Welcome To The Club!

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WELCOME TO THE CLUB! | 6.23.26

Hello Fledgling!

Welcome to the first ever installment of our brand-new wine club! We are so very excited to be able to finally share these amazing wines that we’ve found with you. Amanda and I set out this month having a theme in mind of our “Favorites,” classic wines that demonstrate our taste and what we love. As is often the case, this plan evolved along the way as we sipped through our tasting sessions. Like being on vacation in a city you’ve been to before but deciding to take an unknown alleyway, what we ended up discovering were unexpected little gems that increasingly drew us in as we tasted and talked about them. These two wines are ideal casual dinner party wines, meant to be shared with friends around a table, versatile with an array of cuisine and well paired with conversation. We hope you enjoy drinking them as much as we enjoyed finding them!

 Looking forward to next month’s club:

Looking forward to next month’s wine club, were planning a focus on wines that are geared towards warmer weather; bottles meant to pop open alongside grilled fare or beach sippers perfect for the intro to a California summer. So, polish up that grill, wax up that surfboard, and get your trashy beach reads together in anticipation.

Wine Club Notes:

Les Vignerons De Yura 2023 White Blend, Jurançon Sec, France

Contrary to what one might think from the label, this wine does not come from Jura, France, but rather from the Gascony region down to the south. This lively white blend is composed of 60% Gros Manseng & 40% Petit Manseng, two varietals indigenous to the foothills of the Pyrenees in Southwest France. Juicy notes of guava, passionfruit, and tropical flowers spring from the glass while the palate offers refreshing notes of unripe pineapple with bright acidity. Underlying aromas of beeswax, green herbs and complexity. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot going on here! We like to think of this wine as the perfect common ground for a group split between drinking unoaked Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc.

Try pairing this white with mildly spiced Thai food like green curry, Tom Yum soup, and Mango Sticky Rice. It would also be fantastic paired with fish dishes topped with a pineapple salsa.

The geeky side of things:

Vinification includes pressing whole bunches with skin maceration to extract aroma. Natural yeast fermentation occurs in stainless steel at cooler sites and in used barrels at warmer sites. The wine ages for eight months, with 25% in neutral oak and three months on the lees. After light filtration, grapes from different parcels are blended post-vinification. The grapes are sourced from steep slopes with limestone and molasse soils, benefiting from mountain freshness and an Atlantic influence. The vineyards are organically farmed and certified High Environmental Value (HVE), underscoring a commitment to sustainability.

Read more about this wine and producer here:

Learn More About This Wine

Learn More About The Producer

Familia Monje Amestoy 2023 “Seis de Luberri,” Rioja Alavesa, Spain

This Rioja is a great example of a serious wine that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Juicy up front with loads of cherry and a basket full of mixed berries, there is an underpinning rocky minerality along with focused acidity and an elegant level of tannins on the finish. Effortlessly stylish is a term that comes to mind when enjoying this wine. It’s as comfortable around a BBQ as it is around a fancy steak dinner.

This Rioja will be fantastically paired with most dishes you could throw at it. Cheese and charcuterie boards, cheeseburgers with Manchego and roasted red pepper aioli, or prosciutto wrapped figs are all dishes that come to mind.

The geeky side of things:

100% Tempranillo aged in American oak for 6 months. Practicing organic viticulture. Native fermentation. Vines were planted in 1984 at vineyards 460-500 meters in elevation. Whole cluster with partial carbonic maceration. Winemaker Florentino Monje’s goal with Seis is to create a wine from tempranillo that expresses the truth and gastronomy of his native Basque region, a wine that makes people happy. Seis is a simple wine that is not simple at all. Florentino became famous for resurrecting and perfecting the traditional style of semi-carbonic, whole-cluster maceration of tempranillo that is historic to Rioja Alavesa and utilized in Seis. This style of fermentation dates back more than two hundred years in the region before the changes that came with the arrival of phylloxera and the importation of French winemaking techniques.

Read more about this wine and producer here:

Learn More About This Wine

Learn More About The Producer

Music Pairing Recommendation:

This being our first ever wine club release, we wanted a soundtrack that gets the party started. When we heard this brand-new album from CAVS we knew that it was the perfect fit for the vibe of the wines and the occasion. Lead by drummer Michael “Cavs” Cavanagh of the band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, this LP is a percussion heavy, funky soul concept album that he describes as “the soundtrack of a journey through a tropical island.” With jazzed out bass lines, lifting accents of brass and flutes, and driving rhythms, we also think this is an ideal dinner party album that can either be played in the background for a chill time or centered in the foreground for a dance off depending on how loud it’s played.

Listen on Bandcamp

Listen on Apple Music

Listen on YouTube

While you’re listening to the album and enjoying your wines, try this wine-geeky brain teaser of a crossword puzzle that we created:

Open Crossword Puzzle

Cheers,

Rob Blair, Amanda Sarich & The Word of Mouth Wine Club Team

MORE SECRETS TO COME… STAY TUNED

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