Clos St. Martin, Saint Emilion Grand Cru, 2002
A classic Bordeaux throughout that will age for many years and develop great elegance and complexity. Lean, yet very layered and compelling on the nose. The firm, structured fruit is just barely starting to expose its depth. Sure to be a very fine bottle in another 5 or more years.
Rioja, Allende, 2003
Nice clean medium bodied tempranillo - no more, no less. Nothing more than a good every day wine. A good wine if it’s under 10 bucks.
Nebbiolo Langhe, Parusso, 2004
A good solid effort here, but not very exciting. Nice forward fruit that actually expands out into real nebbiolo flavor and character. Good to drink over the next year or two with meats, roasts and even pizza.
Barbera ď Asti, Cascina Castel’t, Maria Borio, 2003
After the awful La Spinetta I just tasted, this wine is a delight. Certainly modern and explosively fruity, it still has plenty of Barbera acid zest and freshness of fruit. Spicy clean and mouthwatering. Very nice and a wine I would happily drink again.
Syrah, EQuilbrio, Matetic, D.O. San Antonio, Chile, 2003
Big and chunky throughout, while still being quite good to drink. Not a meaningful experience here, but a nice big red wine. Good for charred steaks and other power meats. Good value for the money and more interesting than most Australian wines from this varietal as although it is big it still has some edges.
Marionberry Wine
One of the pleasures of living in Oregon are the fresh bakery goods in the morning. Big juicy Marionberry muffins, scones and anything else you can think of baked into butter, flour, eggs and sugar. They are all delicious and it’s exciting that an Italian wine producer has figured out a way to get the luscious, juicy, dense black fruit flavors of Marionberries all the way from Oregon bakeries into their wines in the Piemonte region of Italy.
Much to my surprise, when I took my first sip of 2003 Cá di Pian, Barbara d’Asti by La Spinetta the proof was there. La Spinetta has obviously not only transplanted Marionberries to Piemonte, but has discovered how to make a wine out of them. Strangely enough this wine, which certainly should be called DOC Marmellata di Marionberry, is somehow called Barbera d’ Asti. This must surely be a mistake, because anyone who has ever tasted a fine Barbera d’Asti will realize that this wine could not be made from the Barbera grape – at least not naturally.
The only thing this could be is some sort of bizarre fruit wine (Marionberries?) as it is grotesquely purple and juicy-fruity to the point of being revolting with food. I tried meat, pizza, panini and pasta with this bottle and it is very clear the only thing this glop of a wine can go with is itself.
The rhinoceros on the label of this wine is very appropriate as the rhinoceros is as graceful and refined as this “wine”. La Spinetta is a label that should be avoided by anyone who cares about the harmony of wine and food.
(artwork by Peter Puszta)
Do They Still Exist?
The 2004 Albert Boxler Riesling ( imported by Robert Chadderdon) is a really pretty wine that will develop and grow for many years, although I probably won’t have the discipline to save my bottles as it is just too damn good to drink now.
It is almost a shock these days to taste such a balanced wine from Alsace. Buy this wine and enjoy for it may be a dying breed. It won’t break your pocketbook to taste this classic as it goes for under $20 a bottle. Funny, it seems these days the more expensive an Alsatian wine is, the more undrinkable it becomes.
Muscadet Sèvre et Maine, sur lie, Domaine de la Tourmaline, 2004
Yikes! What a bad label, but what a good wine. This is a label that would frighten anyone who ever worked on a bottling line. How do they ever get it on the bottle?
More importantly this wine embodies everything that makes Muscadet one of my favorite white wines. Full of acidity, bright fruit that is layered with a yeasty, mineral complexity. A perfect food wine. Bring on the oysters!!
Bourgogne Chardonnay, Robert Chevillon, 2004
It’s easy to forget why you used to like chardonnay, but this wine will remind you quickly and best of all costs under $20. Clean and fresh mineral, chalk and tart apple aromas lead into a fine firm chardonnay with a long toasty finish. Consumed over three days it hardly missed a step even on the last day. Very nice wine that will make you love chardonnay again.
It Bites
It bites hard. Punching the palate with searing acidity. I loved it.
