Soon the grapes for California bubbly will start being picked. They’re always the first as they’re more interested in acidity than sugar and flavor. Here signs at the gates of Domaine Chandon are ready to direct the fleet of trucks that will soon be arriving.
As harvest approaches excess crop is dropped and leaves are pulled from the fruit zone. Here bunches of Cabernet lie on the ground in Yountville.
--- the burgundy report --- The latest edition of The Burgundy Report by Bill Nanson is out. As always, don't miss it. With the combination of this free report and Burghound by Allen Meadows, the definitive report in this category, there is no longer any excuse for suffering through bad Burgundy.
A balloon pilot drops down to touch the vines by Domaine Chandon in the Napa Valley.
While tasting through barrels of our 2008 cabernet sauvignon today, I kept thinking as good as they were they needed a little lift - a little cabernet franc. I love the minty brightness with a vegetal punch that the mouth watering cabernet franc wines of the Loire deliver - often at bargain prices. I think just of touch of that cabernet franc lift would be perfect in our powerful Napa cabernet.
Like soy sauce, Parmigiano and truffles, cabernet franc is packed with umami, that distinctive savory essence that that makes flavors just explode in your mouth. Certainly cabernet franc can be delicious on its own, as in the wonderful reds of the Loire Valley, but its "umami" effect on cabernet sauvignon cannot be overstated. A dollop of cabernet franc "lifts" the nose and expands the finish on many a cabernet and, in my opinion, this variety is under-utilized in Napa where power is easy, but high tones are not.
An absolutely seductive example of California cabernet franc at its best is the 2005 Keenan Napa Valley Cabernet Franc, Spring Mountain District. Rich and powerful without being overwhelming, this is one of the finest American cabernet francs I've tasted. Deep in color, with an expansive, bright nose and a fresh, salivating finish, a telling point about this wine is that while I drank this bottle over three days, the wine never got tired. This very fine cabernet franc is a great education on what is possible from this variety in California.
No shy blushing wine this one. Not at all embarrassed by its pinkness, this is a explosively fruity, but dry wine with wonderful depth. The 2008 Mas Amiel “Le Plaisir” Côtes du Roussillon Rosé, if not a serious wine, is seriously delicious. Born from old vine grenache, syrah and carignane in the sunny Mediterranean vineyards of southwestern France, wines like this can only make you shake your head in wonder that so few outstanding rosé wines come from the similarly blessed vineyards of California. I suppose part of the reason for that is that so many consumers think sweet when they see pink that dry pink wines like this aren’t that easy to sell. It’s amazing that that misconception about rosé has hung on so many years after the white zinfandel craze. A great value and under $20 this is a wine I’d gladly gulp the rest of the summer.
Gray Pinot (pinot gris) sounds pretty drab and 9 times out of 10 the name fits the wine. Yet in the hands of some winemakers this variety can sing. Joining the ranks of delicious and interesting wines from this variety, including wines like Jermann, Chehalem, Albert Mann among others, is the Horse and Plow 2008 Pinot Gris,, Filigreen Farm, Anderson Valley. Crisp, refreshing, but in no way light and simple, it is loaded with creamy fresh pear and white peach flavors all accented by a tangy minerality and firm acidity. This wine was barrel fermented in neutral oak, which shows in the lovely texture and a yeasty whisper on the nose. A whopping 350 cases were produced so Santa Margharita Pinot Grigio has as much to worry about as it has flavor.
The 2006 Gruner Veltliner Federspiel Wachau, Terrassen Weissenkirchen, Trockken, Andreas Lehensteiner is a wine that will indeed make many a winemaker green with envy. This is nothing short of an exceptional wine at an unbeatable price. This green/gold beauty is directly plugged into the socket, with an electric bite of mouthwatering acidity carrying ripe apricot and fresh pear flavors along with a firm mineral highlight on its razor edge. This is one of those wines that you can barely get your nose out of the glass long enough to take a sip.
These Austrian wines are the darling of every Master Sommelier in the country and rightfully so. More often than not they are the wine I go to when white wine wine is in order. They remain tremendous values and you can find exceptional examples for under $100 even on wine lists with the stiffest markups.
'Bordeaux should be selling everything,' he said. He also criticised the region for being too focused on Parker points and said it was no longer a benchmark for Cabernet Sauvignon.
link: Wine pundits label France 'dysfunctional' - decanter.com - the route to all good wine
Pale and more brick red in color than ruby and made from the Trousseau grape grown in the Arbois region of France - this is the kind of wine that frequents a wine marketers nightmares. I found it to be wonderful.
A vineyard is sprayed at dawn during late June in Napa. Vineyards here are sprayed at night or at dawn as most applications require cool temperatures to be effective.
