Tag Archives: artisanal

Introducing Banshee Wines…or How to Buy a $175 Napa Valley Cult-Classic Cab for less than 38 bucks!

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Introducing BANSHEE WINES
We at Church Street Wine Cellars originally got to know our friend, Baron Ziegler when he often came to Vermont while working for Eric Solomon at European Cellars, one of our favorite importers of Southern French and Spanish wine gems.

Well he has recently started his own company along with fellow industry insiders Noah Dorrance, Andrew Crookes and Steve Graf. With their combined experience in restaurant, retail, wholesale and the import businesses, they are uniquely suited to service the distinct needs within each tier of the wine industry, and be the finest stewards for their stable of incredible producers, both foreign (under their import label, Valkyrie Selections, but more on that another time) and domestic.

Banshee Wines is doing the backdoor barrel routine (buying barrels from some of California’s top cult wineries for 15 cents on the dollar) as well making some really GREAT wines. These guys and this brand is absolutely ON FIRE…and you just have to own some of these wines! The QPR value (Quality/Price Ratio) is OFF THE CHARTS!

In Baron’s own words:
“Banshee Wines is not your normal wine company. It is a band of wine industry insiders dedicated to producing benchmark wines without the cult wine prices. We specialize in finding hidden gems in other wineries’ cellars and then blending those barrels to create killer wines. For every barrel we take, we pass on 15 more that don’t make the cut.

The secret is that today, high-end wineries can’t sell all the wine they make and they don’t want to lower prices because they don’t want to diminish their brand. They would rather sell some of their wine to us and protect their luxury prices, knowing that we’ll maintain a strict confidentiality and produce top notch wines.”

Fine by us, and even better for you. You’ll find Banshee on some of the best restaurant lists in the world, in the cellars of select wine cognoscenti, and in only the finest retail shops…you know, those people that tend to know these types of things, like us at Church Street Wine Cellars!

Their goal is to deliver distinctive wines that beat the pants off many costing twice as much. Well know it we do, and we’re true believers in what these guys are doing. We know you will be too.

The Line-Up…

- Banshee Sauvignon Blanc Napa 2010 $19.99
This is a slighty grassy, lemon blossom and citrusy Sauvignon Blanc, with no malo but a rush of melony goodness on the palate. Medium-bodied, this wine has good texture AND acidity, which would come as no surprise if you knew the wine’s source. Banshee gets 98% of the fruit from one of the top Sauvignon Blanc producers in the Napa Valley (maybe you can get it out of us over a glass of wine). Try this with fresh-shucked oysters, a lobster boil or even a Chinese chicken salad. Yum! Everything about this summertime beauty screams “beat the heat”!

- Rickshaw Pinot Noir ’09 Sonoma County $16.99
The fruit is from Sonoma County, the wine is clean, ripe and flavorful and the concept is simple: evolved winemaking. Start with a surplus of quality wine that should be sold for more under a fancy label, select the best and sell for less. Bottle it under screwcap (au revoir, corked wine) in a bottle with a bright and snappy label and you’ve got yourself a fine deal. Nothing could be more natural.

This Pinot from Sonoma County sings from the minute you twist its cap. Full of aromas of sun-ripened blackberry and blueberry fruit, with a pretty cafe con leche note, the nose gives away its serious but accessible nature. Ripe, juicy and full of character, this gets even more impressive the moment it enters your mouth with the dark fruited tones of Sonoma Coast fruit and the soft open knit texture of Russian River Valley. With a likeable streak of oak toast running down the middle of the wine that adds dimension and richness, this is even appropriate for slightly heftier dishes like BBQ and fresh salmon. This speaks of the freshness of spring and the affordability to stock up for summer.

- Banshee Pinot Noir ’09 Sonoma County $24.99
A blend of five prominent vineyards, the 2009 Sonoma County Pinot Noir is a complex pinot with dark cherry fruit and sweet earthen minerality held together by bright acidity and long, ripe tannins. The vineyards utilized include a coveted high-density parcel in the Russian River Valley with Gold Ridge soils, a biodynamically farmed vineyard in the Sonoma Coast AVA, and a steep hillside location in the Petaluma Gap farmed organically.

