Miscellaneous Mendocino
The wines of Mendocino continue their exciting development. You cannot help but be excited by the energy and creativity of the winemakers there. Here are some excellent wines from less than popular varieties that are all delicious and highly recommended.
2007 Bells Echo Syrah - Firm, earthy butcher shop aromas and flavors over rich black fruit. A real beauty.
2007 Monte Volpe Pinot Grigio - Brilliant, bright and fresh with none of the annoying residual sugar that mars so many Oregon and California wines misusing the Italian name for this variety. It’s great to find an American grigio you can actually drink with fried calamari. Winemaker Greg Graziano makes this wine, St. Gregory and the Enotria below and it seems everything he touches is just great to drink - with a fair price to boot.
2005 Enotria Barbera - Explosively fruity and zesty. Oddly like real Italian barbera, which is rare from American examples of this variety.
2007 Lazy Creek Gewurztraminer - Wow, a real dry gewurztraminer. A true rarity these days when most Alsatian examples are almost dessert wines and most Americans are simply and sweet. This gewurz with guts is a wonderful find.
2007 Lioco Indica, Old Vine Carignan Blend - Lovers of brash, forward earthy Southern French wines take note, you’ll love this balanced bruiser. Sausages on the grill anyone?
2008 McDowell Grenache Rose - A perennial favorite, McDowell keeps pumping out this very good rose vintage after vintage. Would it be better dryer? For sure, but it’s still dry enough to be really enjoyable for summer picnics and parties.
Bitter and Black in Mendocino
Despite our corporate driven wine culture, that wants to force every producer into the chardonnay-sauvignon blanc-pinot noir-cabernet-merlot club, there is a growing cacophony of other voices. Stalwarts continue to slug it out with varieties like zinfandel, syrah and others, whose slow sales (unexplainable quality-wise) can only be based on consumer ignorance fueled by the monotone marketing by the mega-wine factories.
Despite the wine white noise pumped out by the mass wine marketing machine there are a few small producers that can make their voices heard. I can’t think of a better example than Mendocino’s Chiarito Vineyard, where winegrower John Chiarito (pictured on the right) has chosen the road less taken, in the USA anyway, and is making wines from some of southern Italy’s best varieties. Chiarito is making some excellent wines out of varieties most Americans have never heard of, much less tasted. The Chiarito Negroamaro ( the bitter black in the title) is explosively fruity, yet with a compelling earthy touch that makes it very interesting to drink. Their Nero d’Avola ratchets all of the above up a notch combined with a bright, racy freshness.
The Chiarito wines are not cheap, which is understandable as the pioneers take all the arrows, but perhaps their wines, along with other producers, will lead our industry down the road of making exciting wines at moderate prices from varieties more suited to their vineyards than the narrow choices pursued by corporate wineries and their marketing departments.
The Chiarito wines may not be bargains, but just maybe they’ll lead the way there.
Marvelous Mendocino
Lots of places on the West Coast think of themselves as pinot prima donna, but there is a very real possibility that the least pretentious of all will claim the throne. Sideways loved the Central Coast. Oregon assumes (a little to quickly) the crown is theirs. Yet it seems time after time the most exciting pinots I’ve been tasting are from Mendocino’s rugged Anderson Valley.Yesterday’s Taste of Mendocino was packed with enthusiastic tasters and expressive pinots. What's most exciting is, strangely enough, what these Mendocino pinot noirs lack. They are moderate in alcohol, missing a big price tag and offer more pleasure than attitude. They are brilliantly light in color, fragrantly lacy, exotically delicate and long on the palate. Pinot noir from Anderson Valley tastes like pinot noir - a claim many pinots from Oregon and the rest of California cannot claim. You'll not confuse a Anderson Valley pinot noir with a syrah.
We can only hope their increasing fame does not lead these growers down the path taken by so many Oregon producers who have given up the elegance that their cool climate can bestow on their wines in the headlong pursuit of points over purity of variety.
Some highly recommended Mendocino pinot noir wines from the tasting:
- 2007 Anthill Farms, Comptche Ridge Vineyard
- 2006 Saint Gregory (winemaker Greg Graziano competes for best pinot anywhere under $20)
- 2006 Handley Anderson Valley
- 2006 Husch Anderson Valley
- 2007 Jim Ball Vineyards, Booneville
- 2006 Jim Ball Vineyards, Signature
- 2006 Lazy Creek
- 2006 Navarro, Methode l'Ancienne
- 2006 Patz and Hall, Alder Springs Vineyard
- 2007 Phillips Hill, Oppenlander Vineyard
- 2007 Phillips Hill, Toulouse Vineyard
- 2007 Phillips Hill, Corby Vineyard
- 2007 Radio-Coteau, Savoy Vineyard
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90 Cases - Not Points
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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Squirrely Wine Blog
American Squirrel Wine Blog Award Winners « Las Flores View Point Squirrel Colony (Camp Pendleton CA)I cannot describe my surprise at winning the "Best Jazz Writing on a Wine Blog" award from the American Squirrel Wine Blogs Awards. It equaled my surprise in learning there was an American Squirrel Wine Blog Awards. Some had accused my blog of being squirrely, but I did not realize I had reached such heights. Be sure I'll squirrel this award away to use in leaner times. They must be nuts to give this award to me, but I humbly accept it.
