If you have enjoyed a spritzy Vinho Verde, the ubiquitous green bottles in the summer wine aisles of Whole Foods, you have tried this grape before.
Arinto is native to Portugal, and also grown in Chile. It is usually citrus forward with high minerality and high acid. True here.
This wine is beautifully aromatic with light floral notes, and high tones of lemon peel and fresh Meyer lemon. Blended with Albariño and the California sunshine, this wine is light on it’s toes but also has some structure notes of nectarine and salty ocean.
This wine was cold fermented in stainless steel for 55 days, lightly spared and bottled in January to keep the natural fermentation in tact.
2021 Orixe Sotelo Nebola
$30.00
“Nebula is the word for fog in Galician. The fruit comes from Monterey County, a vineyard called Pierce ranch. It’s in San Antonio Valley. The family mostly grows Iberian varieties. This is Arinto with a little bit of Albariño. Our goal is to make Txakoli, or that style anyway. So we went for the style, and we’re working with a nursery in Spain to import the Txakoli varieties here. But in the meantime, this is the only variety that we’ve been able to find in California that lend itself to this style.
We found this vineyard through Ian Brand. He is good friends with Bedrock. He came and did the podcast and met Jackie. She mentioned that we had our label, and he gave her his email and said if we ever needed any help finding anything in Monterey County he would help out. I emailed him and said what do you think, who do you know? He gave us three or four different growers and this is one of them. Very cool, all organic. Beautiful, really nice family.
Even the packaging of this wine was complicated, because none of my glass suppliers for cork suppliers wanted to say yes, this is fine to do because of the spritz it has. They all said don’t do it. The thought the corks would push and the bottles would explode, even with this light of carbonation. But, Spain and Portugal do this all the time. So what is it that they know that we don’t? I think it’s just risking it. Nothing has pushed at all. Not one bit.”