It’s hard to imagine two more different winery visits than Mumm Napa and Iron Horse Vineyards in Sonoma, but it’s their very differences that make them must visits when you go wine tasting in Napa and Sonoma. Both are beautiful, you really learn something and, best of all, you get to drink great bubbly.
Iron Horse is the classic family winery estate - a labor of love for the Sterling family. Producing small quantities of wines from their estate vineyards in the cool Green Valley, they shower attention and passion on their wines. Visitors are often greeted by Sterling family members themselves and their tasting room staff are so well trained you often feel the same passion from them that you do from the Sterlings themselves.
While Iron Horse produces outstanding chardonnay and pinot noir, the star of the show can’t help but be their wonderful sparkling wines. Guests are served at their warm and charmingly rustic open air tasting bar surrounded by the rolling bucolic vineyards that gave birth to the wines you’re tasting. Here you have the opportunity to taste several sparkling wines with different dosage and you’ll find the difference that a small change in the dosage can make in the final wine amazing. By the way, Iron Horse has introduced a new sparking wine called Ultra Brut, which is bone dry, with a racy citrus and crispness laid over a rich, creamy wine with a long toasty finish. This is a wine worth seeking out.
Mumm Napa is anything but a small family estate and instead represents the corporate end of the wine world, which dominates Champagne method sparkling wines. Their tasting room is the model of efficiency, but a warm and delightful efficiency it is and guests are really educated on the what and why of their sparkling wines. There’s no jammed tasting bar here, but visitors are seated on their beautiful patio, featuring stunning views of the Napa Valley, where they are personally served flights of wines along with charming and intelligent commentary from the tasting room staff. The highlight here is a flight showing the distinctive impact of aging en tirage.
Too many tasting rooms these days are mostly cocktail bars and souvenir shops, but these two really teach you something, best of all the fun, bubbly and beautiful views are included.
Pictured above: the beautiful patio at Mumm Napa.
A short note about a wine you can’t buy, but should be trying your best to find. I hate to write about wines that are essentially unobtainable, but for those that care about really distinctive wines you should get on this mailing list. La Fenêtre is a project by Joshua Klapper at Timeless Palates Wine.
His 2006 La Fenêtre Cargasacchi Jalama Pinot Noir is a marvel. A lovely garnet color with touches of brown, no purple is to be seen. The nose is high toned with hints of porcini, leather and hard, stony cherry pit fruit. At a 13.5% alcohol you can still taste the wine and the terroir. Damn this is a good wine and anybody that can make a wine like this is worth watching.
They were serving this by the glass at LA’s Water Grill, who said they got twenty of the ninety cases produced. What a great idea for a such a tiny production as far more people got to taste this lovely wine than if it had all gone out through their mailing list by the bottle.
Keep up the good work Josh.
Mobile Blogging from here.
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While a lot of negative commentary is made about The Wine Spectator, too few words are devoted to the things they do right - and there are many of them. First and foremost is that The Wine Spectator has been the avenue that countless consumers have taken as they learned about wine. More knowledgeable consumers buy better (and more expensive) wines and that means that more wineries stay in business There can be no doubt that The Wine Spectator has educated more Americans about the joys of wine than any other source. For this alone they deserve respect.
The other thing is that there is some tremendous content in its pages. Matt Kramer is very possibly America’s best wine writer. I emphasize the word “writer” for Kramer is more writer than critic and his commentary on the world of wine is some of the most thoughtful, sensitive and knowledgeable around. There are other excellent writers there too and James Moleworth’s coverage of the Loire and the Rhone should not be missed. Then there is Executive Editor Thomas Matthews courageous defense of his magazine by taking time to comment on blog after blog on issues concerning the Spectator. Considering the somewhat rambunctious nature of blogs and forums, Matthew’s is to be commended for his guts and willingness to publicly stand up for what he believes in a totally uncontrolled, unedited environment.
While I cannot overstate my misgivings about the 100 points scoring system employed by The Wine Spectator (and almost everyone else these days) it cannot be denied that The Wine Spectator has done far more good than bad to the wine world and that many, many thousands of consumers are drinking better wines because of them. Although their acceptance of advertising from the very industry they are reporting on has raised a few eyebrows over the years and is the the source of a lot of snide comments in the back rooms of wineries around the world, I don’t see any alternative means of financing that could have kept a publication like The Wine Spectator in print all these years. I think it is fair to suggest to them that advertising sections that look like editorial content could be more clearly marked than it is now.
