La Rioja Alta

A break from the whites this week. Three classics from La Rioja Alta are on the table.

The house has made wine in Haro’s Station Quarter since 1890: American oak barrels from their own cooperage, long aging underground, nothing released until it is ready. This is one of the magnificent parts of Spanish wine culture. You are not buying a young wine to cellar. The bodega has done the hard work for us, and the bottle arrives ready for the table.

The Viña Ardanza 2019 ($46): Tempranillo with Garnacha, red cherry, dried orange, sweet spice. The Viña Arana Gran Reserva 2017 ($60): savory and fine, tobacco leaf and balsamic. The Gran Reserva 904 2016 ($95): the flagship, named for 1904, silk texture, dried cherry, cedar, a long quiet finish.

Château de Tracy

Pouilly-Fumé has two faces, and Château de Tracy farms both. Flint and clay around the château give the struck-flint smoke the appellation is named for. The Vilmoy parcel to the north sits on Kimmeridgian limestone, the fossil-shell seam that runs to Chablis, and brings citrus and lift. Thirty-three hectares, one family, generations of farming.

This Saturday, four of their wines are on the table.

The 2025 estate Pouilly-Fumé ($36): white peach, grapefruit, a saline finish. The Haute Densité 2023 ($62), a single hectare at more than double the usual planting density, concentrated and built to age. From Tracy & Cie, a Menetou-Salon blanc ($27), citrus and white flowers, and a Loire Pinot Noir ($20), light and bright.

Roagna

We visited Luca Roagna’s cellar at Pira in 2023 and secured an allocation from this benchmark Piedmont estate. The vineyard is wild, healthy, and vibrant, old vines with grass growing tall between the rows, tucked into a quiet hamlet above Castiglione Falletto. The winery is dug into the hill, understated and built for exactly one thing: giving Luca complete freedom to make wine and age it until it is ready.

The wines are ethereal, balanced, and carry a subtle power. Time in the cellar is always warranted, never required.

Four wines on the table this Saturday: Langhe Rosso 2020 ($45), from the younger vines of the family’s crus. Langhe Bianco Solea 2021 ($77), Chardonnay with a share of Riesling. Barolo Pira 2018 ($120), from the vines we walked. Barbaresco Gallina 2019 ($140), from the Gallina cru in Neive.

Hubert and Laurent Lignier

Hubert Lignier is one of the benchmarks of Morey-Saint-Denis, with grand cru holdings in Clos de la Roche, Charmes-Chambertin and Griotte-Chambertin. The domaine sat on our watchlist for years before a tiny allocation of the 2021 vintage landed, and after our visit to the cellar last September, that allocation has grown. This Saturday we pour four wines side by side: the Saint-Romain Blanc La Combe Bazin 2024 ($60) and the Monthelie 1er Cru 2023 ($75), from new vineyards Laurent Lignier farms alongside friends among Burgundy’s top growers, plus Symbiose 2023 ($45), the Bourgogne Pinot Noir made with the same care as the crus, and the Morey-Saint-Denis 2023 ($85), the house signature from parcels beside the family home. A small parcel of Charmes-Chambertin arrived as well. 

Domaine Matrot

This Saturday we’re pouring three 2023s from Domaine Matrot, a family estate in Meursault since 1835. Sisters Adèle and Elsa Matrot took over from their father Thierry with the 2016 vintage. The vineyards have been certified organic since 2000, and the wines ferment on native yeasts.

The lineup runs from the Bourgogne Chardonnay ($35), through the rare Meursault Rouge ($52), to the Meursault ‘Les Chevalières’ ($88), tense and mineral, from a stony parcel at the northern end of the village. If you want to understand why Meursault matters, that’s the bottle.

Three wines, one family, a clear view of how the village shifts from parcel to parcel. Join us at the shop this Saturday.

Gai’a

Santorini is the spiritual home of Assyrtiko, volcanic soil, and ungrafted bush vines. The wines are aromatic, textured, and complex. Gai’a is arguably one of the best producers on the island and in Nemea, where Assyrtiko also flourishes.

