Erasmus Tasting!

Taste 2010 Clos Erasmus!
One of the most sought after wines in the world!
Taste other wines from the famed Priorat region as well!

Saturday March 2nd, 2013
11am-8pm



Featuring on the tasting machines:
2010 Clos Erasmus (made by Charlotte resident Daphne Glorian)
2009 Mas Doix Salanques
2009 Mas D'en Compte
2009 Closa Batllet "Artai"
2010 Mas Atla "Artigas"

(Just to begin - how cool is it that one of the most influential female winemakers on the planet lives right here in Charlotte!)

Priorat is a lunar landscape of a wine region. But from its wild and ragged turf a few dedicated (no, let’s call them obsessed) winemakers coax powerful, intense wines. Those wines bring ever-lofty prices, and are scoring equally lofty rankings from wine writers.

It wasn’t always so. In 1985, nobody had heard of the ancient wine-producing region, at least not in relation to quality wine. But Daphne Glorian, Rene Barbier (along with his godson Alvaro Palacios), and a few other twenty-something’s, saw a brilliant future in Priorat’s long-forgotten wine-glorious past.

Alvaro and the gang have proven their prescience; and their wines are justly prized and pricey. While the prices vary according to the perceived quality of the vintage, there have been some very good vintages of late.

2009 and 2010 are more powerful in style and for many Priorat drinkers that should be reason enough to jump all over any of the great producers. But don’t dawdle. The 2011 vintage doesn't have any of the cachet of 2009 and 2010. So these will disappear fairly quickly, as people decide to grab enough to last them for a year or two.

And the region doesn’t make a lot of wine. As crazy as it sounds, very little of the Priorat region is planted to wine, or at least currently tended by winegrowers; most of the hillsides betray abandoned vineyards. Growing winegrapes in Priorat is too difficult, and at the impossibly low yields typical of Priorat’s rugged vineyards, there’s no opportunity to make a reasonably priced commercial wine. Instead, a vigneron has to make a strong and powerful wine, worthy of the highest prices for wines sold in the US market. To do anything less will result in so-so wines that demand to be sold at those same crazy prices. It’s just too expensive to make wines in Priorat.

Charlotte residents are lucky that Daphne makes her home here and so they get more than their fair share of these dynamos. The 2010 we're tasting this weekend should offer the best possible explanation of what the region does that is so incomparable and indescribable.

We'll see you Saturday and Happy Tasting!