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.