All About Our Relaunch, And The Exciting Year Ahead
Plus, my top five most memorable wines of the year.
2024 has been an interesting year for me as a wine and spirits writer. As many of you know, at the beginning of the year, I took a job as senior writer at The New Wine Review—which has consumed a great deal of my creative energy and effort. Necessarily, during the past 12 months, that’s meant Everyday Drinking has shifted a bit to the side as I became grounded in my new gig.
As 2024 winds down, and I gain more bandwidth as we enter 2025, that is changing. Over the past few weeks, Everyday Drinking has once again ramped up to publishing twice a week. Moving forward, I will (for the most part) be publishing on Tuesdays and Fridays.
The Tuesday essays and features will continue to be free for all, but Friday’s posts will now be behind the paywall. Those Friday posts will be focused on a specific region or style of wine or spirits, and will always include a roundup of bottle recommendations and tasting notes, along with links on where to buy them.
The first of these new Friday posts will come next week, with my recommendations on exciting new Cognac, Armagnac, and Calvados bottlings. The following week, I will take a break for the holidays. Starting on January 2nd, a regular schedule of paid Friday posts will start, with pieces on Friuli whites and reds, the terroir Rias Baixas and albariño, Loire, Rioja, and much more.
Don’t miss any of the Friday paid-only content. I’m offering 30% off annual subscriptions right now.
Among the obvious benefits of having a stable staff job has been the ability to spend more time in my favorite wine regions, reporting and writing. In particular, I’ve spent a good percentage of 2024 in Spain. That’s no surprise to loyal readers, as my essays and articles on “New Spain” wine and my Spanish travel pieces have been among the most-read pieces at Everyday Drinking.
But in 2025, I’m taking that coverage a step further. I’ve been steadily working on a book about Spanish wine and travel over the past couple of years, which I will publish in the spring of 2025, released solely via this newsletter. More information and sneak previews will be coming soon, but the only way to read my forthcoming book will be as a paid annual subscriber of Everyday Drinking.
Again, right now I am offering the deepest discount I will ever offer on an annual subscription.
Beyond the increased publishing cadence, and my new book, I’m looking forward to two other new features in the second quarter of 2025. First up will be a monthly wine class—hosted by me, live on Zoom—for paid subscribers. I also plan to relaunch a new version of my Everyday Drinking podcast. As always, paid subscribers also get discounts on private one-on-one meetings with me.
I want to be clear: This newsletter is only possible thanks to the support of my loyal paid subscribers. I am so grateful to all of you who have invested your time and money into Everyday Drinking over the past few years. 2025 will be our most exciting year yet!
Now, On To My Top Five Bottles of the Year
These are not necessarily the “best” wines I drank in 2024, but they are likely the most memorable—and each was mentioned in one of my features from the past year. Here’s a look back at the wines, with links to the stories.
1. 1985 Bruno Giacosa Dolcetto d’Alba
A friend had bought someone’s cellar, and as I scrolled through an inventory list filled with usual suspects from Bordeaux, Napa, along with a few Gran Reserva from Rioja, this 39-year-old Dolcetto d’Alba jumped out at me. Even though the late Bruno Giacosa is a well-established darling of collectors, it’s his nebbiolo-based Barolo and Barbaresco that get the high prices and place of pride in cellars. Certainly not his modest, everyday dolcetto, the Tuesday night wine of Piedmont. Who the hell ages dolcetto for almost four decades?
Obviously, I had to taste this wine. Fortunately, my friend is very generous, and, at the next meeting of our tasting group, he brought along this strange bottle. The wine was a light brick red, and the first intriguing whiff was of campfire and something medicinal. The first taste was a shock—the wine had amazing juicy acidity and liveliness for such an old wine. As we swirled and sipped further, the campfire blew off, and meatier, spicier, earthier, more savory aromas and flavors came forward. “Soppressata,” said one guy at the table. “Brambly,” said another. “Amaro,” said someone else. For me, this old docletto defied easy descriptors, but I loved its energy and subtle core of fruit that was still present. It was one of the most memorable wines I’ve tasted this year—a true unicorn.
