the Rizzo winery NOTEBOOK
At Rizzo, we want to help our valued customers learn about how many hands this bottle went through before reaching their glass - or why wine has been the chosen beverage for thousands of years throughout history. We wanted to share the tools that enable our wine lovers to feel confident about discussing the bottle of Rizzo they are drinking with friends.
We created the Notebook to help get you there and to pass on our wealth of knowledge to you.
Muscat Canelli, Food's Best Friend
Muscat Canelli is a delicious white wine made in an off-dry style. Despite its slight sweetness, this wine is a very versatile wine to pair with many different types of food. From light desserts to salads, even to delicious take-out!
Muscat is often overlooked due to it’s off-dry nature. We’re here to tell you to forget what you’ve heard. This wine should be your go to for any dinner party, picnic at the park, charcuterie night, or take-out thai food.
Muscat Canelli is perhaps one of the most delicious grapes to snack on in the entire Vitis Vinifera species. The only grape I’ve ever had that tastes exactly as the wine does, floral, and bursting with sweet perfume. This fun little grape is also very ancient, one of the grapes that most others can trace their lineage back to.
Muscat is a grape variety with many variants of itself as well. Muscat Canelli in particular is a grape named after the town of Canelli (Città di Canelli) in North-East Italy in the larger winemaking region of Piedmont. Rizzo Winery, of course, has Italian heritage, and this grape also can grow in a cooler region than some of the other Muscat variants, making it a no-brainer to be planted as 1 acre of our peaceful vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills.
A picture from the smoke filled vineyard during the growing season of 2020.
Muscat In The Vineyard
We dry farm our vineyard, meaning we don’t use irrigation. We allow Mother Nature to shower our vineyard with the beautiful Oregon rain, and our soils soak and store the water throughout our growing season. We allow the grapes to grow with minimal intervention and harmful sprays. When we do spray we follow LIVE (Low Impact Viticulture & Enology) principles.
Pair The Wine!
Muscat Canelli pairs incredibly well with picnics. Blue cheese is the first that comes to mind, a blue cheese walnut and pear salad on a warm summer day, or a fancy blue cheese on a baguette topped with a bit of honey, delicious.
Traditionally, off-dry wines pair incredibly well with both their similar flavor profile, something slightly sweet like a fruit tart, cheesecake, or olive oil cake. Also, will pair with complete opposite something spicy like wasabi on sushi, a mild/medium spiced pad thai, or a cashew coconut curry.
For dinner, a poached fish filet with a salsa verde, or a simple lemon pasta with olive oil and red chili flakes.
We Reflect On 2020
At Rizzo Winery we reflect on this past year. Struck with hardship, we gained determination and decided we needed to better connect with you all. We are so grateful to those who enjoy our wines, and we are so excited for what lies ahead.
This year has been incredibly difficult for many, with many lives lost due to the coronavirus pandemic, wonderful restaurants and bars permanently shutting their doors after feeding hungry mouths for decades, and the wine industry shifting to new heights in an attempt to survive. At Rizzo Winery, we try to be thankful whenever we can and remember that there is always a rainbow at the end of a storm.
The Rainbow of 2021 here to save our sanity.
This year was a year of big changes for our little winery. We revamped our website and got with the times, getting an easier to navigate online shop just in time for that to be the only way to purchase our wines when the world shut its doors. We decided that you all needed to see the beauty that we are fortunately graced with every day at our estate, even when you couldn’t visit, and made an Instagram account to post these photos to. We started sending you all emails, some educational, some showcasing specific wines, and some all about the deals & discounts. Overall, this year we decided to take flight and connect with you all as best we could.
A very literal representation of us about to take flight.
We wanted to be there for you this year because the world turned upside down and we realized we all needed more from each other. Restructuring our wine club allowed us to give back to those who are there for us as our biggest fans. We gave our members more benefits, more complimentary wine tastings, and access to fun events when the fun can be had again. We reflected on where we had been lacking and decided to fully dedicate ourselves to improve. We invested in our tasting room and made it into a beautiful space where you’d want to spend the cold afternoon inside, or the warm afternoon outside, either way admiring our beautiful views when the world sees a bit of normality again. We believe in hospitality, and soon we will be able to host you all with open arms, glasses of wine, and charcuterie galore.
Our Wine Club Shipments ready for pick-up with their cute new sticker name tags and logo’d sides.
Overall, we’d like to say thank you. Thank you for making it through this year with us, we toast to you, as you are what allows us to keep making our delicious wines that are meant to be shared.
Until we can share again, cheers!
Team Rizzo