This month for The Next Big Thing we have an exceptional wine from Spain, that is sure to be a impossible to get within the coming years, and one of my absolute favorites from France’s Rhône Valley from the exceptional 2007 vintage. If you receive white and red wines, the white is also from the Rhône, a stunning Châteauneuf-du-Pape blanc, and if you receive all reds, you have a stunning, a elegant (yes, I said elegant) Napa Valley Zinfandel.
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Descendants of Sarah Esther Chase have been growing grapes since the late 1800’s in the area around St. Helena, but began making wine under the 
In 1903 Sarah’s daughter Maude and her husband William Alliston Hayne planted the Hayne Vineyard and continued the family’s tradition of grape growing. This wines comes from the original planting of 1903 Zinfandel, head trained, on St. George Rootstock. The gravelly soil, and slope of the vineyard, along with the exceptional age of the vines make it on of, if not the best, Zinfandel Vineyards in Napa Valley.
The Alary family has been growing grapes and making wine in the village of 
planted over forty years ago with cuttings taken from Hermitage, the remainder of the grapes are Grenache and Counoise, some of which are from vines that are over 100 years old. While the Syrah definitely marks the wine, this is unmistakably a wine from the Southern Rhône, and I would even go so far as to say that it is unmistakably a Cairanne.
accompanied by moderate temperatures (for the Southern Rhône at least) averaging just over 80° F and positive influence of the Mistral allowed for a long hang time, and grapes that retained a greater than average acidity. The resulting wines are deeply flavored, but feel light on their feet, with ample acid and silky tannins to support the dense fruit and alcohol. The acid also lets the minerality of these wines show through very clearly. Conditions like this favor wines with high portions of Syrah, such as this one.
Although I find the inconsistency in 
Even before tasting this wine, one gets a hint that it is great because of the winemaker, Peter Sisseck: the Dane who famously makes some of the greatest wines in all of Spain at his own Ribera del Duero estate 