Leon Karatsalos and Yiannis Paraskevopoulos founded the estate in 1994 with two cellars: one on a Santorini beach, one in the Nemea village of Koutsi. This Saturday we’re pouring 4 wines across both. The Monograph Agiorgitiko 2024 ($25) is bright Peloponnese red fruit, easy and generous. The Monograph Assyrtiko 2024 ($30) brings citrus and drive from mainland vineyards. The Assyrtiko Wild Ferment 2023 ($48) comes from the Pyrgos vineyard on Santorini, fermented on native yeasts and aged in oak, acacia, and amphora. The Thalassitis 2024 ($55) is the flagship: ungrafted vines nearing 80 years old, unoaked, saline, precise.

Cristom

The most exciting thing happening in Oregon right now might be Chardonnay. With the Cristom new arrivals in our warehouse, Saturday is a chance to look closer at the estate: its fresh direction under new leadership, and a glimpse of the past through a perfectly aged single vineyard.

Eola-Amity Hills Chardonnay 2024: white peach and citrus, a flinty, saline edge, eleven months on the lees then a stretch in steel to keep it taut. Cool climate Chardonnay with real tension.

Mt. Jefferson Cuvée Pinot Noir 2024, the estate’s calling card red. Cranberry, wild raspberry, forest floor. Bright and lifted.

Jessie Vineyard Pinot Noir 2019. Single vineyard, steep, facing east, six years in the bottle. The one that shows what these wines do with time: concentration and complexity, dried cherry and violets, forest floor, a savoury depth the young bottles only hint at.

Three glasses, one estate. Saturday, in store.

Domaine du Bouchot

This Saturday’s tasting is a single producer shown three ways. Antoine Gouffier farms Domaine du Bouchot on the hill above Saint-Andelain, where his family, the Minets, hold neighbouring vines. He makes three Pouilly-Fumés, all Sauvignon Blanc, each grown on a different soil.

Caillottes 2022 comes off pure white limestone: bright, flinty, saline and linear. Terres Blanches 2024 sits on Kimmeridgian marl packed with fossilised oyster shells, all lemon blossom, white peach and a long saline finish. MCMLV 2023 is the flagship, from vines planted in 1955, with a touch of skin contact for grip. Grapefruit, smoky flint, crushed stone, a tense bone-dry close.

Same grape, same hands, three stories in the glass. Come taste them side by side.

Fefiñanes

This Saturday’s tasting puts one grape side by side with itself. Two Albariños from Fefiñanes, the same family and the same square in Cambados, at two ends of their lives.

The 2024 Albariño de Fefiñanes spends six months in stainless steel, no oak. It’s all sea air and citrus blossoms, lime zest and white peach, with a saline snap off the Galician coast. Young, crisp, bright.

The III Año 2022 takes its name from its third year. Roughly two and a half years in tank, long on the lees with regular stirring before bottling. The result is round and textured, almonds and ripe orchard fruit, a savoury, briny depth held upright by bright acidity. The grape built to age.

Same vines, same hands, two different wines. 

Muga

Something light for the weekend. This Saturday we lean into the fresher end of Muga, the wines built for a warm afternoon, with a special look at their 2021 Selección Especial for anyone who wants to go deeper.

The Blanco 2024 leads the way: Viura and Malvasía fermented in French oak, white peach and lemon, a saline edge, fresh. The Rosado 2025 follows, a saignée of Garnacha, Viura and Tempranillo from named plots, pale, dry, all strawberry and citrus. Then the new Crianza, El Andén de la Estación 2023, juicy and open with red cherry and black pepper, our wine of the week and tremendous value.

And the special pour: the Selección Especial 2021, made only in the best vintages from Muga’s oldest hillside plots, 26 months in oak made on the property. Tim Atkin gave it 96 points. Blackberry, cedar, graphite, polished, and long.

Blanco $22. Rosado $20. El Andén $21. Selección Especial $45. See you on Saturday.

