1. 28 / the tasting panel / july 2013
nEW yORK CITy SIpS
The Wine World Comes
to the Big Appleby lana Bortolot
W
e were fairly consumed by
cocktail culture this month—
whether it was the Manhattan
Cocktail Classic (see story, p. 46 —Ed.) or
the rounds of Great Gatsby–inspired tast-
ings . . . but happily, we found time to turn
our attention to a few events spanning the
wine globe.
Wines of Crete is coming into its own,
infused by both European Union money
and the ongoing interest in emerging
regions. Now an official collective, 14
producers traveled to New York recently
for a trade tasting, pouring wines from 20
producers. “Everyone else in Greece has
an identity, but Crete has not had its own
wholesale promotion. The feeling now is
that they’re ready to join the international
stage,” said Melanie Young, of The
Connected Table, the event organizer.
Tasters found a number of surprises: an
array of wines made from pronounceable
grapes such as Vilana, Vidiano and Dafni;
a number of winning international wines;
and a proliferation of women winemakers.
Bonus trivia: Crete is home of the south-
ernmost European winery.
Girl power also reigns at Spanish
Bodegas Zagarrón, where winemaker
Patricia Lozano Cortés is overturning
assumptions of La Mancha as the land of
Don Quixote. At newly opened Spanish
restaurant Manzanilla, Cortés presented
a portfolio made from Tempranillo and
international styles (a mineral, lean
Sauvignon Blanc and a rose petal–soft
Grenache). A leading producer of qual-
ity bulk wine, the winery relaunched in
2005 and has since focused on fine-wine
bottled projects. Wines from Spain Wine
have long equated with value, and this
portfolio, priced between $12 and $18, is
no exception.
Thin Lizzy’s 1976 hit, “The Boys are Back
in Town,” came to mind as we headed
over to Ai Fiori for a De Martino tasting
with Marco De Martino and winemaker
Marcelo Retamal, here from Santiago to
launch the Viejas Tinajas range. The wines
are made in ancient terracotta amphorae
gathered from all over Chile and pro-
duced in Tata Valley D.O., Chile’s oldest
(and least known) wine region. “We are
trying to rescue the identity of the wine
and region,” says De Martino. Retamal
says the wines have less power and “are
more gastronomic.” What we loved: the
small-production Orange wine made from
a cool-climate Muscat with six months of
skin contact.
PHOTOS:LANABORTOLOT
Enologist Patricia Lozano Cortés
and Andalusian rock star chef
Dani García at Manzanilla.
Left to right: Marco De Martino
and winemaker Marcelo Retamal
of Chile’s De Martino.
Left to right: Nikky and
Emmanuelle Paterianaki
of Domaine Paterianakis,
the largest women-owned
winery in Crete; Cathleen
Burke-Visscher of Wine
Works & Co.; Terry Seal of
Golden Ram Imports.
TP0713_001-33.indd 28 6/24/13 5:35 PM