Season 2, Episode 30: Natural Wines and Where to Find Them

On October 28, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn French varietals, French-American Hybrids, Georgian Wines, Great Plains States, Midwest, Natural Wines, Podcasts, Podcasts with Winery guest stars, Red Wines, Skin-Contact White Wines, Southwest, Sparkling Wines, Unusual wines, Vinifera Wines, White Wine, wine conceptsLeave a comment

We’ve explored a few natural wines over the course of this podcast and the associated blog, but we haven’t delved as deeply as we could have into this often-controversial topic. The fact is, Natural Wines are not something I know a great deal about, and nor do many of the podcast cohorts that I usually drink and record with. We needed an expert. Luckily, Friend of the Podcast and occasional guest Elizabeth Krecker knew just the man for the job.

Meet Timo Geis, the owner of Selection Sauvage. Selection Sauvage is a wine import company that focuses on select producers of natural wines across the world, focusing on filling the Arizona market for these vintages. Living in Sedona, Timo was a great fit for us to talk to about the topic, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the Natural Wine world helped me and Elizabeth to make sense of the topic. Timo is also a student at Yavapai College, where he’s hoping to translate his knowledge of Natural Wines to make some of Arizona’s first examples; one of which we drink in this podcast!

We hope you enjoy this thorough introduction to this topic. The wines in this podcast are coming from such varied places as New York (Channing Daughters Winery), California (Florez Wines), Nebraska, (Junto Winery), Arizona (Rune Winery, Page Springs Winery, and Cactus Cru), and the Republic of Georgia. Cheers!

Images of wines from this episode. My personal favorites, for what it was worth, were the Skeletons from Junto Winery, and the Gewurtztramminer from Channing Daughters… though all were fantastic!

Season 2, episode 29: “Can anything good come from Delaware?”

On October 5, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn American Hybrids, complex hybrid grapes, Dessert Wines, French-American Hybrids, Mid-Atlantic, Podcasts, Sweet Wines, Vinifera Crosses, White WineLeave a comment

If you’ve been following my podcast (and the associated blog) for a while, you know that I’ve come out strongly in favor of varietals that are hybrids between American and French grape strains. I admit, I started out dubious about these varietals, having listened to far too many sommeliers deride these grapes as foxy, unwholesome, and lacking in character. But over the years of doing this podcast, my views have changed. I am now a firm believer in what Ethan Joseph of Iapetus Winery calls “The Triumph of the Hybrids.”

Here before us in this episode is another example of this triumph. Aromella, first bred in 1976, has only recently emerged into the spotlight. Indeed, it is so new that my trusty Wine Grapes book by Jancis Robinson does not even mention it. It is so new to the market, in fact, that the 2017 vintage that Sophia, Peter, and myself imbibe in this episode from Harvest Ridge Winery in Marydel, Delaware, may well have come from the first ever single varietal release of this grape outside of the Finger Lakes!

In case you’re curious, Aromella is a cross between Traminette and Ravat 34, which are two other hybrid wine grapes. Traminette’s parentage includes the vinifera grape Gewurztraminer, which explains the bright floral character we noticed on this vintage in question. The title refers to Peter’s lament that nothing good comes out of Delaware, though in the end, he was convinced that this wine was an exception. Enjoy!

It turns out Peter was wrong: there is one good thing that comes from Delaware at least: this delicious bottle of dessert wine!

Season 2, Episode 29: “Rosé All Night”

On September 4, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn Bordeaux Varietals, Cabernet Franc, French varietals, Mid-Atlantic, Pacific Northwest, Podcasts, Rosé, Sparkling Wines, Vinifera WinesLeave a comment

This is an episode that I’ve lost into the ether a few times and even mentioned as lost in another episode, but somehow mysteriously re-appeared. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (or take it inside the city walls)… so the last time it emerged into my files from the depths like some sort of cryptid, I made a copy. Now that the backstory of this post is done… let’s talk about content.

We’ve talked about Rosé a few times on this podcast before, and we’ve also talked about Cabernet Franc on this podcast before… and now it’s time to look at the center of the Venn Diagram. In this episode, Megan, James, Adam, and I sip on different Rosé wines made from Cabernet Franc coming from Washington (Dama Wines), Delaware (Harvest Ridge Winery), as well as two French vintages. The French vintages we drank in this podcast to compare to our American bottles were sourced from the Chinon AOC and from the Saumur AOC; this last bottle was a brut sparkling wine. Most of these bottles were acquired by yours truly, though the Washington bottle was gifted to me by Isla Bonifield.

