The PRIMA Vini VINE Tuesday, September 3rd
The PRIMA Vini VINE Tuesday, September 3rd
Fetch! (photos by Linda)
So, Labor Day has come and gone. Have you put your white clothes away for the winter yet? All I know is that it was a brisk 52 degrees in San Ramon this morning and pushing 90 now, on its way, apparently, to triple digits. If summer is over, it’s certainly news to me! We spent our Labor Day weekend doing what we do best- a whole lotta nothing at the beach with some of our closest friends. Well, not nothing. I tried a few wines I’ve been meaning to audition, one being the Felsner Sankt Laurent from Austria we’ve been selling for $20. Damn, that was good. Another was Le Piane’s ultra-rare white wine from the Alta Piemonte. I didn’t even know Christoph made white wine until Brandon, who discovered it in Italy earlier this summer, made me buy a bottle. With the fig pizzas, pollo al mattone and other wonderful things on the table Saturday night, both were perfect. We have some of the Le Piane on the shelf now and you should buy it before I take the rest. September means the reinvigoration of our tasting and wine bar calendar and we’ve got some really interesting things on tap. Italian wine importer Tommy Cuni will be here on September 13th and he’s decided to focus on two really good wineries from his portfolio- Tua Rita in Tuscany and Damilano in Piedmont. There will be some amazing things open this evening and you should definitely try and come. The following week, we stay eclectic with good friend Emily Kaplan who has promised us a potpourri of domestic and Italian treasures including Hanzell, AXR and the outstanding Barolos of Renzo Seghesio. The week after, we’ve got something a little more formal planned as we offer a wine class on Bordeaux with whites and reds from both sides of the Gironde, including some Classified Growths. This will be an informative as well as fun and seating is limited. We’ll publish the wines next week but I can tell you, this will be $40 well spent! And coming in October? The One. The Only. Jane Ferrari. PRIMA veterans will remember the epic wine dinners this iconic winemaker used to host in the restaurant and I can tell you that the past decade has only sharpened her sarcasm….. Look forward to an excellent night of Down Under wine, wit and wisdom from one of our all-time favorite people.
Happy fall! (Just kidding)
ON THE PRIMA Vini Calendar
- Saturday, September 7th-
PRIMA’s Il Consorzio Wine Clubs Pickup Party
The September selections for both the Super and Il Consorzio di PRIMA wine clubs will be available for sampling! Come and join the fun.
All Friday Night Tastings are $25 at the door-
no RSVPs required and run from 5:30-7 PM
- Friday, September 13th- An Evening In Bella Italia with Tommy Cuni featuring the wines of Damilano & Tua Rita
Two iconic wineries: one from Tuscany, one from Piedmont. What a crazy lineup of wonderful wines! And you’ll love Tommy!
- Friday, September 20th- Around The World With Emily Kaplan featuring the wines of AXR, Renzo Seghesio & Hanzell
Good friend Emily Kaplan will dig deep into her bag of tricks with a deep selection of wines from California and Italy.
- SPECIAL EDITION TASTING
Friday, September 27th- Bordeaux Wine Class with Savannah Nelson of Aquitaine Imports (special event- ticket required)
Discover the wines of Bordeaux with Savannah Nelson. This tutored tasting will cover top wines from up and down the Medoc including some wonderful Classified Growths. This will be very special.
Tickets are $40 if purchased in advance from this link and will be $45 at the door. Stay tuned for details.
https://primavini.com/
- Friday, October 18th- An Evening In Australia- PRIMA Welcomes Back Jane Ferrari and the wines of Jim Barry
La Grande Dame of Australian winemaking and storytelling makes a rare visit to California. This will be a ton of fun. We promise! - Friday, October 25th- An Evening in Piemonte with Giacomo Bologna-Braida
The late Giacomo Bologna did more to promote the Barbera grape to the world than anyone else in his native Piemonte and his daughter Raffaella and son-in-law Norbert continue to carry the flag.
- Saturday, October 26th- PRIMA’s Annual Halloween Bash
Stay tuned for all the details
- Saturday, December 7th- PRIMA’s 37th Annual Champagne Extravaganza
It’s not that far off! Mark your calendars….
ANY TIME WE’RE OPEN
COME SEE WHAT WE’RE POURING IN THE PRIMA Vini WINE BAR!
