pop & pour

By Peter Vetsch

[These bottles were provided as samples for review purposes.]

Sometimes you have to force seasonal drinking posts, and other times the season and the drinks just fall right into your lap.  Stampede is here in Calgary, the thermometer has just recently clocked over 30C, and we’re well-ensconced into July, which turns my sample pile ponderings to thoughts of whatever I can chill for refreshment most effectively.  After landing on an ideal trio of bottles that achieved that lofty goal, I noticed something odd that bound them together:  they have all at one time or another previously graced the pages of Pop & Pour.  Even though the blog is now 7½ years old and counting, that basically never happens.  Sometimes summer is just meant to be.  Game on.

2016 Ricasoli Albia Bianco Toscano (~$20)

I believe this is the second ever time that an identical bottle will get two separate reviews on PnP:  when Ray had the pleasure of meeting Tuscan winemaker Francesco Ricasoli at a tasting luncheon back in February, this 2016 Albia Bianco was the first bottle they cracked.  If you want a detailed backstory on Francesco, the Ricasoli estate and the family’s critical contributions to Chianti Classico as we now know it, click the link above for the whole enthralling narrative.  While I don’t have a five-course meal to pair with tonight’s wines, I do have both this Albia Bianco and its sibling the Albia Rose on the menu, both scions of Barone Ricasoli’s “fresh and fragrant” early-drinking Albia label.  Both come in gorgeous, hefty, gourd-like bottles that you first admire for making this $20 wine look like it costs double that amount, but then curse effusively once you realize the heavy-punted broad base is about a millimetre away from not fitting at all in any standard wine racking.  Suffice to say the labels suffered some mild to medium collateral damage as I reamed the bottles into place with every ounce of strength I had. Read the rest of this entry »