Notable: Early February 2026

Decades-old bottles of Chateau Montelena, Château d’Armailhac, and Coteaux du Layon, plus new wines of Barboursville and Ferrari

Welcome back to Notable, where twice a month I reflect on the best wines of recent tasting.

Last week New York Times Cooking ran an article titled “I Need Herbs and I Need Citrus.” Girl, I feel you. Temperatures in Northern New England were hovering in the single digits and I was suffering a head cold, medicating myself with lemongrass ginger tea and balms of menthol-eucalyptus. That’s perhaps an unwise admission at the top of a tasting roundup, but my cold was mild and the sinus distress paradoxically only heightened my olfactory powers. Sometimes it pays to be sensitive.

But winter’s clench is easing. The sky’s become less gray, more blue and yellow, and there’s fresh energy in the sunlight now that we’ve passed Imbolc, which Christians call Candlemas and Americans call Groundhog Day. It’s that moment midway between Solstice and Equinox when the house plants reawaken, my Mediterranean Bay unfurling delicate new leaves, bronze and shiny, my 40-plus-year-old Philodendron, purchased for my freshman dorm room, reaching windoward with tender shoots.

My cat’s been chasing sunbeams around the house. I’ve been growing grass for her in batches, soaking soft winter wheat berries for a day, then covering the container with cheesecloth and rinsing regularly to encourage sprouting. By the third or fourth day roots appear, then shoots, at which point I collapse the cheesecloth onto the berries to make a kind of sterile medium, then move it to the windowsill.

I’ve tried using soil and metal mesh and other substrates, but none allow a small carnivore unaccustomed to herbivory to snack on grass without mayhem. So twice a day, usually at her command, I sit with her on the floor, picking off individual blades to feed her, one at a time. Most make their way down her gullet, but some get mauled and spat sideways onto the rug. No matter. Mom’s always ready with another.

The things we do for vitamins and sunshine and love.

Notable Wines

Below are my notes on a handful of wines that recently stood apart from the pack. There’s a Ferrari Brut Trentodoc, a traditional method sparkler from the Dolomites opened in honor of the Winter Olympics; a 2017 Barboursville Octagon, a red-bend winner in the 2025 Virginia Governor’s Cup; a 1995 Chateau Montelena Estate Napa Cabernet, perfectly aged; a 2000 Château d’Armailhac Pauillac, opened alongside the Montelena just because; and a 1990 Domaine Touchais Coteaux du Layon, a sweet botrytised Chenin for the ages. Enjoy.