As part II of our Earth Day Weekend Wine Tasting, we want to show that organic can be inexpensive. So both the Brooklyn and the Manhattan wine stores will each be pouring four organic or sustainable wines under $15. The lineups are below. We’ll have these wines open all day so stop by anytime!
One of the wines both stores are featuring is the Yellow+Blue Malbec 2007. Optimized for a low carbon footprint, the Yellow+Blue (=Green, get it?) comes in a 1-liter tetrapak. So what’s going on with this Tetra Pak? It looks like chicken broth from Provisions. Matthew Cain, who worked for many years with the famous importer Kermit Lynch, set out to make an environmentally conscientious wine. He found organically grown Malbec grapes in Argentina and decided to forgo a glass bottle and instead use a paper container.
Some facts:
– A full one-liter Tetra Pak is 95% wine and 5% packaging. A full wine bottle is 55% wine and 45% packaging.
– For the containers that don’t make it to the recycling bin, you can drink and discard thirty Tetra Paks before you take up the same space as one glass bottle in the landfill.
– If 80% of retail wine sold in the U.S. was changed from glass to Tetra, it would be the equivalent of taking almost 400,000 cars off of the road.
Oh, and the wine – made from 100% certified organic grapes, hand-harvested and cold-fermented with indigenous yeasts. Aged in tank, no oak. Complex aromas of berries, plum, orange rind, spice and leather.
WINES TO BE TASTED TODAY
In Brooklyn:
Whites
Rayun Sauvignon Blanc 2008
Chateau des Hospitaliers Prestige Coteaux de Languedoc 2008
Reds
Notre Dame de Cousignac 2007
Yellow + Blue Malbec 2007
In Manhattan:
Whites
Hofer Gruner Veltliner 2008
Hospitaliers Languedoc Blanc 2008
Reds
Yellow and Blue Malbec 2007
Sobon Estate Zinfandel 2007