100% Pinot Noir, less than 4000 cases made from Sonoma Coast and Russian River AVAs. Most of the wine received a 3-5 day cold soak before beginning a 50% whole-berry, 50% crushed berry fermentation. The wine was then sent to rest in 100% French {Francois Freres, Seguin Moreau, etc} oak barrels, about 35% new, for 14 months. Expensive pedigree for sure, but that’s the Banshee mission!

Oozing class, this beauty does everything that topnotch pinot noir should do…and then some.

- Rickshaw “Red Wine” ’07 Napa Valley $16.99 (60% Merlot, 34% Cabernet, 6% Petit Verdot)
From a GREAT VINTAGE, the 2007 Rickshaw Red Wine is a killer blend of 100% Napa Valley fruit (from a Merlot heavyweight) that punches much higher than its weight class and price suggest. Rich espresso notes mix with refined dark fruits on the palate complimented by an intoxicating pencil lead/anise nose. It would be an amazing deal at $30 but for $15 there is not a better Napa wine anywhere in the world. A delicious blend of 60% Merlot, 35% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Petit Verdot. This was a one off (IT MAY NEVER BE MADE AGAIN, unless someone is again willing to drop $6000 ton top-quality Napa Merlot for $1600 a ton) – SO GET IT WHILE YOU CAN!

- Banshee Cabernet ’08 Napa Valley $37.99
The 2008 Banshee Napa Valley Cabernet comes from some of the most lauded Cab vineyards in Napa but is priced at wallet-friendly prices. When you taste it, you’re immediately transported to the world of $80+ cult Cabernet, rather than lingering in the $38 price point, which is largely dominated by HUGE production, poorly made Cabs. We can’t drink enough of this stuff ourselves, and we think that you’ll be as impressed as we are. The downside is that there was only 400 cases made and it is sold out at the winery.

About 60% comes from 20 year old vines from the famed Ink Grade Vineyard atop Howell Mountain. The remainder is from the low yielding Cab vines of the famous Stagecoach Vineyard in Pritchard Hill.

After harvesting only 4-6 bunches per vine (a tiny 2.2 – 2.5 tons per acre), the wine was fermented in small temperature controlled steel fermenters and then put in 100% new French oak for 20 months. (Radoux and Demptos barrels).

So suave it makes “The Most Interesting Man in World” blush. It deftly balances flavors of rich espresso, Tahitian vanilla, and black cherry with alluring violet perfumes wafting out of the glass. Rarely does one find a wine that so effortlessly and seamlessly combines the masculine and feminine.

- Banshee “Mordecai” Proprietary Red California 2009 $24.99
It started out as a high class problem. The guys were able to secure parcels from some of the best, and most well known vineyards in California. Places like Whitehawk, Alder Springs, Grist, Parmalee Hill, and, well, we can’t mention any more names – at least they can’t say what they get from where. Suffice it to say, there are some heavy hitters in their possession. That is the high class part.

The problem part was that they didn’t have a large quantity of any one of those wines. So they really didn’t want to bottle 8 different wines with only a handful of cases of each available.

The solution? Make a delicious proprietary red wine by daring to cross a few boundary lines. The blend struts some the best Syrah in California, a Turley single vineyard Zin source, Napa Mourvedre, Grenache from Paso and a few other bits and pieces that worked well with the rest of the blend. Again, why pay Turley or other overly-inflated prices?

Bold with a panoply of dark and red berry fruit but structured enough to be a serious wine, the Banshee Mordecai is like nothing else on the market. Somehow the Banshee boys keep coming across some of the best barrels and highest quality fruit sources around and spinning them into wonderfully affordable delicious wines. In the case of the “Mordecai” they have come up with what we call a kitchen sink blend, a little bit of a lot of things. This is wildly crowd pleasing!

