Domaine des Ardoisières Vin des Allobroges Argile Blanc 2019
I have enjoyed the wines of Savoie in France for a long time, but especially the red wines and the asterisks. This was the year I fell in love with Savoyard whites.
Savoie is located in the Alpine foothills of eastern France, where the borders with Switzerland and Italy intersect. The white wines, made from local grapes such as altesse, mondeuse blanche and jacquère, all seem to have an airy, cool feel, like a fresh mountain breeze blowing right at you.
This bottle embodies the appeal of the Savoyard white wines. It’s made from jacquère and mondeuse blanche, along with chardonnay, all organically grown, and it’s almost shocking in its crisp precision and purity. It’s easy to use the word terroir, but these wines really have a sense of place.
Travis Tausend Adelaide Hills Riesling ‘Grandpa, watch out!’ 2018
Travis Tausend is a thoughtful Australian producer who makes natural wines in the town of Hope Forest, on the southern edge of the Adelaide Hills, which, as he points out on the bottle, was originally the domain of the Peramangk people.
I was drawn to his carefully considered wines when I visited him in the Adelaide Hills in 2019. I’ve rarely seen a bottle in the United States, but this one I saw in June at Dame, a seafood restaurant that split its wine list into two sections: one called James Bond, for the classics, and another titled Austin Powers, for the new-wave. .
The Riesling was even better than I remembered—fresh, energetic, structured, and eminently digestible, a favorite of Mr Tausend’s words, if I recall correctly. At our outdoor table in Greenwich Village, the wine seemed to capture the tranquility of the Hope Forest countryside.