Pazo Señorans

Three Albariños from one family this Saturday.

The 2024 Albariño is the entry: taut, bright, Atlantic. Green apple, lime pith, wet granite.

The Colección 2022 is the step up. Same Val do Salnés fruit, longer on the lees, more weight in the glass. White peach, stone fruit, salinity running through.

The Selección de Añada 2015 closes it out. From the Los Bancales single vineyard, 45-year-old vines, thirty-plus months on the lees in tank before release. Ten years on, it shows lemon peel, graphite, sea shells, a waxy texture, the acidity still vibrating.

Marisol Bueno planted the estate in 1989. Her daughter Vicky makes the wines now. Saturday is the chance to taste the family’s hand across a decade.

G4 Tequila

This Saturday is a different kind of tasting.

The Camarena family has been making tequila in the Jalisco highlands for generations. At El Pandillo, Felipe’s distillery, the water for G4 comes from rain collected on the property. The agave is farmed by hand on family land. The result is one of the most respected bottles of tequila in the world, made the way the family has always made it.

Markus Molitor

Molitor took over his family’s Mosel estate at twenty, in 1984. Forty years later, he farms some of the river’s greatest vineyards on blue Devonian slate, with old vines and parcels his family has worked for generations.

His capsule code makes this easy. White for dry. Green for off-dry. Gold for the noble sweet wines that built the Mosel’s name. You read the bottle before you pour the glass.

The flight: Haus Klosterberg Riesling 2023 (white cap, dry, green apple and wet slate), Wehlener Sonnenuhr Spätlese 2022 (gold cap, from the 1842 Sundial vineyard), Zeltinger Deutschherrenberg Auslese 2005 (gold cap, twenty years in bottle), and Haus Klosterberg Pinot Noir 2022 (Mosel Pinot, the surprise of the flight).

Riesling at every level of ripeness, plus some of the best Pinot Noir we have tasted at this price point.

Elio Altare

Elio Altare is one of Barolo’s most important living figures. A founding member of the Barolo Boys, the group of producers who revolutionized the appellation in the 1980s, his estate in La Morra has been producing some of Piedmont’s most compelling wines for four decades.

Our allocation is small, which means this Saturday tasting is a genuine opportunity.

We’re pouring three wines: Barbera d’Alba 2024, approachable and precise. Barolo 2021, classic Altare style with all the tar, roses, and red fruit the appellation is famous for. And the Barolo Cerretta Vigna Bricco Riserva 2019, a single-vineyard Riserva from one of La Morra’s finest sites.

Clos Cibonne

Most Provence rosé is made to be drunk young, pale, and fast. Clos Cibonne has been ignoring that ethos since 1930.

Tucked onto the Côte des Maures near Toulon, Cibonne is one of Provence’s oldest and most singular estates. Their obsession is Tibouren, a grape so rare it’s almost exclusive to this corner of the appellation. Aged in old barrels rather than chased for freshness and color, these are wines built for people who think Provence can do more.

Classic Sancerre: The wines of Lucien Crochet

If Sancerre has a spiritual home, it’s the village of Bué. And if Bué has a benchmark producer who delivers both volume and quality, it’s Lucien Crochet.

Gilles Crochet, who now runs the domaine his father built, is one of the most quietly respected figures in the Loire. No noise, no marketing machine. Just exceptional farming on some of Sancerre’s best soils and wines that consistently outperform their price point.

This Saturday we’re pouring all three colors. Le Chene Marchand 2020, their flagship white from a single flint-rich lieu-dit in Bué. Sancerre Rouge 2022, a reminder that Pinot Noir from this appellation deserves far more attention than it gets. And Sancerre Rosé 2023, with beautiful poise and minerality.

Niepoort Wines

There are winemakers who make great wine. Then there’s Dirk Niepoort, who makes great wine across all borders while sharing his passion with everyone that meets him.

