Photo Camp: Fall colors - Napa November
Fall colors - Napa cabernet vines near Yountville on a November morning.
Last harvest - Cabernet vines ripped out after harvest 2009
Last harvest - Cabernet vines ripped out of a Yountville vineyard after harvest 2009.
Ripasso
Smooth. Is there a smoother red wine made than Valpolicella? Add a touch of ripasso richness and you get a great wine bargain. Ripasso, the process of adding the pressed grapes from Amarone to Valpolicella causing it to referment, elevates Valpolicella from a lovely everyday wine to one worthy of special occations.
The 2006 Capitel della Valpolicella Ripasso from Montrasor is such a wine. Ripe, round and velvety without a touch of heaviness, it delivers an excellent wine at a very fair price - under $20.
Last of Summer
A fresh tomato salad from The French Laundry Garden at Bouchon in Yountville.
Mixed Blacks
Mixed blacks, an old term that used to be the backbone of wines like Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy. It was a catch all phrase for varieties that did not command a premium like those that could be bottled under their own name. It also referred to a very old way of planting as farmers would plant many different varieties in their vineyards so they wouldn’t have all their grapes in one basket - if one variety had a bad year perhaps the others would do better. The ‘mixed blacks’ were the bottom of the totem pole and got bottom dollar for the farmer. Today that’s turned on its head as these old mixed planting vineyards have become a national treasure of old vines and interesting varieties.
Girard Winery has taken full advantage of one of these vineyards producing their 2006 Girard Mixed Blacks from a century old vineyard with a mixed planting of syrah, zinfandel, petite sirah, grenache, mourvedre, carignane and a few other varieties whose identity remain a mystery. All the varieties are co-fermented (always an interesting idea) and aged in a blend of French (85%) and American oak for eighteen months. What a wine this is! Loaded with explosive black fruit and layered with earthy touches of porcini and smoked meats, it fills the mouth without being heavy. Girard has avoided the ponderous, one dimensional character of so many “old vine” wines from these varieties. A crisp acid bite keeps this wine alive and it will remind Rhone lovers of a good Cornas or Crozes Hermitage, of course with an added dose of ripe California fruit.
Too few of these great old vineyards survived the rush to plant more fashionable varieties. It’s great to see a winery give such an old treasure its due.
Chave Bargains
Chave and bargain don’t usually go together and indeed this is one of the most expensive Cotes du Rhone wines you’ll find, but it’s worth every dime. I found the 2004 Chave Mon Coeur Cotes du Rhone tucked away on a back shelf for $20 and it was indeed a bargain. The extra few years in bottle has amplified its personality, which is rich with brooding notes of bacon, butcher shop and black pepper layered over lush, intense black fruit. It’s wonderful when great winemakers like Chave use their considerable skills to produce not only great wines, but affordable ones.
Vielles Vignes under $20
2006 Domaine La Milliere Vieilles Vignes Cotes du Rhone
Old vines, not filtered, under $20 and delicious, what more could you want? Actually this wine is more than delicious offering real complexity and flavor and no simple fruity stuff either, but earthy, warm complex fruit with a structured backbone that makes this wine exceptional with food. How do they do it? They have to grow and make the wine, ship it to the USA, put a importers markup on it followed by a wholesalers then a retailers markup and it still costs under $20 or $30 in a restaurant. It’s damn embarrassing for us American winemakers. Grab cases of this beauty and enjoy.
Feds Stop Fighting Medical Marijuana Laws
The recent decision by the Federal Government to accept state medical marijuana laws seems to have caused things to go out of control in California.
Waiting For "Just So"
It’s a waiting game. We’re waiting for “just so”. Simple ripeness is not enough. Everything has to be just right - sugars, acids and phenolics all have to be “just so”. It’s a tough balance to achieve and in many vintages, like Godot, it never arrives. Because nature rarely offers perfection harvest is usually a battle of nerves - ours vs. Mother Nature’s and Mother Nature always wins. For small production wines like Cornerstone it’s all about precision harvesting. We focus all of our attention on small blocks of vineyards and strive to harvest at the moment of perfection when everything is “just so”. This year it seems that Godot himself has actually arrived as each of our vineyards has been coming in at the perfect point. Picking at perfection is only attained by being in the vineyards and knowing your vines. Pictured above, Cornerstone’s winemaker Jeff Keene (left) and consulting winemaker Peter Franus walk our Hardman Road Block in southern Napa near Silverado Country Club. We’ve picked half of our Cabernet Sauvignon now, but this block, a cooler site, is perhaps a week or more away. Indeed things are looking very, very good in Napa.
Turley on Acid
Cinsault? From Lodi? A bright, zesty high acid sub-14% wine from Turley? I guess wonders never end. Cinsault, one of the work horse varieties of southern France, rarely gets the spotlight - usually for good reason. However, like so many of the lesser known Mediterranean varieties, in the hands of dedicated vintners with good vineyards, they can produce some exceptional wines. This wine may not be exceptional, but it is delicious. In some ways this wine is more reminiscent of southern Italian wine than California with its biting acidity and earthy fruit flavors. On top of that its under $20. I plan to grab all I can find for homemade pizza this winter.
The People That PIck
I was dreaming in Spanish, at least I was dreaming I was dreaming Spanish. As I slowly woke and came back into reality it occured to me I could not be dreaming in Spanish for obvious reasons. Then the lyrical strains of the harmonious Spanish language again floated through my bedroom window. The vineyard outside my bedroom window was alive with pickers in the pre-dawn glow and their happy chatter filled the air. How anybody can be that happy before dawn and facing hours of backbreaking work always amazes me.
