February 8 2007
Quickly on the heels of my tardy, perhaps disqualified effort for Wine Blogging Wednesday (WBW) # 29, comes WBW #30—this time hosted by my frequent collaborator Tim from Winecast.net
The wine of choice for this monthly exercise in drinking and keyboarding is Syrah—no restrictions on place or origin, price, New World vs. Old World, etc.
I was glad to see Syrah and I think it was selected based on its accessibility and variability at price point. You can pretty much find a Syrah at your desired price.
The one thing I admire about Syrah is, unlike a Pinot, Zinfandel, Merlot or a Cabernet, I can pretty much drink any Syrah and be assured that I will be able to find some enjoyment in the glass.
To me, Syrah and Riesling are the only two grapes where I can pick up just about any bottle and have confidence that it’ll be a decent quaff.
Though I’ve been knocking it out of the park with Pinot pick-ups lately, Pinot is usually the last thing I buy because, living in a as yet childless house, the thing I look forward to after kissing my wife and nuzzling the dog is opening up a bottle of wine—the mystery and allure of what’s in the bottle coupled with the cork, the pour, the swirl, the sniff and the taste is where all the pleasure is for me. Actually drinking a glass is a distant secondary pleasure to the build up to the taste. But, it’s a significant buzz kill when the wine ends up being a bummer, as is so often the case with a Pinot, particularly Pinot’s in the everyday drinking price range.
So, I tend to drink a fair amount of Syrah, if only because I don’t like to be disappointed.
The Montes Alpha 2004 Syrah from the Colchagua Valley Apalta Vineyard in Chile was my choice for WBW.
Normally, I might pick up something that would demonstrate a little street credibility, but I got this one at Costco--$14 bucks. No shame, here. I’ve come to appreciate Costco’s wine selection, and they’re the biggest wine retailer in the country with a reputation for bringing to bear high quality despite the quantity of sales.
The Montes Alpha doesn’t disappoint. I drank the ’04, a wine still getting some tailwind from the ’03 being named to the Wine Spectator Top 100 list in 2005 with a 91 rating. A rating duplicated for the ’04, as well. It’s a beautiful wine and a bargain at $14—easily a $25 dollar wine value with more Old World nuance than New World bombast.
Well balanced overall with nice acid, integrated tannins, ample dark cherry fruit, vanilla, spice and some earth all melded seamlessly to provide a glass of joy. This is pretty close to what I would drink everyday if I weren’t ‘wine promiscuous.’ It’s a great wine. It does need a little bit of air, opening up in the glass after ½ hr. to an hour. So, don’t feel bad for pouring and revisiting the glass later on in the evening.
Chilean wines are going through something of a renaissance with a significant upgrade in winemaking quality—according to Wine News (full article found here):
Ancient redwood aging vats are being chopped into kindling, replaced by smaller, top-quality French and American oak barrels. Computerized stainless steel fermenting tanks are providing the temperature control to preserve the intense, natural fruitiness of Chile’s grapes. And when Casa Lapostolle began shipping its wines in refrigerated containers for the long trip across the equator to the United States, it prompted other Chilean wineries to start following suit.
Those vintners who mounted the offensive have been rewarded with an impressive series of small victories, prompting them to declare that Chile can produce wines as good as any in the world. And that, yes, indeed, they are capable of turning out a Chilean version of a grand cru.
I don’t know about a grand cru, but they sure can turn out a second label. Pick up a Syrah, for my money, always a good bang for the buck and pick up the Montes Alpha 2004 Syrah from Colchagua Valley—an extreme value and a delightful wine.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Good Grape Wine Reviews. Permalink | Comments (2) | Print | Email This
November 10 2006
I got a call the other night from a friend of mine who went with me on my Central Coast wine jaunt this past summer.