It's reassuring to know that at least rodents can spot a good wine blog as evidenced by the other squirrely wine blogs that share with me this once in a lifetime honor.
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Solo Dieci
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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Snob Buster
I looked down on it with disdain. It was below me. I'd wallowed in that mud before. Why waste the time?For some reason it always grabbed my attention. I walked by time and time again with the self righteous boredom of a commuter passing the same pan handler every day. Yet there was something about it that caught my eye. Finally, with a sneer I picked up the bottle. An $8 California zinfandel? I knew what that meant - overripe, sweet purple glop. A perfect example of low budget spoofulation. A glutton for punishment, I picked up the bottle using wine blog fodder as an excuse.
I took a sip. Then another. Could I be having a bad palate day? I took a gulp, then another. I liked it. What was up with that?
The next morning I snickered at myself. What could I have been thinking? Yet my next trip to the store that floor stacking was calling, almost challenging me again. I gave in and bought another bottle. The second tasting not only confirmed my first feelings about this wine, I even liked it better.
First of all it really tastes like zinfandel with a lovely briary, raspberry fruit that tastes like wine, not jam. Then there is the refreshingly medium body at an easy 13% alcohol and zesty touch of acidity that livens up the finish. This is a very nice wine and a nice wine it all it is and I think that's great. The world's full of great wines these days, but a charming bottle of zinfandel for under ten bucks is really hard to come by.
The wine? The 2007 Green Bridge Paso Robles Organically Grown Zinfandel is a real steal ($7.99 Whole Foods). Compared to the bland and/or jammy-sweet cabernet and merlot being sold in this price range it's a miracle. Green Bridge delivers real wine instead of industrial purple plonk. It's varietal in character, balanced and perfect for everyday meals, while offering more than enough character for occasions that demand good wine that won't break the bank. It's too bad more zinfandel like this is not produced. After all, can you think of a better wine to be America's everyday go to wine? How in the world did merlot steal that job away?
Often I like simple easy meals. That doesn't mean that I don't expect the food to be flavorful and fresh. The same goes for the wines I like to drink with those meals. It's great to finally find such a wine so close to home.
Is the (2nd) Fiasco Over?
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.
Stellar Cellars
I was a guest, which is by far the best way to attend tastings like this, although as this was a dinner, it might be better to call it a drinking. Be assured I didn’t spit once. It never crossed my mind. One thing drinking old wines confirms is they don’t make’em like they used to. For better or worse, they’re different – more delicate and less alcoholic. It was a great evening with outstanding food, wine and company. What else is great wine for? Many thanks to Dr. Mike Dragutsky for inviting me to join in. Below are the wines with some short comments.
1990 Cristal Brut, Magnum – A reminder of how great Cristal used to be. Toasty, creamy, long and very complex. Cristal today is a mere shadow of this wine.
1985 Kistler Chardonnay, Carneros – Rich and powerful, but a bit passed its prime.
1995 Puligny Montrachet, Enseigners, Verget, Magnum – Unfortunately showing quite a bit of oxidation already, but still quite exciting with a firm mineral backbone and great length. Drink up soon.
2005 Sea Smoke Pinot Noir, Ten, Santa Rita Hills – A powerhouse pinot with a lot of new oak.
1988 Bonnes Mares, Comte de Vogue – Not showing well at first, this bottle ended up by my place so I got to go back to it several times. By the end of the evening it opened into a graceful beauty with layers and layers of length and personality.
1997 Chateau Pichon Lalande, Pauillac, Magnum and 1997 Chateau Lynch Bages, Pauillac – I’ll comment on these two lovely, elegant and totally mature wines together as they dramatically illustrated how much better wines age in magnum. The Pichon Lalande was much fresher with brighter fruit and depth. These wines show how pretty wines can be from lighter years.
1989 Chateau Pichon Baron, Pauillac – Still velvety and rich with an expansive bouquet and a long seductive finish. Twenty years old is a great place for classic Bordeaux from excellent vintages.
