Drew's Wine List

  2014 Castellani Sangiovese Vintage:  2014 Region:  Tuscany, Italy (Toscana IGT) Winery:  Famiglia Castellani Varietal:  Sangiovese Price:  $14 (found at Wegmans) Rating:  90 Points My Rating:  90 Points The Review: After a brief week off and a trip home, I'm back again with another delicious wine! For this week's wine, we'll be venturing to our summer homes in the Tuscan countryside to taste a wine from a legendary producer. The Castellani family has been putting out renowned Tuscan wines for around 150 years now. Around 25 years ago, however, the current owner decided to start focusing on his winery's environmental impact. The vineyard switched to organic (and from what I could read, biodynamic) farming processes and implemented a new focus on maintaining the land itself. This quality has shown itself in the wines, and even one of their low-end wines is receiving quite the acclaim. This 2014 Sangiovese receives the European Union quality certif...

  NV Dibon Cava Brut Reserve Vintage:  NV Region:  Penedés, Spain (Cava) Winery:  Bodegas Pinord Varietal:  60% Xarel-lo, 30% Macabeo, 10% Parellada Price:  $9.99 My Rating:  92 Points The Review: Over the summer, I decided to ask my friends at the local wine shop here in Charlottesville to select me a few wines. This is something I like to do (and would recommend you do!) because it provides an opportunity to really branch out and try something you may have never even looked at. This wine today, the Dibon Cava Brut Reserve, was one of those wines for me. I'd seen the stand-out yellow label in stores but had always steered clear. When I asked my friends for a wine that "tastes like Champagne, but costs like a college student wine," this is what they sent me, and boy was I pleased. Cava, as we've talked about in a previous blog (see "Why is Sparkling Wine So Confusing?"), is made in the Champagne Method. So, it's fermented in the bottle and on the dead ...