Purple Liquid: a wine and food diary

A charming Swan from the Russian River Valley

2012-02-01T14:18:00.000-08:00

This was a low key, mid-week dinner at home and we were sipping our wine. “Wow, this wine is delicious!” my husband suddenly said. I showed him the bottle. It was a 2008 Joseph Swan Pinot Noir Cuvée de Trois Russian River Valley, a fairly-priced wine from Russian River Valley Pinot Noir pioneer Joseph Swan Vineyards.

Located in the Russian River Valley, Joseph Swan Vineyards was founded by Joseph Swan in 1989. He was a retired pilot with no formal viticulture education, but after taking many trips to France, he became known for introducing new methods of winemaking that seemed revolutionary at the time in the United States. These techniques included whole cluster fermentations, extended maceration for more color and depth, and fermenting without the addition of sulfur.

Joseph Swan's son-in-law Rod Berglund is now in charge of the winemaking. He introduced the “Cuvée de Trois” in 1999, a blend from three Russian River vineyards, each site contributing unique characteristics to the final cuvée.

The wine is a charmer. The nose is expressive with aromas of red cherry, spices, and earthy notes, and the palate has a silky, juicy texture, showing more finesse than power with a well-balanced complexity. Delicious indeed!

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A wine made from the blood of the stones

2012-01-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

That's the 2001 Vacqueyras Domaine Le Sang des Cailloux Cuvée de Lopy. The wine is from Vacqueyras, an appellation in the Southern Rhône next to Gigondas and to the east of Châteauneuf du Pape.

It is produced by Domaine Le Sang des Cailloux, which means Blood of the stones, a 17 hectare estate located on an arid plateau made of red clay and limestone layered by rounded stones — the famous galets roulés that characterize the terroir of Châteauneuf du Pape. On the plateau, the summers are dry and hot but can be cooled down by the strong Mistral wind that blows from the north down the Rhône Valley.

Although it has not been officially certified organic, the vineyard has been farming organically for years. The Cuvée de Lopy is 75% Grenache, 25% Syrah from 55 to 65 year-old vines. Lopy is the name of the farm where the owner, Serge Férigoule, was born. After being manually harvested, the grapes are fermented using indigenous yeasts and then aged in large 450-liter barrels. The wine is unfined and unfiltered.

The wine was dark, rich, dense and amazingly fresh at the same time thanks to its high acidity. It was also perfectly balanced leaving a layered finish of wild berries, spices, and licorice. It was aso the perfect wine for a chilly evening. Try it with a Provençal Daube and don't forget the orange peel, that's the dish's secret ingredient!

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A festive dinner at Manresa

2011-12-27T18:30:00.001-08:00

Just before the holidays, we went to Manresa in Los Gatos to celebrate my son's birthday. We took the seasonal tasting menu —highly recommended to us— that consists of 7 savory and 2 dessert courses and is the best showcase for the inventive cuisine of Chef David Kinch. It is also quite adventurous: only the ingredients are listed so you don't know ahead of time what each course would be like.

Chef David Kinch's cuisine speaks of who we are and where we are located and many products are produced at Love Apple Farms in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Owner and farmer Cynthia Sandberg uses biodynamic and organic principles to grow fruits, vegetables, herbs and edible flowers, and produce eggs, honey, and goat's milk. The Love Apple Farms produces were perfectly showcased by one of our favorite courses, “A walk through the vegetable garden”, a colorful alchemy of bitter leaves, sweet flowers, raw and cooked root vegetables with multiple dressings hidden under the leaves, some more citrusy, some more vinegary.

A walk through the vegetable garden

The next course reached even higher heights. Called “The Midwinter Tide Pool”, it was a bowl of rich broth that contained seaweed, clams, sea urchin, enoki mushrooms and the ultimate savory deliciousness, a thin slice of foie gras.

The Midwinter Tide Pool

I am not a dessert person but our second dessert was also one of my favorite. It was a mushroom ice cream with maple syrup, cinnamon chips and a small crispy churro. The dish was sweet and savory at the same time and full of umami flavors.

Mushroom ice cream with maple syrup, cinnamon chips and churro

The wine list has a nice focus on the Santa Cruz Mountains. We chose a 2006 Mount Eden Estate Bottled Pinot Noir from the nearby Mount Eden Vineyards. Located on a 2000 foot peak about 15 miles from the Pacific Ocean, the winery was founded in 1945 by pioneer winemaker Martin Ray who planted his first vineyard of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay there. Today, seven acres of the estate vineyard are planted with Pinot Noir. The wine is fermented using natural yeasts and matures for eighteen months in French oak barrels (75% new). The wine showed a medium red color with fragrant aromas of forest berries, spices and earth on the nose. On the palate it was all about elegance, medium-bodied with a smooth texture and a savory earthy finish that went wonderfully well with David Kinch's alchemy.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Invite Austria to your Thanksgiving table

2011-11-21T16:28:00.000-08:00

Finding the perfect wine that can go with all the rich flavors found on the Thanksgiving menu, the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, the cranberries, and the various side dishes, can be challenging. Nonetheless, I think that a wine that is bright and fruity, and not too tannic nor alcoholic, is always a great choice. So when I recently tasted the 2009 Juris St. Laurent Selection, I thought that this year, it was time to invite Austria to our Thanksgiving table.

Owned by the Stiegelmar family, Juris farms 17 hectares of vineyards in the Neusiedlersee wine region, half way between Vienna and Budapest. This is the warmest part of Austria with climatic conditions well suited to red varieties, which explains the winery's special focus on St Laurent and Pinot Noir wines.

The Stiegelmar family has been cultivating grapes in this area since the 16th century. One of the winery's underground cellars was built in 1756, Mozart's birth year. It was dug 52 meters long, 12 meters below the surface, and maintains a stable temperature of 10°C (50°F).

But over the past 10 years, Axel Stiegelmar and his father Georg have developed a modern winery. The transport of grapes, mash, must, and wine is done predominantly through gravity to avoid damage by careless transport. The storage building is Austria's first passive energy wine storage facility. The building, neither heated nor cooled by fossil or electric energy, has various temperature and humidity zones to provide optimal storage conditions for different wines at different stages of their production.

The underground cellars

St. Laurent is a red grape of mysterious origins. It is said to belong to the Pinot family, although its exact ancestry remains unclear. It is an early ripening grape variety, sensitive to frost, sunburn, and botrytis. The name comes from Saint Laurent's name day on August 10, which is when the veraison of the grape occurs.

If the wine had the bright acidity of a Pinot Noir, it was spicy like a Syrah. It showed a very dark color with aromas of black cherries, moka, and gamey notes. On the palate, it was quite smooth and tasty with maybe a hint of sweet chestnut on the finish.

Last year's turkey

Cross-posted from bluedanubewine.com/blog

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Special aviation wines for the Blue Angels Air Show

2011-10-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, we were invited to a wine tasting party while watching the Blue Angels Air Show, a spectacular aerial show and a tradition in San Francisco since 1981. We were asked to bring a bottle of wine that had some connection with aviation, which was a fun exercise because in addition to tasting the wines, this theme prompted discussion about how the wines were related to planes and pilots.

We started with the 2004 Goldeneye Pinot Noir Anderson Valley. That one was easy: everybody remembered how in Goldeneye, James Bond escapes Soviet guards with a free fall jump off a cliff into an unmanned plane, miraculously gaining control of it and avoiding a crash into the nearby mountain.

The Goldeneye Winery is owned by Duckhorn Vineyard and has been producing Pinot Noir from the Anderson Valley AVA since 1997. The wine is a blend of grapes from four estate vineyards, covering a wide range of microclimates with more than 20 distinctive clones. The wine had a big California style, lush on the palate with ripe berry flavors and hints of pumpkin pie spice on the finish.

Then we tasted the 2004 Château Malescot Saint-Exupéry, a Third Growth in the Margaux Appellation. Château Malescot Saint-Exupéry got its first name from Simon Malescot, King's Counsel to Louis XIV at the Parliament of Bordeaux, who bought the estate in 1697. Then later in 1827, it was acquired by Comte Jean-Baptiste Saint Exupéry, who renamed the property Malescot Saint-Exupéry. So what's the wine's connection with aviation? Antoine de Saint Exupéry, pioneer aviator and famous writer, was actually the grandson of Jean-Baptiste.

The wine is a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot. It had a dense, blackberry nose with some coffee notes, quite chewy on the palate with a well-balanced finish. A promising wine but much too young to be drunk now.

Our third wine was the 2005 Silverado Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Solo Stags Leap District. First, we thought of solo flight, but after some discussions, we found that Solo had even more connections to flying, including Han Solo, famous captain of the Millennium Falcon.

Silverado Vineyards was established in 1981 by the Miller family. They named the winery Silverado, after the abandoned mining camp in the Mayacamas Mountains, where Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon in the early summer of 1880.

The Solo Cabernet Sauvignon is made from 100% Cabernet grapes grown in the estate Stags Leap Vineyard, surrounding the winery. It was a powerful wine with aromas of blackberries and oak and a big finish.

We ended the tasting with a vertical tasting of ZD Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon: 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003.

Nobody knew that ZD stands for the initials of the names of the founders Gino Zepponi and Norman deLeuze, two former aerospace engineers. It also stands for Zero Defects, a quality control program that originated in the aerospace industry.

The ZD Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon is a blend of several Napa Valley lots, with ZD's organically farmed Rutherford Estate used as the backbone. The 2000 was the first vintage to open up, with an expansive nose and ripe fruit aromas. The 2001 was tighter and more subdued at the beginning but it eventually surpassed the 2000 with aromas of blackberries, moka, and licorice, a firm, well-balanced backbone, and a full-flavored finish. It ended up being my favorite. The 2002 was not as good and a bit off balanced. The 2003 was young, bright, and fruity but without the complexity of the 2001.

And above our heads, the Blue Angels were flying.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Prohibition through Ken Burns' lens

2011-10-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

Last week I watched Ken Burns' five-and-a-half-hour three-part documentary on Prohibition, the so-called “Noble Experiment” and one of the country's biggest civic failures.

I like Ken Burns' work, especially his Jazz series, and Prohibition didn't disappoint me. I already knew some of the causes that led to the passage of the 18th Amendment: the force of the Temperance Movement and how its leaders were also pushing for women's rights, how the passing of the income tax amendment made Prohibition fiscally feasible, and the strange alliance of militant suffragettes with white supremacists to ban alcohol use.

But there were some other facts that I was not aware of, like the vilification of German-Americans —which included most of the large brewery owners— when the US entered World War I. And I didn't realize that women, after lobbying so hard for prohibition, became so pivotal in the effort to repeal it.

Pauline Sabin, a wealthy heiress from a Republican family, initially supported prohibition, but as crime increased, her criticism of the 18th Amendment grew slowly. At some point, she realized that “In pre-prohibition days, mothers had little fear in regard to the saloon as far as their children were concerned. A saloon-keeper's license was revoked if he were caught selling liquor to minors. Today in any speakeasy in the United States you can find boys and girls in their teens drinking liquor, and this situation has become so acute that the mothers of the country feel something must be done to protect their children.”

She founded the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform in 1929. Four years later, the 18th Amendment, was repealed.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Pupusas from El Salvador and a good Pinot from the Santa Cruz Mountains

2011-09-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

The other day, we were invited to a Pupusas party, one of the guests' mother being from El Salvador and a great cook. The pupusa is El Salvador's national dish, made of thick corn tortillas typically filled with cheese, pork, and beans and cooked on a griddle.

Freshly made and still hot from the skillet, it is really tasty but what to drink with it besides beer? Actually we found that Pinot Noir was a pretty good choice, especially if you avoided the extra spicy salsa.

We tasted the 2003 Muccigrosso Pinot Noir Santa Cruz Mountains from Muccigrosso Vineyards, a small family-run winery in Los Gatos, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The owners, Michael and Lynne Muccigrosso, planted their first vines in 1983 and bottled their first vintage in 2000. Now they produce 800 to 1000 cases per year of Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, and a Syrah-Sangiovese blend called Table Two. The 2003 Pinot Noir was crafted by Jacob Kauffman, a yound talented winemaker who had gained his experience at near-by David Bruce Winery but who sadly passed away 2 years ago.

The wine had a bright garnet color and perfumed nose of sweet berries and violets. On the palate, it was medium-bodied with a good structure, elegant with a good amount of earthiness on the finish. Quite comforting, like the pupusas.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Something new and creative: a Metro Wine Map of France

2011-09-16T15:01:00.000-07:00

Do you know that it's only in 1931 that the first schematic subway map was designed by English engineering draftsman Harry Beck? Before that, we had route maps that were solely based on geography. They were lacking clarity and had many overcrowded areas. Schematic maps are based on topology and therefore show a simplified, hightly stylized network of stations that is much easier to understand.

So can we apply the same logic to wine regions and appellations to simplify and clarify regional and geographical concepts to beginners? Dr. David Gissen, professor at the California College of the Arts, thinks so and has recently published a Metro Wine Map of France.

Dr. David Gissen is a historian and theorist of architecture and urbanism but he is also a wine lover who, after drinking a bottle of 2009 Morgon Domaine Lapierre at Chez Panisse, wanted to learn more about wine and its relationship with particular philosophies and places.

In a recent interview, Gissen explains what motivated him to design his Metro map.

“I was just very frustrated with the fact that some basic ideas about the relationships between wine and geography that seemed so simple to me, after my own tastings, were not actually expressed simply anywhere. Part of the problem is the way the geographical description of French wine relies on a very literal languages of maps. What I mean by that is that if you look at almost any book on French wine, the maps look like the kind of thing that an explorer would use. They're extremely literal, cartographic views, so that all the regions are drawn with very precise jagged-line boundaries, and you're supposed to understand that this particular terroir stops just below this particular Autoroute in France, for example, and so on.”

“My feeling was that you could explain some very basic geographical ideas and principles about French wine if you used a visual language that was relational and condensed. To me, that means the language of the subway map.”

If you want to find the “best subway stop from which to embark on your own journey of wine exploration”, you can get the map here. And if you want to learn more about Gissen's interesting perspectives on concrete vinification, wine glass shapes, terroir, and the re-framing of wine using an urban aesthetics, read the full interview.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Hiking Mount Baldy and an ice-cold Coors Light after that

2011-09-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

It was hot last weekend in Los Angeles when we dropped our daugther off at college so we decided to find some cool mountain breeze at the top of the 10,068 ft Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains.

An old ski chair lift from the 50s took us to the small Mount Baldy ski resort and from there we took the Devil's Backbone trail that goes up to the top of Mount Baldy with amazing views of L.A. on one side and the desert on the other side.

After the hike, we stopped at the Top of the Notch, the resort's restaurant, feeling hot and sweaty. The temperature was still in the mid-90s.

”What's the coldest drink you have?“ We asked the waitress at the bar. ”Coors Light“ she said witout hesitation, taking two frosty mugs from under the bar. I don't usually drink Coors Light but this time, I could not resist. As I took the first sip of my beer, I thought this was the best thing I ever drank. It was so refreshing, with a clean, mildly sweet taste, and for sure it quenched our thirst.

The Devil's Backbone trail

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A Jasnières at a one-star restaurant in Blois

2011-08-16T14:59:00.000-07:00

When we left the Dordogne, we stopped over in Blois where we ate at a small and charming Michelin one-star restaurant called Au Rendez-Vous des Pêcheurs. The restaurant occupies an old grocery in a 16th-century house not very far from the chateau, and specializes in seafood and regional cuisine with local products from the Loire Valley.

We drank a delicious 2006 Jasnières Les Vignes de L'Ange Vin Le Charme du Loir, a wine from Jasnières, a small appellation located on clay/limestone hillsides thick with flint stones along the Loir River (a tributary of the Loire River). The area is the most northerly wine-growing region of the Loire Valley and is therefore distinctly colder. The wines are all dry white wines produced from Chenin Blanc grapes.

Les Vignes de L'Ange Vin was founded by Jean-Pierre Robinot, who used to run a wine bistro in Paris called L'Ange Vin for nearly 15 years. L'Ange Vin means angel wine but it is also a play on words with Angevin, a term that applies to the residents of the Anjou region and its capital Angers. Jean-Pierre Robinot is an ambitious winemaker that practices natural farming and winemaking. The white wines (70% of the production) are pressed very slowly and raised on the lees in oak barrels for at least 12 months. Minimal sulfur is added.

The wine had a light yellow color and a nose of citrus and white flowers. On the palate, it had a bright acidity, lots of minerality and a touch of honey. The wine was more crisp than a Vouvray or a Savenières but had plenty of character that highlighted well the flavors of the food.

Carrot Mousse and Mushroom Flan

Crayfish Stuffed Zucchini Flower

Bass topped with Sweetbreads

Strawberry Soup

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure in Bergerac

2011-08-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I was in the Dordogne for our biennial family reunion. This region, located in southwest France and east of Bordeaux, is I think, one of the best spots in France for a family vacation. There are hundreds of prehistoric caves, more than 1500 castles and plenty of medieval villages to explore. The region is also famous for its local specialities including foie gras, duck confit, duck magret, and truffles. And of course, there is wine.

The Bergerac wine region lies along the Dordogne river and is the biggest appellation in the south west of France, producing red, dry white, and sweet white wines. The grapes growing in the region are similar to the Bordeaux varieties but the local climate is more continental and less influenced by the Atlantic ocean. Winters are mild and summers are long and can be very hot with occasional storms and showers.

Vineyards in the Bergerac Appellation

During the week that I spent in the area, I had the opportunity to visit the Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure. It is a family owned estate growing grapes in the Bergerac, Pécharmant, and Monbazillac appellations. The name of the domain refers to the old presbytery that Hélène and Gaston Roche bought in 1946 in the small village of Colombier, several kilometers from the town of Bergerac. They were mainly growers at the time, sending most of their grapes to the local cooperative. In 1984, their son Christian Roche inherited part of the family property and built its own winery to become an independent winemaker. Since 2009, the estate has been converting to organic viticulture.

Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure

At the domaine, we were warmly welcomed by a friendly and knowledgeable staff. We sat at the large farmhouse table in the middle of the tasting room and spent two hours tasting and talking about the estate production. The winery makes dry white, sweet white and red wines in three different lines: Jour de Fruit for fruit-forward, ready-to-drink wines, L'Abbaye for more concentrated, age-worthy wines, and the top of the line, L'Extase.

We tasted the following wines:

• 2009 Bergerac Sec Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure L'Abbaye: 30% Sauvignon Blanc, 20% Muscadelle, 25% Sémillon, and 25% Sauvignon Gris. Sauvignon Gris is a rare grape variety on the brink of extinction that has been revived recently in Bordeaux and in the south west. Manual harvest, aged 9 months in barrel, 30% new. My notes: deep golden color, sweet floral nose. On the palate much drier than it smells, peach, tropical fruit aromas, creamy mouthfeel.

• 2008 Bergerac Sec Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure L'Extase: 45% Sauvignon blanc, 35 % Sémillon, 20 % Muscadelle. Manual harvest, 60% new oak barrels. My notes: deep golden color, intense nose, lots of freshness on the palate with additional citrus notes, great balance between acidity and richness.

The red wines

• 2008 Pécharmant Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure Collection: Pécharmant is a small appellation on the north bank of Bergerac. The name means charming hill, pech coming from the occitan word puèg which means hill and charmant meaning charming. The wine is a blend of 50% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Cabernet Franc. Aged 18 months in new oak barrels. My notes: dark color, blackberry nose, very young, still tight and not really "made" yet (with the fruit on one side and the oak on the other side), age-worthy.

• 2005 Bergerac Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure L'Extase: 50% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Cabernet Franc. Grapes are harvested very ripe on calcareous soils and with more acidity on clay soils. Aged 19 months in new oak barrels. My notes: deep color, gamey aromas, ripe blackberries, jammy, quite silky on the palate, fine tannins, good acidity, age-worthy.

The sweet Monbazillac wines

• 2009 Monbazillac Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure Jour de Fruit: the wines of Monbazillac were already well-known in France in the 14th century but were discovered by the Dutch in the 17th century during the Wars of Religion when many Protestants from the Bergerac area emigrated to Holland. Like nearby Sauternes, the wine is issued from Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle grapes harvested by hand when the grapes are affected by the noble rot or botrytis cinerea. The wine is a blend of 90% Sémillon, 10% Muscadelle. My notes: light golden color, floral nose. On the palate, light-bodied, sweet and fresh without been sirupy, nice citrus on the finish, good acidity, great with foie gras.

• 2003 Monbazillac Domaine de L'Ancienne Cure L'Extase: 90% Sémillon, 10% Muscadelle. Careful selection of the best berries, aged in new oak barrels. My notes: deep amber color, powerful nose of madarin orange. On the palate, very rich, sweet, long finish.

Showing the different amounts of botrytised fruit used in the Jour de Fruit and Extase cuvées

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

More interesting summer whites from Spain, Portugal, and Hungary

2011-06-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

At last month's Port4lio Tasting in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to taste some delicious white wines made from uncommon grapes. Here are the three that I found the most distinctive:

• 2010 Raventós i Blanc Silencis: the wine is 100% Xarel-lo, a Spanish grape variety from Catalonia. Although Xarel-lo is mainly used with Macabeu and Parellada in Cava production, it is sometimes used alone in still wines. Located in the Penedès wine region, south west of Barcelona, Bodegas Raventós i Blanc was founded in 1986 by Josep Raventós Blanc, a member of the Codorníu family. The family-run, quality-oriented winery owns 90 acres of vineyards, planted mostly to local varieties such as Macabeo, Xarel-lo, and Parellada, on rocky, chalky soil high in limestone content (like Champagne). The wine has a pale yellow color and a mineral nose of crushed seashells. On the palate, it is dry and quite earthy with a long distinctive finish.

• 2010 Trajarinho Vinho Verde: the wine is a blend of Trajadura and Alvarinho, two native grape varietals of the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, they are mainly found in the Vinho Verde region in the northern part of the country. Low in alcohol (11.5%), the wine has a light golden color and an attractive floral nose. On the palate, it is rather dry, slightly fizzy with lemon aromas and a refreshing finish.

• 2009 Bott Hárslevelu Határi: Hárslevelu is generally blended with Furmint to produce Tokaji Aszú in the Tokaj-Hegyalja region of Hungary but in this wine, it is vinified as a pure varietal dry wine. Határi is one of the top vineyards in Tokaj and the small, family-run Bott winery maintains 1.5 ha of vines there, planted on a rocky, volcanic terraced slope. The wine has a light yellow color and an unusual nose of aromatic herbs (thyme, rosemary). On the palate, it has a great mid-palate mouthfeel with notes of rose petal on the finish.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Looking for a fresh summer wine? Try Soave

2011-06-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

May was Soave Month in New York so as part of the promotion program, I received a couple of wine samples from Colangelo & Partners.

Maybe Italy's best wines are red but I really like its white wines, especially those that are fresh, crisp, fruity, as well as delicious with food.

Soave is (with Pinot Grigio) one of Italy's most popular white wines. It comes from the Veneto region in the northeast corner of Italy, the country's third biggest wine producer. The Soave growing area is situated in the hills east of Verona and is characterized by volcanic soils particularly rich in minerals. Garganega is Soave's principal grape variety and Italy's 6th most widely planted white grape.

