Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
The tradition of Vinsanto on Santorini predates the sweet wine of Tuscany by the same name. Yiannis Argyros, who took over his family’s estate in 1974, gave careful consideration to the grapes that went into his Vinsanto, paying especial attention to the honeyed aidani and floral athiri, two grape varieties that play a supporting role to the assyrtiko that forms the wine’s base. He also instituted an aging regimen in small, old barrels to create complex Vinsantos. This one, released by his son Mattheos, who now runs the estate, took at least two months to ferment, due to the sweetness of the sun-dried grapes, and then mellowed in barrel for 20 years. With 255 grams per liter of residual sugar, it’s technically incredibly sweet. But in the midst of the cathedral of rich flavors—dark, figgy fruit building into notes of dried cherries, salt, herbs and candied orange peel—there’s a beam of acidity that brings light and openness to the wine’s structure. The wine feels at once fresh and mature—or ageless, really. Argyros’s best Vinsantos can age for 30 years or more: This is one of them.
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.
