WBW #19: the true taste of Counoise

I can't believe we're already in March and today is Wine Blogging Wednesday. This month, the event is hosted by Jathan at Wine Expression, and the theme is When in Rhone.

I love the rich flavors of the Syrah-based and Grenache-based wines whether they come from the Rhône Valley, Spain, California or Australia. But what about the lesser known varietals that also thrive in the Rhône Valley and other wine regions with a similar climate? What about Counoise for example?

Counoise is one of the thirteen authorized grape varieties of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Although rarely used nowadays, it was well established in the Rhône Valley in the late 19th century. At that time, Joseph Ducos, who was the owner of Château La Nerthe and the first French grower to import rootstock to overcome the phylloxera epidemic, had selected Counoise as one of the ten grape varieties that he would grow in his vineyard, because of “its personality, charm, freshness, and bouquet”. The origin of the grape is unknown but the Provencal poet Frédéric Mistral, who was also an accomplished gourmet, claimed that “the Counoise grape variety was a gift from Spain to Pope Urbain V”.

Today, Château de Beaucastel is one of the rare domains that use Counoise for its Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine. It typically includes 10% of Counoise to the blend to add peppery notes and lively acidity. In 1990, Tablas Creek Vineyard imported some Counoise cuttings from Château de Beaucastel and the winery started planting the varietal in the Paso Robles Hills. Since 1999, Counoise usually comprises 5-10% of Tablas Creek's Esprit de Beaucastel.

Counoise is a blending component allowed in most of the South of France appellations but it is almost never used on its own. So how can we identify the true flavor of Counoise?

Fortunately, I was able to find two 100% Counoise wines at my local K&L Wine Merchants store. One of them was the 2003 Domaine Monpertuis Vignoble de la Ramière Cuvée Counoise. Paul Jeune, owner of Domaine Monpertuis, produces wines in red and white color in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation. He also makes this Vin de Pays du Gard from a small parcel of vines that he recently acquired in the Gard region, just across the Rhône River from Châteauneuf. The vineyard, called Vignoble de la Ramière, is planted with Counoise and Grenache. This wine is a 100% Counoise cuvée. It had a deep garnet-red color and a discreet nose of pepper and black fruits. On the palate, it was rich, spicy and mouthfilling with a lively acidity on the finish.

The other wine was the 2003 Côtes du Rhône-Villages Sablet Domaine de Piaugier Ténébi. Domaine de Piaugier is, according to Robert Parker, the emerging star of Sablet. Jean-Marc Autran, the domaine owner, discovered Counoise while visiting Beaucastel: “In 1990, I visited Beaucastel and I tasted their Counoise in barrels and I thought that was extraordinary and since I had some planted and had time to kill. In 1991, I decided to bottle the Ténébi and it turned out even better than I thought it would”. The wine had a dark garnet color and a intense nose of red and black fruits. On the palate, it was dense and peppery with pruny flavors, followed by a long finish.

The two wines were very good indeed although I preferred the Domaine Monpertuis because it was softer and more food-friendly.

So would now be the time for Counoise to get out of obscurity?.

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2001 Givry Premier Cru Clos de la Servoisine Domaine Joblot

Givry is a small village in Burgundy and one of the best appellations of the Côte Chalonnaise. It used to be famous as the preferred wine of King Henri IV but later suffered a decline following the destruction of the vineyard by phylloxera and two World Wars. Today, Givry offers some of the best values in Burgundy.

I don't know the origin of the word Servoisine but for me it rhymes with Framboisine, a dessert made with raspberries. So I was not surprised when, as I was opening the 2001 Givry Premier Cru Clos de la Servoisine Domaine Joblot , I detected lovely raspberry liqueur aromas in the wine. In the glass, the wine had a medium ruby color and a perfumed nose of raspberry and blackcurrant. On the palate, it was smooth, smoky and fruity with some lively acidity. This wine was simply delicious with our braised short ribs.

Some people believe that the plants that grow next to a vineyard can contribute to the taste of the wine made from that vineyard. I will not be surprised to learn that they grow raspberries in the Clos de la Servoisine.

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Pinot Noir Blind Tasting

Our wine tasting group met again last month for a Pinot Noir tasting. It is interesting to notice that the wines that people brought were all from California except one that was from Oregon (it was also the only one from the 2003 vintage). More surprisingly, they were all from wine regions north of San Francisco — no Sideways Pinot here.

First, we tasted the 2003 Domaine Serene Pinot Noir Evenstad Reserve Willamette Valley. Located in Oregon's Northern Willamette Valley, Domaine Serene is a winery that utilizes environmentally responsible and sustainable farming practices. The wine, unfined and unfiltered, was aged 16 months in French oak barrels, of which 74% were new. It had a dark garnet color. The nose was discreet but pleasant. On the palate, it was fruity and tannic with some notes of brown sugar. Overall, some tasters found it young and irregular with some good potential while others found it fresh and well-balanced. It was ranked second in the tasting.

