Two Thousand Miles, No Map
TASTING NOTES: “Approximately 33% of this wine was barrel fermented in new French oak. The other 66% was fermented in stainless steel. Striving for a balance between richness and acidic verve, we targeted 35% Malolactic fermentation. After fermentation, the wine was aged in a combination of new (33%) and neutral barrels. Bâtonnage was performed regularly to enhance mouthfeel.” (AbV 13.6%, pH 3.47, TA 5.2 g/L)
VARIETALS: Chardonnay
BARRELS: New French oak.
PAIRS WITH: Fish Tacos, Chicken Satay, Green Papaya Salad, Crispy Pork Belly
THAT REMINDS ME OF: Tuk-tuks
There’s an annual event called the Rickshaw Run where several hundred people pay to drive modified auto-rickshaws — the actual three-wheeled things, no upgrades to the engine allowed — across roughly 2,000 miles of India, with no support crew, no route, and no functioning GPS provided by the organizers. It’s been happening since 2006. Teams get a start point, an end point, and total silence in between; the vehicles top out around 35 mph on a good day and routinely don’t survive the trip.
The organizers, a UK outfit called The Adventurists, seem to specialize in this exact flavor of chaos — they also run a version in a Trabant (the notoriously terrible East German car) and one where you have to buy a “questionable vehicle” for under $500 and drive it across an entire continent. The Rickshaw Run’s stated rule of thumb is that a third of teams won’t finish, which they present less as a warning and more as a selling point.
What gets me is that a tuk-tuk was never engineered for distance — it’s a city tool, built for weaving through market stalls and short fares, not thousand-mile odysseys. Somebody looked at that limitation and turned it into the entire appeal.
ICYMI, you have two choices:
Worried Summer heat might get to your wine before your wine gets to you? Order from this sale, the page you’re on right now, and we’ll get it to you at a cooler time of year (October)!
Want Protected Summer Shipping and don’t think heat will be a problem? Order from the sale linked here! We’ll still try to get them to you with as little travel time as we can.
Some places get absurdly hot during the Summer, and in particularly unpleasant circumstances, it can damage a wine. Most people get theirs no problem, but there are a couple each Summer that fall victim to the sun no matter how fast we get them to you. If you’ve experienced that before or are afraid it’ll happen to you, we’ll hold your order for you until October, if you order from the Summer Hold sale. We are reasonably sure things will be cooler then.
