Today’s wine is the ultimate labor of love—not just for its maker, Nadir Cunéaz, who crafts tiny quantities of wine in a single room in his house, but for its importer, Rosenthal Wine Merchant, whose motivation for bringing wines like Cunéaz's across the ocean is certainly not commercial. It’s at least partly sentimental, but it’s also about exposing an authentic, handmade wine of place to a broader audience, to remind us of what’s special about wine in the first place.
SommSelect subscribers recognized this straight away when we offered a Pinot Noir from Cunéaz not long ago—a small quantity of which quickly sold out—and we’re grateful to have received a substantial allocation (relatively speaking, of course) of today’s lip-smacking red blend, “Les Gosses.” Since his first ‘commercial’ releases in 2009, Cunéaz has built up a small collection of vineyards in the Alpine foothills of Valle d’Aosta, in Italy’s northwestern-most corner. Those holdings total all of one hectare. His total annual production is in the hundreds of cases, and now includes the “Les Gosses” (“little children”) bottling, a blend of the hyper-local native varieties Vien de Nus, Petite Rouge, and Vuillermin. Fermented and aged in steel and bursting from the glass like a basket of just-picked berries and mountain wildflowers, this wine is, in the words of Rosenthal’s Clarke Boehling, a reminder of “just how intimate the scale of our beloved beverage can be.” I like that. You will, too, and not just for sentimental reasons—this is the definition of ‘artisanal’ wine and its quality reflects that.
[***PLEASE NOTE: Today’s wine is only available as a pre-offer and will be shipping from our warehouse the week of March 18th.]
The Aosta Valley is a tiny, mountainous region in the Western Alps, with not just Mont Blanc but the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, and Gran Paradiso forming its snow-capped skyline. The vineyards, some of which are among the highest elevation sites in Europe, occupy terraces and slopes along the Dora Baltea River, which eventually runs down into neighboring Piedmont, where it hooks up with the Pò. The wine culture of Valle d’Aosta (Vallée d’Aoste in French), is a melding of French, Italian, and Swiss wine traditions. French (and a local patois that skews heavily French) is the main language here, and as such the labels on bottles can get confusing—typically you’ll see both Italian and French used simultaneously, much as it is on street signs, etc. in the region.
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Nadir Cunéaz and family are headquartered in the subzone of Torrette, in the village of Gressan, where vineyards often climb to 800+ meters, in rocky, sandy soils of both alluvial (i.e. river-borne) and glacial origins. Although there’s ample water in the form of mountain runoff (surging through Roman-era aqueducts that slice through the hills), Mont Blanc provides a “rain shadow” effect not unlike the one Alsace sees from its nearby Vosges range. Summers up here are drier and warmer than you might expect, although the diurnal swings—daytime heat spikes followed by cool nights—are wide. In Gressan, as well as in neighboring villages such as Chambave and Jovencan, Cunéaz naturally farms an assortment of small plots which, like all the best Valle d’Aosta vineyards, have a nearly full-south orientation—as in Lombardy’s Valtellina, the valley here has an east-west orientation, meaning the north bank of the Dora Baltea offers the best sun exposure.
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The 2016 “Les Gosses” is a bright, fragrant, refreshing mountain red with a moderate ruby color with pink highlights along with a perfumed nose of wild berries, black plums, black cherries, heather, leather, violets, and lots of underbrush/forest floor notes. It is medium-bodied, with soft tannins and a freshness that makes you crave food: To drink a red like this in an Alpine rifugio (hut) after a morning of skiing or hiking is a life goal of mine—I’ve done it before but vow to do it again—but for now I’ll let this bottle work its Google Earth-like magic on me and take me right to the source. Decanting is optional here: Simply pull the cork 15 minutes before serving at 60-65 degrees in Burgundy stems with some Alpine-style canederli (bread dumplings), studded with speck (or pancetta) in beef broth or tossed with some butter. Mountain magic right there. Enjoy!
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