Luca Roagna is 5th generation winemaker in one of the best wine regions in the world; Piemonte. He's considered one of the best in the world and he's selling this gem for only 209kr. I recommend you run to the store and secure a few bottles before continuing this article :)

Here he is, Luca in green shirt. John Kaare and I slightly ecstatic after tasting his whole range of wines (2013 vintage).
Our visit to his winery premieres on Matkanalen, FB and YT January 2019.

Luca is an outstanding winemaker who has brilliant vineyards in both Barbaresco and Barolo. His wines are sought-after world wide and his limited 77.000 bottles production can be tricky to come by. The retail price ranges from 500kr to much much more. So what is the deal with this 209kr gem?

The top wines from Luca have been harvested from vineyards approximately 45 to 80 years old. As he's continuously is expanding, some of the newer vineyards have yet to reach that level of maturity. But in the ageing process they still produce grapes, excellent grapes; every year.
And it's from these grapes he makes what he labels as "a simple wine". But make no mistake, these wines are far from simple. They are complex, elegant world class wines, at a bargain prices. 

After 24 hours of air
At once you see a different wine. A lot has happened since yesterday. 
Delicious smell of ripe fruits, plums, black currants and wet forest. There are some notes of elegant oak poking around as well. Lovely. 
Super juicy in the mouth, with elegant and kind tannins.
​Raspberries, cherries and currants.

With food
Pizza, pasta and hard cheeses.

​What a wine! Wow!!

I have to admit something - I'm not to fond of Beaujolais Nouveau ... I know, I know, not something you say in november when the Est Arrive-hysteria is at it's peak. But after having tasted the 18-vintage it hit me: The New Wine just isn't that good. It feels rushed and unfinished. And when yoy taste wine from Beaujolaise that has been given some time. That has been made like it was a regular wine, then you have to ask yourself: Why do we even bother with Nouveau?

Because wine from Beaujolais can be fantastic! Like this weeks wine from Cheateau Thivin. Their Cuvée Zaccharie is a superb wine in any regard. Fresh and fruity, it is easily a wine to enjoy by itself or with food. It really shows off the great Gamay grape and puts all the Nouveau-wines to shame!

Run by Claude Gouffray, the fifth Claude from this family to make iwnes on the estate that the family bought in the late 1800's, the make their wine the old fashioned way and the result are wines with structure in addition to the great fruitiness that the Gamay is so famous for. 

Ch. Thivin Cuvée Zaccharie Côte de Brouilly 2017
Kr. 306,90

Dark and deep purple red colour. Extremely fresh with delightful pepper notes, great minerality and red berries on the nose. Great structure in the mouth. The minerality really shines through. Hints of strawberries at the end. Just a great wine.
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Food Pairing:
We enjoyed this with turkey this thanksgiving and it was a fantastic match. Will also be excellent with goats cheese. 

Just goes to show what a little patience will do to a wine ...

That's three pretty cool words, especially when they appear in the same sentence. And wine of the week is just that - limited, exclusive and cheap.

Cantina Zaccagnini is a family run winery in Abruzzo, 3 hours driving East of Rome. It's a versatile region, with 1/3 of the land marked as National Parks. They have high mountains and beaches, with good skiing conditions in winter and sunbathing in the summer months. And they produce a lot of wine here. 22 million liters a year. About 2/3 is produced by cooperatives, but small family producers keep popping up; changing the region.

Cantina Zaccagnini, run by Marcello Zaccagnini, is well known in Norway. Their best selling wine "Pinnevinen" has been a favoritt at Vinmonopolet for years. Wine of the week is the diamond version of this wine.

Cantina Zaccagnini Riserva 2013 is a special project, only made for the Norwegian marked. The wine is stored for an extra 30 months in 50 hl oak barrels, called barrique. Only 6000 bottles is produced each year, making this a very exclusive project.