We first tasted the 2009 Il Casale Soave Classico produced by Azienda Agricola Le Albare. Le Albare is a small 6.5 hectare family estate planted with 100% Garganega grapes. it was founded at the turn of the 20th century by Adam Posenato, current winemaker Stefano Posenato's great-grandfather. The wine had a light golden color and a quite stony nose. On the palate, it was light-bodied with a crisp minerality and notes of citrus on the finish.

We actually prefered our second sample, the 2009 Re Midas Soave. The wine is produced by Cantina di Soave, a cooperative founded in 1898 and made up of 2,200 winegrowers and farmers with currently 6,000 hectares under vine. The wine was named after Re (King) Midas who wished that everything he touched would turn to gold. Re Midas vineyards are located on the hillsides in the village of Soave at elevations between 100 and 350 meters. The wine is 100% Garganega aged 3 months in stainless steel followed by 1 month in bottle before release. it had a pale yellow color and a spicy nose with a touch of honey. On the palate, it was fuller and rounder than the Il Casale with aromas of fresh white peach. It was actually a very good accompaniment for our Cod with Lentils.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

The wines of Slovenian producer Kabaj: intertwining modernity with tradition

2011-06-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to Port4lio at the historic Fort Mason firehouse in San Francisco, an annual tasting event featuring wines imported by Blue Danube Wine Company, Return to Terroir, and Vinos Unico. This year, the event prominently featured French winemaker Jean-Michel Morel presenting his Slovenian wines for the first time in the US.

Jean-Michel Morel of Kabaj winery

With his wife Katja Kabaj, Jean-Michel Morel is the owner of Kabaj, a winery located in Goriška Brda, a wine-growing region in western Slovenia, near the Italian border. It was one of the first regions in Slovenia to establish an international reputation for the quality of its wines. Thanks to the Adriatic sea, the area enjoys a Mediterranean climate with constant dry winds called "Bura" that reduces the need for fungicides and pesticides. The soil is principally composed of ocean sediment and is rich in marlstone, slate claystone, and limestone.

The Kabaj family has farmed vineyards in Goriška Brda for generations and used to sell their grapes to the Yugoslav state. But in the early 1990s, Katja Kabaj and Jean-Michel Morel decided to release their own wines under the Kabaj family name. They own 55,000 vines farmed sustainably and fertilized with horse manure, 70% of which are white varieties, including indigenous Rebula (Ribolla Gialla), Sauvignonasse (Tokai Fruilano), and Malvasia Istriana. Red grape varieties are also grown, mostly Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot. The winery has a modern cellar built a few years ago.

I tasted the folowing wines:

• 2008 Kabaj Sivi Pinot: 100% Pinot Grigio, aged 12 months in French oak barrel, followed by 4 months in bottle. Yellow color, floral acacia nose, medium bodied on the palate, less acidic than a Italian Pinot Grigio.

• 2008 Kabaj Ravan: 100% Tokai Fruilano also known as Sauvignon Vert or Sauvignonasse, a grape variety believed to have originated in the Veneto region. Aged 12 months in French oak barrel, followed by 4 months in bottle. Yellow color, floral nose, soft on the palate with fresh peach aromas.

• 2008 Kabaj Rebula: 100% Ribolla Gialla, a white grape variety mostly found in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region of northeast Italy and in Slovenia where it has been grown since the 13th century. The wine is fermented on the skins for 30 days then aged 12 months in French oak barrel, followed by 4 months in bottle. Golden color, aromatic nose of herbs and mineral notes. Quite spicy and complex on the palate. My favorite among the whites.

• 2006 Kabaj Cuvée Morel: 60% Merlot, 18% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Cabernet Franc, and 4% Petit Verdot. Aged 36 months in French oak barrels then 4 months in bottles. Dark garnet color, nose of dry herbs, medium-bodied, some tannins on the palate, needs to open up.

• 2007 Kabaj Merlot: 100% Merlot. Aged 24 months in French oak barrels then 4 months in bottles. Dark color, aromatic nose, aromas of blackberries and cherries, medium-bodied, quite dry with some tannins. Not jammy at all but more fruity than the Cuvée Morel, very food friendly.

The last 3 wines of the tasting were the most interesting and intriguing. They were vinified and aged in 3000 liter clay jars buried underground called kvevri, using ancient Georgian winemaking practices. After being aged in the jars for 10 months on the skins, the wine goes without the skins into oak barrels for 12 months and aged for 12 additional months in bottle. During aging, 25% of the wine is usually lost to evaporation.

• 2005 Kabaj Amfora: dark yellow color, floral nose, concentrated and tight on the palate, not really fruity, rather spicy and quite complex.

• 2006 Kabaj Amfora: much more open than the 2005. Nice floral nose and additional notes of peach and apricots. Quite distinguished and really delicious.

• 2007 Kabaj Amfora: more austere than the 2006, similar in style to the 2005.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Osso Buco and a Super Tuscan for dinner

2011-05-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

The other day, I found some veal shanks at the store and decided to make Osso Buco, a dish where the veal is braised in wine, tomatoes, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and herbs for at least 2-3 hours. The result is a full-flavored stew that calls for a rich and tasty Italian wine so I chose a 2007 Antinori Il Bruciato Bolgheri to accompany the Osso Buco.

Bolgheri is a wine region located on the southern coast of Tuscany and well known for its red Bordeaux style wines also called Super Tuscans. Thanks to a unique combination of sandy-clay soils, a sunny, dry, and moderately windy microclimate, and the effects of a maritime influence, Bordeaux grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot, tend to thrive there. Before the creation in 1994 of the Bolgheri Rosso and Rosso Superiore DOCs (Denominazione di origine controllata), the Super Tuscans of the area—wines of high quality but made outside DOC/DOCG regulations—were typically sold under the simpler designations Vino da tavola or IGT Toscana.

Il Bruciato is produced by Guado al Tasso, Antinori's Bolgheri estate located on the coast, 96km (60 miles) south-west of Florence. The wine is a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 20% Syrah and other black varieties. Fermented in stainless steel, it was then racked off into oak barrels, where it aged for 8 months before being bottled.

The wine had a dark red color and an aromatic nose of moka, licorice, and black fruits. On the palate, it was full-bodied with a juicy mouthfeel and a smooth earthy finish. The wine was quite tasty and I thought my Osso Buco that I served with Polenta was quite tasty too!

Osso Buco with Polenta

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Pinot Noir doesn't need to be that expensive to be good

2011-05-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

It is true that Pinot Noir is one of the most expensive wine varietals. It is quite famous for being difficult to cultivate. The vines are not very vigorous and the berries have a very thin skin, which makes them especially prone to fungal infections. It is also one of the most troublesome wines to ferment, as its fermentation is fast and dificult to keep under control.

But if you're looking for a well priced and well crafted Pinot Noir, try the the 2007 Saintsbury Pinot Noir Garnet Los Carneros.

Founded in 1981 by winemakers Richard Ward and David Graves, Saintsbury Vineyards was named after English writer George Saintsbury, perhaps best remembered today for his Notes on a Cellar-Book (published in 1920). That collection of tasting notes and personal observations is one of the first books on wine written in English. The Saintsbury Club, a prestigious London dining club that still meets twice a year, was founded in 1930 in Saintsubry's honor.

The winery has been producing Garnet, an affordable and early-drinking style of Pinot, since 1983. It is made from Pinot Noir grown in the Los Carneros appellation, an area much cooler and windier than the wine regions further north in Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley. After the wines have spent a few months in barrel, the lots selected to become Garnet are assembled and the wine is bottled in early summer.

The wine shows a bright medium red color and a nose of violet and black cherry. On the palate, it is medium-bodied, quite juicy, and very refreshing. It is perfect to accompany grilled fish on the barbecue. Try it with Grilled Fish with Orange-Fennel Salsa.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A very royal British wedding - in Menlo Park, CA

2011-05-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

A week ago, we were invited to the wedding of a British friend in Menlo Park, California. Although Menlo Park is not Buckingham Palace, the reception was a royal treat. The bride and groom were totally charming, the location stunning, the ceremony very moving, the eight course Chinese banquet exquisite, and I had the honor of selecting some California wines for the reception and dinner.

Our first wine was the 2009 Stuhlmuller Estate Chardonnay Alexander Valley. Stuhlmuller Vineyards is located at the southern edge of the Alexander Valley, just north of the Russian River Valley appellation. The 150-acre estate vineyard borders the Russian River and has a predominance of alluvial gravel-type soils as well as some rocky soils in the hillside sections of the vineyard. The wine was fermented with 100% indigenous yeasts. Aging occurred in both barrels (94%) and larger casks (6%), all of which were French oak (8% new). 85% of the wine underwent indigenous malolactic fermentation.

The wine had a bright nose of citrus and stone fruit. On the palate, it was crisp, elegant with a distinct mineral quality. The wine worked really well with the various hors d'oeuvres as well as with our first course, the crisp Tempura Tiger Prawns served over a bed of spring mix salad.

Tempura Tiger Prawn Salad

There was a second Chardonnay for the remaining courses, the 2009 Crossbarn Chardonnay Sonoma Coast. Crossbarn is winemaker Paul Hobbs' second label. The wine was produced from selected vineyards within the Sonoma Coast appellation. 60% of the wine was fermented in tank, 40% in oak barrels using native and commercial yeasts. It was aged five months in French oak barrels where it underwent malolactic fermentation.

The wine had a nose of spiced apple and pear. On the palate, it was quite full and nutty with a creamy texture. Quite a typical California Chardonnay and a good accompaniment to the moist and flaky Baked Honey Glazed Soy Sea Bass.

Baked Honey Glazed Soy Sea Bass

Our red wine was the 2008 Chappellet Mountain Cuvée. The Chappellet Winery is located in Napa Valley, in the eastern hills between Yountville and St. Helena. It has been producing wines since 1967 and was one of the first wineries to be established in the Napa Valley after Prohibition. Mountain Cuvée is a winemaker's blend of Bordeaux varietals made for early consumption. It is 52% Cabernet Sauvignon, 43% Merlot, 3% Petit Verdot, 1% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Malbec.

The wine had a nose of dark fruit and coffee. On the palate, it was medium to full-bodied, with a round mouthfeel and a well balanced finish. It was very food friendly and worked particularly well with the Skaking Filet Mignon, cubes of filet mignon sautéed with lemongrass, onions, and garlic.

Skaking Filet Mignon

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Bordeaux tasting from the Right Bank and a couple of dry whites

2011-04-22T15:37:00.000-07:00

The terms Left Bank and Right Bank refer to the banks of the Gironde river that flows through Bordeaux into the Atlantic Ocean. The Left Bank includes the Médoc appellation and its sub-appellations (Pauillac, Saint Estèphe, Saint Julien, Margaux etc.). On the Right Bank, we have Pomerol and Saint Emilion surrounded by their lesser-known (and generally less expensive) satellite appellations such as Lussac-Saint-Émilion, Lalande de Pomerol, Fronsac, and Côtes-de-Castillon.

Bordeaux Wine Region

The left and right banks are quite different in terms of terroir. On the left side of the river, the soil is mostly composed of alluvial gravel deposits. It is well drained and holds the heat well, which makes it ideal for Cabernet Sauvignon. On the right side, the soil contains clay enriched with iron, limestone and sandy gravels, which suits Merlot particularly well. Therefore, Right Bank wines have a much higher percentage of Merlot in their blend, which makes them more fruit forward with less tannins. They are also more approachable when young.

Our latest tasting included Right Bank wines from Lalande de Pomerol, Côtes de Castillon, Fronsac, and Saint Emilion. We also tasted two dry whites. Dry whites from Bordeaux are not as well known as their red counterparts and the region produces only a small quantity of dry whites from blends of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle. Graves is the most well-known region for producing dry whites and the only one that includes them in its classification.

Here are the wines that we tasted:

• 2006 Château Carbonnieux Blanc: Located just ten miles from Bordeaux along the Garonne river, Château Carbonnieux was built in the late 14th Century by the Benedictine monks. It is a Grand Cru Classé in the Pessac-Léognan appellation producing both red and white wines. The planting is 65% Sauvignon Blanc, 34% Sémillon and 1% Muscadelle for the whites and 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc, 1% Malbec and 1% Petit Verdot for the reds. My notes: light golden color, nose of lemon and grapefruit, fresh and crisp on the palate, getting more complex with more time in the glass. A big favorite of the evening.

• 2005 Blanc de Lynch-Bages: Château Lynch-Bages was founded in the late 17th century by Irishman John Lynch. The estate is ranked a fifth grown in the 1855 classification but this only applies to the reds. It is located near the village of Bages, just southwest of Pauillac. The production is mostly red with a planting of 73% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot. There is also a 4.5 hectare plot planted with white varieties (40% Sémillon, 40% Sauvignon Blanc and 20% Muscadelle) that has been producing a white wine since 1990. My notes: unfortunately, I found one of the bottles oxydized. Light yellow color, stone fruits and honey on the nose, some thickness on the palate but not as good as the Carbonnieux.

• 2005 Château La Fleur de Boüard: Château La Fleur de Boüard was founded in 1998 by Hubert de Boüard, co-owner of Château Angélus, 1er Grand Cru Classé of Saint-Emilion. It is located in the Lalande de Pomerol appellation near the town of Néac, just at the border of the Pomerol appellation. The wine is a blend of 80% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc, and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. It was aged 18 to 24 months in oak barrels, 75% new. My notes: dark color, quite closed on the nose, medium bodied, tannic on the palate, cocoa flavors on the finish. This was our first red and I realized too late that I should have decanted it. I decanted the 4 remaining reds afterwards.

• 2005 Château de la Dauphine: the Dauphine is Marie-Josèphe de Saxe, daughter of King Augustus III of Poland and wife of dauphin Louis, son of Louis XV. She was also the mother of the last three kings of France, Louis XVI, Louis XVII, and Charles X. She lived in the Chateau around 1750. The estate has 31 producing hectares in the Fronsac appellation. The wine is a blend of 90 % Merlot and 10 % Cabernet Franc. My notes: dark color, nose of berries and tart cherries, medium bodied, well balanced, pleasant finish.

• 2005 Château Plaisance Cuvée Alix: Château Plaisance is an estate of around 40 hectares that has been run by Philippe Magrez of Grand Cru Classé Château Pape Clément since 2005. The vineyard is planted on a very steep south-facing hillside in the Premières Côtes de Bordeaux appellation. The soils are made up of white gravel at the top of the hill and red clay and limestone halfway down the slope. The blend is 75% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc. My notes: dark red color, gamey nose, round, spicy and meaty on the palate, mineral finish.

• 2005 Château Ferrand Lartigue: Château Ferrand Lartigue was founded in 1993 by Pierre and Michelle Ferrand. It is a 5 hectare estate classified Grand Cru in the Saint Emilion appellation. The wine is a blend of 85% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc. My notes: aromatic nose, earthy and smoky flavors on the palate, firm tannins, tasty.

• 2003 Château d'Aiguilhe: Stephan von Neipperg of Saint-Emilion Grand Cru Classé Château Canon La Gaffelière acquired Château d'Aiguilhe in 1998. The estate is located on hills overlooking the Right Bank of the Dordogne River, on the border between the Côtes de Castillon and Saint-Emilion appellations. The south-facing vineyard lies on the upper part of the hills and has excellent drainage. The blend is 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc. My notes: deep brick-tinged red color, assertive nose of raspberries and blackberries, still tight on the palate, full-bodied with multi-layered flavors, long finish. The big winner of the evening.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

My husband's Cailles en Sarcophage and a pretty good Burgundy

2011-04-05T16:08:00.001-07:00

Since we saw the movie Babette's Feast, my husband has been dreaming of reproducing Babette's masterpiece: the Cailles en Sarcophage Sauce Perigourdine (Quails in a Coffin, Truffle and Foie Gras Sauce).

So suddendly the other day, he was ready. He found a recipe on the internet, ordered a foie gras, and bought some quails and frozen puff pastry dough. He didn't have any truffles but decided to use a combination of mushrooms and truffle oil instead.

He deboned the birds, chopped the vegetables for the duxelle, sliced the foie gras, stuffed and roasted the birds, baked the puff pastry, and finally placed each quail in its coffin. The result was amazing: it really looked like the quails in the movie! And it tasted very yummy too! The birds were tender and juicy with earthy flavors and the puff pastry was light and flaky and not soggy at all. We also agreed that having a small piece of seared foie gras to accompany the quail would have been even better.

The stuffed uncooked quails

The quails in their coffins

A 1846 Clos de Vougeot is the wine featured in Babette's Feast. I didn't have a Clos de Vougeot in the cellar but I found a 2002 Vosnes-Romanée Premier Cru Les Suchots Maison Champy. The Vosnes-Romanée appellation is located south of Vougeot in the Côte de Nuits. The vineyard of “Les Suchots” is considered one of the finest of the Vosnes-Romanée Premier Crus, approaching grand cru level in quality. It is located on a mid slope in the Northern part of the village of Vosne-Romanée, near the famous “Echezeaux Grand Cru”.

The wine had a deep red color and a smoky nose of cherry, violet and spices. On the palate, it was medium-bodied, quite complex, with mouth-coating savory flavors and great finesse on the finish. I don't know about the Clos de Vougeot 1846 that Babette served with her quails but our Vosnes-Romanée 2002 was not bad at all.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Is organic wine greener?

2011-03-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

Is organic wine better for the environment than conventional wine? Slate contributor Brian Palmer wonders in his recent article.

Isn't the answer obvious? Conventional viticulture has serious environmental issues such as soil depletion, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and resistance to pests. On the other hand, organic viticulture produces crops that are healthier, more drought tolerant, more resistant to diseases and pests, and can better compete with weeds. But in reality, viticulture is only one of many factors that contribute to the environmental impact of a bottle of wine. Other major factors are winemaking practices, packaging, and shipping.

This interesting study attempts to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions of a bottle of wine and compares various production and transportation scenarios. It shows that the difference in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, between organic and conventional viticulture is relatively small, although this could change if the cost of fossil fuel increases in the future. The CO2 emissions that occur during fermentation are also small. They represent less than 3% of the overall amount of CO2 emissions for one bottle of wine. However, aging wine in oak barrels is more costly for the environment than aging in stainless steel tanks, especially if barrels are imported and new oak is used every year.

Actually, the study shows that the greatest impact on the greenhouse effect from the wine supply chain comes from transportation, and this includes the transport of empty bottles to the winery and full bottles to the customers. The cost tends to be much higher for these ultra premium wines in thick, oversized bottles. In fact, it is far more “green” to use boxed wines or Tetra Pak packaging.

If you live in New York, it is also greener to drink a bottle of wine from Bordeaux that has travelled in a container across the Atlantic than a wine from Napa that came across the country in a truck. Now, for us Californians, what is the price of enjoying a bottle of Bordeaux without being too bothered by our green conscience?

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

How to remove red wine stains

2011-03-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

At our last wine tasting event, one of our guests had some red wine spilled on his shirt. This is quite unfortunate but these kinds of incidents do happen so is there a safe way to remove red wine stains without damaging the fabric?

After a little bit of internet search, I found several effective methods that can be used depending on where you are (at home, in a restaurant) and what you have immediately within reach.

First of all, red wine stains need to be taken care of right away before they set. So check the label. If it is dry clean only, take the garment as fast as you can to the cleaners.

Otherwise, the idea is to dilute the stain's red pigmentation. One way is to blot the stain with a mixture of laundry soap and hydrogen peroxide. But test one small area first to make sure it does not discolor the fabric. Don't rub it, this would set the stain deeper within the fabric.

Another method is to blot the stain with club soda and let it bubble up. White wine can also be used because it dilutes the wine's red pigments. Surprisingly, milk is good too because it contains some enzymes that can discolor the stain. Allow the milk to remain on the stain for a good amount of time.

Following a different strategy, you can try to immediately absorb most of the stain with salt, cornstarch, talcum powder, or even baking soda. Once you have blotted as much of the stain, gently brush the powder off from the fabric.

How to Remove Red Wine from Fabric

Red Wine Stain Removal Methods

How to Get Rid of Red Wine Stains

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A hearty Sauerkraut with some wines from Eastern Europe

2011-03-10T15:52:00.000-08:00

A little while ago, we had a small gathering at my house to taste some Eastern European wines around a sauerkraut dish cooked with carrots, onions, apples, riesling, and juniper berries, and accompanied by braised pork chops, sausages, and potatoes. Most of our wines came from Austria, a major producer of aromatic dry white wines made mostly from the local Grüner Veltliner grape, although red wine production accounts for 30% of all Austrian wines. We also had a red wine from Slovenia, a country that has been producing wine since the time of the prehistoric Celts. Finally, we ended that excellent evening with a Tokay from Hungary, a wine that is believed to be the world's oldest botrytis wine.

We had our first wine, the 2008 Bäuerl Stein am Rain Grüner Veltliner Federspiel with an appetizer of hungarian peppers. Grüner Veltliner is the most widely planted grape variety in Austria. Grüner means green in German as the grape tends to produce fresh and youthful wines. It grows well along the Danube river on steep, rocky river banks, as steep as those found in the Mosel wine region.

Weingut Bäuerl is located in the Wachau, the part of the Danube valley between the village of Melks and Krems and one of Austria's westernmost wine-growing regions. The estate grows only white varieties: Grüner Veltliner (55%), Riesling (35%) and Muskateller (10%), and practices organic and sustainable viticulture. My notes: medium golden color, nose of green apple, pear, and honey. On the palate, smooth, juicy, and quite mineral. Good finish, nice appetite opener.

Hungarian Peppers

The next two wines were served with the sauerkraut. We started with the 2008 Heidi Schröck Ruster Furmint. Furmint is most widely grown in Hungary and is the main grape variety of Tokay, Hungary's famous dessert wine. It is also found in Austria's Burgenland, near the Hungarian border.

Heidi Schröck is a small 8 hectare estate located in Rust, Burgenland, on the west side of Neusiedlersee. Neusiedlersee or Lake Neusiedl is the second largest steppe lake in Central Europe at the border of Austria and Hungary. The lake stores heat and regulates the region's climate. Thanks to warm and humid autumns, it also provides the best conditions for the production of botrytized dessert wines. My notes: this Furmint is actually completely dry. The wine is crisp, mineral with aromas of ripe apple and spices. Very distinctive and quite popular with the dinner guests.

Also with the sauerkraut, we also tasted the 2007 Salomon Undhof Kögl Riesling. Founded in 1792, Salomon Undhof is a Wachau estate that produces white wines from the best terraced sites along the Danube River. The 25 hectares of Salomon Undhof's vineyards are planted with roughly half Riesling, half Grüner Veltliner. All the grapes are harvested traditionally by hand. Undhof Kögl is a south facing terraced single vineyard with highly weathered soil of crystalline schist bedrock. My notes: light color, acacia flowers, stone fruits on the nose. Dry, slightly fizzy on the palate, fresh and crisp with citrus flavors and spices on the finish. I thought it worked really well with the sauerkraut.

Our Sauerkraut

We had the next two reds with cheese and a berry pie. Our first red was the 2004 Wenzel Bandkraften Blaufränkisch. Weingut Wenzel is located in the Neusiedlersee-Hügelland wine-growing region. 60% of the 11 hectare vineyard is planted with the white varieties Furmint, Gelber Muskateller, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, and Welschriesling, the remaining 40% is planted with the red varieties Blaufränkisch, Pinot Noir, and Merlot. Blaufränkisch is the second most important red grape variety in Austria after Zweigelt. It produces spicy wines rich in tannins. My notes: medium red color. Mocha and vanilla aromas on the nose. Full-bodiedood with wood and black cherry on the palate. Not as easy to drink as the next wine.