I started subscribing to The Wine Spectator when it with a thin, newsletter style publication in the early eighties. Looking at the glitzy, glossy magazine these days with its ads for Acura, Rolex, Vegas casinos and high powered financial firms, it’s hard to believe that simple newsletter evolved into the powerhouse it has become. I guess I feel the same way about the Spectator as I do about the Yankees, there’s a lot about the organization I don’t like, but I sure have enjoyed watching them play over the years.
It’s tough to be on top.
I received my invitation to participate in The 89 Project with relish. With the revolutionary spark of an old hippie I thought to myself "right on" and "power to the people"! After all, Wine Camp is a points-free zone because I can think of few things that have driven us to the bland wine world of today more than the 100 point scale. So when I recieved my invitation I was ready to go, to become the Abbie Hoffman of points and blister the blog with righteous indignation about passed over wines. 
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American Squirrel Wine Blog Award Winners « Las Flores View Point Squirrel Colony (Camp Pendleton CA)
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Jed Steele has produced a crisp, charming 2007 Washington State Aligote under his Shooting Star label, which paired perfectly with a dozen pristine Northwest oysters at Etta’s in Seattle (pictured here). As you would expect from Steele, the wine is not bone dry, but it’s dry enough and downright zesty by American wine standards. At 11 bucks it’s a great deal, but’s it’s a bit of a shame they didn’t go really dry.
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Is there any website to hate more passionately in the online wine business than the confusing and irritating Bonny Doon site? Once upon a time it was cute, but no more now that it’s corporate manipulation instead of the genuine weirdness of Randall Grahm. Is there anything more embarrassing than corporate suits trying to act cool? Well, maybe they’re trying to make up for that with their wine. I can’t speak for the other Ca’ de Solo wines, but their 2007 Sangiovese selling for only ten bucks (solo dieci) at Whole Foods is a damn good everyday wine. Does it taste like sangiovese? Not a bit. However, it’s a good honest everyday red wine that goes well with carry out pizza or burgers.
It’s a shame that a good, solid everyday wine like this needs so much hoopla to surround it. Wine like this is all about gulps and good, simple food. Trying so hard to be cool for a ten buck wine is a bit embarrassing. They should just be proud for what they are.
Randall was always ahead of the game, but the corporate types that have replaced him don’t have a clue.
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It could not be darker. You weave up the dark road, which becomes suddenly brilliant from the lights illuminating the castle of Grinzane Cavour, yet another of the castles that mark the towns of Barolo. The lights of the castle quickly fade and you are plunged into a blackness only punctuated by the lights of the few sparse farm houses. Where you are going to dinner bonds you to the families in those houses that are just now sitting down to food much like you will soon be eating. You are headed to have dinner at your grandmother’s house in Piemonte - or at least as close as you can come to that pleasure if you’re not Piemontese. The first time you are bound to pass it and have to turn back, but getting lost is part of this pleasure.
The Trattoria Nonna Genia (Grandma Genia) is located in what feels like the middle of nowhere on this cold, dark Langhe evening in Piemonte, Italy’s northwestern capital of food and wine. Home to Barolo, Barbarecso and the Slow Food movement, this region is a rich blend of the cultures of northwestern Italy and southeastern France - not a bad culinary combination. The local dialect here has a distinctive French patois as do the foods, wines and cheeses. There is no pretense or menu at Nonna Genia, you eat what they’ve made for dinner that night and drink whatever they’ve liked and purchased from local winemakers. That’s not to say there’s no wine list, as there is, but you’re unlikely to be able to use it as Dario will decide for you no matter what you try to choose. Nonna Genia is run by the Marengo family and Dario rules the dining room, while his wife is queen in the kitchen. Dario will be picking your wine for you and you’ll need quite a few glasses to get through this meal.
As usual in the Piemonte, dinner starts with a seeming myriad of antipasti and you can depend on carne crude and vitello tonnato showing up as they do on tables throughout Piemonte. It’s bad luck to have an even number, so expect more if you’re only at six or eight. This will be followed by due primi ( two pasta and/or risotto courses) like the classic plin (tiny local hand formed ravioli) al burro e salvia. Of course, you are just getting warmed up here in Piemonte so this will be followed by due secondi (two main courses) like the mouth-watering brasato (braised beef) al Barolo and coniglio (rabbit) al civet. Then, of course, comes the cheeses and a full plate of assorted desserts a person. All of this costs not much more than dinner at your local Fridays.
