Archive for the ‘Weekly Wine Review’ Category

Power, Finesse and Fun from Napa’s Elyse Winery

rayNow here’s a New Year’s resolution I can get behind: “Resolve to drink more wine in 2011.”

That quote is right upfront and center on Elyse Winery’s homepage, and it tells you something about the spirit of this winery. Owner and winemaker Ray Coursen is a big, fun, talkative guy who’s happy to share theories and stories about wine, food and life. Here’s another quote from their homepage:  “Winemaking is cooking without a flame. Our winemaking philosophy at Elyse in Napa Valley is similar to the approach of a great chef who carefully prepares artisan grown ingredients to bring each layer of flavor to the table.”

Ray learned winemaking from the ground up, working hard in the vineyards and cellars of wineries including Whitehall Lane. He learned to love fruit: “When I make a wine…what’s most important is the fruit. The fruit dictates what the wine will be.” To be able to use the best fruit, Ray doesn’t limit himself to a single estate vineyard. He’s one of the new breed of winemakers who depend almost totally on growers with whom he has long-term contracts and long-time friendships. Most of the vineyards are in the heart of Napa Valley, including the Morisoli Vineyard, which has given him fruit for award-winning Cabernets and Zinfandels.

We recently listened to Ray tell stories while we tasted four of his wines, including the Morisoli Vineyard Zinfandel 2007. This is classic Napa Zin, not that jammy, soft, fleshy stuff you get from California’s warmer regions. There’s structure and acid to this Zin, along with plush raspberry fruit, coffee and spice notes. And did I mention that Ray loves to blend? This Morisoli Zin is actually a blend of 87% Zin and 13% “other.” That 13% is comprised of eight Rhone and Italian grapes that only wine geeks have heard of. It’s called a Field Blend, because those grapes are all picked and fermented together instead of being blended just before bottling. However he manages it, Ray makes a killer Zin that’s powerful but elegant.

“Powerful and elegant” also describes Elyse Tietjen Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. This is classic Rutherford Bench Cab that’s like a fist in a velvet glove. The heavily concentrated fruit and massive structure are clothed in velvety tannins, delivering power along with finesse. The nose offers blueberries, chocolate and something deep and dark, leading to a palate with highly extracted dark berries, vanilla, and spice, and more of that deep, dark whatever. The 2005 was drinking beautifully — too bad you can’t but it anymore!

We switched gears with Elyse’s Rhone varietal wines, which come from a vineyard in the Sierra Foothills. The C’est si Bon 2006 is a food-friendly, crowd-pleasing field blend of seven Rhone varietals. Its name is a nod to the French, and roughly translates to “It’s So Good.”  Indeed it is. This is the jammiest of his wines, with rich raspberry and pomegranate fruit, hints of mocha and leather. There’s still decent structure behind the fruit, and a finish that’s long and creamy.

Elyse Nero Misto 2007 is another field blend (its name translates to “Mixed Black”), but this time the predominant grapes are Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Carignane and Primitivo. There’s more structure and acid to this blend, but plenty of strawberry, plum and cherry fruit with a hint of spice. Toasty oak comes through on the finish, along with that acid that makes this a great wine with red sauces, spicy foods, and just about anything else you can dream up.

From the Elyse website again: “Ray makes wines that he wants to sit down and enjoy – juicy, rich, voluptuous wines. “I love wines that pair well with food. A meal without wine is eating; a meal with wine is dining – it’s a conversation, an event. It’s what wine is about.”"  Sit down and enjoy his wines, and you’ll think so too.


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Another Big Winner from Duckhorn: Decoy Napa Valley Red Wine 2008

decoyDuckhorn is one of those names that lots of wine drinkers know.

Duckhorn is one of Napa’s iconic wineries. Founded in 1976, they’ve grown up along with the Napa Valley wine industry, making highly-rated Bordeaux-varietal wines. Decoy is a second label that was introduced about 20 years ago as a fun, lower-priced red blend, and recently it hatched an entire line of red and white wines. I assume this was in response to the lousy economy: $25 wines stood a much better chance of flying off the shelves than $50 wines.

I tasted and reviewed the Decoy Napa Valley Cabernet, and in case you don’t want to read the entire review, I’ll cut to the chase and report that it’s well-balanced, elegant and well worth the $20 it sold for this Holiday season.

I didn’t try the original Decoy, the Napa Valley Red Wine, until last night. I wish I hadn’t waited so long.

The 2008 was really stunning. The winemaker’s Vintage Notes partly explained why: 2008 was a challenging year, with early frost, drought, and a long, moderately cool summer. The result was lower yields from the vines but more concentrated, intense fruit flavors. I’d say the long growing season gave the phenolics time to really develop.

