It has been a hot summer around Crown Liquors, but we’ve had plenty of great wines this season that stood out! This week we are highlighting some of those favorites, the wines we just couldn’t put down the past few months and want to share, or reshare, with you!

We’ll start in New Zealand with the Giesen Uncharted Sauvignon Blanc. This wine goes through a process called "sur lee" aging, French for on the lees. What are lees? They’re the dead yeast cells left over after a wine is finished fermenting. If you age a wine on the lees they add textural complexity to the wine, it makes it feel fuller and rounder. For this wine that means you get all of that classic Marlborough freshness with a bit more body. A perfect Kiwi pairing would be with fish and chips.

Next, we’ll try the Triennes rosé, this is quintessential for dry French rosé. Soft red fruit aromas with a bit of florality. Easy drinking to the point that you could finish a bottle without realizing it. This wine reminds us of poolside sipping throughout the sweltering season we’ve had.

King Estate Pinot Noir from the Willamette is our next sipper. We just haven’t been able to put Pinot Noir down for more than a few days this summer. The versatility and drinkabilty of the grape standout in the red wine category. The King Estate Pinot swirl out of the glass with notes of strawberry, clove and thyme. As always with Pinot, this wine is imminently food friendly we love it with a nice baked salmon with a dill and caper sauce.

Finally, we’ll head to Napa to try the Burgess Napa Cab. This wine comes from the base of Howell Mountain, for a fraction of the price. Silky tannins that are perfectly integrated with the rest of the wine. We love the dark fruit intensity of this wine that is balanced by baking spice and black soil notes. We would say this was one of our best buys of the season, it may be $50 (although just $40 today, 8/25), but we think this wine drinks like many of its $100 cousins! This wine will be the perfect transition into cooler fall days.