Maker's Table

Caliberico

Urbanite Cellars
Verdelho "Caliberico"
2009
12.2% ABV | Price: about $15*

The wine is a very pale gold and brilliantly clear with a faint green cast. It offers slightly briny aromas of pineapple, yuzu, and stone fruit, especially apricot. The flavors deliver what the nose promises, with more tropical fruits and stone fruit, plus a citrusy finish that's very clean feeling. It's lush and expansive yet also manages to be bracing, bone dry, and mercifully low alcohol for all this fruit.

More New World than Old, as if the grape's genetics, its native expression, has been somehow amplified by the sheer Californianess of Lodi. I'm finding it quite lovely in this particular bottle, in this particular glass.

 

*I received this wine as a press sample. That's my cat Rhubarb in the distance. She's not much of a wine aficionado. She prefers tuna juice.

O Grinho

Bonny Doon Vineyard
Vinho Grinho
2009
Current price: about $20 (as club members we paid $17)

Made from 56% Portuguese loureiro grapes and 44% Spanish albariño, this wine bears an Iberian mien. Its name is a send-up of the region's vinho verde, but with a decidedly Californian slant, and the grapes are biodynamic, from the Ca' del Solo vineyard in Monterey.

Clear and pale gold, it's lavishly aromatic, with notes of spring flowers—daffodil, strawberry, and blackberry—plus orange blossom and thyme. On the palate it's bright and cleansing, with a citrusy edge and more green herbs. It's bracingly acidic, with a long slow finish.

It would be brilliant with seafood, though we enjoyed it with pork tenderloin seared with fresh thyme and rosemary, the wine's vivid freshness a delightful complement to the sweet rare meat and pungent herbs.

A mouthful of spring sunshine. Delicious.

 

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Symington Family Estates
Altano Douro DOC
2006

This Portuguese red is 70% Tinta Roriz (Tempranillo) and 30% Touriga Franca (Touriga Francesca). It's a deep red-violet, offering a nose of fresh cranberries and red currant with some funky, earthy undertones. It's smooth and surprisingly low acid on the palate, with some bright berry fruits and a lightly smoky midsection. It finishes in an instant. The body doesn't quite deliver what the nose promises, but overall, pleasing, if fleeting.

Price: $11.50
Crux: Nice, light, straightforward