Archive for the ‘Review red wine’ Category

I remember sitting outside around a wooden patio table, feeling the hot sun and the still, heavy air. We were tasting wine with Vic Roberts — his wine, in fact.

We’d just tasted a surprisingly wonderful Syrah Rose, and were working our way through his full-bodied reds. Vic was telling stories and joking, and we were just getting ready to start raving about his wines when…the wind went from zero to 20 miles an hour in about 20 seconds. Suddenly we’re grabbing everything that’s not nailed down, and we can feel the temperature stop climbing and start falling.

That’s why Vic’s wines taste the way they do. His vineyards sit smack in the middle of the Templeton Gap, a natural break in California’s coastal mountains that allows cool ocean breezes to get sucked inland every afternoon, and cool down the grapes growing in this warm inland region.

Templeton is in the Paso Robles AVA, which sits in the middle of the huge Central Coast wine region and is about halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Vic Roberts came to Paso in 1983, as has watched (and participated in) the huge growth of the wine industry there.

It was bound to happen — Paso has micro-climates and soils that can make great wine, and now they have great winemakers who are helping the region gain national and international respect.

So what about Vic? He and his wife own Victor Hugo Winery. “Victor Who?” you say? Don’t I know him from somewhere?

Sure. You know him as the author of classics such as Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and he shares a French heritage with the Paso Robles Vic (Victor Hugo Roberts). That’s about all they have in common, except that Paso Vic stole a name from French Author Vic: The Hunchback .

Vic grows several red varietals, including Zinfandel, Syrah, Petite Sirah and all five Bordeaux red grapes. He makes killer Zin, Cab and a Bordeuax bllend called Opulence, but the one we tasted recently is a blend of “everything we didn’t bottle someplace else.” Victor Hugo Hunchback Paso Robles 2008 includes four grapes: Syrah (32%), Petite Verdot (28%), Cabernet France (24%) and Merlot (16%).

The nose showed lots of dark fruit, with the earthy/spicy edge that Syrah gives. Plums and spice also noodled their way in. The palate gave up lots of dark berries, coffee and vanilla, but it wasn’t overly jammy. That’s what I liked most: the verging-on-opulent fruit was balanced by a backbone of acid and soft tannins.

That’s what those cool breezes do: they build structure in the fruit, and allow it to ripen without the sugars going sky-high. Just look at the alcohol content of Hunchback. At 13.5%, it’s a relative lightweight by California standards. And you now it when you drink it — it doesn’t tire out your palate but remains intense but light.

Vic has also aged this wine in French and American oak, which I think accounts for the interesting spice. But he only makes about 600 cases of Hunchback, so you may have some trouble finding. But if you do, let me (and Vic) know how you like it. Cheers!

Josh Jensen doesn’t do anything the easy way.

The first “not easy” thing happened more than 35 years ago, when he returned from Burgundy, France and set out to find limestone in California just like in the Cote d’Or. He finally found a 100-year old limestone quarry on Mt. Harlan, way up at 2,200 feet elevation in the remote Gavilan Mountains in what is now known as the Central Coast.

When I say “remote,” I don’t mean that there’s no cable TV. On Mount Harlan, there was no paved road, no electricity and no telephone service — and there still isn’t!

To create Calera Wine Company, Josh Jensen planted several Pinot Noir (and other) vineyards over the years, and built a multi-level winery into a hillside that allowed him to produce super-premium wine the old-fashioned way. The wines get the gentlest of handling, because gravity does most of the work.

When I met Josh Jensen at Phoenix Wines of Scottsdale, he was pouring four of his single-vineyard Pinot Noirs from the 2006 and 2007 vintages. They couldn’t have been more unique: they were like the four kids in a family that are as different as night and day. My favorite was the Calera Mt. Harlan Pinot Noir Ryan Vineyard 2006. This vineyard is the coolest site on Jensen’s cool property, and the 2006 growing season started out cooler still. But warm temps in mid-summer allowed the grapes to ripen fully and produced an amazing intensity in the fruit.