Our second wine was the 2002 David Bruce Pinot Noir Truchard Vineyard Los Carneros. Located in the cool Los Carneros appellation, the Truchard Vineyard has 270 acres planted with 10 different grape varieties on various types of soil: clay, shale, sandstone, volcanic rock and ash. The wine was the darkest of all. It had a powerful nose with sweet blackberry aromas. On the palate, it was big, chewy and oaky with a long finish, but some tasters found it too intense and alcoholic. It came in third place just one point behind the Domaine Serene.

Our third Pinot was the Oak Arbour Pinot Noir Toulouse Vineyard Anderson Valley. Mendocino County's Anderson Valley is slowly emerging as one of California's best region for Pinot Noir. A mere 10-15 miles from the Pacific Ocean, the valley enjoys a cool, coastal climate with night and morning fog and warm summer days, which is ideal for Burgundian varieties like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and classic Alsatian varieties like Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Pinot Gris. This wine had a much lighter color than the David Bruce. It had also a lighter nose with floral and fruity aromas. On the palate, it was slightly sweet but elegant and well balanced. The group found it very food friendly and placed it in first position. This wine was my favorite too! There is a duck on the label so this makes me think about having a duck magret — one of the culinary traditions of Toulouse &mdash with the wine.

Our next wine was the 2002 Robert Sinskey Pinot Noir Los Carneros. Robert Sinskey Vineyards is a winery that strongly believes in organic farming, natural winemaking, and emphasizes elegance over power. The wine had a dark color and a shy fruity nose. On the palate, it was a bit flat and tart with a short finish. A few tasters favored it over the ones with a bigger style. I personally have to admit that this wine was more difficult to appreciate coming after the first three. The wine finished in fifth position.

Then we tasted the 2002 Davis Bynum Pinot Noir Lindleys' Knoll Russian River Valley. The wine comes from a certified organic vineyard in the Russian River Valley, planted with 14 year-old vines on well-drained hillside soils. The wine was aged in French oak for 17 months, and 30% new oak was used. It had a pleasant aromatic nose with notes of strawberry. On the palate, it was tight, woody and acidic, leaving a short finish. The group found it too young and quite unbalanced and placed it in fifth position.

Our last wine was the 2002 Terra Valentine Pinot Noir Russian River Valley. The wine showed a lighter color and a discreet nose of citrus and grapefruit. On the palate, it was sweet, too sweet for many tasters, with flavors of vanillin oak leaving a somewhat bitter and acidic finish. The wine finished in fourth place just one point above the Davis Bynum and the Robert Sinskey.

Now, following the tradition that we started with our 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon blind tasting, we are saving a second bottle of these wines for a future tasting, and I am very curious to see how these wines will taste in one or two years!

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Making our own wine: update 4 (bottling)

I am part of a group of twenty or so wine lovers who decided to make their own wine through the winemaking assistance and facilities of Crushpad, a community winery located in San Francisco. Crushpad allows you to choose your level of participation in the winemaking process and be involved in key decisions. Making a wine at Crushpad starts with selecting a vineyard and grape variety and then creating a winemaking plan with the Crushpad team that specifies the desired wine style as well as fermentation, aging, blending and bottling related parameters.

The first time I came to Crushpad was in October 2004. Our wine was in a fermentation vat. It was a Syrah from the Clary Ranch vineyard, a cool area located in the Sonoma Coast appellation. That day, we learned how to punch down the cap and measure the brix level of the fermenting juice. A week after, the fermentation was over and we came back to press the wine and transfer it into our Burgundy barrel.

Then, last April, I was able to taste the wine after nearly six months of barrel aging. The wine was promising with a firm backbone and nice fruity and peppery flavors.

Finally, we came back to Crushpad last week for the last step. Our Syrah had been patiently aging for more than 15 months and was ready to be bottled. The Crushpad design team had already produced a label for the wine, based on a photo of the Clary Ranch vineyard taken by our friend Arnaud.



When I arrived, the Crushpad team was around an impressive bottling machine, making the last adjustments. For some reason, the labeling part was not functioning properly but the rest of the machine was working fine.



I was offered a taste of the wine. Since my last tasting of the Syrah, it had been blended with a dash (2.5%) of Viognier, in the Côte Rôtie style. The nose was very aromatic and appealing. On the palate, it was smooth and fruity with notes of vanillin oak. Overall, I found it very pleasant and easy to drink. According to the winemaker, this wine should rather be drunk young.

We quickly started the bottling process. Our barrel had a capacity of 228 liters, so we had to work on roughly 300 750ml-bottles, but in reality less because some people had also ordered some magnums.



In a bottling machine, the wine is pumped from a storage tank to the machine where it flows in pre-measured amount into each bottle.

