San Francisco Wine Trading Wine Tasting

NV Bonnigal-Bodet Crémant de Loire Brut d’Enfer — $26.94

Jean-Baptiste Bonnigal and Stéphane Bodet took over the Bonnigal family’s winery in 2015, establishing their partnership in Limeray, just outside Amboise in the Loire Valley. Their work centers on organic farming, biodynamic practices, and careful attention to the individual parcels scattered across the surrounding hills.

Brut d’Enfer comes from vines rooted in flinty clay over limestone. The grapes are harvested by hand and gently pressed, with the first fermentation carried out by native yeasts. Made using the traditional method, the wine undergoes its second fermentation in bottle and spends an extended period aging on its lees before disgorgement. The same attention given to the estate’s still wines carries through every stage of its sparkling production.

2025 Tsiakkas Xynisteri — $23.94

Founded in 1988 near the village of Pelendri, Tsiakkas began with a production of just five hundred bottles. The family winery sits in Cyprus’s Troodos Mountains, where its work increasingly focuses on preserving and exploring the island’s native grape varieties. Xynisteri is central to that effort, connecting the winery to a long tradition of mountain viticulture.

The grapes come from high-elevation vineyards around Pelendri, Kato Milos, and Krasochoria, with sites ranging from approximately 800 to 1,400 meters above sea level. Ungrafted vines grow in a mixture of volcanic, sandy, and calcareous soils and are harvested by hand. The wine undergoes a cold soak before fermentation and rests on its lees in stainless steel, with no oak aging.

2024 Roagna Langhe Bianco — $36.94

The Roagna family’s work in Piedmont is closely tied to the vineyards of Barbaresco and Castiglione Falletto. Their farming encourages permanent vegetation between the rows and preserves surrounding woodland, allowing a diverse community of plants and insects to remain part of the vineyard. This approach extends to their small production of Langhe Bianco.

The 2024 combines ninety percent Chardonnay with ten percent Nebbiolo vinified as a white wine. Sixty percent of the fruit comes from the family’s Cascina Pira property in Castiglione Falletto, with the remainder grown in Barbaresco. The grapes are gently pressed and the juice separated from the skins, allowing Nebbiolo to contribute without extracting its red color. Fermentation and aging take place in wood, including large-format barrels.

2022 Julien Sunier Morgon — $30.94

Julien Sunier established his winery in 2008 after settling in Avenas, a village in the hills above the Beaujolais crus. Organic farming has guided the project from the beginning, with compost, cover crops, and shallow soil cultivation used to support soil life. His vineyards span Morgon, Fleurie, and Régnié, with Gamay at the center of his work.

The Morgon is fermented as whole bunches with native yeasts, beginning with carbonic maceration before continuing through a semi-carbonic phase. Grapes move into the vats by gravity and are later pressed in a traditional vertical press. The wine ages on its fine lees in well-used Burgundy barrels, generally for eight to eleven months, before bottling without filtration and with a small sulfur addition.

2022 Cristom Jessie Vineyard Pinot Noir — $79.94

Jessie Vineyard was planted in 1994 and named for founder Paul Gerrie’s paternal grandmother, Jessie Sommers Gerrie. Located on Cristom’s estate in Oregon’s Eola-Amity Hills, its eleven and a half acres occupy a steep, east-facing slope with several distinct volcanic soil types. Pacific winds arriving through the Van Duzer Corridor are a defining influence on the site.

The vines are densely planted, with rows running east to west down the hillside. For the 2022 vintage, the grapes were harvested by hand between late September and mid-October, and fermentation incorporated forty-nine percent whole clusters and entirely native yeasts. The wine spent seventeen months on its lees in French oak barrels, thirty percent new, before being bottled unfined and unfiltered in March 2024.

2019 Green & Red Tip Top Vineyard Zinfandel — $42.94

Green & Red began with Jay Heminway’s purchase of a rugged property in Napa Valley’s Vaca Mountains in 1969. A sculptor and teacher before becoming a winegrower, Jay planted vineyards among the remnants of the historic Rancho Catacula. The winery takes its name from the red chert and green serpentine found throughout the property, and its first commercial vintage was released in 1977.

Tip Top is the estate’s highest vineyard, rising from 1,800 to 2,000 feet above sea level. Its terraced rows wrap around the mountainside, with both head-trained and cordon-trained vines growing in rocky Sobrante loam packed with red chert. This single-vineyard Zinfandel comes from that elevated site, overlooking Chiles Valley and continuing the family’s decades-long commitment to mountain-grown grapes.