2020 Cristallo

What it resembles: This is our most unique wine and is hard to pin down a similar wine made by others. Some have said it’s like a Riesling/Gewurztraminer blend. It is dry, crisp, taut, and relatively full-bodied; fruit tends towards apples, pears, and sometimes more exotic fruits. Can acquire a Burgundian quality to the finish after some time in bottle. The Rkatsiteli variety, with huge acreage in eastern Europe, is almost unknown in the U.S., with only five wineries that we are aware of making wines from this excellent grape. Two are in the Finger Lakes district of New York, and two are on the eastern seaboard ( NJ and VA). A famous legacy winery in California's Livermove Valley, Concannon, worked with Rkatsiteli for a number of years from about 1974 to 1983, but dropped it abruptly after a change in management.