Then the bottles move to the corking area where a cork is inserted into each bottle. Finally, the bottles receive a piece of aluminum foil that is wrapped around their cork. At the exit of the bottling line, the bottles are ready to be labeled and put into boxes.

At the end, there was no wine left in the storage tank. All the bottles were in boxes waiting for us to be picked up. It was time to leave the friendly Crushpad team and allow the wine to rest. Now, stay tuned, we will taste the wine again in a year or so and see how it had evolved after some bottle aging.

Related stories:
• Making our own wine!
• Making our own wine: update 2
• Making our own wine: update 3


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Torino 1787: Jefferson was there

“Arriving in Turin on April 17, I stayed two days at the Hotel d'Angleterre, the best hotel. It was here that I first tasted a wine called Nebiule. It was a singular wine, melding three contradictory characteristics. It was about as sweet as the silky Madeira, as astringent on the palate as Bordeaux, and as brisk as Champagne. It was a pleasing wine.”

We are in the dining room of Hôtel de Langeac, Thomas Jefferson's residence in Paris. Jefferson gives an account of his 1787 trip to the South of France and Northern Italy to his good friend Benjamin Franklin and the guest of the evening, Jack Osborne, a modern time college history professor. The three men are leisurely sipping a 1784 Haut Brion — one of Jefferson's favorite wines — while sharing ideas on slavery, women's education, separation of church and state, and many other fascinating topics, including wine of course.

The book, An Evening with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson: Dinner, Wine, and Conversation, is what you need to recover from too much Olympics. I first heard about it in Tom Wark's Fermentation blog. The author, James Gabler, is a Jefferson scholar and also a wine lover. The story is about a fictive dinner conversation around wine, food and politics, using Jefferson and Franklin's own statements. In the book, these two old friends are very much alive, their eyes are twinkling , they are enjoying their wines and relishing the great moments of their lives. And the reader is also having a great time. However, I only have one regret now that I have finished the book: not to have a sip of this 1784 Haut Brion.

Thanks Tom for recommending this excellent book!

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Chignin Vin de Savoie

It's another ski weekend at lake Tahoe and it is cold and white everywhere. Looking out the window, we can see long snow-covered pine trees. It is time to open a bottle of 2004 Chignin Vin de Savoie Jean-Pierre et Jean-François Quénard from the French Alpine region of Savoie.

This bottle of Vin de Savoie is from the Chinin appellation, an ancient wine region with steep, south-looking vineyards that were already renowned in the Middle Ages. Jacquère is the most important grape variety of the appellation. Native from the Alps, it produces dry and crisp wines that go well with the local cheeses.

The 2004 Chignin Vin de Savoie Jean-Pierre et Jean-François Quénard is 100% Jacquère and has a light yellow color and a discreet floral nose. On the palate, it is dry, crisp, nutty with pear and apple aromas. It is the perfect wine to accompany a Fondue Savoyarde.

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Two South African wines for a South African feast

I like the distinctive flavors of the South African wines — they offer a combination of Old World elegance and New World fruit-driven style — and I am glad to see that an increasing number of South African wines are now available in the US. So, when a friend of mine from South Africa invited me to a lunch featuring traditional recipes from her family, I offered to take care of the wine pairing.

For the appetizers and the tomato and basil salad, I chose a 2005 Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc Stellenbosch. The Mulderbosch Vineyards winery is renowned for producing one of the best Sauvignon Blanc from the leading wine region of Stellenbosch. The wine had a bright straw color and a nose of citrus and green apple aromas. On the palate, it had a crisp acidity and a vivid mineral character on the finish. It was slightly too mineral for the tomato salad but it should go very well with seafood dishes and oysters.

To go with the rest of the meal, I chose a 2002 De Toren Diversity Gamma, a Bordeaux blend from the Cape's Coastal Region. This is a rather warm wine region but the estate vineyards have a southern exposure overlooking the ocean and receive a constant maritime breeze, which cools down the temperature. The De Toren winery also produces Fusion V, a highly rated red blend made with the five traditional Bordeaux grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot. Diversity is in fact their second wine and is made from different percentages of the same five varieties. The wine was nevertheless delicious with a pleasant nose of black fruit, a rich, full-bodied palate and a mouth-filling finish leaving distinctive notes of Mediterranean herbs. It was a wonderful accompaniment to our roasted chicken and salad of honey glazed roasted root vegetable.



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Should you really rely on Mr. Parker?

When buying wine, I often wonder whether I should really rely on these little "shelf talker" cards flagging high Parker scored wines in some wine shops. Well, the best way to find out was to try. The other day, I was looking for wines to bring to a friend's birthday party and decided to buy two 90+ Parker point wines that were also nicely priced just below $25.

