Adroît Ribolla Gialla Basalacchi Vineyard Lodi 2022

Since we were just talking about Chris Miller’s Seabold label, we should remind you that we still have a little of that heavenly single-vineyard white from his unspeakably cool Adroît project. $12.95 is an insane price for a very limited bottling of the rare Ribolla Gialla grape – with a 92 point score – made by one of the top somms in the U.S.! 

We like to start with this chilled, so it feels refreshing, but hold the wine glass by the bowl rather than the stem. That way, we get to experience the delicate flavors ripening and the texture getting richer as the wine warms up. This is Ribolla Gialla, which you’ll come across in western Slovenia and Friuli, Italy (hmm… use the money Invino saves you to build up that travel fund…?), but it’s grown almost nowhere in the United States – there are fewer than 20 acres in California. 

Which makes it the perfect side quest for Adroît, Chris’s very personal label, where he produces tiny quantities of wines he’s intensely interested in. He hunted down the Busalacchi Vineyard in Lodi’s Clements Hills AVA – two acres, organically farmed – and made just nine barrels. You can see why under $13 per bottle is a little absurd. This is precious stuff! And so inherently alluring that the 14th-century Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio listed Ribolla Gialla as one of the sins of gluttony!

Chris (much less threateningly) calls his 2022 “exceptionally smooth and silky, especially when compared to other skin-contact whites." Whereas we will babble on about how this amber liquid is a veritable bell choir of marmalade and orange blossom, honey and beeswax, with “a fluid yet tense generosity” to borrow Wine Advocate’s phrasing in their 92-point review. We love that it feels both spacious and quenching. Creamy but also crunchy, like grass-fed butter on cornbread. A light lacing of minerals is the chef's kiss. 

Chris let this ferment with native yeast, then gave it 45 days on the skins in small bins before racking into neutral oak barrels. This is a real-deal, micro-production bottle that comes with the Robert Parker blessing, and for $12.95 on two or more, you can’t pass it up.