No matter the weather in March, I still get knocked over the head with the reality of spring. It’s finally here. Do you feel that? It’s the earth’s awakening. With all our luck, you’ll probably be reading this on an unseasonably cold and rainy winter-meets-spring day, but please know that as I write this, the sun is peeking out of its cloud cover and the camellias in my neighborhood have started to bloom. Winter’s end is in sight.
I can usually wrap my head around most times of the year, but I’m especially fond of the shoulder seasons. I love the momentary juxtaposition of bright sun and cold wind on my face during a long walk; I love the end-of-season produce and the beginning of the next; I love the feeling of change in the air. What can I say? I’ve got a thing for the ephemeral!
Of course, wine is one of the most ephemeral things. Different vintages produce different wines, yes, but even the juice inside the bottle is constantly changing. Sometimes it moves slowly, with oxygen sneaking through a cork over years; other times, it shifts quickly, with the pop of a bottle and the onset of air. A wine can simply feel fleeting in nature because it’s so of the moment. A bottle can remind me of spring and that means I want to drink it in the spring. I think that sums up our March club nicely: wines you want to drink… in the spring. From ultra-dry sparkling Muscadet to citrus-drenched Garnacha Blanca and honeyed, beeswax Timorasso; a chillable Mediterranean red to spiced Spanish Tempranillo and herbaceous Syrah from our own backyard; this collection is a tiny ode to the world coming alive again. I can practically hear the tulips blooming as I type, shooting upward, thirsty for the sun.
2021 Jérémie Huchet La Bretesche Brut Nature: This Champenoise-method sparkler—meaning, it’s made the same way as Champagne with a second fermentation in the bottle—is a bit of a wildcard. Muscadet is a region on the western edge of the Loire Valley, where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean, most famous for its eponymous white wine. Made from the grape Melon de Bourgogne, Muscadet is a stylish, acid-driven white wine that can most commonly be found next to a giant platter of raw seafood. This is a sparkling version, still made from Melon de Bourgogne, that showcases all of the region’s key characteristics—specifically acid and precision. Sparkling Muscadet is not the norm, but it is brilliant.
Jérémie Huchet is one of the Loire Valley’s rising stars, a fourth generation winemaker who took over his family’s estate in 2001. His focus is on the ancient traditions of Muscadet that have been passed down from generation to generation. As part of this central ideology, he has slowly been converting his vineyards to organic. This sparkling comes from le Château de la Bretesche, a clos—which means a walled-in vineyard—that dates back to 1387. I love the bright citrus, minerality, and ocean air of the nose, so delicately underlined by nutty hazelnut notes. The palate matches, rounded out by just a touch of stone fruit and cream. It’s painstakingly dry, with unmatched clarity and exactness. It screams for oysters, as all Muscadet does, but feels celebratory enough to replace a fine bottle of Champagne. Aperitif, party, dinner; it can do it all.
2021 Herència Altés Garnatxa Blanca: Nuria Altés’ family has been making wine in Spain for generations. She has carried the torch, starting her own label with partner Rafael de Haan 2010. They farm 60 acres in Catalunya, right outside Batea, in Terra Alta. At over 1,500 feet above sea level, the Herència Altés estate sits higher than almost all of its neighbors. Their vineyards are old-vine sites, primarily planted between 1900 and 1960, tucked into the region’s trademark Panal soil. This chalky, sandy topsoil over clay-limestone and limestone bedrock is naturally water retentive, meaning the grapes grown in Terra Alta don’t need to be irrigated, despite the hot, dry climate.
This bottle is 100% Garnatxa Blanca—or Garnacha Blanca or Grenache Blanc. (The tx is pronounced ch.) A mutation of the red grape Grenache Noir, the white grape’s ancestral home is Spain, along the Pyrenees. At some point, it crossed over the mountains to France, and found a second home in the Rhone Valley. This Garnatxa Blanca was farmed organically, hand harvested, and fermented with wild yeast in stainless steel. It spent four months on the lees (dead yeast cells!) with bâtonnage (the stirring of said dead yeast cells!). Aging wines sur lie adds a textural seriousness to the finished wine, and stirring the lees increases the contact area with the wine. Here, it balances the freshness and bright acidity at play. The final result is a lemon-drop, poached pear wonder with the most intriguing savory edge. I love the greenness that comes out: fresh-cut grass, salted cantaloupe, a sun-soaked rooftop herb garden.