The 2003 Celler de Cantonella Cérvoles had 94 points and the following tasting notes from The Wine Advocate:

“Wow! What an amazing, reasonably priced wine. This 1,000-case cuvee, aged 12-14 months in French oak, from one of the appellation's highest altitude vineyards (it borders Montsant/Priorat), is a blend of 41% Tempranillo, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Grenache, and 11% Merlot. Fabulously fragrant, with notes of crushed rock, black raspberries, blueberries, and cassis, this inky/purple-colored wine boasts great fruit, medium to full body, fabulous texture and purity, and a long, heady finish. This is a compelling as well as provocative wine to drink over the next 7-8 years.”

With 93 points, the 2004 Hartford Zinfandel Russian River Valley did not have a less appealing description:

“A terrific buy is the blend of 7 different vineyards (the average age of 80+ years), the 2004 Zinfandel Russian River. This gorgeously rich effort reveals a Pinot Noir-like sensitivity along with a seductive, fragrant nose of black raspberries, cherries, spice box, pepper, and earth. In the mouth, it's a flamboyant, seductive, expansive, full-bodied, savory wine with beautifully integrated acidity, wood, alcohol, and tannin. Drink this decadent Zin over the next 5-6 years.”

Conclusion? I actually enjoyed both of them that evening but the Cérvoles was the real crowd pleaser. The wine had a dark and deep color and an attractive nose of blackberries. On the palate, it was juicy with a rich and velvety texture followed by a well-balanced finish. By comparison, the Hartford Zinfandel seemed very young and I think, may benefit from a couple more years in the bottle. The wine had bold aromas of red berries on the nose, and an intense and full-bodied palate, followed by a very long finish.

I have to admit, I feel grateful to Mr Parker now! And by the way, happy Valentine's Day!

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Monkfish and Vermentino

The other day, I was happy to find some monkfish at my local grocery store because monkfish is so rare here. I known, monkfish is a really ugly fish, and the sight of it may disgust some people, but it has a firm, meaty, and tasteful flesh that makes great fish stews.


Northeast Fisheries Science Center

I decided to prepare my filets of monkfish braised in white wine, tomato, carrot, and mushroom. While the stew was slowly cooking in the oven, I looked in the cellar for a wine that could be nice to have with this somewhat Provencal dish, and found a bottle of 2004 Tablas Creek Vermentino.

Vermentino is a traditional Mediterranean white varietal producing fresh and aromatic wines with good acidity that work well with any kind of seafood. It grows mainly in France's Corsica, and Italy's Sardinia and Liguria, and it is also found in small quantities in the Rhone Valley. It was recently imported to California by the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel and Tablas Creek Vineyard. They thought that Vermentino would thrive in the rocky limestone soils of Paso Robles, and so far, the 2004 vintage is their third successful bottling of the varietal.

The wine had a bright light-straw color. The nose was shy but pleasant with pear, honey and mineral aromas and hints of Provencal herbs. On the palate, it was dry, crisp and mouth-coating with green apple flavors on the finish. And it made a great partner with my braised monkfish.



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Wines of Washington State Tasting

It's only recently that I realized how much I liked the red wines from Washington State and therefore I was glad when our friend Arnaud chose this wine region for his January wine club tasting.

Washington State is now the second largest wine-producing state in the nation behind California. Columbia Valley is the main wine region and produces more than 90 percent of the state's wine grapes. Thanks to its northerly latitude, the valley has two more hours of daily sunlight in summer compared to California, and thanks to its location east of the Cascade Mountain range, it is well protected from rainfall. The climate is therefore semi-desert, with dry, cold winters, while summers have warm days and cool nights, allowing grapes to slowly and fully ripen while maintaining a naturally high level of acidity.

Washington State produces more than 15 wine grapes varieties. In red, the leading ones are Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, and in white they are Chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc.

Arnaud started the tasting with two whites from Chateau Ste Michelle. The winery was founded in 1934, just after the repeal of prohibition, and is Washington's oldest wine estate. The 2003 Chateau Ste Michelle Sauvignon Blanc Horse Heaven Vineyard Columbia Valley comes from the Horse Heaven Vineyard, located in the Horse Heaven Hills, adjacent to the Columbia River. It is a relatively warm site tempered by the Columbia River. 70% of the fruit was barrel fermented and 22% Sémillon was added for texture and weight. The wine had an aromatic nose of honey, pear and peach. On the palate, it was lively and fresh with a mouthfilling finish. It was a fine aperitif wine and I enjoyed sipping it with smoked salmon toasts.

The 2003 Chateau Ste Michelle Chardonnay Indian Wells Vineyard Columbia Valley comes from the winery's Indian Wells Vineyard, a warm site located at the base of the Wahluke Slope, which consistently produces ripe fruits. The wine had a full-flavored nose of nuts, butterscotch and toffee. The palate was medium-bodied with some good acidity. A well-crafted wine although not incredibly distinctive.