THE SPECIAL OFFER: How do you buy a 97-Point $175 a bottle Napa Valley cult-classic Cabernet Sauvignon for less than $38? Buy it from Church Street Wine Cellars with the Banshee label on it of course!

Banshee Cabernet Sauvignon Napa 2007 – the real deal
We just procured a very limited supply of this 97-point spectacular Cabernet from our friends at Banshee, even though they are now sold of their awesome 2008 now (but don’t worry, they bottled their 2009 Cab a week ago Friday and it’s on it’s way to us). Check out the review below…$175 bottle retail (by mailing list), and it can be yours with the Banshee label for only $37.99!

(Winery XXX – Source Vineyard)
Wine Advocate # 186
Dec 2009 Robert Parker 97 Points Drink: 2009 – 2029 $175 (175)

“The 2007 XXXX Cabernet Sauvignon (90% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot aged 20 months in 100% French oak) is a La Mission Haut-Brion look-alike. Burning ember, scorched earth, blackberry, smoked herb, and sweet cassis fruit characteristics are all present in this full-bodied, dense, concentrated offering. With a whopping finish as well as great balance and purity, it should drink well for 20+ years. ”

It deftly balances both rich espresso and black currants with alluring violet perfume. Rarely does one find a wine that so effortlessly and seamlessly combines the masculine and feminine.

Some fun facts:

The winery where this gem was born has a flagship wine that releases for well over $250 a bottle.

It was made by one of the top 3 winemaking consultants in the world.

The winery sold this exact wine with a different label for $175 a bottle.

BANSHEE bought all of the unlabeled bottles they had (after pooling their life savings to do it and writing the biggest check of their lives!) and are offering it for less than 1/4 of the price!

This big Cab was made to go with a grass fed NY strip. Light up the grill baby!

Church Street Wine Cellars presents: An Evening with Joe Davis, Winegrower of Arcadian Winery at Church & Main restaurant in Burlington, Vermont

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Join the Church Street Wine Cellars team for another in a series of educational wine dinners in downtown Burlington, Vermont! Just down the road from our stone & brick underground wine cellar on Church Street, we are hosting a very special winemaker event! Save the date on Thursday, June 23rd, 2011 for an evening with winegrower Joe Davis of Arcadian Winery. Our friend Joe, headliner for the Stowe Wine & Food Classic June 24 – 26, 2011 at Trapp family Lodge has graciously agreed to come to Vermont a day early to host this exceptional dinner. Not one of the wines Joe is pouring has scored less than 90+ points from Steven Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar or earned extreme accolades from Allen Meadow’s Burghound.

Church & Main Restaurant is hosting this event, beginning promptly at 6:30 pm, and the tariff is $65 per person plus tax and gratuity (the wine we are pouring alone will cover that!). Reservations must be made only at Church & Main either in person or call 540-3040, a credit card number will be taken and processed to reserve your space. Seats are limited to a comfortable forty people for this intimate dinner.

To view this in a concise PDF along with wines to be shown, click here.

Wines to be shown include the following, reviews are from Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar, November/December 2007:

2006 Arcadian Winery Chardonnay Sleepy Hollow Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands
“Greenish-yellow color. Pungent pineapple, tangerine and peach aromas are complicated by smoky minerals and brown spices. Rich and weighty but energetic too, offering sweet citrus and tropical fruit flavors and a chewy texture. Nervier on the finish, which features a note of lemon peel and very good clarity and persistence. This is drinking very well right now. 90 points

2005 Arcadian Winery Pinot Noir Fiddlestix Vineyard Sta. Rita Hills
“Medium red. Spicy redcurrant and strawberry on the nose, with subtle earthiness and musky herbal character. Bitter cherry and cracked pepper flavors possess impressive concentration but are a bit wound up today. Air brought up sweeter raspberry, then a big hit of bitter cherry pit. The tannins are standing out right now. This needs time.” 90(+?) points“

2006 Arcadian Winery Pinot Noir Dierberg Vineyard Santa Maria Valley
“Deep red. Exotic, pungent bouquet of blackberry, cherry skin and illicit herbs. Offers musky dark fruit flavors and chewy texture, with complicating notes of smoked meat and candied rose. This powerful pinot could stand up to a rich lamb dish. Finishes with good punch and a strong smoky echo. 90 points.”

