2023 Domaine Michel Lafarge Volnay Sake Juan Carlos López de Lacalle

Juan Carlos López de Lacalle walked away from the Rioja DOCa rather than let a bureaucratic label obscure the identity of individual villages — "Laguardia alone is bigger than Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Some spice and dried herbs

falls somewhere between orange

The 2023 Artazu "Pasos de San Martín" is an organically farmed Garnacha from 35-year-old bush vines on a single slope at 600 meters in San Martín de Unx

Made from Gohyakumangoku rice and polished to 58%

2023 Domaine Michel Lafarge Volnay Sake Juan Carlos López de LacalleRed cherry, raspberry, rose petal, and a thread of chalky earth airy and caressing, with the kind of silky texture that makes Volnay famous and the kind of precision that makes Lafarge a reference. Certified organic and Demeter certified biodynamic, 50 year old vines on clay limestone, native yeast, 18 months in barrel. Three generations of the same family, the same village, the same conviction Frdric and Clothilde Lafarge making Volnay the way it was