natal bed. Yet you'd have changed nationality five times: French, German, French again, Nazi German and finally French. These are hardly the conditions under which a fine-wine culture can flourish. The replanting of Alsace's vineyards after phylloxera (under the German empire) was grimly industrial – to protect the long-standing, high-quality viticulture of the Rheingau and the Mosel downriver. The region flaunted 30,000 hectares in 1828; by 1948, just 9,500 hectares remained. Its quality potential had been utterly squandered, enjoying no legal protection. Even the decree for the Alsace AOC, first ordained in 1945, languished in a legal wilderness until final adoption in 1962. The Alsace we know today began to take form with the elevation of the Schlossberg vineyard to Grand Cru status in 1975. Fifty years, but just 50 turns: winemakers only get just one chance a year to perform. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Nothing is yet perfect, but improvements are accelerating. Dry wines are more common than they were and should now say 'Sec' on the label. The market is winnowing inadequate Grands Crus from the great historic sites that merit this status; growers are identifying their own parcellaires (single vineyards) within the overly large Grand Cru zones, and lieu-dit (unclassified named vineyards with a historical tradition) can be identified on labels, too. Riesling is better than it's ever been; Gewürztraminer still promises a gorgeously sensual encounter; fine blends are on the way back. Alsace's potential is, once again, what it was… in Shakespeare's day. [See also: Why George Osborne still runs Britain] Related This article appears in the 21 May 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Britain's Child Poverty Epidemic
Irish Times
17-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Riesling, muscadet, sherry: Time to give these unloved wines a second chance
This week some great unloved wines . They include once popular regions, countries and grape varieties that have fallen out of favour for a variety of reasons. Often it happens when the producers of a popular region meet increased demand with cheaper and inferior versions of the real thing. Not surprisingly sales drop and it can be difficult to rebuild a name. Muscadet, sherry, and German wine arguably fall into this category. Other wines have managed to seduce us back. Austria, once shunned by Irish wine drinkers following a scandal in the 1980s, is now back on our shelves, where it is joined by an ever-growing array of fantastic Beaujolais. Muscadet has always puzzled me. It is generally light, fresh and fruity, perfect for all those albariño and sauvignon blanc drinkers. The multiples offer decent inexpensive versions, and some of the independents have a few seriously good wines that offer great value. At one stage, Alsace was one of our go-to wine regions. Names such as Trimbach, Hugel and Schlumberger appeared in every restaurant wine list and wine shop. As with Muscadet, the style is generally very appealing; fresh, dry white wines without any oak influence. READ MORE Riesling in general, and German riesling in particular, is one of the world's great wines. Wines labelled Trocken are dry, those labelled Kabinett deliciously delicate, low alcohol and off-dry – perfect for sipping over the summer months. [ Two German wines that are a little bit more expensive, but certainly worth it Opens in new window ] I have come to accept that there will never be a real sherry revolution. It will remain an object of adoration to a small group of aficionados (I include myself) who are aware how great these wines are and what value they offer. Muscadet de Sèvre & Maine Sur Lie, Château de l'Auberdière 2023 Muscadet de Sèvre & Maine Sur Lie, Château de l'Auberdière 2023 12%, €9.20, €11.50 Light and fresh with mouth-watering orchard fruits, lemon zest and a lip-smacking dry finish. This would be perfect with mussels, oysters and other seafood. From Aldi Kuentz-Bas Mosaïk Riesling 2022 Kuentz-Bas Mosaïk Riesling 2022 12.5%, €21.95 An excellent racy refreshing dry riesling with vibrant citrus and minerals. Perfect with chicken, pork and fish dishes as well as summery salads. From O'Briens Wagner Stempel Riesling Trocken 2023 Wagner Stempel Riesling Trocken 2023 12%, €23 Floral, with succulent elegant ripe peach fruits, a touch of spice and a dry finish. This would go nicely with Asian seafood and chicken dishes. From BaRossa, D4; Baggot Street Wines; Martins, D3; Green Man, D6; Donnybrook Fair; Lilith, D7; Mortons, D6 Lustau Puerto Fino Sherry Lustau Puerto Fino Sherry 15%, €13-€14 per half-bottle Delightfully racy, tangy green apples, with almonds, green olives and a lovely saline note. It finishes dry and long. Heavenly with almonds, Iberico ham and fish tapas. From Mitchells, Glasthule, Hatch Street and Avoca stores; Prim's, Kinsale; Whelehan's, Loughlinstown; The Vintry, D6; Ardkeen, Waterford; Redmonds, D6; The Wine Centre, Kilkenny; Barnhill Stores, Dalkey; Bradleys, Cork
