The Arizona Wine Monk Podcast Cody Vladimir Burkett

In this episode, which has been teased about for a while, I finally brought my stash of older Malvasia Bianca bottles from Arizona Stronghold to the winery itself, where Matthew Raica and Kim Musket joined me for a vertical tasting of every Malvasia Bianca vintage made by Arizona Stronghold from 2010 to 2018.

How well does Arizona Malvasia age? When does Malvasia peak? What makes for a vintage of Malvasia bianca that lasts? Take a listen and find out.

Gary has been a fixture in the Wine Monk Podcast for over half of the episodes I recorded, (as well as the sister podcast, The Make America Grape Again Podcast) so I figured it was about time that I actually make him sit in the hot seat for once, and talk about his own label, Greater Than Wines. In this episode, I interrogate Gary while we drink the Red Experiment Number 1, and we talk the origins of the label, the origins of the wine, and future plans for the label.

Pinot Noir is a grape that is steeped in mystery and elegance. The unbilled co-star and arguable protagonist of the film 'Sideways,' Pinot Noir has long had a cloak of mystery surrounding it. Pinot has always been a cult favorite.

A while back, I did a tasting of Villa Maria wines with Snooth Media, and I wondered just exactly how New Zealand Pinot stacked up to the rest of the world. Could it stand on par with Burgundy, or Oregon? I decided there was really only one subjective way to find out: inflict a blind tasting upon myself and some of my friends and coworkers. Included in this blind tasting are bottles from Oregon, Sonoma, Burgundy, Arizona, and New Mexico, alongside the aforementioned bottle from Taylor's Pass Vineyard.

It's the Pinot Patrol, this time on the Arizona Wine Monk.

In this episode of the Arizona Wine Monk podcast, Elizabeth Krecker and I sit outside on a starry night and drink the 2014 Salvatore Vineyards Sangiovese alongside the 2012 Licini Brunello di Montalcino. Both of these bottles were of equal value and from small, pocket-sized vineyards.   Hope you enjoy!

Interestingly, Licini is one of the few pre-phylloxera vineyards remaining in Italy.  As Elizabeth excitedly messaged me later, after we recorded:

Cody, I totally stumbled onto this jaw-dropping information about Lisini today while studying for a test. Believe me, I'd hunted for information about Lisini before our podcast, but never saw this. Don't know if there is any way to record an appendix to our podcast (Arizona Sangiovese vs. Brunello di Montalcino), but this might be well worth adding in some way before it is published...No wonder this wine was impossible to find on the internet! With just 1/2 hectare of vines planted, this is a tiny, Arizona-sized vineyard. An even more perfect comparison to Arizona wine than we realized.

From "The Great Escape" by Kerin O'Keefe, published in Decanter, Oct. 10, 2005, retrieved from https://www.decanter.com/features/the-great-escape-247887/ 

Another vineyard untouched by the blight is the Lisini estate in Montalcino. Widely noted for its Brunello, Lisini boasts a half-hectare vineyard of Sangiovese, with vines dating back to the mid-1800s, which inexplicably never succumbed to phylloxera. 

According to cellar master Filippo Paoletti, ‘No one knows why this vineyard was never attacked, as it is no different from those that were destroyed. It is, however, about a kilometre away from the nearest vineyard and is surrounded by olive groves.’ When consultant oenologist Franco Bernabei first set eyes on the ancient vines there was no doubt in his mind what to do.

Lorenzo Lisini of the family estate recalls: ‘We used to use the pre-phylloxera grapes along with those from our other vineyards for Brunello. But Bernabei suggested that we make one wine from this vineyard to honour the rare vines, using traditional techniques.’ Since 1985 the winery has produced Prefillossero. The wine is aged for one to two years, depending on the vintage, in Slavonian oak. Further ageing takes place in large glass demijohns for another two years before it is bottle aged. The wine has devout followers, including Italian wine critic Luigi Veronelli, who inscribed on a bottle of the 1987, on show at the winery, that drinking Prefillossero was like listening to ‘the earth singing to the sky’

In this podcast, I drink the Sangiovese Pet-nat from Sand-Reckoner with Isobel Luna, harvest hand and tasting room wine slinger for Sand-Reckoner!  This delicious sparkling rosé is pretty fantastic, and you can listen to us gush about this wine, and geek out over the oldest method of making sparkling wines in this recording.

I have no idea if there are any bottles of this wine left in the tasting room, but I highly recommend grabbing a bottle of the Sangiovese Pet-Nat as soon as you possibly can.

Ever wonder about the rules of cigar and wine pairing? (or if there are even any rules?) I've been getting into cigars lately, so I have.

In Part two of this two-part series, we are exploring cigars and cigar pairings with wine using the Petit Sirah XM from the Southwest Wine Center. This episode focuses on pairing the wine with a few cigars, as well as which pairs more with a late harvest sweet wine from the Loire Valley. The cigars used in this podcast are the Leaf by Oscar Maduro, the Partigas Serie D, the Guerrila Warfare, and the Atabey.

Enjoy!