Tomorrow is possibly the most important day of the year on the wine calendar! (No silly, my birthday isn’t until August)  For the past ten years, the last Saturday of February is designated as “Open That Bottle Night”, the brilliant invention of one of my favorite wine couples, Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, wine columnists for The Wall Street Journal.  (I highly recommend their book – Love by the Glass for anyone who enjoys wine or a remarkable real life love story) Dottie and John created this evening to encourage everyone who has been holding onto a special bottle for the “perfect” occasion to actually open that bottle up and enjoy it!  Too often we just look at this bottle year after year and by the time it’s opened it’s past its prime.  This dynamic duo is passionate that wine is meant to be enjoyed, not placed on a pedestal. The best part of OTBN is that people across the world reach out to share their stories of how they came to have the wine, (Grandpa’s cellar, a honeymoon in Italy) and of their experience finally popping the cork.  You know that at The Wine Bottega we love sharing the stories of where each of wines comes from and tonight we will share some of our favorites that we have been waiting for “just the right occasion” to open.

2007 Weingut Nusserhof Blaterle, Südtirol/Alto Adige, Italy $23/$20.70/$18.40

Elda and Heinrich Nusser are the current generation of the Mayr family to run this miniscule winery in northeastern Italy, whose records date back to 1788. Nusserhof gets its name from the hazelnut trees that once lined the estate’s periphery situated pretty much in downtown Bolzano, the capital of Trentino.  With just 2.4 hectares of land and the encroaching city on the banks of the Isarco River, tremendous pressure has been put on this tiny estate, which has fought to save the indigenous blatterle varietal from near extinction.  Local Italian DOC laws forbid the use of grape varietals on the label of this “Vino da Tavola” and so to get his message across the Mayr’s have used just one “t” in “blatterle” rather than two for the wine.  The name in German means “little leaf” and the grapes are golden and oval shaped.  Historically the grape was used to make a sweet wine to be served with local roast chestnuts or into a simple local quaffing wine. By practicing biodynamic viticulture, reducing the yields, and using clean, modern winemaking the Mayr’s have transformed the potential of blatterle into quite a serious wine.   Remember the context of “place” and “origin” for this wine, as we are geographically, and culturally closer to Austria than the rest of the Italian peninsula.

2002 Dog Point Chardonnay, Marlborough, New Zealand $15/$13.50/$12

Sometimes we wait too long to open a bottle and sometimes we open it to soon and then occasionally there is a Goldilocks moment where it is “just right”.  I had picked up a three-year vertical of this Kiwi Chardonnay and had been waiting to open them up on the right occasion.  Coincidentally an American who had been making wine in New Zealand stopped by the store and happened to ask me about Dog Point.  This seemed to be a not so subtle cosmic hint that here was the moment!  While many would tell you to be wary of an almost 8 year old white wine from NZ, I had high hopes for this wine as I have always enjoyed this chardonnay’s combination of creamy oak, rich palate weight and refreshing acidity – all the ingredients needed for ageing.  The wine is made by Ivan Sutherland and James Healy, previously the chief viticulturalist and winemaker for Cloudy Bay, the winery that put NZ wines on the world stage.  The name Dog Point comes from the name of the scrub covered hill in the Wairau Valley where sheep-sheparding dogs gone wild would congregate. The wine is aged for a full 20 months in French oak barrels and I think needed this extended time to come together and show its best stuff!

1997 Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva Rose, Rioja, Spain $28/$25.20/$22.40

Talk about taking your time and waiting until something is ready.  A 12-year-old rose?!? Has The Wine Bottega team finally lost their minds?  Well, I suppose that might be true, but not in regards to this truly stunning wine.  This uber-traditional winery was one of the first three houses in Rioja and remains committed to the highest level of quality.  Tasting their wines is truly tasting a piece of history. Matt and Kerri recently had the chance to taste with Maria Lopez de Heredia, one of the most charming, elegant and passionate women we have ever met. This unique rose is made of 60% garnacha, 30% tempranillo and 10% viura (a white grape).  The wine spends 4 years in aged barrels and is racked by hand twice a year and then allowed to rest in bottle before release.  If you see a rose wine and think sweet or only for summertime, prepare to be amazed.

