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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Beer Tasting and Choucroute

My friend Virginie is not fond of wine but she likes beer. Since we were making a choucroute for Christmas, we decided for a change to have a beer tasting. That evening, we tasted one German and three Belgium beers.

We started with a Spaten Pils, produced by the Spaten brewery in Munich. It had a light yellow color with a mildly bitter flavor and a light malty finish. This was my friend's favorite beer.

Our next beer was a Duvel, which is a golden Belgium ale that undergoes three fermentations, the last one taking place in the bottle. It had a light yellow color, and was full flavored and slightly sweet on the palate with a long and fruity finish. This was my favorite as an aperitif.

The third beer was a Chimay Peres Trappistes Cinq Cents, which is a non-pasteurized beer produced by the Trappist monks of the Chimay monastery. It had a deep amber color and tasted rich and spicy with a bitter aftertaste. This was the beer I liked the best with the choucroute.

We ended the tasting with a Trappistes Rochefort 10, which is a strong dark ale (11.3% alcohol), also produced by the Trappist monks. The beer had a dark brown color, a strong medicinal taste and a bitter finish. This was definitively not our style of beer.

Of course, a nice Alsatian riesling is always a great choice with the choucroute.

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A Very Sweet Christmas

For me, Christmas is the time to relax with my family and friends and indulge in rich food and wine. Our Christmas eve dinner started with a terrine of foie gras and two excellent bottles of Sauternes that we tasted side by side.



This was an enlightening exercise. The 2001 Château Rayne-Vigneau had a light golden color and a mild nose of candied pineapple. On the palate, it was lively and medium sweet with a refreshing acidity on the finish.

The 1999 Château Rieussec was very different. It had a deep golden color and a more intense nose of nuts, honey and dried apricots. On the palate, it was rich with a mouthfilling, unctuous texture and a long, lingering finish.

Both wines were fantastic with the foie gras but which one did I really prefer? The Rieussec was definitively richer and more complex but the Rayne Vigneau had a freshness and acidity that worked well with a side dish of caramelized apples that we served with the foie gras.



Merry Christmas!

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Champagne tasting

I am usually very busy around Christmas but luckily this year, I was able to attend our friend Arnaud's annual Champagne tasting. And this year, Arnaud had a special treat for us: he had invited Gary Westby, the K&L Wine Merchants Champagne specialist, to talk about a selection of seven different Champagnes, all coming from small producers that make wine mostly from their own land.



For this special tasting, Arnaud had also prepared some tasty hors d'oeuvres, canapes and petits fours.



We started the tasting with the Champagne Deutz Brut Classic. Deutz is a small Champagne house recently bought by Roederer and the Brut Classic is their entry level wine. With an aromatic nose of Granny Smith apples and a crisp, firm, and toasty palate, it was a Champagne of character and an excellent aperitif.

It was followed by the Champagne Franck Bonville Brut Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs. This Champagne is made of Chardonnay grapes coming from the winery's own vineyard in Avize, one of the Champagne Grands Crus. It was crisp with clean mineral flavors, notes of green apple, and had a dry, zesty finish. With its high acidity and minerality, this Champagne should go well with oysters or shellfish.

Our third Champagne was another Blanc de Blancs, this time from the Lancelot-Pienne Champagne house. The domaine is located in the village of Cramant, one of the best terroirs in the Côtes de Blancs. Made of 100% old vine Chardonnay. the 1996 Champagne Lancelot Pienne Blanc de Blancs Brut Cuvée Marie Lancelot was flowery, full and soft with an elegant finish, and absolutely delicious with the salmon mousse. This was one of the group's favorite.

Our next wine was the Champagne Ariston Brut Carte Blanche, a classic Champagne blend made of 40% Chardonnay, 30% Pinot Noir and 30% Pinot Meunier. The Ariston house makes Champagne exclusively from its own estate vineyard in Brouillet, a tiny village in the far northwest corner of Champagne. This is a unique terroir: the vineyard is located on steep sunny slopes that give the vines a better chance to ripen, and the soil is rich in shellfish fossils, which provide mineral flavors to the wine. This was a very food-friendly wine and with its aromatic nose, and rich, mouth-filling palate, this was one of my favorite.

The next Champagne was another Grand Cru. The Champagne Michel Arnould Brut Réserve Grand Cru Verzenay comes from Verzenay, the farthest north of all of the Grand Crus. Verzenay is an amazing, north-facing location where the Pinot ripens thanks to a mysterious warm air current — that's what some of the locals say. A blend of 80% Pinot Noir and 20% Chardonnay, the wine had an aromatic nose of honey, pear, apple and blackcurrant bud. On the palate, it was rich and slightly sweeter than the others. It should go well with a fruit tart, or with some Asian food.

