2023 Cvne - Viura Rioja Monopole BLANCO

I went out of my way last year to visit this beautiful property located right in the heart of the Entre-Deux-Mers between the Garonne and the Dordogne, not far from Saint-Émilion. A very beautiful terroir, and their Merlot based red is easy-drinking yet has some very fine complexity. WSJ columnist Lettie Teague wrote up the Chateau after we sent her a bottle to try for one of her columns. Perfect burger on the grill wine! -Phil

Intense, very aromatic bouquet with a mixture of floral hints of jasmine, hawthorn and lemon blossom. Full of fruit on the palate – mandarin, pear, lychee, pineapple… Lots of body and length with this wine which fills the palate. Wonderful combination of sweetness and liveliness. A very successful vintage.

The iconic Ameztoi Rubentis rosé is a field blend of the local, indigenous hondarrabi zuri and hondarrabi beltza varieties, grown on traditional trellises high on the slopes rising above Getaria, an ancient Basque fishing village on Spain’s rugged northern coast. In the 2000s, when almost all of the other local wineries gave up on the indigenous red hondarrabi beltza vines, the Ameztoi family retained their old vines, in turn, lending their rosé such exceptional vibrancy and complexity.

Rubentis, the region’s first pink wine, was inspired by the historic claret style wines which were once produced in the area long before the current global craze made rosé famous. The backbone of the blend comes from an old hondarrabi beltza vineyard planted in 1840, preserved by the Ameztoi family for generations. Ameztoi Rubentis is an authentic original, a wine that is often imitated but never replicated.

Vinification – After handpicking, hondarrabi zuri and hondarrabi beltza grapes are combined for destemming; the white and red grapes are worked together, not separately. After direct pressing, fermentation with indigenous yeast occurs in stainless steel at 15°C for 20 days. Towards the end of alcoholic fermentation, the tanks are closed to preserve the naturally occurring carbonation, which is the preferred style of Getaria. The tanks are then kept chilled to near freezing before bottling, which preserves the wine’s delicate, effervescent character and signature mousse. These attributes are unattainable through shortcuts such as force-carbonation, which Ameztoi has never employed.

-Importer notes