A special episode from Piemonte and Abruzzo is coming soon. Check out the trailer here:

It's that time of the year again. The first wines of 2018 are ready and have been shipped out to a wine hungry public. The Beaujolaise Nouveau is here and we have tasted some to find out what this years harvest will be like. On a special occasion like this we had to have an extra podcast too of course. You can hear that here:

We had a two part tasting. Four wines in Oslo and three in Bergen.

Here are our tasting notes:

Jean-Paul Brun Beaujolais Nouveau L'Ancien 2018
Kr. 167,90

At first kiwi on the nose. Then fruit salad and coctail berries. Very tropical. Good stucture.
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Jean-Paul Brun Beaujolais Nouveau Cuvée Première 2018
​Kr. 157,90
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Very funky on the nose right away. Opened up after a while. Strawberries and plums on the nose. Good srtucture in the mouth with good roundness. Strawberries and hints of pepper in the mouth.

Ch. de Chatelard Beaujolais Villages Nouveau Vieilles Vignes Non Filtré 2018
Kr. 184,92
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​Smells like strawberry jam. Unfinished and not plesant in the mouth. Feels like it's not finished.

M. Lapierre Beaujolais Nouveau Cambon 2018
​Kr. 167,90​
Very strange smells in the beginning. PAint, gummy bears, not plesant at all. But fortunately it went away and it became more fruity after a while. Nice acid in the mouth with hints of summer strawberries.

P-U-R Beaujolais Nouveau
Kr. 179,00

Hints of strawberry jam, after a while the strawberries became more apparent. Nice in the mouth, but not a great wine.
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Trénel Beaujolais Nouveau 2018​
Kr. 159,90
​Nice pepper, hints of strawberries on the nose. Very sharp. Fruity and rih in the mouth. Good structure. Very enjoyable. Left the bottle open for a day and it came together. The fruits became more present an clear. A very good wine!

Laurent Perrachon Beaujolais Villages Nouveau 2018
Kr. 155,00

​Blueberrys and blackcurrants first on the pallate. Hints of cherries. Blue, almost purple in colour. Very high in acid so good structure. A nice wine.

All in all an educational tasting. Not sure we'll be buying too many Nouevaus in the future. There are so many other good wines vailable. But I bet we'll be in line next year too ...

"They just have too many bottles in their cellars and not enough consumers willing to pay for all the years of storage. And they are just to proud to sell it off as bulk/blend wine to big cooperatives."

​An employer at my local Vinmonopolet store, told me as I was gazing at the loaded shelves of old Bordeaux. Superb quality, low price. Really low priced. 
​My question was; "what happened?" He told me. I was amazed.

Now this is great news to us who love wine. We have access to an impressive selection, thanks to the great people at Vinmonopolet, at ridiculously low prices.

Bordeaux is a wine region set in the southwest of France. It produces 700 million bottles on an average vintage, and is predominantly known for its great red wines. 
A red Bordeaux is known for being tough, with rough tannins and great fruit. Tannins are what makes your mouth dry and needs ageing to become more mellow. But ageing takes time, space and cost quite a bit of money. That's why these bottles usually come at a much higher price. But as trends constantly shift from year to year, and Bordeaux wines are not trending at the moment. Well...you get the picture :)

Bottom line: go to the store and buy world class wines at super low prices, while you can. Because as we all know; trends will swing back to Bordeaux. That's what trends do.

Fall is heading for it's last gasp and winter will soon be upon us. The cold weather will wreak havoc on our poor and cold souls and this summers warm winds will be a fading memory. Luckily we can find some solace in a good bottle of wine. In the new wines featured this month in Vinmonopolet we find a friend which we visited two years ago.

When we traveled to the Jura we visited Domaine Rijckaert. Here Florent Rouve is in charge of the vinyards and in the cellar. His philosophy is trying to make wines that have a close connection to the terroire around Arbois but he is not a fan of Floor. So the wines are very fine and fruity. Great for an autumn night here in Norway.