He had pulled the cork on a Cabernet from a small family winery called Dark Star Cellars that we had happened into and it was much better than his minds eye (or taste buds) recalled. That tasting room visit in and of itself was memorable because the co-owner and wife to the winemaker had a certain pleasantness that rubbed off and we were also joined in the tasting room by a bachelorette party of recent Notre Dame graduates.
Nothing spells F-U-N like a bachelorette party plus I grew up in South Bend and I’m a die hard Notre Dame fan, so a common bond was struck as we tasted down the list.
I had enjoyed the Dark Star Cab a couple of months ago and forgot about it. But, his call prompted me to do a second look at my wine stash to see what was left from the rapidly dwindling couple of cases that I purchased.
Nope. No Dark Star left, but I did have the Midnight Cellars 2002 Nocturne Syrah.
We had gone to Midnight Cellars just before Dark Star Cellars and that visit to Midnight Cellars stuck with me as a bit of an enigmatic event. The tasting room had wine competition ribbons all over the place, but all of the energy and vigor of a morgue. The guy that did our tasting had woken up on the wrong side of the bed and showed us only marginal, that is to say very slight, interest. He did open a fresh bottle of the Nocturne and proclaimed that it showed better after decanting. I therefore have no idea why he poured us our taste 30 seconds after opening, but, then, I did say it was an enigmatic visit. We gave it a good swirl and drank.
I am, however, the kind of guy that tasting room manager’s love because regardless of my assessment of the tasting, the winery or the wines, I always buy a bottle of what I deem to be the best wine within the price range that I’m willing to plunk down. This was one of those situations where I eased into my tithe to the church of wine and picked up the 2002 Nocturne Syrah—their best seller and a multi-medal winner.
Interestingly, there’s a blurb of an article on Winebusiness.com and a feature in the November issue that talks about the business of wine competitions. It notes:
Wines are increasingly facing a very competitive playing field, and most producers are looking for a way to single out their wines to the consumer. A medal can help tremendously with marketing efforts.
It did with me as the Nocturne consistently wins medal after medal at all sorts of country fair wine competitions.
When I opened the Nocturne, it was a tightly wound ball of dark fruit and white pepper and not much else. Likely called Nocturne because it will stain your teeth the color of night, I sipped it, pondered it, and then drank the rest of the glass. In my house a bottle lasts for about three days—I Vacu-Vin it and put it in the fridge and it holds up for me. I drank a glass of the Nocturne the next day and it had opened up a bit, it wasn’t nearly as tight, but still somewhat inaccessible—to the point that I just chalked it up as a wine I didn’t enjoy.
Oddly enough, the third night, when the wine was at room temperature, it opened up and blossomed. What a beautiful wine this was showing to be.
In a highly unscientific, non-blind, aired out for three days wine rating, I gave this guy a 17 on the UC Davis 20 point scale. My notes say: Dark berry fruit, spice and oak on the nose with blackberry, mulberry, a bit of cherry, toffee with firm tannins and a medium long finish.
Later, in doing some research, I found a Wine Enthusiast rating from late in ’05 that gave it an 85 and noted, “There’s plenty of fruit in this country-style wine. The fruit consists of all sort of black and red berries and stone fruits, with an edge of espresso and oaky caramel. The country is in the rugged texture, which calls for a good steak.”
Definitely a steak. I think they call it a country-style wine because of all the country-style medals, but nonetheless the three-day wait was worth it for this one. Just make sure it gets some air.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Good Grape Wine Reviews. Permalink | Comments (2) | Print | Email This
October 27 2006
My wife and I are prone to crushes and some consumer/pop culture flights of fancy.
My wife’s girly crush’s are more around fetishizing movies and books into complete and absolute fandom (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Walk the Line/Johnny Cash come to mind) and mine are more around lifestyle things i.e. food and wine-related ideas and concepts, et al.
I have a current crush on the consumer micro-crush company CrushPad, and I used to have one on Inertia Beverage Group—though, I have moved my crush from admirer to full-on permanent relationship status and taken a job with them.