With the 1985 Champagne René Collard Millésimé Cuvée Reservée, we had the most extraordinary wine of the evening. This Champagne was an unusual blend of 90% Pinot Meunier and 10% Chardonnay. It had a deep golden color, a smoky nose with notes of red berries, and on the palate, it surprisingly tasted like a sherry! A perfect match for our foie gras toasts.

The evening ended with petits fours and a Champagne rosé. Made of 100% biodynamic Pinot Noir grapes, the 1993 Champagne Fleury Brut Rosé Fleur de l'Europe had an exquisite salmon color and a delicate red fruit nose. On the palate, it was dry, elegant, and delicious with the hazelnut cookies.

A warm thank you to Arnaud, Gary and our hosts, Sabrina and Marty for this exceptional and festive evening!

Arnaud and Gary

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Picpoul de Pinet

Sometimes, it is not the label that makes you buy a wine, but the name, and Picpoul de Pinet is certainly one of them.

Picpoul is a little known grape that is native to the Languedoc and one of the thirteen permitted varietals in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Today, it is rarely used in the Rhône Valley and most of the production comes from the Picpoul de Pinet appellation. The meaning of the name Picpoul is unclear. Some believe that it translates into lip stinger because of its high acidity. Others think that it means pecking hens because in the old days, the hens liked to peck its early ripening fruits.

Pinet is a small Languedoc village where the wine is produced. The vineyards of Picpoul de Pinet overlook the oyster and mussel farms of the Bassin de Thau. Although the climate is dry and sunny, the lake provides coolness and humidity at night, which allows the grapes to retain a high level of acidity. And thanks to its freshness and crisp mineral flavors, the wine is the ideal accompaniment to the local oysters and mussels.

The other day, I didn't have oysters with my glass of 2004 Hughes Beaulieu Picpoul de Pinet, but Dungeness crab. The wine was absolutely delicious with the delicate flavors of the crab meat. It had an attractive nose of floral and mineral aromas, a lively acidity on the palate and a clean, citrusy finish.

No wonder the hens used to eat the grapes, these animals certainly know what is good.

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A new blog for South American wine lovers

A Che Guevara and wine route in Bolivia, painted horses on the streets of Santiago, the first ever international Carmenère competition, these are some of the stories that you can read in Andes Wine Zone. This new blog reports on wine-related events happening in South America and is also dedicated to the wines produced in the Andes Mountains — a land of natural wonders and a fabulous wine region!


Andes wine

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Pastries in Paris... support the Kashmir earthquake relief

Dreaming of spending the afternoon in Paris, sampling (or rather devouring) petits fours with a nice cup of tea? This is one of the cool gifts that you can win if you donate as little as $5 to support the victims of the earthquake that devastated the Kashmir region of India and Pakistan. The funds will be collected by Unicef through the First Giving website.

$4,400.00 has been raised as of today. So, are you ready to participate? Check the menu and find the gift you would like. Then go to the A Menu for Hope II donation page. You see, it's easy.


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President Bush and a Cabernet Sauvignon at your holiday dinner table?

The California Wine Club recently conducted a survey asking its members which public figure or celebrity they would like to invite for holiday dinner, and which wine they would serve. President Bush was the popular choice as well as Cabernet Sauvignon.

Now, which guest would I like to have for my holiday dinner? Certainly someone that could bring a good bottle of wine and tell interesting wine stories. Maybe a famous winemaker, maybe a famous female winemaker. Someone like Helen Turley from Marcassin or Laurence Faller from Domaine Weinbach or Sophie Armenier from Domaine de Marcoux.

Or maybe I could just serve their wines.

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Manresa: That's absolutely true

It was after reading Manresa... All of it is True on the Gastronomie blog that I decided to make a reservation at Manresa . I had previously read several great reviews of Manresa, including Manresa Restaurant: a fascinating ride and Notes From the Vinography "Drink Small" Wine Dinner, but for some reason, this one made me pick up the phone and call the restaurant.

So last week, my husband and I drove to Los Gatos for a 6:30pm dinner, and as predicted, the experience was memorable. Just reading the menu was mouth watering. The wine list was small but the wines were well chosen. I was only disappointed by the small selection of wines by the glass. I could not find anything inspiring that could go with our first dish, a foie gras terrine. Fortunately, the problem got resolved thanks to the Sommelier, a friendly and helpful person, who recommended a glass of Prinz von Hessen Riesling Spätlese 2000 that was not in the list. To go with our four course menu, we ordered a bottle of Volnay Premier Cru Champans 1999, also recommended by the Sommelier.





After a couple of appetizers — a mango smoothie and a parmesan churro, the waiter brought us the famous Arpège Egg, a hot-cold soft boiled egg with maple syrup, sherry vinegar and cream. The dish certainly deserved its reputation. The combination of hot and cold ingredients and sweet and sour flavors was amazing.