Our first red was the 2003 Seven Hills Ciel du Cheval Red Mountain from the Red Mountain appellation, a subregion of the Columbia Valley where Bordeaux varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grow exceptionally well. The wine is a Merlot-based blend with substantial additions of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc and a small amount of Petit Verdot. I really loved this wine! It had a seductive nose of chocolate and blackberry. On the palate it had fine-grained, dusty tannins with complex earthy flavors, followed by an elegant and well balanced finish. It is a very food-friendly wine that should go well with all kinds of meat dishes.

Our next wine was the 2003 Andrew Rich Cabernet Franc Columbia Valley. Andrew Rich Wines is a winery located in Oregon that makes wines from both the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the Columbia Valley. The Andrew Rich Cabernet Franc is Washington's answer to Loire Valley Cabernet Franc. The nose was full of red fruits and the palate was soft and juicy. This wine should go very well with a grilled wild salmon with mushroom sauce.

Then we tasted the 2004 Waterbrook Mélange Columbia Valley, a blend made of 40 % Merlot, 32% Cabernet Sauvignon , 11% Cabernet Franc, 9% Sangiovese and 8% Syrah. The wine had a spicy nose with notes of vanilla and a sweet, full-bodied palate. The wine was rich and tasty but too sweet for my taste.

Our next wine was the 2002 L'Ecole No. 41 Merlot Columbia Valley. L'Ecole No. 41 is located in an old schoolhouse, in historic Frenchtown, a small community founded by French-Canadian immigrants in the early 1800s. One story says that the raising of grapes and production of wine in Southeastern Washington really began with these French Canadian employees of the Hudson Bay Company. I am a big fan of the Merlots from L'Ecole No. 41 and I was not disappointed by this one. The wine was delicious with a spicy and smoky nose. On the palate, it was rich , full of black fruits, with a long, fruity aftertaste.

We ended the tasting with the 2003 K Vintners Milbrandt Syrah Columbia Valley. The K Vintners winery is located at the base of the Blue Mountains in Walla Walla. The Milbrandt Vineyard is from the Wahluke Slope, a warm sub-region of the Columbia Valley where the soil is all sand and gravel, which gives some minerality to the wine. Aged in 100% French Burgundy barrels (20% new) for 14 months, the wine was smooth and rich with ripe fruit flavors and notes of chocolate. The wine was slightly too sweet for my taste but it should go well with chocolate. I should have tried it with the dark chocolate that Arnaud had brought for the tasting.

Many thanks to Arnaud for choosing all these great wines and to Anahita and Peter for sharing their house!

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Vino Voyeur: bottle in the snow

Are you curious about the wine of others? Where do you store your wine? In a cellar, fridge, drawer, counter-top, under the bed, safety deposit box? ask Beau at BasicJuice.

For me, it's in the snow. Isn't the perfect place to chill wine?

Become a vino voyeur and check the pictures.


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WBW #18: A wine shop story

This month's theme of Wine Blogging Wednesday is wine shops that feel the love and Dr. Vino is hosting. That's a very interesting theme and I feel very lucky to have in my area so many awesome wine shops that I could talk about. For this post, I chose to visit Weimax Wines & Spirits, a small wine shop with a tasting room located in Burlingame, California.

I should go to this place more often. I am always happy with the wines I buy there, often recommended by Gerald, the shop owner. Sometimes, I can even taste a wine before buying it if it is available in the tasting room. I often check the store's website, regularly updated with tasting notes, pictures, and detailed information about the producers. And I like the fact that each wine you buy has a tasting note printed on the receipt.

On the day of my visit, I was first disappointed to see that Gerald was not present. But assuming that anybody that works for him should be knowledgeable, I confidently asked the staff person on duty at that time for a good wine value.

”That's a very hard question!“ he replied, ”All the wines are good here. The owner tastes them all.“

”But do you have one in particular that you could recommend?“ I continued.

”That's impossible to say. All these wines are so different. It really depends on what you like.“ he replied, pointing to a wall crammed with wine racks and boxes.

I was not ready to concede defeat. ”What about something you drank recently, that you really enjoyed?“ I insisted.

Then he took me to the other side of the shop and handed me a bottle of 2004 Morgon Vieilles Vignes from a producer called Raymond Bouland.

”This is really good.“ he said, ”People have been mistaking this wine for a Burgundy.“

It had been ages since I drank any Beaujolais! This was an opportunity to get reacquainted with that region. I did not know the producer but Morgon was a respectable appellation and the price ($12.99) was very attractive. So I bought the wine. On the receipt, I found Gerald's tasting note:
”The 2004 vintage is outstanding in Beaujolais. Bouland's Morgon is an excellent red. Lots of delicious fruit. Best lightly chilled.“

This sounded very promising. But how could I judge whether this nice man's recommendation was truly reliable? I had to taste the wine. The 2004 Morgon Vieilles Vignes Domaine Raymond Bouland had a deep garnet color with a fruity nose of plums and cherries. On the palate, it was medium-bodied with a firm structure and some earthiness on the finish. And no sign of these awful banana or bubble gum flavors that are too often found in Beaujolais wines these days. The staff at Weimax was right. The wine was very good, best lightly chilled of course.