2006 Arcadian Winery Syrah Santa Ynez Valley
“Bright red. Peppery red berry and cherry aromas are complemented by notes of black olive and cracked pepper. An energetic rendition of syrah, offering gently sweet raspberry and cherry flavors and slow-building spiciness. Impressively focused and pure, with strong finishing snap and tangy persistence. This doesn’t act like a wine from a hot vintage. A great value. 91 points.”

2006 Arcadian Winery Syrah Sleepy Hollow Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands
“Vivid ruby. High-pitched red and dark berry aromas are complicated by notes of cracked pepper, Asian spices, violet and smoky minerals. Lively, finely etched red fruit flavors are framed by silky tannins and gain richness with aeration. Leaves notes of blueberry and black raspberry behind on the spicy, impressively persistent finish. Davis told me that this wine’s pH is very low and that it weighs in at 13.7% alcohol. He vinified it with 50% whole clusters. 92 points“

Unlike many of his colleagues, Joe Davis, the founder and winemaker of Arcadian Winery, does not come from a long line of winemakers. His people were Monterey fisherman—with first-hand accounts of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row! But he was not destined for the family business.

Back in 1982, when Joe was a college student in Seattle, first destined for medical school, he began working at a wine shop when a customer brought him a gift of a bottle of Domaine Dujac 1978 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru from Burgundy. After a taste of the rare wine, Davis became a Pinot Noir devotee and knew that he wanted to make wine himself. He promptly transferred to the University of California Davis to study winemaking, and eventually took a position working for and being mentored by Dan Lee at Morgan Winery.

It was there in the 1990s that he honed his skills making Chardonnay, and then implemented a Pinot noir program relying on Burgundian winemaking techniques. From there, he serendipitously landed a position with his idol, Domaine Dujac, for two years before returning to California to start Arcadian Winery in the Santa Ynez Valley in 1996.

Today, Davis is one of the best known figures in Santa Barbara wine country, thanks to his top-quality Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs, and Syrahs. At the heart of Arcadian’s success is Davis’s terroir-driven philosophy: make wines that fully express the distinct characteristics of each vineyard and of California’s Central Coast region. He does so by using traditional French artisanal techniques and hands-on vineyard management.

As a classicist, his wines often need a few years to really offer their charms. As writer Dennis Schaefer has said, “Almost every winemaker who makes Pinot Noir professes to follow the Burgundian model. And, more or less that’s true. But with some winemakers, the ‘less’ part is apparent, and plenty of shortcuts may be employed. With winemaker Joe Davis, everything is always ‘more’ Burgundian.”

Founded in 1996, Arcadian owns no vineyards, but winegrower Joe spends considerable time in his contracted vineyards from Monterey, Santa Maria and Santa Barbara counties, making him as much a farmer as a winemaker.

Production is 8,000 cases annually of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Syrah. The wines are released after extended barrel aging and often lag the market by one or two vintages. Arcadian exports wine to thirteen countries.

This winery, owned and operated by winemaker Joe Davis, has emerged as a serious producer of elegant, balanced Pinot Noirs that are capable of developing real complexity with bottle age. Pungently aromatic, spicy and minerally, and possessing firm acidity, they deliver clarity and intensity of flavor at relatively low levels of alcohol. Just like the Pinot Noir, Davis’ Chardonnay is much more Burgundian than Californian in style.

The mission of Arcadian, and a question Joe Davis asks himself with each bottle he makes, is whether it is worth it to produce these vineyard-specific wines. Do each of the wines consistently represent a sense of place? Are they different enough from one another, and yet still consistent from each site year to year, and also in terms of overall quality? Based on the wines we’ve tried, we think Joe does indeed accomplish that mission.

