WTN: New Year's Fizz

I can't seem to open conventional wines if my life depended on it. For our NY fizz this year I opened up a Čotar Črna Penina klasična metoda ekstra brut 2006 which is a sparkling red wine from Teran (Refosco). It was closed with a crown cork and is unfiltered and undisgorged. Opening it was a bit scary because there is some sort of capsule that shoots out after the crown top is opened (can someone explain how this method differs from more conventional disgorgement methods? - I am a bit shaky on this sort of technical aspects). But we managed it without any eye-injuries and without too much of the wine being wasted.



The wine, as expected from Čotar, was wonderful. It had earthy aromas, lactic/sour, tangy. Just 11,5% abv yet wonderfully deep aromas and well structured. It was very much like the still Teran I recently wrote about: very dry, very acidic yet not hardcore or difficult despite being out of the mainstream. Lovely wine.

[James Roscoe]

I don't believe I have seen a single Slovenian wine in a US store in my life! Glad to see your notes. Happy New Year!!!

Čotar may not be the most common, but Radikon is a 'fairly' common/classic name in the better wine shops (at least the ones that are inclined to have some Slovenian names) along with Movia. Gravner's another big/classic name, I guess the wines are technically Italian but some of the vines are in Slovenia. There are more as well.

Hi Otto,
Amateur home winemakers who make sparkling wines know these small plastic cylindrical shape objects (which look like short shell casings) as “bidules”. The device traps the sediment formed after the “second bottle fermentation” after the bottle is put through a “riddling process”. (No need to freeze the “plugs”).

Salute