3CUPS Blog

If you don't feel like making the green bean casserole this year, but also don't want to show up for Thanksgiving empty-handed, how about picking up one of our handy 6-bottle Thanksgiving wine bags? Every wine in the set is selected for its appropriateness at the Thanksgiving table: you'll look like a wine pairing genius! We guarantee these bottles will impress even your most uppity of guests. All six wines included in our (reuseable, made in Canada, very fetching) wine bag are imported by Neal Rosenthal, a man with taste we trust absolutely. He is unwavering in dedication to importing the genuine article. Still skeptical? Fine. Come by on Wednesday, November 26th and Trey Stephensen of Rosenthal Wine Merchant will be pouring all the wines included in the bag from 1 pm. What is in this made-for-entertaining bag of good times? Read on: 

2006 Chateau Soucherie Anjou Blanc $14.99 

2006 Pascal Granger Beaujolais Villages Le Bouteau $15.99

2007 Jean Claude Thevenet Macon-Pierreclos $18.99

2006 Domaine Monpertuis Cotes du Rhone $14.99

2007 De Forville Dolcetto d'Alba $16.99 

2007 Hubert Rousseau Domaine des Trois Toits Muscadet $15.99

Click Link Above to View or Purchase

$99.99 = 6 bottles (30+glasses!) of tasty, tasty European wine.

Dr. Heyden

Pinot Noir 2005

$18.99/bottle, $17.09/bottle Special Price

Click Here to Purchase

For customers planning a less ambitious Thanksgiving week, consider spending a little time with the work of Frank Heyden. The doctor. This is an easy Pinot to enjoy, flavor-packed, riper than was probably thought possible during previous eras of German viticulture. It's the classic red for turkey-based festivities. Soft red fruit, freshness and a general absence of tannin make it a pleasant holiday meal companion. Read on for some quotable facts on Dr. Heyden.

Located in the Nierstein area of the Rheinhessen region, Heyden's vineyards total an area of 11 hectares, with holdings in top Oppenheim sites such as the Sackträger, Herrenberg, Schloss and Kreuz. The estate has a short history, being started in 1999, but was awarded the state merit prize in 2004, and in the same year, Frank Heyden was awarded the German Oenologists Prize.

The Rheinhessen is a difficult area to organize. It isn’t easily fragmentable into clusters of information. It is a large (61,000 acre) and relatively undifferentiated mass of towns that have an unnerving tendency to end with the suffix “heim.” It boggles my mind and resists compartmentalization. Take a map of the area out of context and one is left to look at a Wisconsin-shaped blob surrounded to the east and north by the Rhein. Because wine towns are scattered across a large landmass, the growers who are reshaping the region are often working in isolation from each other, and far from the Rhein. Young idealists at estates like Gysler (Weinheim), Wittmann (Westhofen), Wagner-Stempel (Siefersheim) and Dr. Heyden (Oppenheim) are creating a degree of recognition for their recently anonymous hometowns. Much of the current action is occurring far from Bingen, a mirror of Rudesheim across the Rhein, and Nierstein, a flagship for Riesling and the region as a whole, a crucial wine center in the middle of a sea of red sandstone. The stretch of vineyard land lining the Rhein between these two towns has been a steady source of good and great wine, even when most of the region was not.

This Spätburgunder (pinot noir) from the Oppenheim vineyards is labeled in Germany with the name “Tradition.” It is a wine that is produced according to traditional methods, i.e. fermenting on the mash and long maturing in old oak cask to give it a soft, smooth character and solid, yet elegant structure with fine berry fruit.

Come in for the wine and witty banter (we pay top dollar to keep bar staff that are witty banterers) and stay for the awesome snacks available from our coffee-side. After a flight or two of holiday wine options, some savory treats from Scratch Baking or Farmer's daughter may prove irresistible.

Chardonnay Flight: $10

2007 Jean-Claude Thevenet $18.99/bottle

2006 Jean Manciat Macon Charnay $17.99/bottle

2007 Guillot-Broux Macon-Villages $18.99/bottle

Pinot Noir Flight: $8

2005 Binner Pinot Noir $20.99/bottle

2005 Dr. Heyden Pinot Noir $18.99/bottle

2007 Montinore Pinot Noir $19.99/bottle

La Golondrina

Colombia

Cauca

$16.50/lb.

Click here to Purchase

The Coffee... Caramel, chocolate, black cherry notes. The body of the coffee is juicy, a reliable Colombian coffee that delivers satisfaction with a sweet and clean aftertaste.

The Name... “La Golondrina” means “The Swallow,” In Latin American culture, the swallow is a symbol of communication between people separated by distance and borders. The swallow crosses borders easily and carries messages of goodwill between friends, no matter how far away. Also, the swallow returns every year, just as we plan to return to Cauca every year.

The Project... Alejandro Cadena and Giancarlo Gianetti are two Colombians who dedicate themselves to finding and protecting small lots of great coffee grown in the mountainous region of Cauca. Alejandro and Giancarlo search Cauca for farmers willing to make the strong commitment to quality we need, and immediately send samples from potentially great farms to for analysis. If the coffee meets our standards, we purchase the lot from the small farmer who offered it at many times the local price. In this way, we were able to create a strong incentive for these talented farmers to supply us directly rather than sell it to the local mass-market buyers for homogenization and export.