Swirl & Sniff

On Zinfandel Rosé

2005-10-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

Catie over at the Through The Grape Vine blog recently wrote a post on Zinfandel, its presence (or rather lack thereof) in Washington, and the "white zin" phenomenon. (Catie if you're reading this, I wanted to send this personally via email, but couldn't find any contact information!)

The post nails the "white zin" terminology right on the head: Sutter Home created the name as a marketing device and it worked wonders (as can be evidenced by the fact that anybody is even having this conversation). "White" Zinfandel wine is just rosé. It doesn't sit on the grape skins more than a handful of hours so it doesn't turn completely red.

While I agree whole heartedly with her on the marketzoid misnomers, there are some truly fantastic rosés made from Zinfandel. The first one that comes to mind is the one from Lucas Winery (lucaswinery.com). Their rosé is made from Zinfandel and has fantastic, surprising fruit. Its apple-like bite (malic acid, perhaps?) is characteristic of the outstanding Chardonnays that Lucas produces. Pedroncelli also makes a wonderful rosé with Zinfandel grapes.

Of course, as I write this, I'm thinking of shuffling off to open a Bandol rosé.

Please keep up the good blogging, Catie.

Wine: Cavatappi Sangiovese

2005-10-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

If soup is anything in America, it is the food of fall. Spring pea soups and late summer tomato consommés are wonderful; real honest stews are something else altogether. In Oaxaca (pronounced “wah-ha-ka”), a state in Mexico, soups are serious business. They are traditionally served as meals in themselves. As fine as vichyssoise can be, a hearty, spicy posole is to soup what a great grizzly bear is to the forest.

It’s fall in Seattle and so we must make posole. It will be evening, and so we must have wine. Pairing spicy food with wine generally reminds us of white wines, but what few deciduous trees we have here are losing their leaves and so the wine that we must drink must be red.

Sangiovese can and does pair well with a hearty, spicy soup. The one good Washington Sangiovese I know of is the Cavatappi Sangiovese from Peter’s Cellars. The bouquet is musty, earthy, and even a bit like wet wood; that is to say, it is a delightful fall wine. No light fruits are prancing around here. It has a pleasing finish and beautiful ruby color. It can be had for about ten bucks.

The author Zarela Martinez says that a Oaxacan market is the highest glory of a land where food can express dignity, generosity, and grace. Wine, food, and fall may be able to bring a little bit of that out in all of us.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.0

Wine as Fuel (Literally)

2005-10-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has a story about winemakers in France distilling their wines to get ethanol, which is eventually sold to refineries to be turned into gasoline. "It's like going to a funeral," one winemaker is quoted as saying. While using wine product for something other than wine when it's more profitable to do so is nothing new, it's a bit sad to see it happening in the traditional heart of the wine world.

Wine: Dehasa Gago 2003

2005-10-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

Just a little bit of purple in this very accessible Spanish red – color? Let’s talk about color first.

In the early 20th century the chemist R.M. Willstätter found that most fruits which are noticeably red or purple have pigment made of cyanidine-based compounds. Bear with me: I promise this isn’t too painful (and therefore not too accurate, either). Cyanidine, a kind of anthocyanin (if you care at all), changes color depending upon the pH of the solution it’s in. Very roughly, the more acidic the solution, the more cyanidine appears to be red; the less acidic, the more it appears to be purple. (The pH of a liquid doesn’t exactly correlate to the acidity, but let’s just pretend it does for now.)

Those cyanidine compounds are in the skin of the grape; though you are not drinking the skins, you are in fact drinking things pulled from the skins into the wine (this is where most of the flavor comes from, in fact). The wine’s pH will have an impact on the color because of this, but it’s not the only thing influencing color.

As most of us know, wines change color with age. One big reason is that the compounds mentioned above slowly join up with other fellows and turn into that flaky stuff you see at the bottom of old bottles. The color gets less intense over time. Whites tend to brown a bit, becoming more straw or hay colored. Reds on the other hand get a more subtle gradient from an almost orange to a brick color; some look tawny. Old reds will tend not to be purple.

Back to the wine at hand. The Dehesa Gago (“g” according to the label and the designated shorthand) from famed Spanish winemaker Telmo Rodriguez is an impressive eight dollar wine made from Tempranillo. Just after being opened, it’s as cranky as most wines a year old, but given a little bit of air it opens up just fine. The oak works well: it isn’t overbearing but it gives it nice palatability (read as: there is a light vanilla in here). Its most notable qualities are the cherry scent and its chewy mouthfeel. Oh yeah, and it’s a dark red with some purple around the rim.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 3.0
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.5

Wine: Coeur d’Alene Cellars Viognier

2005-08-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

Apparently Viognier does not read this blog. Not that it should, necessarily, but seriously, the Coeur d'Alene Cellars approach in 2003 was exactly what I was complaining about: the "Idaho wine" (quotes due to the fact that its grapes come from the state of Washington) is a no-holds-barred, fully mechanized cream assault. Folks talked of apricots as they do on their website, but frankly I was underwhelmed with the overly vegetative smell.

Yikes. A friend paid too much for it at a vegetarian restaurant which will go unnamed (oops); the restaurant described it as spicy and pointed out with glee that it must be unfiltered because it's so cloudy. Sorry, it's not just unfiltered: it's flawed.

Which gets me thinking about wine contests in general. What does it mean for an Idaho wine, made entirely from Washington's grapes, that can dismay me so much to win a gold prize in an Idaho contest? (Lest you think I am making too much of the state distinction, these grapes are travelling around 200 miles on average.) Perhaps it's best not to think of things about which you have nothing nice to say.

But maybe this blog has earned at least the right to complain a little bit; there isn't too much negative here. Wine contests are bizarre and especially confusing for the average consumer in part because of their large catalog of categories. For example, one such contest has six (6) categories for varying levels of residual sugar; if you don't like dry or cloyingly sweet wines and a particular wine hoists a gold medal, what does that mean, exactly? I have yet to see a wine bottle explain exactly what it won, and in which category. I especially get a kick out of the fact that most competitions are done with more than one judge; an average of varying tastes doesn't tell you much apart from an indication that a wine may not be grotesquely flawed in its hilariously obscure category. (It doesn't always bother me to be a kettle calling the pot black.)

And there's another thing, too, that's hard: picking on someone just becase you don't like their style. But hey, I don't. (Only a wine so overly oaked can force me to use the word 'but' as a sentence starter so often. My grade school English teachers, wrong though they were on this particular topic, would beat me with a stick.) I fail to see how a casual wine drinker could find a difference between this ~$20 Viognier and a cheap, overoaked Chardonnay.

