Cafes & Wineries

The good $15 Pinot Noir is the unicorn of the California wine industry. A mythic beast, highly sought after, no one is actually sure whether it exists or not. I’m always on the lookout myself, as it’s one of the most frequent questions I get asked when people find out I review wines.

Consequently, whenever I do come across something that comes close, I feel almost obligated to share the find. It’s been some time since I visited the wines made under the brand TAZ, but a couple of bottles arrived recently and went into the tasting lineup and they showed extremely well.

TAZ is one of the many wine brands that are part of wine and spirits conglomerate Fosters USA. Originally a part of the Beringer-Blass portfolio, it has been subsumed, like many others, in the wave of consolidation that has swept through the California wine world in the last five or ten years.

The wine brand is named after winegrower Bob “Taz” Steinhauer, who earned the nickname due to his resemblance to a certain cartoon character. Despite being part of one of the world’s largest wine corporations, the TAZ brand is operated with a certain degree of independence. The wine continues to be made out of a winemaking cooperative in Santa Barbara, under the guidance of winemaker Natasha Boffman, who took over from the original winemaker John Priest in 2005. Boffman’s prior credits include winemaking stints at Stags’ Leap and Meridian Vineyards as well as some time spent down under in Australia’s Coonawarra region.

The winery produces several wines from Santa Barbara County, Steinhauer’s stomping grounds, with a special emphasis on Pinot Noir from several sites, including Steinhauer’s most well known property, the Fiddlestix vineyard (which sites next to the well known Sanford and Benedict vineyards).

This particular wine is made from fruit from the North Canyon Vineyard in the Santa Maria Valley, as well as the Fiddlestix vineyard in Santa Rita Hills. After destemming and fermentation, the wine is aged in French oak barrels of which about 25% are new.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Light to medium garnet in color, this wine has a nose of sweet cranberry fruit. In the mouth it is beautifully soft and juicy with cranberry and raspberry flavors that stay lively thanks to good acidity and very judicious oak. Not incredibly complex, but hard to dislike in all its bouncy juiciness. Delicious.

Food Pairing:
This wine showcases its fruit beautifully, and will complement anything earthy and savory I think. I’d love to drink it with mini chicken pot pies with bacon and marjoram.

Overall Score: between 8.5 and 9

How Much?: $17

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Every time I review a wine from some little producer whose wines I adore, I experience a pang of regret, because I know that by writing about these wineries and their wines, I only make them more expensive and harder to acquire for myself (and others). I do occasionally get e-mails from ticked off wine lovers bemoaning the fact that I’ve divulged one of their secret sources for great wine.

But that’s just an occupational hazard for me, and doesn’t outweigh the joy of being able to say things like this: Listen up people. There is some seriously amazing wine being made in a little out-of-the-way place in the northernmost part of California’s Sierra Foothills AVA (American Viticultural Area). At the hands of soft-spoken resident winemaker Gideon Bienstock, Renaissance Vineyards is making small lots of Bordeaux and Northern Rhone style wines that are pretty much unlike any other wines being made in California — in a really good way.

Renaissance Vineyards is not some upstart young winery that is pioneering new things in a new region. Rather, they are more like a wild-eyed hermit, that disappeared into the mountains years ago to live in the valley that he believed was the promised land, showing up in town every once in a while for supplies. Some people have known about them for years, but for others, the idea of a winery out in the middle of nowhere, CA elicits the scratching of heads.

German winemaker Dr. Karl Werner discovered the vineyard potential of the steep hillsides of the North Yuba river valley in the upper reaches of what was not even yet the Sierra Foothills AVA. It was not until 1987 that the appellation of the Sierra Foothills came into existence, and by then Renaissance Vineyards had been making wine for 8 years.

Just how Renaissance Vineyards and Dr. Karl Werner starting making wine in North Yuba is quite a unique story for a California winery.

In 1971 an organization known as The Fellowship of Friends, already well established at that time, purchased nearly 1300 acres in North Yuba County in the Sierra Foothills. The Fellowship of Friends was, and continues to be, a religious organization that many regard as a cult, built around the charismatic founder Robert Earl Burton who serves as the spiritual teacher of the organization. Its members tithe 10% of their gross monthly income to the organization, which has used those funds since the mid Seventies to completely transform this land into a spiritual retreat for the organization. One that also happens to have a very large, very impressive vineyard.

The group didn’t set out to have a vineyard to begin with, but one of its early disciples was a man named Dr. Karl Werner, who in addition to being a devotee of the spiritual teachings of the organization, also happened to be a very accomplished winemaker back in his home country of Germany. Apparently on his first visit to the Fellowship’s property, he recognized the potential for grape growing, and his enthusiasm for the project, as well as the attraction of the craft itself, convinced the organization to undertake a vineyard development project that lasted several years — clearing, terracing, and planting the hillsides with vines. The first harvest took place in the fall of 1979.

