Archive for the ‘Review Merlot wine’ Category

What Makes a Winner: Silver Oak and Twomey

twomeyIt’s really a pleasure to run smack dab into excellence. We’re so accustomed to mediocre service and so-so performance that, sadly, it’s a surprise when someone does a really good job.

I had that kind of experience recently with Silver Oak Cellars, a winery in California’s Napa Valley that has become an iconic brand in the wine world. They started out small, making only one varietal, Cabernet Sauvignon, from vineyards in Alexander Valley and then Napa Valley. They made that varietal very well, creating a style of Cabernet that was rich, complex, and very drinkable, with a trademark flavor of “sweet” vanilla oak.

We knew Silver Oak in the old days, when it was selling for just shy of $17 a bottle, which was many days and many dollars ago. The Alexander Valley Cab now retails for around $75, and the Napa around $95. Obviously, wine drinkers  have signed on to the Silver Oak legacy.

Silver Oak branched out about 10 years ago when they created a sister winery to make Merlot, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. Twomey Cellars vaulted right to the top of the wine food chain and quickly became recognized as a premium brand. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Wine Lady–Trashes Cooking Wine

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Tin Barn Napa Valley Blend 2005

tin barnHere we go again with another amazing wine value, brought to you by the Great Recession.

Tin Barn Napa Blend 2005 should have been sold out long ago, and in a normal economy it would have been. But it’s still available in late 2010, and at a great price. What was $40 on release is now just $25, even though it still drinks like $40.

Tin Barn Vineyards is one of the new “wineries without vines.” (You can read about another one in my article on Michael Pozzan Wines). Winemaker Michael Lancaster gathered up some partners 10 years ago and began buying select lots of grapes from growers in Napa and Sonoma. He sources his grapes from great appellations such as Carneros, Russian River, and Chiles Valley, where the grapes for the 2005 Napa Blend come from. Volker and Leisel Eisele  tend this vineyard in the Northeast corner of the Napa Valley, which is particularly suited to warm-weather grapes.

You can taste the ripeness and concentration in this Tin Barn wine. The blend is 63% Cabernet Sauvignon, 21% Cabernet Franc and 16% Merlot, and the Cab Sauv certainly dominates on the nose and palate. The classic cassis and blackcurrant flavors are right up front, but then it goes deep, deep down with real Napa Cab intensity. I loved that part of it. Then the Cab Franc and Merlot kick in, softening the tannins and adding a hint of spice. The finish lingers with some toasty oak.

I intend to lay in a store of Tin Barn, and there can’t be much left since they made less than 900 cases. If you want to do the same thing, I’m telling you now that I’ll try to beat you to it.

Cheers!

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The Wine Lady–Don’t Dis Merlot.

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Hunting for Excess Treasure: Treasure Hunter “The Castaway”

treasure“Excess” is the magic word here: as in “excess supply,” which is something we have a lot of these days in higher-end wines. Ever since the bottom dropped out of the fine wine market two years ago, good wines has been accumulating in wineries and warehouses all over California. With a couple of vintages still unsold, the last thing a winery wants to do is bottle more wine, or at least bottle too much more wine. So they quietly release some of their wine for sale, often already bottled, and savvy buyers snap them up.

One such buyer is Treasure Hunter Wines, which calls itself a negociant. It’s one of four labels from 3 Finger Wine Company, which is owned by a winemaker, a fourth generation farmer and an entrepreneur (they’re the “3 fingers,” get it?).

The 3 Finger guys find excess juice from high-end California wineries who don’t want to devalue their label by selling their wine at less than full price. Negociants like these guys (and Cameron Hughes, too) buy top-quality juice from appellations such as Rutherford and Oakville and release them under their own name at a fraction of the regular price. I think this works for all of us:  the wineries recoup at least some of their investment, the negociants get a great product to sell for a profit, and wine drinkers get some stunning wine at a very reasonable price. As the 3 Fingers guys say on their website, it’s a “win-win-win.”

