The Platters are surprised when she shows them nontraditional, market-oriented wine labels she has recently approved.
And yet, like winemakers in many other European regions, many winemakers in Rioja have toyed with the way they make their wines, using nontraditional techniques like ripening grapes past what was once typical to extract as much fruit flavor and sweetness as possible.
Featuring plenty of Gluhwein (warm mulled wine, translated from the German for "glow-wine") along other traditional and nontraditional treats.
Just as the Italians have been experimenting with nontraditional blends of grapes to create the wines known as super-Tuscans, so have the Californians.
The lowest tier of wine is vino da tavola (table wine), although many vineyards have experimented with creating, most successfully in Tuscany, a superior vino da tavola by using nontraditional methods or grapes.
These burgeoning wine regions housed young vinters experimenting with uncultivated soils and nontraditional vines.
The wines, all French and Italian, were selected to complement the plates in nontraditional ways as well: "Some are a bit funky, some are even a bit salty.
A party to taste wines made by Abe Schoener, who runs the Scholium Project, a beacon of nontraditional winemaking in California and Red Hook, Brooklyn, is scheduled for May 2 from 7 p.m. to midnight at Jakewalk, 282 Smith Street (Sackett Street), Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; $40 from [email protected], $50 at the door.
The goal, say the brothers, is to make top-flight wine from a variety of grapes, both traditional sauvignon blanc and pinot noir and nontraditional, such as malbec in Argentina, carmenere in Chile and tannat in Uruguay.
Some seek nontraditional ministry.