Is there a wine more complimentary to homey, rustic foods than top-quality grignolino? I don’t think so because rich, full flavored dishes need a good dose of acidity to keep the palate alive and few wines deliver like grignolino. The 2004 Grignolino del Monferrato Casalese, Bricco del Bosco, Az. Ag. Acconero imported by Montecastelli fills that bill just perfectly.
Warning: if you like California merlot or Australian shiraz with cute animal labels selling for under ten bucks a bottle, avoid this wine at all costs.
I fell in love with this wine from the first sip that set my saliva glands into hyper-drive.
The Best Sangiovese Ever...
There can really be no debate about the best Sangiovese ever…
Well, that’s not exactly true for the best ever will be debated with no resolution. However, the best Sangiovese ever for under $20 – in fact, under $15, is not a topic open to debate in my opinion.
That wine is the Fattoria Zerbina Ceregio Sangiovese di Romagna Superiore. A wine of perfect Sangiovese varietal character vintage after vintage with a bright freshness that embarrasses most Tuscan reds. Ceregio is everything you could want out of Sangiovese at such a modest price range. In fact, Ceregio is a better Sangiovese and more Italian in character than most Tuscan reds at double the price. The only reason this wine could remain such a value is that it not Tuscan, but a product of neighboring Romagna.
Winemaker extrordinaire Cristina Geminani, owner and winemaker of Zerbina, has crafted this wine with the same passion, intensity and skill she devotes to all of her wines – no matter the price. Cristina is dedicated to excellence and that means her top wines, like Pietramora and Marzieno are extraordinary, but it also means that her basic wines, like Ceregio, are incredible values.
The current release of Ceregio, the 2004, is yet another of a long list of very fine Ceregios that I have had the pleasure to enjoy for well over a decade. Explosively alive with fresh fruit on the nose and a bright rich ruby color that is still translucent, the juicy bittersweet cherry fruit mixes with sweet tobacco and a firm mineral backbone to create a wine that could only be Sangiovese.
This is a wine to go out of your way to find.
If Points Were Years
If points were years, less would be more, but now everyone pays for points, not maturity or complexity, while leaving older, more developed wines for others – like me.
The current release of Guigal, 2001 Côte Rôtie Brune et Blonde runs about $50, but there it was right in front of me, a long ignored bottle on the shelf. In the bottom rack was a 1997 Guigal Côte Rôtie Brune et Blonde at the same price. Sure, for those in the wine-know Guigal is famous and Côte Rôtie revered, but other than those eight people nobody cares so the 1997 was still there waiting…
Côte Rôtie was a name mentioned with respect and awe not so many decades ago, but now drinkers are more interested in Shiraz than Syrah. Easy is in and terroir is esoteric. I suppose that’s great for me and other old guys in that we can find bargains like this, but I find it hard to believe that decades from now someone will be waxing poetic about some machine-picked, low-acid and over-extracted wine from a hot vineyard made in 2006 – unless you have a thing for canned stewed tomatoes, which is what those wines will taste like in a decade or so – just about the time 2006 Côte Rôtie will be just getting warmed up.
Today’s feeding frenzy is for the latest and hottest, while store shelves throughout the USA are filled with bottles from a few years ago that are cheaper than current releases and far better to drink on the week you take them home. While I can’t understand why you (the consumer) aren’t grabbing up these wines, I am very happy that you don’t. The earthy beauty of this Côte Rôtie was exotic and layered with spices and a generous sottobosco of mushrooms and cedar chips with an expansive mid-palate and a lingering finish of wild flowers and a depth throughout that challenged and inspired the palate and the mind.
The definition of great Syrah is still in the Northern Rhone Valley of France.
Cassis and Oak Hunters
It smelled funky: earthy, compost and dried mushroom without a touch of black cherry or cassis. Man-o-man what a wine. I love the taste of wine aged in big old barrels, as this one was for eighteen months.
It was hidden there on the wine list in an out-of-the-way section sure to be missed by the cassis and oak hunters. All the better for me and I pounced on it. Best of all, it was a bargain. I was doing them a favor as they would have hated this wine. I also did myself a big favor by ordering it.
This beauty was the 1999 Bosquet des Papes Chateauneuf du Pape, Cuvee Grenache. One of the best wines made from the grenache grape, it is a outstanding example of a varietal at it finest moment. Although, considering its non-fruit driven character, many will find this wine disorienting. That would be a good thing for today’s young wine drinkers need a bit of disorientation to wake them to the pleasures of wines driven by terroir and varietal instead of the “wisdom” of the latest hot-shot consulting enologist dead-set on making wine by a proven point-winning formula.
