A Midsummer’s Hundo Sampler
Twelve Wines for $100 or Less
This Sampler’s Price – $94.99
(Full Retail – $137.88)
Who doesn’t love a deal? To make your life easier we’ve put together a sampler of interesting wines at a reasonable price. We’ve chosen wines that we like and that we think make for good everyday drinking. Enjoy!
Castillo de Monseran Garnacha
Red fruited, clean, fresh Spanish Garncha.
Domaine Vetriccie Ile de Beaute Red
A Corsican red blend – 40% Niellucciu, 30% Sciaccarellu, 20% Merlot, 10% Syrah
DFJ Paxis Red
A meaty Portuguese red made from Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca and Tinta Roriz.
Terra de Lobos
A light bodied Portuguese red made up of Castelao and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Encanto Mencia
A midweight red made from the Spanish grape Mencia.
Domaine Piquemal Cotes Catalnes Rose
A dry southern French rose made from Syrah, Grenache, and Merlot
Domaine Vetriccie Ile de Beaute Rose
A dry Corsican rose of 40% Niellucciu, 30% Sciaccarellu, 15% Grenache, 15% Merlot.
Peitan Albarino
100% Albarino from Spain, grown just north of the Portuguese border.
Domaine Vetriccie Ile de Beaute Blanc
A refreshing white made from 50% each of Chardonnay and Vermentino. No oak!
Hugues Beaulieu Picpoul de Pinet
The classic French picnic wine. Easy to drink, easy to love.
Luigi Baudana Langhe Bianco
A fine Italian blend made of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Nascetta, and Riesling.
Santola Vinho Verde
The glugging wine of summer: Vinho Verde. Enjoy with crabs or shrimp.
(Wines in this sampler are occasionally subject to substitutions)
Get to Know a Grape
A Three Bottle Sampler
This Sampler’s Grape: Furmint
Full Retail – $72.97
Sampler Price – $55.99
If you ask the average American (myself included) to name all of the countries bordering Hungary, you will probably be met with… limited success. Hungary’s most famous grape, Furmint, is about as well known to the average American wine drinker as that list of Hungary’s neighbors is. Despite its obscurity, the grape shows great potential and versatility that leads me to think it could be grown in all sorts of interesting places to make all sorts of compelling white wine. It’s best known for making dessert wines affected by botrytis (or noble rot) a la the wines of Sauternes in France. That said, two of the wines in this sampler are totally dry to show what else can be done with the grape.
Heidi Schrock 2015 Furmint – Austria (Full Retail – $32.99)
Sure the grape is famous as a Hungarian variety, but there’s no reason that Hungary’s neighbor Austria can’t give it the old college try. Heidi Schrock makes dry and sweet wines with Furmint in the town of Rust on the west side of lake Neusiedl. This dry wine is full bodied and bears some resemblance to, dare I say, Chenin Blanc?
Royal Tokaji 2015 “The Oddity” (Full Retail – $17.99)
The winery Royal Tokaji was founded in 1990 to help keep alive the tradition of sweet Tokaji wine which was highly sought after for hundreds of years. The Oddity is so named because it is the outlier in their lineup being the only dry wine that they make with Furmint. Their suggested food pairing is a bit of a blanket statement indicating one should pair it with foods of the Orient. As general and dated as the suggestion seems, I’m not going to argue.
Royal Tokaji 2015 Late Harvest (Full Retail – $21.99)
The truly sought after wines of Hungary made from Furmint are affected with noble rot and if I included one of those here, it would have doubled the cost of the sampler easily. As the name implies here, this sweet wine is simply a later harvest. Pair this wine with blue cheese (Gorgonzola, Stilton, St. Agur, etc), fried foods, salty foods, or slightly spicy foods.
Do you have wine sampler requests? If there are samplers you’d like to see, please let one of us know. Maybe one month we’ll choose your idea!