Value: 0.5
Color & Clarity: 1.0
Bouquet: 2.0
Flavor: 1.0

Wine: Hendry Ranch Zinfandel

2005-08-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Zinfandel, I apologize. I've been saying for so long that the tendancy toward high alcohol in your wines is starting to annoy me, but recently I've been proven wrong. Constantino's "The Zin" is a hugely alcoholic yet wonderful wine, and after tasting Hendry Ranch's 2001 Zinfandel, I'm convinced that something can really work even when you're approaching 16% alcohol by volume.

Packed with blackberry and cassis notes and blooming with the pleasant scent of great foods on the grill (charcoal, barely a hint of vinegar, and game), the Hendry is a fine example of a wine that can taste wonderful without being overwhelming even while it is turning you into a tipsy fool with only a large glass or two. Deep rich color makes this a Zinfandel worth gazing upon (which works quite well, since it pays off if you take your time with this one).

Last night, I shared another Nero D'Avola and I must admit that while I enjoyed it I was thinking back to the Hendry. The Zinfandel was well-matched with a grilled beef tenderloin (which, strangely enough, we grilled as we ate our homemade tuna tartare).

Value: 2.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
~Joseph Addison

Wine: Château Moulin de Bel Air

2005-08-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Flavor, sometimes, lies in wait; it peeks around the corner and casts a shadow into the hallway so that we know it's there yet still too shy to come into the room. We can smell its perfume, but just barely. Stuck with idle conversation and tepid wine, we must wait until the decanting has drawn our friend out to us. Occasionally it isn't until we've forgotten about the event that great flavor finally joins us.

Château Moulin de Bel Air, a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon (70/30), is an affordable wine that greatly benefits from an hour or two of decanting. At first taste, it had a slightly offensive vegetable quality to its bouquet and a short, fiesty finish. Scents of leather were present, but not much else.

A few hours later, having forgotten about the wine in the decanter, I revisited it and was more than pleasantly surprised: it had truly bloomed into a fine example of a Medoc wine. With its finish lengthened and softened, it was certainly more welcoming than before. The bouquet exposed pleasant hints of cedar and dark fruit. A great 15$ match for a lamb dish or perhaps a relaxed, outdoor BBQ.

Value: 3.0
Color & Clarity: 2.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.0

Wine: Domaine André Vatan Sancerre

2005-07-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.
~ Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert, the poet who fled from the fame flung in heaps at Beat poets like Ginsberg, composed his poetry out of not only images of the Americas and its people but of old Europe as well (as discussed elegantly by Meghan O'Rourke of Slate). His best work is unclouded & clean, relevant and accessible.

Domaine André Vatan Sancerre could be described in a similar way: perfectly clear in color and clean on the palette, while partically typical Sancerre it is also very reasonably priced. It's a well balanced, dry-tasting wine with a light citrus and honey bouquet. A perfect lunch wine (12.5% alcohol), it went down well with a salad made with a preserved lemon viniagrette.

Value: 3.0
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.0

Wine: Domaine Sainte-Eugenie

2005-07-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

It can be of no practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely would be intolerable not to know.
~ Titchmarsh, E. C.

The mathematician E.C. Titchmarsh may agree that while it isn't of much practical use for there to exist so many varying wine styles it surely would intolerable for them not to exist.

Rosés come in a few different and general styles. A great little example of a less common approach is embodied in the Domaine Sainte-Eugenie rosé: it's not a big, sweet fruit bomb and it has a very short finish. The pleasant acidity makes you just barely want to smack your lips, and the faint caramel hint in the mouth is a real treat. It's made of Cinsault and Syrah in the Languedoc region of France, and has an expressive if gentle bouquet of strawberry. It's a playful, beautifully light-pink rosé and can be had for about $15.

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.5

Wine: Conde de Valdemar Rioja

2005-05-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

"...there are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned...." ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish poet killed by Franco's fascists, spent much of his later years (those which should have been his early years, in reality) obsessing over the duende. Translated literally by many as 'hobgoblin' or perhaps 'boogey man', the duende for Lorca and people of Andalusia was something like the Greeks' muse but unlike the muse it is present when death or darkness is near.

Lorca himself said that he once heard a guitar virtuoso observe that the "duende is not in the throat, the duende comes up from inside, up from the very soles of the feet." He tells a story of a famous gypsy dancer loving Bach and saying that it had duende while becoming bored with Brahms.

While the Code de Valdemar doesn't come from Andalusia (Rioja is another region of Spain), it does have a touching set of "black sounds" to it. I drank a few bottles with a handful of friends: half of them hated it, the other half of us kept turning our heads to look at it while listening to others speak.

K&L calls it a great pizza and burger wine. My friend with a PhD in biology called it a poisonous, acidic monster. Another wine-geek friend said it was one of the best reds he's had in a long time. I think it's somewhere between all of those: its seriousness comes from the combination of its flaws (overly acidic, lack of balance, too much spice) and not from what it excels at (explosive fruit, wonderful color, almost overstated bouquet). The wine has words of drunken sailors and visions of women passed by on horseback; that is, even though it's rough and nasty in some ways that are also fun and exciting, it still has some layered beauty to it.

Lorca also told a story of an Andalusian singer with great skill who could not excite a crowd because they were looking not for skill, talent, or practiced nuance but rather for the duende. She downed a glass of Cazalla liquor and mangled her voice. She removed the nonessential parts of the song and suddenly the crowd was lifted; she turned out the muse, the lover of perfect balance and technique, and left herself vulnerable.

The wine costs ten bucks a bottle, their reserva being more acceptable to the masses and coming in at fifteen. We won't rate this one, but we will drink it again.

Wine: Southern Right Pinotage

2005-05-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so. After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do. ~Margaret Laurence

After a few weeks of vacation, Swirl & Sniff is back from California with some good news to report: the vineyards are still there, the vines are blooming, and even Texas can now ship wine like a first-world state.

While in California, one of the things I was turned onto is North American plantings of Pinotage. Vino Con Brio, a winery in Lodi, California, has the largest planting of the varietal on the continent with fewer than ten acres. As Pinotage starts to climb its way out of obscurity here in the States, it seems appropriate to discuss a wine made in Pinotage's home land: South Africa.

Southern Right's 2002 Western Cape Pinotage is a subtly tannic, well-balanced red wine with a full, rounded texture. Even with the slightly pronounced aforementioned tannins, the wine's texture is pleasingly smooth. The bouquet highlights concentrated dark fruits with hints of ripe red fruit and a sliver of oaky spice. These grapes are grown in clay-rich soil, which the winery claims helps to soften the potentially harsh tannins that can be found in some Pinotages. At $15/bottle, the Southern Right's Pinotage is a fine deal.

Value: 3.0
Color & Clarity: 3.0
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5

Open Letter to Viognier

2005-04-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Viognier,

In 1965, only a meager twenty acres of you was planted worldwide. You existed in only one region of the world and thus were largely ignored.