I hope you enjoy our exploration of Cabernet Franc Rosé. This will not be our last exploration of this grape. I am planning later this year on recording an examination of bottles from across the Mid-Atlantic region of the US which should prove to be a lot of fun. In the meantime, pull up a chair and join us at the table!

Cabernet Franc Count: 12

Season 2, Episode 27: “Fünf der Mai Riesling Extravaganza”

On August 17, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Natural Wines, Pacific Northwest, Skin-Contact White Wines, Southwest, Varietal Deep Dives, Vinifera Wines, White Wine, wine conceptsLeave a comment

In the American Southwest, celebrations around the Fifth of May are a big thing. Known as Cinco de Mayo, American pop culture seems to hold that this date is the independence day for Mexico, but this is actually a misnomer. May 5th actually celebrates the Battle of Puebla, where a Mexican army defeated a French army that was trying to install a puppet regime there. The day is not even celebrated in Mexico, often passing by unremarked. But this podcast isn’t about cultural movements and deep cultural reasons why one day is celebrated my immigrants and their white neighbors, while natives in the homeland ignore the same day (and there is a lot to deep dive on the subject, this just isn’t the place). This podcast is about wine.

And, as it turns out, Mexican food is a great pairing for wines made from Riesling. Not only that, as it turns out, Mexican food and German food form really delicious fusion cuisine. So I invited some friends over and took blatant advantage of the day to make some sauerkraut and pork tacos with Pico de Gallo brought by Nikki… and we had a lot of Riesling. Bottles came from Arizona, Italy, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Germany, from a wide variety of styles. Grab a taco and dig in while you take a listen. You’ll be glad you did.

Some of the fantastic Riesling vintages we drank while recording this episode…

Season 2, Episode 26: “A Sort-of Super-Tuscan by the Sea”

On August 1, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn California, Podcasts, Porchpounder-style wines, red blends, Red Wines, SouthwestLeave a comment

Last week, I went to visit the rocky landscape of Moab, Utah, in pursuit of the state’s oldest wineries. This is not a podcast about this experience, though the winemaker for the vintage in this episode, Evan Lewandowski, is based out of Utah, and features the state on his fantastic labels.

Ruth Lewandowski Winery, named after the Book of Ruth from the Old Testament is a natural wine label that focuses upon minimum intervention in the cellar, and Evan tends to only use sulfites at the very end of fermentation. (Coming up soon will be a whole episode where we talk Natural Wines, so stay tuned). The operating philosophy of this winery is based on a cycle of death and redemption, both in physical and spiritual realms. After all, as Evan states: “Death is, indeed, the engine of life. Nothing that is alive today could be so without something having died first. This is the nature of our universe, of our planet, of our soils, plants, and ultimately you and I.”

With this philosophy in mind, I decided to take my bottle of the 2018 Dinos to Diamonds on vacation to Maryland with me last spring. The idea was to drink this bottle with my paleontologist friend John-Paul Hodnett, hopefully, to talk about deep ideas such as extinction, ecosystem rebirth, wine and deep time, and fossilization. Instead, this wine, a blend of 60% Sangiovese and 40% Merlot, proved to be a surprisingly perfect beach wine for the Calvert Cliffs. You won’t hear much philosophy and paleontology in this podcast (if you want that instead, go check out the episode JP did in the Paleo Nerds podcast), but what you will hear is him, his wife, and me enjoying a good bottle of a vaguely Super-Tuscan wine by a beach while we are taking a break hunting for fossil9 shark teeth. Cheers!

Yes, of course, I had a toy dinosaur on hand for these photos, why do you ask?

Season 2, Episode 25: “Diamond in the Rough”

On July 11, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn complex hybrid grapes, Mid-Atlantic, Natural Wines, Podcasts, Sparkling Wines, Unusual wines, Vitus labrusca Wines, White Wine, wine conceptsLeave a comment

Diamond is a grape you might know better than you think. You may not have heard of this hybrid varietal, but there is a decent chance that you might have tasted it… but not in wine. Also known as Moore’s Diamond, this hybrid cross between Concord and Iona is, along with Niagara, one of the main grapes grown by Welch’s for use as white grape juice. If you know us in this podcast though, you know full well that we are all about trying some of the odd and unique wines made from varietals not commonly found along the beaten path.