That was about ten days ago and those crews were the first wave, picking grapes bound for sparkling wine. However, now those first ripples are getting ready to turn into a tsunami of harvesting as the Napa Valley gets ready for the main event: the Cabernet Sauvignon harvest. There has been scattered activity around the valley as first the grapes for sparkling wine and then some of the white varieties were harvested. We picked the grapes for our Cornerstone Sauvignon Blanc early last week, in perfect conditions. This was our first harvest of Sauvignon Blanc from the Talcott Vineyard just outside of St. Helena (not too far from Taylor’s Refresher), so I was out there at first light to watch the pick. It never ceases to stun me how hard the picking crews work. None of what we do could be possible without them. Every time I watch a harvest crew in action I want to punch Lou Dobbs in the mouth. I’d like to see him survive even a half-hour, while these crews work at breakneck speed hour after hour until the mid-day sun forces the picking to a merciful end.
Tonight our new Sauvignon Blanc is slowly bubbling away in a cold stainless steel fermemter, while the pickers themselves sleep the sleep that only exhaustion can bring as they prepare to hit the vineyards tomorrow before the morning light illuminates the seemingly endless rows of vines waiting for them. Today we scheduled the pick of our Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon for this coming Tuesday and our Oakville blocks will be right behind. It’s going to be a busy two weeks for us, but it’s nothing compared to the ultra-marathon our pickers have already embarked on.
Fleur de Savagnin
This is a wine outside of your (and almost everyone’s) comfort zone. Slightly oxidized and dry-as-a-bone, you’d be hard pressed to find a white wine more outside today’s popular profile. First of all it’s from the eastern part of France in the Jura region, home to wines loved by only the geeky-ist of wine geeks, on top of that it’s an oxidized style of wine like the great Fino and Manzanilla wines of Spain’s woefully under-appreciated Sherry region. Unlike those great wines, it is not fortified, which makes it even more confusing as it just does not fit into any easy marketing category.
The 2006 Domaine de la Tournelle Fleur de Savagnin Arbois from vignerons Evelyne et Pascal Clariet is an extraordinary white wine. It is such an interesting and compelling wine that almost everyone you let taste this wine will hate it. However, if like Steve Martin in LA Story you, “let your mind go and your body will follow” - or in this case let your palate go and your body will follow, you will be treated to a wonderful glass of wine. Nutty and layered with endless layers of complexity, the firm dryness of this wine is almost jarring to palates numbed and dumbed by extremely fruity wines or those that claim dryness, but actually have significant residual sugar.
Just in case this wine needed something to confuse the drinker even more it’s made from the Savagnin variety, which as nothing to do with Sauvignon Blanc and may (or may not) be related to the traminer variety, more recently of Gewurz fame.
None of that matters for this is wine at its best: compelling, interesting, delicious and, most of all, unique and distinct to its variety, vineyard and tradition. What else matters?
Dog (liani) Gone Good
I’m trying to remember the first year I visited this estate - 82? 83? In those days Einaudi was ultra-traditional and in the 80’s that meant erratic. While those days are often a bit over romanticized, there is no debate that great wines have always been produced by the Einaudi estate - most of the time. Rustic would have been an over-polite way to describe the old Einaudi winery of the early eighties, but today’s Einaudi wines are produced in a sparkling clean modern winery. While some may debate the plusses and minuses of that, you cannot debate the pleasures of their wonderful dolcetto wines and the fact that the ups-and-downs of previous decades are no more. The Dogliani region of Piemonte is well established as a premier dolcetto region and Einaudi’s are among the very best wines from this region. The 2006 Einaudi Dolcetto di Dogliani is as brilliant and brightly fruity as you could hope for, but offers a lot more than that. Under the dense black fruit is a hard edge that comes not only from the electric acidity, but from a delicious warm earthiness that makes this wine reach beyond the simple fruity offered by so many of its siblings. Drink this wine up now before it dries out.
Wine Enthusiast's Wine Star Awards Nominees Announced!
SwiftPageEmail Subject: Wine Enthusiast’s Wine Star Awards Nominees Announced! Let’s think about The Wine Enthusiast’s previous Wine Star Awards and what it means about The Wine Enthusiast:
The 2008 Winners
- The winemaker of the year is from Chateau St. Jean.
- The American winery of the year is Korbel Champagne Cellars
- The Man of the year is from Constellation Brands
- The Importer of the year is Shaw-Ross
I am sure you’re dying to pack wine from these companies into your cellar. I think no further comment is required.
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Julie and Julia
While Julie and Julia may be more a puff pastry than a plat principal, it is a light pleasure that no foodie should deprive themselves of indulging in. The main beauty of the movie is that people are actually cooking in it -- thinking about cooking, dreaming about cooking, really cooking and most of all, really eating and eating with gusto. That's a good feeling in an era where people are more likely to spend time watching competitive cooking than actually cooking themselves. I left the movie feeling good and, best of all, hungry. A wonderful feeling that television shows like Iron Chef and its ilk do not leave me with. If the one good thing that comes out of this movie is that a few people actually pick up those copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that are sitting, clean as they day they were purchased, on their bookshelves and actually cook something then it's a great movie.
Never trust someone who calls themselves a foodie whose cookbooks are not stained and worn.