Brickish in color without a touch of purple, the aromas explode out of the glass with a smoky meaty character mixed with tar, fresh tobacco and coffee grounds. Not a bit of blueberry, blackberry, raspberry or currant show in any aspect of this wine. Warm and generous on the palate with flavors of a haunting burnt black fruit tarry-ness dominated by fresh morels and exotic spices. This is a wine more about wildness (sauvage) than simple, obvious fruit.
I found this tasting note from wine writer Daniel Rogov on this wine in 2002:
“Bosquet des Papes, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, 1999: Made entirely from Grenache grapes, this deep, full bodied wine is packed with ample black fruit, mineral, tobacco and earthy aromas and flavors. Showing its tannins and its acids rather strongly now so don’t dare drink this one now but give it until at least 2005 to find its equilibrium. After that this will be a wine to sip slowly, for as it opens in the glass it will reveal an almost sweet-stewed plum overlay. Don’t worry as the 2005 date approaches for the wine will store nicely until 2020 or longer. Score 94. (Tasted 6 Jan 2002)” Link to original article
I find his notes right on the money and forgive him for reducing such a complex wine to mere points.
This wine is yet another example of why it is better to first search a wine list by vintage instead of varietal. Most wine lists are dominated by current vintages and not only do wines with a few years of bottle age offer better drinking, but usually much better value.
13 and Under
I know numbers lie, but in the eighties I think they lied less. Alcohol levels were not an issue, so if they were less than accurate on their labels, they did it for convenience instead of as a marketing ploy. Yet, these labels of two wines from the 80’s made me think.
I opened two of my cellar wines over the weekend; a 1989 Girard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and a 1980 Fisher Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon - each were 13% or less. Both were excellent wines that had aged gracefully. In fact, the Fisher was an extraordinary bottle still showing great depth, richness and layer after layer of complexity.
How can that be? A twenty-six year old wine with less than 13% alcohol that is still rich and complex? The reason is these wines were made to last, to expand and develop over time.
If anything should make today’s winemakers sit back and contemplate the current fashions of winemaking, it is bottles like these. We must seriously ask the question; how will today’s 14+% wines taste in twenty-six years? We certainly don’t know the answer, but the quality that these two bottles showed should make a lot of people insecure about extended aging of today’s California (and others) Cabernet Sauvignon.
Today they make’em to drink now. To taste great in a press tasting when only two years old. This was a concept that never occurred to Steve Girard and Fred Fisher when they made these magnificent wines. They aspired to make Cabernet Sauvignon that would develop greatness over time. The philosophy that made Bordeaux and Cabernet Sauvignon famous. They were trying to make great wines not great points.
A winemaker that makes wines like these today is consciously sacrificing high press scores when the vintages are first reviewed. This is courage not many have. It would be very sad if great California Cabernet Sauvignon, like these two wines, was a thing of the past.
(pictured: Fisher Wedding Vineyard)
Small Pleasures
Small pleasures are a lovely part of enjoying wine. Pretty little wines that don’t cost much, but deliver pleasure and enhance a Monday night dinner. Tonight with an all Oregon omelette with Tillamook Cheddar and Apple Orchard Smoked Ham from McMinnville, a charming little bottle of Bordeaux provided just such a moment. Running somewhere around $10, this is the type of Bordeaux ignored by the American press and public. However, I found it disarming with my dinner for its clean flavors, medium body and obviously regional character: this could be nothing but a Bordeaux. This is exactly the type of wine it is hard to find at this price point from New World producers as the Australians are so often just too fruity and the American wines are just too characterless to provide such a nice counterpoint to a meal.
Tonight’s wine was the 2004 Chateau les Bordelaises, a plain AOC Bordeaux from Dominque and Jean-Louis Pointet and it is a charmer to anyone who loves the angular character of a true Bordeaux. I don’t expect lovers of Yellowtail and Mondavi will understand why I find this wine so delightful, but here is a wine with no pretense, yet plenty of terroir and enough character to actually make you think for just a second before taking another bite.
(Recommended by Doug Salthouse at SmartBuy wines in New Jersey)