The food is good, honest and hardy. There’s nothing fancy about it - it’s the real thing. The same goes for the wines Dario will bring to your table once he discovers you’re serious about your vino. He has the full range of local treasures: barbera, dolcetto, freisa, gavi and so on, but we’re there for the Barolo. The Baroli and other wines are likely to come from producers you’ve never heard of and you’ll find no big Euro bottles from Gaja, Conterno or Giacosa. It’s Dario’s passion and he scours the Langhe hills for exciting small producers. It was at his instance that I had my first taste of the wines from Teobaldo Cappellano and that alone is enough to be forever grateful to him. It’s always the same with Dario, you look at the list and choose, but all to often those wines are long gone and it’s just not all the important to him to reprint the list. He is more than a sommelier, Dario himself is the winelist. I always consider myself lucky to be in his hands.
Oddly enough there is no Nonna Genia at Nonna Genia, which is named after a famed cookbook of traditional Piemontese cuisine, which the Marengo family is ably keeping alive. Everything is about tradition at Nonna Genia - the food, the wine and the people. The evening ends with an assortment of grappa bottles on your table - some without labels. Dario just brings the bottles and glasses and lets you sip at your leisure and the warm glow of the grappa lights your stomach and your mind just like the golden light from the castle of Grinzane Cavour, just across the valley, warms the windows of Nonna Genia on this chilly fall night.
There are some traditions that cannot be improved on.
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We're sometimes marionettes when it comes to food and wine matching, but Love Puppets and skate can cut those strings. Skate wing is one of my favorite fish dishes and meaty, rich fish like this sometimes go better with red than white wines. Especially the way I cooked it, quickly floured and sauteed, then served with a beurre rouge - in this case accented with some pancetta and capers. Easy and delicious.
The real love puppets are the husband and wife team of Terry and Sue Brandborg who make this excellent pinot and a host of other wines from cool climate varieties in their decidedly very cool climate in the the Umpqua Valley in southern Oregon, which they are so successfully pioneering. 
I looked down on it with disdain. It was below me. I'd wallowed in that mud before. Why waste the time?
The old saying two sides of the same coin all to often applies to wines these days. Diversity is drowned in the head on pursuit of Points. We can’t really criticize wineries for seeking financial success. I know that it’s strange to think of an elite winery having to make a buck in these days of multi-multi-million dollar wine temples, but it’s a fact that some producers actually have to turn a profit to stay in business. Blaming them for Point hunting seems a bit disingenuous when both the trade and wine buyers are so Point drunk.
Recently I tasted three wines from the same variety and region. Each could not have been more wonderful, lovely or good at what they were trying to be. Each winemaker had a different goal and achieved it. To somehow rank these wines is silly as they were made with different visions, but each accomplishes that vision with equal dexterity. Awarding these wines Pointless Points only confuses the consumer because to every wine there is a season – Turn, Turn, Turn.
Here were three barbera wines from the Piemonte region of Northwestern Italy that have little in common except variety and the fact that when served with the right meal they’re almost perfect.
2006 Vietti Barbera d’Alba, Scarrone – Scarrone is barbera presented as a great wine. From old vines planted in a vineyard that by all rights should be planted in nebbiolo for Barolo, winemaker Luca Currado crafts a powerful, magnificent barbera that ages beautifully. That same evening we tasted the 2006 we had a 1996 Scarrone that had aged into a graceful beauty. Young Scarrone is deeply colored, concentrated, richly fruity and powerful. A wine that always gets big Points – how could it not?
2006 Brovia Barbera d'Alba DOC Sori Del Drago – Brickish with touches of brown in color, the wonderfully traditional Brovia winery has made a high strung graceful beauty. With an aromatic complexity that will please Barolo traditionalists, this firm, structured zesty wine is a wonder with classic Northern Italian dishes – I’m thinking Ossobucco Milanese. This wine is all about complexity, structure and aromatics and power. Points are not what it’s about. I feel this is an exceptional barbera.
