August 2023 Wine Club

Welcome to the first-ever Little Thing Wine Club! Little Thing is a small, woman-owned wine club—soon-to-be shop and bar—that focuses on wine made by real people, for real people. Your support (i.e. the delicious wines you’re about to drink) helps keep Seattle local and weird and wonderful. We think you’re going to like it here.

So, let’s dive in. This six-pack is an introduction to Little Thing—chock full of wines you want to drink. What are wines you want to drink? They are wines made by wineries with real people at the helm. They are wines that represent good value; not cheap for cheap’s sake and never needlessly expensive. Wines you want to drink are wines you can bring to a dinner party and know they will pair well with whatever you’re eating; wines that you don’t need to sit on for 10+ years to make approachable. And most importantly, wines you want to drink are wines that actually taste good—plain and simple. We call our six-bottle club Our Favorite Things because it’s the Little Thing way: flat-out delicious, high-value wines from producer-and-grower forward wineries around the world.

The August wine club is an ode to the season. August is—dare I say—the sultriest of the summer months. A touch more sepia-toned than July’s bright blue sun and sky, August feels downright funky. Afternoons are hot enough for swimming, evenings cool enough for sweatshirts. Tomato season arrives in August, one of life’s greatest pleasures, and the farmers markets around town burst at the seams with produce. Dinner is often raw and almost exclusively al fresco. 

I come alive this time of year and I know I’m not alone. 

The wines you're taking home are for August days and nights, and in the following pages, you’ll find all the important—and probably unnecessary but fun—information you need to know about them. They are to be enjoyed during lazy lunches on the patio, long afternoons spent on Lake Washington, and even longer evenings of tomato-fueled meals with carefree versions of your favorite humans. Like summer, they are meant to be savored, but not stick around too long. I can imagine these moving through your household quickly, as I know they will in mine. Enjoy them while they last.

Cheers,

Dylan

2019 Léon Boesch Crémant d'Alsace Zero: I first fell in love with Leon Boesch’s pristine Alsatian wines a few years ago when I tasted an 

entry-level bottle of Edelzwicker—a whimsical field blend from the region—that quite literally brought me to tears. (I aspirated a bit of the wine and had a mega coughing fit). I remember thinking: holy moly, if this is where it starts, where does it end? I set myself on a mission to find out, and quickly fell head over heels for the crystalline whites and electric reds of this biodynamic producer on the French-German border. Imagine my sheer delight when I found out the Boesch family produces a Champenoise method sparkler.

This bottle is a blend of Pinot Blanc (50%), Riesling (40%), Pinot Gris (5%), and Pinot Noir (5%) from the Noble Valley, a perfect little growing area in the rain shadow of the Vosges Mountains. Fermented with native yeast—the natural yeasts that come in with the grapes at harvest—the wine spends 12 months on the lees in large oak casks and an additional 24 months in bottle. The nose is a honeysuckle blend of lemon rind, orchard fruit, buckwheat, and alpine minerals. On the palate, it’s bone dry with a deeply savory edge; pear lined with almonds, citrus lined with sourdough. The bubbles are exquisite. You’ll soon learn: the entire Leon Boesch lineup punches well above its price tag, and this bottle is no exception. 

2021 Arnaud Lambert Clos du Midi Chenin Blanc: Paris, Bordeaux, Provence—there are many regions lauded as the ultimate French experience. However, to me, the Loire Valley has always felt most quintessentially French. With its rolling green hillsides, grand châteaux, and tiny hamlets that spill into vineyards, Loire is the France of fairy tales. The Loire Valley is where Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc reign supreme. 

Arnaud Lambert is somewhat of a wunderkind of the Loire. In 2017, he merged his family’s label with Château Brézé, a historic estate he helped bring back from near-extinction, to create his eponymous winery. Arnaud makes the type of acid-driven Chenin Blanc that sends shivers down my spine. This one is entirely sourced from the hilltop of Brézé, a colder site about three hours southwest of Paris, where various topsoils cover a foundation of tuffeau bedrock, a porous, fine-grained stone that makes Loire freaks salivate. 