Growing up in France without much attention, I can imagine that you went through some hard, jealous times. Natural sparkling water was officially recognized by Napoleon III; stinky cheeses were made quite close to your 1965 source and sent on trips around the world while you went on hardly noticed; sparkling wines splashed from glasses all over the world while your efforts were barely recorded.

But things have begun to change, Viognier. In California, there are over 300 Viognier acres planted. Huge wineries, even, are taking a substantial interest in you. Late harvest Viognier, a magnificent treat, can be found way out here in Seattle!

So I’m writing in order to encourage you not to get too hasty. Don’t spread yourself too thin, like Zinfandel of the eighties or Syrah of the nineties. Don’t let yourself become a joke in a movie like Merlot in Sideways. True, those are all great varietals, but by spending too much time w/the papparazi they had to climb out of some nasty holes. You really are in need of this lecture: you’re in Washington, even, and that you’re beginning to get an ego is being noticed.

What I’m really trying to say is that you need to stick to your guns, stick to the course that allowed you any of this attention in the first place. When you’re not overripe, you do an impressive job with orange blossom aromas, so stop letting winemakers leave you on the vine so long that you reek of bananas. Nobody likes a volatile party guest; make sure people don’t throw you into new oak. And, damn it, you’re not one dimensional, so don’t let people bottle you that way.

I know you, and I know you like specifics and that’s why I came prepared. The folks at Joseph Phelps treat you respectably with oak: from them, you’re an attractive, pale straw color with only a slightly creamy mouthfeel. Grapefruit shouts from a glass of Geyser Peak’s Viognier. Westerly Vineyard is kind and respectful with their Santa Ynez Valley Viognier. Rosenblum, both in my opinion and that of others, knows how to take you on a date – and cheaply! Mount Baker Vineyards’ Late Harvest Viognier is a kick in the pants.

The last thing I'm going to ask you not to do is to not take this too personally. Even if you go the way of Arbor Mist or some other abomination, you'll still be on my table.

Signed,

Wine: Francesco Bonfio Chianti

2005-04-20T18:09:00.000-07:00

This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

—William Carlos Williams

Simplicity in food, wine, poetry — anything with an aesthetic, really — should be cherished. This wine is just that: simple. 12% alcohol. Roughly ten bucks. Drink it with a big chunk of sausage and a healthy slice of firm cheese. This wine takes a back seat to the conversation yet performs the essential functions of wine at the table: enhancing the food and enlivening the mood.

Value: 3.0
Color & Clarity: 3.0
Bouquet: 2.5
Flavor: 2.5

Wine: Cloudline Pinot Noir

2005-04-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

Everything is connected; no one thing can change by itself.
—Paul Hawken

Monday, a handful of friends and I had the opportunity to have our buddy Tommy, the smokin', wine tastin' madman, cook up a massive feast of traditional Cambodian and Chinese dishes: fresh spring rolls, fried egg rolls, two whole ducks, a whole fish, live shrimp, and a variety of other shellfish. He even made all of the sauces from scratch.

The first of us present were roped into Tommy's nearly homicidal work camp: he had us rolling the fried egg rolls. I laughed out loud when he showed us the obscene amount of (delicious) filling we had to cram into the little wrappers. We literally could have filled a couple of pillow cases with it. I told him there'd be no way we could do it in a reasonable amount of time. He said, "Less talk, more work," and stepped outside for a smoke break.

Well, at about this same time another friend and I opened a bottle of the Cloudline Pinot Noir. He believed the wine wasn't going to be palatable, especially after I explained that it is Cloudline Cellars' first wine.

We were both wrong — he about the wine and I about the egg rolls. The Cloudline, a Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley (Oregon), has a moderately attractive ruby color and is noticeably clear. Ripe cherries jump out of the glass. The wine is well balanced and a good match for fatty fishes in particular. It goes for $17/bottle.

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.0

On Not Very Good Wines

2005-04-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

A friend recently noted that I've only been writing about wines I like, wines that are noteworthy particularly with respect to cost. That evening, I was reading a Bukowski poem given to me by a close friend and found the following lines relevant:

... as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

It's a beautiful thought, and I'd venture a guess that everyone would believe it if they replaced "poetry" with whatever it is they care deeply about. So, personally, I find it a terrible state of affairs that there should be so many winemakers and so few wines. There are just so many wines that are... well, that aren't very good.

When we speak of these wines, as we do poems or music of similar quality, we use phrases that are quasi-positive yet mostly hateful: "quaffable", "yeah, it's okay but", "well, yeah, have you tried {something else}".

The Di Stefano Sauvignon Blanc, from Washington (the state, not the political wasteland), is a strange and ugly beast. With it being essentially 14% alcohol, I didn't expect a cloying, sugary nasty mouthfeel yet that is exactly what I was given. You've got to love it when the bottle uses the word Bordeaux; Bukowski says that wrong poets use the word 'cicada', I say that wrong wines have the word 'Bordeaux' on them (unless, naturally, the wine is from Bordeaux!). Call a spade a spade, they say, and it may be cliche...

Like poems, some wines can be tricky on accident. The Steel Creek Pinot Noir is exactly that, in my opinion: its appearance says, "yes, I may look weak but try me out anyway -- I'm full of promise!" It's lying. The wine is exactly what you'd think when you see it in a glass. It's exceedlingly flat, unbalanced, and lacking in aroma. It isn't offensive, mind you, but it won't light anyone's face up with excitement. It's like eating wine-flavored paper.

Wine: Lamblin Bourgogne Blanc

2005-04-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago, I had the chance to share some wine with friends. A glass of white Burgundy was left over, and so this early afternoon I sat on the porch and finished it off. As I thought about it, a hawk landed on a railing not fifty feet from me. It saw me as it landed and simply stared in my direction. Until then, I had never seen a hawk in Seattle.

Hawks, to some, symbolize wisdom and are observant, perceptive messengers from a spirit world. As the hawk left, I found myself remembering the night before, thinking about my good friend Tommy. Tommy is a little Cambodian guy who once said of the Carolina tobacco industry, "I smoke cigarettes faster than those bastards can make 'em." Hyperbole, perhaps, but not by much.

Last night, he eyed a glass of Lamblin Bourgogne Blanc suspiciously after hearing only that it is made of Chardonnay. He surprised me by picking the glass up by the base, gently swirling it, tasting and then saying, "They treated this grape with respect: its minerals, its floral scents are nourished and cherished by these guys. They knew not to give it too much oak." Well said, Tommy. Tommy, it turns out, spent years working for a wine distributor.

The Lamblin smells distinctly of pears, has a great mineral quality, and a rather pale straw color. White Burgundys this good probably shouldn't cost $10/bottle, but they do.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5

Wine: Château L'Ermitage Costieres De Nîme

2005-04-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

America's Francophobia is bizarre and historically inaccurate, but perhaps most importantly it is beneficial to casual wine drinkers. Okay, there may be more important ramifications of a dispute between two of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, but it's hard for me to think of any. In a time when the Euro is trying to pick a fight with the Dollar and finding that the Dollar can hardly defend itself, it's a delight to come across a wine like the Château L'Ermitage Costieres De Nîme.

