I Googled Centennial Mountain just now (Idaho? That can’t be right LOL) and so just read Esther Mobley’‘s article for the first time. She writes really well and is confident in her palate. I feel validated in many of my rookie Carricante impressions especially the marine aspects I found in the 2009. Kevin good luck with your projects, if anyone can maximize those grapes’ potential in California it’s the Rhys team. I’m a big Castelli fan and it will be fun to compare Nebbiolos. Very interesting about the diurnal requirements.
Thanks George and crew for the notes, very interesting.
“Centennial Mountain” lies somewhere along the Sonoma coast west of Geyserville, IIRC. Annapolis area maybe?
Near Lake Sonoma per the article IIRC
Is “Centennial Mountain” a made-up name (I noticed it received quotation marks)?
It’s slang for the giant pile of $100 bills stashed in the cellar of every successful winery.
I knew money had to be flowing somewhere, but always assumed it was walking around in the wads bulging from the winery owner’s pockets.
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I wasn’t there, but if i had to guess I would say that it was neither. More likely the entry level Etna bianco which consists of approximately 65% carricante and the remaining 35% is a blend of catarratto, inzolia, grecanico, and minnella (according to their website).
No, Centennial Mountain is the real name of the mountain where we planted the vineyard. It is about 5 miles due west of the Lake Sonoma Dam. It is next to the less interestingly-named “Big Mountain”.
I might retrieve the bottle from recycling but I’m pretty sure it was the plain old bianco.
Nope, dug it out of recycling, the Terre Nere was the 2016 Santo Spirito. I really liked this wine for current drinking, similar broad richness to a top California chardonnay with complex interesting flavors and very well balanced among the structural elements. I think it lacks the mineral depth of the 2009 PM and the 2014 Aeris and even the otherwise unimpressive 2013 PM but it doesn’t seem to aim that way so it seems complete. Thank you Brian and Douglas for calling my attention to the various bottlings, I grabbed it off the Biondivino rack in haste while focusing on the Benanti wines.
Thanks for checking George. I have a few bottles of the Santo Spirito so wanted to know if your note was for it or not.
For my sometimes-California palate quite a buy at $47 I will repeat if I happen upon it again. And it gets even better with a day’s air. But it’'s a different take on Carricante.
Besides the usual great group of people, it was interesting as always to do a blind and in particular for a varietal that you don’t see everyday.
The good news was yes the 2nd bottle of Aeris proved that the first one at the raclette dinner was indeed flawed in some way though I don’t think it was heat as there was nothing oxidative about that particular bottle. We will never know.
I had the wines ranked as 5-3-8-2-7-6-1. Given the couple of recent threads on prices and QPR, I still humbly believe that Aeris has a value issue which seems to be confirmed by the majority of the comments from the table and borne our further in notes on CT. I will definitely be hunting for the older Pietra Marinas on the next trip as Italian sources have the 2004-2014 vintages (yes the source is different for the more recent vintages) for low to mid 30 euros range and that’s inclusive of the 22% VAT.
Ooh get me some older PM’s
My guess is that Aeris has a value issue, not a pricing issue. I guess it will continue to sell out.
The other thing about the Aeris is that it was lighter on its feet than some of the wines I ranked above it. That could bode well for the future and for actual drinking, at least for people who like elegant wines.
I really like the Graci arcuria, both white and red, maybe the red even more than the white. Both have some of the best aromatics I’ve experienced outside of Burgundy.
I’m glad to read this because I’d like to try the Arcuria white again with a couple of days’ air. I might grab a bottle.