Barco Reale di Carmignano from Capezzana has been a best buy for so many years it’s almost trite. Yet, there is something really special about such a low profile accomplishment. Their 2005 is yet another in a long line of lovely, lively wines at low prices. Structured and fragrant with a nice touch of complexity to boot. Here’s a wine that falls into the buy by the case category.
1985 López de Heredia Viña Tondonia - a gorgeous nose of strawberry and underbrush immediately grabbed my attention. I had in my glass that magical thing, a wine you want to coddle and sniff for a long while before even sipping it. Such glorious aromatics. At last, though, I struck out to discover if it was going to be an interesting sip, to boot. Zounds. On the palate, it was even better than what its heady scents promised. Such death-defying complexity! Waves of silky, elegant fruit and earthiness, with a sudden twist of sap and bark right in the middle, and then playing out forever, until I was wide-eyed and shaking my head. Wow.
Touraine Gamay “Pouillé,” Thierry Puzelat 2006 $18. 13% alcohol. Cork. Louis/Dressner, New York, NY. Relative to “Le Tel Quel,” which I’ve written about here before, “Pouillé” is arguably Thierry Puzelat’s more serious – perhaps substantial would be a better word – expression of Gamay. In this case, the fruit comes from Puzelat’s own vineyards, which he purchased from Michel Oger. Situated near Clos Roche Blanche in the commune of Pouillé, the 65 year-old selection massale Gamay vines are planted in argilo-silex (clay and flint) soil that’s been farmed biodynamically for the past fifteen years. Following fermentation, the wine is aged in old oak casks until bottling, without filtration, in the summer following the harvest.
via McDuff’s Food & Wine Trail
Arbois Poulsard “M,” Jacques Puffeney 2005 $30. 13.5% alcohol. Cork. Rosenthal Wine Merchant, New York, NY. Puffeney’s wines may be a little pricey for a typical midweek repast, but I’ve been on vacation the last couple of days so I figured why not give myself a treat. Straight from the bottle, this is lean and firm in both acidic and tannic impact. Its color is a completely transparent, pale ruby, tinged green/orange at the rim. With a few moments to settle, aromas emerged of red tea, rose petals, teak and tart cherry fruit. Like its color, the wine’s flavors are delicate but intensely penetrating. If you’ve been looking for a “light” wine to serve with hearty fare – think duck, beef daube or, why not, pot pies – this may be your ticket.
via McDuff’s Food & Wine Trail
When I first got into wine I spent as much time with my nose in a wine book as it did in a wine glass - come to think of it that’s still true. That was thirty years ago and wine books were serious things in those days - thick tomes by British writers that read like the textbooks they were. I learned a lot, but it was a rather dry experience, which seemed a bit of an oxymoron when the subject was wine. I balanced the books with a tasting group that was loaded with energy - we had a blast and learned a lot.
One of the most exciting things about the online wine community (bloggers, Twitter, Facebook etc.) is they have expanded the online wine world into one gigantic virtual tasting group. Not to say studying about wine is any less important, perhaps more so now there are so many more wines, but the amount you can learn about wine on the Internet is truly astounding.
One of the most charming aspects of the explosion of wine blogs is the large number of young wine drinkers who share their thrill of exploration with their readers. They’re not really critics, but more like the host of a wine tasting. Visiting their blog is like visiting their home for a wine tasting party. Yes, sometimes there may be some inaccurate technical information, but the energy and love of wine they share more than makes up for it. They’re learning along with you, not pontificating from up on high.
I love to visit these blogs as they recharge my batteries with their enthusiasm and make me remember my excitement of discovery when I first fell in love with the world of wine. We all should remember it’s less important to get the pH of a wine right than it is to feel its spirit - its soul. These writers are about soul not technical sheets and I love them for it. These are the writers that are giving birth to a new generation of wine drinkers that, while it will be a small percentage of them, will be drinking the wines that the writers in my previous post,“Going to School” are writing about now. This new generation will preserve those wines as my generation drops the wine list. They represent a passing of the torch even if they don’t yet know it or appreciate the beauties of Poulsard yet, but some of them will some day. Eventually they, and a sadly small percentage of their readers, will turn away from the obvious side of the force and learn to love finesse over sheer power. This is the way of the wine world and it will always be so. It’s a right of passage. I went through it too.
Here’s a woefully short list of these young leaders. It’s a dangerous thing to make such a list as there are so many talented wine bloggers out there. So my apologies to the majority that I leave out here as I include just a few I’ve had the pleasure to meet personally. I encourage you to visit my blog roll or the ones on Vinography or Fermentation to really experience the beautiful diversity of these new, new media wine writers, which interestingly are mostly female. Change is a good thing.
Here's the progress on the same block of Cabernet in Yountville just over a week later.