This Rhône wine, even the young 2003 vintage, is a well balanced and yet slightly tart blend of Granache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. By today's standards, this wine's alcohol content (12.5%) is relatively low and so it's refreshing to drink a few glasses of it without needing to put your kickstand out in order to keep the room from spinning. It demands grilled food. Oh yeah: it goes for less than $10/bottle (!).

The next time The Senate decides to do something like rename their cafeteria's french fries to Freedom Fries, I'm going to run out and grab a couple of cases of French wines.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 3.0
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.0

Wine: Montevina Barbera

2005-04-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

The reverse side also has a reverse side.
—Japanese Proverb

At Montevina, a rather large winery in Amador County (California), they like to tell how they make big, juicy red wines. Tasting their Zinfandels is like getting slapped with a canvas bag full of fruit. The Refosco smells like a coffee shop.

But anybody worth knowing will surprise you. I know a guy who is ill-tempered, unmannered, and as coarse as a newspaper photo or a barrel of broken rocks. I recently found out the guy has been working on yet another new translation of the Iliad. The Iliad!

Now, Montevina is neither unmannered nor coarse, but imagine my surprise to find that their 2001 Barbera, available for less than ten bucks, is an unassuming, inconspicuous wine. It is very much Italian in style: it doesn't try to shock and awe you with a carpet bombing of fruits. Pleasant scents of damp forest and playful fruit makeup the bouquet; it's impressively balanced for a wine that clocks in at 14.5% alcohol. This is a great pizza wine.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 2.5
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.0

Wine: Rotari Blanc de Noir (Sparkling)

2005-04-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

"Oh, sure, everybody's always up for saving Hitler's brain, but when you put it in the body of a great white shark, suddenly you've gone too far!" (Professor Farnsworth, Futurama)

Go ahead and let people tell you that wine is predictable, that there are a few hard and fast rules. I just listened to a dork yesterday tell someone that you can't get a halfway decent sparkling wine for less than fifty bucks.

He told his date, and I quote, "good, cheap wine is a chimera: it's a mixture of things that do not go together and it is fictional."

Hitler's brain in a great white shark would suck. This part-baby part-bear doll flattens me with terror. Good, cheap wine, though, is another thing altogether.

Let's say you had to make a wine from Pinot Noir grapes (okay, you can use up to 25% Chardonnay) that was almost entirely white (amber/pink will do), and sparkled beautifully. You'd do yourself a favor to get out and by a bottle of Rotari Blanc de Noir. The Rotari, which goes for $10/bottle, is a pleasant, fruity sparkling wine from Italy. Dry and stuffed with cherry aroma, it's a wine that can serve you equally well throughout a movie or at a fancy pants dinner party.

While the Rotari is not a Champagne (it's Italian), it worth remembering John Maynard Keynes when drinking it; he once said, "My only regret in life is that I did not drink more Champagne."

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 4.0
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.0

Wine: Ajello Majus Nero d'Avola

2005-04-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

Less is more. Simplicity is the soul of efficiency. Inherent complexity is orthogonal to actual complexity. Etcetera. All of this is my way of saying that you shouldn't get your panties in a bunch over wines with impressively long and unfamiliar names.

Ajello, an Italian wine producer relatively famous for white wine, makes a wonderfully straightforward wine from the grape Nero d'Avola. The designation for the wine is Majus. While "Ajello Majus Nero d'Avola" is a mouthful, there's nothing too complicated about the name of the wine or even the wine itself. If you're still raising an eyebrow, try this on: the wine is fantastic and it goes for ten bucks a bottle.

This Nero d'Avola is a beautiful solution to a complicated problem: which wine should you serve to a group of people who may have widely varying tastes? There isn't anything offensive in this wine: no overt oak, no unfamiliar colors, no funky textures, no hint of vegetables. Even the bottle is understated. I'll say it again: it costs $10.

An entry on CellarTracker hit it on the head when it used the phrase "ripe fruit" to describe the bouquet. You know that part of your brain that lights up when it smells ripe fruit? Yeah, that part is going to be woken up by this wine. The wine is acidic enough to give you that great "my thirst is being quenched" feeling. When you lick your lips after a sip, you'll taste that fruit again.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 3.0
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5

...a quote on complexity:

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
(R. Buckminster Fuller)

King Tut's Wine? Red

2005-04-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

Science Daily has a story on King Tutankhamun's drinking habits. After years of debating whether ancient Egyptian wines were red or white, professors at the University of Barcelona have shown that King Tut's wine, at least, was red.

Much like we do today, the Egyptians labeled their wines to indicate the name of the vintner, the vintage, and even the source of the grapes.

Wine: Col del Mondo Montepulciano

2005-04-02T16:38:00.000-08:00

Montepulcianos tend to be, in my experience, rather hot and noticably unbalanced. I had the opportunity to taste one that is deliciously soft and inviting, despite being 13.5% alcohol (which may actually be rather low by today's red wine standards). Col del Mondo (winesearcher) is a reasonably priced

($30/bottle for the 2001 vintage, less than $15 for the 2003) wine that is soft, inviting, and fruity. The bouquet is rather muted, but does express some floral fragances including violets. It is not at all vegetative. It's a dark, skin-of-plum colored wine. I enjoyed it with a slice of a flourless chocolate cake and found it to be quite a good pairing.

Approachable Montepulciano, as far as I can tell, is in the States mostly relegated to decent-ish pizzerias and mid-range Italian restaurants. It's a shame, really, because Montepulcianos such as the Col del Mondo can be so inviting and yet withdrawn enough to highlight good food and encourage good conversation.

Value: 3.0
Color & Clarity: 3.0
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.5

Wine: Spenker Zinfandel

2005-04-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite wine sources in this country is the Lodi Appellation (as may already be apparent). The area gets its fair share of press on its Zinfandels and for good reason. The Spenker Winery's Zinfandels are superb examples of the excellent quality to cost ratio usually seen around Lodi.

Their 1999 Zinfandel can still be purchased directly from the winery, and at $19/bottle, it's a killer deal. I had a chance to open a bottle at a dinner party recently and attempted to spring it on some folks who aren't familiar with Zinfandels.

I tried to pour it without introducing it, but by the time I got to the third person's glass, the first two were singing its praises and demanding to know the name of it.

The Spenker Zinfandel has an impressively dark, inky color. Typical Zinfandel aromas come alive with one swirl: coffee, dark fruits, and violets all play together in its bouquet. The carmelized notes (coffee, chocolate) are subtle and quickly nudged out by the floral scents. As with many recent Zinfandels, it's a bit hot (at 14.5% alcohol it's hard not to be) but definitely not overwhelmingly so. Aside from that nit, the Spenker is a very well balanced wine with just enough acidity and tannin.