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Two tasty wines from Campania

I recently attended an Italian cooking class organized by one of my friends for which I had volunteered to bring some wine. Based on my recent improved knowledge of Italian wines, I selected a couple of bottles from Campania, to be tasted at lunchtime with the result of our cooking session. Campania is a region that is currently experiencing a winemaking renaissance and is producing an increasing number of exciting — and still reasonably priced — wines made from unusual native grape varieties.



The white wine was made from Falanghina grapes grown in the Pompeii area. Falanghina is an ancient varietal that has been recently rediscovered as it can produce wines with high acidity and good aging potential. The 2003 Sannino Falanghina Pompeiana had a golden color and a delicate nose of white peach and honey. On the palate, it was round and mouthfeeling with a fresh, lively acidity. The wine was delicious with our Caponata, a full-flavored eggplant-based Sicilian appetizer.



The red wine was made from Aglianico grapes grown in the mountainous province of Beneventano. Aglianico is considered to be the greatest red grape of the South as it can produce tannic and dense wines suitable for long ageing. The 2003 Sannino Aglianico Beneventano had a bright red color with a peppery nose of blackberries. On the palate, it was medium-bodied with a soft texture, followed by a lively finish and an aftertaste of cocoa powder. Not the tannic and dense kind but it was very tasty with the other dish we made, a wonderful stuffed veal dish called Cima.



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Good and bad surprises from the cellar

Knowing when it is the right time to drink a wine is always a challenge. You can always try to compute a window of drinkability based on numerous factors such as tannins, acidity, appellation, vintage, varietal, winemaker, ageability of the wine in past vintage, not to forget the storage conditions. But far too many parameters influence how wine ages and whatever you compute is only a rough approximation. Consequently, opening a bottle of mature wine often produces surprising — and for me, fascinating — results. A wine that you expected to age well can be disappointingly passed its prime time. On the contrary, a modest wine may turn out to be delicious.

I prefer drinking my wines in their full adulthood, when they have shed their baby fat and picked up complexity. But at the same time, I am always afraid to wait too long and miss their peak. In fact, I regularly check my cellar inventory looking for wines that might have started to decline.

This is how I recently found two bottles that looked suspicious: a 1996 Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Les Folatières Domaine Jean-Marc Boillot and a 1995 Geyser Peak Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County. I opened the Puligny-Montrachet first. The wine had a encouraging bright golden color but the nose was rather shy with hints of cheesy aromas. On the palate, the wine had more cheesy off-flavors covering a once opulent nutty body. I retasted the wine the day after. It had become completely undrinkable and I immediately poured it down the sink.

Then I tried the Geyser Peak. This Cabernet Sauvignon has always been known for its excellent quality-price ratio but not specifically for its ability to age. The wine had a deep red color that hardly showed any sign of age. On the nose, I found black currant and earthy aromas more typical of Bordeaux. On the palate, it was soft and elegant with hints of mushroom and chocolate flavors. Retasting it the day after, the wine was surprisingly even more delicious, exhibiting additional sweet raspberry flavors.

So how do you known when a wine is too old?

“My answer to this is straightforward,” says Matt Kramer in an humorous Wine Spectator article called When Good Wines Say Good-Bye. “A wine is too old when you have to imagine it. When you have to bring to a wine a lot more than it's bringing to you, time's up. The wine is no more.”

But when the wine is good, you don't need to use your imagination. The wine is present. It still has the power to charm you...and let you forget the other bottles that you had to pour down the sink.

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Dining with robots or drinking like robots?

I just read a wonderful story written by software engineer and writer Ellen Ullman. In her essay called Dining with Robots, Ellen Ullman wonders how much pleasure robots could ever experience. She also worries that with our long working hours, our well organized life in which so many processes are automated, we may just become robots ourselves.

Everything started when she decided to make a Beuf à la Parisienne, a recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, for dinner. This is a sauté of beef served with a cream and mushroom sauce. The book also recommends buttered green peas and a good red Bordeaux to accompany the dish. While cooking that evening, she imagined having robots as guests for dinner.

Eventually, this may not be a fantasy anymore. According to Dr. Cynthia Breazeal who works at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, we will one day be able to build robots that can become socially intelligent machines, learning things as we learn them, through social interactions. Her team is currently developing the first robotic creature that takes an active interest in its world, and learns and develops over time. It learns by trial and error and remembers its mistakes, making incremental improvements. This is a cute little robot called Kismet who, like a child, is learning how to communicate a number of emotion-like processes such as happiness, fear and disgust.

For Ellen, having well behaved guest robots for dinner means that she will have to teach them many different things, and above all, explain what a good red Bordeaux means.