Rijckaert Côtes du Jura Chardonnay 2016 - 234,90
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The Chardonnay wines we tasted from the barrel in 2016 are finally here and they are really fine. Peach, melon and citrus on the nose. Yellow apples, white flowers and citrus in the mouth, with nice acidity that really cleans the pallet. Also you get the feeling of the forrest here, like you do with all wines from the Jura. 

I lkie this on it's own, but try it with some Chicken Alfredo. It will handle the creamy sauce really well. 

Jurancon is a wine region in the south west of France in the foothills of the majestic Pyrenees. It produces a dry white wine and a famous kind of sweet wine. Today we give you two bottles of dry gold, from the same producer. And the price is awesome.

It's not often you get to meet true trailblazers, people who break new ground and lay the foundation for a new understanding of what lies ahead. The maker of this weeks wine is one of those persons.

Arianna Occhipinti is Italy's uncrowned queen of natural wine. Her fresh take on sicilian winemaking have made her a star in her own country and all over the world. Along with Luca Roagna she is also the representative of the next generation of winemakers in Italy and they are truly breaking new ground. Her wines are so natural and fresh and extremely drinkable. 
We had the great pleasure of visiting her this autumn and will be presenting her and more of her wines soon so watch this space

When traveling to wine producers we are privileged. We meet so many fascinating and fun people, all around the world. These past few weeks we have been to Italy and meet so many great people from Piemonte in the North, via Abruzzo to Sicily in the South. But it was in Abruzzo we met a true original and one of the most fun and generous persons I have ever met on my travels. 

At a lunching with Zaccanini he introduced us to a friend of his with the great name Fausto Zazzara. An entertainer and funny man, and also, as with so many Italians, a fantastic chef, he made one great dish after the other for a typical Italian lunch that lasted for hours. But it was the wine he served that surprised us the most. It was his own sparkling wine, made there in the mountains of Abruzzo. A great and fruity sparkling that piqued our interest. He invited us to his cellar and Zaccanini insisted we should go. He promised us it would be something different and he wasn’t kidding.

​The next day we drove to the tiny town of Tocco da Casauria. And Fausto showed us around. I had my I phone with me and filmed a little bit so you can see for your self the charming and fun place he has. He only makes 15 000 bottles a year and he is the only one who works with the wine, although, since he has five names, he says he has five persons working in the cellar. Being on a tasting with Fausto is something special that is for sure. But he follows up with his wines. We tasted his whole range, he has four different sparkling wines, and the white is this weeks Wine of the Week. But I have to mention the rose he had left on the lees for 48 months. It was a sort of experiment that he forgot about and then suddenly one day he found some bottles hidden away in corner. I stead of throwing the wine away he tried it and lo and behold, and orange sparkling wine that tasted like fresh blood oranges appeared! I have to say it was one of the fines sparkling wines I have ever tasted, that wasn’t a champagne. Here’s hoping some bottles find their way to Norway soon.

​Fausto Zazzara Majgual Metodo Classico Brut 2015
254,90 kr
Fresh and sharp sparkling wine. A lot of lime on the nose. In the mouth the lemon and also lime is very present. Very refreshing and super drinkable. A perfect aperitif. 

This week we're giving you wines of the week; two delicates from the same winemaker.
One white - one red: both from South Africa. 

This is a fun and very affordable project from the Carinus brothers, who have vineyards both in Stellenbosch and Swartland. For a long time they've been one of the top producers providing grapes for different winemakers all over Western Cape. From the classic, to the big commercial and the young and hip ones. Everybody wants grapes from the Carinus brothers. 

Carinus Syrah 2017 - 209Kr

Medium deep Burgundy red colour. Classic Syrah on the nose with black currants, blackberries and spices from the far east. Hints of oak. Extremely fresh berry sent, that with a little bit of air opens up to more earthly tones.

A very juicy, rich and playful wine in the mouth. Flavours of black currants and blackberries, with nicely rounded tannins. Very nice fruit driven wine, that sent my thoughts to the famous Barbera's of Piemonte. 

This will be perfect with a classic Italian pizza or Bolognese. But will also be great with a green or red curry. A very versatile wine, to a great prize.