The 1999 may be reaching the end of its lifetime in the next few years.

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 4.0
Bouquet: 4.0
Flavor: 3.5

Solar Power & Wineries

2005-03-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

The St. Helena Star published an article today about solar power and wineries; Ted Hall gave a talk on how places like Frog's Leap and Domaine Carners are using solar power to reduce air pollution and the total cost of energy consumption at their wineries.

This kind of proactive arrangement lends even more credence to the idea that supporting those in the wine business who wine put up on a pedastal, who cherish the tradition and history of wine is a worthwhile endeavor (historically, corporate consumers of the agriculture business have tried to lie low, shying away from the scrutiny of environmentalists, though that too has been changing).

Youth & Wine

2005-03-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

Tom at Fermentations just posted about offering wine to children, something I have had quite a few discussions w/other folks about.

It's hard to talk about the American attitude toward wine & children without talking about the history and tendency toward prohibition, a topic covered well by Johnson's recent post.

While I am in agreement with the majority of rational wine drinkers on the subject, the ferocity of the other side's seemingly visceral argument is striking. Take, for example, this article on teenstoday.com: it's as if the folks behind the site believe that the only reason people would allow a teenager

(and they're talking about folks 17 or 18 years old) a drink is because they're afraid of what the child will think of them. Frankly, if you're afraid your teenager won't think you're cool, you've got problems that go deeper than throwing a kegger. While they take a slightly more sober viewpoint in another article, their tone is still terribly forboding.

"We want parents to understand that underage drinking is not just kids being kids, or a rite of passage. It is a serious - even deadly - problem,"
-- Wendy Hamilton, president of MADD (quote taken from this newspaper article.

Well, obviously it is serious and can be deadly. But because it is serious, it should be taken seriously, not simply waved away. It's hard to imagine this argument sounding sane to folks in France.

There are countless articles (such as this one) suggesting that lowering the legal drinking age minimum would by itself reduce the frequency of irresponsible drinking among America's youth, but as is pointed out elsewhere, it's not clear that the legal restriction alone is responsible for misuse -- it's a multivariable problem, one for which is seems entirely irresponsible to lay out blanket statements for all children like "it's never safe for children to consume alcohol." Potsdam University published a great article on such logical fallacies.

Wine: Wilridge Nebbiolo

2005-03-29T13:38:00.000-08:00

Nebbilio, Italy's "wine of kings", is the varietal responsible for Barolo and Barbaresco (a Barbaresco was recently reviewed on this site) and is just starting to peek its head out in the Pacific Northwest.

Wilridge Winery, a relatively small winery in a Seattle neighborhood, has among its offerings a Nebbilio whose grapes are grown in the Red Mountain Appellation. The Nebbilio di Klipsun is a great wine at a reasonable price.

A few friends and I had a chance to enjoy a couple bottles of this wine with grilled veal chops and a variety of accompaniments. It paired very well with the food, which was rustic and relatively simple.

Wilridge's Nebbiolio has a handsome red brick color, a surprisingly floral aroma, and a somewhat tannic astringency that begged for a few more years of aging. Two of us detected different flowers in the bouquet, but all agreed the floral aroma was a delight. The wine's attack (that is, its intial impact in the mouth) was intriguing: it played gently and cleanly with our palettes. The aforementioned astringency proved pleasant when taken with food, but perhaps a bit harsh for casual drinking. It's complex and subtle enough to demand your attention with each smell and each taste. We paid $20/bottle.

While I had planned on just tasting a bottle, we enjoyed it enough that we had to open another. When we started to open the third, though, we actually switched to tall boy PBR cans. :)

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5

Wine: Joel Gott Sauvignon Blanc

2005-03-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned before, it's finally the time of year when we can start drinking our summer wines in their natural habitat: the sun. :) Although this Easter weekend has proven to be an ugly one in Seattle, we did have a few good weeks recently. More good weather is coming. I hope.

Joel Gott makes a very good Sauvignon Blanc in California (not the wine pictured). The 2003 vintage was excellent, with bright acidity, beautiful citrus bouquet with hints of melon, and is entirely free of oak. It's a beautiful, clear wine. At about $12/bottle, you can't go wrong with it.

The 2004, it seems, is made entirely of grapes from the Napa Valley and is going to a screw cap in a green bottle.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 4.0
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.0

Wine: Lano Barbaresco

2005-03-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

One of the nice things about having lunch at a restaurant with friends is that it makes it easier to split a bottle of wine. Yesterday, a few friends and I had such an opportunity at a local Italian restaurant named Firefly. They have a website that makes me cringe and the food was hit & miss, but the wine we shared was surprisingly good.

Made by Gianluigi Lano, the 1998 Lano Barbaresco can be had a for less than $40 online and in my opinion is well worth it. Like any other wine I've had made from the Nebbiolo grape, it took some time to open up and probably would have benefited from having been open even longer than it was. The Lano was a delight to look at: beautiful brick red with an excellent gradient from the center to the edges.

It is definitely the kind of wine you can relax with, simply smelling its complex and largely floral bouquet. Barbarescos, in my experience, have a tendancy towards spice that this wine didn't -- while there was some notable spice in the bouquet, it complemented a scent of orange peel very well. The Lano was soft and the smell of dark fruits come out more clearly upon drinking. The level of oak was pleasant and it had a long, dry, clean finish. For the 1998 vintage, this wine is to me definitely a winner.

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 4.0
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5

Wine: Two Cheap Italian Reds

2005-03-26T11:25:00.000-08:00

DeLaurenti's, an Italian specialty store in the Pike Place Market, always tempts its customers at the cheese counter with an array of cheap wine. Because the friend I was with yesterday hadn't chugged cheap Italian vino in a few weeks, we grabbed a few bottles to go with dinner.

The first one we opened, the Luccarelli Primitivo Puglia, was disappointing to both of us. A somewhat pleasant berry and vanilla aroma was actually overwhelmed by the spice and tartness in the mouth -- this wine could hold its own against, say, a strongly flavored tomato sauce or a beef dish accompanied by pungent cheese, but it could easily completely overwhelm a more subtle dish. The wine is reviewed favorably over at winewaves.com; I also paid $9.99 for the bottle in Seattle. This isn't a wine I would enjoy drinking without food.

The second we tried, Crinaccio's Rosso Dell' Umbria (2002), was much more agreeable. A Sangiovese/Merlot (80/20) blend, the Crinaccio is a soft, smooth and relatively well-balanced wine. The color is quite dark and pleasant; it's quite clear and attractive. The nose is full of plum and strawberry and has just a suggestion of cedar. It has a long after taste and while it clocks in at 14% alcohol, it would pair well with a rustic (perhaps grilled) dish with fresh herbs. I believe my next order of wine will include a few more bottles of this for evening grilling with friends. Like the Luccarelli, it goes for ten bucks a bottle.

