< Tasting Notes

Wines for When Summer Runs Long!
And Midterms Loom…
- October 2026

Summer this year has been epic and endless! Almost feels too good to be true.

Or like climate change is a real thing?

Oh shit…I got political.

Let these wines both represent the light, and the dark. The yin, and the yang.

And may they always bring you some comfort.

Enjoy and Salud!

(**NOTE - Links are embedded in each winemaker’s names to direct you to their respective websites. Know thy vintner!**)

EL HATO Y EL GARABATO 'Nat’Cool' 2023 * Arribes del Duero, Zamora, Castilla y León, Spain
Winemaker - José Manuel Beneitez and Liliana Fernández are forestry engineers who worked vineyards in Australia, California, and Portugal before deciding to head home. They remodeled the old stone house José's great-grandfather built in Formariz, settled in with their daughters, and started making wine from the little family vineyard they inherited. Today they farm 12 organic hectares split across 32 plots. The winery’s name comes from Don Quixote, where Sancho puts everything he owns on the line. That's the whole personality of this place encapsulated.

The Wine - This wine is Nat'Cool, a project Dirk Niepoort started to bring producers from around the world together. The goal is to release light, easy, affordable wine, and always in a one-liter bottle. José and Liliana make their Nat’Cool from old-vine Juan García, fermented whole cluster after a short four-day maceration, with spontaneous fermentation doing the work. The whole-cluster fermentation brings the stems along for a little spice and structure without the harshness. Only four days on skins keeps the color pale and the tannins polite. And the old vines give smaller, more concentrated berries, which is why this light wine has so much flavor. Part of the wine rests in stainless steel and part in a flexible tank for about 15 months. At 11.5 percent alcohol, it's meant to be drunk and enjoyed liberally, not studied.

NERD ALERT!! - Nat'Cool comes with a short list of house rules:

• RULE NUMBER ONE…THERE ARE NO RULES!

• ALWAYS RESPECT THE FIRST RULE

• LESS IS MORE

• COOLER = LESS EXTRACTION, LESS MESS

• AUTHENTIC, COOL ATTITUDE

• ONE LITER BOTTLE

• COOL PRICE

• THE INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Grape(s) - 100% Juan García

Flavors - Fresh red berries with herbs and a little floral lift. Juicy and savory with an easy finish. Medium body. The tannins are so soft you'll almost miss them. Serve it cool, around 54-57 degrees.

Serving - Chill it, grab a patio, a few friends, and put out something salty. Jamón, olives, tortilla, grilled sardines, the works. This is the bottle you open before anyone has even decided what's for dinner. And with a liter, you're not doing math. You're just sharing, pouring, drinking, and repeating.

Album Pairing - BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB - ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ - 1997 * A true classic, this album is the heartwarming story about old musicians getting a second act. Ry Cooder went to Havana and gathered Cuban players, some of whom had stopped performing for years. Several were well past the age the industry cares about. Nobody expected much. The sessions were loose, the recordings were quick, and somehow they made one of the warmest, most joyful records anyone's heard. Compay Segundo, pushing ninety at the time, sounds like he's having the best day of his life. That's El Hato in a nutshell. José and Liliana took a family vineyard and a family house and made something new with the old ways intact. The music is loose, sunny, and a little ragged in the best way. Nobody is trying to impress you. They're just happy to be there, which is exactly how this wine tastes on a warm afternoon. Pour a glass, put the record on, and let the evening stretch out.

JUPITER WINE CO. 'NSFW' Montepulciano 2025 * Fox Hill Vineyard, Mendocino, California
Winemaker - Michael Richardson and Thomas DeBiase are longtime hospitality veterans who left Las Vegas for Sonoma with a simple goal: prove wine can be honest and humane. Every bottle sends 100 percent of net profits to affordable housing for the agricultural and hospitality workers who keep this industry running. They also have a soft spot for the light, chuggable, barely-red, barely-rosé wines of Abruzzo. This bottle is their attempt to bring that style to California.