And, I have a full-on man-crush for Twisted Oak winery in Murphys, California. Twisted Oak, in a combined convergence of crushes, should be working with Inertia and our Rethink Engine, but I’ll leave that bit of sales stuff for another day.
If I were going to start a winery, I would want it to be fun like it seems like these guys are having.
Twisted Oak has a joie de vivre and an Espirit de Corp that is obvious and infectious. They also have a wine blog called El Bloggo Toricido (Spanish for: The Twisted Blog) which is one of, if not the most engaging winery-related blogs on the Internet. No serious, dry stuff, either. It’s all about turning the volume up to 11, to borrow from The Spinal Tap--which, I think, these guys might appreciate.
I recently received some review wines from the fellas at Twisted Oak—Jeff and Scott.
You see, a couple of months back I mentioned another winery that I visited while in Paso and Jeff wrote a comment on my site saying he thought his and the other winery were something of kindred spirits. This coincided with an email from said winery in Paso and their pr representation asking me to write (more) about them.
I thought the Paso wineries were okay: okay, but nothing exceptional—maybe even priced a touch high relative to quality. At the tasting room they had a fee and a tasting limit of five wines, so I shot a note back to the pr guy asking for a sample. In this case, a sample of their Tempranillo because I thought it might be interesting to do a story about the kindred spirit wineries and their respective Tempranillo’s and I didn’t get an opportunity to taste their Tempranillo while there in-person.
Twisted Oak came through ... within the same day of my email, I got a note back from Scott and shortly thereafter two bottles of Tempranillo showed up on my doorstep.
I’m still waiting for a reply from the other guy.
Just the same, it’s actually better that way because it allows me to focus on the Twisted Oak Tempranillo which is a well-crafted wine.
Besides the obvious fun that Twisted Oak has, it was something of a small surprise to get a rubber chicken in the mail. How can you not crack a smile at the obvious absurdity of a rubber chicken, and really, a small stroke of marketing savvy, because it’s the kind of tchotchke that doesn’t allow you to throw it away, either. But the real genius here is the way Twisted Oak team couples wine geekdom with a kind-of casual chic. Nestled alongside the rubber chicken were tasting notes and their Geek sheet that gave all of the technical winemaking minutia that you’d want.
These guys kind of remind me of Food Network star Alton Brown and his show, “Good Eats.” They are serious and take their wine seriously, but they are so obviously having fun and creating fun that they take away all the b.s. artifice of wine.
In their own words the vision of the winery was to create a, “Terroir based winery making superior, hand crafted, yummy wines, and then having more fun than anyone else in the industry selling them.”
I’d have to say they are succeeding.
900 cases of the Tempranillo were made. Released earlier this year, the Tempranillo grapes were sourced from the Rolleri Ranch outside of Angels Camp, California and were blended with 20% Cabernet.
This is a delicious wine. Tempranillo is generally a blending wine in Spain, but has come on in recent years as a varietal in its own right.
The Twisted Oak Tempranillo shows a nice garnet color and a medium body and is surprisingly well-balanced to drink with or without food. It’s not overly tannic and really mellowed from day one to day two—opening up and showing more fruit and some nice complexity.
On the nose it shows cherry, strawberry and raspberries with some chocolate and dust. The mouth is the same with a touch of anise and some very minor herbal notes.
This is a well-integrated, well-crafted wine. On the UC Davis Scale I gave it a 17.5 with good, but less then perfect scores for bouquet, flavor, and quality—albeit 2.5 points in total—so it’s still a definite winner.
Frankly, I’m glad they sent two bottles because I will surely enjoy the second one—likely with a hearty bowl of chili, which is exactly how I think of these guys and my man-crush. They’re dudes that I would want to have over to drink (beer) with, eat some chili and watch the game. Their spirit and attitude is contagious and their wine is pretty damn good, too.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Good Grape Wine Reviews. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This
October 21 2006
Ahem, what’s the saying? ... Martha Stewart in the kitchen and Jenna Jameson in the bedroom ... or something like that ... there’s a lot to be said for the dichotomy of nurture and nature.
