What I'm Excited About This Week: Easy Summertime Italian Wines

This week Orazio Campoli, our Vinum Italicum Magister, introduced us to a beautiful array of very seasonally relevant wines. All of our buyers do such a great job at putting together these lineups for us week after week, often with little themes or goals in mind. This lineup had a lot of wines that have been in our Italian Wine Club, which means that for any Wine Club member, you get a discount on them. These are all reasonably priced wines, and each one that I've featured for you here overdelivers when it comes to a price/quality ratio. There's just so many wines that we carry, and we keep bringing in new products every single day, so it's easy for some of these to get lost—but they're just exceptional and deserve your attention.

Muscadet: Loire Valley's Freshest White Is Still Under the Radar

Like what happened in Beaujolais with its crus, Muscadet began highlighting specific geological zones capable of producing wines with aging potential. The first three—Clisson, Le Pallet, and Gorges—set the tone, and now there are ten official crus. These wines are aged longer on the lees (usually 17–30 months, depending on the cru), and they offer a completely different experience from the classic sur lie style. The best of them are structured, mineral, and textured—serious wines hiding behind a humble name.

Greece and Lebanon Are World-Class Destinations for Delicious Rosé

I think the world has started to embrace the idea that not all rosé is from France and actually some of its most interesting and gastronomic examples come from other parts of the world. Two of my favorite outliers come from the Mediterranean—but maybe not from places that would be your first or even second guesses. I speak of two unique and utterly fascinating winemaking regions—the island of Crete in Greece and the high mountains of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. The producers from both of these regions have near cult-like followings for those in the know. So if you don’t know, this is a great opportunity to find out!

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