I just tasted the 2007 Treasure Hunter Oak Knoll “The Castaway.” This one is a blend, and although the grapes aren’t listed on the bottle, there are some pretty good clues about what it contains. In a nutshell: it’s kinda dark, kinda edgy, kinda earthy… but very good! The aromas jump out of the glass with dark fruit, vanilla and a hint of earth. The palate is rich but well-structured, with currants, blackberries, a little bit of spice and earth. Clearly, there’s a lot going on here, and the tannins on the finish say there has to be some Cab in this thing. And there is, but only 20%. The dominant grape is Merlot at 60%, along with 20% Syrah.

Now this ain’t no ordinary Merlot. If you look back at the label, you’ll see the Oak Knoll appellation and go, “Aha!” This is prime Napa Valley fruit, the kind of Merlot that’s got enough stuffing to masquerade as a Cab. We really enjoyed it, and it still has a few years of age-ability left. But if you’d like to try it, you’d better do it soon. All the Treasure Hunter wines are one-time releases, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. So start hunting for treasure now…


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Mercer Estates: One Of The Great Things About Washington State

mercer vines

Mercer vineyards in Horse Heaven Hills appellation

In my opinion, nearly everything about Washington State is great, with the possible exception of freezing temperatures in the winter and that white stuff called “snow.” I don’t think they get a lot of white stuff in Eastern Washington State, where the wine industry is growing and thriving, but for a Northeasterner, any is too much.

I’ve talked in other reviews about why Eastern Washington is an ideal place to grow wine grapes. The Reader’s Digest version is that this area to the east of the Cascade mountains is arid (which wine grapes like), with warm daytime temperatures and very cool nighttime temps (which wine grapes love). On top of that, the very northerly latitude of the Columbia Valley results in more hours of daylight in the summer, helping to ripen the grapes and making them very happy.

So let’s talk wineries. Mercer Estates is a small, family-owned winery located in and around Prosser. It’s a partnership between the Hogue family, who built Hogue  Cellars from nothing, to the second largest winery in the state, and the Mercer family, who’ve been farming in Washington since before it was a state. Their winemaker, David Forsyth, is also a Washingtonian, except for sojourns to Sun Valley and Europe where he competed as a Para-Ski racer. (This is not a sport for the faint of heart. David parachuted out of an airplane to land on a target literally the size of a quarter, and then slalom-skied down a mountain. Really).

We tasted many of Mercer’s wines recently when David came out to do a Winemaker Dinner for us. In fact, he’s the one who gave me the definitive low-down on corks and screw caps, which you can read about in More on the Cork Wars. But getting back to what’s in the bottle, I’d like to talk about their stunning Columbia Valley Merlot, since I think it hits all the high notes of Washington state wines.

Mercer Columbia Valley Merlot 2007 surprised the heck out of me. It isn’t like any Merlot I’d ever tasted (except perhaps a mountain-grown one). The dark cherry fruit is incredibly intense, with hints of cocoa and vanilla sliding in at the finish. The acid and tannins created by the cool temperatures create a Cab-like  structure that leaves you thinking, “This ain’t your typical Merlot.” It’s really a Cab-drinkers Merlot, with the age-ability of a big red. For me, it’s what a red wine should be: fun to drink, great with food, and a joy to open for friends and family. Enjoy!

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Sitting on Top of the World: Barnett Vineyards

BARNETTIn Northern California there are a lucky few who sit on top of the world,  gazing down on the valley-dwellers below and quietly going about their business.

Which is a very wonderful business. The select few winemakers who live way up on Napa Valley’s Spring Mountain make red wines that for decades have stunned wine drinkers and critics alike. They face challenges from cultivating the steep slopes, but they reap the rewards in the extraordinary fruit they’re able to produce.

Just getting to Spring Mountain separates the average Saturday winery-hopper from the true acolyte. The narrow, twisting road up the mountain is not for the faint-hearted (or those prone to car sickness). But the experience is rewarding. Breaking out on top, and seeing the Napa Valley spread out below, is breathtaking. We experienced it recently when we went in search of Barnett Vineyards, where we found much more than we bargained for.

First, we found Hal and Fiona Barnett, who discovered Spring Mountain in 1983 and dreamed of planting vineyards there. More than one vineyard management company told them they couldn’t do it – the grades were just too steep. But they persevered and in 1989 released 100 cases of their first vintage of Barnett Spring Mountain District Cabernet Sauvignon.

