The Producers Table
This is a series built around the growers, families, and estates behind the bottles. Each edition features a producer Ian Mendelsohn knows personally, has visited, or has worked alongside across a twenty-five year career in wine and spirits. These are not names on a label or bottles on a shelf. They are friends and colleagues earned through harvests, meals, and decades of shared work. What follows is not a tasting room experience. It is access built on trust.
Domaine Jean-Louis Chave
Domaine Jean-Louis Chave traces its roots to 1481 and has farmed the hill of Hermitage since 1865. Jean-Louis, the sixteenth generation, and his wife Erin farm fourteen parcels on the hill and see themselves as master blenders. However, Hermitage aren’t the only wines they make.
Paolo Scavino
Paolo Scavino has owned Bric dël Fiasc in Castiglione Falletto since 1921 and works with over 20 crus. Enrico's daughters, Enrica and Elisa, run the estate now. Every Barolo is made the same way, so each cru speaks for its very specific terroir.
Au Bon Climat
Au Bon Climat, founded by Jim Clendenen in 1982 and made on Bien Nacido Vineyard since 1990. His longtime team and his children, Isabelle and Knox, keep his Burgundian methods. Cool Santa Maria Valley fruit, picked for balance and freshness, but aging beautifully
Avignonesi
Twenty years of enjoying Vino Nobile and a day at Avignonesi, the largest certified biodynamic estate in Italy. Avignonesi was founded in Montepulciano in 1974. Virginie Saverys bought it in 2009 and converted 175 hectares to organic and then biodynamic farming, the largest such estate in Italy. Her daughter Eline's Ventisei comes off the same ground.
Feudo Montoni
Feudo Montoni has farmed Sicily's high interior since 1469, three generations of the Sireci family joined by Sicilian American chef Melissa Muller of New York's Eolo. Altitude and iron-rich sand turn Catarratto into something singular. Access through Vineyard Confidential.
The Slopes Sancerre Forgot: Coteaux de Giennois
Make the beautiful drive south from Paris and about twenty minutes before Sancerre you pass through a small appellation called Coteaux du Giennois. Most people drive right through on their way to the famous name but they miss meeting a family that has farmed the land since the early 1920's. Marc & Yves make wine from the same Sauvignon Blanc grape and flint soils that have made Sancerre the go to summer wine.
Bodegas Emilio Moro
Bodegas Emilio Moro is a a fourth generation estate in Ribera del Duero. The Valderramiro vineyard was planted in 1924 and is still the source of the fruit used throuought the estate.. Private access through Vineyard Confidential.
Comte Armand
2015 Volnay Fremiers by Comte Armand with fried chicken at Round Hill in Jamaica. A private visit to Comte Armand's built on twenty-eight years of direct relationship with this historic Burgundy domaine, available through Vineyard Confidential.
Azienda Agricola Demarie
A private visit to Azienda Agricola Demarie in Roero, Piedmont, arranged through years of personal relationship with Paolo Demarie who spent years buying back land in the Roero and Langhe the Second World War scattered, available exclusively through Vineyard Confidential.
Nicolas Jay Winery
A private visit to Nicolas-Jay in Oregon's Yamhill-Carlton, arranged through twenty years of personal relationship with Jean-Nicolas Méo of Domaine Méo-Camuzet, Private access through Vineyard Confidential.
Bethel Heights Vineyard
Fifteen years of direct relationship with Ben Casteel at Bethel Heights Vineyard, one of the founding estates of Oregon's Eola-Amity Hills, where own-rooted vines planted in 1977 still define the ridge. Private access through Vineyard Confidential.
Adelsheim Vineyard
Twenty years of direct relationship with David Adelsheim, the man who authored the Willamette Valley AVA and built the architecture that Oregon wine operates inside. Private access through Vineyard Confidential.