To this end, whenever possible Joe gains control over the vineyard by leasing the land as opposed to simply purchasing the grapes at harvest. By controlling yields from these vineyards and keeping them very low (he farms his Pinot Noir to 2 – 2.5 tons to the acre), he increases grape quality. The resulting wine speaks more about where it came from than about the hands that made it. As with Joe, this ”somewhereness” vs. ”someoneness” concept appeals to us because we believe the best wine is made more in the vineyard than in the winery.

Stunning Value, 93 Point Old-Vine French red under $20!

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CHATEAU PUECH-HAUT Prestige 2009
A.O.C Coteaux-du-Languedoc – Saint Drézéry
A stunning value, this 55 % Grenache, 45 % Syrah practicing organic farming, undergoing conversion for Eco-Cert is a true gem!

One needs to glance only briefly through the notes of Jancis Robinson, Robert Parker, Andrew Jefford and David Schildknecht (among many others) to discover their love affair with the Languedoc, and rightfully so.

A short time ago, a Robert Parker (of Wine Advocate fame) pronounced of this wine on the bulletin board: “One of the Greatest VALUES” with a preliminary 94 point rating for an under $20 wine.

CHATEAU PUECH-HAUT has been on the critic’s radar for some time – which makes sense since the property has employed Michel Rolland, Claude Gros (of Chateau Negly) and now Philippe Cambie as their consulting enologist. Visionary owner Gérard Bru spares no expense in his quest for excellence and their cumulative efforts are on display here in a remarkable way.

93 points, Robert Parker in Wine Advocate - “From a bio-dynamically farmed estate, this 2009 is a blend of 55% Grenache (from 60- to 75-year-old vines) and 45% Syrah (from 40-year-old vines), all planted in limestone soils, and aged completely in concrete tanks. This remarkable offering is a naked expression of the vivid terroir and excellent fruit found in this region. The incredible aromatics consist of forest floor, spring flowers, sweet black currants, raspberries, licorice, and incense. With a pure, velvety, seamless, full-bodied texture and a finish that lasts 30+ seconds, this wine possesses a stunning integration of acidity, tannin, and alcohol, suggesting this 2009 will age nicely for 3-5 years, possibly as long as a decade. However, it will be hard to resist given its current performance. Bravo!”

Church Street Wine Cellars, our underground stone and brick specialty wine cellar at the top of Church Street in Burlington, Vermont is always looking for exceptional values, and once again the south of France does not disappoint!

Only 28 cases of this vintage are coming to Vermont, and we staked our claim. It is available on a first-come, first-served basis, for ONLY $19.99 pre-arrival, ready for pick up Friday, April 29. THIS IS VERY LIMITED, drop us a line and we will do our best to secure you some.

Many of the artisanal, limited-release wines we source are made in such tiny quantities, but we offer these gems to our e-mail clientele first, at discounted pre-sell prices. If any is left over for stock, which is often not the case, they revert back to original prices. This is not the only benefit to being on Church Street Wine Cellars e-mail list.

Yes, you will receive notice of special allocated items and pre-sells, but also of our intimate Winemaker Dinner series. Over the past two years we have hosted Morgan Twain-Peterson of Bedrock Wine Company, master Italian vintner Lucio Mastroberardino of Terredora di Paolo S.S., David O’Reilly of Owen Roe, O’Reilly and Corvidae Wine Company fame and a bevy of other talented winemakers and speakers.

You will also be alerted to our free, unpretentious, informative and educational in-store wine tastings on Friday nights and Saturday days and other fun wine pairing and lecture events at a variety of local restaurants.

Church Street Wine Cellars also hosts two major shows in the Spring and Fall, CSWC’s Direct-Import Wine Tastings held at a local hotel featuring between 70 and 80 wines from around the globe, all for just $15 per person and including a variety of snacks and accoutrements to pair with the wines.

To sign up for this and more, just click on info@churchstreetwinecellars with the notice “subscribe” in the subject line. We hope you will join us for our upcoming events!

Marinell