A 3-Pronged Wine Alert

Read on to the bottom, it's an action-packed wine line-up at 3CUPS this weekend, worthy of a few minutes of your time. Deals, free fancy wine tastings for those in the know, outside validation of the awesome stuff we already sell and love....

#1... The Weekend Wine. Kudos to Ed Behr for hitting the nail on the head in his recent Burgundy 2: Chablis issue (#81) of the Art of Eating. Behr writes the most important, relevant and accurate food journal in America today. It truly is a joy to read: I wait anxiously for each issue while most periodicals collect dust on the coffee table until there's a moth to kill. Gotta protect my woollens... Edward Behr's kind words about the Goisot clan and their wines reminded me of my too-brief time tasting wine with the Goisot kids last winter. Anyway, their incredibly delicious and affordable 2007 Bourgogne Blanc is our weekend Wine. $16.99 (10% off this weekend.) See Below. To the right is a photo of the Goisot family that I took duriing my trip in January.

#2... Free Wine Tasting Alert... As you may know, every Friday and Saturday we offer free wine samples to anyone foolhardy enough to darken our door. And not the miserly, here's a puny pour in a plastic cup with a used-car sales pitch type of "free" sampling that one often encounters. I hear your complaints, feel your pain, etc. We pour you wine ourselves (industry sales reps need not apply), to hang out and talk wine, with you, our customers, the folks that pay the rent. This Friday and Saturday during our allotted sample times I'm going to open a wine that I think is amazing, the 2003 Cappellano Barolo Pie Rupestris. Barolo in July? I understand your confusion. We just picked up 31 bottles of this ultra-traditional, legendarily small (800 cs average per vintage total production) family winery's benchmark wine, at a price easily $30 below the national retail average for recent vintages. $49 (yes, I will pour you a sample for free of a $49 wine, just this once, don't tell any strangers) If you think the deal is too good to be true, come down and try it. Bring your checkbook, once tasted you'll be wanting to stock the cellar with this wine that could very well last a lifetime.

Here's a short story/the facts on Cappellano.

Teobaldo Cappellano, who sadly passed away in February of this year, may have been the last great traditionalist Piedmontese winemaker. For the last 25 years of his life he banned journalists from reviewing his wines, unless they agreed not to use scores, which he viewed as meaningless and devisive. I'd like the guy for this alone, even if he didn't make one of the world's most profound and timeless red wines. Cappellano was a leader in the sustainable agriculture movement in Italy. His wines were rarely seen collectors' items, classic rose-scented reds that resulted from long aging in traditional used barrels. The Pie Rupestris wine that we have a scant quantity to sell came from vines planted over 60 years ago. Come by this weekend to taste a piece of real wine history.

#3... Vina Caneiro...  Last week another talented wine writer, Eric Asimov of the New York Times, reviewed a number of wines imported by Andre Tamers of Chapel Hill-based DeMaison Selections. The featured and pictured wine in this facinating piece about verdant northwestern Spain was D. Ventura's Vina Caneiro, a red made of the Mencia grape that we've happily been able to taste and sell for several years thanks to proximity of Mr. Tamers and his dedicated Spanish wine importin' crew. This year a meager 14 cases of Vina Caneiro came to NC, we were granted 2cases, which we plan to squirrel away until you drop by to ask for it by name. The wine is a winner, from a single plot of 80-year-old vines grown in the steep slatey slopes of the Sil River, in isolated Ribeira Sacra.