Enter Lenn Thompson of The Cork Report. Along with the stellar blog, Lenn has a fantastic wine club focusing on some of the wines from off the beaten track, and in the February shipment came this fantastic bottle, the 2018 Diamond Petillant Naturel from Fossenvue Winery in the Finger Lakes AVA of New York. Also called the Eighteen-Forty-Eight (the year in which a famous Woman’s Suffrage Camp in Lodi, NY was created), Lenn described this wine, saying, “Even if you’re not typically a fan of ‘weird’ grapes, I think you’re going to dig it.”

We here at the Make America Grape Again Podcast are fans of ‘weird grapes,’ as well as strange wines in general (just look at our back catalogue which contains such wonders as Dandelion wines, Tomato wines, and amber wines made of La Crescent from Vermont, just to name a few), so of course, I dragged my friends kicking and screaming into drinking this bottle. It started out a little weird, and a little funky, but opened up to become something amazing and fun, and we’re glad we recorded that time to share with you all. Enjoy!

The Fossenvue Winery 2018 Diamond Petillant-Naturel was a fantastic exploration into an unfamiliar grape.

Season 2, Episode 24: “Uncle Jake’s Elderberry Wine”

On June 29, 2021June 29, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn Country Wines, Fruit Wines, Mid-Atlantic, Other Wine Styles, Podcasts, Unusual winesLeave a comment

For many of us city folk, our first introduction to Elderberry (and its alcoholic potential) was probably the infamous line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of Elderberries.” Yet, as it turns out, berries of the Sambucus genus have been used to make wine (and other alcohols: the blooms of Elderberry are used to make St. Germain.) for hundreds of years. And so it is that we return once more to West Virginia in this episode.

James, Megan, and I have never had any wines made from Elderberry, and Uncle Jake’s Elderberry Wine, made by West Virginia Fruit and Berry Company, seemed like a good beginning. Well, there’s also the fact that it was one of the first bottles of West Virginia wine I was able to find in a liquor store in neighboring Maryland! Located in Bridgeport, West Virginia, this winery began life as a fruit company, making jams and preserves, then wines, and is now beginning to make bourbon and rye whiskey as well. The owners, Bob & Becky Titchenal, pride themselves on not using high-fructose corn syrup for their jams and preserves. They also mention that their fruit wines would be a great cocktail mixer; something I wish we had thought of while drinking this bottle.

Anyway, this wine was a really fascinating experience for us, and we hope you enjoy this episode! We never did find out just who Uncle Jake was, but as long as he wasn’t like John Gault, I’m sure I would have enjoyed drinking with him. I will try to get back on my previous upload schedule in July (First and Third Mondays); I truly apologize that uploads have been so erratic. The main problem is that I haven’t been able to find the time to edit my backlog of recordings as often as I’d like, and executive function thanks to ADHD isn’t helping either…

Uncle Jake’s Elderberry Wine is the cornerstone of our second West Virginia Wine Experience. Take a listen!

Season 2, Episode 22: “Petit Manseng Deep Dive with Greg Gonnerman”

On May 2, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn French varietals, Podcasts, Podcasts with Winery guest stars, South Atlantic, Southwest, Varietal Deep Dives, Vinifera Wines, White WineLeave a comment

Petit Manseng is a grape that is not on the radar of average wine-drinkers. But, perhaps it should be. Coming originally from the Jurançon of France, Petit Manseng has begun to obtain a dedicated cult of followers scattered worldwide. Indeed, some writers such as Jancis Robinson suspect that this obscure little grape may be poised to become the next big white wine to break onto the sales market. No less a writer than the French poet Colette herself wrote of this varietal: “I was a girl when I met this prince; aroused, imperious, treacherous, as all great seducers are,” and with that quote in mind, it is perhaps no wonder that such wines, most of which are dessert wines, were advertised in their homeland with posters that read “Manseng means Jurançon, which means Sex.”

