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October 25 2007
Sometimes you find a wine that belies its packaging. Depending on the type of packaging, sometimes it ends up good and sometimes it ends up not so great.
When you see primary colors and some shtick, usually it’s not so good.
This is a good one.
When I picked up the ’04 Gravity Hills Zin, I did so based on a wine monger recommendation. It was on end-cap and on sale—$13.99 – so I didn’t think much about it. “It’s a decent Zin probably, but nothing special,” I thought to myself.
“A Paso Zin with flashy packaging—it’s probably bulk wine dropped into a bottle with an eye-catching label,” said my inner skeptic.
This purchase was six or seven months ago, damn near a half-life for wine at this price point, and in the interim I have pulled the cork on plenty of other stuff, and bought plenty of wine, as well. This week, though, after drinking three clunkers in a row, I was ready for something decent and opened the Gravity Hills almost out of mercy. A fourth clunker in a row, on the streak I was on, wouldn’t have surprised me, or even aggravated me.
Fortunately, the Gravity Hills does, indeed, belie its packaging and is a good wine. It’s a good wine for $13.99 and a good wine for much more than that.
And, upon further inspection, I need to give Gravity Hills a break, because their packaging, while demonstrating some eye-popping primary colors, in addition to holding some superb Zin and presumably an equally good Syrah, also masks a pretty interesting story, too.
The name Gravity Hills comes from the steep evaluation of their vineyards.
From their web site:
At Gravity Hills, farming is an uphill battle, but we’re not alone…
Mosel, Germany: so much topsoil washes down when it rains that workers have to haul it back up in buckets.
Priorat, Spain: too steep for tractors. Only mules are surefooted enough to pull the weeders and plows.
Côte Rôtie, France: vineyard workers in the “roasted coast” rope themselves in with harnesses at harvest time.
So, why bother?
Sun-exposure, wind-stress and quick drainage on slopes produce unique, complex wines.
How steep are we talking, anyway?
Our vineyards slope from 20° to 45°.
• *Most cars can’t climb hills with a slope over 30°.
• *Nine out of ten avalanches occur on slopes from 25° to 45°.
In ski terms:
18 – 22° = Green
23 – 30° = Blue
30 - 35° = Black
40° = Low end of extreme mountaineering!
60° = A quick and certain death!
Huh, who knew? These grapes are from hills that are as steep as a Black Diamond ski run. I guess I’m just damn glad I don’t have to work the vines, all I have to do is get out a corkscrew—something I recommend you do as well with this tasty Zin.
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September 23 2007
I was given this wine as a gift from a business associate, a wine distributor in the state of Florida that sells exclusively the wines of New York to New York state ex-pats (and natives) in the state. Brad Emler from NY Uncorked is somebody that knows and understands New York wines, you kind of have to when it’s your main business.
With the exhortation that the Rkatsiteli is a special wine, made in small quantity by Dr. Frank, it was given to me as a gift of cordiality. And, what a gift it is. Perfect. Thanks Brad!
I do have to note that the wines circuitous voyage does nothing for green practices as it went from its New York birth to Florida to California where I received it and then to its final resting spot in Indiana before landing down my gullet. The Rkatsiteli was no worse for the wear despite its cross-country journey, though I’d hate to add up the carbon offsets that might be required based on this single bottle of wines frequent flier miles …
Not being familiar (at all) with the varietal, I wasn’t sure what to make of it when pulling the cork. Simply, this wine is a winner, a big winner. It tastes like a blend, with a bracing acidity and spiciness, but fruit a plenty and a touch of herbal notes. If forced a guess in a blind tasting I would call it a Chard/Sauvignon Blanc/Gruner Veltliner blend with, perhaps, a smidgeon of Viognier. To get all of that into one wine varietal has to be considered an intriguing possibility for cool climate, East Coast vintners.
In doing a touch of additional research on this wine I realized that my other favorite New York expert on wine, Lenn from Lenndevours, featured this wine favorably on Appellation America and his own site.
By way of background, Lenn’s Finger Lakes correspondent Jason Fuelner had this to say on the Dr. Frank’s Rkatsiteli:
Currently, Dr. Frank’s has 10 acres of rkatsiteli planted and produces about 3000 cases each year. Fred Frank considers 2006 a great growing season for rkatsiteli, and this wine recently won a Gold Medal at the New World International Wine Competition and was also awarded Best in Class.
Lenn noted in his tasting on Appellation America:
Rkatsiteli is a grape that you don’t hear much about, but it’s been around for a long time. It’s an ancient vinifera grape dating back over 5000 years to Georgia. No, not the state, the republic that was once part of the Soviet Union. It’s still extremely popular in Georgia and other former Soviet nations. In the United States, plantings are limited and found almost exclusively in the eastern US, including the cool-to-cold Finger Lakes region.
This wine goes a little bit against the grain of my tasting ethos—wines that can be found pretty much anywhere, but thanks to the Internet and e-commerce, this is practically true. I would encourage you to buy some at the Dr. Frank’s web site and try out this very intriguing varietal.
My tasting note can be found here.