It opens with all of Chenin’s bests: apple orchard, citrus, limestone, chamomile. It’s mid-weight on the palate, with the type of acidity that makes you feel like a baby trying a lemon for the first time. It’s a citrus-and-mineral drenched daydream; linear and pristine in the way that only Chenin can be. No intro to Little Thing would be complete without an exceptional Chenin Blanc, and this one is big bang for your buck. 

2021 Terre Nere Etna Bianco: Even before White Lotus, I loved writing about Sicily. It is a fascinating place to explore. The winemaking history is ancient, dating back to 750 BC. The topography is wild and mountainous, with elevation that rises from shores of the Mediterranean to over 10,000 feet in an area roughly equivalent to the size of Massachusetts. The soils range from marine sediment to rugged limestone to deeply volcanic. Without a doubt, Sicily is pumping out some of the most energetic, characterful, and delicious wines in all of Italy, and Terre Nere is leading the charge. 

One of the trailblazer wineries of Mount Etna, the very not-defunct volcano in Northeastern Sicily, Terre Nere farms 50-100 year old vines that sit 2,000-3,000 feet above sea level. Mount Etna is a windy, high-elevation melange of ash, black pumice, and volcanic rock. The vines are out in the open, not protected by trees or hillsides, blown by the wind all day, keeping things cool and dry. The day to night shift in temperature—called the diurnal shift—is steep, crafting what you find here: elegant, high-acid wines with intense volcanic character.  

This Etna Bianco is a blend of native Sicilian varieties—Carricante, Catarratto, Grecanico, and Inzolia—fermented and aged in stainless steel. The nose is floral, salty, and ripe: yellow apple and nectarine, saline and Castelvetrano olives, jasmine and wildflowers. There’s an air of sauvage here that feels so Sicilian. The palate is bright and mineral-driven with a touch of density through the midpalate. I love the brilliant acidity that carries out the long, savory finish. 

2021 Schloss Gobelsburg Rosé: Gobelsburg’s history dates back almost 1,000 years, when the Monks of Zwettl were granted their first vineyards in 1071. Its current iteration dates back to 1996, when Eva and Michael Moosbrugger took over the helm, making Gobelsburg the sensation it is today. In my world, Gobelsburg arrived in 2013, when I was working at a restaurant in Boston and consuming this Barbie-pink fever dream every chance I got. It was over a bottle of Gobelsburg—at the bar of now-shuttered Westbridge in Cambridge, MA—that I decided to move to Seattle.  

Gobelsburg has long been a wine-industry favorite for its food-friendly nature. The blend of acidity and juicy pink fruit can match just about any meal. It’s a seriously consistent wine—a favorite for many years—that I have sold at various restaurants and shops and brought to countless parties of adoring fans (read: my friends). It never gets old. And it’s at its very best in summer. Cliché? Perhaps. But there’s nothing better than this vibrant, lip-smacking rosé and all its Rainier cherry and pomegranate goodness on a hot summer day. 

2022 COSM MOMCARB Pinot Noir: I met COSM winemaker Hayden Allen at one of my favorite Washington operations, Latta, where he is the assistant winemaker. I worked next door at the time and heard he had started his own project, truckin’ up Oregon fruit from a vineyard he grew up next to and making funky, low-intervention Pinot Noir. Lo and behold, that vineyard is Momtazi, an under-the-radar Willamette gem in the foothills of the Coast Range that is farmed entirely biodynamic, and has been since its inception in 1997. Hayden started working at the estate at 15; biodynamic winemaking and vineyard management are central to who he is as a winemaker. This is some deeply hard-to-get-your-hands-on fruit, and it’s the backbone of this quaffable summer red. 