The Luccarelli:
Value: 2.0
Color & Clarity: 3.0
Bouquet: 2.5
Flavor: 1.5

The Crinaccio:
Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.0

Wine Haikus

2005-03-24T18:16:00.000-08:00

My friend Amy recently got my mind spinning on haikus after she told me that she comes up with haikus during her rather painful daily drive through Seattle's traffic mess. Haikus are incredibly deceptive little beasts -- at once very easy to understand and difficult to write well.

A post on eGullet suggested folks try writing a few haikus about wine and another eGullet member pointed out a wine haiku blog of sorts! Some of those are outstanding. I can't resist. I may even make a practice of boring folks to tears with wine haikus... though it would certainly seem a bit strange if not rude to spout one off at a tasting. :)

A Zinfandel grape
before the day, gone too young
a June coyote

Vines in need of care
tangled unidentified
no grapes, rain soaked buds

Oh, and what discussion about haikus could go without mentioning one of my favorite sites on the web: a random haiku generator (actually, there are many).

Wine: Valmiñor Albariño

2005-03-24T00:15:00.001-08:00

Albariño, the white and largely Spanish varietal, has been getting a lot of good press lately but its prices remain quite reasonable in the $8-$20/bottle range. I tend to have a preference for them myself...

The Valmiñor Albariño is no exception. Its grapes are grown in the Rias Baixas region of Spain and a bottle of it goes for $11 or $12. Valmiñor has a slightly pale color, which is for me most attractive on a bright sunny day. It delivers an almost understated bouquet of peaches and citrus with a faint vanilla note. Its acidity gives it that thirst-quenching quality desirable in an outdoor wine and plays well with many foods; there is a pleasant if feeble mineral quality in the mouth. The Valmiñor is one of the whites that is really a pleasure to swish around in your mouth while you pretend to listen to someone talk. :)

On my first taste of this wine, I prepared a dish of Gkai Pad Gkaprow with prawns instead of chicken (pictured). The recipe is on Kasma Loha-unchit's website. The website is truly worth a visit for those interested in or curious about Thai food -- her brand recommendation for coconut milk, for instance, turned my home versions of Thai dishes completely around. Anyway, the pairing worked very well, but I was left feeling that there was a pairing I could enjoy just slightly more...

...and I realized, on the second tasting of the wine, exactly what I wanted w/this wine: peanut butter! It may be a tad unorthodox, but I was pleasantly surprised with the way the acidity and the mineral note in the wine played with the peanut butter so well. I slathered a generous amount on a baguette sliced lengthwise, poured a very little bit of honey on top of that, and drizzled an extra bit of salt on top of the honey. I'll certainly be doing that again.

The best pairing suggestion I've ever heard may be a cliché but it still rings true: once the bottle is open, anything is a suitable pairing for wine.

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.0

Funny Reminder Wine is Fun, Not Serious

2005-03-23T18:44:00.000-08:00

Over on windowsandfoodies.com, Barbara has posted a geniunely funny article from The Observer on the difference between the approaches men and women take to wine... and no, it's not a chain-letter type of article.

Men reach a certain age – 34 or so – and stop thinking they know how to play the guitar, or how to DJ, and start thinking instead that they ‘know’ wine.

Spring Wines (The Usual Suspects)

2005-03-23T18:03:00.000-08:00

As we had a spurt of nice weather up here in Seattle (read as: the seemingly endless onslaught on drizzle has almost come to its yearly four month hiatus), my friends and I have finally been getting a chance to enjoy what we call 'spring wines' out on a patio or standing in someone's backyard. Naturally, we enjoy rosés and whites throughout the year depending on what we're eating, the time of day, or what happens to be open, but bright, sunny weather makes a white seem especially apropos.

It's too bad, really, that so many people (perhaps young men, in particular) shun wines that aren't red. I have a semi-funny story about that, actually:

I was sitting at a café about a year ago, happily drinking a glass of rosé while awaiting a meal, when a couple wandered in and sat near me. The gentleman suggested that the server bring him a glass of "whatever is good" (which sometimes comes across as vaguely insulting as it did in this case). The server suggested the rosé I was enjoying to which the man replied, "Absolutely not -- only women and gay guys drink rosés!" Half of the place cringed; Seattle isn't the town to spout off ridiculous nonsense like that. The server didn't blink, though, and said, "Well, sir, the gentleman a few seats from you seems to like it." The offending customer looked over at me and I said, smiling, "Guess which one I am?" He didn't skip a beat: he immediately looked at the server and said, "A rosé sounds wonderful." He ended up drinking two glasses -- I like to think he's a convert, though it's conceivable that he isn't. :)

I'm not suggesting you go to the length these cats go to in their appreciation for pink wine...

At any rate, whites and rosés deserve more respect than they tend to get (particularly here in the States). I'll be putting up a few reviews of whites and rosés over the course of the next few days, but for now here's a few suggestions for picking out accessible & enjoyable whites and rosés:

Spanish whites, especially those with little oak on them, generally tend to be quite accessible and geared for warm weather. One good way to introduce yourself to the whites of Spain is to look for wines made from Albariño (especially from the Rias Baixas region) and Verdejo (behr-they-ho) grapes.

A decent/good white Burgundy or Bordeaux can be quite within the reach of the average consumer. A white Burgundy will tend to be made of Chardonnay and have dramatically less oak (and less of a buttery mouthfeel) than, say, a "typical" California Chardonnay whereas a white Bordeaux will probably be made of Sauvignon Blanc and/or Semillon and yet taste quite a bit different than a New Zealand wine made of the same varietal.

Napa Must Mean Napa (Still)

2005-03-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court today decided that it would not hear Bronco Wine Company's case that it should be allowed to use the word 'Napa' on its wine labels, even though its fruit doesn't originate in the Napa Valley. Previously, they were allowed to do so due to a grandfather clause.

It's awfully... interesting... when companies act as participants in debates about free speech.

Wine Blending

2005-03-20T13:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, two friends and I got a chance to participate in a wine blending session with a couple of local winemakers at The Tasting Room which highlights a handful of Washington Wineries.

Paul Beveridge, of Wilridge Winery, and Don Corson of Camaraderie Cellars, poured the participants generous Washington barrel samples of the five Bourdeaux varietals* and asked us to blindly sample them. Amy loved what turned out to be the Petit Verdot, whereas Derek and I both found it to be the least appetizing of set (it wasn't lacking as much fruit character as was suggested it might, but its spiciness put it way out of the safety zone for my palette). Derek's favorite was the Cabernet Sauvignon and I preferred the Cabernet Franc. Blind tastings are something of an anomaly when you consider the typical drinking experience, but two of the things they do so well are to highlight and celebrate the differences in people's preferences and palettes.