1988 Chatau Guraud Larose, St. Julien – Silky, delicate and perfumed. Really lovely with an almost caressing texture. Drink up now while it’s so pretty.
1961 Chateau Bouscaut, Graves (Pessac-Leognan now) – Just a beautiful old wine that is still showing a touch of fruit freshness amid all the coffee, porcini and spice. With that nice touch of that earthy minerality that defines Graves. Long and graceful.
1988 Petrus, Pomerol – Wine of the night. An elegant, graceful wonder. Svelte and incredibly long and complex. A wonderful wine.
1979 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, Pauillac – The definition of elegance. A perfectly proportioned wine. Subtly complex and endlessly interesting. As usual, a perfect Bordeaux.
1977 Taylor, Oporto – Will this wine ever mature? Still young, fruity, dark, sweet and powerful. Just plain great Port that will age forever.
Southbound
Last weekend I headed southbound down I-5, but it was no vacation. I was moving from the Willamette Valley to the Napa Valley. I was migrating from pinot noir to cabernet sauvignon. It was less than a ten hour drive, but it’s worlds apart.
Cabernet and pinot may both be wines, but they have little in common other than being red. Cabernet’s backbone is tannin, while pinot’s is acidity - at least that’s what nature intended. The culture between the Willamette Valley and the Napa Valley is also a contrast. The hippie winemaking ashram of Oregon versus the corporate powerhouse of Napa. For me it is another step on a winemaking journey: three vintages in Italy, three in Oregon and now on to Napa.
I’ve learned many things on this odyssey. First and foremost is that your palate is not a machine that can be calibrated, but something always in motion. Something that is influenced and defined by the wines you are drinking at the moment. After three years of drinking young nebbiolo, the the wines of Oregon seemed unstructured. After three years of Oregon pinot the wines of Napa seemed bombastic. Yet after a month of drinking them my palate has adjusted and opened so that I also appreciate their power and concentration. As in all art, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The fashion today is to rank wines with an exactitude that is absurd, but true connoisseurs understand that it’s the full rainbow of diversity that makes wine such a compelling beverage.
Wine is a beautiful, creative thing that brings not only happiness, but health and invites us to sit back and appreciate life and each other. Those that define it by points deny this cultural and aesthetic beauty. Those that rank wines don’t give up their aesthetic distance when they taste. I do.
So this is my first week as a full time resident of Napa, a place I’ve visited many, many times over almost three decades. It’s a new start in familiar surroundings. I hope regular readers will forgive the sporadic posts over the last two weeks during my move and transition into my new job, but now I’m back to the the blogging grindstone. I’ll not be commenting on California cabernet for obvious reasons, but will be increasing my commentary on exciting wines of America’s Northwest as I separate myself from day-to-day relationships with wineries there. As always you’ll find extensive commentary on the wines of Europe, which I love.
Now you’ll find my professional attentions focused on Cornerstone Cellars, which produces two cabernet sauvignon wines, a Napa Valley and a Howell Mountain, crafted by an extraordinary winemaker, Celia Masyczek. So my blogging focus will be on everything but Napa Cab.
I became a wine professional in 1980. Now as I approach my 30th year immersed in all things wine and food I can only count my blessings. Most of all I treasure the diversity of taste that I have been privileged to experience. That experience has taught me to dig deep to understand the character of wine and those who make it. With the same passion I took on nebbiolo and pinot noir I now focus on cabernet sauvignon.
Appreciating each wine and wine region for both what it is and what it isn’t is what wine appreciation is all about. I’m about to truly appreciate the wines of the Napa Valley.
The Thin White Line
They said it couldn’t be done. Yet it is being done. California is emerging from the excesses of the previous decades (who isn’t) and presenting a leaner, meaner attitude in their wines. By lean and mean I mean acidity and a glorious lack of residual sugar. Perhaps Pilates is good for all types of fat.
Just today I had two crisp, mineraly and very dry white wines from California and they were as good examples of the genre as you’ll find anywhere.
Facing down a half dozen pristine oysters the 2006 Brander Sauvignon Blanc Natural from Santa Ynez was master of its domaine. It was clean and fresh as you could want, yet the Brander was not that simple cat pee punch produced in New Zealand as on top of that zest was a lovely touch of honeydew melon and ripe pears. Brander Natural is a rare example of a new world sauvignon blanc that can actually challenge Sancerre or Pouilly Fume for both guts and glory.
More difficult to find, but well worth the search is the 2007 Pey- Marin, The Shell Mound, Riesling from chilly Marin County. Here’s a high strung dry riesling that is not a bad copy of Alsace, but an interesting wine in its own right. Like the Brander, on top of all the structure and bite is a deliciously ripe fruitiness that belongs only to California. At only 11.8% alcohol it hits some of those high notes you thought only German riesling could hit.
