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For each San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, longtime wine writer Mike Dunne tastes and jots notes on best-of-class wines. For the competition in 2024, Mike first tasted best-of-class wines and then trimmed this wide field to the 70 wines that went into the concluding sweepstakes round, plus a few others that he found to represent the exceptional character, quality, value, backstories, and trends within the wine scene, especially the rise in grape varieties and wine styles beyond California.
In his post, he reviewed only 3 of Ohio's four best of class winners. Here are his
Blanc de Blancs Ferrante Grand River Valley "Star Seeker" Bubbly Blanc: If the Cleveland Browns had as much cohesion, attack and stamina as this sparkling wine, the NFL playoffs would be running a different script these days. Cleveland comes into play because the Grand River Valley is an American Viticultural Area just east of Cleveland. From there, Ferrante's "Star Seeker" is an aptly named sparkler. It has the thrust and flow of a successful launch into orbit. Its spritz is enduring, its acidity forthright, its sweetness delicate, and its flavor running to suggestions of peach and lime.
Red Natives/Hybrid Varietals
Hocking Hills Winery Ohio Léon Millot: American wine enthusiasts brought up on wines of Europe and California often get thrown by the quirkiness of wines made from hybrid grapes grown in much of the rest of the United States. This Léon Millot, however, comes across as more traditional vitis vinifera than the French/American hybrid it is. The color is bright and of medium intensity, the aroma falls in the cherry family, the tannins are more velveteen than grating, the acidity spunky, the impression dry, and the finish lasting. You get to Ohio and find this on the wine list, hope you are in a place specialing in pizza and
pasta, its ideal match.
Vignoles
The Vineyards at Pine Lake 2022 Ohio Vignoles: "Vignoles" is French for "fun." Not really, though that Is apt to be the thought by anyone who takes a sip of this interpretation of the grape by The Vineyards at Pine Lake. It is one frolicking wine - brassy yellow color, floral bouquet, melodic sweetness, punctuating spice, and in flavor happy suggestions of sponge cake - lemon or peach, take your pick. Thanks to its cleansing acidity, it bounds across the palate, yet also lingers so long in the mouth that the only reason someone wouldn't gulp the wine is to continue to relish the previous sip. White wines aren't expected to be this complex and long, but here it is.
All of his Best of Class Notes:https://winejudging.com/2024/01/19/mike-dunnes-2024-best-of-class-tasting-notes/
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