Today the organization continues to own the vineyard, but is perhaps less involved than it was in the past. Dr. Werner passed away in 1989, just after the winery’s first commercial release, and after being run for a time by Dr. Werner’s wife Diana, winemaking operations were turned over in 1994 to Gideon Bienstock who has spent the last 13 years transforming Renaissance Winery from a broad, almost experimental winery, to a more focused winery with a clearer vision of what it wants to accomplish.

Dr. Werner’s vision was originally for a winery that combined the best of the Bordeaux and the German traditions, which meant that a lot of Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc, and Riesling were planted to start. Over time, Bienstock discovered that Rhone varietals performed particularly well, and now the winery focuses primarily on Bordeaux and Northern Rhone varietals. In addition to “learning the terroir” as he puts it, Bienstock has gradually increased the focus of the winery, reducing yields, reducing production, phasing out the use of commercial yeasts, pump-overs, fining, filtration, sulfur use, and cold stabilization. In addition he has moved the winery to 100% organic viticulture, and has introduced some Biodynamic farming techniques in the most recent vintages.

If you ask him, even after 13 years of winemaking, and nearly 20 years of experience in the Sierra Foothills, Bienstock will tell you that he is still figuring out the terroir of the area, which he believes to be quite possibly the most remarkable of any in California. But as someone who has been tasting the wines pretty regularly for the past few years, I can tell you he’s had it dialed in now for some time.

“Some time″ means at least since 1995, only a year after he took over as full-time winemaker, and the year of one of the winery’s current releases. Not content to be the sole winery in what is now its own North Yuba AVA, under Bienstock’s leadership Renaissance is defying all the common sense of traditional winery marketing and release schedules. To wit: this 2001 wine is their current release, and several other of their current releases date back into the 1990s.

The only other winery in California that I know of which approaches this sort of delayed release program is Kalin Cellars, whose current releases are typically aged about 10 to 12 years. To any normal winery, such delayed release dates would be financial suicide, but Renaissance vineyards has never operated like a normal commercial business.

Leaving aside the financial and operational considerations, such a move takes guts, and a particular vision for what your wines can be and ought to be. From Bienstock’s perspective, it’s a simple question — he lets the wines tell him when they’re ready. “We originally scheduled the release of our ‘95 Cab to be around 2004 or 2005 but the wine was still completely “dormant” and did not cooperate with that idea, so we had to postpone it until 2008,” he says.

This sort of intuition and old world thinking pervades Bienstock’s winemaking, resulting in wines that are strikingly unique in character and personality, not to mention long-lived. The winery currently has two sets of releases, those older wines that it has chosen this year to release, and more current vintages that follow a more traditional release schedule. Both are exceptional in quality, and worth the time and effort required to seek them out.

Most wines undergo very long fermentations, the reds in open-top oak fermenters with frequent hand punchdowns, the whites in stainless steel. Oak aging, which some of the late harvest wines receive as well, is done primarily in a combination of French and American oak between 1 and 5 years old. Some of the top reds are aged for up to 30 months in barrel before bottling.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Dark ruby in color, this wine smells of cherries, lilacs, and cedar aromas. In the mouth it is incredibly aromatic, with soaring flavors of cherry, cedar, floral notes and hints of darker deeper earth and leather. Muscled, suede-soft tannins hug the palate and linger as the wine finishes in a resonant way. Excellent.

Food Pairing:
Relatively low in alcohol with wonderful acidity this wine will pair well with lots of things. I’d be utterly content drinking it with slow braised beef short ribs over polenta.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $45

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Should one of your New Years’ resolutions be to broaden your wine horizons without breaking your wine budget, one of the places worth exploring would certainly be Beaujolais. Much maligned, or at the very least avoided — and rightly so — by many wine lovers whose experience with Beaujolais consists of a glass of banana-scented Nouveau in November, the region actually produces some truly wonderful wines that can be tremendous values.

The Beaujolais region has seen a renaissance of winemaking in the past decade, with many serious, small producers trying to make wines that have much more in common with its parent region, Burgundy. This means eschewing the methods and principles that are employed to make massive quantities of Beaujolais Nouveau, and instead focusing on growing and vinifying the region’s lovely Gamay grapes like any sensible person would if they wanted to make really high quality wine.

And that is precisely what the team behind Potel-Aviron has tried to do. Nicolas Potel has made a prominent name for himself in the past few years as a new star negociant of Burgundy. For those unfamiliar with the term, that means he owns no vineyards, and instead buys grapes (and occasionally finished wines) on contract from growers, which he uses to make wine. Potel’s top Burgundies have become hot items for collectors in recent years, though as a result of some investment relationships gone bad he is now no longer associated with his eponymous label.