Our second red was the 2007 Santomas Big Red Refosk. Located in the village of Smarje in Slovenian Istria, just southeast of Trieste, Santomas is a family-owned winery overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The area is the warmest wine region in Slovenia so the local wine production is mostly red. The winery currently farms 19 hectares of vineyards planted with traditional varieties like Refosco and Istrian Malvasia, as well as international grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Refosco is a Northern Italian red grape variety that mostly grows in Friuli, Gavi, and Trentino. In Slovenian Istria, it is also known as Refosk. The grape produce deep colored wines that can be quite powerful and tannic. My notes: dark purple color. Smoky nose with black cherry and blackberry aromas. Fruity with bright acidity on the palate. Quite popular with the cheese.

Our last wine was the 2001 Hétszölö Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos. The Tokaji wine region, in northeastern Hungary, is characterized by long, warm autumns and misty mornings that favor the development of noble rot. The botrytis-infected grapes called Aszú are harvested manually, one grape at a time. They are then crushed and added to a dry base wine. The proportion of Aszú grapes added to the base wine is measured in puttonyos or baskets. One puttony represents 30 kilos of grapes that are poured into a traditional 126 liter barrel of base wine. The number of puttonyos can vary from 3 to 6 (the highest being the sweetest). The wine is then aged for three years in oak barrels stored in underground cellars. My notes: the Aszú 5 Puttonyos is 90 to 100% Furmint and has a minimum of 120 g/l of residual sugar. Deep golden color. Fresh, fragrant nose of apricot and tropical fruit. On the palate, unctuous texture with lively acidity, zesty kumquat notes on the finish.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

The oldest winery in the world

2011-02-26T02:01:00.000-08:00

The oldest winery ever found is 6,100 years old. It was recently discovered inside a cave in Armenia, near the country's southern border with Iran. Archeologists were able to date the winemaking installation to approximately 4,100 BC. That's the Copper Age, a transitional period between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. In the cave, they found winemaking equipment, including a rudimentary wine press, a clay vat probably used for fermentation, a cup and drinking bowl, as well as remains of pressed grapes and grape must. They found no device to actually crush the grapes so they think that people stomped the grapes with their feet. The installation was surrounded by graves, which suggests that the wine may have had a ceremonial role.

After examining the seeds, paleobotanists were able to identify the grapes as vitis vinifera vinifera, which indicates that the winegrape had already been domesticated at the time. This is an important milestone in Human Evolution.

“Deliberate fermentation of carbohydrates into alcohol has been suggested as a possible factor that prompted the domestication of wild plants and the development of ceramic technology,” said Hans Barnard, one of the archaeologists who teaches in the UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Until now, the oldest wine production site was dated to around 3150 B.C. and was found in the tomb of Egyptian king Scorpion I.

You can read the whole article here, it's fascinating.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Pouilly-Fuissé, fresh and mineral

2011-02-11T15:16:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, Kobrand Corporation sent me a bottle of 2008 Pouilly-Fuissé Domaine J.A. Ferret.

The wine is 100% Chardonnay from a white wine appellation located in the Mâconnais in southern Burgundy. The region is best known for its wave-shaped hills above the Saône valley, rich in limestone mixed with clay, and particularly well-suited to the Chardonnay grape.

The 15 hectare Domaine J.A. Ferret lies at the heart of the appellation, in the village of Fuissé. Fonded in 1840, it was the first estate of the region to bottle its own wines. It also introduced the concepts of terroir delimitation and vinification of separate grape lots. Since 1993, it was owned and managed by Colette Ferret, the last in the family line. She died in 2007 and the estate was later sold to Maison Louis Jadot.

The 2008 Pouilly-Fuissé Domaine J.A. Ferret had a light golden color and a Chablis-like nose of crushed oyster shells and citrus. On the palate, it was medium-bodied, crisp, slightly creamy with a touch of oak, and a fresh, lemony finish.

It was a good accompaniment to the Sweet Potato, Mushroom and Spinach Gratin we had that evening, although I think it would have been even better with a fresh Dungeness Crab.

Our Sweet Potato, Mushroom and Spinach Gratin

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Do wine grapes need more sex?

2011-02-02T16:50:00.000-08:00

In a recent study, Sean Myles, a researcher at Cornell University working on the genetics of grapes, reveals that 75 percent of our 583 kinds of cultivated grapes are either parents, children, or siblings of each other. A graph of grape family relationships shows that for instance, Sauvignon Blanc is a parent of Cabernet Sauvignon and is also related to Traminer, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Muscat. The reason for this interrelatedness? Very little sex for the last 8,000 years.

The reality is that wine consumers are deeply attached to these traditional grape varieties and so most vineyards are planted with clones to make sure that the qualities of these varieties are preserved. However, the lack of grape diversity is worrisome. Vines have low resistance to many diseases and pests and farmers have to spray their vineyards with large amounts of fungicidal chemicals to protect them.

“We can't just go on using the same cultivars for the next thousand years”, says Dr Myles. To tackle this issue, his team has produced genomic maps of more than 1,000 samples, which link the presence of genetic markers to traits such as acidity, sugar content, or disease resistance.

“If you know the genetic markers associated with these traits, you can plant them out as seedlings, look at its DNA as soon as you get the first leaf tissue, and say for example 'we'll keep these five because we know their genetic profiles are associated with the traits we're interested in',” explains Dr Myles.

If we could identify and maintain the genes responsible for the taste of varieties like Chardonnay or Merlot, we could produce a wider variety of grapes that are resistant to disease and with the desired combination of traits. The new variety may not be Chardonnay but may taste like Chardonnay.

Genomically selected grape varieties may be ready sooner than you think.

See also New grapes needed to keep wine flowing.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

How Wine Became Modern at SFMOMA

2011-01-20T16:31:00.000-08:00

Last week I went to see “How Wine Became Modern: Design + Wine 1976 to Now” currently at SFMOMA. 1976 is of course the year of the Judgment of Paris, the legendary California vs. France tasting, which is showcased by a large floor-to-ceiling mural at the entrance of the exhibit.

Overall, the exhibit is more design than wine tasting, winemaking, and grape growing. One of the first galleries is about winery design, from traditional to ultra modern. The next room shows innovative glassware and decanter design, and an entire wall is covered with wine labels.

There are a few displays more dedicated to grapes and vines. At the “smell wall”, visitors can inhale from several flasks of wine and try to identify aromas like Riesling's petrol or Sauvignon Blanc's gooseberry. The terroir display introduces the concept of terroir with soil samples from famous vineyards around to the world. And there is a superb giant grapevine suspended in the air showing an extensive root system.

The popular media display shows how wine critics, magazines, and books have fashioned popular tastes. I even found my favorite manga there, Tadashi Agi's The Drops of God, the comic that has so drastically influenced wine sales in Japan and Korea.

The exhibit is fun to see but I also highly recommend the remarkable Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective on the museum's third floor. It is showing until the end of January.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Napa Cellars wines: tasty and well-priced

2011-01-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

Before the holidays I received four new release samples from Napa Cellars, sent to me by Balzac Communications. I thought these wines were pretty tasty, food-friendly, and really well-priced. For instance, you can currently find the 2009 Napa Valley Chardonnay for $13.99 at Bevmo.

Although Chardonnay is the winery's most popular varietal, Napa Cellars produces wines from seven varieties including Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Syrah. Grapes are sourced from different areas of the Napa Valley, and lots from diverse climates are often blended together to obtain a consistent quality and balance.

The director of Winemaking is Joe Shirley, a California native raised in Napa Valley. Before Napa Cellars, he worked at Sonoma Cutrer and Trinchero Winery. He's been also involved in research while he was studying enology at UC Davis. He co-authored a paper on grape seed extracts and also a study published in the British Medical Journal The Lancet that showed that chocolate was a more powerful antioxidant than many common foods, such as prunes and blueberries.

Here are the wine samples that we tasted:

• 2009 Napa Cellars Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley: sourced from vineyards in Yountville and the warmer Chiles Valley, the wine is cool-fermented in 100% stainless steel tanks. To retain the wine's acidity, no secondary fermentation is allowed . The wine exhibits a light yellow color and a fresh nose of grapefruit and citrus. On the palate, it is medium bodied with a rounded mouth feel and lively fruity flavors. Try it with Steamed Mussels in White Wine broth

• 2009 Napa Cellars Chardonnay Napa Valley: sourced from a collection of vineyards located in South Napa, Oakville and Atlas Peak. The fruit from the cool southern part of the valley adds acidity to the blend while the fruit from Oakville adds riper flavors. A quarter of the juice was cold fermented in stainless steel, the rest in small French oak barrels. The wine has a golden color and crisp braeburn apple aromas on the nose. On the palate, it is medium-bodied with peach & cream flavors and notes of vanilla spice on the finish. Try it with Seared Halibut with Haricots Verts, Scallions, and White Wine Sauce

• 2009 Napa Cellars Chardonnay Mount Veeder: sourced exclusively from the estate vineyard atop Mount Veeder. Located west of Napa and Yountville, within the Mayacamas mountain range that separates the Napa and Sonoma valleys, Mount Veeder is the largest AVA within Napa Valley but makes only about 1.3% of total Napa Valley production. It is characterized by a rugged mountain terrain, thin volcanic soils, and labor-intensive viticulture. Wines from the Mount Veeder AVA are typically powerful in structure. The Mount Veeder Chardonnay is produced from grapes that are hand-picked, crushed, pressed, fermented, and left on the lees for six months in 100% French oak barrels. The wine has a golden color with notes of caramel and tropical fruits on the nose. On the palate, it is rich and round with hints of bitter almonds and toasty oak on the finish. It is a more serious than the Napa Valley Chardonnay. Try it with Salmon with Lentils and Mustard-Herb Butter.

• 2007 Napa Cellars Syrah Dyer Vineyard: the Dyer Vineyard is situated on the sunny, northwest hillside of the cool Los Carneros AVA. The vineyard has minimal irrigation. Grapes are cold soaked for 24 hour after crushing and skins are pressed off early to avoid excessive seed tannin extraction. The resulting wine is aged in both French and American oak for 16 months. It is deep in color with a nose of black cherry and pepper. On the palate, it is medium bodied, well balanced with a smooth mouthfeel, leaving flavors of sweet black berries, spices, and notes of oak. Try it with Lamb Chops with Mushroom Wine Sauce

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A 20 Year Old Yquem for the holidays

2011-01-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

During the holidays, my husband made his traditional foie gras and our friend Marcus brought a 1991 Château d'Yquem to accompany it. The foie gras was delicious as usual but I have to say that the 20 year old Yquem was particularly remarkable.

My husband's foie gras

Sauternes is the classic pairing with foie gras as the luxurious sweetness of wine is able to stand up to the rich fatness of the foie gras. These wines come from the Sauternais region located 40 km (25 miles) southeast of Bordeaux along the Garonne river and its tributary, the Ciron. The Ciron river has cooler waters than the Garonne and in autumn, when the spring-fed stream of the Ciron River meets the warmer Garonne, mists develop and stay in the vineyards from evening to late morning. This moisture promotes the development of the Botrytis cinerea fungus on the grapes. However, by mid day, the sun helps dissipate the mist and the infection can develop into noble rot rather than the malevolent grey rot. Noble rot removes water from the grapes and causes the grape to concentrate sugars and flavors while maintaining high levels of acidity. It also affects the grape's flavor compounds and that's what differentiates botrytied wines from wines that are sweet because of fortification, drying, or being harvested late.

In the Sauternais, harvests are very labor-intensive and costs of production are high. During harvest, skilled workers hand-pick only berries that have been properly infected with the fungus and multiple passes throughout the vineyard are required over a couple of weeks.

Château d'Yquem is the most famous of all the Sauternes. The Yquem property once belonged to Eleanor of Aquitaine as part of her duchy. It was also Thomas Jefferson's favorite white wine: during a visit to the Château, he ordered 250 bottles of the 1784 vintage. Château d'Yquem is the only white Bordeaux rated Premier Cru Supérieur (Superior First Growth) by the Bordeaux Classification of 1855.

1991 was a difficult vintage in the Sauternais. It was characterized by a devastating spring frost followed by a hot summer. Then storms in August prompted botrytis to attack the vines and picking began early in late September. Harvest workers had to avoid picking the grey rot infected berries.

When we poured the 1991 Château d'Yquem, it showed a beautiful deep amber color. The nose had subtle aromas of honey and dried apricots. On the palate, the wine was not overly sweet, unctuous with some acidity, and a touch maderized, which somewhat added an unusual layer of complexity. The best was taking a sip of it just after a piece of foie on toast sprinkled with coarse sea salt.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

If you like Rioja, you should try Navarra

2010-12-24T14:43:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, I received a set of wine samples from Navarra that was sent by Balzac Communications as an introduction to the Navarra Wine Region.

Navarra lies north of the Rioja region and south of the area's main city, Pamplona. The region used to belong to the kingdom of Navarre in late 10th century-early 11th century, a kingdom powerful enough to have halted the southward expansion of the Franks and the northward expansion of the Muslims.

To the north, near the French border, the terrain is very mountainous, but south of Pamplona is Navarre's agricultural area. The land is flatter with a continental Mediterranean influence (long, dry summers and cold winters).

The Navarra appellation includes five sub-regions: Baja Montaña in Eastern Navarre bordering Aragon, Tierra Estella in Western Navarre bordering the Basque Coutry and La Rioja, Valdizarbe in Central Navarre, Ribera Alta south of Valdizarbe, and Ribera Baja in Southern Navarre bordering La Rioja.

Navarra Wine Map

The region used to be famous for its rosado (rosé) wines from Garnacha, a grape overwhelmingly dominant in the 1980' (90% of the plantings at the time). But recently, many Navarra winemakers have modernized their equipment as well as their planting, harvesting and production methods. Grenache is now less than 40% of plantings, with Tempranillo close behind and there is an increase use of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc.

The first sample was the 2009 Inurrieta Orchídea. Bodega Inurrieta owns 230 hectares of vineyards in the Ribera Alta sub-region, 57 km (35 miles) south of Pamplona. Although it's a new estate founded in 1999, the area's winemaking traditions date back to the 1st century BC during the Roman rule. Plantings include Garnacha, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Graciano, and Sauvignon Blanc.

The wine is 100% Sauvignon Blanc and this is the only white produced at the winery. It exhibits a light yellow color and an aromatic nose of citrus, peach and white flower. On the palate, it is crip, more fruity than grassy, with a light finish. Try it with Trucha a la Navarra, a Navarra Style Trout.

We also tasted the 2006 Otazu Crianza, a blend of 35% Tempranillo, 35% Merlot, and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon. Located between the Sierra del Perdón mountain range and the Sierra de Echauri, just 8 km from Pamplona, the Señorío de Otazu winery is Spain's northernmost vineyard for red wines. The microclimate is predominantly Atlantic with rainy winters and sunny summers. The estate grows four grape varieties: Tempranillo, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon for red wines and Chardonnay for whites.

The wine has a dark color and a nose of spices and herbs. The palate is round, medium-bodied and quite tasty. Try it with Pochas with Paprika, an other specialty from Navarra with fresh local white beans.

Our last sample was the 2007 Chivite Expresión Varietal Tempranillo. Founded in 1647, Bodegas Julián Chivite is one of the oldest wine producing dynasties in Spain. Currently the bodega owns almost 500 hectares of vineyards and is run by the eleventh generation. In Navarra, the Chivite estate vineyards are located at Cintruénigo in Navarra Ribera Baja, at nearby Corella not far from the border with Rioja Baja, and at Marcilla in Navarra Ribera Alta. Plantings are predominantly Tempranillo and Garnacha with some amount of Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Muscat à Petit Grains.

The Chivite Tempranillo has a dark purple/violet color and an aromatic nose of moka and black cherry. On the palate, the wine is still young with mineral notes and a nutty finish. Try it with an another dish from Navarra: Pollo Chilindron, a chicken stew that uses red bell peppers, a common ingredient in that part of the country.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Should we trust wine experts?

2010-12-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

Listen to the latest Freakonomics Radio podcast called Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? and learn how easily wine experts can be tricked.

I think my favorite part is when wine writer Robin Goldstein explains how he created a fake restaurant in Milan and a fake wine list full of very expensive wines and nonetheless won an Award of Excellence from the Wine Spectator.

Have fun and enjoy the news that you don't need to break your piggy bank to appreciate a good wine as more and more studies show that the most expensive wines are not always the ones that taste better.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Comparative wine and Riedel wine glass tasting

2010-12-11T15:11:00.000-08:00

I recently had the chance to be invited to a comparative wine and Riedel glass tastings and I was really glad I came: the tasting, conducted by Maximilian Riedel himself, was much more informative than I thought.

Maximilian Riedel is currently the CEO of the US branch of Riedel Glas, the Austrian glassmaker company that introduced the concept of varietal specific wine glasses. He also regularly hosts tasting events to demonstrate how the shape of the glass can influence the way we perceive wine. According to Riedel, a wine can display different characteristics — good or bad — when served in glasses of different sizes and shapes.

Riedel wine glass tasting with Maximilian Riedel

In order to illustrate that concept, four wines were paired with four varietal glasses from the Riedel Vinum XL series, one of Riedel's most recent lines specifically designed for young new world wines.

Riedel tasting setup

We started with a 2009 Giesen Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough that we tasted in a Vinum XL Riesling Grand Cru glass. The wine had a light yellow color with green reflections and a fresh and fruity nose of grapefruit and gooseberry. On the palate, it was crisp and mineral with a good finish. After having enjoyed the wine in the Riesling glass, we were asked to pour some of it into a small plastic cup. The difference was remarkable. In the plastic cup, the wine had no nose at all and tasted mostly acidic. It is actually easy to understand why: in a small V-shaped cup, there is no room to swirl the wine and bring out the aromas. Moreover, the V-shape is the wrong shape to concentrate the aromas towards the nose (much of what we taste really comes through our nose).

Then we moved to our second wine, a 2008 Talbott Chardonnay Sleepy Hollow Vineyard that we tasted in a Vinum XL Montrachet glass. The wine was deep golden with a nose of apple, pear, and nut. On the palate, it was rich and creamy with notes of caramel. The glass bowl was large and round, which helped temper the alcohol in the wine. It also directed the flow of wine to cover a large area in the mouth, thus enhancing the richness and acidy of the wine. Then we tried the Chardonnay in the Riesling glass. The wine seemed more unbalanced, drier, and not as crisp. The reason is that the Riesling glass, designed for unoaked acidic wines like dry Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc, is much too narrow to allow the creamy aromas to expand towards the nose and in the mouth.

Our third wine was a 2008 Kali-Hart Vineyard Pinot Noir that we tasted in a Vinum XL Pinot Noir glass, a glass with a large tulip-shaped bowl that flares out slightly at the top. The wine had a deep ruby color and a nose of raspberry, dried fruits and raisins. On the palate, it was full-bodied and jammy. When we were asked to try the wine in the Chardonnay glass, we noticed that the wine seemed less fruity and more tannic. In fact, the wine flow reaching the tongue was less focused and much less of these fruity aromas were reaching our tongue.

Our last wine was the 2007 Educated Guess Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley that we tasted in the oversized Vinum Xl Cabernet glass. The wine was dark with a nose of sweet blackberry, cocoa, and vanilla. On the palate, it was full-bodied, young, and oaky. When we switched to the Pinot Noir glass, the wine appeared more tannic, maybe because of the flared top, and in the Chardonnay glass, the opening was too wide and the wine aromas were partly lost.

At the end of the event, we each received a Vinum Xl wine tasting glass set so that we can continue to play at home. There are so many combinations that we haven't tried yet. What about a Sauvignon Blanc in the Chardonnay glass or a Pinot Noir in the Cabernet glass? I'm also suspecting that the Vinum Xl Cabernet glass might be too big for a Bordeaux.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

What we drank for Thanksgiving

2010-12-02T17:13:00.000-08:00

In November, it's funny how so many newspapers publish the requisite Thanksgiving wine column, in order to help us find the ideal wine that can work with turkey, stuffing, gravy, casseroles, cranberry sauce, and pies, thanks to a list of smart pairing tips.

What should we drink with this turkey?

For my part, I think it's quite easy to decide what to drink for Thanksgiving: just open a good bottle and enjoy it with your family and friends.

We started the evening with a bottle of 2008 Kendall-Jackson Vintner's Reserve Riesling that our friend Christophe had brought. Kendall-Jackson Vineyard Estates was founded by San Francisco based attorney Jess Jackson in 1982. It is one of the few remaining family wine businesses of this size in the country. Since 1982, the winery has acquired many vineyards and it is now totally estate-based, maintaining 11,000 acres of vines. It also owns 17 additional brands, including La Crema, Pepi, Camelot, Cardinale and Cambria. As of 2010 Kendall-Jackson was the top-selling U.S. brand for wines over $15 a bottle.

The wines under the Kendall-Jackson Vintner's Reserve label come from cool vineyards in coastal regions including Monterey County, Lake County, Mendocino County, Santa Barbara County, and Sonoma County. They are all managed by the Kendall-Jackson viticultural team. The Riesling is a blend of 83% Riesling, 12% Gewürztraminer, 2% Muscat Canelli, 2% Chardonnay, and 1% Viognier. According to the winemaking notes, “87% of the Riesling comes from Monterey County where the growing season is long and cool adding apricot, almond and honeysuckle flavors. The Gewürztraminer adds orange blossom and spice. Muscat Canelli brings tangerine and mango tones. Chardonnay adds tropical lushness to the palate. Viognier for hints of floral on the nose”.

The wine had a fragrant nose of pear, apple and stone fruit and was moderately sweet on the palate with enough acidity to keep it clean and fresh. It was good with the smoked salmon and a natural accompaniment to our Sweet Potato Casserole (that we made with yams).

After the Riesling we opened a 1999 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou. This was a gift from Christophe and his wife Virginie and I was waiting for a good occasion to share the bottle with them. Château Ducru-Beaucaillou is a second growth Bordeaux in the Saint-Julien appellation. The estate sits between the village of Beychevelle and the Gironde estuary, farming 50 hectares of vineyard. The soil is characterized by well drained gravel and large stones up to 2.5 inches in diameter, which gave the estate its name (Beaucaillou means beautiful stones). The vines are 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Merlot. Grapes are harvested and sorted manually. The Grand Vin is aged 18 and 20 months in 50-80% new oak.

The wine had a distinctive nose of spices, blackcurrants, and berries. On the palate, it was medium-bodied, well-balanced with smooth tannins and more elegance in the finish than power. I enjoyed it a lot and thought it worked perfectly well with the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, the casseroles, the cranberry sauce, the pies, and my friends and family.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Tasting the wines of Oregon

2010-11-16T16:50:00.000-08:00

At the end of the summer, I had a call from our friend Jean-Frédéric. His brother and his wife — both wine lovers — were coming from France and he was wondering whether we could organize a wine tasting at his place sometime during their visit. We agreed that we should taste some wines from Oregon since I had visited a few Oregon wineries earlier in July. Moreover, his brother and his wife were not very familiar with Oregon wines.