All this translated to good stuff in my glass. The nose was big and warm, with dark berry aromas, vanilla and spice. The palate showed great depth and concentration, with more dark berry, vanilla, and a hint of mocha. It finishes with soft, appealing tannins and lingers nicely.

This wine really delivers for $20 or $25, proving once again how icons get to be icons. I hope there’s plenty of the 2008 Red Wine in someone’s warehouse, so I can keep enjoying it for some time to come. Cheers!

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High and Mighty: Schweiger Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

schweigerMountain-grown fruit makes big, bold, kick-ass reds. The depth and structure of the wine, and the intensity of fruit and tannins are unique.

I’ve had the good luck to drink Napa Valley mountain-grown Cabernets the last two evenings. The first was Schweiger Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, which I drank with a great big Filet at a steakhouse in Arizona. The winery was new to me, and I assume their production is too small to warrant distributing their wines in the state in which I live.

Too bad. I’d love to drink Schweiger Cab often.

Schweiger Vineyards is pretty old by Napa standards. Their property up on Spring Mountain was purchased by the family in 1960, when the valley floor was full of sheep and the hillsides were heavily forested. When they began clearing the land for vineyard planting in the late 1970′s, they found redwood stakes that suggested the hillside had been planted to grapes as long ago as the 1870′s. Read the rest of this entry »

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Balanced and Delicious: Pierano Estate Chardonnay


pierano

A lot of wine comes out of Lodi, California. And a lot of it doesn’t appeal to me.

But Pierano Estate Vineyards makes some fine Lodi wines. And they’ve been at it for a long time.

Pierano’s colorful history dates back to the Gold Rush days, when Giacomo Pierano got off the boat from Italy and set out to find gold. What he found instead were a lot of gold miners in need of everything from pick-axes to potatoes. He opened a Mercantile in one of Lodi’s mining camps and made good money supplying the other newcomers’ needs.

When he returned to Italy a few years later to fetch his bride, he took cuttings  of some Italian Zinfandel vines from his family’s vineyards. These he planted on his new land in Lodi, tending the vineyards and selling grapes while his wife worked the store.pierano 2

Let’s skip to the next generation, who were at the helm of Pierano Estate Vineyards when Prohibition was declared. Many wineries went bust during those 13 years, but Pierano actually profited. Because Zinfandel grapes were their only crop, and Zin had not yet been recognized by the government as “wine” grapes, they were able to make good money bootlegging their grapes to Italian home winemakers in New York and Canada. Good thinking!

Pierano is now run by the fourth generation, who have been making and selling their own wine for almost 20 years. They use many of great-grandfather Giacomo’s methods, such as head pruning their old vine Zinfandel and hand picking their grapes, but have expanded to many more varietals.

Let me back up now and explain my opening statement, that I don’t like many Lodi wines. The climate in this region, which sits at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills, is quite warm. Many of the wines I’ve tasted from Lodi have flavors that are over-ripe, cooked, and raisin-y. Read the rest of this entry »

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More Bad News on Chinese Wine

chineseA few months ago I posted an article about the Chinese wine industry, after the People’s Daily reported that China had become the w0rld’s sixth largest wine producer by volume. I thought that sounded potentially scary, given China’s recent record of product tampering, tainting, and all-around inferior quality.

Here’s a short quote from my article: “Their wine could be like their toothpaste (contaminated with DEG, a solvent used in anti-freeze), dog food (contaminated with melamine that killed American pets), or seafood (farmed in raw sewage and rejected by the FDA), to name just a few incidents of dangerously unhealthy products.  And let’s not even get into the electrical products that burned down houses, baby carriers that dumped kids on their heads, and circular saws that sawed fingers instead of lumber.”

OK, so I was painting all of  Chinese business with a very broad brush. Maybe too broad a brush, I thought — until today, when I read a post in another (very good) wine blog called Vinography. Alder Yarrow said that “the (Chinese) government is shutting down some wineries and pulling wine from the shelves after finding a whole lot of faked, adulterated, and chemically altered wine on the market.” Read the rest of this entry »

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A Classic Wins Again: A Review of Lan Crianza 2006

lanIf you wanted to name the classic wine regions of the world — the ones who’ve been producing great wines for centuries or more — you’d have a relatively small “short list.”  It would include Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhine River Valley, Chianti, and Rioja. And arguably a few more.