2006 Azienda Agricola Canneto, Rosso di Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy $19/$17.10/$15.20

Montepulciano is known as the “pearl of the 1500’s” given its truly honorable and grandiose stature on the Tuscan countryside. “I Canneti” is actually an ancient zone of the hill town where the once royal Canneti family lived.  Today this area, facing south towards the Val di Chiana, is legendary for its classic Vino Nobile, one of Italy’s most renowned wines.   Just below the Greco-renaissance Tempio di San Biagio lies the estate of Swiss proprietors called Az. Agr. Canneto spanning a total of 48 ha, 26 of which are planted to vine; the rest is olive groves and fruit trees. It was in the mid 1970’s that a group of Swiss wine lovers in Zurich founded their own venture in Vino Nobile after years of enjoying the traditional wine style.  The high altitude vineyards (350-400 meters) contain 90% prugnolo gentile (aka sangiovese grosso)and 10% canaiolo, mammolo, etc. are dug deep into the fragmented marl and gravel soils which give the wines of the Canneto a distinct style of salinity.  This Rosso di Montepulciano is blend reflective of the field proportions, aged in 500 liter French wood barrels before bottle aging on site.

2004 Weigut Nusserhof Lagrein Riserva, Südtirol/Alto Adige, Italy $30/$27/$24

The Mayr family’s tiny estate has worked hard to preserve local traditions through their winemaking for generations.  The Nusserhof vineyard lies close to downtown Bolzano, a thriving and sprawling industrial city in the heart of the Südtirol, northeast Italy.  Cultivating the local grape varietals of lagrein, tyroldego  and blatterle is the real passion of Heinrich and wife Elda.  Using a combination of 50% guyot trellising and 50% pergola (vine training systems) the grapes are brought to full ripeness on the vine.  Though we are speaking of very northern Italy, in the mighty Dolomite Alps, the climate of Bolzano is somewhat contrary to what one might expect.  The valley along the Adige and Isarco rivers acts like a trap for circulating warm air, and in Bolzano there is a strange balminess in contrast to the snow covered peaks just a km away.  This has an interesting effect on the viticulture of the area, allowing full ripening and long “hangtime” of the grapes on the vines. Lagrein is a local wine grape known for its rare combination of good chewy dark fruit and low tannin, for which it is often criticized for not aging gracefully.  In the hands of the Mayr’s, lagrein reaches new levels of quality. This 2004 Riserva is a result of a great harvest, natural yeast fermentation with extended maceration followed by elevage not in barrique but rather larger, Slovenian oak before bottle aging.  To truly appreciate the wine, try it with some local speck (smoked pancetta) and spaetzles.

2005 Atalayas de Golban, Ribera del Duero, Spain $24/$21.60/$19.20

In 1999, Miguel Sanchez, a wine merchant from Madrid, began buying up vineyards in the little known Atauta region of Ribera del Duero, in North Central  Spain.  The region of Ribera del Duero was known for producing broad-shouldered wines of great power like Vega Sicilia and Pesquera, but this was a forgotten nook with old vines that many considered a lost cause.  Through meticulous pruning, love and dedication, Sanchez brought these ancient vines back to life, many which were planted pre-phylloxera and therefore on their own original roots.  He partnered with the talented young French winemaker, Bernard Sourdais, and when the debut 2000 vintage of his Dominio de Autata was released in 2002, it sent shockwaves throughout the wine world.  Given his incredible success, Miguel launched a second project, Atalayas de Golban. The project is named for a nearby Atalaya, a watchtower dating from the time of the Moors and the Golban River, which is responsible for carving out the Atauta Valley. The wine is 100% tempranillo. After fermentation the wine is aged for one year in French oak barrels, one third of which are second and third passage barrels from Chateau Haut-Brion (one of the five First Growth Bordeaux Chateaux).  The resulting wine marries the power and concentration of the Ribera del Duero region with an incredible elegance and finesse.