Wine Down Thursday: Aromatic Reds
September 10 from 6 to 7:30pm
Sampler: $20/person

Join us for this week’s Wine Down Thursday, a fragrant exploration of three expressive reds that prove delicacy can be deeply satisfying. As late summer shifts toward cooler evenings, light, aromatic reds offer exactly the right kind of pleasure: vibrant, versatile, and effortlessly inviting. Each pour sits on the lighter end of the red wine spectrum, yet every wine carries its own sense of structure, energy, and quiet complexity.

Travel from the lifted perfume and Alpine freshness of Piedmont, to the sunlit, schist-driven Roussillon, and on to the high-elevation granite slopes of Sierra de Gredos. Expect captivating aromatics, graceful texture, and beautifully balanced finishes that build with every sip. These are reds made for lingering conversation, good food, and one more glass.

Featured Wines:
2025 Sottimano “Maté”
This is a strikingly dry, still expression of Brachetto, Piedmont's famously perfumed but too often sweetened grape. Drawn from a small, mature-vine parcel, it translates Brachetto's natural floral character into a refined, savory red: wild rose, violet, strawberry, raspberry, orange peel, sage, and gentle spice unfold with remarkable clarity. Indigenous fermentation and stainless-steel aging preserve its brightness, while skin contact gives the wine quiet structure and a pleasantly saline edge. Light in color but not in presence, Maté is vivid, finely textured, and food-flexible, showing how compelling Brachetto can be when treated as a serious dry wine.

2021 Le débit d’ivresse “Amb Amics”
Luc Devot's 2021 Amb Amics captures Roussillon's warmth without weight, combining Syrah and Grenache from schist-rooted vineyards near Montner. The blend is naturally suited to the task: Syrah contributes violet, pepper, and a savory mineral line, while Grenache brings juicy strawberry fruit, brightness, and supple generosity. Devot works with an intentionally gentle hand, preserving lift and freshness rather than pursuing extraction, then ferments with native yeasts before bottling the wine unfined and unfiltered. The result is ruby, energetic, and lightly structured, with sunlit red fruit, licorice, spice, and stony tension. It is a meaningful expression of Roussillon: openhearted, rugged, and deliciously alive.

2023 Pegaso “Zeta’
Pegaso's 2023 Zeta shows a strikingly lifted face of Garnacha from Cebreros, in central Spain's Sierra de Gredos. It comes from organically tended, 60-year-old bush vines planted at 2,920 to 3,020 feet, where cool nights preserve energy in a landscape of slate and granite. The aromatics feel both wild and precise: red cherry, cranberry, wild strawberry, lavender, thyme, cracked pepper, dried citrus, and crushed stone. On the palate, bright acidity carries the wine's generous fruit through fine, earthy tannins and a mineral finish. Native yeast fermentation, restrained aging, and minimal intervention allow the rugged mountain setting to speak with clarity, fragrance, and poise.