Since our thirsty food & drink editor’s cup runneth over, here’s a space for her to spill the tea on all of the greatest, tastiest, and trendiest sips. There’s really only one thing you’ll find here ... NO BAD DRINKS!
My Current Drink Crush: Sun Goddess Wines, a new collaboration between the legendary Mary J. Blige and Fantinel Winery
Why This Drink Matters: A Black-owned wine brand that you should have on your radar, Sun Goddess Wines is bringing some much-needed positive vibes (and Black-owned representation) to the predominantly white world of wine. With plenty of buzz from the editors over at Harper's Bazaar, VinePair, and BET, we want to shed some light on this new wine collaboration from artist and philanthropist Mary J. Blige and family-owned Italian winery Fantinel.
Launched this past June, Sun Goddess Wines offers both a pinot grigio ramato and a sauvignon blanc, both deliciously ripe and perfect for summer pairings.
How We Met: I got word from a press contact back in June that Mary J. Blige was teasing the launch of her very own wine collaboration. As a wine lover and journalist, this immediately piqued my interest, so I requested a sample as soon as humanly possible.
When these gorgeous bottles arrived at my doorstep, the pretty pale orange-hued pinot grigio ramato automatically activated my nerdy wine receptors — part of a greater trend of slightly lesser-known skin-contact pinot grigios — as it was unlike most pinot grigio offerings on the market.
After trying both the pinot grigio ramato and the sauvignon blanc, the name Sun Goddess made much more sense to me. From the Sun Goddess site: "These wines are produced with love and passion from the sun-kissed vineyards owed by the Fantinel family in the Friuli Venezia Giulia."
In other words: These wines are sunshine, bottled.
It took over 3 years of careful taste-testing and development to make these wines, and they're a testament to the wines Blige genuinely loves sipping the most. Since wine tasting is one of her passions, Blige created this collaboration as a representation of wine as culture, community, and the connective tissue between travel and emotion.
Tasting Notes: Blige spells out three facets that attract her to a good white wine: freshness, minerality, and purity. The Pinot Grigio Ramato is exactly this — hints of peach, blackberry, and melon, with a fresh, floral bouquet and equally gorgeous pinkish hue. The sauvignon blanc is also superbly crisp and slightly more vegetal and intense on the nose, with some green bell pepper snappiness and mouthwatering acidity. I wanted to keep drinking both bottles after my first sip.
I wouldn’t be able to pick a favorite between the two, but I would wholeheartedly recommend both of these fresh, vibrant white wines for any summer pairing. They are food-friendly, quite reasonably priced, and have a passionate backstory.
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