While wine grapes have been grown in Oregon for nearly two centuries, it is only since the 1960s that wine production has become a significant industry in the state. Oregon is now the 4th largest wine producing state in the US, after California (89% of the wine production), New York, and Washington. In 2006, it had more than 370 wineries, up from 70 in 1990, and only 5 in 1970. In 2007, four grape varieties made up more than 80% of the state's wine production: Pinot Noir (55%), Pinot Gris (17%), Chardonnay (5.6%), and Riesling (4.2%). Additionaly, Oregon has recently become a leader in green viticulture and winemaking with more than 140 vineyards and 20 wineries certified by LIVE: Low Input Viticulture & Enology, Inc.

Oregon Wine Regions

Oregon's largest wine producing region is the Willamette Valley, which runs from the Columbia River in Portland to the Calapooya Mountains outside Eugene. The valley has a relatively mild climate with cool wet winters and warm dry summers. The long growing season enjoys warm days and cool nights, allowing the grapes to develop their flavors while still retaining their acidity. The Willamette Valley AVA includes six sub-appellations: Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills, McMinnville, Ribbon Ridge, Yamhill-Carlton District, and Chehalem Mountains.

Here are the wines that we tasted:

• 2009 Evesham Wood Blanc du Puits Sec: founded in 1986, Evesham Wood Vineyard makes Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Gewurztraminer in the Willamette Valley near the town of Salem. The estate vineyard is located on a low terrace (300-420 ft. elevation) on the eastern side of the Eola-Amity Hills ridge. It was named Le Puits Sec, which means the dry well in French, because there is one in the vineyard. The winery and Le Puits Sec vineyard are certified organic. The wine is a blend of 80% Pinot Gris and 20% Gewurztraminer with minute quantities of Rieslaner and Kerner, two German varieties. My notes: very pale color, a bit shy on the nose, more mineral than fruity. The guests didn't find it very exciting.

• 2008 Chehalem Reserve Dry Riesling Willamette Valley: Chehalem is a small winery established since 1990 in Newberg in the Northern Willamette Valley. It produces wines from Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Blanc, Grüner Veltliner, and Gamay Noir. The Reserve Dry Riesling is produced in very limited quantities and is sourced from the Corral Creek vineyard that surrounds the winery and Stoller Vineyard, a 175-acre vineyard on the southern slopes of the Dundee Hills in Yamhill County. My notes: light color, mineral nose with aromas of honey and tart apple, medium-bodied, crisp on the palate with stone fruit flavors, lively finish, tasty.

• 2009 Evening Land Celebration Les Gamines: Evening Land Vineyards is based in both Oregon and California. It owns two vineyards in California, Occidental Vineyard in the Sonoma Coast and Odyssey Vineyard in the Santa Rita Hills. In Oregon, it leases Seven Springs Vineyard, a 65-acre Pinot Noir vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills appellation. The Oregon wines are made by winemaker Isabelle Meunier with the help of consulting winemaker Dominique Lafon of Domaine des Comtes-Lafon in Burgundy. Inspired by the Bourgogne Passe-Tout-Grains, Les Gamines is made from a small block of Seven Springs Vineyard old vine Gamay Noir (60%) and Pinot Noir (40%). My notes: medium purple-pink color, bright strawberry nose, fresh aromas of plums and berries on the palate, quite pleasant.

• 2007 Argyle Pinot Noir Willamette Valley: owned by Petaluma Winery of Australia, Argyle Winery was founded in 1987 by Australian vintner Brian Croser and winemaker Rolin Soles. Housed in a former hazelnut processing plant in Dundee, the winery is well known for its still and methode champenoise sparkling wines. The Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is sourced from the Knudsen Vineyard in the heart of the Red Hills of Dundee, Argyle's primary vineyard source since 1987. My notes: medium color, fresh fruity nose, soft texture, mid palate on the light side, easygoing and not really popular among the guests.

• 2007 Ponzi Pinot Noir Willamette Valley: founded in 1970, Ponzi Vineyards is one of Oregon's oldest wineries. It is located just 30 minutes from downtown Portland in the city of Beaverton. The Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a blend of several 100% Certified Sustainable vineyards. The fruit is hand sorted and destemmed and then fermented in small lots with five days of cold soak to increase aroma and color. The wine is aged in French oak barrels (30% new) for 11 months. My notes: medium garnet color, attractive nose of red and black cherry, medium-bodied, well balanced acidity, quite tasty, more complex than the Argyle.

• 2008 Shea Wine Cellars Pinot Noir Estate Willamette Valley: Shea Wine Cellars was founded by grape growers Dick and Deirdre Shea in 1996. The winery produces wines from the Shea Vineyard, a 200-acre vineyard property located in the Yamhill-Carlton District that also supplies fruit to several of Oregon's and California's premium wineries. Roughly 25% of the vineyard production is used by Shea Wine Cellars for its releases. My notes: dark color, sweet nose of blackberry and spicy cherry, full-bodied, more power than finesse, somewhat too bold for a Pinot Noir.

• 2006 Francis Tannahill Syrah Mason Dixon: Sam Tannahill was winemaker at Archery Summit before founding Francis Tannahill Wine Co in 2001 with his wife Cheryl Francis, who was co-winemaker at Chehalem. They are also co-owners of A to Z Wineworks. The Mason Dixon Syrah is a blend of several vineyards including Deux Vert, a small vineyard planted on a low elevation southern slope outside the town of Yamhill and the only producing Syrah vineyard in the northern Willamette Valley. My notes: dark color, pepper, plum and violet aromas on the nose, dry, complex, well-balanced palate with some good acidity, spicy finish without being very fruity, a northern Rhone style of Syrah and one of the best wines of the evening.

Related posts:
• Touring the wineries in Oregon's Willamette Valley
• Our Oregon trip: wine tasting at the Ponzi Wine Bar
• Our Oregon trip: The Beaux Frères Vineyard
• Oregon Trip: Dinner at the Painted Lady Restaurant
• Oregon Trip: J.K. Carriere Wines
• Last but not least from our Oregon trip: Brick House Vineyards and The Eyrie Vineyards

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Today is sandwich day: A Grand Prize sandwich and a glass of refreshing Pinot Grigio

2010-11-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

Do you know that you can win a trip to New York thanks to a sandwich recipe? That's what happened to my friend Catherine. She was the Grand Prize winner of the Build a Better Sandwich contest organized by Southwest Airline. She won a trip to New York City, a three-night stay in Times Square, a dinner for two at Riverpark, and a tour of New York City's food markets.

Today is sandwich day and I'd like to share with you the winning recipe of her Easter Monday Sandwich. She usually makes that sandwich in order to use the leftover meat of her Easter Sunday leg of lamb.

It's quite easy to make once you have all the ingredients. First, toast 2 slices of New York rye bread. Rub garlic clove lightly on inside sides, then spread mayo (homemade if you can) on same sides. Layer lamb meat, roasted red pepper strips and feta cheese. Sprinkle with fresh oregano, cover with the other bread slice and cut sandwich in two.

Now, I don't think you need to wait until spring to make that sandwich. Moreover, the recipe could be easily adapted to use other kinds of leftover meat. Try it with leftover turkey after Thanksgiving for instance.

What to drink with the sandwich? I propose a glass of Pinot Grigio, a light and fresh wine, especially if you had a heavy meal the day before.

We tasted the 2009 Caposaldo Pinot Grigio that I had received from Suzie Kukic at Kobrand Corporation. There is a horse on the label because the brand name Caposaldo refers to the Roman Empire's most famous racing horse of the Circus Maximus.

The wine is 100% Pinot Grigio, a clone of Pinot Gris that grows in Italy, mainly in the northeastern regions of Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and Trentino-Alto Adige. Wines made from the Pinot Gris grape variety vary greatly in style depending on the region they come from. In Alsace or Germany, they can be full-bodied and spicy. However in Italy, the Pinot Grigio style is usually light-bodied, crisp, and fruity.

Rather low in alcohol (12.5%), the wine had a pale yellow color and a fresh nose of grapefruit and lime. The palate was clean, crisp, and tanguy, leaving a slightly quinine-like bitter finish. The perfect wine for a winning sandwich.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Vino Argentino: learning more about the wines and food of Argentina

2010-10-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Michael Lamp from Hunter Public Relations sent me a couple of wine samples from the Alamos brand. There was also a copy of Laura Catena's new book, Vino Argentino that she describes as an insider guide to the wines and wine regions of Argentina.

Laura Catena's life is absolutely fascinating. She is simultaneously a practicing emergency room physician, a winery owner, an active ambassador of Argentine Wine, and a book writer. She is also the daughter of Nicolás Catena, the pioneer of Argentina's high-altitude viticulture and the first wine producer to plant a Malbec vineyard at almost 5,000 feet (1,524 m) elevation in the high plains of Mendoza.

The Mendoza province is Argentina's main wine region. It is a high desert that receives an average annual rainfall of less than 8 inches (20 cm). The climate is continental with very cold nights and intense sunlight during the day thanks to the elevation. The soils are very poor in organic material and filled with alluvial rocks and gravels, which means excellent drainage. Grapevines growing in this environment suffer and have low yields. To protect their seeds from the sun, they build thick grape skins that are rich in tannins and polyphenols, therefore producing wines that are concentrated and flavorful.

The Alamos brand was introduced in 1993 by the Catena family as a second label to the higher priced Catena wines. The name Alamos means poplar in Spanish and is derived from the poplar trees lining the vineyards to protect them from the strong dry winds coming from the Andes.

We tasted our first wine sample, the 2009 Alamos Torrontés, with appetizers. A crossing of Criolla Chica (a local cousin of the Mission grape) and Muscat of Alexandria, Torrontés is Argentina's signature white variety. The grape, which thrives in cold and dry conditions, produces the best wines in the Salta Province in the north west of the country, a region of high altitude and low humidity, with dramatic diurnal temperature variation.

The Alamos Torrontés is sourced from vineyards located near the city of Cafayate, in the Salta province. It is cold fermented and aged in stainless steel tanks. The wine showed a light golden color and an aromatic nose of peach, apricot, and white flower blossom. On the palate, it was crisp and fresh with notes of honey and orange peel on the finish.

With our dinner, we opened the other Alamos bottle, a 2009 Alamos Malbec. Malbec is the signature wine of the Mendoza region. Originally from France, it is one of the six grapes allowed in the blend of red Bordeaux wine. It is also the primary grape used in the Cahors appellation in the South-West of France. But then in the 1860s, a French agricultural engineer called Michel Pouget brought the grape to Argentina. Malbec being a thin-skinned grape that needs more sun and heat than either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot to mature, it quickly thrived in Argentina's high-altitude vineyards and is now widely planted in the country.

The Alamos Malbec is sourced from high-altitude vineyards in the Mendoza wine region. It is aged 9 months in oak barrels, 50% French, 50% American, 25% new. The wine had a dark purple color and aromas of black cherries and blackberries on the nose. On the palate, it was full-bodied with a good balance of acidity and tannins and notes of pepper and pomegranate on the finish.

For dinner, I made a Carbonada, using a recipe that I found in Laura Catena's book. The stew was heartwarming with some sweet and fruity flavors that went perfectly well with the Malbec.

There are several other recipes in the book that look as delicious. And many other things too that make you wish you could visit the country.

Carbonada

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

The 2000 Château Sociando-Mallet is ready to drink and wonderfully seductive

2010-10-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

The other day, our friend Marcus invited us for dinner. He asked me to come early because I had to choose the wine and then we needed some time for the wine to breathe. The thing is that Marcus had built quite a large room underneath his house to store his wines, and I was quite excited to have a look at his collection. I wanted to choose a bottle that would work best with the meal. There were thick fillet steaks waiting to be grilled on the barbecue and a swiss chard gratin baking in the oven.

Down in the cellar, as I concentrated my attention mostly on the Bordeaux and California Cabernets area, I found a bottle of 2000 Château Sociando-Mallet. With little hesitation, that's the one I brought back to the kitchen.

The 2000 vintage is considered one of the finest in Bordeaux, although the year didn't start very well. Winter was warm and spring was wet. July was cool and overcast. But then suddenly, the weather changed. August was unusually dry and above all, the weather was warm and dry during the entire harvest, allowing Cabernet Sauvignon, the primary grape variety of the Médoc, to ripen beautifully.

The Sociando-Mallet estate is located to the north of the Saint-Estèphe appellation, on a gravel outcrop, right on the Gironde river. The vineyard is planted to 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, with the remaining 5% divided between Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

Sociando-Mallet was classified as a Cru Bourgeois in 1932 but nowadays, it is considered as good as most Médoc Cru Classés Châteaux. The harvest is done manualy and fermentation occurs in both concrete and stainless-steel vats. After fermentation, the wine is aged in oak (100% for the grand vin) and then bottled without fining or filtration.

The wine didn't disappoint at all. The color was deep garnet and the nose really attractive with fragrant aromas of blackcurrant and eucalyptus. While the palate was rich in flavors, it displayed classy finesse and elegance. The wine had aged well and was succulent, like the tenter and juicy meat, and the creamy gratin.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Can technology help make better wines?

2010-10-14T14:18:00.000-07:00

I recently received an email announcing the launch of UC Davis' new high-tech winery. It is a $15 million teaching-and-research facility and is expected to be the first winery to earn a LEED Platinum certification.

The project is impressive. The winery's eco-friendly features include onsite solar power generation and a system for capturing, storing, and recycling rainwater. The ultimate goal is to operate the facility independent of the main campus water line and be self-sustainable in both water and energy. Moreover, an innovative system of plastic tubes running up to the ceiling from the fermenters is designed to capture the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation. There are also plans to sequester that CO2 in order to work in a carbon zero environment.

The winery has also a new high-tech fermentation system that was donated by T.J. Rodgers, chief executive officer of Cypress Semiconductor and a winemaker himself. 152 stainless-steel fermentation tanks automatically control temperature during fermentation. In each tank, a brix sensor measures sugar levels and transmits the data across a wireless network. With this high-tech system, UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology plans to conduct data-intensive studies, hoping to understand how different variables such as grape-growing practices, vineyard location and choice of yeast strains impact the character and quality of wines.

“No other viticulture and enology research organization has a facility with these capabilities,” explains David Block, vice chair of the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology. “And when it is fully implemented, it will contain one of the largest wireless networks in any fermentation facility in the world.”

To me, it is not clear how all this data analysis will really help winemakers. “A lot of information is great,” acknowledges PlumpJack Winery General Manager John Conover, “but the great thing about wine is that there is no recipe.”

By contrast, I remember my recent visits to Oregon wineries and the discussions I had with the local winemakers. Their main focus is to grow the best fruit in the vineyard. Viticulture science helps them select the best soils, microclimates clones, crop size, and grow more healthy grapevines. However in the cellar, most of them believe in minimal intervention and to just let the grape shine.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Will an unusually cool California summer result in more balanced, lower-alcohol wines?

2010-10-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

“If conditions continue, we'll be harvesting into November”, recently declared David Beckstoffer, president of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers.

While many parts of the U.S. experienced a scorching summer season this year, Napa and Sonoma had the second coldest July in 50 years. Wine growers like to use degree days, measuring accumulated degrees above 50 degrees during the summer season, and so Oakville, at the heart of Napa Valley, has typically 2,700 degree days. But this year, until the recent heat wave, it was at 2,300. In Paso Robles, it's at 2,200, compared to a typical value of 3,000.

Harvesting so late is going to be risky for winegrowers because any rain in October may worsen the threat of mildew that already exists due to persistent caostal fog and cool temperatures. However, more time on the vine can result in better fruit quality.

“The fruit flavors are very strong,” says Larry Hyde of Hyde Vineyards in the Carneros region. “The stuff that makes fruit taste fruity, compounds like esters and ketones, are sensitive to hot weather and tend to be vaporized in the heat of a warm season. But we're finding great fruit flavors in all varieties, and high acidity.”

“2005 was an odd year like this with a late harvest,” explains Andy Peay, winemaker at Peay Vineyards in this article, “It was kind of a lesson to winemakers. People who were used to making these big, bold, high-alcohol wines ended up producing some of the most elegant, balanced, beautiful wines they'd ever made. You just have to take care. Some of our best vintages came out of years like this.”

Grapes should be less ripe this year, which means that less sugar will be converted into alcohol. I think this is good news: we should see more wines with lower alcohol levels as well as higher acidity. I am also looking forward to finding those that are going to show additional balance and elegance.

More on the 2010 California harvest:
• California's late grape harvest of 2010: What it could mean
• Grapegrowers anticipate a late - but great - 2010 harvest
• Three California Winemakers Discuss the Difficult, Possibly Disastrous 2010 Vintage

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Blind Tasting of Nebbiolo and Barbera wines from Piedmont

2010-09-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

Piedmont is one of the great winegrowing regions of Italy. The name means at the foot of the mountains in the local dialect as the region is surrounded on three sides by the Alps. The climate is continental with long and hot summers, misty autumns, and cold, foggy winters. Rainfall is low due to the rain shadow effect caused by the Alps.

Piedmont is home to many indigenous grape varieties including Barbera, Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, Freisa, Grignolino and Brachetto. While Barbera is the most widely-planted grape in the region, producing plummy dark wines naturally high in food-friendly acidity, Nebbiolo is considered one of the most noble Italian varietals. It is quite difficult to master but it can produce ageworthy wines known for their elegance and power. Vineyards are usually found on the hills at altitudes between 490-1150 feet, with the warmer south-facing slopes planted to Nebbiolo and Barbera, and the colder areas dedicated to Dolcetto and white varietals.

Big wine estates are rare in Piedmont. The vast majority of producers are small-to-medium wineries, often owned by the same family for generations.

We tasted our wines blind accompanied by a chicken liver terrine, braised short ribs cooked in wine, and cheese.

Chicken Liver Terrine

Braised Short Ribs

Here are the wines that we tasted:

• 2006 Luciano Sandrone Nebbiolo d'Alba Valmaggiore: founded in 1978, the Luciano Sandrone estate farms a total of 27 hectares (67 acres), 75% of which is owned, and produces about 8,000 cases per year. The winery follows organic farming rules although it has not chosen to seek certification. It uses organic fertilization and pest treatments and no chemicals or enzymes are added to the wine. The wine is produced with Nebbiolo grapes from Valmaggiore, one of the historical cru vineyards in the Roero district around the commune of Vezza d'Alba. The vineyard is on a hill characterised by an extreme slope and very sandy soil. The average vine age is 25 years. Sandrone purchased this parcel in 1994 and replanted the vines in 2001 at a density of 9,000 per hectare. Our notes: medium red color with orange tints, dairy nose with notes of red berries, cherries, and caramel, tannic with a solid mid-palate, good finish. Was ranked third in our tasting.

• 2003 Aurelio Settimo Barolo Rocche: founded in 1979, Aurelio Settimo is a 5.67 hectares (14 acres) property producing mostly Nebbiolo and a small amount of Dolcetto. The property used to do mixed farming and animal breeding and until 1974, 50% of the grapes were sold to the larger local wineries. But since the 1974 vintage, all the production has been vinified on site. The wine comes from the Rocche dell'Annunziata cru, a 3.42 hectare vineyard facing south-southwest and one of the four historic vineyards in La Morra. Our notes: orange hues, nose of sweet berries and prunes, good fruit flavor and acidity on the palate with some herbal notes. Food friendly, great with the braised ribs. Finished in 2nd position.

• 2005 G. D. Vajra Barolo Albe: Founded in 1972, the Azienda Agricola G. D. Vajra is regarded as one of the most reputed Barolo producers in the area. It is situated in Vergne, the highest village in the Commune of Barolo. Its vineyards are planted with Nebbiolo, Dolcetto and Barbera at heights of 350-400 meters. The cuvée Albe is a blend from three different vineyards, Fossati, Le Coste, and La Volta. Albe is the plural of alba, which means dawn. According to the winery website, here is the explanation for the name: when the sun rises in the morning, it takes about 20 minutes for the dawn to reach each vineyard, which results in three different albe (dawns). Our notes: medium red color, shy nose with notes of dried herbs, acidic on the palate and quite green with not much fruit flavors. Quite unbalanced but better with sharp-flavored cheese. Finished in 6th position.

• 2006 Agostino Pavia Barbera d'Asti Superiore La Marescialla: founded in 1979, Agostino Pavia is a small family estate located in the heart of the production area of Barbera d'Asti. The estate has several 50-year-old vineyards covering seven hectares, partly owned and partly rented. La Marescialla is one of the crus of Barbera d'Asti. The wine is produced from careful grape selection from one of the oldest vineyards of the estate and is aged about 11-12 months in barriques. Our notes: darker color, dairy aromas on the nose with notes of citrus, caramel, and vanilla. On the palate, not as tannic, but assertive with fruity flavors, well balanced. Finished in 4th position.

• 2000 Paolo Scavino Barolo Carobric: Azienda Vitivinicola Paolo Scavino was established in 1921 by founder Paolo Scavino in the commune of Castiglione Falletto. Today, the winery is run by Paolo's two granddaughters, Elisa (winemaker) and Enrica (marketing). The Carobric cuvee (Ca-Ro-Bric) is a selection of grapes from Scavino's best crus: Cannubi, Rocche di Castiglione, and Bric dël Fiasc. It is aged in a combination of barrique and cask. Our notes: orange/brown color, shy nose getting richer with more time in the glass, round, tasty, complex, well balanced, with a long finish. The wine was a clear favorite, maybe because it had reached its peak. Finished in first position.

• 2003 Massolino Barolo: located in the commune of Serralunga d'Alba, the Massolino estate has been in the family since 1896 and today has 15 hectares of vineyards around the village. The Barolo is a blend of several estate vineyards. Grapes are hand-picked and the winemaking is traditional. The wine id aged 30 months minimum in large oak barrels with further bottle ageing for at least one year before release. Our notes: bright medium red color, nose of sweet fruit and citrus, some tannins and acidity on the palate that became softer with more time in the glass, not as balanced as the Carobric. Finished in 5th position.

Related posts:
• Tasting the wines of Piedmont
• Blind Tasting of Bordeaux Right Bank wines
• Syrah Blind Tasting

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Budweiser, balsamic vinegar and the effect of expectations on our biased view of the world

2010-09-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

Would you willingly mix balsamic vinegar with your Budweiser? yes in certain conditions, explains Professor of Behavioral Economics Dan Ariely in his book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.

The Muddy Charles is one of MIT's two pubs and the place of Ariely's experiment. Students that dropped by were offered two small free samples of beer, one labeled A and the other labeled B. Beer A was regular Budweiser whereas Beer B was a special mix called “MIT Brew”, two drops of balsamic vinegar for each once of beer. After tasting the samples, participants were offered a free large glass of the beer of their choice.

Most of the participants that knew nothing about the vinegar before tasting the beers chose Beer B, the vinegary beer. But those that were offered more information before the tasting (Beer A was a commercial brew, Beer B had a few drops of balsamic vinegar in it) would wrinkle their nose at the vinegary brew and request Beer A instead. They believed beforehand that Beer B was going to be bad and after tasting it, they actually found it bad.

Now what happens if the presence of vinegar is revealed after tasting the samples instead of before? Can initial sensory perceptions be reshaped with new knowledge or is it too late to change the perceptions once they are established?

It turned out that the participants to this new version of the experiment liked Beer B as much as those that knew nothing about the vinegar. Moveover, when asked whether they would like to make the “MIT Brew” themselves, they were willing to add the right amount of vinegar to their beer. Like the first group, they tasted the vinegary brew blind without any pre-conceived expectations and they actually liked the taste of it so they didn't mind giving it another try.