But the one I want to talk about today is Rioja. Wine has been produced for over a thousand years in this beautiful region along the banks of Spain’s Ebro River. Its great reds are made from a grape called Tempranillo, and have been respected for centuries for their longevity and Old World elegance. They are only medium-bodied: the joy of tasting a Rioja isn’t in the blockbuster palate, but in the soft cherry fruit, vanilla oak, and balanced acid on the finish.

For me, the acid’s the thing: it’s what makes Spanish reds such a treat when you put them with food. I just drank Bodegas Lan Crianza 2006 with a supper I threw together from what happened to be in my kitchen  — Italian Sausage Tortellini, leftover Spicy Marinara Sauce and Wilted Spinach. It was a knock-out impromptu meal, but it got even better when I uncorked the Lan Crianza. The nose, first of all, was warm and rustic, with lots of jammy berry, mocha and vanilla. The palate gave me the bright cherry fruit and a hint of tobacco, and with every bite of my Tortellini, the crisp acid jumped in at the end. That lovely “bite” kept my palate jumping, and made the (acidic) red sauce taste even better. And take note — the half bottle that I didn’t finish with my meal tasted even better the next day. Read the rest of this entry »

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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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Meet the “New” California Chardonnay: Midnight Cellars 2008

midnightBack in the day, we all loved chewing on a log. Or at least it seemed like it, because the California Chardonnay we drank was so full of oak that you thought you were chomping on a 2 x 4.

Not that that was a bad thing…

For years, American Chardonnay was aged in young American oak barrels, and put through 100% malolactic fermentation, which was a secondary fermentation that resulted in the crisp malic acids (like the acid in green apples) being converted to lactic acid (like the acid in milk). The result was a “buttery” mouthfeel, and combined with 100% oak barrel aging, it produced a Chardonnay that was so rich and heavy it tasted like you were drinking butter on toast.

So fast forward to 2010, when imported and domestic Pinot Grigio has begun to steal some of Chardonnay’s market share. The savvy marketers at the big wine conglomerates noticed the trend (they don’t miss a trick) and postulated that Americans might be getting tired of traditional California Chardonnay.

And I believe they were. I could see it in my customers when they said, “You know, I think I’ll try something different from my usual Chardonnay.” And winemakers saw it too. Or maybe they also got tired of over-oaked whites. Read the rest of this entry »

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Top 100 Accessible Wines: D’Arenberg Stump Jump GSM

d arenbergTop 100 lists can be a pain in the anatomy. They’re published annually by the major wine review magazines, and every year they generate huge demand for the all the wines on the list. Unfortunately, most of those wines were sold out before the list was published, and thirsty consumers everywhere are doomed to be frustrated when they can’t buy any of the wines. (You can read my frustrated rantings in a previous article, What’s Wrong With Top 100 Lists.)

There are a few exceptions, and one of them is Australia’s d’Arenberg winery, which appears on the lists with amazing regularity. These folks (do they call them “blokes” down there?) have been making wine since the late 1800′s. They are clearly not Johnny-Come-Lately’s, or a Flash In the Pan. These guys have been doing it right for well over 100 years. I’ve sold and enjoyed many of their Shiraz, Shiraz blends and Cabernets, but their most humble wines keep showing up in, of all places, the Top 100 lists. Last year’s Wine Spectator Top 100 list included d’Arenberg’s Stump Jump Shiraz 2008. This was a cheap, cheerful Shiraz that was fruity and well-balanced. I’ve been able to sell lots of it, because the winery apparently “declassified” some juice from a  more expensive Shiraz in order to bottle more of the Stump Jump. That’s a a win-win situation for wine drinkers and the winery too.

And lo and behold, this year’s Wine Spectator Top 100 list included d’Arenberg’s Stump Jump Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvedre 2008. Wow. Top 100, two years in a row. Read the rest of this entry »

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When a Decoy is the Real Thing: Duckhorn Decoy Wines

decoyAnyone who knows even a little bit about Napa wine has heard the name “Duckhorn.” It’s practically an iconic brand, having been around since Napa started to become known as a world-class wine producer. Their Merlot got lots of buzz, and the sophisticated wine drinkers would part with some serious cash for a bottle of their single-vineyard Three Palms Merlot.

Then along comes a fun little bottling called “Decoy.” The duck on the label  pegged it as part of the Duckhorn family, and it was some kind of fun red blend. It also sold for a much more fun price than the mainline bottlings (like $25 instead of $50). Napa wine fans snapped it up, which may be why it was difficult to keep in stock.

That was a few years ago, when Napa (and the rest of the USA) was flying high. Winesellers like me thought it was normal to have to beg a distrtibutor or a winery to sell us their wine. Read the rest of this entry »

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