Notable: Early January 2026
Drink more Lambrusco! And wines of Vermont, Alentejo, and the Willamette Valley.
Welcome back to Notable, where twice a month I round up the best, or at least most engaging, wines from recent tasting.
We start off with three Lambrusco (Lambruschi?) made in a range of methods: charmat, traditional method, and ancestral. They’re from a newer, organic producer, Ventiventi, in Emilia-Romagna. To honor their territory, I’ve illustrated the entire post with photos from my trip to the region in 2019. Read more about that visit, and see more photos, in Artful Wine: A field report from Emilia-Romagna.
We then turn homeward, tracking two natural wines from La Garagista, in Vermont, again both fizzy. One’s made from grapes, the other from apples, but it’s all just “wine” to makers Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber. Get a further taste of their work, and that of other Vermont cider makers, in a short film I made in 2020, Vermont Terroir Cider: A Moment in Time.
There’s a red wine from Quinta da Fonte Souto in Alentejo. It’s a project by the Symington family; they’re best known for port but, like many other producers in the Douro, have recently branched into still wines to meet the market.
Finally, we visit the Willamette Valley of Oregon to taste a vineyard designate from organic Bethel Heights, one of the region’s earliest Pinot producers, and an AVA bottling from Lemelson, an organic producer with a gonzo gravity-fed winery. I visited both in 2014 and have admired their wines ever since. Enjoy.