What happens is that our brain is always refining and distorting sensory information in order to construct a simpler picture of the world. If our brain has tried to represent everything as accurately as possible, we would be completely paralysed by information. Moreover, it cannot start from scratch at every new situation. Instead, it must build on what it has seen before so we can interact with our environment more decisively and make better sense of our complicated surroundings.

So next time you make a decision, be realistic, it's 100% biased.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A tasting of affordable Bordeaux from the Planet Bordeaux Program

2010-09-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

Before the summer, I received three samples of Bordeaux wines from Michael Wangbickler of Balzac Communications as part of a new marketing campaign called Planet Bordeaux. The goal of Planet Bordeaux is to promote wines from the Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur appellations, incite wine amateurs to look beyond the expensive classified growth and top rated wines and help them discover well-crafted wines at very reasonable prices.

The Bordeaux AOC is the most generic and the largest category within the Bordeaux region. It is used for red, white, and rosé wines produced outside the more specific appellations. Wines under that appellation vary greatly in style, price and quality but the best can be smooth, easy to drink, and affordable.

The Bordeaux Supérieur AOC covers the same geographic area as the Bordeaux AOC but has stricter production norms. The wines must be aged for at least twelve months before they can be sold. So it is usually used for more ambitious wines with a better aging potential, sourced from older vines in selected vineyards.

The first sample was the 2009 Château Ballan Larquette Rosé. Château Ballan Larquette is a 35 hectare property (86 acres) owned by the Chaigne family. It is located in the Entre-Deux-Mers region between the Garonne and the Dordogne rivers. The vines are on average 18 years old. The blend is mostly Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon with a small amount of Cabernet Franc. The Rosé is made by partial saignee (or bleeding off the juice) after a 24 hours contact with the skins to obtain a light cherry color. The wine had a fresh nose of red berries and citrus with some good acidity on the palate and notes of of sour cherry and mineral on the finish. Take the wine along on your next picnic or try it with Grilled Rosemary Lamb Chops.

The next wine was the 2008 Château Fontblanche. Château Fontblanche is owned by Elisabeth & Armand Schuster de Ballwil of Château Montlau. It is located between the hills and the banks of the Dordogne river. The wine is a blend of mostly Merlot with some Cabernet Franc and a dash of Malbec. It showed a medium ruby color and a mellow nose of fresh plum. On the palate, it was easy going with a dry and clean aftertaste. Try it with Pork Tenderloin and Grilled Vegetable Salad

The last sample was the 2007 Château de Bel La Capitane. After spending 10 years as a négociant in the wine business, Olivier Cazenave and his wife Anne bought the property in 2003, realising their dream of making their own wine from their own vines. Olivier's philosophy is to make wines that are immediately pleasurable, without being diluted or overextracted, and as such, works long hours in the vineyard. The Château is located along the bank of the Dordogne across the river from Saint-Emilion. It has 12 acres in production, mostly old vines of Merlot and some Cabernet Franc. The cuvée La Capitane is a Bordeaux Supérieur made from 100% Merlot vines averaging 30 years old. The wine has matured in 100% new American oak for 6 months. It had a deep garnet color and attractive notes of vanilla and fresh cherries on the nose. On the palate, it had a round, juicy mouthfeel with dried herbs and earthy tones on the finish. Try it with Grilled Pork Sausages with Spiced Figs.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

If our wine is too bold, too alcoholic, there is hope: just add water

2010-09-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

Maybe you knew it already, and like me, have in several occasions surreptitiously dropped an ice cube in your glass of 14%+ alcohol Merlot and found the resulting drink more palatable.

I thought that the wine tasted better because it was a few degrees cooler but according to Harold McGee's latest Curious Cook column, water is actually an ingredient that can enhance flavors.

That may seem counterintuitive: water has no flavor and by adding water, you dilute instead of concentrate flavors. But what McGee found out is that water, by diluting the other ingredients, can change their balance for the better.

This is how it works in high-alcoholic drinks:

“Both alcohol and aroma molecules are volatile,” explains McGee, “meaning they evaporate from foods and drinks and are carried by the air to the odor receptors high up in the nasal cavity. Aroma molecules are also more chemically similar to alcohol molecules than they are to water, so they tend to cling to alcohol, and are quicker to evaporate out of a drink when there's less alcohol to cling to. This means that the more alcoholic a drink is, the more it cloisters its aroma molecules, and the less aroma it releases into the air. Add water and there's less alcohol to irritate and burn, and more aroma release.”

In case of high-alcohol wines, “flavor chemists have found that high alcohol levels accentuate a wine's bitterness, reduce its apparent acidity and diminish the release of most aroma molecules. Alcohol particularly holds down fruity and floral aromas, so the aroma that's left is mainly woody, herbaceous and vegetal.”

So next time your glass is filled with some big, bold Zinfandel, don't worry about what others will think. Add water, the wine will taste more fruity, more balanced, more pleasant, and you will know why.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Last but not least from our Oregon trip: Brick House Vineyards and The Eyrie Vineyards

2010-08-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

You usually need an appointment to visit Brick House Vineyards and when we called the winery, it was already late in the afternoon and we were just hoping to have an appointment for the next day. Therefore, we were surprised to be invited to come right away. At the winery, we were warmly welcomed by Alan Foster, an artisanal cider maker who now works at Brick House and casually sat around a farmhouse table to taste the latest estate productions.

Brick House Vineyards

Tasting with Alan Foster

We started with the Chardonnay, made from estate grown fruits. The wine is certified organic, fermented with native yeast, aged in used oak barrels, and bottled without filtration. I particularly liked the 2008 Brick House Estate Chardonnay with its nose of pear and stone fruit, smooth and creamy mouthfeel, and mineral finish.

Then we moved to the 2008 Brick House Boulder Block Pinot Noir. The fruit comes from a volcanic hillside that greatly differs from the nearby sedimentary soils that characterize the Ribbon Ridge appellation. Columbia river basalt rocks can be found between vines throughout the parcel. These volcanic boulders are particularly good at retaining moisture and warmth during the growing season and it is usually the last block to be harvested. The cuvée is all Pommard clones — originally from cuttings imported in the 1940's from Château de Pommard — and sees more new oak than the other reserve Cuvées. The wine had a fragrant, spicy nose, a rich, fruity palate almost liqueurish, leaving a lasting earthy finish.

Basalt rocks from the Boulder Block parcel and the 2008 Brick House Boulder Block Pinot Noir

The next wine was the 2008 Brick House Evelyn's Pinot Noir. For me, it had an even stronger spicy character and a longer finish. The cuvée is named after the mother of winemaker and founder Doug Tunnell. It is a blend from selected barrels and a very limited bottling built for long-term aging.

My husband had heard that the winery was making some gamay and asked about it. The current vintage had been sold out for a while but Alan let us taste a barrel sample of the 2010 vintage. There was no banana, candy, or bubble gum quality in the wine. Instead, it had some good depth and structure with some of these aromas of tobacco and black fruit that could also found in some of the best Crus of Beaujolais.

We were also lucky when we arrived at Eyrie Vineyards' historic winery in downtown Mcminnville. The previous visitors were still in the barrel room when we arrived and we were able to continue the guided visit of the wine facility.

The Eyrie Vineyards

The history of Eyrie is now well known but still fascinating. In 1965, David Lett — locally known as Papa Pinot — came to Oregon from California with 3,000 vine cuttings and planted the first Pinot noir vines in the Willamette Valley. One year later, he founded The Eyrie Vineyards with his wife Diana and produced his first vintage of Eyrie Pinot Noir in 1970. Then in 1979, the winery suddendly caught the attention of the international wine community as the 1975 Eyrie Vineyards Reserve Pinot Noir successfully competed at the Wine Olympics held in Paris that year. This instantly put Oregon on the map as a world class Pinot noir producing region.

Lett's original plan was to build a winery on the hillside overlooking the estate vineyard in the Dundee Hills but he found no bank to loan him any money. So he ended up refurbishing an old poultry plant in McMinnville. Many years later, his son Jason Lett is still making wine in the original building with even a few barrels from the 1970 vintage still in use. The mold that grows on the walls is part of the cellar's natural environment and is thought to play a positive role during the winemaking process.

The barrel room and the mold on the walls

Here are some of the wines we tasted:

2007 The Eyrie Vineyards Estate Pinot Noir: from the four estate vineyards in the Dundee Hills. The youngest vines were planted 19 years ago. Aged in mostly neutral French oak. Fresh nose of griotte cherry, tasty, well balanced, lively finish.

2008 The Eyrie Vineyards BlackCap Pinot Noir: made with organic fruits from the Dundee Hills and Carlton-Yamhill appellations. The vines are 20-year old and own-rooted (non grafted). Dark color, more earth and spices than fruit, concentrated.

2006 The Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir Reserve Original Vines: from Eyrie's original planting, 40-year-old vines grown on their own roots. Aged nearly two years in used barrel, bottled without filtration or fining. Sweet nose of wild berry, creme de cassis and spices, great texture, absolutely delicious!

2006 Eyrie Pinot Noir Reserve Original Vines

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Oregon Trip: J.K. Carriere Wines

2010-08-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

Founded in 1999 by owner and winemaker Jim Prosser, J.K. Carriere has recently moved to a brand new facility on Parrett Mountain near Newberg in Yamhill County. Before founding J.K. Carriere, Jim Prosser worked for eight producers in four countries including: Erath, Domaine Drouhin, Brick House and Chehalem in Oregon; Villa Maria in New Zealand; Tarra Warra and T'Gallant in Australia; and Domaine Georges Roumier in Burgundy. The name J.K. Carriere corresponds to the combined names of his grandfathers J.K. Prosser and Paul Carriere. Being severely allergic to wasps and nearly killed by them twice, he chose to prominently feature one of these insects on his bottle labels.

The new facility has steel culverts embedded into the ground to create naturally temperature-controlled barrel caves

In the summer, the tasting room is conveniently open Friday and Saturday, 11 am to 4 pm. Otherwise, you need to make a private appointment to visit the winery.

The wines we tasted:

2009 J.K. Carriere Glass White Pinot Noir: whole cluster pressed and barrel fermented to absolute dryness at low-temperature in older French oak barrels. Lees from a Chardonnay fermentation are stirred during aging, following a 100-yeal-old Champagne Rosé technique to strip color and broaden an earthy mid-palate. My notes: beautiful salmon color, citrus aromas, dry and mineral on the palate with some roundness, fresh and crisp on the finish.

2009 J.K. Carriere Glass White Pinot Noir

2007 J.K. Carriere Chardonnay Willamette Valley: a blend of two vineyards: Temperance Hill in the Eola Hills and Maresh Vineyard from the Dundee Hills. Whole cluster pressed and barrel fermented at low-temperature with wild yeast in older French barrel. My notes: deep golden color, crisp and dry, more mineral than fruity.

2008 J.K. Carriere Provocateur Pinot Noir Willamette Valley: Provocateur is French for troublemaker. A blend of seven vineyards: Temperance Hill, Anderson Family, Black Walnut, Shea, Gemini, Momtazi, and Sheppard. Small-lot wild yeast fermentations in open-top stainless steel tanks. Barrel aged for 17 months in French oak, 4% new. My notes: attractive Pinot nose, dusty spice aromas, well-balanced, light on the finish.

2007 J.K. Carriere Pinot Noir Willamette Valley: a Willamette Valley blend that includes 21% Shea Vineyard for ripe dark fruit, Temperance Hill for old-vine complexity, Eola Hills for centrist cherry, Gemini Vineyard for moving red, Momtazi for hi-tone and spice, Black Walnut for earth, and Anderson Family Vineyard for savory and structure. Small-lot wild yeast fermentations, 100% barrel aged for 18 months, 21% new. My notes: richly flavored with notes of mint, eucalyptus, citrus, and licorice, medium-bodied, well-balanced with a nice, long finish.

2007 J.K. Carriere Antoinette Pinot Noir: Antoinette Carriere was Jim Prosser's Canadian grandmother. The wine is made from the five best Temperance Hill vineyard barrels, sourced from 28-year-old vines growing at high elevation. Small-lot wild yeast fermentations, barrel aged for 18 months in French oak barrels (25% new). My notes: denser than the Willamette Valley blend, complex aromas of wild berry and pepper with mineral notes. Needs time to open up, very long finish, age worthy.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Oregon Trip: Dinner at the Painted Lady Restaurant

2010-08-06T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Painted Lady Restaurant is located in a refurbished Victorian house (the painted lady) in downtown Newberg. The chef and co-owner, Allen Routt, cooks seasonal dishes using fresh locally-sourced ingredients including local fish, berries, and hazelnuts. He opened the restaurant with his wine Jessica Bagley in 1995 after working several years in Napa Valley and then Las Vegas.

The Painted Lady Restaurant

The evening of our reservation was warm and breezy so we decided to sit out on the deck, a more relaxed setting than the elegant dining room inside. We chose the four-course meal which ended up being the best food we ever had in Oregon.

Alsatian Onion Tart with Bacon and Veal Sweet Breads

Seared Diver Scallop with Braised Endive and Grapefruit Supremes

Hazelnut Crusted True Cod with Viridian Farm Pea Ragout

Rabbit Roulade with Pancetta, Butted Savoy Cabbage and Medjool Dates

Chocolate Tart with Local Hazelnuts and Milk Chocolate Ice Cream

That night, the restaurant offered wine pairing with the menu but the wine list also included some older Pinot Noir vintages that were very well priced. So, after getting some advice from our extremely friendly and knowledgeable waitress, we ordered the 2001 J.K. Carriere Pinot Noir Willamette Valley with our meal. We were not disappointed: the wine was ready to drink with a complexity of aromas that went fabulously well with the food. And our plans for the following day were made: we had to visit the J.K. Carriere Winery.

2001 J.K. Carriere Pinot Noir Willamette Valley

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Our Oregon trip: The Beaux Frères Vineyard

2010-08-03T16:34:00.000-07:00

In 1986 while on vacation from Colorado, Michael Etzel found an 88-acre pig farm for sale in Yamhill County, Oregon. The place looked like a promising vineyard site so he decided to purchase it with the help of his brother-in-law, Robert Parker, Jr. The following summer, he moved to the farm with his family and became a vineyard manager, planting Pinot Noir and slowly converting the old pig and dairy farm into a prime vineyard property. Eventually, The Beaux Frères Vineyard (which means brothers-in-law in French) was established in 1991 thanks to the addition of a third partner, Robert Roy.

Michael Etzel's winemaking philosophy is to follow a minimal intervention approach using small yields and healthy fruit. The vineyard is planted with tightly spaced vines to keep yields low. The grapes are harvested when they have reached physiological maturity. The fermentation occurs with indigenous yeasts. The wines are aged in French oak for 10 to 12 months and the percentage of new oak utilized is based on the strength and concentration of the vintage.

The Beaux Frères Winery

Replanting in the vineyard due to Phylloxera damage

When we arrived at Beaux Frères, we were welcomed by Rebekah Bellingham in charge of the tasting room and the winery tours. It was very nice of her to take us on such short notice. Here is what she had available for tasting:

Rebekah Bellingham at Beaux Frères

The wines we tasted

2007 Beaux Frères Pinot Noir Willamette Valley: formerly known as the Beaux Frères Belles Soeurs Pinot Noir, this is a blend of fruit from different vineyards. Less new oak is used than for the Estate Cuvées. My notes: light red color, fragrant nose with notes of citrus, medium-bodied and round on the palate, well-balanced.

2008 Beaux Frères Pinot Noir Willamette Valley: while the 2007 vintage was characterized by moderate temperatures during the summer and rain storms during the last few weeks of the vintage, 2008 was on average warmer, with a cool summer followed by hot days and cold nights in September. My notes: more sweet cherry aromas, fuller with more power but less refined than the 2007.

2007 Beaux Frères Pinot Noir The Beaux Frères Vineyard: the vines of the 22 acre Beaux Frères Estate Vineyard were planted between 1987 and 1990. The vineyard is a mix of Pommard and Wadenswil clones. Although it is not certified as either organic or biodynamic, it is being farmed using biodynamic principles. My notes: medium red color, a hint of fruit but mostly spices, black pepper, rich and full on the palate, young.

2007 Beaux Frères Pinot Noir The Upper Terrace Vineyard: the Upper Terrace is made from a ten acre vineyard purchased in the late 90's. The site is similar to the Beaux Frères Vineyard in elevation and its sedimentary soils. It is surrounded on all sides by a forest of old fir trees. Eight of the ten acres are currently planted to Dijon clones, as compared to the Estate Vineyard, which is planted to Pommard and Wadenswil clones. It is farmed using the same sustainable principles as the Beaux Frères Vineyard. My notes: still tight and young, concentrated, earthy, licorice aromas, very long finish. This is a wine that should age beautifully.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Our Oregon trip: wine tasting at the Ponzi Wine Bar

2010-07-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a quick bite and a good introduction to the wines of Oregon, Ponzi Vineyards' wine bar in downtown Dundee is the place to go. You'll find different wine flights and wines by the glass on the menu showcasing over 70 Oregon vintners, as well as various cheese and salumi plates to accompany them.

Ponzi Vineyards is one of Oregon's oldest wineries. It was founded in 1970 at a time when Oregon was not a well-known wine region and when making Pinot Noir in the Willamette Valley was rather risky. Nowadays, Ponzi has become a successful winery dedicated to sustainable viticultural and enological practices. It is was one of the first Oregon property to get the LIVE Winery Certification. A new eco-friendly winemaking facility was completed for the 2008 harvest. Built atop one of the Chehalem Mountains slopes, it uses several green features including gravity-flow processing, temperature control, energy efficient lights, natural ventilation, water retention, and recycling.

It was a hot day and we wanted to start with something fresh and crisp, so following the advice of Sales Associate Kendra Wells, we ordered a flight of mostly white wines. Here are my notes:

• 2008 Ponzi Chardonnay Willamette Valley: produced from old vine Chardonnay, the wine was hand sorted, whole cluster pressed and fermented in 100% stainless steel. My notes: stone fruit and butterscotch aromas on the nose, crisp, light to medium-bodied on the palate, fresh and lively on the finish.

• 2009 Ponzi Arneis Willamette Valley: Arneis is a white wine varietal from the Piedmont region in Northern Italy. Ponzi Vineyards is one of very few U.S. producers of Arneis and the only producer in Oregon. The wine was fermented at very low temperatures in stainless steel with a portion in neutral oak. My notes: floral aromas on the palate, fizzy and light on the palate, good acidity, light finish.

• 2009 Ponzi Pinot Blanc Willamette Valley: Pinot Blanc is a genetic mutation of Pinot Noir and produces full-bodied white wines in Alsace, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia. In Oregon, it is known as the real thing because Oregon's cuttings came originally from Alsace, whereas in California, the certified Pinot Blanc rootstock from University of California at Davis turned out to be Melon de Bourgogne, a grape from the Loire Valley used in Muscadet. The wine was fermented 75% in stainless steel tanks, 25% in neutral oak barrels with partial malolactic fermentation. My notes: aromatic nose, floral notes, rather dry, crisp, mineral finish.

• 2009 Ponzi Pinot Gris Willamette Valley: Pinot Gris is a clone of Pinot Noir with a different skin color that was caused by a genetic mutation. It is known to be Oregon's Signature White Wine. It was David Lett from The Eyrie Vineyards that planted the first Pinot Gris vines in Oregon in 1966. At Ponzi, Pinot Gris plantings started in 1978. My notes: attractive nose of white peach, medium body, spicy, mineral finish. Drier than most of the Oregon Pinot Gris wines that we have tasted so far.

We also tasted a flight of two “guest” (non Ponzi) wines:

• 2008 Patricia Green Pinot Noir Whistling Ridge: Patricia Green Cellars is located in the Ribbon Ridge district of Yamhill County. Whistling Ridge Vineyard is a small, 15-year old vineyard in the Ribbon Ridge appellation, located just behind Patricia Green Cellars and Beaux Frères Vineyards. My notes: funny chemical on the nose, notes of tar, butterscotch. Not our favorite.

• 2008 Penner-Ash Pinot Noir Shea Vineyard: founded in in 1998 by winemaker Lynn Penner-Ash and her husband Ron, Penner-Ash Wine Cellars is located on the eastern edge of the Yamhill-Carlton District. Owned by Dick and Deidra Shea, Shea Vineyard was one of the early planted vineyards in Yamhill County. It is a 200-acre property with 135 planted to Pinot Noir and 5 acres planted to Chardonnay. While the Shea family keeps 25% of the Pinot Noir for their own bottling, the rest is sold to various wineries in Oregon and California. My notes: nose of sweet berries with notes of green pepper, earthy on the palate with a hint of caramelized pear on the finish.

While we were tasting, Kendra recommended going to Beaux Frères and she even called the tasting room for us. I remembered buying two bottles of their Pinot Noir some time ago but I hadn't tried them yet, so it was time to move on and discover the wines of Beaux Frères.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Touring the wineries in Oregon's Willamette Valley

2010-07-21T16:21:00.000-07:00

We just spent five days in Oregon, visiting Portland, the Willamette Valley around the town of Newberg in Yamhill County, as well as the beach resort of Cannon Beach on the Pacific Coast.

While touring the Willamette Valley, we found ourselves welcomed by a laid-back and bucolic lifestyle, meeting warm and frienfly people, always happy to share their stories. There were many highlights in our trip and in my next posts, I'll write about our lunch at the Ponzi Wine Bar in Dundee, wine tastings at Beaux Frères, J.K. Carriere Wines, Brick House Vineyards, and The Eyrie Vineyards. We also had a wonderful dinner at The Painted Lady Restaurant in Newberg.

Vineyard in the Dundee Hills

So stay tuned for my next post with a review of the Ponzi Wine Bar.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A bright orange soup and a Spanish wine for the World Cup Final

2010-07-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

Sunday was the Spain-Netherlands World Cup Final and we were invited to a potluck party to watch the match. For the occasion I made a chilled Carrot Ginger Soup that I served in small glasses garnished with a drop of cream and snipped parsley. With fresh ginger and a pinch of curry, the soup is spicy but very refreshing and it works wonderfully well with a Spanish Albariño like the 2008 Burgans Albariño Rias Baixas that I also brought to the party.

The Rias Baixas region (the name means low estuaries) is located on the Galician coast, between the city of Santiago de Compostela and the Portuguese border. It is renowned for its white wines (over 90% of the wine production) primarily made from the Albariño grape variety.

Albariño produces aromatic wines with high acidity. The name means the white from the Rhine as it was thought to be a Riesling clone brought from Alsace in the twelfth century. It may actually be related to Petit Manseng, a grape grown in the southwest of France. In Portugal, it is called Alvarinho and is commonly used in the blend of Vinho Verde wines.

The 2008 Burgan had a light yellow color and a citrus nose with white peach and mineral notes. On the palate, the wine was dry and bright, clean and zappy, just like a skilled and precise Spanish pass.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

How we tried to rescue a corked 1st growth Bordeaux and failed!

2010-07-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

The bottle was a 1995 Château Haut-Brion, stored in our friend's wine cabinet in Chicago, patiently waiting for our visit.

We arrived in Chicago on a Thursday night and it was decided that we would taste the wine the following evening. As the wine was from a great vintage and highly rated, we were expecting a memorable moment.

