Jet Wine Club - November 2025

November is such an excellent month for wine! The temperature is reliably cooler (ooh! fuller-bodied wines! ooh! riper fruits!), and that fabulous feast known as Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving or Food Feast enables the drinking of multiple bottles with no judgment!

Fitting in with this feasting are this month’s High Altitude Wines. These are wines made from grapes grown at an elevation of at least 500m (ca. 1600ft). They are usually from mountainous areas like Argentina and Armenia or volcanic zones like Mt. Etna. But grapes from other areas – for instance, Texas’ High Plains – also constitute high altitude wines.

These wines are popular right now for their flavor attributes: high acidity, elegance, great structure, and freshness. The same attributes make them wonderful with food. Oh, and they are higher in antioxidants than are low-elevation wines! But we’ll get to that in a moment.

For the most part, high-altitude vineyards share certain characteristics that produce benefits in the resulting wines. Plantings are generally in rocky soils and are set on slopes, both of which aid in drainage. Well-drained soils encourage deep-root expansion, which enables the roots to reach deeper nutrients. Good drainage also helps fend off mildew and certain diseases, as do the high winds that often occur at higher altitude. In addition to winds, these locations generally benefit from lots of direct sunlight. Direct sunlight in the day creates strong diurnal temperature variation from the cooler nights experienced at altitude. Such variations encourage slow and gentle ripening of the grapes, which results in greater acidity. Copious amounts of sunlight further affect grapes by promoting anthocyanins, which can help protect against the heavy UV doses. As a result, grapes develop thicker skins that have a lot of coloration and a lot of tannin, and increased anthocyanins equate to increased antioxidants. At least one study of high-altitude grapes indicates that the resulting wine also has increased antioxidants. 

So, make sure you drink these wines when you sit in the sun. For *protection*.

Gaetano Di Carlo Animoso Corleonese Catarratto, Sicily, Italy

The Animoso Corleonese is made with 100% Catarratto from vineyards at ca 750m elevation on Rocca Busambra. The vines are younger, and in addition to the great acidity from the elevation, the wine is bright and fresh. The nose has some lemon blossoms and bush herbs, with a salty melon mouth – a bit like prosciutto and cantaloupe! Thinking about November feasting, I’d have this wine with all sorts of vegetable side dishes: roasted brussels sprouts with lemon and parmigiano cheese, or a traditional (to my Midwestern self) green-bean casserole!

Gaetano di Carlo is from a family of farmers with a long history in the town of Corleone. He still cultivates some grains and olives and, of course, grapes. He was the first in his family to bottle wines commercially, and he now has a few vineyards on the slopes outside of town. Corleone, itself, sits at an altitude of 550m, while the surrounding mountains reach about 1600m elevation; the vineyards of Gaetano Di Carlo are mostly planted at ca 750m. The soils here are composed of something wonderful: glauconitic calcarenites. What a great name! These are specific to the Corleone area, and their deposition is atypical. They were deposited around 20 million years ago in a “non-conformity”, in which new rock is deposited over older, weathered material. In other words, sedimentation had stopped for a long time before starting anew. The archaeologist in me finds this disturbing, as the result is that there is a hiatus in the recording of time! That break can last a short amount of time, or very long; there is an unconformity in Shoshone Canyon, Wyoming, in which 2 billion years of time is “lost”.

The soils were glaucanitic calcarenites that were laid some 40-50 million years ago in a period of global warming. These would have formed at a shallow point near shore, like a beach, delta, or sandbar. The resulting soils are enriched from the iron in the glaucanite, and have a dose of sandstone-based marine fossils.

Domaine Ouled Thaleb Red Blend, Zenata AOG, Morocco

Ouled Thaleb’s red blend is 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Grenache, organically grown at around 600m (200ft) in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. The grapes stay in concrete tanks during fermentation and aging before transfer to oak for a short time. The wine has dark berry notes with plums and blackcurrant, cardamom, coffee, and chocolate. What to eat with it? I can think of few things more appealing than a tagine of couscous, lamb, and prunes. Please invite me to that Friendsgiving! I’ll bring an extra bottle. 

The soils in their Rommani vineyards near the Ben Slimane plateau are made of a dark clay-marl soil called tirs, surrounded by rocky outcrops. As is typical with high-altitude wines, the soil is well drained, and the area is swept by winds off the Atlantic Ocean.

At the risk of repeating myself (and repeating myself!), wine first came to Morocco via the Phoenicians. In the 8th-7th centuries BCE, traders sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar and established Lixus, Chellah, and Migdol - Modern Essouaria – on the Atlantic coast. Migdol was the location of the most-distant (known) colony from the Phoenician homeland on the Lebanon coast at Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Phoenicians are credited with bringing arboriculture to their colonies. Grapes were certainly part of his importing, as were olives and other fruits – though it is not entirely clear which other fruits.

But, perhaps there is a Herculean labor that may shed light on at least one fruit. Around the time that Lixus was settled, Hercules (Greek Herakles) was said to have embarked on his quest to retrieve the golden apples from Hera’s Garden of the Hesperides. To get there, Hercules would have to pass the end of the Western World and go beyond what is now known as the Straits of Gibraltar. In the myth, Hercules has to create this strait, and the area is called the Pillars of Hercules. So, he was successful in crossing, got to the Garden, and got the apples. Why this is of relevance to Lixus and arboriculture is that the timing of Hercules’ trip is much at the founding of Lixus. The Hesperides (“daughters of night” of the garden) were a group of young ladies of semi-divine status, likely fathered by the titan Atlas. Atlas was charged with holding up the world – much like the high mountains of Morocco, the Atlas do. Further, Hercules/Herakles is associated with the Phoenician god, Melqart, with whom Hercules/Herakles later became interchangeable. To make a long story short, perhaps the Phoenicians introduced apples to their colonies on the Atlantic. 

Enjoy your wines!

And join me at Jet on November 12th for a tasting of these and other High Altitude Wines!

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