Williams Selyem Late Harvest Gewurztraminer (375ML half-bottle) 2016
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The rich color of this wine evokes visions of liquid gold. The exotic aromas give way to notes of poached pear, cardamom, and vanilla bean. Apricot and frangipane add another interesting layer in the profile. The classic Gewürztraminer nose of rose petals ties everything together and provides elegance and lift. On the palate, the wine immediately has great presence and mouthfeel, and is like an elixir. Balanced with just enough acidity, flavors of peaches and cream, and shortbread cookie come through on the finish. This is the perfect companion to a stone fruit tart with cardamom ice cream. Enjoy!
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Give this time in a decanter and its clean flavors of fresh litchi turn bold and juicy, with enough talc-like acidity to keep its substantial sweetness in check. Chill it down to serve with a chicken-liver mousse before dinner, or a slice of toasted pound cake for dessert.
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Williams Selyem Winery began as a simple dream of two friends, Ed Selyem and Burt Williams, who pursued weekend winemaking as a hobby in 1979 in a garage in Forestville, California, and made their first commercial vintage in 1981. In less than two decades, Burt and Ed created a cult-status winery of international acclaim. Together they set a new standard for Pinot Noir winemaking in the United States, aligning Sonoma County's Russian River Valley in the firmament of the best winegrowing regions of the world. Today John and Kathe Dyson, who purchased the winery from Burt and Ed in 1998, carry on the passion for Pinot Noir winemaking without compromise. As for the wines... they just keep getting better and better.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Taking advantage of the cool Pacific breezes that arrive via gaps between the Gabilan Range and the Santa Lucia Mountains, San Benito AVA is a great Central coast source for cool climate whites and Pinot noir.