“This wine has been brilliant on every occasion I have tasted it”, said Parker on the 1995. “More accessible and forward than the 1996, it possesses a saturated ruby/purple color, as well as a beautiful, knock-out set of aromatics, consisting of black fruits, vanillin, spice, and wood-fire smoke. Multidimensional and rich, with layers of ripe fruit, and beautifully integrated tannin and acidity, this medium to full-bodied wine is a graceful, seamless, exceptional Haut-Brion that should drink surprisingly well young.”

But as soon as we popped the cork, the bad news jumped at our nose: the wine was corked! We took a small sip to confirm the verdict and it was unmistakably bad. Sad, sad, sad!

But then I remembered a New York Times article that suggested a way to rescue a corked wine:

Mr. Waterhouse said that the obnoxious, dank flavor of a “corked” wine, which usually renders it unusable even in cooking, can be removed by pouring the wine into a bowl with a sheet of plastic wrap.

“It's kind of messy, but very effective in just a few minutes,” he said. The culprit molecule in infected corks, 2,4,6-trichloroanisole, is chemically similar to polyethylene and sticks to the plastic.

The experiment was worth trying, what could we lose? We took a large bowl, lined it with plastic wrap, and poured a small amount of the wine into the bowl. Then, after 5 minutes or so, we compared the wine from the bowl with the wine from the bottle. You could definitively detect some differences between the two. The bad chemical taste was somewhat smoothed out in the wine from the bowl, but sadly, it didn't make the wine more drinkable. Maybe the plastic wrap was able to catch some of the molecules but not all of them. And maybe we should try that experiment again but only with a wine that is marginally flawed.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Tasting the Slovenian wines of Santomas at Albona with Winemaker Tamara Glavina

2010-07-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

As most Soccer fans have learned, Slovenia is barely the size of Houston and was the smallest of the 32 nations that participated in the 2010 World Cup tournament. Nonetheless, its wine industry is one of the most advanced of the former Yugoslav republics. So I felt very lucky when I got invited by Frank Dietrich and Zsuzsanna Molnar of Blue Danube Wine to a Winemaker Dinner featuring the wines of the Slovenian winery Santomas at Albona Restaurant in San Francisco.

The Santomas winery is located in the coastal town of Kopler, on the Slovenian side of the Istrian peninsula. The Glavina family has been cultivated vines and olives for 200 years and over time, has expanded the estate to almost 50 acres of vineyards and 7,5 acres of olive orchards. Nowadays, the winery consists of a modern wine cellar, a tasting room, and a wine laboratory.

The current production is 70% Refošk or Refosco, a local varietal that also grows in Italy and Croatia and can produce tannic and powerful wines, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Merlot, and 10% Malvasia, an ancient grape of Greek origin that is found throughout the Mediterranean.

The winemaker dinner was at Albona Restaurant in San Francisco's North Beach district, the only Istrian restaurant on the West Coast. The Istrian cuisine has been uniquely influenced by Italians, Austrians, Hungarians, Slavs, Spaniards, French, Jews, Greeks, and Turks and thus combines classic Italian dishes with ingredients like cumin, sauerkraut, and strudels.

For the occasion, owner Michael Bruno had assembled a 4 course menu showcasing Istria's flavorful cuisine, and paired with 4 wines presented by Santomas Winemaker Tamara Glavina.

1st Course: Minestre de asparaghi (Puree of asparagus soup thickened with Yukon Gold potatoes)

The asparagus soup was paired with a 2008 Santomas Malvasia: the Malvasia vines grow on white soils that are hard to work on and thus require a lot of manual work. The harvest is manual. About 10% of the wine was aged in oak and rested on lees for additional body. My notes: golden color, aromatic nose of acacia blossom and citrus, fresh and slightly oily on the palate, dried herbs on the finish. The soup was really delicious and I loved the wine too!

2nd Course: Chifeleti de mia nona con sugo de carne al cumin (Grandmother's specialty: pan-fried potato gnocchi in a brown sirloin sauce laced with cumin)

The gnocchi dish was paired with a 2008 Santomas Cabernet Sauvignon: manual harvest, made with no oak. My notes: attractive raspberry nose, smooth mouthfeel, soft tannins, spicy on the palate, good acidity, worked very well with the meaty sauce and the subtle notes of cumin.

3rd Course: Involtin de porco con capuzi garbi e prosuto (Pork loin stuffed with sauerkraut, apples, and plums served with red cabbage sauté)

With the pork loin, we tasted the 2003 Santomas Big Red Grande Cuvée: the Grande Cuvée is Santomas's age-worthy premium blend made primarily from Refosco. Refosco is difficult to grow and historically vines were trained in a pergola style to optimize yields. Santomas moved to a guyot vine training system to reduce yields to 3000 l/ha. The wine is unfiltered, unfined. My notes: dark color, rich aromas, spicy, peppery on the palate, notes of garrigue on the finish. An excellent match for the apples, plums, and sauerkraut filling.

Dessert: Sorbetto (Housemade raspberry sorbet)

With the sorbet we were served a glass of 2007 Santomas Late Harvest Malvasia Invasia. Sadly, 2007 was the last year the winery produced a Late Harvest Malvasia. My notes: light golden color, fresh floral nose, with sweet apple aromas, light-bodied, semi-sweet on the palate, expressive, not cloying at all.

Winemaker Tamara Glavina introducing the 2007 Late Harvest Malvasia

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Does the oversized Vinum XL Pinot Noir glass really make a difference?

2010-06-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

As I posted earlier, during our visit to Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards, I ended up being the lucky winner of 2 Vinum XL Pinot Noir glasses. Initially, I have to admit that I was not really sure about these glasses. Large and tall (they hold slightly more than a full bottle of wine), they obviously don't fit in my dishwasher, but would their size and shape make a real difference on the wine-tasting experience?

So back at home, I had to check. I poured a 2001 Provenance Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville into the Vinum XL Pinot Noir glass (contenance 80cl) as well as into a Ouverture Red Wine glass (contenance 35cl), a glass that I particularly like because it doesn't break easily and fits nicely into my dishwasher.

Located on Highway 29 in Napa Valley, Provenance Vineyards currently owns the land originally farmed by Thomas Rutherford in the 19th century. The name Provenance means origin in French. The winery released its first Cabernet Sauvignon in 1999 and since then, has bought vineyards in the Rutherford, Oakville and Mount Veeder appellations. The philosophy of the winemaking team is to select top vineyards and intervene as little as possible during the winemaking process.

There was no comparison between the wine poured into my everyday Ouverture Red Wine glass and the wine poured into the Vinum XL Pinot Noir glass. The large bowl of the glass allowed the wine aromas to fully develop while the slightly flared top lip directed them efficiently towards the nose and mouth.

The wine had a deep garnet color and aromas of mint, figs, and blackberries on the nose. On the palate, it was full-bodied, rich, with flavors of sweet berries, leaving notes of cocoa on the finish.

These glasses are advertised for Pinot Noir but I think they really work well with full-bodied Cabernets. However, I would not bother using them for wines with much less body and a more subtle nose.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Richard Feynman, wine, terroir, and global warming

2010-06-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

In The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman invokes a glass of wine: “a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars”, a terrific quote that Author and Professor Steven Kolpan cites in his latest article on how soil and climate affect wine.

“Grapes can grow in plenty of places,” says Kolpan, “but since the best soils for grapes are those that stress the vines, the best climates are those that are just barely warm enough for them to ripen, and wine growers are keenly attuned to the weather and temperature of their vineyards.”

So in a follow-up article, Kolpan wonders what will happen to great wines when classic wine regions get too hot. Yes, what will happen when Napa Valley becomes as hot as California's Central Valley?

“Cool climate conditions grant the grapes a healthy dose of acidity, ” explains Kolpan, “the refreshing, citrus-or-green fruit-sour flavors that make a wine interesting, even compelling. It is that acidity that makes our mouth water, and encourages us to have another bite of food, another sip of wine.” However, “grapes that grow in warm climates obviously have no trouble ripening, but their lack of acidity can translate into a flat, flabby uninteresting wine. Also, in hot climates grapes easily overripen, creating huge amounts of sugar that turn into alcohol bombs during fermentation.”

Unfortunately, argues Kolpan, global warming and wine is just another inconvenient truth for the global wine industry that has been ignoring the facts for too long, as well as for wine consumers.

“The message is clear,” concludes Kopan, “Wine is a precious product of nature, and its future is threatened. In your glass of pleasure there is also a microcosm of our shared environmental concerns, concerns that can no longer be ignored, no longer be denied.”

“How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it!” says Richard Feynman at the end of his great speech on wine. “If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!”

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Tour of Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards

2010-05-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

The other day, we were invited by our friend and real estate agent Sophie Ravel to a wine tasting and lunch event at Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards.

Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards is a small winery located in the scenic Santa Cruz Mountains above the town of Saratoga. It was founded in 1892 by a French immigrant named Pierre Pourroy but Prohibition quickly forced the Pourroy family to shut down production. Winemaker Daniel Gehrs bought the neglected winery in 1976 and was able to rescue the old Zinfandel and Cabernet Franc vines that were still growing on the estate. Eventually, Michael and Kellie Ballard purchased the property in 1996, naming it after their two daughters Savannah and Chanel. Two years later, the Chanel fashion house sued the Ballards forcing them to change the winery name to Savannah-Chanelle Vineyards.

The estate has 58 acres planted with Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, Zinfandel, and Chardonnay. The Zinfandel plantings date back to 1910, and the Cabernet Franc plantings —California's oldest— date back to 1920. We didn't have the opportunity to taste the old vine Estate Zinfandel nor the Cabernet Franc but we were served an unoaked 2009 Chardonnay Monterey County that I particularly liked, It was refreshingly crisp with attractive aromas of grapefruit and lemon . I also enjoyed the tasty and peppery 2007 Syrah Coastview Vineyard, from a vineyard located at 2600 ft on a mountain top overlooking Monterey Bay.

It was a warm and sunny day and we had a nice lunch in the lawn and garden area in front of Pierre Pourroy's Mediterranean-style chateau and surrounded by tall redwood trees and hillside vineyards. There was also a raffle and I did win one of the three prizes, a set of 2 Riedel Burgundy glasses! But that's the subject of a future post.

The old redwood winery built in 1922 that now houses the tasting room

Inside the tasting room

Old Zinfandel plantings

View from the garden of a small hillside Pinot Noir vineyard

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Third Guess The Wine tasting party

2010-05-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Our last tasting event was another Guess the Wine party where guests are asked to identify the varietal, region, and vintage of wines they drink blind. This time, the wines were served in identical skittle-shaped Côtes de Provence bottles —bottles that our friend Jean had saved just for the event— to ensure that no one could recognize the wine based on the shape and color of the bottle.

I have to say that this game is extremely challenging because even wines that are made with one single varietal are hard to identify, especially if the only clue you have is a list of 6 varietals to choose from. Nonetheless, it's a fun game and it gives you the opportunity to really enjoy a wine without being influenced by its label.

Here are the wines that we tasted:

• 2007 Kingston Family Vineyards Cariblanco Sauvignon Blanc: The Kingston Family came to Chile in the 1900's looking for copper and gold. In the 1920's, they settled in Casablanca, a town between Santiago and Valparaiso, and built a farm. They now specialize in Pinot Noir, Syrah, and Sauvignon Blanc from cool-climate vineyards located in the Casablanca Valley, about 12 miles from the Pacific Ocean. My notes: pale color, nose of citrus, grapefruit, good body on the palate, fresh, crisp mouthfeel.

• 2006 Trimbach Gewürztraminer: The Trimbach family has been making wines in Alsace since 1626. The estate vineyards are located around Ribeauvillé, an area known for its soils of clay and limestone. The Trimbach house makes wines that are dry, mineral, fruity, and well balanced from classic Alsatian varietals such as Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Blanc, and Sylvaner. My notes: light golden color, nose of rose petal and lechee fruit, slightly sweet on the palate with a mineral finish.

• Broadley Pinot Noir Willamette Valley: Broadley Vineyards have been making Oregon Pinot Noir for more than 20 years. The winery has 30 planted acres in the warmest and driest part of the valley near the small town of Monroe in Southern Willamette Valley. Grapes are harvested by hand and then a good portion of the wine is fermented in wood as whole clusters (stems and all) to add structure and character. The Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a blend from several vineyards in the appellation. My notes: medium garnet color, aromatic nose of sweet cherry, light to medium bodied on the palate, good acidity, spicy finish. A very nice Pinot at a great price.

• 2006 Las Rocas de San Alejandro Garnacha Vinas Viejas: founded in 1962, Las Rocas de San Alejandro is a cooperative in the Calatayud appellation, in northeast Spain. Calatayud has a continental climate with vast temperature differences between night and day. The region is an old river basin with soils comprised of limestone and loam over slate and gypsum. The majority of the wines produced are red mostly from Grenache or Garnacha (55% of the vines planted) followed by Mazuelo, Tempranillo, Monastrell (or Mourvèdre), Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah. The Garnacha Vinas Viejas is from dry-farmed old vines Grenache vines (a minimum of 45 year old) and aged in American oak (60%) and French oak barrels (40%). My notes: dark garnet color, spicy, peppery nose with black cherry aromas, firm backbone on the palate with some tannins, lengthy finish.

• 2006 Whitehall Lane Merlot Napa Valley: founded in 1979, Whitehall Lane is a small, family owned winery located in Rutherford, Napa Valley. In 1993, the Leonardini family bought the Whitehall Lane property, updated the winemaking process and currently owns and operate six Napa Valley vineyards in the Rutherford, Oak Knoll, and St. Helena appellations. The 2006 Merlot is a blend of 83% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 7% Syrah. The Cabernet Sauvignon adds structure and additional fruit aromas while the Syrah adds complexity to the blend. My notes: deep red color, sweet berry aromas on the nose, soft tannins on the palate with notes of oak and vanilla, juicy finish.

• 2007 Thorn-Clarke Shotfire Shiraz: Thorn-Clarke Wines is a family owned producer located in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, probably Australia's most famous wine region. The valley enjoys a Mediterranean climate with a lot of sunshine, low humidity and rainfall, ideal for full-bodied red wines, especially Shiraz. The wine is aged for 12-18 months in a mix of French and American oak, 40% new. My notes: deep red color, smoky pepper on the nose, rich and soft on the palate with aromas of sweet berries, spicy and mineral on the finish, a great way to end the evening.

This year, Xavier was our winner and received a bottle of Champagne for his performance. Hélène got the lowest score but lucky her, she got a bottle of wine too.

Our next wine tasting will feature the wines of Santa Barbara County and I can already tell you that there will be no Merlot!

Previous wine club tastings:
• Tasting of Zinfandel and Zinfandel related grapes
• Drink Local Tasting
• Pairing wine and cheese

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Finding treasures in a closet under the stairs

2010-05-12T17:41:00.001-07:00

The late husband of our friend Simone was a wine lover. In particular, he liked collecting wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and California that he would generously share with good friends. But this was in the 70s and 80s when he was still in good health. Now, my friend Simone has a whole collection of dusty old bottles that are resting in a dark closet under the stairs. So when she asked me to make an inventory of the wines, I told her that unfortunately, many may have gone past their prime. Some had an alarming very low fill level with some dark mold around the cork. How to find out which wines were still drinkable? The best way was to taste them.

And that's what we did the other day: we selected twenty bottles that looked most promising, opened them —which was by far the hardest task— and tried them. We were all hoping that some of the wines would still be good and I have to say that each bottle was opened religiously. But sadly, half of the wines were simply not drinkable and some others were drying out with light bodies and fading aromas. But miraculously, we also found a handful of treasures.

Here they are:

• 1979 Beaune-Grèves Château de Meursault: the Beaune-Grèves appellation is a Premier Cru located on a hillside facing the town of Beaune. Its name probably comes from the French word graviers (small pepples) due to the presence of small gravels and sand mixed with clay in the soil. The wines from Beaune-Grèves are known for their elegance and finesse. The estate of Château de Meursault comprises 60 hectares of vines, all situated in the Côte de Beaune, around the towns of Aloxe Corton, Savigny-les-Beaune, Beaune, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet. The wine had an amber-brick color and a fragrant, slightly smoky nose of dried cherry. The palate was fresh and well-balanced with a light finish of dried herbs, truly delicious!

• 1986 Château Font Villac: the wine is a Grand Cru from the Saint Emilion appellation and most likely a Merlot-Cabernet Franc blend. The year 1986 was a great vintage in Bordeaux. While the weather was hot and dry during the summer, mid-September rains tempered the drought-like conditions and helped vines reach full maturity. The wine had a deep brick-orange color and a sweet nose of blackberries. The palate was not overly complex but smooth, round, and pleasant.

• 1980 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande: Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande is a classified second-growth from Pauillac. The property uses a blend of 45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Franc and 8% Petit Verdot, which has an unusually high proportion of Merlot for a Pauillac. Therefore, the wine tends to be more fleshy and softer than wines from the other Pauillac properties. The 1980 vintage was cool and wet in Bordeaux. Growers were able to delay their harvest until the weather began to improve at the end of September but rains returned in the middle of October during the harvest. Many wines from this vintage were light and diluted, the best results being from producers that made a strict grape selection and picked exceptionally late. The wine had a light-to-medium red color and a seductive nose of berries and flowers. On the palate, it was smooth and savory with an elegant and spicy finish.

• 1971 Château Lafite-Rothschild: Château Lafite-Rothschild is maybe the most famous property in Bordeaux and one of the four classified first growth wines. Located in Pauillac, the Lafite vineyard is one of the largest in the Médoc planted with 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, and 2% Petit Verdot. The 1971 vintage is characterized by a small crop size and forward and flattering wines upon release, thanks to a cold, damp spring followed by a warm and sunny summer. The wine had a light orange color, a subtle nose, and a light-bodied, lean palate with notes of buttermilk and earthy flavors on the finish.

• 1981 Château Lafite-Rothschild: the 1981 vintage produced wines of medium-weight, well-balanced and graceful. July was a cool month but August and September were hot and dry. It could have been an outstanding year had it not been for the heavy rains that fell just before the harvest. The wine had a light red color and a subtle nose of dried herbs. On the palate, it had more body and fruit than the 1971 with smoky spices on the finish.

So did you guess my favorite wines? Hint: I had two.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Napa Cellars: latest releases

2010-05-06T11:39:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, we tasted the latest releases of Napa Cellars, that were sent to me by the winery. Located on Highway 29 in Oakville, Napa Cellars produces several very reasonably priced varietal wines, all from the Napa Valley AVA.

Stretching from Carneros to Calistoga, Napa Valley offers multiple microclimates due to various geographical factors. The open southern part of the valley is close to the northern tip of San Francisco Bay and is cooler during the growing season. Then, north of Yountville, the valley becomes narrower and bends towards the west. The winds don't make the turn so the St. Helena and Calistoga areas tend to be much warmer. Napa Cellars takes advantage of these diverse climates when blending wines to achieve a consistent quality year after year and balance fruit flavors, tannins, and acidity.

Here are the wines that we tasted:

• 2008 Napa Cellars Chardonnay Napa Valley: this is the winery's flagship wine. Most of the fruit is sourced from the southern part of the Napa Valley where summer temperatures can be ten to fifteen degrees cooler than those up north. The wine was aged 7 months in 100% French Oak (34% new). It had a light golden color and a nose that was more mineral than fruity. On the palate, it was medium-bodied, creamy, slightly oaky, with a good acidity and a lingering finish. Try it with a cream-based dish such as Fettucine with Smoked Salmon and Asparagus

• 2007 Napa Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley: sourced from a collection of vineyards located in the St. Helena, Oak Knoll, and Rutherford districts, the wine was aged for 18 months, in predominately French oak (55% new). Showing a dark purple color and a red berry nose with notes of mint, eucalyptus, and vanilla, it was full-bodied with a moderate amount of alcohol (13.8%). It was surprisingly well-balanced in terms of acidity and tannins for a young Cabernet. Try it with grilled steaks such as Rib Eye Steaks with Mixed Mushroom Sauté

• 2007 Napa Cellars Merlot Napa Valley: most of the fruit comes from the cooler regions of Napa Valley, such as Oak Knoll and Carneros. The blend also includes a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon (10%). The wine was aged for 20 months in predominantely French oak (36% new). It had a deep red color and a nose of sweet black plums and blackberries. The palate was rich, full-bodied and showing more alcohol than the Cabernet, leaving notes of cocoa on the finish. Try it with a pork dish cooked with fruit such as Pork Roast with Winter Fruits and Port Sauce

• 2007 Napa Cellars Zinfandel Napa Valley: much of the fruit was sourced from the warmer regions of Napa Valley, including Calistoga, St. Helena and Pope Valley. The blend is 88% Zinfandel and 12% Petit Sirah, aged for 18 months in American and French oak (23% new). Showing a medium red color, the wine had a nose of red berry fruit. The palate was fruity but not too jammy with exotic spices on the finish. Try it with some Asian spiced grilled meat such as Sweet Soy-Grilled Short Ribs

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

In vino veritas: wine grapes are an early warning system for the effects of climate change

2010-04-27T12:45:00.000-07:00

“Because wine grapes are extraordinarily sensitive to temperature, the industry amounts to an early-warning system for problems that all food crops—and all industries—will confront as global warming intensifies” says Mark Hertsgaard in a recent article in Slate Magazine. “In vino veritas, the Romans said: In wine there is truth. The truth now is that the earth's climate is changing much faster than the wine business, and virtually every other business on earth, is preparing for.”

In California, for instance, it is still hard to predict the effects of climate change on Napa Valley wines. However, “there is a fifteenfold difference in the price of cabernet sauvignon grapes that are grown in Napa Valley and cabernet sauvignon grapes grown in Fresno in California's hot Central Valley,” says Kim Cahill, a consultant to the Napa Valley Vintners' Association. “Cabernet grapes grown in Napa sold in 2006 for $4,100 a ton. In Fresno the price was $260 a ton. The difference in average temperature between Napa and Fresno was 5 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Some winemakers are actually very happy with the current situation. Pancho Campo, the founder and president of the Wine Academy of Spain, explains: “some of the most expensive wines in Spain come from the Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa regions. They are getting almost perfect ripeness every year now for Tempranillo. This makes the winemakers say, 'Who cares about climate change? We are getting perfect vintages.' The same thing has happened in Bordeaux.”

The Rioja Alavesa Wine Region from OenoSpeak - A sommeliers journal

But in Burgundy, “producers are very concerned, because they know that chardonnay and pinot noir are cool-weather wines, and climate change is bringing totally the contrary. Some of the producers were even considering starting to study Syrah and other varieties. At the moment, they are not allowed to plant other grapes, but these are questions people are asking.”

The wine industry doesn't seem to be ready to adapt to climate change and this is worrisome because the industry has much incentive to act. “If winemakers aren't motivated to adapt to climate change, what businesses will be?” asks Hertsgaard. And he concludes, quoting Darwin: “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

The full article is here.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Dinner at Craigie on Main in Cambridge, Massachusetts

2010-04-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, we were on a East Coast trip with the firm intention to try some good local restaurants. So one saturday night, we had a reservation for Craigie on Main, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a restaurant with excellent reviews.

