MASSICAN | ANNIA 2016
(Napa Valley, California) $30 (750ml)
Every person I’ve ever served this wine to has said the same word—fascinating. And that’s what I wrote, too, the first time I tasted this intriguing fresh dry white, a blend of two Italian grapes—ribolla gialla and friulano—with a small amount of chardonnay. (Some of the friulano in this wine was planted in Napa in 1946!). The wine seems to encapsulate the pure foresty aromas of the mountains ringing Napa Valley, and yet the flavor of the wine is definitely Italian. Massican (the name comes from a mountain range in southern Italy) is dedicated to making California wines with what the owner calls Italian “intellectual verve.” Delicious verve, we might add. (12.8% abv)
90 points KM
Available at Massican Winery
Currently, there are 239 AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) registered in the United States. Match the following AVAs with the geographical regions that contain them:
- 1. Chalk Hill
- 2. Horse Heaven Hills
- 3. Ribbon Ridge
- 4. Bell Mountain
- A. Columbia Valley, Washington
- B. Gillespie County, Texas
- C. Sonoma Valley, California
- D. Willamette Valley, Oregon
Scroll down for the answer!
“Wine is so special because it is mankind’s one source of comfort and courage, his only medicine and antiseptic, his one resource to renew his tired spirits and lift him above his weary saddened self”
—Hugh Johnson, British wine authority, author, The Story of Wine
IT’S IN THE MAIL—THE HISTORY OF WINERY MAILING LISTS
Getting on a top winery’s mailing list can be harder than scoring tickets to the Super Bowl. Indeed, there are now waiting lists to get onto mailing lists. How did such coveted access begin? The quick story starts in the 1940s, when Fred and Eleanor McCrea purchased a Napa Valley homestead called Stony Hill. In 1954 they released their first wine—a 1952 chardonnay that cost $21.69—a case (tax and delivery included). Although the state of California did not yet keep viticultural records, fewer than 200 acres of chardonnay probably existed at the time. Fred, who was a Mad Men-style advertising executive, marketed his chardonnay via handwritten letters to friends. That Stony Hill private list of customers—kept on index cards—was the first winery “mailing list” in the Napa Valley.
CLOUDY
Descriptive term, not necessarily negative, for a wine that is not brilliantly clear. A wine can be slightly cloudy because it has not undergone fining or filtering. Some wines, however, are cloudy as a result of faulty winemaking.
1-C, 2-A, 3-D, 4-B
Chalk Hill , named for its white volcanic ash soils, is located in Sonoma Valley, California. Horse Heaven Hills is within the Columbia Valley of Washington State. It was named for the knee-high grasses there that roving bands of feral horses once fed on; hence a horse heaven! Ribbon Ridge, a ridge along the northwest end of the Chehalem Mountains, is located in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. And Bell Mountain is in the central Texas county of Gillespie, and was the first designated AVA in that state.
