Wine Club

SANTA JULIA 2025 ORGANIC MALBEC

Grape Varietal: 100% Malbec
Origin: Mendoza, Argentina

100% Malbec, this is a fruit-forward, grippy wine that is drinking wonderfully now and will continue to do so over the next few years. The nose is simply lovely, layered with red berries and dark plum, pepper spice, hints of violets and vanilla. More spices open up with some aeration and the fruit leather flavors react favorably in time. The palate reiterates the fruit as the main focus with a mix of red and blue fruits and berries. Secondary notes of dark/brown spices are joined by a hint of cacao and earth as the present, balanced tannins and acidity keeps this wine perfectly poised-- oh, heavenly body!

Enjoy over the next 3-5 years, pair with steaks, burgers, bison, chops, hard cheeses, charcuterie. Great for early season Spring barbecues!

VINOUS MEDIA 91 POINTS - "The 2025 Malbec Orgánica comes from Mendoza. It shows a clear, primary fruit profile and is expressive, lightly grippy, agile and fruit-driven on the finish. It is a tasty wine for its price segment, offering excellent value." -Joaquin Hidalgo

A Zuccardi Family Tradition
"Preserving our environment has always been one of our family's dominant values. My grandfather, Tito, arrived in these lands with his mind set on the idea to implement an irrigation system to help grow crops while taking care of the use of water. Our winery was named Santa Julia after me, since I am José Zuccardi´s only daughter. We have always thought of winemaking as an activity concurrent with the protection of the environment and, as time goes by, we work hard to become better and better at this. Santa Julia represents our commitment to achieve superior quality standards by means of sustainable practices which contribute to the protection of the environment and, at the same time, intend to be useful to the community where we live." - Julia Zuccardi

Mendoza, Argentina - Made with Organic grapes

CHATEAU LA PRADE 2022 COTES DE FRANCS

Origin: IGT Toscana, Italy

The 2022 Chateau La Prade is a great wine to enjoy and completely over delivers for the price. Overflowing with rich, dark fruits enveloped in satiny smooth tannins, this is an easy wine to pick for your Tuesday night drinker. As you probably know by now, 2022 in Bordeaux was an exceptional vintage with well ripened fruit and excellent balance and freshness. The beauty of the vintage is the quality extends from the higher priced Classified Growths and Grand Cru Classe's to the more reasonably priced wines.

A perfect example is this wine from Chateau La Prade which received critical acclaim from numerous wine critics.

Decanter gave La Prade 93 points calling it, "Juicy and fun" with "great quality and value."

Jane Anson of Inside Bordeaux gave this wine 93 Points calling 2022 La Prade, "A buy" and "A hugely consistent, good value property from the Thienpont family."

James Suckling gave this wine 92-93 Points noting, "Plenty of fruit with well-integrated tannins."

Jeb Dunnuck gave La Prade 91 Points along with the quote, "It would make one hell of a great house red for drinking over the coming decade or more. It would put a smile on my face."

This wine deserves every bit of this praise, delivering pleasure with every sip until the bottle is completely empty.

The tiny appellation of Cotes de Francs is located on the right bank of Bordeuax near its famous neighbors of St Emilion and Pomerol. The terroir of Cotes de Francs consists of clay and limestone soil, perfectly suited to Merlot which makes up the majority of the blend augmented with Cabernet Franc adding freshness and floral notes.

MUGA 2021 RIOJA RESERVA

Grape Varietal: Tempranillo, Garnacha Tinta, Mazuelo and Graciano
Origin: Rioja Spain

Practing Organic Farming

#1 Wine Value of the Year 2025,' Wine Spectator: - "[$39 list] This is fresh and minerally up front, opening to reveal a fine mesh of chopped cherry and plum skin flavors, with fragrant hints of ground coffee, smoked paprika and dried marjoram. Sculpted tannins define the long, slightly chewy finish. Tempranillo, Garnacha, Mazuelo and Graciano. Drink now through 2035."

