Notable: Early September, 2025
Welcome to Notable, a round-up of select wines from recent tasting
Welcome to Notable, a new feature of Maker’s Table.
I taste many wines over the course of a month, and used to cover the best in individual posts, mostly for reasons of SEO. When I migrated to Substack I shed that unwieldy tactic and switched to tasting reports, like this one on the 2024 Massicans and this one on the 2020 Ratti Barolos.
But I taste more wines than I can feature at length, and so this post inaugurates a new regular column, Notable: notes from the table. It’s free for now, but may convert to a paid offering in the future. Although wine-heavy, it’ll occasionally include non-wine products thanks to my interest in cheese and other special foods. I hope you enjoy it.
Fragrant Portuguese skin-contact whites
Mendes & Symington is a collaboration between Anselmo Mendes, in Portugal’s Vinho Verde, and Symington Family Estates, an historic producer of port wines from the houses of Graham’s, Dow’s, Warre’s, and Cockburn’s. Like many port makers, the Symingtons are increasingly adding table wines to their portfolio to offer consumers broader choice and keep vineyards in production. I visited Symington properties in the fall of 2019 (see more about them and port wine generally in my illustrated feature, Wither Port). I separately visited Anselmo Mendes when I was in the Vinho Verde region in 2016, tasting with enologist Constantino Ramos, who has since started his own label. The Mendes & Symington wines are imported by Premium Port Wines.
Mendes & Symington Contacto Alvarinho Monção e Melgaço Vinho Verde 2024
Mendes was making a skin-contact Alvarinho even a decade ago; at the winery I tasted the 2015, which had had twelve hours of skin contact, giving it a ripe, rich texture. This wine gets de-stemmed and enjoys a short skin maceration before fermentation and aging in stainless steel, with lees stirring. The wine’s aroma is perfumed, green fruited (lime peel), with a citrusy, juicy palate.
12.5% ABV | $22
Mendes & Symington Contacto Loureiro Vinho Verde 2024
The Contacto Loureiro is made exactly like the Alvarinho, so having them open together presents an opportunity to understand the essential flavors of each grape (with their skins). It’s flowery, with a scintillant palate and flavors of pear and citrus. It’s lightly bitter at the finish, which feels correct for this grape. In neither wine does the skin contact feel pronounced. It seems rather (perhaps along with lees stirring) to add muscle their otherwise lithe and delicate frames.
12% ABV | $22
Classical Nebbiolo from Manzone
Stefano Manzone founded the estate in Monforte d’Alba in 1863. Today, the fifth generation, Patrizia, Mirella, and Mauro, run production. Their 8.5 hectares of Dolcetto, Barbera, and Nebbiolo all fall within Barolo. Viticulture is environmentally sensitive; they host beehives and bat houses and have installed photovoltaics to help power the winery. Fermentations are spontaneous and the wines age in large oak cask and concrete tank. The wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered. Manzone is imported by Banville Wine Merchants.
Manzone Il Crutin Langhe Nebbiolo 2023
Il Crutin is their entry-level Nebbiolo; the word means “small cellar” in the local dialect and is the name of an old house hand-carved into the rock near the vineyard. The wine’s robe is shiny, limpid, fragrant of cherries, raspberry, and rosemary. The texture is huge if slightly astringent, carrying flavors of black fruit and licorice. It deserves another year or so of bottle age.
13.5% ABV | $25
Manzone Castelletto Barolo 2020
Pale, rosy, tea-like, with a woodsy fragrance of dried flowers and spice. The wine is piquant, spicy, with flavors of forest and red fruit. But fruit isn’t the main attraction here; the wine’s charms arise from a youthful and scintillant texture.
15% ABV | $45
Manzone Bricat Barolo 2019
Bricat is similar in many ways to the Castelletto in its offerings of rose, tea, wood, and potpourri. But it’s a darker wine overall, more angular and astringent but also more concentrated, with deep fruit and a kind of walnut flavor at the finish. Stern, upright, and slightly brooding, it’s a wine that rewards cellaring.
14% ABV | $55
Manzone Cento Anni Barolo Riserva 2009
The winery advised three hours of decanting and I gave it about two. The color is brickish but limpid. There are noticeable oxidative aromas; it smells like a paneled room in candlelight, with pronounced acetic and caramel warmth. The fruit has mostly fallen away, and the wine feels serious, sober, quiet, with supple, powdery tannins and a glittery, bitter finish.
14% ABV | $300
Notable wines from Tomasella
Tenute Tomasella straddles two northern Italian regions, the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and they make wines in both denominations, sixteen in all, including sparkling, still, and sweet. Prosecco is the bulk of it, both white and rosé. The winery was founded in 1965 by Luigi Tomasella, and today his son, Paolo, runs the business. They are in the process of an organic conversion that will be complete in 2026. They are currently SQNPI certified and maintain an arboreal bee oasis with twenty hives. The winery is seeking a new U.S. importer.
Tenute Tomasella Friulano Friuli 2024
This wine is a varietal Friulano. Half of the grapes were direct pressed while the remainder were treated to ten hours of cold maceration. The juice fermented cold, and the wine went through full malolactic. The result is stony and sharp at first, offering aromas of wet clay (faint reduction), flavors of citrus peel and pith, and a saline bite. With air it unfurls, and the palate softens and spreads out in flavors of stone fruit. There’s a curious but pleasant basil note in the mid-palate. The wine held well for four days in the fridge.
12.5% ABV | About $15 in Italy
Tenute Tomasella Rigole Rosso Trevenezie 2022
A blend of 85 percent Merlot and 15 percent Refosco del peduncolo rosso, a regional variety. It’s a lovely bright red with aromas of red cherry and roses. Juicy and sharp, it has firm tannins and a finish like bitter cherry. It feels cleansing, a good counterpoint for richly savory dishes. It would also profit from a few years of bottle age.
12.5% ABV | About $22 in Italy
Tenute Tomasella Chinomoro Vino Aromatizzato NV
This wine is a curiosity, a nod to Barolo chinato, the aromatized Nebbiolo from Piemonte. Tomasella uses Merlot grapes, which they vinify in the Veneto and transfer to Piedmont for the chinatura process, which involves fortification with grape spirit and flavoring with bitter, herbal, and aromatic extracts including absinth, coriander, rhubarb, cinchona, orange, elder flower, and more. The results are aged in oak barrels before bottling. The aroma is chocolatey, medicinal, herbal, vanilla. Woody notes come forward in the mid-palate as the wine blooms with bitter sweetness (it has 200 g/L of residual sugar). The winery suggests using it in cocktails (try it in a Negroni or spritz) or serving over ice as an aperitif or lightly chilled as a digestif. It’s also a good partner for chocolate and other complex, semi-sweet desserts. An opened bottle lasts for weeks in the fridge. Intriguing, stimulating, unique.
16% ABV | About $45 in Italy
All wines were samples for review.
Photos ©2025 Meg Maker