We started our menu sharing a Terrine of Duck Foie Gras and Pig’s Trotter. This was an inventive creation that combined the rustic flavors of the pig feet with the delicate and silky taste of the foie gras. The 2000 Prinz von Hessen Riesling Spätlese was excellent and a perfect accompaniment to the terrine. The wine had a lot of purity and finess, a smooth texture, a complex finish, and the right amount of sweetness to go well with the foie gras.





I absolutely loved my second dish, the Sea Urchin and Dungeness Crab in Lightly Spiced Coconut Milk. For me, this was the most inventive dish of the menu. I loved its airy texture, its intense flavors combining the salty, iodized flavors of the urchin with the sweet and rich taste of the coconut milk.





My third dish was the Breast of Duck with Braised Red Cabbage and Prunes Poached in Black Tea. This was a more classic dish, yet rich and tasty. It worked very well with the 1999 Volnay Premier Cru Les Champans Domaine Marquis d'Angerville, a concentrated and spicy wine that started very firm and became smooth and unctuous towards the end of the meal.





My last dish, a Warm Date Cake with Caramel Pears and Ice Cream, was a real treat, a comfort food in its most refined form.




Feeling hungry? Call now. The number is 408-354-4330.



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WBW #16: Don't be fooled by the appearance

Today is December's Wine Blogging Wednesday and Derrick at An Obsession with Food (and Wine) is hosting. This time, he is asking us to present a wine that we have chosen solely for its pretty label.

When I choose a wine, I am usually influenced by the winery name, the appellation, friends recommendations — and the price. But once in a while, I have to confess that I buy a wine because I am attracted to its label.

That's what happened when I ran into the 2002 Eno Pinot Noir Presumed Innocent Morelli Lane Vineyard. At first sight, the wine's label looked pretty. I liked the subdued rose petal color and the delicate transparency of the main picture, as well as the flowery, red and green design on the side of the label.



And then I took a closer look and the label started to suggest a mystery as thick as the London fog. It showed a picture of a mysterious and seductive woman with a pearl necklace and perfectly manicured fingernail, entitled “PRESUMED innocent”. Who was this lady? An intriguing brunette like Mary Astor in the Maltese Falcon, or a cold and blonde Hitchcock heroine like Kim Novak in Vertigo? What was her crime?

On its website, the winery warns you: “Be careful, it's an iron fist in a velvet glove. You are "Presumed Innocent" until you have a glass or two...”

When I finally turned my attention to the side of the label, the whole truth came out: she was guilty!



What about the wine itself? It has a bright bloody ruby color and an attractive nose of fresh cherry with notes of cinnamon and cloves. On the palate, it is medium-bodied and dry with a earthy-spicy finish. It is a fine Russian River Pinot Noir that should be delicious with a Salmon with Indian Spices.


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My 2005 Top Wines

Everybody talks about the Wine Spectator's 2005 Top 100 these days. And like every year, people wonder how the magazine came up with its ranking. For me, the list is interesting because I haven't drunk any of these wines, although I had some from a different vintage. So, does that mean that I completely missed the best wines of the year?

This led me to wonder what were my own 2005 Top wines. A simple query to my Wine Database returned a list of almost 100 wines that I tasted in 2005 and found excellent or exceptional (four stars or better in my rating scheme). These are the wines that I enjoyed the most this year and all of them are associated with fond memories of dear friends and delicious food.

I already featured several of these coup de coeur wines in recent posts. Here are some more :

• 1980 Page Mill Cabernet Sauvignon Volker Eisele Vineyard Napa Valley
• 1985 Château Lynch-Bages
• 1986 Château Raymond-Lafon
• 1995 Château Cantenac-Brown
• 1996 Merryvale Profile
• 1996 Santenay Premier Cru Clos de Tavannes Domaine de la Pousse d'Or
• 1998 Miner Family Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville
• 1999 Brunello di Montalcino La Mannella
• 1999 Domaine Weinbach Riesling Clos des Capucins Cuvée Sainte Catherine
• 2001 ZD Reserve Pinot Noir Los Carneros
• 2001 Gamba Old Vine Zinfandel Russian River Valley
• 2001 Gigondas Domaine Les Goubert Cuvée Florence
• 2001 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Domaine de la Janasse
• 2001 Barolo Mauro Molino
• 2001 Schmelz Riesling Smaragd Durnsteiner Freiheit
• 2002 Two Hands Angel's Share Shiraz
• 2003 Joh. Jos. Prüm Graacher Himmelreich Spätlese
• 2003 Chassagne-Montrachet Premier Cru La Maltroie Michel Colin-Deleger et Fils
• 2003 Vacqueyras Blanc Domaine La Monardière
• Champagne De Meric Grande Reserve Sous Bois Brut

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