A few things from the last several days:
EIEIO 2004 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, Meredith Mitchell Vineyard. The last of the four bottles of EIEIO -- two each from MM and Broadley -- that we bought at the Carleton Tasting Room a decade ago. Impressive: concentric rings of meatiness, minerality, and flowers surrounding a dense core that suggests the possibility of even further development. I thought this was likely to be a fruitless chemistry experiment, but boy was I wrong.
Enfield Wine Company 2014 Chalone Pinot Noir, Antle Vineyard. Balanced, refined, pleasant enough but very tightly wound and not especially expressive; if I had more of this I'd put it away for 5-8 years to see if it comes out of its cave.
Dirty and Rowdy 2015 California Mourvedre "Familiar." This, on the other hand, is goofily expressive: Purple flowers, bloody red fruit, a light sprinkling of crunchy tannin, barely prickly acidity, fresh and deeply flavorful.
Le Fraghe 2013 Bardolino. A $16 Corvina and Rondinella blend that doesn't wow, but serves its purpose well enough -- a savory, cherry and bitter-almond tinged light red that can be served cool on a hot night with green food.
Ingrid Groiss 2014 Gemischter Satz. I know very little about current Austrian nomenclature; I gather Groiss is in the Weinviertel section of Niederösterreich, but neither of these appears on the label as a denomination; the label does say "Dorflagen," but I think that's not a geographical or vineyard designation; I dunno quite what it means. Anyhow, this is a field blend of who knows what; it's a tasty combination of rich and austere, showing some spice and waxiness that definitely suggests Grüner, but also riper fruit and a lot of rocks. Excellent quality and complexity for $22.
But it's also where we tried that D&R Mourvèdre a few months back. It's always been a strange match with the restaurant (Formento's), which is sort of old-school Frank-Sinatra-style-high-end-Italian-American-meets-local-ingredients-and-contemporary-techniques. It leaned toward heavier dishes, though, and the menu didn't change frequently enough for me to want to go eat there as often as I wanted to go drink there. I put that in the past tense because they're just now having a turnover at all levels -- new chef & pastry, new sommelier. The new dishes are already a lot more seasonal, which is encouraging; but I don't know whether the new somm will be able to maintain the relationships with the very small producers that Morgan was bringing in.