The nose hit me with black cherries, plum and a hint of spice, and led to a palate that exploded in my mouth. I was amazed at the richness of the fruit, with more plush red berries and licorice. It showed the signature minerality that comes from the limestone soils, but the impression was still soft and velvety, right up to the nice hint of black pepper on the finish.

Did I say I was amazed? This five-year-old Pinot was still very youthful, and showed much more vibrancy than the other ’06 we tasted that day. I guess I’m just a sucker for big and rich…

But all of Calera’s wines are worth going out of your way for. If you can’t find the single-vineyard bottlings, go for the Central Coast Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. They’re just as well made, and great value for the money. Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vintage close-outs are a tricky thing. They can be an amazing bargain, or a waste of time and money (my time, and my customers’ money).

So I flinched when I heard, “Down from $25.99 to the amazing low price of $12.99!! But wait! There’s more!!” Well, he didn’t say it quite like that, but I always think of late-night infomercial hucksters when I hear about deals that seem too good to be true.

So was this deal a bargain, or a bust?

The wine I’m talking about is Bodegas San Juan Bautista Yonna 2003. It’s from Spain, known for long-lived reds from the Rioja and Ribera del Duero regions. But this wine is from Campo de Borja, a relatively new wine producing area in Aragon province in northern Spain. I say “relatively new” because grapes have been grown there since Roman warriors marched across the Iberian Peninsula, scattering grape seeds and offspring along the way.

Up in Zaragoza (the much-more-romantic Spanish name for the region), the winters are cold and the summers are warm and dry. There’s a large Diurnal Temperature Shift, and if you’ve been reading my blog you know that’s techie talk for “Large Difference Between Daytime and Nighttime Temperatures.” This is a good thing because it helps create structure in the grapes, and contributes to the intensity of the flavors. Read the rest of this entry »

The Flowers Vineyard and Winery website says they’re located in the “Extreme” Sonoma Coast. No kidding.

When I saw this photo on the website, I said, “Holy Cow, why are there rocky cliffs instead of rolling hillsides, and how can they grow grapes there?”

Well, the truth is they can grow as good or better grapes there than anywhere else. The Flowers vineyards are situated on several ridge tops just two miles from the Pacific coast. They’re at elevations above 1,000 feet, so instead of being buried in coastal fog for half the day, like most good Pinot Noir vineyards, these vineyards bask in bright sunshine. They’re still kept cool, though, by ocean breezes, and at night the evening fog rolls in and cools everything down for the night. The Flowers have the perfect “warm site in a cool climate,” an ideal place to produce Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Walt and Joan Flowers discovered these amazing sites pretty casually — they answered a three-line classified ad for land in the Northern Sonoma Coast. These Pennsylvania natives were familiar with Oregon and northern California from regular trips for their nursery business back East.

Wait a minute — their name is Flowers, and they owned a nursery? I’d say they were a natural for the grape growing and winemaking  business, too.

I recently encountered Flowers Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir 2009, and I loved it. I didn’t expect the intensity I encountered. It started with the nose: I was hit with loads of baking spice, light cherry, licorice, plum, and even baked caramel. Wow — there’s the whole kitchen sink of complexity, right there.

The palate kept right on rolling, with soft, rich fruit and intense black cherry notes. But it wasn’t heavy or jammy — bright acid lifted it up and waltzed it right through to the supple, lingering finish.

Like I said, I loved it.

I guess that’s what the ridge top vineyards have created — intensity with elegance. The 2009 growing season helped, too. Temperatures were a little cool, allowing the grapes to ripen slowly and completely, and be picked with relatively low sugars and complete physiological development.

I hope you can find a bottle for yourself, although I gotta tell you it’s not always easy to find.  Flowers has gotten a boatload of awards and “Best of” ratings almost since the day they started bottling wine, so their supply goes fast.