Fifth-generation Dutch-Portuguese, based in the Douro Valley, Dirk has spent decades proving that Portugal makes some of the world’s most compelling wines across every style. Opinionated, generous, and genuinely one of the most engaging people in wine.

This Saturday, we’re pouring four wines that tell his story across styles and decades. Tiara 2021 is a white that sings with beautiful tension and weight. Coche 2016, Dirk’s tribute to Coche Dury and a white wine that just gets better with age. Vertente 2020, the wine that turned so many of us onto the magic of Douro reds. And Niepoort LBV 2019, because no Dirk tasting ends without Port.

Easter Wines

This Saturday at Two Rock we’ll be pouring wines we think belong on your Easter table.

Whether it’s lamb, ham, or a big seafood spread, stop by and taste a few bottles that’ll work with whatever you’ve got planned. We’ll point you in the right direction.

Thierry Germain

Thierry Germain left Bordeaux for the Loire in 1991 and nobody took him seriously. Then he apprenticed under Charly Foucault of Clos Rougeard, converted his estate to biodynamics, and started plowing with draft horses. Three decades later, he’s one of the most influential winemakers in France.

His wines are all energy. Violets, red fruit, fine chalky tannins, and a pulse that runs through every bottle. Tuffeau limestone does the heavy lifting. Thierry stays out of the way. Minimal sulfur, zero manipulation.

This Saturday we’re pouring several Roches Neuves bottlings side by side. A chance to see what one of France’s great producers can do across different wines, all from the same philosophy: let the vineyard talk.

Saint Julien

Saint Julien is the smallest of Bordeaux’s major appellations and arguably the most consistent. Over 80% of the appellation is classified growth. Estate after estate producing polished, structured reds that split the difference between the power of Pauillac and the elegance of Margaux.

What makes these wines click in Bermuda is the balance. Structure and polish with a roundness that makes them naturals with red meat, lamb, or a rich fish stew on a cooler evening.

This Saturday we’re pouring several Saint Julien producers side by side. A rare chance to taste the appellation across different estates and see why this little stretch of the Left Bank keeps showing up on every serious Bordeaux lover’s table.

Domaine Faiveley

Domaine Faiveley has been farming Burgundy since 1825. Seven generations, more monopole vineyards than any other domaine in the region, and wines built to age with real purpose.

This Saturday we’re tasting two wines from opposite ends of Burgundy. The Mercurey 1er Cru Clos du Roy comes from a walled vineyard in the Côte Chalonnaise that once belonged to the Kings of France. Dark berries, spice, a little smoke, and a fineness of tannin that outperforms its price point.

Then north to the Côte de Beaune for Corton Clos des Cortons Grand Cru. A Faiveley monopole since 1874 and one of only two Grands Crus to carry the producer’s name. Blackberries, cassis, cinnamon, blood orange, and structure for days.

Matthiasson

Steve Matthiasson is one of Napa’s most respected viticulturists and his own label shows exactly why. Precise farming, restrained winemaking, wines that don’t need to shout.

This Saturday we’re pouring three bottles side by side. The Linda Vista Chardonnay 2023 is all white peach, wet stone, and clean acidity. Then two 2022 Cabernets: the Napa Valley bottling, sourced from organic sites across the valley and built on balance; and the Phoenix Vineyard, from the block behind Steve and Jill’s home, with more depth and intimacy.

Claudie Jobard

Stop by the warehouse to discover why the Côte Chalonnaise is fast becoming the primary source of superb quality Burgundy without the top-tier price tags of wines from the Côte d’Or.

Alongside our wine of the week, we’ll be sampling wines from Domaine Claudie Jobard who specialize in a splendid range of Rullys as well as some sublime Pinots from the Côte de Beaune.

Dal Forno

Dal Forno’s estate in Illasi, on the eastern edge of Valpolicella, is one of the most obsessive operations in all of Italy. Every vine is trained low to the ground, stressed deliberately, yielding almost nothing. Every grape is dried for months in his purpose-built fruttaio before fermentation even begins. The wines spend years in barrel and in bottle before Romano decides they’re ready.

