Many of you will remember our former colleague, Marli Hadden, for her winning smile and infectiously positive demeanour. She left Metrovino in 2019 to chase dreams that were still unfolding, embarking upon a nomadic adventure that eventually landed her in Ontario's wine country. In ways it seems as if she just left yesterday, yet it also feels like a hundred years ago.
Who knew that Monastrell could be so elegant?!? And where the hell is Jumilla?!?
I first met the Cerdán brothers of Bodega Cerrón earlier this year at a massive wine fair in Barcelona where prominent wine journalists and sommeliers hovered around their booth like moths to a flame. It was clear that I wasn't about to discover anything under the radar, but I needed to see what the ruckus was all about.
We lost Nika, our spiritual inspiration and irreplaceable canine family member, in November of 2019. Almost immediately, my wife decided that our cat, Bébert, was suffering acute loneliness from the loss. Nika and Bébert had merely coexisted, but I didn't dissuade my wife from projecting our own sense of emptiness upon the seemingly indifferent cat. By the end of December we would welcome an additional family member into our household.
There's much to love about 2023 German Riesling. The wines possess a breathtaking, spellbinding sense of harmony, albeit in a slightly riper and richer register than the previous two vintages. Happily, this is without the aromatic evidence of warmth embodied by some ‘18s, ‘19s and '20s. The 2023s have stubbornly long finishes, soaring on and on with enchanting harmonic inertia.