We change the wines we pour by the glass week frequently so there’s always something interesting and fun open. Or pick a bottle up off our shelf, wine fridge or Enoteca! If it’s under $50 on the shelf, there’s only a $15 corkage and if it’s over $50, hey, we’ll waive it! Or do what the ‘Back to School Moms’ did last week and bring your own group, a bunch of your favorite fixins’ from one of our fine local restaurants and take over the place! And, coming soon, the East Bay’s first Italian Pizza Vending Machine. Whaaaaat?
PRIMA WINE BAR’S BY THE BOTTLE SPECIALS
We’ve chosen a half dozen really special wines you can enjoy at our tasting bar with no additional corkage!
Order a pizza or some takeout to be delivered here and ask us to pop a bottle of one of these half dozen really special wines you can enjoy at our tasting bar with no additional corkage! These are not available by-the-glass so bring a friend or two or come thirsty~
2018 Antica Fratta Franciacorta Saten $45
2023 Spottswoode Sauvignon Blanc, Napa/Sonoma Counties $48
2020 Fattoria Felsina Chianti Classico Riserva $40
2022 A. Rafanelli Estate Zinfandel, Dry Creek Valley $60
2022 Williams Selyem Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley $65
2019 Oddero Barolo Classico $67
PRIMA’s Wines of the Week
I opened a bottle of this over the weekend and it is truly outstanding!
Pinot lovers, take note.
2017 Weingut Felsner Sankt
‘Ried Rohrendorfer Thalland’ Kremstal, Austria
Regular Price $28.00,
Our PRICE $19.99
From somewhere out near wine’s lunatic fringe (and Austria) comes today’s offbeat but really, really delicious offering. Manfred Felsner is one of those guys who- despite its commercialization and globalization- still exist in the wine business. He farms as he’s always farmed and makes wine as he’s always done with little care about anything else- like how his wines might be perceived in a world any further away than the Kremstal hills where he works. He carves a sort of living from an ancient cellar dug deep into a hillside of pure löess. The cellar looks like it always has; damp, covered in multicolored flor and lined with really, really old casks and barrels, one dating back, in fact, to the nineteenth century, though most were constructed right inside the cellar back in the 1960s. Manfred is a throwback character from another age. Even though his vines sit adjacent to the likes of Schloss-Gobelsburg, he has no appetite for fancy packaging, submitting his wines to the press for reviews or even, particularly, bottling and releasing his wines in any sort of organized fashion. An agent of non-change, he even voted against the Kremstal’s new Premier Cru designation even though he farms vineyards like the Thalland that would qualify. That’s where his amazing 2017 Sankt Laurent
Dueling Arneis…
2022 Giovanni Almondo Roero Arneis ‘Bricco delle Ciliegie’
Dueling Arneis Edition-
Either/Or Only $29.99 per bottle
2022 Cornarea Roero Arneis
Dueling Arneis Edition-
Either/Or Only $29.99 per bottle
The scene- two Piemontese winemakers, both from Roero, facing each other in front of PRIMA Vini’s Italian white shelf.
Domenico Almondo glares at Pier Bovone.
Pier glares back.
‘This shelf ain’t big enough for the both of us,’ Pier snarls.
‘You’re derned tooten’,’ Domenico snaps back, menacingly twirling his corkscrew….
‘Whoa! Whoa! Down boys,’ I intercede. ‘You know there can be more than one good Roero Arneis on the shelf, right? Look! We have Deltetto, Correggia, Giacosa, even Cornarea’s rare 2019 Arneis Riserva! Can’t we all get along?’
Neither of these two are, alas, in the mood to play nice. I’m lucky they’re not coming after me! It looks like the duel is on.
Who will come out on top?
YOU get to be the judge. Both of our favorite Roero Arneises are on special today and you are hereby instructed to vote with your pocketbook! Will it be the brighter, crisper Giovanni Almondo Bricco Ciliegie? It’s plenty rich but hits all the high notes too. Or will it be Pier Bovone’s iconic Cornarea from Cornarea hill in Canale? Pier’s is more a serious, brooding sort with a bit of lees contact that adds a bit more depth and an aura of gravitas to the wine. Both are hitting their peak now at two years after the harvest and awaiting your judgement.
