This seems a little premature given the meager content on my site, but it’s the end of the year and, like a lot of people, I’ve been reflecting on what’s happened in 2018. I thought I might do a “Best of” list, but wine is such a personal thing and my goal here isn’t really to tell people what they should be drinking, as much as encouraging them to learn and try new things.
So, in the spirit of that, here are my 5 most Memorable Wines of 2018. These are the wines that surprised me, taught me something, or made me look at wine in new ways. These may not be the best wines I tried this year or even the ones I enjoyed the most, but they are the wines that will inform my future decisions and shape who I am as a wine drinker.
5. Dragon’s Hollow Unoaked Chardonnay 2005
China is not a place most westerners associate with wine, but maybe it should be. The oldest evidence of grape wine that has so far been discovered was in China. Also, they are one of the largest importers and producers of wine. With all this buzz surrounding China, I was eager to find and try a bottle of Chinese wine.
My first exposure was bad. I picked it up at a shop in Chicago’s Chinatown. The wine had started a secondary fermentation and tasted like cooking Sherry. I was disheartened.
I began asking friends in the industry if they had tired any or had recommendations. Their suggestions generally amounted to, “Don’t drink Chinese wine.”
Then, one day, while browsing a wine shop in the loop I discovered a bottle of 13 year old Chinese Chardonnay. I was skeptical, but I talked to the store clerk and he made me an attractive offer, clearly just wanting to get the bottle out of his store, and I took it.
I sat on the bottle for weeks before opening it, but once I did, I was impressed. More importantly, after a year of searching, I had proof that good wine could be made in China. None of the people who discouraged me had ever tried any wine from that country, their bias was inherited, not learned.
I stuck to my convictions on this one and took a couple of risks, in the end I feel that was rewarded.
This was the only bottle of sparkling rosé I drank this year and, in retrospect, I have to ask myself, “why?” I like sparkling wine and I often encourage people to buy and drink more of it, so why I am seemingly incapable of following my own advice?
I sell this at work and every time I look at the bottle I think, “I really enjoyed that.” So, why don’t I get another bottle?
What is it about pink wines that make me retreat? Do I expect them to be inferior? Maybe it’s the opposite, and I’m holding out for some special occasion that will never arrive. I don’t know why I don’t make more time to enjoy wines in this style, whatever the reason, learn from my mistake; life is short, celebrate more: drink more sparkling rosé.
3. Aurelia Visinescu Nomad Fetească Neagră 2014
I can’t blame somebody else for this one; I’m the one who decided Fetească Neagră was bad after trying just a couple of bottles. It’s the danger of presuming to have knowledge on a subject, you form biases based on that presumed knowledge. I don’t know when I would have come back to this grape if it wasn’t for the website, I wanted to add some Romanian wine to my World Map and Cardinal Wine and Spirits was having a sale on the Nomad labels.
This was the first time I had a chance to try Fetească Neagră with oak and it was drastically superior to what I encountered in the past. The moral of the story is: don’t be so afraid of past experiences that you miss an opportunity to learn something new.
2. Monte Xanic Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2015
I cannot tell you how often Mexico has been cited to me as a place incapable of producing good wine. It’s one of those axioms I have been dying to dispel, unfortunately, finding Mexican wine is hard.
I had some moderate luck looking at Mexican restaurants that serve brunch, because if you serve brunch you probably serve wine and if you’re going to be a Mexican restaurant that serves wine, it might as well be Mexican wine.
Monte Xanic is a label I was directed toward by my brother, who had the opportunity to visit the winery and from all accounts had a great experience. After searching for a couple of months I managed to find a bottle at Binny’s. I really didn’t have any expectations beyond wanting to try something new, but this was, hands down, the best Cab/Merlot blend I tried this year.
Like I said about Dragon’s Hollow, don’t let other people’s bias inform your decisions.
1. Hofgut Falkenstein Krettnacher Euchariusberg Kabinett Riesling 2016
Before I bought this bottle of wine, I might have been so bold as to tell you I know something about Riesling. I don’t, not really. This is a very terroir driven wine, produced by a family of winemakers, the Webers, who invest a lot of themselves into what they do.
The small, calculated, decisions they make have a huge impact on the final product and a bottle produced from grapes in one parcel of land can differ significantly from a bottle using grapes from another. It’s for this reason that many wineries blend their wines together before bottling, to create a homogeneous final product. The Webers seem to embrace these nuanced differences, creating traditional wines that defy the conventional wisdom of branding and marketing to create something beautiful and unique.
Hofgut Falkenstein is the winery that every large scale producer tries to pretend they are; if wine can be art, the Webers are artists.