This promises to be one of the most glorious spring weekends we’ve had this year and a huge change from the previous month or so of gray, wet and depressing. So let’s party! Here are some wines that will liven up any gathering even if it’s a gathering of just you! Get the case price on any 12 bottles from the list—heck, you should get a case of the Scavino Rosso all on its own. We’re so happy to have not only Scavino back in the house but also a new vintage of Li Veli’s Susumaniello Rosato from Puglia. Hard to pronounce, yes, but so very good to drink. And, just because steaks on the grill are in the offing, how about Jordan’s seminal Cabernet at our best price of the year? 

Shipping will be included on any 12 bottles or more from this offer, mixed and matched.

And, here’s some news: All this will be available for pickup in DANVILLE later next week. You’ll be among the first to know the exact date and see the new place at 77 Front St. Thanks for your patience and support!

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2023 Brokenwood Semillon, Hunter Valley
Friday Follies Special $22.99, CASE PRICE $20.69

Just because Australia hasn’t been on the lips of every American wine lover the past decade or so, doesn’t mean that the winemaking Down Under is any less compelling than it was during its heyday selling wine in the States. In fact, if anything, it’s become even better, as the scores of wannabes that entered the market and effectively killed it, have all fled the scene, leaving behind only the most dedicated and passionate producers.
 
Brokenwood is, to those who remember their wines from the old days, one of the Hunter Valley’s most venerable estates and one of a precious few wineries in the world that specialize in making outstanding Semillon as well as Shiraz. Longtime winemaker Iain Riggs made the first vintage of Semillon at Brokenwood in the early 1980s and still continues to make three really different expressions of the grape including the world-famous ILR Reserve, a wine that can age gracefully for many decades.

But, for under $23, consider Iain’s 2024 Hunter Valley Sem, a thoroughly lovely, broad-palated white that cuts the variety’s rich Kadota fig, green apple, preserved lemon and florals in fine relief. Mouth-filling yet zingy, the fresh and lovely Semillon loves goat cheese, citrus and herb salads, smoked or grilled salmon and roast chicken dishes and drinks very, very well all on its own as an apéritif or just with a handful of nuts and dried fruit. And at under 12% ABV, its flexibility and food-friendliness makes it a supreme house white.

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2025 Masseria Li Veli Susumaniello ‘Askos’ Rosato, Salento IGT
Friday Follies Sale $31.99, CASE PRICE $28.79

It’s here! Hot off the bottling line, this is our mostest-favoritest rosé of the new vintage so far. Sure, you can be forgiven for never having heard of the Susumaniello grape. In order to, you’d, most likely, either be studying for a sommelier exam or have had opportunity to eat and drink in coastal Puglia, along Italy’s Adriatic Coast. Even if you had traveled there, you might have been more likely tempted to order something marginally more familiar (or easier to pronounce), like Puglia’s much better known Negroamaro or Primitivo instead, to go with your orecchiette pasta. Susumaniello (sue-sue-mahn-ee-‘ello), though, is worth the inevitable trip of the tongue when you try to order it. It is, in our opinion, the very essence of this sunny, wind-swept cerulean blue coast in a bottle.

Grown only at a handful of family-run masseria around the white-washed hill town of Brindisi, this pungent, fragrant red variety is typically either blended with Negroamaro into various Salento blends or turned, by some intrepid producers, into a wonderfully rustic red where its deep color and incredible aromatics can shine. A late ripener, Susumaniello, when it’s harvested at the proper time in the season, can also make a truly delicious, distinctive dry pink wine that not only looks fabulous with the sunshine streaming through a cold glass, it seems born to accompany the wonderful pastas, spicy fish dishes and smoky, grilled meats one finds in this incredible region. I first discovered Li Veli’s wonderful Askos Susumaniello Rosato at a small trattoria overlooking the impossibly blue Adriatic in the stunning hilltop town of Ostuni. I know. I could have been drinking most anything and it would have tasted terrific in that town, but, even so, I remained objective enough to determine that this was going to be a tremendous bottle of wine no matter how and where you consumed it.

Dry and exceedingly minerally, there is great substance to go along with its fabulous aromatics and persistent flavors. Just think about walking through one of the many impossibly colorful gardens that surround the whitewashed walls of Ostuni and you get the idea—lemon, blood orange, all kinds of flowers, maybe a squeeze of some other sunny fruit? Something tropical perhaps? Wow. Not going to be anywhere overlooking the Adriatic with a perfectly grilled San Pietro bathed in a fragrant chili brodo in front of you this summer? Do the next best thing and chill a bottle of this and make your own magical food and wine pairing in your own backyard heaven on earth! And it’s really, really good all on its own, too!

**** Arugulas, *** Hammocks on PRIMA’s Scientific Rosé Scale.

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2021 Jordan Cabernet Sauvignon, Alexander Valley
Regular Price $72.00, Friday Follies Special $52.99

It seems like the more new ultra-high priced, ultra-trendy Cabernets come onto the market, the more I appreciate the generation of great wines that created the category in the first place- affordable classics of the genre that combine old school class with good ol’ California sunshine. Is there any better representative of this old guard than Jordan? Started in the mid-1970s by Tom Jordan to mimic the Bordeaux chateaux he so loved, the Jordan family has stuck to their guns ever since, creating each vintage a single red wine (and an excellent Chardonnay) that remains in their cellar until truly ready for release and, once it is out there in the world, it only improves for decades longer. I remember my late father-in-law’s last bottle of 1977 we drank in 1998 or 1999 that just blew us away! And while other wineries are already trotting out their 2022 Cabernets, we still get to enjoy Jordan’s 2019!

A blend of 80% Cab and the rest Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec, it’s as polished and complex as any Classified Growth Bordeaux yet as true to its Alexander Valley, Sonoma County roots as can be. Now well on its way to maturity, the 2021 Jordan Alexander Valley Cab is gorgeous: glossy with black-tinged fruit, Kirsch, olive tapenade, blackberry bramble and tarry mineral. Not overdone or over-oaked, it’s seamless, silky and very complex- about as different as you can imagine from some its competition from over the other side of the mountain, if you know what I mean. Enjoy its understated elegance now or over the next two decades and take yourself back to a time when California Cabernet was aspirational and exciting rather than jaded and overblown….. The price, by the way, is an end of the month special from Jordan to you! I say take advantage of it while you can!

James Suckling, 94 points: The nose is slightly restrained and intriguing, with graphite, dried herbs, black cherries, red cherries, anise and stones. The palate is incredibly silky and complete, with rose petals in the finish. A very pretty cabernet that is wonderful now and will reveal more with time. Drink or hold.