After revealing the identities of the wines to us (only one person out of about twenty was able to guess all five of them correctly), we were given a chance to blend and taste them to our hearts' content.

I at first made some insultingly awful blends -- something I hadn't realized was so easy to do -- while the woman sitting next to me made a wonderful blend on her first time. Amy made a blend that was mostly Petit Verdot, which is, well, rare to say the least. While I didn't try it, I'll trust that it was good.

By the time Mr. Beveridge handed us a glass of his personal blend named Mélange (which is a killer wine, by the way), I had found that, for me, Merlot was much easier to start with as a base than, say, Cabernet Franc. That is, my blends that were heavier on the softer, less spicy wine seemed to be much more forgiving. None of this is a surprise, of course, but experimenting directly in that manner was much more reinforcing than tasting blended wines and reading about them.

If you subscribe to The Tasting Room's mailing list, you can get early notification of events like these. This is the first of any I've been to, and I must say it was very much worth the $25 (!).

*The Bourdeaux varietals, meaning the types of grapes that typically appear in the red wines of Bourdeaux, are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet
Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. All of these grapes are grown in France, California, Washington, and Oregon -- among other places.

Wine Blogs: Organization? Seal of Approval?

2005-03-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

John Olney, over at The Wine Country Club blog (which I found out about via this post on Fermentations), posted a few thoughts on the nature of wine blogs and whether it may make sense to give readers a guide to or a method for identifying "qualified" wine critics/bloggers. His insightful post touches on issues of liability, responsibility, and honesty of blogs.

I think it's tough, really, to imagine a (semi-)formalized wine blogger directory or a "stamp of approval" because, in a way, the freedom to say things without worrying about whether this organization or that organization would agree with you is part of what blogging is all about.

It's definitely true that you can unfairly make a difference in someone's bottom line if you're an irresponsible blogger with a large readership no matter the field you're blogging about, but my personal (and therefore entirely anecdotal) observation has been that the wine blogging community is really more of an unabashed fan of wine rather than a group of folks attempting to unscrupulously make a name for themselves. (I'm certainly not saying that John was accusing anyone of this -- we're referring to hypothetical nefarious blogs after all!)

Worries about "viral marketing" blogging are usually blown out of proportion -- it's been attempted before, and usually a blogger or avid reader who smells something fishy can get to the bottom of it. And any bloggers that actually have a financial or otherwise vested interest in wine on some level will realize what it takes to be respected: disclosure, disclosure, disclosure.

...but, obviously, I could be wrong. Hopefully bloggers continue to prove, in the long run, that they are friends of wine, wineries, and wine drinkers.

Lodi Appellation Getting More Press

2005-03-18T18:30:00.000-08:00

The Lodi Appellation in California, home most notably to some fantastic and accessible Zinfandels, has been getting quite a bit of press lately. The fruit there is certainly not limited to Zinfandel as there are some nice Cabernet Francs, Sangioveses, and even Barberas in the region. As much as 20% of California's wine starts with Lodi grapes. It is one of the places in the country where wonderful wines are being handcrafted in small wineries.

Contra Costa Times has a recent article with a bit of focus on Lodi's similarity today to the Napa of the past (bugmenot has a registration). USA Today published a favorable article on the Lodi appellation about six months ago. Michael Vaughan had some very nice things to say about Lodi just over a year ago. Sunset dedicated ink to Lodi as well.

Lodi is a personal favorite of mine largely because of its accessibility and the winemakers' dedication to quality. The tasting rooms, the wineries, and the nearby homes are a nice reprieve from the mansion-like monuments in some other regions.

Recommended wineries:

Lucas - a personal favorite and the first to put 'Lodi' on labels
Macchia
Watts
Jewel of Global Wine Group - very reasonable prices
...and more

Wine: Camaraderie Cabernet Sauvignon

2005-03-17T09:08:00.000-08:00

Camaraderie Cellars, in Port Angeles, Washington, makes a few different wines. Friends of mine really quite like their merlots; I wandered into the Washington Wine Tasting Room in the Pike Place Market of Seattle to give it a few wines from Camaraderie a taste.

Camaraderie's 1999 Cabernet Sauvignon has received quite a bit of press, but I'm not able to find many references to the 2001 or 2002 vintages on the web.

This wine's grapes come from the eastern part of Washington, as is the case for many Washington wines. My understanding is that the 2001, at least, is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon.

Both of the wines have a dark garnet color, tending toward ruby at the rim. They're both very clear as well. Both are full bodied, intense, markedly tannic wines that are clearly not completely evolved. The 2002, to my palette, really shouldn't be consumed yet as it definitely needs another year or two (or three) in the bottle where the 2001 is just beginning to develop to a point where the more concentrated flavors are coming to the front. The tannins in both of these wines are too short and affecting to make these wines I'd recommend drinking this year. Today I'm picking up pleasant blackberry and plum flavors wonderfully in the 2001, along with hints of vanilla. Both vintages are pleasantly oaked.

I'm looking forward to trying these again in 2007.

Please see the sidebar or the article linked there for more information on what the ratings below mean; the scores below reflect the experience of drinking the wine today.

2002:
Value: 2.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 2.5
Flavor: 2.5

2001:
Value: 2.5
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.0

On Rating Wine

2005-03-16T16:16:00.000-08:00

Tom, over at Fementations, noticed the rating system used here and had more than a few interesting things to say about it. The folks at Drink Up! and Lenndevours also chimed in, among others.

It's remarkable how many different, valid points of view there are on the subject. Different people have different goals when rating a wine (or interpreting a rating for that matter), for example:

To objectively measure the quality of one wine against similar wines
To try and get as exact a measurement of the pleasure they experience when enjoying the wine regardless of its price
To somehow come to a truth about the wine, after carefully weighing its various attributes
...and so on

The bloggers I've read so far don't neatly fall into any of those categories, but let's just say that we had to pigeon-hole some rating system... let's pick Parker's, since most folks don't mind beating him up a little bit. My guess is that what most folks who rate wines with a system like Parker's are using it because they're trying to get a good measurement of their experience whereas I'd conjecture that wine consumers (newbies especially) are typically assuming that it's an objective measurement of the quality.

Communication, Trade-offs

I, like many others, try to keep a pretty exhaustive set of notes on the wines I taste (naturally not every wine-tasting experience is conducive to this). That set of notes, multiplied by some constant plus the actual experiences I had drinking said wine, is my own internal rating. That is, the quality of wine is simply not quantifiable: human communication isn't a perfect vessel for communicating our experiences and even if it were, the experience we're talking about is still mostly subjective anyway!

