Devenish Wines

02/01/2026

Atilia Montepulciano d'Abruzzo 2022 1 Litre

Available at Rosemont Market, Bow St, Kennebec Meat Co, Monte's Fine Foods, Barber Brothers, and the Blue Hill Co op

Back in the spring of 2024 I went on a wandering trip through southern Italy and at the last minute called up Donatello Jasci down in Vasto, a region of southern Abruzzo. I sure am glad I did! His operation was eye opening and the wines are really excellent: ripe and full while still being balanced and vibrant. These are exactly the type of wines I love. More about Donatello at the bottom of the email.

Donatello’s Montepulciano comes from 15-20 year old vines grown on clay rich hillsides and all trained on pergolas. Hand harvested and fermented with wild yeast in stainless steel for 2 weeks with the skins. This gets a light filtration before bottle and like the others is bottled with very low sulfur added. For the first time we just brought in a full pallet of this direct from the winery. It’s allowed us to bring the price down a bit and now we don’t have to worry about the importer unexpectedly running out of stock.

01/28/2026

Tabarka 'Giancu' Vermentino di Sardegna 2022

I do love good salty Mediterranean Vermentino! I’m also always interested in wines from Sardinia, and this is a particularly weird one. So I was excited when I saw this in Matchvino’s portfolio. The culture here is unusual. The local population originally came from Liguria and were coral fisherman down of the coast of Tunisia, but then relocated here to the Island of San Pietro. They still speak a dialect from Liguria and maintain close ties with coastal Liguria. The Tabarka winery was founded by a pair of friends: Umberto Zamaroni and Carlo Perfetti back in 2000 on the island of San Pietro off the coast of Sardinia. They were moved by a drive to hold on to some of the traditional culture here and started the winery as a way to do so. This Vermentino comes from 20 year old vines planted in volcanic sand on the nearby Isle of Nuraghi. Organically farmed, hand harvested, native yeast fermentation, and then aged in stainless steel for 6 months

01/24/2026

Daino 'Ilex' Sicilia Rosso 2019!

Available at the Blue Hill Wine Shop

Gianfranco Daino began this small personal wine making project in 2006 on his property bordering the protected Bosco di Santo Pietro 20km southeast of Caltagirone in Sicily. Gianfranco is working with Salvo Foti, the iconic wine maker from Etna. Gianfranco is part of I Vigneri: an organization lead by Salvo Foti to preserve and spread traditional farming and wine making wine techniques. The farming here is organic with biodynamic principles incorporated. The point of I Vigneri is to have all the vineyard work done by hand; no tractors to cut weeds, instead they use hoes.  It’s much harder work and the I Vigneri wines are always impressive and special. This wine seems like an impressive value. This, the Ilex is made from 100% Nero D’Avola.

Aroma: the aroma is complex, heady, and interesting. There's some dried lavender, candied orange peel, a little bit of dried cherry, a touch of cocoa powder, and a whiff of dry hay. It smells rich and a tiny bit smoky, a bit savory in a beautiful way. This is 2019 and with the barrel aging it's developed a lovely and complex nose.

Taste: medium bodied, bright fresh fun dark raspberry with dynamic acidity backing it up. The mid palate has some weight to it and turns more savory and serious and substantial. There's a bit of burnt orange peel, and then a hint of cinnamon. The finish goes back to candied orange and lingers with these sticky toothy really enjoyable tannins. This is cool; this is a complex, interesting, layered old school wine that has character and is quite well made and integrated. There's just no replacement for aging a well made wine if you're looking for complexity.

01/23/2026

01/15/2026

O**m 'EZY TGR' Willamette Chardonnay 2023!

Available at Bleecker and Greer, Now You're Cooking, Sissle and Daughters, Blue Hill Wine Shop, Vessel and Vine, Oak Hill Beverage, and Bow St Beverage Wells

Wow, look at this: I’m excited about a domestic Chardonnay!!! A nice bright tropical Chardonnay from the Willamette Valley. O**m sent me a tank sample months ago and I wasn’t even going to open it, but then I did and I was so impressed!

It turns out that this is juice from vines planted in 1979 in the Walter Scot Hyland vineyard, one of the oldest vineyards in the Willamette. Somehow John House got his hands on some of the juice and used it to make this Chardonnay. It is barrel fermented and aged on the fine lees for about 16 months; almost none of that was new oak.

01/10/2026

Sanguineto Rosso di Montepulciano 2023

Available Crooked Face Creamery, Monte's Fine Foods, Sissle and Daughters, Leeward, Red Pony, Bow St Beverage, First Fig, Now You're Cooking, Stompers, Golden Harvest, Maine and Loire, Sawyers Specialties, Vinolio, and Pomelia

Honestly, I’m looking at this and seeing we’re already down to 98 bottles are wondering why I didn’t order more!? What was I thinking? I don’t know, shipping from Italy takes so long that I placed the order for this pallet back in late September. This is old vine Sangiovese with a bit of Mammolo and Colorino. It spends at least a year in large old casks and then rests in concrete before bottling. 2023 was a difficult vintage yields were down because of the non stop rain early in the season, but then it dried out and got hot and the grapes there were were high quality. I like this wine very much!

12/30/2025

Kobal Bajta Pet Nat Rose 2024!

Available at Bow St Beverage, 2 Fat Cats, The Abbey, Treats, Cong Tu Bot, Friends and Family, Barber Brothers, and Sissle and Daughter’s

This petnat rose is so so good! This is 100% Blaufrankisch from Bojan’s little family vineyards in Štajerska Slovenia, close to the borders with Austria and Hungary. Bojan hand harvests, lets the grapes sit for four hours to leak juice and sort of start fermentation. Bojan watches the fermentation intensely and when the baby wine has the right amount of sugar left he bottles it. No sulfur, filtration, fining, etc because this is real petnat and you can’t add anything in that process. Bojan only makes about 450 cases of this. It’s really delicious and fresh and tastes so alive!