There used to be a line that could not be crossed in California without wines being branded as thin. Thankfully those days seem to be gone as producers like Pey Marin and Brander produce lean, mean fighting machines such as these.
From an Acorn a Mighty Wine Grows
The wrong Acorn has been in the news lately. The tiny Sonoma winery called Acorn was news to me as I tasted the wines for the first time at the first (annual we hope) Wine Bloggers Conference held in Santa Rosa last weekend. Betsy and Bill Nachbaur’s Acorn Winery is very good news indeed.
In a California wine world dominated by squeaky clean, but personality-free wines, the wines of Acorn are packed with personality. Producing wines exclusively from their estate vineyard in the Russian River they once again challenge conventional wisdom on so called “warm” climate varieties. In the cool Russian River Valley, which is known for its pinot noir, the Acorn Vineyard is planted with syrah, zinfandel, sangiovese, petite sirah and other varieties that aren’t usually associated with pinot territory. It seems zinfandel and syrah like a little fog too.
Acorn is doing some things that seem cutting edge in the new world, but actually go back to the very first wines. They are co-fermenting field blends instead of picking and fermenting each variety separately. There is no doubt that varieties that are co-fermented together have different characteristics than a wine made from those same varieties made separately then blended. The chemistry that takes place during co-fermentation is just different.
For example, their 2005 Heritage Vines Zinfandel (1005 cases) is 78% zinfandel, 10% alicante bouschet, 10% petite syrah and the remaining 2% includes carignane, trousseau, sangiovese, petit bouschet, negrette, syrah, muscat noir, cinsault and grenache. All of these varieties were harvested and fermented together. The wine is rich, but with a firm backbone of tannin and acid and loaded with layers of flavors and aromas like coffee, chocolate, porcini and deep ripe blackberries. The 2005 Sangiovese (1022 cases) is easily one of the most interesting New World examples of this variety I’ve tasted. Produced from 98% sangiovese (7 different clones), 1 % canaiolo and 1% mammolo, which is a blend I wish more Tuscan wineries would use instead of overwhelming their sangiovese with the strong varietal character of cabernet sauvignon. This is a decidedly robust, California style wine, but like their Zinfandel it has the zesty backbone to carry the heft. It is interesting to note that while these wines come from an Acorn they are blessedly not over-oaked. They are also not overpriced running around $30 a bottle.
All of the Acorn wines have just the right touch of what I call a rustic character. While being very well made they have just a bit of wildness or sauvage, as the French call it. Rustic does not mean brett or other wine faults, but means that the character of the varieties and vineyard really show through in the wine and are not polished away leaving only artificially gleaming simple fruit flavors. With this edge of wildness, the wines of Acorn are not only delicious, but interesting, which is just the way I like them.
Acorn may be small, but they’re making some mighty fine wines.
Serious Sonoma Syrah
Often when you think of Napa and Sonoma, the big corporate winery showcases come to mind. Palatial wineries costing tens of millions of dollars surrounded by gardens that compete with Versailles and gourmet kitchens better equipped than three star Michelin restaurants. Yet some of California’s most exciting wines are not being made in such wine palaces.
Working in leased space, crammed in with other small producers sharing space and equipment, some young winemakers are making a dramatic new generation of California wines. Some of the most compelling wines I tasted during a visit to Sonoma last weekend were some bottlings of syrah produced by some low tech, but high passion winemakers. I say this is a new generation because these are not the huge raspberry fruit bomb syrahs with little varietal character you 
have come to expect from California. These are big wines, just as they should be, but layered in with all that fruit was real complexity as they exhibited that earthy, butcher shop character that defines the finest wines from this variety.
Morgon Peterson at Bedrock Wine Company is crafting some of the most fascinating American wines I’ve tasted in some time. He’s making a tremendous range of single vineyard syrahs and a dramatic sauvignon blanc/semillon blend. Neighbor Phillip Staehle is making some compelling wines under the Enkidu label. His Odyssey Russian River Syrah is proof positive that the best syrah is made in cooler climates than conventional wisdom has called for in the past.
In the picture above, Peterson presses wines using a muscle powered basket press. Yes, he really makes wine that way. There’s a growing group of young winemakers in California who are well educated not only on winemaking science, but on the traditions that made European wines the standard for greatness in the past. They are on the cutting edge of California winemaking not because of their use of the latest technologies, but by their return to the methods of the past. They are making textured, complex wines that don’t bury the characteristics of the variety under excess and manipulations, but that proudly and clearly show their California personality. For me, these wines were nothing short of exciting. As you might expect, very little wine is produced at wineries such as these. I’d suggest you get on the mailing list now.