We have to make a trade-off when we talk about wine: there is a natural, obvious tension between giving all of the information you can and trying to distill that information into something that's quicker to utilize. I think a simple number like 92 is much too brief. Delivering my set of personal incoherent ramblings verbatim is probably useless in the mind of anyone else. Pulling apart some of the components and placing them on a sliding scale does intuitively make sense, I believe.

Just as we have to make a trade-off when we talk about wine, the average consumer has to make one when buying it. Somewhere between just randomly picking bottles of the shelf and being able to predict what wines will taste like is where I hope typical consumers can get to.

My Personal 'System'

The rating system I use, which is by no means set in stone, is meant to judge wine that would be enjoyed in the day-to-day life of what I perceive to be the typical consumer. In particular, I'm thinking about folks who are interested in wine, tend to enjoy it, but don't want to invest the time and money it takes to find out what's good and what isn't. After all, while the experience is subjective, there are many commonalities and a set of respectable contraints.

The fact is that the consumer I'm referring to is exceedingly unlikely to be capable of or willing to spend $100/night on wine. Nor is that person going to be able to dodge that fact that wine costs money. I have almost arbitrarily picked a price range that seems accessible based (very unscientifically) on what I see in restaurants, wine shops, grocery stores, and in the homes of friends: $0 - $27ish. I'd guess that the closer you get to $30, the less likely you are to get someone to pickup something new on her way home.

When I say a wine's bouquet is, for me, 4.0, I don't mean that there isn't anything better -- instead, what I'm saying is, "in this price range, for this type of wine, I don't know of many that are significantly better than this." A 4.0 isn't nearly as exclusive for me as, say, a 99 in Wine Spectator.

Also, I do need to make clear on the sidebar that the points in the different categories I rate wine on are not intended to be equally weighted -- that, I hope, can be an exercise for the reader.

Phew. I've learned a lot from this conversation!

Wine & India

2005-03-16T07:13:00.000-08:00

About six months ago, I had a glass of Indian wine at a restaurant near where I live. My initial excitement and curiosity gave way to horror as I tasted what was easily one of the worst beverages I have come across: it was a white (they weren't able to tell me the varietal), easily pushing 14% alcohol, and it had tons of residual sugar. It smelled frighteningly like an ash tray. Ack!

Word is, though, that like many things in India, their wine business is changing and that my (remarkably limited) experience with it is more of an anomaly. This isn't anything new, but the mainstream press is starting to give some attention to this.

Rediff.com has an article about Indian wines, and mentions that there is a grower who has successfully raised pinot noir -- though what 'successfully' means remains to be seen. Asia Times Online mentions in an article that India's tax on wine is as high as it is on hard liquors, and they're trying to change that.

While some folks hint at the potential competition from Indian winemakers, it seems to me the interesting point here is that India's wine consumption is growing at a quick pace. As Indians being to consume more wine (the per-capita consumption is less than half a teaspoon per head as of 2004) and are in posession of more expendable capital, we can hope to see their demand rising as well.

Look for some Indian wine reviews here sometime soon.

New York Times on "Mondovino"

2005-03-15T19:34:00.000-08:00

The New York Times publishes an article in tomorrow's newspaper about Jonathan Nossiter's "Mondovino," a (semi?) controversial documentary on the differences and tensions between small time wine makers and the big corporations.

Unsurprisingly, folks like Robert Parker seem a little peeved.

Over at Vinography, Alder has an interesting take on the movie:

Go see the movie. Then think about it. Then go buy a bottle of your favorite wine no matter whether it is made by a little guy or a big guy. Drink it. Remember what life is all about.

More coverage on Slate; a quote from Mike Steinberger:

Delicious as it is to have a documentary devoted to wine, and as entertaining as Mondovinosometimes is, the film represents something of a blown opportunity ... He has made a film that perfectly mirrors the style of wine he deplores: obvious and manipulated.

Wine: Seresin Sauvignon Blanc

2005-03-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

Seresin is truly one of my favorite wines. As New Zealand sauvignon blancs have become so popular, it's strange not to see Seresin in more restaurants and wine shops.

The wine has a beautiful, yellow-gold color and is almost perfectly clear. Even at a relatively cool temperature, the Seresin's bouquet can't help but make you smile with scents typical to the nicest sauvignon blancs: hints of citrus, passion fruit, and a surprisingly effective grassy note. While I've read others say it has a generally herbaceous quality, I distinctly smell fresh-cut grass in the bouquet and love it.

Seresin has a nice balance, at once crisp and rich. My favorite in-the-mouth quality is the mineral flavor of the wine -- a reflection, probably, of the three different soils the grapes came from. An excellent match for many foods; I've enjoyed it with everything from subtle, non-spicy Thai dishes to salads with fresh goat cheese and pickled beets.

This wine should be had for $18/bottle or less.

Value: 3.5
Color & Clarity: 4.0
Bouquet: 3.5
Flavor: 3.5

Wine: O'Reilly's Pinot Noir

2005-03-15T00:26:00.000-08:00

O'Reilly's Pinot Noir, from David O'Reilly of the Owen Roe Winery, is a superb "value" wine. The wine, which is made from grapes farmed identically to David's pricier Owen Roe wines, is respectably balanced with enticing berry notes. Nearly every time I try it, I come across hints of strawberry and cedar.

Accessible pinot noirs are, to my palate, almost always noticably unbalanced -- this wine's balance is a delight. At around $14 per bottle, it's one of the only pinot noirs I've been able to recommend under $25.

Richard Kinssies reviewed the 2003 for the Seattle PI.

My personal rating (see side panel for how I score wines):

Value: 4.0
Color & Clarity: 3.5
Bouquet: 3.0
Flavor: 3.5

Open Containers & Wine

2005-03-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

The Florida House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill that would allow people in Florida have a previously opened bottle of wine in their cars -- but only if that wine was purchased at a restaurant.

I was quite surprised to hear this news. I couldn't believe it had been illegal in the first place, when states like Wyoming actually allow open containers in hands of passengers so long as the driver herself isn't drinking. What really is strange, though, is the bit about proof: in the Florida bill, the driver of the car is actually responsible for producing a dated receipt reflecting the purchase of the wine and food. The requirement is remarkably short-sighted: are restaurants really the only place they can imagine someone drinking wine?

Open container laws have always seemed a little fishy to me: while it feels like common sense to disallow having an opened container in a vehicle, I had never heard any evidence that the law actually kept people from driving drunk. According to the president of the National Motor Association (an organization about which I know very little), there simply isn't any. Naturally, the vast majority of conversations about open container laws in this country are somehow interpreted to be endorsements of drunk driving.

Finally, what may be the worst thing about this is that wine is called out specifically by the bill: taking an opened bottle of gin home from a friend's house is not allowed. (Wine is singled out in this way in at least thirty states.) It reeks of elitism and I can't think of any other explanation for it. Thankfully, I'm not the only one who thinks it's wrong to call out wine specifically.