Coins On Your Calves
TASTING NOTES:
2018 Denier Handal Cabernet Sauvignon, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County - “Deep luscious black fruits shine alongside hints of cocoa, spices including black pepper and tobacco. This is a deep rich velvety wine that has aged quite well.” (AbV 14.2%, pH 3.24)
100% Cabernet Sauvignon
2018 Denier Handal Petite Sirah, Mendocino - “Our 2018 Denier-Handal Petite Sirah is a full bodied, deep purple inky well-balanced wine that exhibits the best varietal characteristics of Petite Sirah. Great fruit concentration for such a tannic wine, deep blackberry and raspberry notes. We found the layers of flavor impressive and very typical of Petite Sirah. The lower sugar at harvest is a good thing and really helped build the flavors of the wine. Full bodied but not heavy, floral and fruity with a long finish. This is great now and will age for years to come.” (AbV 14.8%, pH 3.24)
100% Petite Sirah
2021 Denier Handal Sangiovese, Venturi Family Vineyards, Calpella, Mendocino County - “Sangiovese is the main grape variety found in Chianti Classico. This wine is a medium-bodied high acid wine with fruity notes. Our Sangiovese boasts qualities similar to Italian Sangiovese. The color is ruby velvet. Aromas of lilac, roses and cooked plum. Flavors of raspberries, blueberries, light spice and hints of earth. This wine pairs well with porchetta, softer cheeses like young pecorino and buffalo camembert. Sangiovese also holds up to cooked puddings like Panna Cotta especially if it is served with a huckleberry sauce.” (AbV 13.9%, pH 3.24)
100% Sangiovese
2022 Denier Handal Dolcetto, Russian River Valley - “Taking a hint from a longtime friend and peer, Dick Handal decided to purchase the Dolcetto from this vineyard because he had tasted delicious wines made from this fruit. He liked the option to be able to blend this into wines like the 2020 Family Blend, make a rose of it and decided to make the Dolcetto on its own. The aroma is light and fruity, the color is a soft supple ruby and the flavors are bright, fruit, red & black plum, spice and earth. It is a great young wine that will age well. It’s easy to drink, pairs well with various dishes including cheeses and desserts.” (AbV 14%, pH 3.78)
100% Dolcetto
VINEYARD: These grapes are organically grown and dry farmed on soils of rocky, medium clay. It is the dry farming that brings the intensity to this beautiful wine. farming.
BARRELS: Aged in new and 2 year old French oak barrels for 19 months.
PAIRS WITH: roast meats, hearty vegetable dishes and full flavored aged cheeses
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Denier, the first half of the winery’s name, and also the number printed on the packaging of every pair of tights ever sold.
It’s a unit of thread thickness: one denier is one gram of fiber per 9,000 meters of length. So a pair of 15-denier sheers is made from thread where nine kilometers of it weighs about as much as a few sheets of paper. The 80-denier opaque pair in your drawer is built from a much beefier thread, and I find it deeply satisfying that this entire category of clothing is sorted by how heavy a very long string would be. The name comes from the denier, a small French coin, which comes from the Roman denarius. (Why a coin? The word was used for a tiny unit of weight, and the textile world borrowed it. I like that nobody felt the need to invent something new.)
The denarius got around. It’s the reason the British penny was abbreviated “d” until decimalization in 1971, which means generations of shopkeepers wrote prices in the initial of a Roman coin. It’s also the root of the dinar, still the currency name in Serbia, Jordan, Kuwait, and several others. One Roman coin ended up in your wallet, on old price tags, and on a package of hosiery. I want to know more about the day somebody first looked at a spool of silk and said “this feels like a coin.”