The Wine - Montepulciano has a lot of color and a lot of flavor, so Jupiter gives it just four days on skins and stems. The fruit was lightly foot-trodden, then pressed in a traditional wooden basket press once fermentation got going. Wild yeasts and native bacteria from the vineyard did the work. The wine then rested on its lees for fourteen months. That's a long time for such a playful wine, but Montepulciano throws plenty of sediment, and they didn't want to filter it. The gravity rest did the clarifying, so it's bottled unfined and unfiltered with a small sulfur addition.

NERD ALERT!! - Four days sounds short for a red, but Montepulciano is so densely colored and flavored that four days is plenty. Those brief hours on skins pull out enough color, aroma, and grip to make a wine that's bright and light on its feet. That's the Cerasuolo idea: a rosé-ish red built from Montepulciano, made to drink young and cold. Jupiter took that Abruzzo instinct and asked whether it could work in Mendocino. In this bottle, the answer is yes.

Grape(s) - 100% Montepulciano

Flavors - The ripest red cherries you can imagine, then that Amarena cocktail cherry note that makes you pause. White pepper and a little spice show up next. It's crunchy, aromatic, and mouthwateringly fresh. Densely colored in the glass, but it drinks like it has no business being that serious.

Serving - Serve it cool, on a patio, with something salty and a little bit fried. Pizza, salami, arrosticini if you can find them, pasta with a tomato sauce that's not too fussy. It's another wine for the moment before dinner gets serious, but it's happy to stay for dinner anyway. Pour it for the friend who says they don't like red wine. The name is a dare, and this bottle takes it.

Album Pairing - PUBLIC ENEMY - 'It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back' - 1988 * Jupiter says no to corporate sustainability talk and asks where the profits actually land. Public Enemy said no to a lot of things in 1988, loudly and on purpose. This album is urgent, political, and unapologetic, built on a dense wall of samples from the Bomb Squad and Chuck D's booming voice. Flavor Flav and the rest of the crew keep the energy high, and the message stays loud. It was a turning point for hip-hop, and it still hits hard. Both speak up for the people the system forgets. Both are a little dangerous, and that's the point. Turn this one up, and maybe pour a glass for the folks doing the work nobody puts on a billboard.

WHITE WALNUT ESTATE Chardonnay 2024 * Dundee Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon
Winemaker - Chris Mazepink worked in a New York wine shop during college, then came west to study at Oregon State. He spent time at Willamette Valley Vineyards, Shea, and Benton Lane, then six years making wine at Archery Summit. In 2013 he bought an abandoned walnut orchard on 11 acres in the Dundee Hills and planted it between 2015 and 2016. The first significant vintage came in 2019. Production stays small, and the approach is patient, precise, and a little stubborn.

The Wine - This is the estate Chardonnay, farmed organically on a site built carefully from the ground up. The vineyard is planted to a mix of heritage Chardonnay clones, and that's a big part of why the wines taste the way they do. The winemaking is about getting out of the way. No added yeast. No new oak in the house style. A mix of vessels that leans toward concrete, amphora, and large neutral Burgundian barrels. The wine is unfined and unfiltered. Expect salinity and tension, not butter. This is a Chardonnay that wants to smack of Chablis, and it gets there.

NERD ALERT!! - Dundee Hills sits on red volcanic Jory soil, the same ancient basalt that built much of Oregon's Pinot Noir reputation. Chardonnay in this neighborhood is the quiet kid in the back row, and this wine proves the class is full of geniuses. Heritage clones give you complexity that uniform clones often don't. Concrete and neutral vessels keep the fruit pure and the texture taut. No new oak means the vineyard gets to talk. That's the whole recipe, and it's harder than it sounds.

Grape(s) - 100% Chardonnay

Flavors - Lemon, sea air, and a salty edge that makes your mouth water. Tart green apple and grilled citrus come up front, with savory herbs and a whisper of vanilla behind them. The finish is long and bright, and it carries that coastal saline thread all the way through.

Serving - Oysters, obviously. Grilled halibut with lemon, and a little brown butter if you're feeling indulgent. Fresh goat cheese and a bowl of herbs if you’re feeling truly decadent. Serve it cool but not cold, so the salt and citrus have room to move. This is a dinner wine for people who like to talk slowly and eat even slower.