”How to explain wine at all?“ she asks, ”You could spend the rest of your life tasting wine and still not exhaust its variations, each bottle is a little ecosystem of grapes and soils and weather, yeast and bacteria, barrels of wood from trees with their own soil and weather, the variables cross-multiplying until each glassful approaches a singularity, a moment in time on earth. Can a creature that does not drink or taste understand this pleasure? A good red Bordeaux!“

One day, robots may become more like us and show human-like feelings. However, in our effort to quantify everything, even the pleasure of drinking wine, aren't we becoming more robot-like? We buy wine based on ratings, classifications, even computerized wine matchmaking services. Wines have become numbers from which we compute means, medians and standard deviations in order to declare one vintage or wine region better than the other. I guess we trust numbers better than our own palate.

”Quand le vin est tiré, il faut le boire, surtout s'il est bon“ (When the wine is poured, you have to drink it, especially if it's good) says César, the jovial character in Marcel Pagnol's Fanny Trilogy. Isn't it still the best way to enjoy a nice glass of wine?


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Big is beautiful

Isn't it funny that a magnum size bottle seems always so festive? For some reason, the unusual size of the bottle makes the juice it contains more special and delicious.

Last night, a friend of ours brought a magnum of 2002 Quintessa and also cooked a delicious beef roast with garlic potatoes. The wine had a deep red-purple color and an attractive nose of berries and spices. On the palate, it was dense, very smooth, well balanced, with vanilla notes and a lively finish. We finished the whole roast and the magnum!

This make me think that I should have more magnum sized bottles in my cellar. They are not easy to find but the satisfaction you get when you open one with your friends is definitely worth the effort.



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The appeal of mature German Rieslings

I love Riesling but I rarely drink German Rieslings. I usually find them too sweet and hard to match with food. But the other day, I had guests at home that were German wine lovers and so I took that opportunity to open a bottle of 1996 Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Riesling Spätlese that was quietly lying in my cellar since 1999.

The Scharzhofberger Riesling of the Müller family comes from a 8 hectare lot that the estate owns in the famous Scharzhofberg vineyard along the Saar river. Scharzhofberg is renowned for its wines of great elegance and finesse thanks to its well drained slate soil where grapes enjoy a slow and long ripening season. Good drainage is necessary because the region is cool and rainy and slate allows the soil to warm up quickly.

1996 was a good vintage in Germany that produced ripe, healthy grapes with good acidity. Because of a relatively cool and dry summer, the harvest started late but the weather remained fine during the fall months and grapes could be safely picked for the Spätlese wines at the end of October.

Did the wine hold its promise? Absolutely! It exhibited a light golden color and a characteristic nose of petrol-mineral aromas. On the palate, it was slightly sweet with a refreshing acidity, along with complex flavors of peach, pear, grape, honey and citrus. On the finish, it was rich and juicy.

Now, am I turning into a German Riesling fan?






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Snow and Shiraz

This weekend, we skiing at Tahoe. It snowed all day yesterday, and after half a day of ski and some snowshoeing, I was pretty wet and ready for a full, hearty wine.

At the local Safeway, I found a bottle of 2003 Cape Mentelle Shiraz Margaret River that looked promising.

Cape Mentelle is one of the first winery established in the Margaret River region of Southwest Australia. Located within three to seven kilometers off the Indian Ocean coast, the Cape Mentelle vineyards enjoy a maritime influenced Mediterranean climate with mild winters and warm summers. The wine had a deep red color with a nose of ripe fruits and spices. On the palate, it was rich and smooth with sweet flavors. This is a wine that keeps you wonderfully warm and cozy while it is all white and snowy outside.






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Burgundy High

In her delightful memoir Tasting Pleasure : Confessions of a Wine Lover, Jancis Robinson describes her fascination for Burgundy and her relentless pursuit of the Burgundy High:

”Burgundy of both colors reaches parts of you that other wines cannot. Great burgundy is the ultimate sensualist's wine, but it is even rarer than great bordeaux, at a much, much riskier purchase. This makes one treasure bordeaux's somewhat plodding predictability, but when burgundy succeeds—which it can do for me at all price levels, even some of the most modest appellations can be a real, heady, flirtations joy—it brings such singular pleasure that it spurs me on to keep trying [...] I see a pathetically obvious, relentless pursuit of the Burgundy High. Like a drug addict determined to duplicate the seminal experience at whatever cost, I track myself continuing to choose burgundy from the lists of restaurants and wine merchants in the often futile hope that this will be the bottle.“

Well, I recently experienced my own Burgundy High. We were celebrating the New Year with our close friends Catherine and Pierre when Pierre decided to open the oldest bottle of his collection, a 1983 Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Brulées Domaine de la Poulette given by his father-in-law a long time ago. Pierre has an excellent underground cellar room and the bottle's condition seemed perfect. We opened it religiously and sniffed it. The nose was tight but very promising.

