At AdVINEtures we know we have been blessed with more than our fair share of good luck. Over the past few years we have been very fortunate to meet and taste with some of the top winemakers in the world. Any time you are able to meet, talk with, and learn from those people who are the very top of their game, you are very fortunate to get such an experience.
Bryan Babcock
We first met Bryan Babcock, proprietor and winemaker at Babcock Winery a year ago when we visited Santa Barbara hosted by their tourist bureau, Visit Santa Barbara. They sent us to the Santa Barbara Wine Collective, a very hip bar that pours a lot of very good local wine by the glass. We tasted 5 or 6 different Pinot Noirs from Santa Barbara County. Our favourite of the tasting was the 2012 Babcock Pinot Noir Radical. We told that to the bartender who then informed us that Bryan Babcock was actually sitting just a few tables away and would we like to meet him? Of course! We were introduced, had a brief conversation and he invited us to come up to Lompoc and meet him at his winery the next time we were in the area. That Radical was so darn good we knew we had to get back and learn how he made such good wine and to taste the rest of his line up.
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Spain is one of the world’s important wine growing countries and has a number of wine growing regions. The best known regions are Priorat, near the Mediterranean Coast and known for Garnacha, the Spanish term for Grenache and in the North are Rioja and Ribera del Duero, known for Tempranillo. These better-known regions have earned their reputations, and having been producing wines that have captured the praises of the wine press for decades. But there is a newcomer on the scene that is just starting to gather attention and that is the region of Toro.
Most of us wine enthusiasts have harboured, either secretly or not, the dream of some day owning a winery. Cristom Winery, in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, is the story of a man who actually pursued that dream and created one of the top wineries in the state.
We arrived at Avennia’s “facility” in Woodinville’s warehouse district, about 30 minutes drive north of Seattle. We use the word “facility” because it is not a tasting room, but a barrel room, winery, office and a little reception area where we tasted their wines. Avennia is not open to the public, but that does not stop them from selling out all of their wines via their mailing list along with wine specialty and high end grocery stores in the Northwest. (You can register on their mailing list here.) As the tasting notes that follow will show, this has become one of the rising stars on the Washington wine scene, producing wines of great finesse and intense flavours.
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