“Aligoté expresses terroir almost more than chardonnay,” he told me in 2017. Not many Burgundy producers would take that position, much less act on it. But Mr. Pataille had the courage of his convictions, and wine lovers are the beneficiaries.
Gaia Ritinitis Nobilis
Gaia is a fine producer of Greek wines, but I want to single out one of its bottles, which says a lot about the qualities that go into an original wine. It’s an exceptional retsina, a wine infused with the resin of Aleppo pine trees that traces back to the ancient Greeks. Nowadays, tourists who visit Greece are generally warned not to drink retsina, which all too often is bad wine made with bad pine.
But back in the 1990s, Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, a founder of Gaia and the winemaker, was convinced that retsina could be a good wine. It was the national wine of Greece, he believed, a traditional product that should be a source of pride, not of shame, and he was determined to do it right. The result, made with excellent roditis grapes and good-quality resin, is superb.
Like many people, I scoffed at retsina, until I tried Ritinitis Nobilis the first time, with Greek food. I was both taken with the wine, and with the idea that often, we reflexively dismiss wines not because they are inherently bad, but because we’ve only had bad versions. Just as with hybrids and with aligoté, if retsina is made with care, it can be beautiful.
Hiyu Wine Farm
Hiyu Wine Farm in the Columbia Gorge region, where Oregon meets Washington at the Columbia River, makes astonishingly unconventional wines. One bottle might be a combination of assyrtiko, fiano, greco and other grapes that are put together because they trace a path from Greece to southern Italy. Another might mix pinot noir and gewürztraminer. Who would do that?
Not a company that only produces what is going to sell. Hiyu is built on taking risks. It’s a place that mixes vineyards, fruit trees, vegetable crops and animals in a healthy, polycultural ecosystem.
Hiyu was founded by Nate Ready, a former sommelier, and China Tresemer, a cooking teacher, who believes in natural farming techniques. It hasn’t been easy. Hiyu almost lost everything in its first vintage. “The failures are so important,” Mr. Ready told me in 2021. Yet the rewards are great.