The results are unlike anything else made in the Veneto. Where most Amarone is rich and approachable, Dal Forno’s wines are dense, structured, and built to outlive most of the people drinking them. He was mentored by Giuseppe Quintarelli, the undisputed godfather of Valpolicella, and now rivals Quintarelli in the eyes of many serious collectors.

Production is tiny. Prices reflect it. And these bottles almost never show up in small markets like ours.

We’re opening the 2018 Valpolicella and the 2018 Amarone this Saturday. The Valpolicella is Dal Forno’s ‘entry point,’ which is to say, it’s still dried grape, still extraordinary, still nothing like what the appellation name implies. The Amarone is the real thing: massive structure, extraordinary concentration, and a drinking window that stretches decades.

Di Costanzo

This Saturday we will be cracking into our wine of the week, ‘Di Co’ alongside the single vineyard bottling Di Costanzo ‘Caldwell’ 2022. The Caldwell vineyard sits high on the rim of the Coombsville AVA and is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from clippings smuggled out of Bordeaux in the early 1980s. This is a brilliant chance to taste both of these wines side by side to get a feel for the differences in the vineyards.

94 points (Vinous) The 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Caldwell Vineyard is very promising. It offers tons of fruit intensity and voluptuousness, with terrific freshness and nuance in spades. Dark red fruit, blood orange, spice and rose petals are amplified in this decidedly dramatic, full-bodied wine.

Bordeaux

This weekend we will pour our Wine of the Week, Château Lamothe-Bergeron 2016 alongside their newest release, the Lamothe-Bergeron Blanc 2024. Both of these wines offer tremendous value, and come straight from our friends at the Château which is tucked away on a beautiful just between Margaux and Saint-Julien.

If you continue up the road, through Saint-Julien and into Pauillac, Pichon Baron offers a brilliant look at the hallmarks of this Cabernet-Sauvignon dominant commune; power, structure and depth and ageability. We have selected Chateau Pichon-Longueville Baron 2016 to open for you tomorrow so that you might get a feel for what a great vintage 2016.

Continuum Proprietary Red 2019

Continuum represents a continuation and evolution of the Mondavi family legacy. Founded in 2005 by Tim Mondavi and his sister Marcia, the estate is situated on 41 pristine acres on Pritchard Hill, an elevated part of the Vaca Mountains, off the beaten track and remote, known for producing some of the most profound wines in Napa Valley. The vision behind Continuum was to create a singular, focused proprietary red – a Bordeaux style blend, meticulously crafted primarily from Cabernet Sauvignon with Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot. The 2019 delivers fantastic intensity and great poise, super fine-grained tannins with dense, rich black fruits and a distinct mountain-grown minerality.

Domaine Lignier-Michelot Clos de la Roche 2019

The Lignier family have deep roots in the village of Morey Saint Denis and own some of the very best vineyard sites in this village, and also in the two neighboring villages Chambolle-Musigny and Gevrey Chambertin. Virgile Lignier-Michelot’s father and grand-father had always produced wine and sold it to negociants until he started working with his father in the early 1990’s and he decided to sell the wines himself. Now with almost 20 vintages of experience Virgile has moved the domain to fully organic viticulture and is producing what many believe to be the best wines of this prestigious village.

Vega Sicilia Unico 2014

Unico is one of Spain’s most iconic reds and the latest vintage in a superb run of Unico releases – the 2014 is a finely judged cuvée of Tempranillo (known locally as Tinto Fino) and 6% Cabernet Sauvignon. The essence of unico is its aging (up to five years in barrel and large oak vats, and additional years in bottle), and as a result the wine is poised, complex and self-assured.

Giuseppe Mascarello Barolo ‘Monprivato’ 2018

If you ask most Piedmontese growers which vineyard they would buy, money no object, the response is invariably Monprivato. A south west facing vineyard situated at 280 metres above sea level just below the town of Castiglione Falletto. This together with gentle, traditional winemaking result in ethereal, nuanced wines of great ageing potential.