WINE ADVOCATE 94 POINTS - "The grapes for the 2021 Reserva (sold as Crianza in Spain), mostly Tempranillo with some Garnacha Tinta, Mazuelo and Graciano, were picked late in a cooler year when they finished the harvest the 20th of October, with plenty of times for the grapes to develop full aromas and flavors and complete ripeness. It fermented destemmed and lightly crushed in oak vats with indigenous yeasts, separating qualities, villages and soils, and matured in 80% French and 20% American oak barrels, 20% of them new, for 24 months, with racking every eight to nine months. It's a textbook example of their style in a very good year, with power, concentration and clout, elegance and freshness. It was a very harmonious year; the cycle was long and the tannins ripened to perfection. It's terrific and more so for the volume they produce (984,000 bottles of it). It was fined with egg whites and bottled in January 2024. Drink 2025-2040."

JEB DUNNUCK 94 POINTS - "The winery’s flagship, the wine that introduced Muga to the world, the 2021 Muga Reserva is Tempranillo-dominant, with Garnacha, Mazuelo, and Graciano filling in the gaps. A larger-production wine, it offers tremendous quality, fermented in wooden vats using indigenous yeasts, the grapes separated by quality, soil type, and village origin. This one in particular is from a beautiful vintage and practically beams in full-bodied concentration, with supple, silky tannins and light touches of oak spice, cedar, balsamic, and white pepper. A new release, it should continue to thrive another 15-20 years. Drink 2025-2045."

BODEGAS PUJANZA 2020 HADO LAGUARDIA

Grape Varietal: 100% Tempranillo
Origin: Mendoza, Argentina

"Young and full of life, with the characteristic red-berry fruit aromas of the local Tempranillo to the fore, with floral and very subtle light toasted notes coming through." This is a great introduction to today's high-altitude Rioja: excellently balanced in texture and flavor, with a caressing texture of plentiful, chalky tannins and only a light infusion of oak - French rather than the more overtly vanilla/coconut American.

WINE ADVOCATE 92 POINTS - "Like the other wines from this vintage, the 2020 Hado is a little lower in alcohol and has more freshness and acidity than the 2019 I also tasted next to it. This is still quite ripe at 14.5% alcohol but comes through as balanced. It comes from Tempranillo grapes from the estate vineyard and fermented in stainless steel and matured in barrique for one year. He harvested earlier in 2020 than in 2019, despite being a cooler year, when he had fun during the harvest. It's tight and still young, powerful and with abundant chalky tannins. 100,000 bottles produced."

Lightly crushed grapes go through a 5-day soak before fermentation, which then takes place in stainless steel at a controlled temperature, which starts the wine off tasting youthfully fresh and intense. A year in small French oak barrels polishes the tannins a bit, and tames the intensity of the fruit without ruining that sense of youthful freshness.

Bodegas Pujanza was began by Carlos San Pedro in 1998 with the intention of making "new traditional" wines of Rioja, specifically from the high-altitude area near Laguardia.

Wine Tip

DOMAINE MANN 2023 ALSACE PINOT BLANC VIGNOBLES DES 3 TERRES FLY ME TO THE MOON

Grape Varietal: 100% Pinot Blanc
Origin: Alsace, France

ORGANICALLY FARMED

Sébastien Mann has breathed new life into the family estate, imprinting the wines with his own distinctive style. Meticulous work is carried out on these fifty biodynamically farmed plots.

Pinot Blanc is usually the wine that the winemakers in Alsace drink daily. It can pair with a large variety of food, it is not too acidic neither too fruity.

At 13.5% of alcohol, it is bone dry, the fruit profile is a mix of yellow plum and white peaches. A lovely roundness texture in the mid palate and a hint of flowers on the nose makes it a pretty compelling package at a very reasonable price.

DOMAINE LAROCHE 2023 CHABLIS SAINT MARTIN

Grape Varietal: 100% Chardonnay
Origin: Bourgogne, France

For more than 160 years, the Laroche family has been dedicated to producing top quality wines from the Chablis region.Domaine Laroche is currently undergoing active conversion to organic viticulture.

Chablis Saint Martin has the intense freshness typical of the terroir in combination with ripe white fruit and white blossom aromas. The minerality gives a lingering finish and a distinct character. A nice complexity emerges from this vintage, while keeping a lot of purity. Perfect as an aperitif or to pair with seafood, prawns or fish.