It’s Syrah season at last. As temperatures drop and the last vestiges of Fall fade into Winter, there’s nothing better than a beautiful glass of one of the most unique red grapes on the planet. A grape that fits like a glove with all the seasonal fare you can expect to be on your dining room tables for the holidays. The smoky, savory, wonderfully spiced fruits of Syrah are begging to be enjoyed with your most festive dishes.

Today we have one of Syrah and the Northern Rhone’s most prestigious producers on special pricing for our Vinopolis loyal. Delas Frères has been making wine in the Rhone for generations and its portfolio includes bottlings from sub-appellations all across the North. With over 75 hectares of vineyard at its disposal (including more than 20 on Hermitage Hill itself), Delas is able to craft world class wines from top quality fruit year-in and year-out.

 

Some producers rarely need introductions, and this is one of them. Bernard Baudry has been producing the highest quality Chinon on the market vintage to vintage for many years now. The wines are wonderfully textured, complex, and a true homage to the varietal character of cabernet franc and the terroir of Chinon. At Vinopolis we regularly have each new vintage release on offer when we receive it, and the wines sell extremely fast to a dedicated set of fans.

Recently we were able to acquire a series of back-vintage Baudry bottlings of the esteemed Croix Boisée bottling. This wine is produced from Baudry’s “Grand Cru” vineyards, two hectares exposed in the perfect middle of a south facing slope on clay and limestone.

    


Do you drink Brunello?

You should.

If you haven’t noticed, Italy is consistently producing some of the best vintages and wines the market has ever witnessed in recent years. The trend extends across the entire country, from the racy and mineral driven reds and whites of volcanic Sicily to the perfumed and haunting wines of Piedmont. The entire nation has fully emerged from the slumber of rustic winemaking methods and now the pursuit of excellence is all-encompassing.

Perhaps no single region has felt this rebirth as much as Brunello di Montalcino. Back in the late 20th century there were only a handful of producers that were catching global attention and occupying spots on some of the finest wine lists in the world.

There’s no greater pleasure for a wine shop than to see beloved winemakers and estates flourish with success and improve their craft vintage after vintage. As each new release of a vintner’s wines hit our shelves, we have the privileged opportunity to be the curators of another memorable wine experience for our customers and the translator of that vintner’s vision.

 

This is the shop’s absolute favorite Beaujolais producer. Hard stop. A few years ago Dubois’s  wines completely changed our perspective on the trajectory that the region was headed in and the nuance that could be expressed through gamay. Wine nerds en masse have been heralding the ‘Burgundian’ advance of Beujolais for a while now, and this has been spurred on by the upward spiral of prices for pinot noir coming out of the Cote d’Or. However, gamay actually achieving the heights of pinot noir in the glass has been few and far between, with only the best winemakers coming close. The gang of 4 producers (Lapierre, Foillard, Thevenet, Breton) influenced by Jules Chauvet have garnered most of the attention in recent times, and have reinforced the ‘natural’ mantra of most new age producers.