Nuits-Saint-Georges is one of the main appellation of the Côte de Nuits that produces big, strong wines that usually demand long bottle age. Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Brulées is a single vineyard designation in the Nuits-Saint-Georges village, although Les Brulées is not a Premier Cru. The 1983 vintage in Burgundy was considered overrated by the wine critics. The grapes had much thicker skins than in 1982 but many parts of the region suffered from hail damage followed by rot. Overall, the quality of the red wines ranged from excellent to poor.

After half an hour or so, the wine started to open up and exhibit a wonderfully seductive quality. In the glass, the wine had a bright brick-orange color and a headily perfumed nose of flowers, cherries and spices. On the palate, it was well structured with complex smoky flavors—burnt (brulées) flavors said Pierre—, leaving a long, lingering aftertaste.

For dinner, Catherine had made some delicious slow cooked braised beef short ribs. We were in heaven!

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A wine journey along the Russian River

During the holidays, I read A Wine Journey along the Russian River by Steve Heimoff, a book that took me on an enlightening journey along the Russian River.

Steve Heimoff is the West Coast editor of Wine Enthusiast Magazine, and is very familiar with the region. In his book, he introduces you to the geological history of the river, the area's multiple climate and soil variations, the first Indian settlers, the Russian trappers, who established their fur trading colony at Fort Ross, and the early grape-growing pioneers. You read stories of storms and flooding and also of pleasant rowing trips down the river. You participate in comparative tasting between wines from the Alexander Valley and the Napa Valley AVAs and join the everlasting quest for great Pinot Noirs with the local vintners and growers.

It is regretful that Steve Heimoff did not include some detailed maps of the region. There are rich geographical details in the book that are hard to follow without a map.

Another weakness of the book is its disjointed flow that sometimes loses the reader. Like the river that changes course, meanders and loops several times before reaching the ocean, stories are told, new ideas are introduced, without any obvious connection with the previous ones.

In the last chapter of the book, Steve Heimoff raises an interesting issue: the Incredible Hulk-ization of Pinot Noir, and to understand the problem, he interviews different winemakers and growers. Among them, Bob Cabral of Williams-Selyem points out:

”In the evolution of Pinot Noir winemaking, where we found that, physiologically, grapes get riper at higher brix, some people are pushing things too far, for such a delicate grape.“

And when he is asked what would motivate some people to go too far, here is his reply:

”They're chasing the wine writers.“

That does not bother him but he thinks it's insane. I cannot agree more.


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WBW #17: A tale of two Pinots

I have been busy traveling during the holidays without much time for wine shopping. So for the 17th edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday — thanks a lot John at Corkdork for being the host and choosing the theme: Red Kiwis — I simply selected the only NZ red wine that was in my cellar at this time: a 2001 Martinborough Vineyard Pinot Noir. I also decided to open a 2001 Merryvale Pinot Noir Los Carneros as a point of comparison.

Actually, I didn't mean to buy the Martinborough Vineyard Pinot Noir. I had ordered a 2001 Ata Rangi Pinot Noir but the store shipped the Martinborough Vineyard instead. I guess they were out of the Ata Rangi and chose to replace it by a similar wine. I hate when they do this but it was not worth returning the wine.

Martinborough is considered to be the most exciting place for Pinot Noir in New Zealand's North Island, and Ata Rangi as well as Martinborough Vineyard are the two leading wineries of the area. Located on the southern tip of the island, this is the coolest wine region but autumns are sunny and dry. The 2001 Martinborough Vineyard Pinot Noir exhibited a dark red-brown color and a big nose of sweet fruits and pepper. On the palate, it was muscular and concentrated with a long, earthy finish.

The Los Carneros AVA is one of Napa Valley's coolest area and is renowned for its Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and sparkling wines. The 2001 Merryvale Pinot Noir Los Carneros showed a bright red color and a mild yet attractive nose of berry, vanilla and clove spice. On the palate, it was well-balanced with some lively acidity. I found it slightly more elegant than the New Zealand Pinot Noir and I liked it better with our Pot-au-Feu.

Two Pinots, two wine regions, two new world styles. Now I am wondering how the Ata Rangi would have tasted?

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A classy Cheval Blanc for the New Year

Florence is our long-time friend from Chicago, and she is lucky to sometimes receive wines from her father's expansive Bordeaux wine collection. As we were visiting her and her family for the New Year, she generously opened a 1994 Château Cheval-Blanc at the New Year's Eve dinner. We were very honored and tasted the wine religiously.

To tell the truth, we were a little bit disappointed by the wine, but to be fair, it rained heavily during the 1994 Bordeaux harvest and the 1994 vintage is lighter than most of the vintages that came after. The wine had a deep color with little sign of age and an appealing nose of spices and fruits. On the palate, it was medium-bodied, well balanced and elegant. The wine was delicious but we were expecting more concentration from such a famous Château.

Anyway, for us, it was still a memorable experience and we had a great time. Happy new year!




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