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| Domaine de Sulauze “Super Modeste” Sparkling VDF (2023) Domaine des Ronces Crémant du Jura blanc NV Bonnigal-Bodet Crémant de Loire “Brut d’Enfer” Rosé NV Domaine de l’Austral “Octopus Blanc” Saumur 2023 Fornelli “Clos Rouge” Corsica 2024 Bonnigal-Bodet “Diabolicôt” Touraine 2022 |
| Please join us this week in welcoming our old friend, wine importer Nadia Dmytriw, to the shop for a small sample of the treasures her portfolio has to offer. I’ve known Nadia for many years—a shocking number of years, when I think about it—and first got to know her when she’d sometimes frequent my old wine bar, dimly lit moments that feel like a life and a lifetime ago. We bonded in 2009 during an insanely cold winter visit to the Loire Valley natural wine fest, “La Dive Bouteille,” then housed in the depths of the frigid medieval castle, Château de Brézé, where over the course of two days, we’d periodically grin/grimace at each other as if to verify that neither of us had yet frozen solid. Over the years, I have appreciated watching her import book grow with commitment and thought. Rather than “damn, we need a Sancerre grower, any grower at all might do,” she bides her time and finds just the right grower, as committed and as thoughtful as she.
She imports a deep selection of truly fabulous, organic Champagne (she once accidentally spilled an entire glass of one over my pants when we were dining at Night Market, eliciting a shriek from me that resembled Francis Bouvier on crack; I will never let her forget this—I see that I’m narrating Nadia with a chilling vibe, but she’s actually a warm and gregarious person), which we’ll stock as the holidays approach, but also has a fine selection of fizz from elsewhere in France, and so I thought it fitting to have her pour three very different bubbly wines from three very different parts of France. We’re starting with “Super Modeste,” a pét-nat from her Provence grower, Domaine de Sulauze, whose wines always seem to find a home on our shelves. It’s a blend of a neutral, high-acid grape ugni blanc, and the not-neutral grape vermentino (which some in Provence refer to as “rolle,” a fact that is incredibly dull to repeat, but that’s how I rolle). Dry, crisp, refreshing, and a little salty. Next, two different crémants: one from the Jura, bone dry and leesy; the other, equally dry, from the Loire, a rosé made from old vines, pineau d’aunis, and cabernet franc. Then a transcendent dry chenin blanc, with a beautiful balance of texture and knife-edge minerality, again from old vines, aged in old barrel. To finish, two reds: one, from the Loire, all côt (aka malbec), whole-cluster fermented to help tame some but not all of the tannins; the other from Corsica and made from the local niellucciu variety, which is genetically related to sangiovese, but tastes nothing like it. |