The Almondo really needs no introduction here but, in case you are one of the few who have yet to discover the joys of this delicious Roero Arneis, here is a word of explanation. The vineyard is named ‘Hilltop of Cherries’ as this broad, quite steep hill was, until some eighty or ninety years ago, an expansive cherry orchard in Vezza d’Alba, in the heart of the Roero region of Piemonte. The vines that now dot the hill were planted in the nineteen eighties, one of the first new plantings of Arneis since the war, and the vine rows are still punctuated by some really old, really gnarly cherry trees. To see this patchwork of vineyards and trees in the spring, when the cherries are in bloom, makes the trip out to this distant part of the Roero, across the Tanaro River from Alba, an absolute pilgrimage. The genial but driven Domenico Almondo, whose father Giovanni planted Bricco Ciliegie, is one of Arneis’ best-known champions now, producing around 55,000 bottles total of two distinctly different cuvees. Besides a simpler, all stainless-fermented cuvee, there is the wine sourced from the Bricco. Domenico ferments most of the fruit in steel under gas where it sits on its lees for six months, while a second portion is fermented in new barriques that add richness, texture and spice to the finished wine. Bottling the finished cuvee under pressure typically gives the wine a bit of bubbly prickle when it’s young but, after a few months, that gives way to Arneis’ gorgeous, very focused green almond-y, Granny Smith apple and wintergreen-like flavors. The secret is in the texture. The barrel fermented portion adds weight and palate appeal to a grape than can be very delicate, even brittle. Lovely and a perennial PRIMA Vini favorite.
The discovery of Cornarea was the product of several years hard research in the Langhe- a search for an Arneis we could recommend to our customers that the locals there themselves loved. I looked at what winemakers ordered when I ate out with them, what local sommeliers recommended, and what bottles I saw in people’s fridges. The answer was consistently Cornarea. And Cornarea, once we started putting it on our own shelves, has proven every bit as popular here as it is there. The property, I found out over a lunch in Alba with owner Pier Bovone, was the first in Roero dedicated solely to the production of Arneis and, after the Currados then at Vietti, who have been making Arneis for nearly fifty years, Cornarea has been bottling it the longest. The Rapetti family first planted their vines high on the mineral-rich Cornarea hill, near Canale, in the heart of the Roero, back in 1975- a time when others were busy ripping their Arneis vines out and scrambling to plant other, far more productive varieties. And now, at over 45 years old, they are among the oldest in the entire area. These old vines produce Arneis with great intensity of fruit and plenty of the variety’s hallmark almondy, white pepper and fennel frond flavors. A little weightier and more textural than most versions of Arneis we see, this is Arneis for those who love a little more oomph.
Let’s show these two would-be cowboys there’s a new sheriff in town and that it’s YOU! Take ‘em both home and see which of these excellent wines you like better- or, if you’re me, you’ll love them the same!
2015 Fratelli Abrigo Barolo Ravera
Regular Price $68, Last 29 Bottles $44.99
with shipping included on 4 bottles or more
No. That’s not a typo. This is a nine-year-old bottle of Barolo from the famous Ravera MGA in Novello for $45! As I like to say, better to be lucky than smart, and, in this case, I was a little bit of both. The importer was looking to move on to make room for the 2020 and happened to call me first. Lucky me! The smart part is knowing that this very small producer is on to something great, has great vines and also the attention of a lot of my Barolo-loving friends in Europe. And smart was grabbing it all while the getting was good. The Abrigo family aren’t well-known outside of Piedmont and northern Europe because their tiny cellar is not in the Barolo DOCG production zone per se, rather it’s up in the hills behind the Castello di Grinzane-Cavour in Diano d’Alba and, as such, they’re more famous for their Dolcetto. They only purchased their parcel of Ravera back in 2013, so even though the vines are mature (plantings in 1960, 1980 and 2003), the 2015 Barolo Ravera we have here is only in its third-ever vintage- hardly enough to earn any sort of far-flung reputation. Their vines are in a great spot, though, along a high spread that runs lengthwise across the vineyard, bordering the Scavinos’ parcel to the west. The cellar is very traditional: the 2015 underwent a maceration of 35 days before being aged for 18 months in large botti casks, better to not gild the lily with new wood or other cellar tricks. Originally quite powerful- a wine that reflected the warm harvest and Ravera’s own penchant for robustness- time has worked its magic and its youthful fruitiness has given way to more woodsy balsam and cinnamon notes with black licorice and dried floral notes now waxing ascendant. Perfectly ready to drink, it’s a complete Barolo that shows its pedigree in its complex mélange of plummy, cherry fruit, complex aromatics and lovely, savory finish. Only 3000 bottles were produced. That’s bottles
not cases…..and I have 30 of them at what I think is a pretty unbeatable price!