Saved From Extinction: Our Favorite Wines

Saved From Extinction explores seven European grape varieties that once stood on the edge of disappearance—and the modern winemakers who brought them back. These grapes survived not through accident or nostalgia, but through deliberate choices: vineyard recovery, technical innovation, and a refusal to let market forces dictate what deserved to endure.

Through guided tastings and a focused lecture, the class examines the historical pressures that nearly erased these varieties, alongside the winemaking decisions that restored them to relevance. Students will explore how changes in farming, fermentation, and style reshaped each grape’s future, and how some found renewed life in the Americas, where new conditions allowed them to express themselves with clarity and confidence.

Rather than treating these wines as rarities, the class approaches them as fully realized, contemporary expressions. You’ll taste for structure, balance, and identity, and learn how survival itself leaves a sensory imprint—shaping flavor, texture, and aromatic profile.

Saved From Extinction is a class about recovery through intent: how knowledge, risk, and conviction have preserved diversity in the vineyard and expanded what modern wine can be.