Winemaker Notes
Drastic diurnal temperature shifts due to the altitude produce wines with great acidity. Honey, candied fruits, white flowers, and distinct minerality. Opulent mouth feel balanced out by bright acidity.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is unashamedly sweet, showing dried peaches, orange blossoms and honeyed notes. Rich, delicious and charming despite its sweetness—not mind-blowing, but undeniably attractive.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A late-harvest Moscatel de Alejandria from vineyards planted between 1920 and 1930, the 2024 Victoria #2 sees no additions or fortifications. The grapes are picked when partially dehydrated and dried out further at the winery. Stainless-steel fermentation and aging keeps the wine fresh within a context of balanced, full-bodied richness and refined texture, ending up at 11% ABV and moderate residual sugar. It tastes like ripe peach drizzled in wild honey.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Known for bold reds, crisp whites, easy-drinking rosés, distinctive sparkling, and fortified wines, Spain has embraced international varieties and wine styles while continuing to place primary emphasis on its own native grapes. Though the country’s climate is diverse, it is generally hot and dry. In the center of the country lies a vast, arid plateau known as the Meseta Central, characterized by extremely hot summers and frequent drought.
Rioja is Spain’s best-known region, where earthy, age-worthy Spanish reds are made from Tempranillo and Garnacha (Grenache). Rioja also produces rich, nutty whites from the local Viura grape.
Ribera del Duero is gaining ground for Spanish wines with its single varietal Tempranillo wines, recognized for their concentration of fruit and opulence. Priorat, a sub-region of Catalonia, specializes in bold, full-bodied Spanish red wine blends of Garnacha (Grenache), Cariñena (Carignan), and often Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. Catalonia is also home to Cava, a Spanish sparkling wine made in the traditional method but from indigenous varieties. In the cool, damp northwest Spanish wine region of Galicia, refreshing Spanish white Albariño and Verdejo dominate.
Sherry, Spain’s famous fortified wine, is produced in a wide range of styles from dry to lusciously sweet at the country’s southern tip in Jerez.