The Italian varietal aglianico is something like that. It grabs you firmly, doesn’t let go, but caresses with a velvet touch.
Or, as the October Saveur magazine describes the wine: ‘Mistress of the Dark.’
Saveur remarks:
Think of brawny, dark, powerful wines that are also fresh and elegant; wines that combine smoke and bitter chocolate with sweet herbal flavors when young, then develop surprising delicacy and haunting fragrance with ten or 20 years of age; wines that remind many tasters of great nebbiolo ... virtually all young aglianico is forbiddingly tannic, though. Even at a tender age, it may prove a tasty match for spicy salumi, gamy ragu, or juicy beef dishes, but it will provide greater satisfaction if it’s aged in the bottle for a decade or more.
Reading this article prompted me to pull the cork on the 2002 Caparone Aglianico.
I visited Caparone in July on a swing through Paso Robles. A charmer of a winery, it’s a small operation run by Dave Caparone with help from his son Marc. They make 5 or 6000 cases of wine with limited distribution, some sales at a lone Trader Joe’s in California and some on-premise placement in New York. Everything else is sold at the winery or via the wine club. In fact, Dave told me on my visit that they are in the midst of scaling back to about 3000 cases
The thing that stands out about these wines is their positioning as everyday, enjoyable, Italian-style full-bodied wines. They are certainly priced that way—all of them are $14 a bottle, but the thing is, these wines are exceptional values and would be a steal at $30 a bottle.
Unfined and unfiltered, these wines are made with a minimal amount of intervention and are beautiful in a very graceful way.
The aglianico is an interesting story because it’s very rarely found domestically. In Dave’s words (excerpted from their site):
Aglianico was much more difficult to obtain than Nebbiolo or Sangiovese. I initially inquired at UC Davis but was told they didn’t have any. I was however, told of a vine collection owned by the Germplasm Repository, a Federal agency, which reputedly contained Aglianico. I was given permission to visit the collection and to obtain cuttings for propagation later on. In the early fall of 1986 I visited the vineyard. Doctor Harold Olmo of UC Davis was good enough to go with me to help identify the Aglianico vines, which were in several different locations.
This is the first experience I have had with aglianico and to describe it as tannic is an understatement. This is a burly wine that is drinkable now, but has enough bite that it’s certainly best paired with food.
On the UC Davis scale I gave it an 18. I really like this wine, and all of the Caparone wines. My notes for the wine:
This is a flavorful, mouth-filling, bracing wine with ample tannic structure that will let it age for years, balanced with enough zingy acidity to drink young. Dark berries and plums in the nose with a more berries and a touch of cranberry, leather and pepper on the palate and a medium long finish, this is a wine to enjoy with a hunk of red meat, grill optional, but appreciated. I gave it an 18 out of 20. Excellent.
I joined the Caparone wine club in the summer and just received a note prior to the October shipment indicating that they have determined the number of club signees they will allow in total. There’s still room, but I’m not sure how many more people they will take on. My advice is to join, join, join! At $14 a bottle, and discounted to –I think- $12 a bottle as a part of the club, you cannot go wrong with these—the aglianico grips you with a velvet touch and all of the wines engender the kind of fandom that would make a man brag about his conquest.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Good Grape Wine Reviews. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This
August 28 2006
#1White wine, as a rule, is far more giving with a greater price to qualityequation at all price points then a red.
And…
#2)This is a delicious wine.
digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit
Posted in, Good Grape Wine Reviews. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This
Enter your email address for a monthly summary of posts, additional news and information available only to email subscribers. Your email is never rented, nor sold to anybody else!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Design by The Blog Studio
 of 04 Barnwood Cab_thumb.JPG "Barnwood Cab")
