Wine & Spirits - Fall 2023 - 20

Wine & Spirits
CALIFORNIA: SONOMA COUNTY
Aeris
The origins of Aeris begAn
with a love of Barolo and a question
bandied about in the early
2010s in the Santa Cruz Mountains
cellars of Rhys Vineyards,
namely: Why don't Italian varieties
do better in California? Rhys's
owner, Kevin Harvey, winemaker
Jeff Brinkman and vineyard
manager Javier Tapia began to
research the topic and found that
Piedmont's diurnal shifts, compared
with coastal California,
are relatively modest, allowing
a high-acid grape like nebbiolo
to expel more of its acidity as it
ripens. Soon after, Harvey took
interest in carricante, the citrusy
Etna white, and its red counterpart,
nerello mascalese, and
since the vines were not available
here in the US, he decided
to import them. They worked
with Salvo Foti from Mount Etna
and Gianpiero Romana from
Piedmont to plant nebbiolo, barbera,
zinfandel, carricante and
nerello mascalese at their Centennial
Mountain Vineyard, a
hilltop site west of the Rockpile
AVA and Lake Sonoma. Editor
Joshua Greene was fascinated by
their 2019 Bricco Rosso, a blend
of carignane and zinfandel, nebbiolo
and nerello mascalese. And
he found the team's zinfandel
to be bold and juicy, spiced with
cedar and clove, " less about cherries
than about cherry-blossom
finesse... " making it sound a bit
like nebbiolo after all. -P.J.C.
NEW YORK: FINGER LAKES
Hillick &
Hobbs
hilliCk & hobbs is PAul hobbs's
homage to his parents, Joan
Hillick and Edward Hobbs,
who raised ten children in Niagara
County, not far from Lake
Ontario, on a farm that included
orchards and hybrid grapes. Paul
helped to plant those grapes and,
when he was of age, his father
urged him to study winemaking.
This project brings his international
consulting work closer to
20
WINE & SPIR IT S
37TH ANNUAL BUYING GUIDE
clone (548) in the Tualatin Hills
prone to millerandage (hens and
chicks)-in 2019, he called one
of them " Noburg, Oregon, " and
left it outside in a barrel that
wasn't topped off, with the intent
to oxidize the juice. Instead, the
cold winter forced the wine into
a reductive state. This portion,
blended with another barrel of
more typical élevage, made for
one of the oddest, most compelling
white wines we tasted this
year, fiercely reductive and yet
full of lively fruit. -P.J.C.
KElSEY
ITÄMERI
lYNNE FaHEY aT
HIllICK & HOBBS
home. Originally in a partnership
with Johannes and Barbara
Selbach, they developed a parcel
on the southeast shore of Lake
Seneca and planted 25 acres in
2014 on a rocky slope, employing
a vertical trellis similar to those
of Mosel vineyards. Hobbs's
boots-on-the-ground winemaker
is Lynne Fahy (her riesling cred
includes a stage at Trisaetum
Winery in Oregon, and Finger
Lakes winemaking at Keuka
Spring, then Anthony Road).
Their latest release is a lean riesling,
exotic and concentrated in
its flavors, especially for the Finger
Lakes. -P.J.C.
OREGON
Golden
JEFF VEJR OF GOlDEN ClUSTER
F all 2023
Cluster
Jeff VeJr mAkes The wines AT
Golden Cluster, a collection of
brands featuring off-the-beatenpath
vineyards and varieties,
whether that's saperavi and
sagrantino from small plots in
the Columbia Gorge, or 55-yearold
plantings of semillon put to
ground by Charles Coury, Oregon's
modern vine pioneer. He
also makes chardonnays from
an old planting of an obscure
WASHINGTON: WALLA WALLA
Itä
kelsey Albro iTämeri goT A
degree from Georgetown's
School of Foreign Service before
moving to Los Angeles to work in
TV and film, then on to bartending
and bar managing. In 2017
she enrolled in oenology school
in Walla Walla, working stages
at The Walls and Balboa Winery,
and, later, with Domaine Jean
Charton in Puligny-Montrachet.
She founded Itä in 2019, focusing
on vineyards near or in the
foothills of the Blue Mountains.
She draws most from Breezy
Slope, where she purchases some
of the only pinot noir found in
the Walla Walla Valley, and the
iconic Les Collines, where she
gets semillon, merlot, zinfandel
and syrah. Across the board, her
wines are lean, crunchy, low alcohol
jewels, bristling with energy
and nerve. -P.J.C. l
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Fall 2023
