As restaurant and bar owners, the start of a new year is when we finally take a vacation. It also is a great time to reflect on spirits and wine styles we discovered and, most importantly, enjoyed in the past year.
If you are on a break from booze, this might be a great time to think about what you enjoy most about drinking. When you are ready to partake again, here are a few wine trends we plan to follow in 2024.
Wine-based amari. An amaro is a staple in our liquor cabinet — a delightfully bitter, sweet and botanically complex sipper. With its digestive-aiding properties, it is the perfect end to a meal, and it’s much easier just to pour it over ice than bringing out the cocktail tools and supplies.
While most amari in the market are spirit-based, in 2023 we found ourselves drawn to the lighter side of the category: the wine-based styles. Two favorites include Cardamaro, a pleasantly vegetal Italian cardoon bitter that is only 17% alcohol by volume, and Ercole amaro, part of a line that features liters of quality value wines from the Piedmont region of Italy. It is bright and bitter on the finish, and only 20% ABV.
Light-bodied, chillable reds. As with amari, our preference for red wines took a decidedly lighter direction in 2023. Not only does the slightly lower alcohol percentage make for a happier morning after, but the more delicate style of red wine also is far more versatile at the dinner table.
For those desiring to eat more vegetable-forward or pescatarian-leaning diets in the new year, these reds harmonize very well with a lighter approach to dining. Sicily is home to several great options for lighter, mineral-forward reds that are particularly good with fish and vegetable dishes (and just about everything else). A favorite for under $30 is Mortellito Cala Niuru rosso, made from the local reds frappato and nero d’Avola. Pale in color, it glitters on the tongue with juicy red fruit and crushed stones.
Coferments. When you ferment various grapes (and sometimes other fruits) together, which is called coferment, you get a different result from simply fermenting specific grapes individually and then blending them later. This is especially true — and exciting — when cofermenting red and white grapes together. Champagne has a long history of this, and in the Northern Rhone Valley up to 20% viognier, a white grape, is added to tame and add aromatics to the muscular red syrah.
For the more contemporary set, Broc Cellars makes incredible natural wines that are cofermented using all white, all red and red and white grape combinations. Italian varieties are prominent in the lineup, as are old-vine California zinfandel and trousseau, which is a light red grape with origins in the Jura region of France. It also is a grape to seek out for your light-bodied chillable reds!
Another great California producer, Matthiasson, makes a grape and peach cofermented wine that is aromatic, dry, fizzy and, at only 8.5% alcohol, a nice re-entry from Dry January.
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