Here’s hoping you get the chance to enjoy it as much as I did. Cheers!

 

 

We’re all pretty darn quick to chirp, “2006 was a bad vintage,” or “2008 was a good vintage.”

The truth is, Mother Nature sometimes gives winemakers better conditions to work with, but no individual winery has a “good vintage” unless the winemaker does a good job.

Take the 2008 vintage in Oregon. The word went out very early that it was one of the better vintages in several years, and wine drinkers got their palates set to enjoy some really good stuff from their favorite wineries.

But 2008 was not an easy growing season. Nature through all kinds of stuff at Oregon vintners, including cool spring temperatures that delayed flowering, higher-than-normal summer rainfall, and early October frost. Vineyard managers and winemakers had to make some tough decisions, including how much to thin the crop in order to produce the best quality fruit.

Here’s how Rollin Soles put it: “So, it is an important balancing act to get the crop not too low, and not too high, to ensure proper ripening before the rain starts and doesn’t stop until next July!”

Here’s my point: Rollin made some great wine that year (which I know because I just tasted one), and not everyone else did.

Rollin is the winemaker and owner of Argyle Winery in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. He’s got some perspective on good and bad vintages, because he’s been growing and making wine in Oregon since 1987. And he hasn’t just been goofing around. His winery has earned all kinds of 90+ ratings from the big-name wine reviewers; his wines have made Wine Spectator’s Top 100 list more often than any other Oregon winery; and Spectator named Argyle “Oregon’s Premier Winery” in 2000.

So yeah, the guy knows how to make great wine, even in a not-so-good vintage. Of course, he’s got some good tools to work with, like the Lone Star Vineyard that produces the fruit for Argyle Nuthouse Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2008.  The Lone Star Vineyard is in the Eola-Amity Hills appellation, but it sits at a relatively low elevation and its orientation is such that it’s drenched with sunshine from the moment “the first light of day peaks over the Cascade range” until late in the day.

What does this extra radiant heat do? It produces more intense black fruit flavors and good structure. Read the rest of this entry »

If you think you know everything you need to know about anything, then think again.

I thought I knew all I needed to know about Napa Valley’s Sterling Vineyards. I thought they had a classic reputation but weren’t very interesting, probably based on the fact that their wines have very large distribution — i.e. they’re in almost every grocery store. (As a small, independent wine retailer, I look for brands that my customers can’t pick up while they’re shopping for lettuce and milk.)

So when I came across a Sterling label that wasn’t familiar to me, I jumped on the internet to look it up. And I learned that Sterling Vineyards has a rather interesting history. The winery was created more than 30 years ago by successful British entrepreneur Peter Newton, who I’m guessing fell in love with the landscape and climate of the Napa Valley (if you’ve spent much time in London, you’ll now why).

Remember, this was back before Napa was a “wine country destination.” Newton planted some additional vineyards around the valley, including the first significant plantings of Merlot.

What??  You mean Sterling pre-dates, and may even have had a hand in creating, the American love affair with Merlot? (which later became a scornful relationship, thanks to one crack by a wine geek in a movie called “Sideways.”) Read the rest of this entry »

Elderton Wines shows you how great Australian wines and wineries can be. They’re family-owned and operated. They have vineyards dating back to the 19th century. They express terroir with elegance and style. And oh yeah — they’ve won a boatload of awards for their fabulous wines.

Deservedly so. Their primary Barossa line shows the big, bold style that the region is famous for. But they have another project, the Friends Vineyard Series, that says “Barossa” on the front label, but is designed to showcase a lesser-known sub-region.

The Eden Valley vineyards from which this fruit is sourced don’t sit on the Barossa Valley floor. They’re scattered up the hillsides, at elevations from 1200 to 1500 feet. Combine the effects of elevation with the cooler, wetter climate and more minerally soils of the Eden Valley sites, and you get fruit with more acid and structure, along with intense flavors.

