January

Happy New Year!

2024 was quite the year for us at UnWined with many new endeavours established to ensure that we are doing everything we can to go above and beyond what is expected of the neighborhood wine shop.  In February we held our first Wine Workshop!  We are nearing the end of the first year worth of material, with some exciting changes for our second year coming soon.  January 31st will be the final lesson of the Structure & Flavour curriculum, where we’ll cover Herbal & Herbaceous aromas.  Grab tickets with the link below!

In June we celebrated ten years of serving Three Sisters Mountain Village with a patio party sponsored by our friends at Jessica Stoner Real Estate.  We had live music from  The Brand New Companions, food from The Market Bistro, and drinks from Wild Life Distillery, Canmore Brewing, and Univins Imports.  Fingers crossed we don’t have to wait a decade until we throw a party like this again!

On a more day to day basis we’ve launched a New Products Newsletter to better keep you in the know about what is changing on our shelves.  We’ve also built The Last Chance Shelf to better rotate through old wines to new, making sure that our shelves stay as fresh as possible.  The beer fridge saw a solid refresh with signage added for the different shelves which allowed us to organize and grow certain sections like

non-alcoholics, coolers, premiums, and cheap & cheerful offerings.

We would like to thank all of you for your continued support, allowing us to do what we are passionate about in our beautiful community.  Cheers to you and we look forward to serving you for all your libation needs in the year ahead.  

I’ve done a lot of weird things in the past few months of the wine club, from volcanic soil obsessions to ruby port.  For this month were going back to the classics, with six old world wines to restock your wine rack after the holidays!

Boeckel

Pinot Gris

Midelberg, Alsace

I am often asked how I make the decision of what wines come into the store, and I’ll do my best to explain my processes in some of these entries.  In this instance it came from my searching for wines for the Wine Workshop.  This one was from the lesson on Citrus & Green fruit.  This wine grabbed my attention but ultimately I decided to go with a Pinot Blanc that would display sightly lower acidity and more clear citrus notes.  Minerality and texture are the characteristics of this wine.  There is a richness to the palate typical of Alsace Pinot Gris, no doubt due to their long autumns allowing grapes to raise in sugar, producing a fuller wine with 5-6g of sugar remaining at 13.5% ABV.  Serve this one just a touch away from fridge cold and drink it slow to explore all the complexity of this.

Tenuta Monteti

Rose

Tuscany, Italy

This entry is as simple as the fact that I got to taste this wine!  Jenn brought Javier Pedrazzini in from Tenuta Monteti to taste some wines.  If she didn’t take him out of the store too I probably would have picked his brain until past closing.  At one point he had dropped the word “phenolic” in conversation and I knew then that he and I were fully on the same wavelength as far as wine goes.  He further explained how the winery is entirely gravity operated, allowing for juice and wine to flow without any pumping to reduce oxidative effects and improve the wines’ ability to show terroir.

We’re aiming to get one of their red wines in soon but for now I’ll introduce you to the Rose, made from an unusual blend of 70% Merlot, 20% Cab Franc, and 10% Mourvedre.  This is another great textured wine with a hint of spice coming from a touch of new barrique aging.  A long, cool ferment has kept the fruity flavours subtle with strawberry, tart cherry, and cranberry showing.  There is a faint tannic element here, most likely from the Mourvedre component.  A seriously cool Rose that defies the idea that these are only fit for patio weather.

Marques de Riscal

Arienzo Crianza

Rioja Alavesa, Spain

This entry is brought to you by 2024 World’s Best Vineyard event, which placed Spain’s Marques de Riscal in first place!  It’s pretty easy to see that visually the property is stunning with it’s avant-garde architecture and wine spa, but this is more than face value, the wines speak for themselves.  This offering is a fairly straightforward table wine made from Tempranillo and Graciano.  Calling it table wine is by no means a disparaging remark, I often use it as a positive term for wines that can be opened any time of day, any time of year, with any meal.  17 Months in American oak have given this wine notes of vanilla and coconut, but the fruit is still lively with bright cherry and raspberry supported by firm acidity.

Via Caritatis

Pax

Ventoux, France

Okay so this one.  I sometimes wonder if I fall under some possession cast by the god of wine himself, Dionysus.  I imagine my eyes turning gold, horns sprouting from my temples, and speaking in tongues, all while rifling through webpages and textbooks in search of some obscure bit of wine knowledge.  Once I come to I remember nothing of my possession and am simply faced with a new entry on my “Wines to Order” sheet: Via Caritatis Pax Ventoux Rouge.  

In short, I have no memory of what drew me to this wine.  

But I trust myself, so here we are.  

I opened this last night and had a couple glasses.  I was surprised to see it was a 2017!  This has got some years behind it and it’s showing nicely.  The tannins while still firm have melded really nicely into this, and at 14.5% this is wine with a big, structured body.  The fruit profile has mellowed together as a mix of red and black plum primarily.  Where this wine really shows is high in the nose and mid palate where spices, meatiness, and leather come through loudly.  I kept getting sensations of things like coriander, pepper, and smoked meat that made me envision a pastrami on rye, which would probably be a fantastic pairing with this.

Conde Vimioso

Sommelier Edition Tinto

Tejo, Portugal

This wine is a case where once I’ve been won over by tasting one in a family I’m much more likely to order it’s siblings with confidence.  For quite a while we carried the Vinho Branco from Falua’s Conde Vimioso lineup.  That white was excellent and I had a few bottles rotate through my shelf at home.  These “Sommelier Edition” wines were crafted in partnership with sommeliers making them versatile food pairing wines.   I expect nothing less of this red.  Blended from Aragonez (Tempranillo), Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Syrah, I expect this wine to show an intensity of fruit that will make it best served with things like bbq or braised meat.  One year in French oak leads me to believe that the tannins will have just had the edge taken off to support the fruit profile, rather than overshadow it completely.  

Lets hope I’m right, but hey, Portuguese wines haven’t let me down yet.

Ricasoli

Rocca Guicciarda

Chianti Classico Riserva, Italy

This Chianti is another instance of simply getting to sit down with an importer and try before I buy.  Now when we do these sit downs we’re tasting anywhere from one to six or seven wines, so how do I keep track of them all?  Well, I don’t even try to keep it all in my head, so I obsessively take and catalogue notes.  I probably have a few hundred entries now.  These are what I use for reference when typing up these descriptions but they usually require some cleaning up. Here are the notes for this one, raw and unedited.

*Ricasoli Chi Cla Ris - Farmyard, mushroom, red plum, baked red plum, red cherry, licorice, fennel!  Roasted red pepper, faint smoke, vanilla (-), smooth tannins, dry, citrus peel.