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September 9 2007
In baseball a triple-threat is a player that can run, field and hit. In the world of dating a triple-threat is a girl (or a guy) that is attractive, smart AND has something on the ball related to a career. In wine, my view of a triple-threat is a wine that is delicious, a value AND has some sort of message or cause related to it that I can rally behind.
A triple-threat in spades, let me introduce you to the ’04 Fairvalley Pinotage.
Still something of a mystery in the U.S., Pinotage, South Africa’s signature grape, is a viticultural cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault and, according to the web site winepros.com, can be made in several different styles: young, light, and fruity, like Beaujolais, deep and rich like a Cotes du Rhone or Zinfandel, or elegant and restrained like Bordeaux.
The Fairvalley is definitely more in line with a Cotes du Rhone, with an immediate richness that may actually have you thinking Central Coast Pinot and not imported Pinotage.
Adjoining Fairview Estates in South Africa run by Charles Back, vintner of Goats Do Roam, a tongue-in-check South African play on Cotes du Rhone, is Fairvalley, a post-Apartheid winemaking community of 60 + black families dedicated to crafting high-quality, reasonably priced wines.
The Fairvalley Workers Association was set-up in 1997 with a government grant and land donated by Back in order to create a profit entity that would support the families of the Association members and create a profit stream to create housing for those same families.
Imported by Vinnovative Imports (www.capewine.com), Fairvalley is one of the very first wines to support a social cause to receive wide distribution in the U.S.
With just 3,300 cases made of the ’04 Pinotage, there isn’t enough of this stuff to be an end-cap kind of wine, but at just $9.99 this wine is such a tremendous and delicious value that it’s hard to pass up, especially when you add the third, social justice element to the equation. Don’t pass this up if you see it in the store.
My review of the ’04 Fairvalley Pinotage is here.
*UPDATE*
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August 31 2007
Let me paint a quick picture for you … while my wife and I were on vacation in June, in California, in a 23 ft. rented RV, with our dog, a Pug/Beagle mix, cover girl for the book Mixed Breeds for Dummies, we took a hot lap through Napa on our way to Bothe State Park to camp for a night, before heading over to Yosemite National Park.
In order to get provisions for the evening we needed to stop at Dean & Deluca on Hwy 29 in Napa Valley. This is how I roll when I camp—RV and cheese and crackers, tough guy that I am. Unfortunately, on any given Saturday the Dean & Deluca parking lot is jam packed, and particularly jam packed for a 23 foot RV.
However, and most fortuitously, the Flora Springs tasting room across the parking lot was not packed. So, I dropped my wife off at the door of Dean & Deluca and parked the RV lengthwise across four parking spots in front of the Flora Springs tasting room. My big ass rented RV was simultaneously causing a mini-eclipse while reflecting a shadowed pallor in the large, glass picture window of their tastefully modest retail storefront tasting room. I get out of the RV wearing shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops, with a days beard growth and four heads on a swivel, Flora Springs’ employees, look at me through the tasting room window like I’m either Satan’s spawn or Cousin Eddie.
At that point, I was going to leave our dog in the running RV with A/C while I joined my wife to shop for a couple of minutes. She always gets mild cheeses and I wanted to get a stinky gorgonzola with some honey. Based on the angle and arch of the eyebrows of the faces in the windows of the Flora Springs tasting room, I quickly re-thought that strategy and figured a tasting in the lovely Flora Springs tasting room was a darn good idea. I dutifully paid my tasting fee, which was credited towards purchase, if I recall correctly, and did a fly through tasting while my dog looked forlornly out the front seat window.
Given a choice of heaping scorn and being the story at the end of the day as an example of the unwashed masses OR essentially paying a parking fee in the form of a tithe to the church of wine at Flora Springs, I chose the latter and the ’05 Sauvignon Blanc. A pretty good wine, and one I won’t soon forget. Thankfully I did buy the bottle and didn’t need to peel out of their parking lot disgracefully because well ... Total tasting room time coupled with Dean & Deluca shopping time 17 minutes. Total waiting time to turn left onto Hwy 29 at 3:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday: 19 minutes.
This is a nice wine and my review can be viewed here:
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August 27 2007
If you asked a complete wine layperson to build a U.S. winery brand image, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t look too different from Dry Creek Vineyard.
Unquestionably one of my favorite wineries and one of the best tasting room experiences I’ve had, Dry Creek just seems to get everything right—the back story, the beautifully bucolic setting and the customer-facing packaging, with a refined elegance. The wine is pretty good, too and mostly at accessible price points—a fact that shouldn’t be neglected when you consider that at the ripe age of 35 years old, many other wineries started in that time period have long gone up-market to cash in on cachet.
If you have 3 minutes, download and view their slide presentation (found here) which takes you through the early days of the winery and through the seasons into harvest. It’s a nice powerpoint presentation and a nice touch—something you don’t always see from winery marketing folks.
The ’05 Dry Creek Vineyard Heritage Zinfandel is a quality wine at price point—under $15, depending on where you buy it. It’s well made and demonstrates a restraint not often seen from wineries whose calling card is Zinfandel. I’d like to see it with a touch more acidity to help it cross the chasm to being a food wine, particularly because it’s not made in the fruit overload Zin style, but, overall, your ducats will be well spent.
My review and tasting notes can be found here.
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