2007 Fontanafredda, Barbera Piemonte, Briccotondo – Purple, fresh and lip-smacking good. A bright, fresh, fruity modern wine that still tips its hat to real barbera character. The nice acid pucker underneath the veneer of sweet dark fruit reminds you that this is indeed an Italian wine. I’m buying this for ten bucks at Cost Plus and I can think of few better values in a wine at this price. Most wines at this price range have a innocuous jammy sweet fruitiness that quickly bores. There is nothing boring about this fun and delicious wine. Eating pizza or simple spaghetti con pomodoro? This is your wine.
To rank these three lovely wines is Pointless as each served with the right foods will appropriately show their charms. Appropriate is the right word and that responsibility lies with the consumer because if you follow Points, you’ll be led astray at the table.
Wine trade legend had it that the word fiasco entered the English language when the Italians flooded the American market with mediocre wines after the war and destroyed their reputation for decades. The fiasco was the the name of the straw wrapped around those bottles of cheap Chianti, which became the symbol of Italian wine in the United States. Cheap, innocuous or worse -the straw covered bottles were omnipresent on tables covered with red checked table cloths and provided romantic light, covered with candle wax, in dorm rooms in the 60’s and 70’s.
Of course, Italian wines long ago recovered from that debacle and are sold at prices on par with the the worlds finest. However, there was a second Italian wine fiasco. The first was them sending bad wine here, the second was our fault. We imported Italian varieties and proceeded to make some very boring wine from them. In the eighties there were a lot of high profile efforts to make expensive wines from Italian varieties in California and the category was even given a name: Cal-Ital. There was a lot of hoopla, but the wines were mediocre and expensive – not a good combination. Even today all too many American sangiovese and barbera wines look ridiculous when compared to Italian wines (or other American wines) selling for half the price. Those that deigned to attempt nebbiolo fell far shorter than ridiculous. What could the possible reason be to buy these American wines at $40, $50 or more when you could buy better Italian ones at $20. What made these Americans even worse is that they had no varietal character. They could have been made from zinfandel, merlot or cabernet, but were not as good as the wines made from those varieties. Why buy an expensive sangiovese when a zin or cab that tasted better cost less? As you might expect, the Cal-Itals soon went out of fashion.
Is this second fiasco over? It may well be as some exciting wines from Italian varieties are finally being made up and down the west coast. They are distinctly New World, as they should be, while maintaining true varietal character. Cabernet from Bordeaux and Napa may not taste the same, but the family resemblance is unmistakable. Finally you can now say the some thing about a few wines produced from varieties like barbera, sangiovese and even nebbiolo. While most of the better examples seem to be coming from Washington there are a few Californians producing some exciting wines too.
I can think of no more stunning example of this new trend than the 2004 Palmina Nebbiolo, Stolpman Vineyard, Santa Ynez Valley. This is a gorgeous wine that is true both to its variety and its vineyard. First of all it is perfectly pale, with a radiant garnet color. Dark purple nebbiolo, like pinot noir, is not to be trusted. On the nose it is powerful, yet elegant and laced with all the classic tar and roses you could want. However, it also shows its pride in its American birth with a round, warm spiced fruit forward personality. The firm classic tannins, that are a hallmark of fine nebbiolo, are very present suggesting that those that age this lovely wine will be well rewarded.
The second Italian wine fiasco is coming to a very happy ending.
There has been a spate of articles and blog posts about a study that statistically proves that results from large judgings are, for all practical purposes, worthless. They had to do research to figure that out? The wine trade figured this out long ago and the only place a gold medal from some judging does a winery any good is in their own tasting room. Tell a wine buyer in a top restaurant or retailer that you've just won a double gold and best of show and they'll look at you like you're some rube from the sticks. They could care less. 
The explosion of wine blogs and sites where consumers post their notes, like on CellarTracker and Adegga, offers the antidote to relying on notes from a few critics and competitions. After all, can you think of a worse way to appreciate and understand a wine than sitting down and tasting it buried in a lineup of dozens (if not hundreds) of them? The notes from bloggers and consumers come from tasting conditions more in line with how wines are meant to be actually consumed - leisurely, thoughtfully and with meals. It is also a wonderful thing to have so many different opinions of the same wine tasted in different circumstances by different people. Of course you always have to be aware that some of these new media reviews may come from tasters with little experience, but it's easy to spot that inexperience in their notes. Also the risk of inaccurate information is no greater than that coming from professional judges when those judges are basing their opinions on results from mass tastings. Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog: Welcome to the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards
Tom Wark is back with the 2009 Wine Blog Awards. Visit his Fermentation, The Daily Wine Blog to nominate your favorites.