When I poured the Elderton Friends Vineyard Series 2009 Shiraz, I saw what I expected: intense deep garnet and purple color that you could barely shine a pin-light through. The nose hit me with fruit, as I expected it would, but it wasn’t just tooty-fruity. There was lots of cedar and spice, tart red berries, and even a bit of meatiness tickling the back.

The palate had all sorts of stuff going on. The first was black raspberry candy. Ever had a black raspberry Jolly Rancher? If they made them, they would taste like this. And that’s a good thing — the rich fruit was clean and not jammy. Because the crisp acid jumped in right behind the fruit. It lifted the palate and made way for the eucalyptus and mint that followed. My palate was not quite overwhelmed, because as the finish lingered, a little black licorice teased me.

Boy — there’s enough stuff here for a meal. And did I mention my meal?

I was eating Seared Tuna as I sipped my Elderton, and the match turned out to be brilliant, if I do say so myself. The slight smokiness of the tuna was perfect with the sweet black raspberry fruit.

And this really was a good food wine. You might think that Aussie Shiraz is a meal in itself, but the Eden Valley version has so much natural acid that it keeps the wine bright and laser-beam clean. Elderton Friends is actually a fairly mind-blowing combination of intense fruit and tangy brightness.

And oh yeah — there are a few things you don’t get with this wine. The first is heavy oak, which used to be considered a feature of all Barossas. The second is a big price tag. You can take home the Friends Shiraz for under $20, and that’s a lot of fun for the money. Cheers!

 

 

I read in a recent post by Dr. Vino that a couple of British wine people have created an online wine store that rates all of its wines on a healthfulness scale.  The site is called vinopic.com and here’s how Dr. Vino describes it.

Vinopic brings together Rosemary George, Master of Wine and one of the UK’s leading wine writers and critics, and Professor Roger Corder, world renowned health expert and author of The Wine Diet. These two wine experts assess and score every wine at Vinopic for the two key elements of wine quality. Roger guides consumers in the direction of higher “natural quality” by taking into consideration the richness in grape polyphenols. Rosemary ensures the wines are of superior “drinking quality”, rewarding aroma, taste and pleasure.

If you’re wondering what they mean by “Natural quality” and what “grape polyphenols” have to do with anything, they’re obliquely referring to our old friend, Resveratrol. This substance found in red grapes and therefore red wine was the Miracle Drug of the Moment a year or two ago. Researchers found that if they fed massive amounts to laboratory mice, the little critters would show reduced signs of aging. (You can read all about it in my post, “Are You A Man (Woman) Or A Mouse?”).

Every nutritionist and anti-aging quack jumped on the Resveratrol bandwagon, and many wine geeks made it their mission to figure out which red wines would give drinkers the most anti-aging bang for their buck. They published articles saying things like, “Cool-climate Pinot Noir has the highest levels of Resveratrol, followed by mountain-grown Malbec” (or something like that).

People who didn’t know any better (i.e. who drank little or no wine of any kind) came stumbling into my wine shop, clutching dog-eared pages ripped out of magazines and newspapers. They believed that the key to their health and happiness lay in procuring this one, exact, cool-climate, mountain-grown red wine. And when I told them the Oregon Pinot they were seeking was gonna run them $25 or $30 a bottle, they almost wept.

What was the problem then? Too much hype and not enough common sense.

And what’s wrong with the Vinopic concept (in my humble opinion)? Too much hype and not enough common sense.

The fact is, ALL RED WINE CONTAINS HEALTHY LEVELS OF RESVERATROL AND OTHER STUFF THAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.

Wines made from grapes that ripen slowly, i.e. where cooler temperatures and lots of sunlight allow longer “hang time,” will have more developed polyphenols (and Resveratrol), which are the compounds in red grapes that ripen more slowly than grape sugars and also happen to contribute flavor and complexity to wine.

