Wine Review: Left Coast Cellars Latitude 45° Estate Pinot Noir 2015

Left Coast Cellars of Willamette Valley, Oregon was founded in 2003. With 350 acres of land and 130 acres of vineyards, they use sustainable viticulture to produce only estate-grown wine. They're LIVE Certified Sustainable, Salmon Safe Certified, and are one of fourteen wineries to complete the Oregon Environmental Council's Carbon Reduction Challenge. All of the power for the guest cottages, the front gate, and the vineyard irrigation is run by solar power, and use a big chunk of their land for their Oak Savanna Restoration Project. They are very environmentally conscious.

This is also the fifth wine that I've reviewed by them. You can check them all out by clicking here.

You'll see that the 45th parallel is often brought up on wine labels from both Oregon and France. That's because many of the great vineyards in France are along or near this latitude, given just the right coolness and daylight for great wines of specific varieties, and the vineyards in Oregon around this latitude are turning out to be great as well.

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Wine Review: Falesco Vitiano Rosso 2015

Over the course of this week I've reviewed three wine's by Falesco's Vitiano label. I started off with their 2016 Bianco, then their 2016 Rosato, and now finally I'm tasting their 2015 Rosso. Falesco is located in Italy's Umbria and was founded in 1979 by two legendary winemakers, Riccardo and Renzo Cotarella. In 1995 they introduced the Vitiano label, seeking to find a balance between tradition of native grapes and the versatility of international varieties. Basically, Vitiano is their affordable, easily-approachable label for the average consumer.

The 2015 Rosso is 34% Sangiovese, 33% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 33% Merlot. The vineyard was planted in 1992 and is 1,000 about sea level, and the vines are trained as spur-pruned cordon. The wine sees twelve days of fermentation in stainless steel tanks and fifteen days of maceration. Then it goes into French oak barrels for three months before it's bottled, and then three months of bottle aging before release. The final ABV is 13.5%.

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Wine Review: Falesco Vitiano Rosato 2016

Over the course of this week I'm be reviewing three wine's by Falesco's Vitiano label. I started off with their 2016 Bianco, now I'm on their 2016 Rosato, and then finally I'll taste their 2015 Rosso. Falesco is located in Italy's Umbria and was founded in 1979 by two legendary winemakers, Riccardo and Renzo Cotarella. In 1995 they introduced the Vitiano label, seeking to find a balance between tradition of native grapes and the versatility of international varieties. Basically, Vitiano is their affordable, easily-approachable label for the average consumer.

The 2016 Rosato is 30% Sangiovese, 30% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 10% Aleatico. The vineyard was planted in 1985 at 990 feet above sea level on sedimentary clay with calcareous deposits. It has a brief maceration of two days to extract color and flavor, and then it's fermented in stainless steel tanks for ten days. 40,000 bottles were produced and it has an ABV of 12%.

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Wine Review: Falesco Vitiano Bianco 2016

Over the next week I'll be reviewing three wine's by Falesco's Vitiano label. I'm starting off here with their 2016 Bianco, then their 2016 Rosato, and finally their 2015 Rosso. Falesco is located in Italy's Umbria and was founded in 1979 by two legendary winemakers, Riccardo and Renzo Cotarella. In 1995 they introduced the Vitiano label, seeking to find a balance between tradition of native grapes and the versatility of international varieties. Basically, Vitiano is their affordable, easily-approachable label for the average consumer.

The 2016 Bianco is 50% Vermentino and 50% Verdicchio, all from experimental vineyards planted by Falesco and the University of Viterbo. The sedimentary clay around the estate is just what those vine varieties want to make their best representation of their wine. The wine sees cold soaked maceration, fermentation in stainless steel tanks, and then three months of aging in stainless steel tanks before it sees another month of bottle aging.

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Wine bloggers share their favorite posts

Below, in their own words, wine bloggers tell me what post of their own is their favorite and why. It was a fun project, as round up posts usually are. But understanding why a writer likes a certain piece they have written above all their others gives you some extra information, and telling information, of who they are. And really, who we are is what makes the blogging world so great. You need to bring a piece of you, preferably all of you, if you want to make it worth the time for yourself and your readers.

That is an important part of Lori Sullivan's pick. Lori inspired this article when I met her a few months back. She was "in the area". The distance from Plymouth, Massachusetts, to South Yarmouth, Massachusetts, is not "in the area" to a Cape Codder like myself. That's *gasp* OVER THE BRIDGE! But she lives in Texas and Texas is huge. The entirety of New England probably feels like a neighborhood to her. Lori is awesome, by the way. There's skulls on her glasses. She goes to metal concerts. She's funny. She took a good portion of her day to go see me where I work.

During our conversation, she was explaining to me why she doesn't blog much anymore. That led to her telling me what her favorite post of her own was. It's a deeply personal story and something only she could write. Over the next few days I started wondering... I have favorite posts but which one is THE favorite? And then... wait... everybody has to have their favorite posts, but what is THE favorite for them? I've been tweeting with and reading the work of most of the following people for years, and this was something I suddenly really wanted to know about them! So I asked.