2. 1985 Château Lynch-Bages
For whatever reason, 1985 was a theme in 2024. I tasted this wine with my friend David Avedissian and his 86-year-old father, Pierre—and I wrote about the experience here. This was the second time I’d had a 1985 Château Lynch-Bages—the first was maybe five or six years ago—and it still sings beautifully. It starts with deep, dark forest floor notes, then moves to cedar, smoke, leather, and mint. An amazing, youthful core of fresh black and red fruit persists, with a hint of elegant tannins and a long savory finish. It’s seamless, and it’s everything that people who love old Bordeaux desire.
This bottle has drawn raves pretty much since it was released. (Wine Spectator named it their No. 1 wine of the year in 1988.) Given that, it’s somewhat surprising that Lynch-Bages, from Pauillac, is a Fifth Growth, not a Premier Cru. In the 1980s, critics used this bottle as an example for Americans, many of whom were new to wine collecting, to look for value outside of Bordeaux’s traditional hierarchy. In that era, Pierre bought his for under $40, or around $100 in today’s dollars. Today you’ll find the 1985 Lynch-Bages selling for around $400. The 2022 vintage’s release price, by contrast, is $140.
3. Two Native Reds from Catalonia
I drank so many great wines on my trip to Catalonia last spring. But if I was forced to choose the most memorable, I’ll go with two reds (a tie!) from native Catalan varieties, Sumoll and Trepat. “Nobody loved Sumoll until recently,” said Ramon Parera, of Celler Pardas. In fact, Penedès didn’t even allow the grape in the appellation until 2009. “In the past, it was the most important red in the region. But it was really prolific, and it was planted in the wrong places. It’s a crazy grape. Sumoll needs struggle. It needs poorer soils. It needs drought.”
As for Trepat, until the late 2000s, it was used mostly in bulk sparkling wines. But now it’s used to make bright, lively, drinkable, glou-glou reds that feel very of the moment. For me, the top producer of Trepat is Josep Foraster, in Conca de Barberà
2022 Celler Pardas “Sus Scrofa”
100 percent old-vine Sumoll (and 50 percent whole cluster) aged in concrete tank, this is very much a red for contemporary tastes. Electric and lively. On the nose it’s almost like a young nebbiolo with its earthiness and dark minerality. On the palate, there’s lots of juicy red and purple fruit, with edgy tannins and a cool, dry stony finish.
2022 Josep Foraster “Julieta” ($30)
A joyful, light-bodied red made from trepat, from a single vineyard at over 1,700 feet elevation, 40 percent whole cluster, and aged in concrete egg. Bright, fresh notes of citrus blossom, strawberry, and hints of forest, this is a super pretty wine (and eminently gulpable at 12 percent abv).
4. New Wave Jerez
The past few years, I’ve talked a lot about the new wave of winemaking that’s happening right now in Jerez. In fact, I posted a big piece about it on Tuesday. Suffice to say I’m very excited about what’s happening there. As with Catalonia, I’m hard pressed to choose one New Jerez bottle. But if I must, I will go with this extremely non-traditional bottling from pioneering winemaker Raúl Moreno, who I profiled a couple of months back.
2022 Raúl Moreno La Femme d’Argent
This clarete—Spain’s classic, skin-contact blend of red and white wines—is a great example of the sort of innovative wines happening in Jerez right now. Raúl Moreno’s unfortified vino de pasto is a curveball blend of palomino and whole-cluster syrah aged under flor. It has the nuttiness of sherry (cashews? pistachio?) along with the herbal and spice character of syrah. Balances bright red fruit and black olive, with an underlying saline note and a crisp finish.
5. 2018 Domaine de Cotes Rousses “Ensemble”
I drank this on a snowy night in Burlington, Vermont in early 2024. I chose this one in part because the beloved wine bar, Dedalus, where I drank this bottle (and which I wrote about) no longer exists.
Roussette de Savoie is a white wine from an appellation in the French Alps, made from the altesse grape. It’s the sort of off-piste Alpine wine that appeals to the nerd in me. It also epitomizes a Winter White. Rich, dense, moody; swirling notes of gaudy flowers, wild herbs, and tropical fruit, balanced by notes of white pepper and black tea, and an underlying saltiness and zesty energy. This altesse had a lot going on.
At Dedalus, I enjoyed a delicious risotto with mushroom, brown butter, and sage, alongside a funky, raw-milk Gruyère, with my Roussette de Savoie. That pairing will likely now have to live in my wine memory. In part because that wine is hard to find—and also because Dedalus no longer exists.