Grapes grown that way are also the ones used to make higher-quality wines: it costs more to baby the grapes through their growing season, usually dropping fruit to limit yields and further improve quality. So the wines made from these grapes cost more.

The cheaper wines generally use grapes grown by the boatload, the more tons the merrier, in the relatively hot Central Valleys of the world.

Do they have less Resveratrol? Yes. Are they less healthful and lower quality? Yes again.

But not just because of the Resveratrol. These wines happen to be made by companies that intend to fill grocery store shelves with wine in jugs and boxes. To keep costs down and to standardize flavor profiles, they add to the wine: CHEMICALS, SUGAR, SULFITES, AND GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE.

So we’re getting around to the Moral of my Story: If you want to be healthy, feel youthful, and enjoy a lovely-tasting beverage with food, friends and family — drink any red wine that doesn’t come in a jug or 5 liter box (notice I said % liter, because there’s some decent stuff in 3 liter boxes) and doesn’t cost less than about $8 a bottle. (Or even a little less for some good-quality and good-tasting imports from Spain, Chile or Argentina.)

It’s that simple. You don’t need complicated rating systems or scientific reports — just ask your friendly local wine merchant to recommend a good, naturally-made red (i.e. with no unnecessary additives) and whether it’s a Pinot Noir, Malbec, Rioja or Cab, you’ll be doing your body a favor while you give yourself some fun and pleasure.

And now excuse me — I’m gonna pour myself a glass of red wine. Cheers!

P.S. – I tried to go to www.vinopic.com and Google says “Cannot Be Found.”

 

 

 

It’s pretty darn easy to drop a couple hundred bucks on a Napa Cab. There are cult wines and super-cult wines, and all of them ask us to part with a substantial sum for the privilege of tasting them — IF we can find them.

I just stumbled across a Napa gem because one of my hard-working wine reps (Thank you, Gabe) pulled a bottle out of his sample bag and said, “You know, this thing has been open for five days, but why don’t we taste it anyways?” This Thing turned out to be Soda Canyon Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon 2009, a second- or third-label bottling from Beau Vigne Wines.

Who is Beau Vigne? Well, Beau Vigne makes great Napa reds that earn huge ratings and sport a price tag that’s respectably high ($– ish) but seem a bargain compared to the stratospherically priced cult wines.

And then they have this “lower tier” called Soda Canyon Cellars that didn’t taste “lower” to me.

Backstory first: Soda Canyon and Beau Vigne are owned by Ed and Trish Snider, and until recently their winemaker was Dave Phinney. Ever heard of “The Prisoner?” “The Prisoner,” “Saldo” et al are the private project of Beau Vigne’s now-ex-winemaker.

Are you following me? Read the rest of this entry »

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of  Malbec.

Now raise the other hand if you think it’s a wine from Argentina.

If you’ve got both hands in the air, you look like a lunatic and you’re only half right.

While Argentine Malbec is taking up more and more space on wine store shelves, the grape actually originated in France, where it was one of the six blending grapes used to create Bordeaux. In 1956 a killer frost took 75% of the Malbec crop in France, and while a small region called Cahors replanted, Bordeaux did not. Nowadays, you’ll find a little Malbec in Cahors, and even less in Touraine, a district in the Loire in northern France.

I found a bottle called Guy Allion Touraine Malbec Le Poira 2009, and I was too intrigued to ignore it. French Malbec is, after all, a vanishing breed, and the researcher in me was keen to see how the flavor profile of this Old World wine would compare to Mendoza’s New World Malbec.

My research showed me, first of all, that Malbec is a thin-skinned grape that ripens even more slowly than Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon. Holy Cow! How could it thrive in the cool climate of northern France? Just imagine how happy the grape could be in the foothills of the Andes mountains, where higher elevations produce tons of radiant heat, warm sunny days and cool nights to develop structure.. Read the rest of this entry »