Their  property included one rocky hilltop that looked particularly intriguing to Hal and Fiona, so they cleared it to grow fruit for a single vineyard Cab. Clearing the land for grape vines scared up lots of the local flora and fauna, and earned the hilltop its name – Rattlesnake Hill. But the grapes the hill grew were worth the effort — the first vintage of Rattlesnake Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, the 1991, earned a whopping 96 points from Robert Parker, Jr’s The Wine Advocate. And unless you’ve been living in a cave (and not the kind of cave the Barnetts store their wine in), you know that a 96 rating will catapult a winery to the top of the “Must Have” list. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tamarack Cellars Light a Fire — A Wine Review

washingtonHere’s something I hear way too often: “I don’t like blends. I drink only varietal wines” (usually accompanied by a disdainful sniff). Now where did folks get the idea that a blended wine is somehow second-class? Haven’t they heard of Bordeaux or Meritage? Don’t they know that  most of the wines they drink have a little something added to spice-up/soften-up/beef-up their varietally labeled wine?

The wine I’m writing about today, Tamarack Cellars Firehouse Red 2007, is testament to the wonders of blended wines. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so many grapes and vineyards in one bottle (I counted eight grapes, each from as many as six appellations). And many of these appellations are known for producing premium red grapes.

Did I mention that this wine is from Washington State? I’m featuring that state in this week’s wine reviews because so many Washington reds knock me out! This one is no exception. It’s big on aromas and flavors (which I’ll get to later), but more important, it’s got that wonderful Washington State balance. If you’ve caught my recent reviews, you’ve already read my Hymn of Praise for the accident of climate and topography that’s created a veritable Wine Grape Heaven in eastern Washington State. But here it is again: the Cascade Mountains create a rain shadow in eastern Washington, and because the region is at a northerly latitude, there are longer-than-average daylight hours to ripen the grapes. Even better, there’s a 30 degree Diurnal Temperature Shift (that’s techie talk for “a really big difference between daytime and night-time temperatures). What this creates is good acid in the grapes, which balances the very rich, ripe fruit. Now that’s my kind of wine! Read the rest of this entry »

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Road Trip Warriors Discover Colorado Wine

plum creek vines

Colorado's Grand Mesa rises behind Plum Creek's vineyards

OK, we’ve just done four days and 2300 miles. We traversed eight states, experienced temperatures ranging from 37 to 102 degrees, and climbed from 1,200 feet above see level, to 10000, and back down 1800 feet. Did I say, in just four days?

I’ve gotta tell you, there are lots of amazing sights to see in this country. And lots of amazing stuff that’ll pop up and delight you if you keep your eyes and your mind open as you travel.

The welcome surprise we tripped over was the Colorado wine industry. Now I’m not a total, “American wines begin and end with Napa Valley” snob. I’ve written lots of good things about Washington State, New Mexico, and even Arizona. But I admit to being oblivious about Colorado wines until we started chatting with a very informative and helpful wine guy at a shop called Little Raven Vineyards in Denver. When we asked about the Colorado-made wines on his shelves, he recommended his favorites and pointed us towards the Grand Valley region in the southwest corner of the state. The next day we pulled off the interstate to investigate (always a good thing to do) and came across Plum Creek Cellars in Palisades, Colorado. And we were knocked out. Read the rest of this entry »

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Red Wine and Sweet Fruit — a Bergevin Lane review

bergevinSome red wines are so rich that you could have them for dessert. I don’t mean actual dessert wines: I mean a wine with so much fruit that it tastes like a yummy dessert. Actually, we paired this wine with a chocolate raspberry dessert. And it was really yummy.

Bergevin Lane Columbia Valley Calico Red 2006 is the wine I’m reviewing today. It’s made in Washington State wine country, and if you’ve been reading my posts, you know I really like Washington State reds. But Bergevin Lane is especially cool. Read the home page of their website and you’ll see why. Bergevin and Lane are the two women you see here, and their passion for good wine is real and obvious. Many other critics have agreed — Wine Spectator, The Wine Advocate, Wine & Spirits and others have already given their wines a boatload of 90+ ratings and rave reviews, and they’ve only been around since 2001! They’re also located in the town of Walla Walla, Washington — that’s just too much fun to pronounce, and makes me want to go visit there soon. Read the rest of this entry »

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