Bacco’s Wine Club February 2026
"Love Stories: A Valentine's Wine Club"
This February, we're celebrating love in all its forms: the love between partners who build dreams together, the love passed down through generations, and the love affair between winemaker and land.
These three bottles tell three love stories—from a secret Umbrian estate built by a couple who left everything behind, to alpine vineyards tended by husband and wife for seven generations, to a passionate Finger Lakes partnership proving that love conquers all (even difficult grapes).
Pour a glass. Share with someone you love. Toast to beginnings, partnerships, and the passion that makes great wine possible.
Pictured: Renardat-Fache Au Commencement
Renardat-Fache - Bugey-Cerdon ‘Au Commencement’ 2023
Au Commencement—"In the Beginning."
The name alone tells you what this wine is about: new starts, first loves, and the kind of leap that changes everything. For Elie and Christelle Renardat, that beginning happened generations ago, but they tend it every day.
The Renardat family has farmed the alpine foothills of Bugey, tucked between Lyon and Geneva, for seven generations. This is France's overlooked corner—too small for fame, too remote for trends, and too devoted to place to care. The Bugey region is wet, cool, and difficult, the kind of terroir that punishes shortcuts and rewards patience. The Renardats farm organically and biodynamically, not because it's fashionable, but because it's how their grandparents did it, and their grandparents before them.
Elie and Christelle work the vineyards together, husband and wife in constant conversation with the land. Their estate is tiny—just three hectares of old-vine Gamay, Poulsard, and Chardonnay—but what comes from it is something rare: wines that taste like the place they're from, made by people who love that place enough to never leave.
Au Commencement isn't made every year. Production is minuscule, released only in vintages deemed worthy. It's a drier, more structured wine than their famous Cerdon du Bugey rosé—a blend of Gamay and Poulsard fermented naturally using the méthode ancestrale. The 2023 vintage was a response to hardship: after difficult weather in 2024, the Renardats chose to bottle what they had with care rather than force what wasn't there. That restraint is love, too.
Chilled and poured into a glass, Au Commencement tastes like alpine mornings: bright, brisk, alive. It's the kind of wine that reminds you why people fall in love with this work in the first place.
The Nitty Gritty:
Country: France
Region: Bugey-Cerdon
Farming: Organic and Biodynamic (certified)
Soil: Alpine foothills, limestone-influenced
Varietal: 50% Gamay, 50% Poulsard
Method: Méthode ancestrale (natural sparkling)
Production: Not made every year; minuscule production
Style: Dry, structured, lightly sparkling
Pictured: Fattoria Moretto Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Secco
La Segreta - Pottarello Umbria Rosso 2021
Some love stories begin with a question: What if we left everything behind?
For Lorenzo de Monaco and Eileen Holland, that question became a reality in 2009. Lorenzo, born in Italy, had built a life in Boston running Italian bike tours. Eileen, a native Bostonian drawn to art history and the classical world, had already spent time at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. But the pull of something deeper—a life rooted in land, tradition, and purpose—brought them to a hidden corner of Umbria, between Todi and Perugia.
They called it La Segreta—"the secret." And it was: a 70-acre nature preserve surrounded by the Tiber River Valley, untouched and overlooked, accessible only if you already knew it was there. No GPS could find it. That remoteness became the point. They purchased the land, moved their family, and began the slow work of building something together: restoring old farmhouses, planting vineyards in 2008, and learning to make wine from scratch.
The estate produces just a handful of wines, each named by the local dialect: Cinino ("little one"), Pottarello ("kid" or "rascal"), and Marmocchio ("rascal"). The Pottarello—their middle wine—comes from younger Sangiovese vines but loses nothing in seriousness. Hand-harvested, naturally fermented, and aged in French oak, it's a wine of grip and earth, built for the table and for patience.
What makes La Segreta remarkable isn't scale or fame—it's the love that built it. A couple who chose each other, chose this land, and chose to stay. The wine tastes like that choice: honest, grounded, and made for sharing.
The Nitty Gritty:
Country: Italy
Region: Umbria
Subregion: Todi DOC
Farming: Organic (certified)
Soil: Clay, mineral-rich
Elevation: 300 meters
Varietal: 80% Sangiovese, 10% Malvasia Nera, 10% Colorino
Aging: 12 months in French oak (mostly used tonneaux), 9 months in bottle
Production: Hand-harvested, natural fermentation
Pictured: Claude-Emmanuel and Louis-Benoît Desvignes of Louis Claude Desvignes
Love doesn't always look like romance. Sometimes it looks like belief—stubborn, singular, and willing to prove the world wrong.