When we arrived for our 9:00pm reservation, the place was busy like a beehive but fortunately, we didn't have to wait too long for our table. The place was crowded but we know now that it's for a good reason: the food is fantastic and as they explain on the menu, they also want you to feel right about it. The restaurant prioritizes local and sustainable food and buys it from small independents farms and growers. About 80% of the bottles in the winelist are from organic and biodynamic vineyards. Moreover, this is real food with tasty, earthy flavors, not Molecular Gastronomy.

Salad of Hiramasa Sashimi, red onion-shiso salsa, avocado, harissa-rose vinaigrette

Ragoût of Forest Mushrooms, Boudin Noir, and Veal Sweetbreads, farm-fresh poached egg, smoked foie gras sauce

Vermont Organic Pork Three Ways: Crispy Suckling Confit, Spice-Crusted Rib, Grilled Belly, caramelized endive, satsuma tangerines, pioppini mushrooms, parsnip purée, tawny port

We chose a 2003 Château Poujeaux to go with the meal. Still firm at the beginning, it evolved nicely during the dinner, revealing a spicy, mineral nose and a multi-layered palate. It worked well with the rich aromas of the food.

At the end of the dinner came a complimentary cup of chocolate, hot, thick and mildly spicy, and we felt just right about our evening.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Oddball Wines Tasting

2010-04-09T12:14:00.000-07:00

The other day, we had an interesting theme for our wine tasting: oddball wines. Everybody was asked to bring what he or she would consider an oddball wine and this resulted in a surprising set of bottles. They were served blind and we tried to identify what they were, but I have to say that most of the time, we were just completely puzzled and we had no clue as to what the wine was or where it came from!

Here are the wines that we tasted:

• 1985 Adams Chardonnay Yamhill County: I could not find any information on the internet regarding the Adams winery. This wine is from Yamhill County, which, with over 80 wineries and 200 vineyards, is considered to be the center of Oregon's wine production. My notes: deep yellow color, apple cider flavors, tasted like a mature Chardonnay or a Sémillon-Sauvignon Blanc blend from the Graves region.

• 1985 The Eyrie Vineyards Chardonnay Yamhill County: located in the Red Hills of Dundee appellation in Oregon, the Eyrie Vineyards was founded by David and Diana Lett in 1966. This was the first planting of Pinot noir and Chardonnay in the Willamette Valley. In 1979, the 1975 Eyrie Vineyards Reserve Pinot Noir won tenth place among Pinot noirs in blind tasting at the Wine Olympics in Paris. My notes: dark yellow color, nutty, oxidized, Sherry taste.

• 1991 Panther Creek Reserve Pinot Noir: located in McMinnville, Oregon, Panther Creek Cellars has been producing Pinot noir since 1986. The reserve Pinot Noir is a barrel selection coming from different vineyards within the Willamette Valley. My notes: copper color, sour cherry and flowery aromas, actually pretty pleasant, tasted like a mature Pinot Noir.

• 2007 Chinon Charles Joguet Cuvée Terroir: located in the Chinon appellation, in the heart of the Loire valley, the Domaine Charles Joguet was founded by Charles Joguet in 1957. The wine production is mostly red with a little bit of rosé and made from Cabernet Franc only. The Cuvée Terroir is a blend of several vineyards and is made to be drunk young. My notes: unfortunatelly, I found the wine not drinkable and most likely, the bottle was flawed.

• 1999 Masi Osar Rosso del Veronese: this is Masi's only wine made from Oseleta, an traditional grape from the Valpolicella area, almost completely abandoned, due to its extremely low yields. The grape is harvested late to get higher concentration, roundess and a higher level of alcohol. In Italian, osar means to dare. My notes: dark color, raisiny, tannic, seemed high in alcohol, tasted like a Petite Sirah.

• 2005 Château de Bellevue Lussac St Emilion: the blend is mostly Merlot with some Cabernet Franc. Farming is organic with the use of green fertilizers and biodynamic techniques. Grapes are 100% hand-picked. My notes: citrus on the nose, medium bodied with some acidity on the palate, green pepper flavors, didn't taste like a Merlot to me.

• 1998 Sandhill Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley: Sandhill Winery is a small, family owned winery located in the Columbia Valley, specializing in Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Pinot Gris. My notes: typical Cabernet aromas, woody, tannic, young.

• 1995 Bussia Soprana Barolo: Bussia Soprana is located in Monforte d'Alba, which is widely considered one of the best areas for making Nebbiolo-based wines. My notes: light copper color, flowery nose with aromas of wild wood berries, light to medium bodied, tasted like a mature Pinot Noir.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Why is Easter food so good? Deviled Eggs and Chardonnay make a heavenly combination

2010-04-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

Deviled Eggs are soft, creamy, and highly addictive and I thought that this was the reason why they were called deviled. But I was wrong, devil is actually a culinarity term that appeared between the 18th and early 19th century, and it is used to describe dishes prepared with hot seasonings, such as cayenne or mustard.

The egg is an important part of the culinary traditions for Easter. It is the symbol of the rebirth of the earth during springtime. Moreover, eating eggs was forbidden during the Christian Lent season, so in order to keep them from spoiling they had to be hard boiled, resulting in a large amount of eggs ready to be eaten for Easter Sunday.

Our friend's beautifully made and absolutely delicious deviled eggs

With the deviled eggs that our friend made for Easter Sunday lunch, we drank an excellent 2007 Storrs Chardonnay Stu Miller Vineyard from the Santa Cruz Mountains. The wine had a nose of citrus with mineral notes, a crisp, fresh, slightly smoky palate and a lingering finish that worked particularly well with the curry-flavored eggs (the ones decorated with the red bell pepper strip).

We also made Pysanky or Ukrainian eggs, decorated using a batik-like technique
Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Funny Math

2010-03-26T16:16:00.000-07:00

A dialog reported by wine writer Dan Berger in his latest weekly newsletter.

Two wine lovers have dinner and wine together.

“So what's this?”
“A 1993 Harlan Cabernet.”
“Really? Well, that probably cost you something.”
“Yeah, well, I had to try it.”

Both men then try the wine.

“So what do you know about it?”
“It got a 95 from Parker.”
“Oh, really? A 95, huh? Well, that's pretty good.”
“Yep.”
“Sure is a good score. I think it's probably more like a 92, but he probably liked it more than I do.”
“Yeah, probably 92. Maybe 93.”
“It's pretty good.”

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Tasting some new releases from St. Francis Winery

2010-03-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

While we were staying at the ski cabin with friends this weekend, we tasted a couple of newly released wines from St. Francis Winery & Vineyards that delicious life PR had sent me.

Located in Kenwood at the northern end of Sonoma Valley, St. Francis winery produces big, full-bodied wines from a variety of vineyards through out Sonoma County. What I particularly appreciate about St. Francis is the fact that since 2004, the winery is engaged in serious green and sustainable practices, including the installation of solar panels on the roof of the winery, the use of electric cart for the maintenance crews, water conservation programs in the vineyard and the winery, and several recycling programs. “With success comes responsibility to future generations who will live and work here as well”, says Christopher Silva, President & CEO of the winery on the company's website. “Engaging in green practices is the right thing to do, which makes it the right way to run a business.”

We first tasted the 2006 St. Francis Merlot Sonoma County with a assortment of country pâté and cheese. The wine is a blend of valley and mountain grown grapes, hand harvested and aged in American and French oak barrels for 23 months. Showing a dark red color, the wine had aromas of sweet blackberry and vanilla on the nose. On the palate, it was full-bodied and still young and tannic with a pleasant lingering finish of spices, pepper and earthy flavors. The wine was good with the pâté but the best match was with the surprisingly sweet (for the season) strawberries that we had for dessert.

The other wine was the 2007 St. Francis Old Vines Zinfandel Sonoma County. This “Old Vines” blend is made of grapes from at least 50 year old dry-farmed vines with many as old as one hundred years old. These vines come from small family-owned plots dating from the early 20th century and planted with a field blend of Zinfandel intermixed with some Petite Sirah and Alicante Bouschet. The grapes are hand-picked and aged in new American oak barrels for twelve to fifteen months.

The wine had a deep color and a nose of red berry and citrus. On the palate, it was full-bodied, strong, and sweet, with floral and sour cherry notes. It was a good accompaniment to our Pasta Bolognese, especially after I added a handful of black olives to the sauce.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Napa and Sonoma trip: Dutton-Goldfield Winery

2010-03-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

After a nice lunch in Forestville, we met Valerie Wathen from Dutton-Goldfield at the winery's tasting room that it currently shares with Balletto Vineyards on the outskirts of Santa Rosa.

Dutton-Goldfield is the partnership of grapegrower Steve Dutton, a fifth generation farmer in the Russian River Valley, and winemaker Dan Goldfield. The winery's main focus is to produce cold-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and also a bit of Zinfandel, Syrah and Pinot Blanc. Most of the fruit is sourced from the various vineyards of Dutton Ranch in the Russian River Valley AVA

Russian River Valley AVA

With Valerie, we tasted the following wines:

• 2007 Dutton-Goldfield Chardonnay Dutton Ranch: a blend of five Dutton Ranch vineyards from the coolest part of Russian River Valley. My notes: ripe apple and pear on the nose, creamy and lush on the palate with some good acidity, elegant finish.

• 2007 Dutton-Goldfield Pinot Noir Dutton Ranch: a blend of five Dutton Ranch vineyards from the Russian River Valley. My notes: sweet and spicy cherry aromas on the nose, bright and fruity on the palate, earthy finish.

• 2007 Dutton-Goldfield Pinot Noir Freestone Hill Vineyard: farmed by the Dutton family, the Freestone Hill Vineyard overlooks the tiny town of Freestone located between Sebastopol and Bodega Bay. This cold-climate wine is bottled separately only in years when the fruit stands out as truly unique. My notes: exotic spices on the nose. On the palate, herbs and licorice flavors, very distinctive.

• 2007 Dutton-Goldfield Pinot Noir Devil's Gulch Vineyard: located on a steep hillside near the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin County, the Devil's Gulch Vineyard is farmed by local grower Mark Pasternak, a viticultural pioneer in Marin County. My notes: deep color, red and black berry aromas on the nose, rich and complex on the palate, lingering finish.

• 2007 Dutton-Goldfield Zinfandel Morelli Lane Vineyard: planted with Zinfandel, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Morelli Lane Vineyard lies just north of the town of Occidental in the Russian River Valley. My notes: nose of sweet blackberry, lots of fruits on the palate, lively acidity.

My favorites were the Freestone Hill and the Devil's Gulch Pinots and I bought a few bottles of each to bring back home. These wines should age well, said Valerie, so I am looking forward to retasting them in a few years.

Related posts:
• Napa and Sonoma trip: visit of Quintessa
• Napa and Sonoma trip: Hanzell Vineyards
• Napa and Sonoma trip: Emeritus Vineyards

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Napa and Sonoma trip: Emeritus Vineyards

2010-03-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

After a solid breakfast in downtown Sonoma, we drove towards Sebastopol in the Russian River Valley for our appointment with Chris Mattson, National Sales Manager at Emeritus Vineyards. The winery occupies a functional warehouse-like building on Highway 116 and was not easy to find.

Most of our time with Chris Mattson was spent in the winery's home vineyard (also called Hallberg Vineyard). We looked at how the vines had to be pruned and trained, and discussed weather, soil, and experimentation with dry farming.

In the vineyard with Chris Mattson

Planted exclusively to Pinot Noir, the 100-acre Hallberg Vineyard is located on Sonoma County's Gold Ridge, a ten-mile-long low ridge running from Sebastopol to Forestville. The area is characterized by well-drained soils made of fine sandy loam and a cool climate thanks to Pacific Ocean breezes and late afternoon fog that stays untill mid-morning during the growing season. Sonoma's Gold Ridge is also called America's Cote d'Or and is home to many top-flight Pinot Noir producers.

Then it was time to taste some wine and meet winemaker Nicolas Cantacuzene. The French-born and American-trained Cantacuzene had recently replaced Burgundy-trained veteran winemaker Don Blackburn, who sadly passed away last April.

While we tasted and compared several barrel samples, from lots with different soil types or different watering levels, including one completely dry-farmed, Nicolas Cantacuzene explained to us how he will blend these wines in order to achieve a desired style of complexity and elegance.

I really enjoyed that visit. This is where we had the most informative discussions regarding vineyard management and winemaking. But it was already lunch time and we had to find something to eat before our next appointment at Dutton-Goldfield.

Related posts:
• Napa and Sonoma trip: visit of Quintessa
• Napa and Sonoma trip: Hanzell Vineyards

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Napa and Sonoma trip: Hanzell Vineyards

2010-03-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

In 1948, James D. Zellerbach, a former US Ambassador to Italy, acquired 200 acres on the Mayacamas slopes above the town of Sonoma and founded Hanzell Vineyards, Hanzell as a contraction of Mrs. Hana Zellerbach's name. Five years later, the Zellerbachs planted 6 acres of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir — now the oldest Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyard in the new world — and in 1957, they created their first vintage.

We met with Estate Educator Ben Sessions at the historic winery building that the Zellerbachs built in 1956 and modeled after the 12th century press house at Clos de Vougeot in Burgundy. Ben Sessions is the son of Bob Sessions, who was winemaker and general manager of Hanzell Vineyards from the 1973 harvest until his retirement in 2001. After a tour of the original Zellerbach vineyard and after admiring the wonderful view overlooking the Sonoma Valley, we visited the old winemaking facility in the historic winery and finally sat with winemaker Michael McNeill to taste a sample of the Hanzell Vineyards production.

The historic winery building

Hanzell's former winemaking facility, now a tasting room

The original Zellerbach vineyard at Hanzell Vineyards
There were two glasses of Estate Chardonnay from the 2006 and 2007 vintages and a glass of 2006 Estate Pinot Noir. The 2006 Hanzell Vineyards Chardonnay had a bright golden color and a nose of ripe pear and spiced apple aromas. On the palate, it was boldly creamy and nutty with a ripe, fruity finish. In comparison, the 2007 Hanzell Vineyards Chardonnay was young and big but not as polished and slightly more unbalanced.

The 2006 Hanzell Vineyards Pinot Noir had a medium garnet color and a sweet black cherry nose. The palate was full-bodied, rather oaky with tannins and an earthy finish. More powerful than elegant, it was not my prefered style of Pinot Noir, but maybe the wine was simply too young.

After admiring one more time the sunset over Sonoma Valley, we were driven to one of the guest houses hidden in the vineyard where we would spend the night, a well deserved rest as we had more scheduled visits the day after.

Related post:
• Napa and Sonoma trip: visit of Quintessa

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Napa and Sonoma trip: visit of Quintessa

2010-02-26T17:18:00.000-08:00

Time flies so fast that I haven't had the time to blog about a trip to Napa and Sonoma that I did before the holidays. The trip was particularly interesting as it was organized by a friend that works in the restaurant business. Thanks to him, we enjoyed a VIP treatment at the wineries and even stayed overnight as guests at one of them.

Our first meeting was at Quintessa on Silverado Trail in St. Helena. It's a beautiful 280 acre property that includes a valley, a lake, a river, five hills, four microclimates and numerous soil types. 170 acres of vines are planted to the classic Bordeaux grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon (129 acres), Merlot (26 acres), Cabernet Franc (7 acres), Petit Verdot (4 acres), and Carmenere (4 acres). Thanks to the diversity of the microclimates and soil types, 40 different wines lots have been defined from 26 different vineyard blocks.

We were welcomed by Niesa Granger from the Quintessa Hospitality team, who had prepared for us some wine samples and documentation.

We first tasted two 2008 Vineyard Block Cabernet Sauvignon barrel samples. One was from the cool Bench block. The wine had a rather closed nose with lush, sweet berry flavors on the palate. The other one was from the Cruz del Sur block, a warm area without much water. The wine was very different with a more expressive nose and enticing minty and cocoa aromas.

We also tasted the 2005 and 2006 Quintessa. Quintessa is a meritage blend of multiple vineyard blocks. Fruit from each block is harvested, sorted, and fermented in either oak or stainless steel tanks. Then each block wine is aged separately for up to two years in French oak barrels. Finally, the components are brought together to create the final Quintessa blend.

The 2005 Quintessa had an fragrant nose full of minty and tobacco aromas. The palate was rich, full-bodied with sweet tannins and a peppery finish. The 2006 Quintessa looked more tight with toasty oak aromas and firm tannins, definitively too young to be drunk now but promising.

Tasting with Niesa Granger from the Quintessa Hospitality team

We ended our visit with a tour of the property. As we reached a scenic spot overlooking the lake, we stopped to have a sip of the winery's Illumination Sauvignon Blanc. The place was idyllic and it was quite unfortunate that we couldn't stay longer but we had to drive over the Mayacamas Mountains to the Sonoma side for our next appointment: Hanzell Vineyards.

View of the lake at Quintessa

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Tasting the Slovenian wines of Ivan Batič

2010-02-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

Last month, I was invited by Frank Dietrich of the Blue Danube Wine Company to a special tasting of Ivan Batič's wines at the newly opened restaurant Hibiscus in Oakland. Ivan Batič and his son Miha were present to talk about their wines and winemaking philosophy while we were sampling the restaurant's delicious Caribbean specialties.

The Batič winery is a 18 hectare estate located in the Vipava Valley, a narrow valley in the western part of Slovenia connecting the Friuli lowlands to central Slovenia. The valley is renowned for its quality wines, mostly white, as it enjoys a submediterranean to continental climate with dry and warm winds coming from the Adriatic sea. The valley grows a mix of indigenous, Italian, and international grapes.

For Ivan and Miha Batič, the best wines are made in the vineyard, not in the cellar. They pay the greatest attention to vineyard management and employ the same viticulture methods that were used hundred years ago. The vineyard is farmed organically, although it is not certified as such. Grapes are harvested manually and selectively, fermentation occurs with native yeasts, and wine is aged in Slovenian oak barrels, some of them older than one hundred years old.

White wine accounts for nearly three-quarters of the production. White grape varieties include the native Pinela, Zelen, Vitovska, and Rebula (known as Ribolla Gialla in the nearby Friuli) as well as Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc. Red grape varieties include Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc.

Opening the Batič wines

Ivan Batič

Miha Batič (left)

Here are my notes:

• 2004 Batic Pinela: golden color, flowery nose with notes of pineapple, luscious and thick on the palate, rich aftertaste.

• 2005 Batic Sauvignon Blanc Reserve: deep color, mineral nose, notes of citrus, some fullness on the palate and crisp acidity on the finish.

• 2007 Batic Zaria: an amazing field blend of Pinela, Rebula, and Zelen. Orange color, mineral and herbal notes on the nose, dry, nutty on the palate, slightly oxidized character that reminded me of some of the white wines from the Jura.

• 2005 Batic Rosso: a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc made only in the best years. Deep red color, forward nose with red berry aromas, full-bodied on the palate, tasty and well-balanced with some good acidity on the finish.

“You can open a bottle of Rosso Batič at any time, all you need is good company and time, as the wine keeps developing and growing in the glass,” recommends the winery website, “Should you choose to open a Rosso in the time of the old moon, a most special taste will evolve – the Rosso Batič taste.”

Related posts:
• The wines of Slovenia
• Wines of Germany and Eastern Europe class: Croatia, Slovenia and Romania

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

For Beaujolais, a "Villages" is the way to go

2010-02-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

It is unfortunate that over the years, the wines of beaujolais have developed a negative reputation among consumers that tend to associate them with the sweet cotton candy and banana gum flavors of Beaujolais Nouveau. That's too bad because wines from the Villages appellation or one of the 10 Crus are definitively worth checking out.

Beaujolais Wine Region

Beaujolais is a large wine region located south of Burgundy, along the Saône River between the towns of Mâcon and Lyon. The Beaujolais AOC is the broadest appellation covering 60 villages, with nearly half of the crop being released just a few weeks after harvest and sold as Beaujolais Nouveau.

Beaujolais-Villages covers 39 villages located in northern Beaujolais. It is a more hilly region with soils containing more granite and schist. Due to better growing conditions, the Beaujolais-Villages wines have more complexity and depth.

The finest wines come from the 10 Crus of Beaujolais located in the foothills of the Beaujolais mountains. Seven of them (Saint-Amour, Juliénas, Chénas, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié) relate to actual villages. Côte de Brouilly is grown on the volcanic hillsides of Mont Brouilly and Brouilly is found in the flatter area around it. Moulin-à-Vent, a more serious wine with great aging potential, is named for the last remaining windmill in the Beaujolais.

Ninety-eight percent of the area is planted with Gamay, a grape with a thin skin and low in tannins. Gamay ripened two weeks earlier than Pinot Noir and is less difficult to cultivate. It produces a light wine with a bright and fruity style.

I recently tasted the 2008 Beaujolais-Villages Louis Jadot that was sent to me by Kobrand Corporation. Maison Louis Jadot is the largest Negociant in Beaujolais that purchases grapes instead of juice or must in order to keep full control over winemaking decisions. Half of the wine is matured in oak barrels and the other half in stainless steel. The final cuvée contains up to 40% of declassified wines from the various crus of Beaujolais.

The wine had a bright color with red cherry aromas on the nose. On the palate, it was light-bodied and juicy leaving a clean and fresh aftertaste. Try it with a Frisée aux Lardons Salad, one of the classic Bistro specialties from Lyon.

Now for your February 14th dinner, why not share a bottle of Saint-Amour with your Valentine?

Related post:
• Visiting Fleurie in Beaujolais

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Wine and Neuroscience

2010-02-03T11:03:00.000-08:00

In his book Proust Was A Neuroscientist, journalist and author Jonah Lehrer has a whole chapter explaining the neuroscience behind our sense of smell and taste. He describes how Escoffier invented the veal stock, therefore the secret of deliciousness: the denatured protein from the bones, the burned bit of meat in the bottom of the pan are full of L-glutamate, which is now known as umami. Additionally, we enjoy food that smells good. According to Neuroscientists, up to 90 percent of what we perceive as taste is actually smell.

But our sense of taste and smell, says Lehrer, is greatly influenced by subjectivity. “Impressions are always incomplete and require a dash of subjectivity to render them whole. When we bind or parse our sensations, what we are really doing is making judgments about what we think we are sensing. This unconsious act of interpretation is largely driven by contextual clues.”

That's because the olfactory bulb is flooded with information from higher brain functions, like the memories of past experiences.

To illustrate this point, Lehrer describes a couple of mischievous experiments conducted by Frédéric Brochet, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Bordeaux. In the first test, 57 wine experts tasted a white wine and a red wine and were asked to describe them. Adjectives like "fresh, dry, honeyed, lively" were used for the white wine, whereas the red wine was found "intense, spicy, supple, deep." In reality, the two wines were identical, the red one was just dyed red.

In the other experiment, tasters were given two wines in two different bottles, one labeled as a cheap table wine, the other labeled as a Bordeaux Grand Cru. The Grand Cru was characterized as "woody, complex, and round" and the cheap wine as "short, light, and faulty". Here again, the two wines were the exact same mid-range Bordeaux.

“What these experiments illuminate” says Lehrer, “is the omnipresence of subjectivity. Our human brain has been designed to believe itself, wired so that prejudices feel like facts, opinions are indistinguishable from the actual sensation. If we think a wine is cheap, it will taste cheap.”

“Without our subjectivity we could never decipher our sensations, ” concludes Lehrer, “ and without our sensations we would have nothing about which to be subjective. Before you can taste the wine you have to judge it.”

