Wine Review: James Charles Cincinnatus 2017

A wine by Virginia's Bogaty Family Wine Group is back on the blog! I've reviewed a bunch of wines by them and I like to think of them as good friends. Hey, Bogaty! Give Coy a raise! He's great!

James Charles Bogaty's parents came over to America from the Italian Alps, and his family in the old country still runs a small vineyard. So James thought he'd carry out his family tradition in Virginia. He bought his first vineyard in 1995, and in 2000 he and his wife Della founded Veramar Vineyards.  Their son Justin became the winemaker in 2001.

They've got three labels: Bogati Bodega, Veramar Vineyards, and James Charles. To read the other reviews I've written on all three of their labels, check out the Virginia label for the blog.

Now how about we sip some dessert wine from Virginia? This is a fortified dessert wine made from the hybrid Seyval Blanc. Unfortunately that's all I really know about it, because as of right now there's issues getting information from their labs. But hey, it really doesn't matter. The final result does!

Read More

Wine Review: Bogadi Bodega & Vineyard 2014 Seyval Blanc

Virginia is for lovers. And for strongholds in uprisings against governments. It's also got the longest history of winemaking in the United States of America (Texas and California made wine much earlier but weren't a part of the USA until much later). Wine from the native species' of grapevines had been made there since the early days of English colonization. Many attempted to grow vitis vinifera (the European species for making wine) but the vines just kept dying. Thomas Jefferson (drinker, collector and "America's first wine expert") planted vinifera at Monticello in Charlottesville. He failed.

The reason was phylloxera, that little bug that I've mentioned half a billion times, before anybody knew it even existed. It's native to the eastern United States and it likes to munch on the foliage of the native grapevines (like vitis labrusca and vitis rupestris), but for whatever reason it can't eat the leaves of vitis vinifera. So instead it attacks the roots and slowly kills the plant. That's why the English colonies couldn't grow vinifera wine while the Spanish were growing it like crazy in places like Mexico, Texas and California.

Before the solution of grafting vinifera trunks onto labrusca roots was discovered in the 1870's, there was a period of hybridization. Artificial selection and modification of our crops and animals is what we humans do best, right? So we took vinifera and various American species and created hybrids. The varieties involved were chosen carefully for what flavors were wanted or what conditions it had to face. After grafting, the creation of hybrids cooled off but they were still made for various reasons. One of those after-grafting hybrids was tonight's subject: Seyval Blanc.

Read More