Album Pairing - JONI MITCHELL - 'Hejira' - 1976 * Hejira is a record about being on the road, mostly alone, watching the country slide by. Joni wrote a lot of it while driving, and you can hear it in the restless, searching songs. "Coastline" brings the Pacific right into the room, with Jaco Pastorius's bass moving like water under her voice. The whole album feels like someone trying to figure out where she's headed, one mile at a time. That's the White Walnut connection for me: a coastal edge, made inland, by someone who knows exactly how precise he has to be. Chris Mazepink is out in the Dundee Hills paying attention to every vine. Joni is out on the highway paying attention to every mile. Both are clear-eyed and restless. Put it on, open the wine, let the world slow down, and focus on the little details.

HOLOCENE 'Codex' 2023 * Willamette Valley, Oregon

Winemaker - Todd Alexander came to Oregon after a long run in California, including Bryant Family Vineyard, where he started as assistant winemaker and ended as general manager. He also spent time as cellarmaster at PlumpJack and CADE before moving north to partner on Force Majeure in Washington. Holocene is his personal Oregon project. He launched it in 2015 with a simple goal: make Pinot Noir from small, diverse sites that let the Willamette Valley speak for itself. The first vintage was released in early 2017, and the approach hasn't changed. Dry-farmed sites, native yeast, little extraction, little new oak, and no filtering or fining.

The Wine - ‘Codex’ is Holocene's valley-wide bottling, built from fruit across the Willamette Valley rather than a single site. The 2023 spent time in about 20 percent new French oak before bottling. That's enough to add structure without covering the fruit. Like the rest of the Holocene lineup, it was made with native yeasts and bottled without fining or filtration. The idea is to taste a place, not a winemaker's signature.

NERD ALERT!! - Todd Alexander has said his early Holocene wines were too ripe and too dark, so he moved toward finesse. Earlier picks, more whole-cluster fermentation, and gentle handling all push toward freshness and restraint. Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley has a built-in advantage here, since the cool climate keeps acidity alive. The dry-farmed sites matter too. Less irrigation means concentrated flavor without the heaviness. It's a wine that aims for lift, not weight.

Grape(s) - 100% Pinot Noir

Flavors - Red and dark fruit with a salty, savory edge that keeps things honest. Silky texture, fresh acidity, and a finish that lingers on cherry and spice. It's still young and a little tight, and it will reward patience.

Serving - Roast chicken with crispy skin. Mushrooms on toast. Pasta with butter and herbs. Salmon, especially with a little smoke. Pinot Noir is the grape people reach for when they want something that feels personal, and this one pulls up a chair. Serve it slightly cool, leave it in the glass for a while, and let it open as the evening goes on.

** AUDIOPHILE LP OF THE MONTH CLUB VINYL**

Album Pairing - SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE - 'Diary' - 1994 * A codex is a handwritten book. A diary is a handwritten book too. Both are records of someone trying to make sense of their own heart. Sunny Day Real Estate formed in Seattle and released this debut on Sub Pop in 1994. The album is melodic, urgent, and emotional without being sappy. Jeremy Enigk's voice cracks the songs open in a way that feels private, like you've wandered into someone's notebook. Songs like "Seven" and "In Circles" build and release tension with real care. That's Pinot Noir in a nutshell: silky, emotional, a little heartbroken, and never once trying to be cool about it. Fun coincidence: the album came out the same day as Weezer's Blue Album. 1994 was a very good year for people with big feelings and guitars.

REMINDERS

• To celebrate our valued club members we offer 20% off all food ordered on the day you pick-up. 

• If you can not pick up on the pick up dates please contact mckay@barmiriam.com and we will hold your allotment offsite and can arrange for a future pick up.

• Email mckay@barmiriam.com to buy more single bottles or a case with special club pricing.

• Queen Anne Bottle Shop is open Tuesday-Saturday from 3:00pm — 8:00pm.

• Wine pairs best with friends. Tell your friends.