Capellanía and Zisola included in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2015

Bodega Marqués de Murrieta Capellanía and Marchesi Mazzei’s Zisola Sicilia have been included in the Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2015!

Each year, Wine Spectator editors survey the wines reviewed over the previous 12 months and select their Top 100, based on quality, value, availability and excitement. This annual list honours successful wineries, regions and vintages around the world.

Wine Spectator awarded the Marqués de Murrieta Capellanía 92 points and described it as being full of “Aromatic notes of beeswax, camomile and orange blossom…[with] flavours of baked apple, coconut, ginger and tarragon in this generous white, whose fresh acidity and light tannins keep it structured, with the spicy accents lingering on the finish. A traditional style.”

Zisola scored 90 points and was described as “A lovely, medium bodied red, with a pure beam of ripe cherry and fresh acidity layered with supple tannins and accents of star anise, dried thyme, loamy earth and mocha.”

Contact the Maisons, Marques et Domaines team to find out more about these high-scoring wines.

Wine Detective Wine of the Month: Ramos Pinto Duas Quintas Tinto

Sarah Ahmed has chosen Ramos Pinto Duas Quintas Tinto 2011 (Douro DOC) as her wine of the month on her blog, The Wine Detective!

Ahmed described her reasons for choosing this wine:

“This year the Duas Quintas brand is 25 years old. It was one of the Douro’s pioneering table wines and, as last month’s verticals of both white and red revealed, Vintage Port years were a real stand out.

In the exceptional 2011 vintage, this the junior Tinto is a markedly deep hue with a youthfully pink rim still. A youthfulness which is reinforced by a formidably concentrated, still tightly coiled palate with prodigious ripe tannins to match. This will go some distance. It reveals exotic hints of coriander spice and bergamot dark currant/berry and chocolate palate as it opens up. Great structure – an outstanding wine!”

Contact Christine to find out more.

Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva is one of James Suckling’s Top 20 Wines of 2015

James Suckling has included Marqués de Murrieta Rioja Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial 2007 in his list of “Top 100 Wines In 2015”.

All in all, “JamesSuckling.com reviewed almost 9,000 wines to create this formidable list of the Top 100 Wines in 2015.”

Suckling created this remarkable list by visiting wine regions in France, Italy, Chile, Argentina, Spain, and the United States, travelling for six months of the year in order to visit as many top wineries and producers as possible.

The diligence and skill that went into producing this list is testament to the exceptional quality of the wines that earned a place in Suckling’s Top 100.

Marqués de Murrieta Rioja Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial 2007 was ranked 13th, well within the coveted Top Twenty.

The Ygay Gran Reserva Especial 2007 is made from a blend of Tempranillo and Mazuelo grown in an old single vineyard called La Plana, located at 485 metres altitude within the 300 hectare Ygay estate in the Rioja Alta. This premium quality vineyard is used exclusively for the Ygay Gran Reserva, and only in the most outstanding quality vintages.

Click here to read the full article.

Contact Christine to find out more.

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon is Wine Enthusiast’s Winemaker of the Year

Wine Enthusiast Magazine have named Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon “Winemaker of the Year” in their 2015 Wine Star Awards.

Roger Voss, reporting for Wine Enthusiast, writes that it is Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon’s ability to “catch the moment of Champagne’s revolution” that has made him Wine Enthusiast’s 2015 Winemaker of the Year.

Roger Voss reports that Jean-Baptiste is using modern methods – biodynamic and organic farming, fermenting in wood, picking grapes for ripeness, not acidity – to make a “new-old style of great Champagne”.

Jean-Baptiste has been working with the Rouzaud family, which owns Roederer, since he graduated from oenology school. He worked in the Roederer estates in California, Tasmania and Bordeaux, before returning to his native Reims in 1999.

Lecaillon revolutionized the vineyards by banning herbicides and introducing biodynamic farming to 184 of Roederer’s 590 acres.

He is also responsible for other properties in the Roederer group: the Bordeaux chateaux (including Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande), Roederer Estate in Mendocino, Domaines Ott in Provence and Ramos-Pinto in Portugal’s Douro region.

But, he said to Voss, “I’m not a flying winemaker. Everybody on the spot knows much better than me. I see myself as the team coach.”

Voss sums up his work today: “with ‘many more vintages to go,’ Lecaillon is one of a handful of winemakers changing the way Champagne is produced and how the region sees itself. He’s perhaps the most farsighted, seeing climate change as a major factor in how to approach vines and winemaking. While looking to the future, he has also learned to take from the past.”

Click here to read the full article on Wine Spectator.

Contact Marinel to learn more about the wines of Champagne Louis Roederer.

Duas Quintas 25th Anniversary Vertical Tasting

Award winning wine writer, Sarah Ahmed, has released “Part Two” of her series on the Duas Quintas 25th Anniversary Vertical Tasting.

While “Part One”, published last month on The Wine Detective, focussed on the Duas Quintas whites, “Part Two” concentrates on the reds.

Duas Quintas, of the famous Port House Ramos Pinto, was founded by brothers Adriano and Antonio, and is still run today by their heirs, João Nicolau de Almeida and Jorge Rosas.

Duas Quintas red wines are made from a blend of Touriga Franca, Tinta-Roriz and Touriga Nacional from the Quinta de Ervamoira and the Quinta dos Bons Ares. The Duas Quintas Reserva is a blend of mostly Touriga Nacional with a small amount of Tinta Barroca.

Sarah Ahmed’s article reveals the (sometimes turbulent!) history behind the Duas Quintas reds:

The eagerly anticipated release of the Duas Quintas maiden red was a “very near miss”.

“Chief Winemaker João Nicolau de Almeida told us he was ‘very happy’ with it at bottling. However, the very next day, he received word of disaster. Hot-footing it back to the Douro from Oporto he discovered that, “in something like the coldest year in a century,” the wine had frozen, forcing the corks out!

… Fortunately, when he tasted the wine it was good. In the end, 80,000 bottles were uncorked of which 60,000 were successfully salvaged and released.”

Following an exceptionally successful Vertical Tasting, comparing the vintages from 1990 to 2013, Ahmed concludes:

“As with the whites, this vertical revealed that the best red wine vintages were often made in generally declared Vintage Port years. The other striking revelation of the tasting was the longevity of the Classico – it offers terrific and complex bang for modest buck”.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Contact Christine to find out more about the exceptional reds produced by Duas Quintas.

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