When we go wine tasting, we look forward to discovering wineries and wines that we never knew about before. For as many years as we have indulged in this avocation, we still make wonderful discoveries each trip. But we also find ourselves visiting some wineries repeatedly because we know their wines and appreciate the opportunity to taste them again. This is especially true with limited edition wines that are only available at the winery.
So imagine our disappointment when we arrive at a tasting room only to find that certain of our favorites are not available. It’s a shame when they’ve run out of a particular wine, but it’s near tragic when we find that the wine we were looking forward to is not longer being made. Well, tragic is a bit strong, but it does make us sad.
This problem only applies to wines from certain places, in our experience. In Europe, they’ve made the same wines from the same grapes in the same places for centuries. They’re not about to change now, and there are often laws preventing them from doing so. Only in the United States and Australia do they make wines that come and then go. So we’d like to pay homage to some wines we’ll never taste again.
Preston’s iconic Moscato Curioso poster, framed and hanging on our wall. There’s a smile here, because the yard in front of the Preston winery is crawling with cats, which they love.
- For many years, Preston in Dry Creek has been a “must go to” whenever we are in Dry Creek Valley in Sonoma County. They make wonderful wines primarily from Rhône-style grapes. In the past, they used to make more wine, but in the early years of the century they cut back wine production in favor of olive oil and general agriculture. (They are now Preston Farm and Winery.) In so doing, they stopped making two of our favorites. One was called Faux, because it was a fake Côtes du Rhône. Make-believe it may have been, but it was a very fine wine. Another was a real gem, a dessert wine called Muscato Curioso. It was sweet and luscious and it was a hallmark of Preston at the time. They even made a widely loved poster about the wine. We still have the poster on our wall, but alas, we’ll never taste it again.
- Long Island’s North Fork now boasts over 60 wineries, but the first winemaker to turn a potato patch into a vineyard was Alex Hargrave in 1973. In 1999, he sold his winery and vineyards to a noble Italian family, who now operate Castello di Borghese. Today’s wines have a distinctively Italian character. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they’re different from what the Hargrave Vineyard used to make on the same land. For their time, they were unusual wines, as the region was trying to develop its own style. They aged nicely but there’s no way to taste anything like them any longer.
- Decades ago, we travelled to the Hunter Valley in Australia. A winery in the region, Tulloch, was serving something they called, humbly, Tulloch’s Table Red. It tasted to us like sunshine in a bottle, and we bought several bottles. A few years later we were in Sydney and searched for it in local wine stores, only to be told that it was an experiment by the winery and they no longer made it. All we were left with was the memory.
- Finally, Joseph Phelps in St. Helena, Napa Valley, used to sell a Rhône-style wine that they called Vin du Mistral. (The Mistral is a seasonal cold wind that blows over Provence.) It was very reminiscent of the wines from the southern Rhône valley and it was quite affordable. Phelps discontinued it in 2008. They now have a wine by the same name but it’s not the same wine. The grapes now come from Central Coast vineyards in the Santa Barbara and Paso Robles areas, not Napa Valley. And it’s no longer inexpensive.