Today, Petit Manseng has now found homes as far afield from its homeland as Virginia, Arizona, Ohio, California, and Uruguay. As mentioned in the podcast, it is also on the shortlist of varietals to begin a wine industry in the Kingdom of Bhutan, also. The reason? The small, widely-spaced clusters make this grape more resistant to rot in humid, wet climates. Indeed, this is the same reason why Greg Gonnerman, our guest in this episode, loves this grape in his vineyard, located in the Willcox AVA. In season 2, Episode 22, Greg and I dive deep into Petit Manseng, drinking two vintages of the Greg’s from Callaghan Vineyards (made from grapes he grows), as well as a bottle from Granite Heights Winery, located in Warrenton, VA. We were tragically unable to find any French vintages to compare our stateside examples to, but since we recorded this episode near the start of Lent, that’s probably a good thing…

Drinking some Petit Manseng in a winter storm is a nice way to dream of summertime.

Season 2, Episode 20: “The Full Monte(pulciano)”

On April 13, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn Italian varietals, Podcasts, Red Wines, Southwest, Varietal Deep Dives, Vinifera Wines, wine conceptsLeave a comment

Someday, I will again be on top of upload schedules! It is not this day, however. But, this day I have another varietal deep dive for you! This day, we drink Montepulciano! More specifically, Elizabeth Krecker, who you may remember from several previous episodes, and I drink three bottles of this particularly fascinating grape. Two of the bottles are from local vineyards in Arizona, while the third bottle is from Abruzzo, Italy.

For those who are not familiar, Montepulciano is a red varietal from the region of Abruzzo, Italy, as well as nearby regions such as Molise, Marche, Lazio, and Puglia. It is completely different from, and should not be confused with, the very different wine from Northern Italy, called Vino Nobile di Montepulciano; that wine is made from a clone of Sangiovese. But, this association with Sangiovese is not necessarily unwarranted, as genetic evidence indicates there is a genetic relationship between the two grape varietals.

While Montepulciano is the second most planted grape in Italy after Sangiovese, here in the United States it is rather uncommon. Plantings in the US exist are focused around the American Southwest, being found in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona. Indeed, a 2012 Montepulciano from Black Mesa Winery in New Mexico won the prestigious Jefferson Cup. However, I have been unable to find any information on how much acreage of Montepulciano has been planted in the United States. As for the two Arizona bottles in this episode, they come from two different AVAs in Arizona: the Sonoita AVA and the Willcox AVA. Enjoy!

Season 2, Episode 20: “Bar-Bar-Barbera”

On March 16, 2021 By makeamericagrapeagainpodcastIn Podcasts with Winery guest stars, Red Wines, Southwest, Varietal Deep Dives, Vinifera Wines, wine conceptsLeave a comment

I’m sorry for not uploading this sooner; time has, once again, made a mockery of me. But for this episode, we have another deep dive into another fantastic Italian varietal; Barbera. While I didn’t necessarily intend for the Nebbiolo episode to be the episode immediately prior to this one, it is nice synchronicity as both grapes originate from the same region of Italy: Piedmont. However, while wines made from Nebbiolo are generally meant to slumber both in barrel and bottle for long periods of time, wines made from Barbera tend to be imbibed much younger. It also is the third most abundantly planted grape within Italy, known for high yields and for producing a deep-colored, full-bodied red wine with high acidity and lower tannins.

This episode marks the return of Elizabeth Krecker, Sommelier and now one of the owners of the newest winery that is open for tastings in the Sonoita AVA, Twisted Union Wine Company. I haven’t visted them yet, but I look forward to it immensely! In this episode, we drink a 2014 Barbera from Pahrump Valley Winery’s Nevada Ridge label alongside a 2017 Barbera D’Alba from G. D. Vajra, and the 2013 Le Cortigane Oneste from Caduceus Cellars, a 50-50 blend of Barbera and Merlot sourced from the Mimbres Valley AVA in Southern New Mexico. Along the way, we talk about how Sommeliers taste wine, and the history of Barbera. Hope you enjoy the ride!

Also, as an exciting announcement, I’m working on doing a crossover episode or two with Iso and Lindsay of the fantastic ENDLESS, NAMELESS podcast. Theirs is a fascinating podcast; a divorced couple drinks through their wine stash (largely AZ vintages) and reminisce about their shared past, both the good times and the bad ones. I hope to drink with them a bottle of wine I’ve been saving through multiple relationships, hoping to use as an engagement bottle, but that opportunity has never come to pass. Anyway, go check them out and give them some love!