INSIDER'S PICK: 2020 RUTH LEWANDOWSKI RIESLING COLE RANCH 'ELIMELECH' $32.99

Even though we will not be doing the public tasting portion of the Insider's Pick until further notice, we will still be offering the wine for purchase with the usual 10% discount on Thursday and Friday. The wines will still be ones we highly recommend, and the tasting notes will still be our own. We will be returning to doing just the one wine on Thursdays and Fridays until further notice. We hope you are able to come by and get some wines to enjoy.

Not the usual type of wine to do for a February Insider's, and a touch higher in price than we usually feature. But this is a fascinating wine from an equally fascinating source, and it deserves our full attention. Most of the excitement for older heritage vineyards in California centers around Zinfandel plantings (deservedly so because of their age and because there are so many of them), but there are corners and pockets all over the state that feature all sorts of other long lived and well loved vines, and there are more and more producers like this that embrace them. There is no 'Ruth' here, more of a nom de plume for owner/winemaker Evan Lewandowski and his deep seated agricultural beliefs ('Death is, indeed, the engine of life'). The wines here are very 'hands off' in style, and they pull from some of the most unique sites in the state. Cole Ranch is the smallest declared AVA in America, a single property in a pocket valley high up in Mendocino County first planted in the early 1970s. Cool climates gives the grapes extended time to ripen, and distinct soils impart a little extra nuance, resulting in one of the more exotic dry Rieslings you will come across from North American soils.The nose starts out with lots of cool white fruits but gets more intensely floral as it opens up; fairly new to the bottle, so this is a white that does very well with some decanting if possible to really unlock the nuance. After a while it gets into the stone fruits and even a bit of the orange citrus world, a lot more diverse than your usual Rieslings would. The palate has a lot of flesh and weight to it despite being quite dry, with a little bit of mineral zip to the finish to help lighten the load. Think Alsatian style dry Riesling with a little bit more pizzazz.

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