Forge Cellars is a partnership born of that belief: the conviction that the Finger Lakes, carved by glaciers and shaped by deep, cold water, could produce Pinot Noir worthy of Burgundy's attention. Not imitation Burgundy. Not "New World" fruit bombs. But something real, rooted, and alive with place.
The partnership began with Rick Rainey and Louis Barruol, two winemakers who saw what others hadn't: that the steep slopes around Seneca Lake—with their shale, limestone, and glacial till—shared something fundamental with the great sites of Europe. The lakes themselves act as thermal regulators, cooling the vineyards in summer and moderating winter's bite. The result is a long, slow-growing season that gives Pinot Noir time to develop complexity without losing its spine.
Forge Cellars works with some of the Finger Lakes' most promising vineyards, farming sustainably and intervening minimally. The Classique Pinot Noir is their vision distilled: cool-climate elegance, mineral-driven structure, and a transparency that lets the vintage speak. There's red fruit here—cherry, cranberry, wild strawberry—but it's framed by stone, earth, and a fine-boned acidity that makes you reach for another glass.
This is a wine made by people in love with a place that most of the wine world still overlooks. That love is an act of defiance, and it tastes like the future.
The Nitty Gritty:
Country: United States
Region: Finger Lakes, New York
Subregion: Seneca Lake
Farming: Sustainable
Soil: Glacial till, shale, limestone
Varietal: 100% Pinot Noir
Elevation: Steep lakeside slopes
Style: Cool-climate, mineral-driven, Burgundian in spirit
Production: Small-lot, minimal intervention
TASTING NOTES & PAIRINGS:
AU COMMENCEMENT (Bugey)
Tasting: Bright red berries, cranberry, subtle alpine herbs, fine bubbles, dry finish. Lively, fresh, brisk.
Pairing: Oysters, charcuterie, grilled salmon, strawberries and cream.
POTTARELLO (Umbria)
Tasting: Dark cherry, wild herbs, tobacco, earthy grip. Structured but approachable, with a rustic Italian soul.
Pairing: Grilled ribeye, wild mushroom risotto, pasta with ragu, aged pecorino.
FORGE CLASSIQUE PINOT NOIR (Finger Lakes)
Tasting: Red cherry, cranberry, wild strawberry, wet stone, fine tannins, mineral finish. Elegant, transparent, cool-climate precision.
Pairing: Duck breast with cherry gastrique, roasted salmon with herbs, mushroom tart, soft cheeses.
Bacco’s Wine Club January 2026
Tenuta di Carleone - Il Randagio Toscana Rosso 2022
Pictured: Sean O’Callagan of Tenuta di Carleone
Sean O’Callaghan—who’ll describe himself, with a wink, as a “one-eyed rascal”—works in rarefied air in the Tuscan countryside, quite literally. Tenuta di Carleone sits in Radda, the highest subzone of Chianti Classico, where elevation brings cooler temperatures, longer growing seasons, and a natural sense of lift. It’s a place that tends to reward transparency over amplitude—wines with line, brightness, and detail rather than bulk.
O’Callaghan first made his name in Chianti at Riecine before building Tenuta di Carleone as a tightly focused, two-person project. His core wines—his Chianti offerings—lean fully into Sangiovese, and the point is not to modernize the grape but to let Radda speak clearly through it. We’ve had the pleasure of featuring his Chianti Classico in the club in the past, and this time around, we’re putting the spotlight on Il Randagio, or “the stray”, due to its focus on the two non-native varietals of the region, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.
In a warmer zone, that blend can easily drift into something plush, sweet-fruited, and oak-led. Here, at altitude, it lands differently. Il Randagio keeps the profile taut and savory: Cabernet Franc’s herbal lift and graphite-like edge, Merlot bringing shape and mid-palate without turning the wine soft. The result feels more “composed” than showy—Tuscan in its structure and dryness, but not trying to play the Chianti Classico game.
In other words, this isn’t your ordinary Super Tuscan.
The Nitty Gritty:
Country: Italy
Region: Tuscany
Subregion: Chianti
Farming: Organic, Biodynamic
Soil: Alberese Limestone and Galestro Sandstone
Blend: 50% Cabernet Franc 50% Merlot
Pictured: Tenuta di Carleone Il Randagio Toscana Rosso 2022
Fattoria Moretto - Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Secco 2024
Pictured: Fausto Altariva of Fattoria Moretto
“Moretto is to Lambrusco what Tempier and Terrebrune are to rosé. It reminds me of the best reds of Bandol and Tuscany, with herbs like thyme, and a sort of dusty mineral quality, like you find in some of the top Bordeaux and Tuscan wines.”