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Blind Tasting of Bordeaux Right Bank wines

2010-01-27T16:02:00.000-08:00

Before the holidays, our wine tasting group gathered for a blind tasting of Bordeaux wines from the Right Bank.

The Right Bank is a large wine region that lies on the right side of the Dordogne river while facing the river downstream. It is made of 10 different appellations, including the prestigious appellations of Pomerol and Saint-Émilion. On the other hand, what we call the Left Bank is the region located on the left side of the Garonne river, north of Bordeaux. The Left Bank includes the Médoc and Graves districts.

The two banks differ mainly in soil composition. On the Left Bank, the soil is mostly gravels and wines are often dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon. On the Right Bank, the soil is made of clay, limestone and sand. Therefore, it is more suited to Merlot and to a lesser extent Cabernet Franc. Wines from the Right Bank tend to be fruit-forward with soft tannins and are more approachable than Left Bank wines when young.

Bordeaux Wine Region

We tasted six wines from the appellations of Saint-Emilion, Lalande de Pomerol, Fronsac, and Côtes de Castillon. Four of them were from the warm 2005 vintage. The others were from 2004 and 2006. Overall, we found the wines tasty and food friendly although still young.

The wines we tasted:

• 2006 Château La Chenade: this is a small property in the Lalande de Pomerol appellation, north of Pomerol. The wine is produced by Denis Durantou of renowned Château L'Eglise Clinet in Pomerol. The blend is Merlot 80%, Cabernet Franc 15%, Cabernet Sauvignon 5%. Our notes: subtle mineral nose with caramel notes, tight mid-palate, some acidity, earthy finish. Finished in fourth position.

• 2004 Château La Vieille Cure: from the Fronsac appellation, west of Pomerol. Americans Colin Ferenbach and Peter Sachs bought the property in 1986, bringing a fresh investment of funds to lower the yields, select better fruit at harvest time, and buy new oak barrels, and winemaking equipment. The château has 20 hectares planted predominantly with Merlot (75%), the remaining being Cabernet Franc (22%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (3%). Our notes: dark color, discreet earthy nose, wood and acidity on the palate, slightly unbalanced, not as good as the others with food. Finished last.

• 2005 Château de la Dauphine: from the Fronsac appellation, Château de la Dauphine has 37 producing hectares planted with 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc. The average age for the vines is 33 years old. The wine is aged in oak barrels (of which 1/3 are new) for 12 months. The last few years have seen significant investment both in the building itself and the vinification areas. Our notes: dark color, attractive spicy berry nose, full-bodied, mint and vanilla on the finish. Finished in second position.

• 2005 Château Rocher Bellevue Figeac: a Grand Cru in the Saint Emilion appellation. The wine is a blend is 80% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc. it is aged 15-18 months in oak barrels, 40% of which are new. Our notes: peppery, smoky nose, full-bodied on the palate, a bit tannic but well rounded, long finish. Finished first, the wine was the clear winner of the tasting.

• 2005 Château Joanin-Bécot: from the Côtes de Castillon appellation, east of Saint Emilion and south of Fronsac. It is owned by the Bécot family of Château Beau-Séjour Bécot in Saint Emilion. The wine is a blend of 75% Merlot and 25% Cabernet Franc, aged in oak barrels 70% new. Our notes: forward nose with dairy and mineral aromas, young and tannic on the palate. Finished in third position.

• 2005 Clos Kalinda Saint Émilion: this is the first Bordeaux wine under the Kalinda label from K&L Wine Merchants. It is produced by Château Sansonnet in Saint Emilion. The property's second wine (in France, Lasalle) was used as a base for the wine with also some Sansonnet in the blend. Our notes: subtle vanilla nose with sweet fruit aromas, good mid-palate, shorter finish, good with food. Finished in fifth position.

Previous blind wine tastings:
• Blind Tasting of Syrah
• Blind Tasting of Cabernet Blends from Washington State
• Blind Tasting of Pinot Noir from Los Carneros and Anderson Valley

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Two Sauternes for my husband's Foie Gras

2010-01-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

Every year, my husband likes to make a Foie Gras for our December 31st dinner and it's interesting to notice that as years went by, his recipe has evolved to the bare minimum. There is no Armagnac marinade and water bath anymore: first, the foie is deveined, seasoned with salt and pepper, wrapped tightly with plastic wrap with the ends tied like a sausage, poached 5 minutes in boiling water, and refrigerated for at least a couple of days. He serves the foie gras at room temperature on toasted bread, lightly sprinkled with coarse sea salt.

The poached foie gras tightly wrapped with plastic wrap

Slicing the foie gras

To accompany the foie gras, our friend Christophe and I had brought two different bottles of Sauternes that we enthusiastically compared side by side.

Christophe's was the 2005 Château Doisy-Védrines from an estate vineyard dominated by the Sémillon grape (approximately 85% Sémillon, the rest planted with Sauvignon Blanc). Like in the other Sauternes Châteaux, the harvest is labor-intensive, picking the fruit in several waves called tries to select the berries most affected by the Botrytis fungus. The wine is aged for eighteen months in oak barrels, 70% of which being new. The 2005 vintage was excellent in Sauternes with lots of heat and sunshine to ripen the grapes and foggy nights and mornings to promote the development of botrytis.

The wine had a bright color with rich aromas of dried apricot and pineapple. The palate had a lighter body with a lively acidity and a smooth and elegant finish.

Mine was the 2001 Château Clos Haut-Peyraguey, an estate with 17 hectares under vine planted with Sémillon (90%) and Sauvignon Blanc (10%). The terroir is excellent for the appellation, characterized by north-east facing slopes and gravely and sandy soils on a clayey subsoil. The harvest is done manually in 4-7 successive tries to hand-pick the best botrytis-infected grapes. The 2001 vintage was highly rated in Sauternes, thanks to exceptional weather conditions and a speedy spread of botrytis on grapes that had the time to fully ripen.

The wine was opulent, with apricots, acacia flower, and honey aromas. On the palate, it was thicker and sweeter with a lingering finish of caramelized fruits.

So which one was the best with the foie gras: the livelier 2005 Doisy-Védrines or the more opulent 2001 Clos Haut-Peyraguey? I am sorry, I couldn't decide, they were both so good!

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

An apple tart competition and a fizzy Moscato

2010-01-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

Our friend Christophe loves to make apple tarts. That's one of his specialties and he is pretty good at it. He makes a quick sweet pastry crust, arranges apple slices on top of it and bakes the tart until the apples are soft. That's a quick and easy recipe and we all love his tarts but our friend Jiyon thought that we should also try her own more elaborated recipe as well.

Christophe's tart

Her point was that the dough had to be made with very cold butter and iced water and it was important to use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour in order to avoid warming up the butter. When done, the dough had to be refrigerated for several hours before baking. And then, when the tart is cooked, she likes to brush the top of the tart with a glaze made of apricot preserve and Calvados.

Jiyon's tart

There were unanimous cheers for Jiyon's tart and everybody voraciously ate her/his slice. I thought the crust had a cookie-like crunchiness and was very tasty. I also liked the glaze on the apples but I found the Fuji variety that was used for both tart, too firm and not tart enough for my taste. For our next apple tart competition, I think we should use Granny Smith or even Golden Delicious.

Because it was New Year's eve, we drank a Champagne Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Rosé, a terrific dry Champagne Rosé with a delicate rose petal color and a lot of finesse, although the Champagne was much too dry to accompany the apple tart.

I think the Michele Chiarlo Nivole Moscato d'Asti that Kobrand Corporation had sent me before the holidays would have worked better with the dessert. Unfortunately, we had tasted the wine earlier in the evening and there was none left.

Made from the aromatic Muscat grape, Moscato d'Asti is a sweet, semi-sparkling wine with low alcohol content. Nivole, which means clouds in the local dialect, is produced by Azienda Vitivinicola Michele Chiarlo, a prominent producer in Piedmont. The fruit is sourced from a single south-southwest facing, steep hillside vineyard. Fermentation occurs using natural yeast and is stopped when the wine has reached an alcohol level of 5.5% using a sterile filtration to remove any remaining live yeasts. Then the addition of unfermented must adjusts the residual sugar level to 11%.

The wine had a pale yellow color and a fragrant nose of exotic fruits. The palate was light and fresh, slightly fizzy, with a definitive sweetness, leaving an aftertaste of honey and apricot. But the uncomplex sweet style of the wine didn't convince everybody: my husband thought it tasted like sparkling apple juice. Maybe he should have tried it with the apple tart.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Bubbly for the holidays: Cava or Champagne?

2009-12-28T17:40:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the holidays, Kobrand Corporation sent me a shipment of sparkling wines that I recently shared with some friends and family.

One of them was a bottle of Champagne Taittinger Brut La Française. Founded in 1734 by Pierre Taittinger, the Taittinger Champagne house owns approximately 752 acres of vines, including vineyards in the renowned Côte des Blancs and Montagne de Reims. It is one of the three most extensive wine estates in Champagne and relies primarily on its own grapes for its Champagne production. Pierre Taittinger was a visionary well ahead of his time. He foresaw that the market would turn away from heavily dosed, sweet champagnes in favor of natural, elegant wines and thus defined the Taitinger style to be centered on the concepts of lightness and naturalness.

The cuvée La Française contains approximatively 40% Chardonnay, over twice the percentage of Chardonnay used in the standard cuvées of most Champagne houses, the rest being Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Chardonnay contributes elegance, finesse, and crispness to the blend. Pinot Noir brings body, structure, and vinosity while Pinot Meunier adds fruitiness and roundness. The wine showed a bright golden color and fine bubbles rising from the bottom of the glass. On the palate, it was fresh and lively with toasty, yeasty aromas and notes of apple compote on the finish.

The other sparkling wine was a bottle of Poema Cava Brut. Cava is a Spanish wine produced mainly in the Penedès region in Catalonia, southwest of Barcelona. Under Spanish D.O. laws, Cava must be made using the Traditional Method with second fermentation in the bottle, and using a selection of grapes that includes Macabeo, Parellada, Xarel·lo, Chardonnay, Pinot noir, and Subirat.

The Poema Cava Brut is a traditional blend of 40% Macabeo,40% Xarel-lo and 20% Parellada grapes grown in the Penedès region. Each grape variety is harvested separately. Primary fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks at 16-18ºC. The three varietals are then blended, the triage (yeast and sugar) is added and secondary fermentation begins in the same bottle at a temperature of 13-15ºC.

Low in alcohol (11.5%), the wine had a pale yellow color, aromas of peach and apricots and was light and crisp on the palate. My friends preferred the toasty, yeasty flavors of the Champagne but my father-in-low, who enjoys going to Spain on vacation, really liked the fruity character of the Cava.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Tasting of Zinfandel and Zinfandel related grapes

2009-12-17T09:27:00.000-08:00

Considered America's sweetheart grape, Zinfandel was the theme of our latest wine club event. Our goal was to taste and compare different Zinfandel and Zinfandel related varieties from various wine regions, including Croatia, Italy, and California.

The story of Zinfandel is fascinating. It came to the United States in the early 1800s via the Imperial Nursery in Vienna, Austria, and quickly became a popular table grape in the Northeast. Then in the mid-1850's, it was introduced to California by a Massachusetts nurseryman who had joined the California Gold Rush. It thrived so well in the state's climate that by the end of the 19th century, Zinfandel was the most widespread grape variety in California.

For a long time, Zinfandel was California's mystery grape, but thanks to DNA profiling, it has now been proved that Zinfandel is a clone of the Croatian variety Crljenak. The grape was also imported to Apuglia in Southern Italy, probably by the Illyrians more than two thousand years ago. In Apuglia, the grape is called Primitivo because of its precociousness.

Here are the wines that we tasted:

• 2006 Dingac Plavac Mali Peljesac: Vinarija Dingac is a Croatian winery located in the Peljesac Peninsula on the Dalmatian Coast. Plavac Mali, which has been found to be a cross between Zinfandel and the local grape Dobricic, is the main red varietal grown along the Dalmatian Coast. My notes: only 11.5% alcohol. Light red brick color, plums and prunes on the nose, light to medium-bodied on the palate, nicely balanced. Really easy to drink and pretty popular among the guests.

• 2006 Bibich Riserva: The Bibich estate is located in Skradin in Northern Dalmatia. The wine is a blend of three local grapes (Babich, Plavina, Lasin) that are thought to be related to Zinfandel. My notes: 12.2% alcohol. Red berry color, spicy and peppery on the nose, medium-bodied on the palate, lively acidity, food friendly.

• 2007 Vinosia Primitivo di Salento: Aziende Agricole Vinosia is a new winery from Campania founded by Mario Ercolino, winemaker at Feudi di San Gregorio, and his brother Luciano. The wine comes the Salento region, a sub-peninsula in the south-eastern extremity of Apulia in Southern Italy. My notes: 13.5% alcohol. Deep purple color, peppery, red and back berry on the nose, earthy on the palate, good acidity, licorice on the finish. My favorite wine of the evening.

• 2006 Limerick Lane Zinfandel Collins Vineyard Russian River Valley: Limerick Lane is located at the eastern extremity of the Russian River Valley appellation and at the eastern end of the Dry Creek Valley appellation. The vineyard dates back to 1910 and some vines from that era are still in production. It is dry-farmed, relying on winter and spring rains to water the vines. The wine is stored for a year in a combination of French and Hungarian oak barrels. Each vintage uses between 25-30% of new oak. My notes: 14.6% alcohol. Medium red color, citrus and red berry on the nose, medium-bodied on the palate, herbal notes on the finish.

• 2006 Ridge Zinfandel York Creek: Ridge Vineyards started harvesting Zinfandel from the York Creek Vineyard in 1975. Situated high on Spring Mountain and overlooking St. Helena and the Napa Valley, the York Creek vineyard has well drained gravelly loam soils and a cool, mountainous climate. The 2006 vintage is aged in a combination of new and used American oak barrels. The blend is 99% Zinfandel, 1% Petite Sirah. My notes: 14.8% alcohol. Deep color, red berry on the nose, medium-bodied, good acidity, juicy on the palate, well-balanced. A favorite among the Zinfandels from California.

• 2005 Rosenblum Zinfandel Harris Kratka Vineyard: Rosenblum Cellars was founded in 1978 by veterinarian Dr. Kent Rosenblum and his wife Kathy. The winery works with over 80 unique grape growers and has an extensive wine portfolio of Zinfandel and Rhône varietal wines. The 16-acre Harris Kratka Vineyard is located just east of the Russian River in the Alexander Valley appellation. It is planted with half-century-old, head-pruned vines, 90% of which are Zinfandel, 5% Carignane and 5% Petite Sirah. My notes: blend of 75% Zinfandel, 15% Petite Sirah, 10% Carignane. 14.7% alcohol. Deep color, herbal, spicy on the palate, good finish, tasty.

• 2006 Seghesio Cortina Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley: Seghesio Family Winery was founded by Edoardo Seghesio who emigrated from Italy in 1886. The family-owned winery flourished in the bulk wine business until the mid 1970s, producing most of the red wine made in Sonoma County. Then in 1983, Ted Seghesio, a fourth generation family winemaker, bottled his first wines under the Seghesio label. Nestled in the heart of Dry Creek Valley, the Cortina vineyard was purchased by the winery in 1957. The climate is both coastal and inland with coastal fogs in the morning followed by long hours of sunshine. My notes: 15.2% alcohol. Medium red, sweet red berry on the nose, intense, hot on the palate, somewhat unbalanced, too alcoholic.

For our next wine tasting, we'll be tasting the wines blind, so be ready for the challenge!

Previous wine club tastings:
• Drink Local Tasting
• Pairing wine and cheese
• Tasting the wines of the Rhône Valley

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

A Moroccan-inspired Turkey Couscous and a Châteauneuf-du-Pape

2009-12-09T15:29:00.000-08:00

After Thanksgiving, we had a good amount of turkey left and also some of the broth that was used for the gravy. So looking for a recipe to accommodate the leftovers, we were inspired by that Moroccan-inspired turkey soup that we found on the Web. For the soup, we made more broth using the turkey carcass and then added onions, carrots, parsnips, zuchini, squash, and tomatoes, spiced with saffron, turmeric, cinnamon, and chile. When the vegetables were almost cooked, we stirred in a small can of chickpeas and diced turkey meat. We served the soup with couscous, harissa, and fresh cilantro leaves.

Cooking the vegetables in the turkey broth

Our Turkey Couscous

With the Couscous, we drank a 2004 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Château de la Gardine. The Château de la Gardine estate is located close to the town of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. The vineyard is made of different south-facing and southeast-facing lots overlooking the Rhône Valley. Some are covered with the famous stone pebbles that help hold moisture in the soil, retain heat during the day and release it at night. Planted white grape varieties include Roussanne, Grenache blanc, Clairette, and Bourboulenc. Red varieties are 60% Grenache, 15% Syrah, 12% Mourvèdre, the rest divided between Picpoul, Terret Noir, Counoise, Muscardin, Vaccarèse, Picardan, and Cinsault. The grape varieties are vinified together and aged in oak barriques.

The wine held well against the soup. Showing a nose of ripe black fruit, it was smooth, rich, and spicy on the palate. Too bad we finished the whole bottle that night! Anyway, we didn't have enough turkey leftovers to make more soup.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

With those leftover cranberries, make Cranberry Cocktails

2009-12-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

After Thanksgiving, there was an unused bag of fresh cranberries in the refrigerator so we decided to make some cranberry cocktails. We adapted a recipe found in the current Sunset magazine that looked particularly delicious. This was fun to do and the drink was fruity and refreshing after the big Thanksgiving meal that we had the day before.

Chilling the drinks in the snow

A glass of Cranberry Cocktail

Our Cranberry Cocktail recipe: combine 1 part tequila, 1 part cranberry juice, 1 part fresh cranberries, 1/2 part triple sec and ice cubes in a blender. Add a splash of lime juice. Blend until smooth then strain liquid through a fine strainer. Pour into glasses with a sugar-coated rim and a lime wedge. Enjoy!

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Warm up with a glass of 2006 St. Francis Red

2009-11-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

It's dark and cold outside and I have a bottle of wine that should warm me up: a 2006 St. Francis RED that was recently sent to me by Kobrand Corporation.

The wine, made by St. Francis Winery, is a proprietary blend of 48% Merlot, 28% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Syrah, 3% Zinfandel and 6 % Mixed Blacks (Cabernet Franc, Grenache, Alicante, Malbec), from Sonoma County.

“RED is for all red wine lovers who simply want a tasty bottle of wine with a fun package at a great value. It's my job to worry about clones, soil conditions, vintage and Vinification” says St. Francis Winemaker Tom Mackey on the winery's website, “so that the consumer doesn't have to. We've created a dependable, versatile wine — No lessons needed &mdash uncork and enjoy.”

The St. Francis RED is made to be fun: if you buy the wine by the case, each bottle comes with a different red patterned label. If you buy only one bottle, you can pick and choose the label you like the best.

The wine has a deep color and a nose of spiced cherries and sweet berries. On the palate, it is full-bodied, fruity, juicy, slightly tannic with a peppery aftertaste. For a retail price around $10, it's a steal.

The RED website has also some hearty recipes that should go well with the wine. I noticed their Braised Short Ribs recipe that looks delicious and perfect for the season. Just make sure you have enough braising sauce to pour over your mashed potatoes!

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Harvest Festival in Montmartre

2009-11-12T12:59:00.000-08:00

Last month, I was lucky to be in Paris just in time for the harvest festival in Montmartre. The Montmartre hill used to be a small village completely covered with vineyards. A temple dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine, was built there by the Romans. But in the early 20th century, the vines were completely devastated by the phylloxera epidemic, as well as urban development. Fortunately, in the early 30s, a group of artists petitioned the government in order to resurrect and replant a 1,556 square meter parcel of land called Clos Montmartre.

Clos Montmartre

The Clos Montmartre vineyard is planted with 27 different varietals (primarily Gamay and Pinot Noir), and produces around 1500 half-liter bottles each year. It's the only remaining vineyard within the city limits of Paris. After harvest, the wines are sold at auctions, the proceeds going to local charities. Those who have tasted the wines say they are decent enough, although the bottles, with labels designed by local artists, have now become collectors' items.

Sadly, the Clos de Montmartre vineyard is not open to the public. There were a couple of special visits organized by the City Hall during the harvest festival but they were all sold out by the time I inquired about them. Moreover, there was no tasting of Montmartre wine during the Festival.

Nonetheless, the small streets around the white dome tower of the Basilique du Sacré Coeur were lively, with stalls selling regional food and wine everywhere, and street performers attracting crowds in front of the Basilique.

A stall selling produce from Chablis

Have a plate of oysters with a small tasting of Muscadet

We had a nice time talking to Marie-France and Philippe Bec, owner of Domaine de Bayelle, a small wine estate located in the medieval village of Caux in Languedoc. We tasted their 2006 Coteaux du Languedoc Pézenas Cuvée Luména, a blend of Grenache and Syrah from Pézenas, a sub-appellation of Coteaux du Languedoc. The wine had a dark garnet color and an appealing nose of forest berries and dried herbs. The palate was round, medium-bodied, not overly complex but tasty. The Becs recommend to drink the wine with a Ragoût d'Escoubille, a hearty Languedoc dish made primarily of pork, sausages, wild mushroom, and olives.

Marie-France and Philippe Bec from Domaine de Bayelle

Technorati tags: wine food & drink

Has wine become like fastfood?

2009-11-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

Has wine become a grape-based processed food product? Keith Wallace, founder of the Wine School of Philadelphia and contributor to The Daily Beast thinks so and explain why in his latest article.

“The bottle you'll enjoy with dinner tonight likely wasn't produced at a winery, or by a winemaker”, says Wallace. “One imagines a winemaker in his vineyards, inspecting bunches of grapes. Maybe his dogs are chasing rabbits between the rows of vines. At night, he pops open a bottle of his own creation to share with friends and family. It is a romantic ideal.”

In 2008, Americans consumed 658 million gallons of table wine, 80% of which, according to The Beverage Information Group, has been sold for less than $10. Most of these wines are made today by wine processing companies, such as Golden State Vintners, one of the largest suppliers of premium bulk wines, wine processing and storage services in the country. The company, which began as a small vineyard and winery in the 1930s, receives today the majority of its revenue from supplying well known labels with premium bulk wine. Gallo is one of the company's most important customers. Other customers include Sutter Home, Sebastiani, and Vincor.

What Wallace calls winery-less wines are not just found at the lower tier of the market. Today, many luxury wines come from wineries with no vineyard, no winemaking facilities and no tasting room. They are made in custom crush facilities. For example, the Oakville based Napa Wine Company has around 60 clients including Pahlmeyer, Crocker & Starr, and Volker Eisele, and works with 12 to 20 different winemakers. It produces one million cases of wine each year. The company facilities includes fermentation and barrel rooms, a bottling line, a wine testing laboratory, and a tasting room.

And things get weirder, says Wallace, when wines are made by actual wineries, from their own vineyards, by their own winemakers. but they hide behind a virtual label. When wineries has excess wine that they don't want to sell under their flagship brand, they bottle it under a second label that they sell for a fraction of the flagship brand's price.

If that whole wine business bothers you and you still want your wine made at a real winery, from a real vineyard and by a real winemaker, the trick is to read the fine print advises Wallace: look for the term “produced and bottled by” on the label, at least for the wines made in the US.

Technorati tags: wine food & drink