2021 Vietti Derthona Timorasso: Vietti is a household name for Barolo, but it’s also one of the few wineries responsible for bringing Timorasso into the zeitgeist. Timorasso is an indigenous grape of Piedmont, calling the southeast corner of the region, Colli Tortonesi, home. For most of its life, Timorasso was viewed as a table grape, most commonly used as a blending companion for other wines. In the late 1980s, winemaker Walter Massa flipped the script, sourcing grapes from the 400-or-so Timorasso plants in his own vineyards, and fermenting them on their own. When he started, there were only 1.2 acres of Timorasso left in existence. I’d love to say that from that first vintage on, Timorasso picked up speed. But it has still taken decades to catch on. Vietti’s choice to purchase a vineyard in Colli Tortonesi and produce a varietal bottling of Timorasso has helped show the world that this grape is one to take seriously.
Working with Walter Massa and other locals in Colli Tortonesi, Vietti has dialed in their production. The wine is aged in a mixture of terracotta, neutral wood, and stainless steel, with time spent on the lees with occasional bâtonnage. The result is a serious white wine with a touch of rusticity. It has a wonderful honeyed layer that wraps around a core of minerals, flowers, and orchard fruit. It’s a medium-to-full-bodied wine, but the acidity at play keeps things so refreshing, so brilliant, so precise. It reminds me of Chenin Blanc, but decidedly Italian, which is a combination I’m fairly smitten with. What a treat.
2022 Mas des Caprices RAS Rouge à Siroter: There’s this one scene in the movie Julie & Julia where cookbook editor Judith Jones cooks Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon for the first time. Alone in her kitchen, she pats dry the meat, she deglazes the pan, she finally takes a bite and says one word: yum. She then takes a second bite, and as her eyes ever-so-slightly roll back into her head, she says it louder: yum. It’s the same moment as when you’re at a buzzy dinner table and people begin to eat. Suddenly, silence. It’s singular, yet universal; it’s a feeling we all know. Sometimes a wine gets chosen for this club for that exact reason: it’s yummy.
That isn’t to say that this juicy little number doesn’t have more going on than ‘yum’—it’s made by a cool certified organic and biodynamic producer from the Leucate Plateau off the Mediterranean coast in France—it’s just so dang delicious it doesn’t really need more going on. A blend of young-vine Carignan, Mourvedre, and Grenache, all aged in concrete, this is a rustic table red in only the best ways. The nose is all sun-soaked red fruit, like summer strawberries and almost-too-ripe raspberries, mixed with purple flowers and sea air. The palate is juicy as hell, light bodied yet fervent, with an ultra-fine whisper of tannin. You can certainly chill it, but you don’t need to, which I’ve decided is my favorite category of reds at the moment. I love picking my own adventure.
2021 La Bicicleta Voladora Rioja: I think I should start here: this is not a textbook Rioja. Rioja, arguably Spain’s most famous wine region, could be called the love story of Tempranillo and oak. (This is, of course, a simplification, but we only have two paragraphs!) Rioja’s traditional classification system for aging is also an unofficial classification system for quality, i.e. the more oak age means a better quality wine. It means that often when you drink the best Tempranillo in the world, it has substantial oak influence. Now, this is not a problem, and Rioja is a truly delicious category of wine, but it begs the question: what is Rioja-grown Tempranillo without oak? This bottle may be the answer.
Sourced from organic, dry-farmed vineyards ranging from 20-50 years old, La Bicicleta Voladora is an exploration of place. In the cellar, the wine is aged in concrete tanks over wood barrels, which allows its varietal character to shine: cherry, anise, earth. There’s a balance at play between juicy, unapologetic fruit and rustic texture. That dichotomy is one of the things I love most about Spanish wines, the ease of fruit with the sharp edges of tannin and acid. I can picture a Rioja lover enjoying this wine just as easily as someone who was turned off from the category because of its emphasis on oak. Categorize this: crowd pleaser.
2019 Buona Notte Rocks Syrah: When we talk about terroir, so much of the conversation centers around the old world. Even outside of Wine Professionals®, many people have heard of the famed climats of Burgundy, the rolling hills and fog of Piedmont, or the sun-soaked hillside of Hermitage. These places have centuries, if not a millenia, of wine-making history, and they have studied every inch of their land to perfect their craft. New-world terroir can often be overlooked and dismissed in these conversations.
However, that’s a mistake, because there are pockets of the new world—more specifically, pockets of our very own Washington state—that showcase their home just as splendidly as any other place in the world. Perhaps the most impressive in my mind is a small sub-AVA of Walla Walla called the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater. Affectionately known as the Rocks, this is a dried-up riverbed full of baseball-sized rocks. Here, grape vines have to struggle to survive, digging deep past the rocky top layer in search of nutrients. The result is unmistakable to those who know it the siren song of the Rocks: marionberry, olive, smoked meat, and fresh flowers. Briny and meaty, floral and fruity, sanguine and beautiful. Buona Notte’s version is a stunner with a 5% coferment of Roussanne and only 12.5% alcohol. It’s a sing-song version of Syrah that calls to something deep inside lovers of the grape. It’s primal—feral, even—and beautiful.