Lambrusco is used to being the butt of the joke—the also-ran to Prosecco, and more often derided than Franciacorta, Italy’s official answer to Champagne. But in the right hands, Lambrusco is something altogether different: a wine of real purpose and deep local identity, shaped by food, place, and tradition. Nowhere does that matter more than in Emilia-Romagna, the heartland of Italian cuisine, where Lambrusco has always been a table wine first and a sparkling curiosity second.
Fattoria Moretto began as a passion project for Domenico Altariva in the early 1970s, when he started planting vineyards dedicated to Lambrusco Grasparossa, one of the historic varieties of the region and indigenous to Castelvetro. Sitting just outside Modena, Castelvetro’s hills and clay-rich soils give Grasparossa its signature depth and structure—more intensity and grip than other Lambrusco styles, and a natural affinity for dry, food-driven wines.
What started as a modest husband-and-wife operation grew slowly, guided less by ambition than by continuity. The Altarriva family worked the land as their parents had before them, farming naturally, avoiding pesticides, and trusting the strength of their vineyard sites rather than chasing yield or polish. That commitment shows clearly in the wines today: Lambrusco that is dry, savory, and grounded, with dark fruit, gentle tannin, and a brisk, cleansing finish that makes immediate sense at the table.
Moretto’s Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Secco isn’t interested in rewriting the category—it’s interested in reminding you what it can be when treated seriously. Chilled, poured generously, and paired with food, it becomes less a novelty and more a necessity: a wine built for prosciutto, Parmigiano, rich pastas, and the everyday rhythms of a meal shared.
The Nitty Gritty:
Country: Italy
Region: Emilia-Romagna
Subregion: Castelvetro
Farming: Organic
Soil: Alberese Limestone and Galestro Sandstone
Varietal: 100% Grasparossa
Pictured: Fattoria Moretto Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro Secco
Louis Claude Desvignes - Chateau Gaillard Morgon 2023
Pictured: Claude-Emmanuel and Louis-Benoît Desvignes of Louis Claude Desvignes
Louis-Claude Desvignes was a very particular kind of Beaujolais vigneron—restless, quick-witted, and seemingly incapable of standing still. Tastings in his cellar were as likely to include laughter and asides as they were bottles pulled from every corner of the domaine: experiments, comparisons, older vintages offered purely for context. The energy was light, almost playful. The seriousness of the wines never was.
Desvignes passed away in 2021, having already handed the estate over to his children, Claude-Emmanuelle and Louis-Benoît, the eighth generation of the family to work these vineyards in Morgon. Emmanuelle joined in 2001, and Benoît in 2004. While the core identity of the domaine has remained intact, their stewardship has quietly sharpened it. Today, all production is estate-bottled, the vineyards are certified organic, and the family has begun exploring small, focused bottlings that highlight individual lieux-dits within Morgon.
The Desvignes holdings have long centered on Morgon’s most serious ground. Much of the fruit for the estate’s wines comes from the Côte du Py, widely regarded as the beating heart of the appellation. If Morgon were formally classified, this hill would sit at the top. Its decomposed schist soils—and, in certain parcels, added clay—give the wines their depth, structure, and capacity to age, setting them apart from the lighter, more immediate expressions found elsewhere in Beaujolais.
That pedigree comes into particularly clear focus with Château Gaillard. Once blended into the estate’s broader Morgon cuvée, this 1.03-hectare plot of south-facing, old-vine Gamay proved distinctive enough to stand on its own beginning in 2020. Planted on sandy granite soils near the Fleurie border, the vines—now around 80 years old—deliver fruit with concentration, firmness, and a sense of gravity that feels unmistakably Morgon.
In the cellar, the approach is traditional and restrained: largely whole-cluster fermentation, gentle extraction, and élevage in concrete. The aim is not to soften Morgon’s edges, but to frame them. When young, Château Gaillard shows dark cherry, raspberry, and blackcurrant, carried by a structure that feels composed rather than heavy. With time, the wine begins to “pinotize,” taking on the savory, earthy notes—cocoa, coffee, forest floor—that have long made Morgon one of Beaujolais’ most age-worthy crus.
This is Gamay with intent and patience built in. For Wine Club members, it’s a reminder of why Morgon occupies such a singular place in the region: a wine that drinks beautifully now, but rewards those who give it a little air—or a little time—and one that bridges the space between Beaujolais and Burgundy with confidence rather than comparison.
The Nitty Gritty:
Country: France
Region: Burgundy
Subregion: Morgon
Farming: Organic
Soil: Sandy Granite
Varietal: 100% Gamay
Pictured: Louis Claude Desvignes Chateau Gaillard Morgon 2023