Get ready for some excellent reads, because these are all great. I'll get to my own favorite at the very end because this isn't about me. It's about my amazing wine blogging friends.

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Wine Review: Artezin Mendocino County Old Vine Zinfandel 2016

Holy crap, it feels like I've had this bottle forever. To be honest I've been kind of dreading it, because Artezin looks like a great thing with a great crew behind it but... it's *yuck* Zinfandel. I'm not going to get into my issues with Zin for the hundredth time, but let's just say that myself and Zin have issues.

Artezin, a part of the Hess Family Wine Estates, was founded in 2002 and has had Randle Johnson as its winemaker since the beginning. Artezin is focused on expressing classic Old Vine Zinfandel from Mendocino and parts of Sonoma by working with family-owned farms that have been growing Zin for generations.

The 2016 Mendocino Zinfandel is 84% Zinfandel, 14% Petite Sirah, and 2% Carignan. It was aged for fifteen months in French and American oak, and has an ABV of 14.9%.

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Wine Review: Jenny Dawn Cellars Sta. Rita Hills Pinot Noir 2016

To learn more about this winery, that will be based out of Kansas by November of 2018, check out my review of their 2016 Chardonnay. I suggest you do that anyways because that Chard is pretty awesome. Doooo iiiiit. Go ahead, reeeeeeeead it. Here's the link again.

Like their Chardonnay, I know very little about the winemaking process. I do know that it was fermented in stainless steel and aged in French oak barrels for eleven months. And that the ABV is 13.8%. So with that said, it seems like a perfect time to talk about the music I'm listening to while reviewing this wine.

Today's music selection is one of the most iconic sountracks of the 1990's: Demon Knight. As a kid I loved Tales from the Crypt. I watched the show, I read the comic books. Hell, I still have the comic books and will still open one up every once in awhile. The show made a movie in 1995 called "Demon Knight" and it was amazing for a fifteen year old like myself, buuuuuut... it really doesn't hold up at all. The soundtrack, however, will hold up for eternity. 

It starts off with Pantera's Cemetery Gates, which is just incredible. Ministry's Tonight We Murder pops into my head all the time. Then there's Machine Head, Megadeth, Melvins, Rollins Band, Biohazard, and Sepultra. It's a metal eargasm. The song that launched Filter's popularity, Hey Man Nice Shot, made its big debut on this album and opened the movie. And how can you forget Gravediggaz, basically a Wu-Tang Clan spinoff, and their song 1-800-Suicide. So yeah, this wine is seeing some headbanging action tonight. Now let's drink some wine!

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Wine Review: Jenny Dawn Cellars Sta. Rita Hills Chardonay 2016

As soon as I saw that I had been followed on Twitter by Jenny Dawn Cellars I knew I had to try their wines. Why? Because even though they're not settled in yet, Jenny Dawn will be a Kansas winery by the end of 2018. KANSAS! Cool, right?

How could you not throw your support in for people wanting to make fine wine in Kansas? Seriously, I don't see how any wine lover wouldn't be excited about people making wine in non-traditional (or what we consider non-traditional) places. I've seen snobs scoff at the idea and I want to stick my middle finger an inch away from their stupid faces. Russian River started off as lumber yards, now get your head out of your ass. Ahem... anyways... in all honesty, I just wanted to try some wine from Clark Kent's home state.

JENNIFER MCDONALD
IMAGE CREDIT: bizjournals.com

But because they were just founded in 2016, their first vintage was both sourced from and made in California. They will continue to buy their fruit exclusively from California, but they'll have a winemaking facility up and running in Wichita by November of 2018. It'll be the base of their operations and will also include a tasting room, store, and event venue. They're also planting an apple orchard in Wichita to make apple wine, which is basically apple cider but with higher alcohol. All of this will make Jenny Dawn Cellars the first urban winery in Wichita.

Speaking of firsts, Jennifer McDonald is also the first African American CEO of the winemaking industry in the entire state of Kansas. She founded Jenny Dawn Cellars, named after a Kansas wildflower, with fellow entrepreneur Lesley Selvidge. Both of these lovely ladies have a ridiculous amount of degrees and education. Meanwhile, some dumbass that graduated from a tech school for offset printing is about to review their wine. Let's drink! I've got their 2016 Chardonnay and their 2016 Pinot Noir!

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January Wine Pick: Merotto Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG "Colbelo" Extra Dry

This WINE PICK of the month was written for the Luke's of Cape Cod website.

Prosecco is a region in northeast Italy's Veneto, given the classification of a DOC. This means that wine must meet specific requirements in the vineyard and winemaking to officially call itself and be labelled a Prosecco DOC. Without going into too much detail, Prosecco is a sparkling wine fermented and secondary fermented (where it gets the carbonation) in big stainless steel tanks called autoclaves, and it's made mostly from the Glera grape variety.

The quality tier above DOC in the Italian classification system is DOCG, and within the Prosecco DOC is the Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG. Valdobbiadene is a village among the hills of Trentino in Veneto. Because they're known to produce impressive Prosecco well above the average quality, they've earned themselves the DOCG classification.

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