What’s New for the New Year?

Along with the promises you’ve made to yourself in the flush of the new year, you may consider adding a promise to venture beyond the borders of the kinds of drinks shackling you.

by

Eat/Drink

The world of fermented beverages holds in its orb infinite ways to explore the ways our bodies react to alcohol. Infinite ways to discover ourselves. New aromas. New flavors. New thoughts. New memories. New ideas.

And yet, day after day, year by year, we shackle ourselves to a vanishing quantity—and quality—of all they have to offer us. We lounge in our living rooms, neighborhood bars, and fancy restaurants and ask for the kinds of drinks we always ask for. An Old Fashioned. A draft of ale. A glass of chardonnay. Whatever you drink you’ve convinced yourself is the kind of drink you like.

Along with the promises you’ve made to yourself in the flush of the new year, you may consider adding a promise to venture beyond the borders of the kinds of drinks shackling you.

Why not explore a new vista or two?

Pavese Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle

  • Estate: Ermes Pavese
  • Country: Italy
  • Region: Valle d’Aosta
  • Appellation: Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle
  • Approximate retail price: $40

If you haven’t yet explored the majesty of mountain wine, this is the wine to begin exploring with. Mountain wine is wine made from grapes cultivated in vineyards at high altitude. Mountain wine benefits from wide diurnal temperature swings, acute sun exposure, and rocky soils rich with minerals. These benefits make for complex wines of intense aromas, rich flavors, and vibrant acidity. Among the best terroirs for mountain wines are the vineyards of Monte Bianco in the Italian Alps, where Ermes Pavese grows wine expressing the beauty of his Alpine land.

If you travel from the village of Morgex to the village of La Salle, you’ll find Pavese’s vineyards in the hamlet of La Ruine. In these vineyards, Pavese cultivates a wine grape called prié, which makes a white wine by the appellation of Blanc de Morgex et de La Salle. Pavese’s prié blanc is racy and vivacious. Easy to drink, yet remarkably complex. A wine which shows you the majesty, the profundity, and the complexity mountain wines can achieve.

Rox Mut Sidra Vermut

  • Estate: Llagar Sidre Castañón
  • Country: Spain
  • Region: Asturias
  • Appellation: Asturias
  • Approximate retail price: $40 (for a one-liter bottle)

If you think of vermouth solely as an aromatized wine to make mixed drinks with, I’d like to invite you to leave your dark cell behind you. Those kinds of vermouth—which we might call mixed drink vermouths—are made like widgets in a factory. More like cans of soda than bottles of wine. The kinds of vermouth I’d like to lure you to are made by artisans and farmers at wineries across Italy and Spain and France. They comprise a luscious and extraordinary variety of fermented beverages.

Vermouth is made by fortifying a base wine with a neutral spirit and infusing it with botanicals like herbs, spices, roots, and flowers. The botanicals are macerated in the base wine, then fortified again. They may also be macerated in a neutral alcohol, then added into the base wine, and then fortified. 

But Roxmut Vermouth is its own creature.

This vermouth is made with 80% cider from Asturian apples, then infused with herbs like oregano and chamomile, and then fortified to 15% alcohol. The vermouth is aged for three months in wood barrels, which round out rough edges, enhance flavors, and impart an amber color.

Rox Mut is fresh, bright, and herby, with the acidity and bite of a juicy apple. Serve Rox Mut chilled with a slice or a twist of lemon or with an olive. Or, if you’re feeling spicy, with both lemon and olive.