November 2025
The Month of
Autumn’s Last Glass
Three wines for fall’s last serious night. An Old Vines Verdejo from Rueda to hold the white-wine season until it can’t anymore. A Bordeaux Haut-Médoc that wants the first stew of the year. And a Ridge Monte Bello — the California Cab that helped redraw the global wine map — pulled up from the cellar for the kind of night that earns it.
Selections from a past month — availability may have changed.
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01
The Weekday Wine · Under $20
Bodegas Vatan Nisia Old Vines Verdejo 2022
Rueda DO, Spain
Cut grass and lime zest on the nose, then a chalky, almost saline weight on the palate that high-yield Verdejo never delivers. Nisia’s Old Vines bottling comes from pre-phylloxera vines planted in sandy Rueda soils — vines that survived because phylloxera couldn’t move through the sand to reach the roots. Old-vine Verdejo doesn’t taste like the breezy stuff most people associate with the grape. It tastes like Verdejo finally getting to say something. Under twenty dollars on Wine.com, this is the autumn-white you keep buying long after the rest of the table has moved to red.
TASTING NOTES
Cut grass, lime zest, chalky saline
PAIRS WITH
Roast chicken with herbs, grilled white fish
GRAPE
Verdejo (100%, pre-phylloxera old vines)
DRINK WINDOW
2024–2027
Vintage Context
Rueda’s 2022 was a hot, dry vintage that punished young-vine parcels but rewarded old-vine sites with deeper root systems. Nisia’s pre-phylloxera vineyards, sand-planted to depths most Verdejo doesn’t reach, held their acidity through the heat. The 2022 has an iron-mineral grip that warmer years can produce in heritage parcels — what high-yield Verdejo loses, old vines find.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A weeknight board for old-vine Verdejo — Pyrenean rusticity in November light
Ossau-Iraty AOC · Jambon de Bayonne 9-month · black-cherry confiture · Marcona almonds · pain de campagne
02
The Saturday Pour · $20–$50
Chateau Loudenne 2018
Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux, France
Cassis and graphite, with the cedar-and-tobacco notes that proper Médoc earns from a few years in bottle. Château Loudenne sits on a gravel ridge overlooking the Gironde estuary — purchased in 1875 by the English Gilbey family, who built the estate’s pink-painted château and ran it as one of the first English-owned Bordeaux properties. The 2018 is mid-weight claret, drinking now and rewarding the year’s first cassoulet. This is the bottle you bring out when the conversation turns to wine and someone asks why everyone keeps making such a fuss about Bordeaux.
TASTING NOTES
Cassis, graphite, cedar
PAIRS WITH
Cassoulet, roast lamb shoulder
GRAPE
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot blend
DRINK WINDOW
2026–2032
Vintage Context
Bordeaux 2018 was a vintage of contrast — a wet, mildew-pressured spring followed by a remarkably warm, dry summer that concentrated the surviving fruit. Loudenne’s clay-and-gravel soils held water through the heat, and the resulting wine has structure without the tannic overload that warmer years can produce. Drinks well now; another five years and the cedar notes will pull forward.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A Saturday board for Médoc Bordeaux — French canon meets French claret
Selles-sur-Cher AOC · Époisses de Bourgogne · Délice de Bourgogne · Jambon de Bayonne · saucisson sec
03
The Splurge · $50+
Ridge Monte Bello 2022
Santa Cruz Mountains, California — 2,300+ feet above Cupertino
Black currant, graphite, dried herbs, and a deep mineral grip that the limestone of Monte Bello Ridge gives this wine and nothing else in California really matches. Ridge has been farming the Monte Bello vineyard at 2,300+ feet above Cupertino since 1959; Paul Draper joined in 1969 and is still consulting today. The 1971 Monte Bello placed in the Judgment of Paris tasting that put California Cabernet on the map; the same wine won the 30-year retrospective in 2006 outright over all the great Bordeaux first-growths it was tasted against. The 2022 Monte Bello is built to age forty years. Pull this one for the night you finally light the fire.
TASTING NOTES
Black currant, graphite, dried herbs, limestone
PAIRS WITH
Roasted leg of lamb, aged ribeye
GRAPE
Cabernet Sauvignon-led Bordeaux blend (Monte Bello)
DRINK WINDOW
2030–2055+
Vintage Context
Santa Cruz Mountains 2022 was the cool, classical California vintage Ridge has been waiting for — late summer fog rolled up Monte Bello Ridge later than usual, and harvest happened in October, well after the warmer Napa valleys had finished. The result is a Monte Bello with profound structure and very modest alcohol; the vintage proves Monte Bello’s altitude and limestone are the real terroir story, not the heat-spike harvest tendency of California Cabernet at lower elevations.
Build the Board
via Murray’s Cheese
A cellar-night board for Monte Bello — French canon meets California legend
3-year Comté AOC · Roquefort PDO · Brillat-Savarin · Jambon de Bayonne · Fabrique Délices saucisson
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“Some bottles are for the moment fall turns serious.”
— The TERROIR Editorial Desk
Producer Spotlight
Bodegas El Grifo
Lanzarote, Canary Islands — one of Spain’s five oldest wineries, founded 1775
Bodegas El Grifo — founded 1775 in Lanzarote, one of Spain’s five oldest wineries. When the Timanfaya volcano erupted from 1730 to 1736 and buried a quarter of the island under lava and ash, Lanzarote farmers responded by planting vines in zoco pits dug into the volcanic ash — a viticultural method now declared a UNESCO Protected Landscape. El Grifo has been there since.
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