2025 Chateau Fontareche Tradition Rose, $13.78
Affordable French Blend of Picpoul Noir, Syrah, and Grenache

2025 Muga Rose $14.85
The GOAT of Rose.  Muga won every blind Rose tasting that we ever did.

2025 Margerum Riviera Rose $19.60 OR $9 for 12 oz Can
We love this Santa Barbara Rose of Grenache, but we REALLY love that it also comes in 12 oz cans, $9 for (just under) half a bottle. Throw it in a cooler for a summer baseball game or take it to the beach. Big enough to share, small enough to not.

If you haven’t met, we would like to introduce you to Malbec from Argentina. And if you haven’t been introduced, this is the perfect starter Malbec. Low price, 13% alcohol, medium body, good fruit, and just enough tannins to let the wine linger in your mouth. The perfect summer red for grilling anything. Plus, 90 Pts from James Suckling – you have good taste.

It’s a $13 Pinot Noir, from France.

Ippolito is the winery. Liber Pater is Latin for Baccus, the God of Wine. Ciro is the appellation. The wine is made of 100% Gaglioppo, a grape that has been used for hundreds of years before my Grandmother was born in this area. Even when we started the Club is 2015, it was hard to find Calabrian wines that weren’t too big, heavy, and alcoholic. This is a big winter red but is a reasonable 14% alcohol. It has a clean finish that makes you want to take another sip, even at the end of the bottle. You may need two.

Upside: We’re embracing this new trend of high quality, affordable, and drinkable wines that come in one liter bottles. Downside: Your bedtime just got later. If you’ve had a chance to sip with us, you know that we are all about value. This wine brings the quality of a unique blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Vermentino…. and adds the quantity. In Italian, we say “un altro frate viene…” and this wine gives you a little wiggle room to invite another guest. For you non-Sauv fans, not to worry, even Sarah and Club member Meredith love it.

Never tried Pecorino (the grape, not the cheese?) Well here is a no-brainer introduction to one of our favorite Italian Grapes.

We bought this wine for the February Delivery and then realized that we had too many Low Road Whites so we decided to save it until May.  Buuut, as it goes, we started drinking it. If it looks familiar, you must be a white wine regular who bought wines in between shipments. Spoiler – everybody loves it. Like most Portuguese whites, it is a blend of many (seven) grapes resulting in a balanced versatile wine. Since we waited, the newer vintage has been released but we prefer this one. Don’t put it away, put it directly in the fridge and enjoy it soon.

Portuguese blends go with everything.  This one is a “field blend.” Grapes include Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, and Tinta Roriz picked and put into “lagares” together.  Lagares are traditional open vats made of stone or stainless steel used for stomping grapes manually. This one gets 90 points from Decanter.

Garrafeira means “cellared wine,” meaning that its held in the bottle longer before release. Most people don’t have a true wine cellar, but if you do, I hope you don’t have many $18 bottles from 2011. They are probably vinegar by now, but this is the exception. Strong, balanced, with significant tannins, and made with the same grapes that go into port. And 2011 was an amazing vintage for port. What do you get when you have a 14-year old wine, from a great vintage, made in a place that is famous for aging wine and selling affordable, high quality reds? Lezgo.

Jorge Ordonez was the first person to import Albarino into the U.S. His company represents many of the Spanish wineries that we have used over the years, including La Caña. They make delicious, affordable, typical Spanish wines. We have used their oaked, High Road Albarino in the past. This one is affordable, unoaked, and earned 91-95 points. Obvio!

Il Conte Villa Pradone is the winery, the town is Monteprandone, Marche. Monteprandone is a picturesque Italian towns located on the highest hill in an area surrounded by vines, three miles from the Adriatic Sea. Rosso Piceno is their name for a local blend of Sangiovese and Montepulciano. In 2019, we visited a wine cooperative on Valle Cecchina where you could fill any jug with excellent, local Rosso Piceno for about $2 per liter. Locals were showing up with anything from glass jugs to cheap water bottles to get their fill on. We enjoyed hillside, you enjoy wherever you’d like.

The most popular High Road white wine from the TASTE! Fundraiser. This is a true family business, Christophe runs the winery with his wife and six kids (five too many!)  The wine is 100% Viognier. It is very floral as Viognier should be, but 70% of it is oaked, giving it more elegance and body. Suitable for a winter lunch or dinner. Or heck, leftovers even.

Because of the stigma of being a sweet wine, we typically don’t use much Riesling in the wine Club. But not all Rieslings are sweet. In this one, you’ll get notes of stone fruit and apricots, but the wine is dry and the acidity is intense (as it should be.)  That makes it great with Asian Food, seafood, fatty meats, and big cheeses. It also makes it ageable but why?  91-93 points.

Most of the time when we give you Malbec from Cahors (France) or Mendoza (Argentina) it is a big, juicy, tannic, ageable wine with a backdrop of earthiness that you get from those regions. This one is more approachable. Still from Cahors, the birthplace of Malbec, this third-generation winemaker has a more modern approach and produces a polished, wintery red that California wine drinkers will love. 93 Points from Wine Enthusiast 

We’ve had wine from probably the most famous winery in Argentina, Cantena. This wine is a separate project from Ernesto Cantena, the oldest son and fourth generation winemaker from the Cantena family. This single-vineyard, high-elevation Cabernet s howcases what happens when you blend old world and new world traditions and techniques. If you stay away from big Cabs when the summer comes, try this 13.5% “summer” cab. It is interesting and the flavor is long, without being overpowering.

