Winemaker Éric Louis can follow his roots in Sancerre as far back as 1860, when his great-grandmother Pauline was an early pioneer by tending vines and bottling her own wines. Sauvignon Blanc has remained the family’s passion, with hillside vineyards to the southeast of Sancerre in Vinon.
Marie-Ange represents the fourth generation of vine growers in the family. It was her father Guy who slowly, parcel by parcel, purchased vineyards in the 1960s; yet it is Marie-Ange who has brought the winery to a level of greatness for which it was always destined. Simply put, there are few other Chablis estates with such a rich collection of older vines and as a result, few other estates that deliver Chablis wines of such character and complexity.
The appellation of Graves de Vayres is historically renowned for its silky, full-flavored wines. The region’s unique, sandy terroir is what gives wines their fine-grained texture, a characteristic that is expressed fully in Pontête Bellgrave’s elegant, silky blend.
Azienda Agricola Ca’Vittoria is a small Prosecco estate that has earned its spot at the top of Italy’s finest, with its mountain vineyards, estate-grown grapes and peerless quality in each bottle. All hand-harvested grapes used to craft Ca’Vittoria Prosecco are estate grown—a unique situation that few other Prosecco estates can match.
For more than 100 years, the Scammacca del Murgo family has cultivated vines and olives under the fiery gaze of Mount Etna in Sicily. More than once this active volcano has destroyed vineyard plots and covered their family home under ash—events that would rattle the nerves of even the most daredevil winemakers. Yet for the Scammacca del Murgo clan, it’s just the price one pays for the privilege of growing vines in one of the more dynamic and breathtaking wine regions on earth.
Hand-crafted from field to bottle, craft shared as tradition from generation to generation—this is what makes Barbaresco from Azienda Agricola Ronchi so special. Winemaker Giancarlo Rocca and three generations of the Rocca clan live in a house built by the family, surrounded by ‘Ronchi’ cru vines.
With its vineyards in the shadows of the towering Dolomites, Friuli is the true home of the Glera grape and therefore the source of the most aromatic, vinous, elegant and true Prosecco wines. For more than three generations, the Fantinel family of Azienda Agricola Zuccolo has championed Glera on its native soils and cultivated vines from family-owned mountain vineyards, harvested by hand.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the Troisi family has championed the wines of Irpina, a historic vine-growing region in central Italy. Winemaker Raffaele Troisi’s father Antonio, in the 1980s, was one of the first growers to bottle a single-variety Fiano wine. The family’s very high-altitude vineyards and the region’s volcanic soils combine for single-variety wines of impeccable finesse.
Terres Secrètes is one of France’s more celebrated cooperative wineries, founded in the 1950s and supported by dozens of talented growers in the greater Mâconnais.
Eve and Michel Rey produce natural, honest white Burgundy in miniscule quantities from the finest terroir in the Mâconnais. Their ‘La Roche’ vineyard in Mâcon-Vergisson is not only the highest vineyard in the appellation but also delivers the purest expressions of Chardonnay in the region, bar none.