So, that takes care of the MOM part of MOMCARB. The CARB part? Carbonic maceration, a type of intracellular fermentation. Basically, most grapes are transformed into wine through yeast: it eats the fruit sugars in the juice and converts them into alcohol. Carbonic wines are made by sealing up whole grapes in a fermentor with carbon dioxide and letting them ferment from the inside out. Hayden learned how to do this while working a vintage in  Australia and it’s definitely a rarity in the world of Washington wine. That’s one of the many things that makes this wine so damn exciting. Other things: dope label, chillable nature, electric cran-raspberry nose, hidden herbaceousness, and propulsive palate. I’m tickled Hayden let us have access to enough of this stunner for our first wine club.  

2021 Francesco Boschis Grignolino: Northern Italy’s Piedmont is famous for its trophy wines: Barolo and Barbaresco. So much so, you don’t really need to be into wine to know the names of these high-cost, high-scoring locales. And they deserve the hype! I’ve had decades-old Barolos that have knocked my socks off and pristine Barbarescos that have moved me in unexpected ways. However, I think the most interesting wines in Piedmont exist just beyond the award-winners, in the pockets around the prestige, where extreme value can be found. Langhe Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Barbera, and today’s indigenous stunner: Grignolino. 

Grignolino is a native variety of Piedmont—named after the Piedmontese word for seed, grignolè—that grows in the Monferrato hills. Much like its kissing cousin, Nebbiolo, Grignolino is a high-acid, high-tannin grape that produces aromatic, food-friendly wines. Stylistically, varietal bottlings of Grignolino are crisp and crunchy with an unexpected tannic kick. That’s exactly how famed Dogliani producer Francesco Boschis’ Girgnolino presents. It starts with a rippin’ wild strawberry, white pepper, rose petal, mortadella, and sagebrush nose. The palate is all lean and lithe upfront but quickly shows off its hidden structure. Roadside berries are met with dusty tannins and it’s all so wonderfully Italian. This one is definitely to be drunk with pizza, preferably in a take-out box on a picnic blanket overlooking some glorious vista. 

A Perfect Evening: There is no place better than Seattle in the summer. (As a girl from Maine—a place literally dubbed vacationland—that is sacrilege. But it’s true: Seattle’s sunny months are singular.) There is nothing better than the 16 hours of sunlight we get in July and August; nothing better than the evenings that stretch on for hours, touches of sunlight streaking the sky well past sundown. I live for those nights. This August wine club was built for those nights.  

So, here's the move: rent a boat—better yet, win at life and make friends with someone who has a boat—and head out on Lake Union. (Bring a sweatshirt because it will get chilly, right about the time the orange sun illuminates Capitol Hill and the shadows get extra long.) Grab special snacks, like a whole steaming pile of ham bao from Beacon BBQ or countless baby burritos from Taco Chukis and put on “A Little August 2023 Playlist” on Spotify. Find the cutest plastic cups you can and pour yourself a glass of the Terre Nere Etna Bianco or COSM Pinot Noir. Jump in, if you dare.

PS: If you spent all your money on this wine club and a boat rental isn’t in your future, an innertube will work just as well. 10/10. 

Summer of Crudo: Incredibly easy, endlessly impressive: crudo is a move. The secret is that it takes no skill whatsoever; just high-quality fish and zero fear of salt, fat, acid, or heat. Plus, it pairs excellently with this month's bubbles, white, and rosé. Here's how:

• Buy the best-quality fish you can find. I have a soft spot for sushi-grade Ahi and many fishmongers will slice it for you. 
• Chill a plate in the freezer for 10 minutes.
• Ready your other ingredients, like thinly sliced jalapeno and scallions.
• Drizzle really good olive oil all over your very cold plate and arrange the fish as you like it.
• Drizzle more olive oil on the fish, followed by the juice of half a lemon and a generous pinch (or two) of flaky salt. 
• Taste it. It probably needs more salt. 
• Top the whole thing with scallions and jalapenos, and a final little touch of olive oil and squeeze of lemon.
• Serve! Be delighted in your own excellence! Take pictures!