The last time we used this wine was the 2017 vintage.  Here is what we said then….

Imagine a Chardonnay Style scale of 1-10 with California butter bombs (think Rombauer) as the 10 and Chablis (think drinking a glass of rocks) as the 1. We are going to place this wine at 3. It has more of a medium body to go along with the acidity (pucker) and flinty-ness that you get from Chablis. It is an impressive white perfect for a high end lunch or a dinner outside.

Repeat wine alert, last vintage was 2018.  Here’s what we said then and still true…

Chenin Blanc in California was mostly grown to add some acidity to cheap jug wines. It was like the squeeze of citrus that makes a well drink palatable. But more and more respected wineries are treating the grape with the same respect (lower grape yields, smart winemaking) that use to be reserved for the blue chip grapes like Chardonnay. Foxen is an extremely well-respected producer (worth a trip to the tasting room as well). This Chenin Blanc comes from a single vineyard of Old Vines planted in the 1960s and boasts the acidity you expect from Chenin, with the elegance and body that you get from California. 91-94 points

If you’ve been with the Club for a while, you know we love when Paul Hobbs partners with foreign wineries and gets the most out of their potential. Hobbs works with aging, barrels, and blending to get the best vintage of every varietal. Natural wine drinkers (cough) might call him a cheater, but we call him a Winemaker. Yes, we know. It’s a 2021, but it’s the current release and Wine Spectator said you can drink it until 2029. Awarding it 91 points and opined “There's a lush quality to this white's flavors of golden apple, creamed almond and vanilla, yet a spine of vivid acidity and a tangy streak of salinity trim the rich profile effortlessly. Fresh and well-balanced on the palate, with aromatic broom, ground ginger and Meyer lemon peel notes lingering on the finish. Drink now through 2029." Or as we would’ve put it, “That’s so Hobbs!”

We know that France identifies their wines by region rather than varietal (For example, Sancerre=Sauvignon Blanc).  This Sancerre Rouge is Pinot Noir. English and American marketers have influenced many wineries in France to start identifying their wine by grape to help with the confusion. “Pinot Noir” is written on the label, but it isn’t as prominently displayed as the marketers would like.  Let’s just say Sarah couldn’t find it on the label, even with her readers. The wine, like the label, is a good blend of French tradition with some American influence. It is a bright, well-rounded, summer Pinot with a little bit of oiliness.

Vignoble Edmond Latour is the estate. Gigondas is the region in Southern France that neighbors Chateauneuf du Pape and Vacqueyras. The area produces the most classic GSM (Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre) blends in the world. Let it breathe and enjoy it with some red meat, something heavy, or by itself.

Collio DOC is located in Friuli, on the border of Italy and Slovenia. We have used plenty of white wines from that region, but this may be our first red. In Collio, they generally grow French Varietals and in the summer we prefer Cab Franc to Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot. It has the seriousness, earth, and tobacco of a French wine, but with the medium tannins that you will appreciate in the summer. It’s tastes exactly what it is, a French Grape in Italian soil.

We weren’t looking for a Chianti Classico, aged in stainless steel and concrete, made by a British born, Irish, one-eyed (The Tuscans call him Il Guercio), winemaker who studied/worked in Germany and partnered with an Australian. I mean, who is? Fortunately for Sean O'Callaghan, his wines delicious and well respected by locals and critics. This isn’t the Chianti Classico in the fiasco (basket bottle). This is a serious, 100% Sangiovese Chianti Classico that isn’t hiding behind oak. This wine has received Tre Bicchieri in the past and this vintage is rated 92-94 points from various raters. 

Traditionally we would recommend a Gamay or Pinot Noir for your Thanksgiving table, so this year we are bringing you both. There is a region in Burgundy called Passetoutgrains where they blend the two grapes, BUT this one is from California. The High Country Red is a blend of almost equal amounts of the two varietals and is from the Sonoma Coast. America!

SRWC loves Rioja and this one is not much of a “find.” R. Lopez de Heredia was one of the first three Rioja Houses and has been around for 150 years. Their signature wine is the Vina Tondonia and we tasted that side-by-side with another one of their vineyards, Vina Bosconia. This was our preference. Surprise! Big wine, 93-96 points, this is the current vintage. So, don’t be afraid of the age. If 2007 was a big year for you, this is the kind of wine you can buy now and drink forever to celebrate anniversaries or birthdays.

Meet this classic Pinot Noir from the premier Pinot Noir region in the world made by a family that has been doing it here since the 1800s. Critics of Burgundy will say that it is overpriced and overrated. But they also say it’s delicious.

An allocated wine is one that is in high demand, with limited quantity that the winery or importer dolls out sparingly, usually to reward loyalty. And boom! We got some. Alain Graillot is the maker, who over the past 30 years has been consistently lauded for high-quality Syrah from the region. 91-93 points. Our allocation is only 12 bottles for (and we already drank one.)