Are there such wines?
Just joking.
Anyhoo, I guess I could contribute with some stuff I’ve tasted off the beaten path.
2017 Artemis Karamolegos Assyrtiko Mystirio/21 - I suppose Santorini Assyrtiko isn’t off the beaten path to anyone. How about one fermented on the skins for 21 days? One would think that a grape known for piercing acidity, aggressive minerality and rather noticeable phenolics wouldn’t make a good skin-contact white. Well, surprisingly enough, they make. Rather austere, but very fine-tuned, delicate and cellarworthy. Probably not everybody’s cup of tea, but definitely a positive surprise for a style that didn’t exist 5 years ago.
2009 Benoît Lahaye Champagne Grand Cru Brut Nature Le Jardin de la Grosse Pierre - I guess everybody has tasted Champagne made from the 3 key varieties. Some have tasted wines made from the other 4 permitted varieties. However, this Champagne is composed of 9 different varieties, and it doesn’t even have all the 7 permitted varieties in the blend! A spectacular bubbly.
2014 Bire Grk - or any Grk for that matter. Probably the greatest white variety in Croatia. Unctuous like a Viognier, but shows more structure and remarkable depth. The difficulty in growing Grk is that the vines have only female flowers, so the vines won’t cross-pollinate themselves. You have to rely on bees and other insects and keep your fingers crossed. That’s why there is so little Grk to go around.
1994 Girolamo Dorigo Colli Pignolo di Buttrio - This would be Friuli’s answer to Langhe’s Barolo/Barbaresco, Tuscany’s Brunello, Campania’s Taurasi and Umbria’s Sagrantino - only if anybody would’ve heard of it. Outrageously structured with remarkable power, acidity and tannins. Since the wines are rather forbidding in their youth (just like Nebbiolo, Aglianico and Sagrantino), most producers have ceased to farm Pignolo and most of the remaining producers tend to make their Pignolos now in this soft and sweet semi-appassimento style that tries to compete with the Amarone wines from the neighboring Veneto. Great Pignolos are very difficult to come by nowadays.
NV Jacques Lassaigne Champagne Le Flacon De L’Incertitude - an orange Champagne. I guess that says enough. Terrific stuff.
NV Jean Bourdy Galant des Abbesses - Technically not a wine, but instead probably the most extraordinary mistelle in the world. The base wine is unfermented Savagnin from Château-Chalon, which is cooked for one whole day with 25 different spices, letting the juice concentrate and infuse it with the spice flavors. After the cooking the juice is fortified with Marc de Franche-Comté, resulting in a Macvin that is 2/3 juice and 1/3 Marc. Then it is aged for a minimum of 5 years in oak barrels. You just simply lack the words to describe the smell of this “wine”, let alone its taste.
2018 Pheasant’s Tears Chinuri-Danakharuli - This is Pheasant’s Tears’ own Georgian take on rosé. Instead of making a rosé wine, they’ve co-fermented white Chinuri with the nigh-extinct Danakharuli (there are only a few hectares in the world). The grapes have went with skins and stems into a kvevri, macerated with the skins for two weeks and then left to finish the fermentation and clarify itself naturally. Feels like a very weird countryside cousin of the already rustic Spanish Clarete style of wine.
1931 Viuva José Gomes da Silva & Filhos Colares Reserva Tinto - These Colares wines are astounding. They seem to develop for 30-40 years and then they just stop it right there. I arranged a tasting of Colares 2010-1931 and from the bottles from the 70’s, 60’s, 50’s, 40’s and 30’s it was impossible to tell which wines were older and which younger. As long as the cork holds, these wines don’t seem to go anywhere.
1992 Weingut Raabe-Schönhof Spätburgunder Beerenauslese Trocken - So, this is not a Trockenbeerenauslese, but a Beerenauslese Trocken. So, somebody in 1992 had a great idea to make a Beerenauslese wine from botrytized Spätburgunder grapes - and then ferment the wine dry. 16,5% alcohol. Unique? Definitely! Good? Heck no.
And then of course: 2012 Château Elomaa Rondo Aiswine - the only ice wine ever made in Finland. Total production: two half bottles. This was poured to me blind, I thought it was a good-quality red Beerenauslese from Austria. Shows that it is possible to make wines of distinction even here in Finland, but I guess making it actually profitable with production numbers like these is still a work in progress.