Presumably, however, he continues to work in partnership with Stephane Aviron to produce the wines of Potel-Aviron. Potel and Aviron met studying winemaking together in Beaune (though apparently Potel dropped out, while Aviron finished) and became friends. Aviron’s family has worked in the wine business in Beaujolais for some time, so when one day Potel needed to get his hands on some good Gamay, he called up Aviron. That first collaboration must have gone well, and the following year the two struck up a partnership around a simple goal: to make some of the best wines possible from the region.

Together they sought out six groups of some of the oldest vine Gamay in the region and established contracts with the owners giving them complete control of the farming. Drastically reducing yields, and whenever possible farming organically, the two have produced some of the highest quality fruit in the region from these 40- to 100-year-old vines.

The fruit is sorted rigorously at the winery (when possible they like to make the wines at the location the grapes are grown to minimize the handling of the fruit) and treated the same way they would treat their top Pinot Noir fruit. Fermented in small lots, sometimes with whole clusters and always with native yeasts, the wines are coaxed through to completion and then aged in traditional Burgundy barrels, of which at most only about 20% are new. This aging, which lasts at least 10 months, is quite uncommon, even among those who are trying to make serious wines in the region. As a result, their wines are quite profound, with the texture and complexities of Burgundy instead of the cloying fruitiness of their bad brethren Beaujolais Nouveau.

This particular wine comes from the village of Fleurie, and is made from fruit grown in two separate vineyards. The first is an east-facing vineyard from the northern part of town closer to Moulin-a-Vent, with 50 year-old-vines planted in slightly richer soils. The second is a more southerly-facing vineyard from across town with 55-year-old vines and very powdery, nutrient-poor soils.

This wine represents a great example of how wonderfully expressive “cru” Beaujolais can be, and in particular the delicacy and finesse that Fleurie can produce.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Light garnet in color, this wine smells of dark chocolate, exotic flowers, and mulberries. In the mouth the wine is soft and bright with excellent acidity, subtle black cherry, mulberry, and light floral aromas that carry through the airy finish. Undertones of wet wood, light tannins, and a gorgeous texture round out the package. Quite nice. One of those wines that, when encountered at a dinner party, makes you want to tuck the bottle under your arm and disappear into another room to finish it yourself.

Food Pairing:
While this wine is elegant enough to serve even with more delicate fish, it also has the backbone of complexity and hint of tannin to do wonders with roast chicken, quail, or even braised pork.

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $19

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

The Aconcagua valley presents the first time visitor with a surreal vista. From the flattened floodplain of the valley floor, mountains rise steeply on either side but only their rocky peaks are visible. Starting only a short distance down from their spires, and extending all the way to valley below, the mountains are wreathed in a bumpy, dense green outgrowth that makes them look like they’ve been carpeted with a dark Astroturf on a grand scale.

How someone figured out that they could grow avocados on slopes so steep I′d love to know. But once upon a time they did, so now the Aconcagua valley reserves its steepest slopes for avocados, while the vineyards begin as the hills slope shallowly towards the river below.

Less well-known to global consumers than the highly visible and successful valleys of Maipo or Casablanca, the Aconcagua region of Chile nonetheless has an incredibly long and celebrated history as a winegrowing region, if only thanks to one pioneering winery estate called Errazuriz.

Begun in 1870 by Don Maximiano Errázuriz in the tiny town of Panquehue, Errazuriz vineyards was, not long after its founding, one of the largest single-owner wine estates in the world, with 1730 acres planted in an area largely unknown for viticulture in Chile at the time. Don Maximiano was used to making big bets, however. As the part owner of the country’s (and at one point, the world’s) primary copper producer and the owner of the country’s primary natural gas producer, Don Maximiano did not do anything half-heartedly. As the elder son of one of Chile’s most influential families (of which 4 sons became presidents, 2 sons became archbishops, etc.) you might say it was in his blood.

Planted with cuttings imported from Europe, the estates vineyards were planted, cultivated, and vinified with a spare-no-expense approach that is much more common today than at the end of the 19th century. As a result, the estate has had the reputation of making some of Chile’s best wine for nearly 100 years.

Given the power and influence of the family, it is perhaps less than remarkable that the winery continues to be run by one of Don Maximiano’s descendants. President Eduardo Chadwick is the sole owner of Errazuriz, as well as a major shareholder in the other parts of the small wine empire that has accumulated over the past few decades, including the brands Seña and Chadwick.

Errazuriz is just completing construction of a brand new winery building that is one of the most stunning pieces of modern winery architecture I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. I had the opportunity to walk through on my visit as the tanks were being moved in and fitted. Designed at a price of $50 million dollars by architect Samuel Claro, with the help of sustainability consultant Guillermo Hevia, the winery is masterful in its use of light, curved surfaces, and airflow, resulting in an incredibly compelling space that is naturally cooled from air recirculated from underground. The winery maintains a small web page with renderings of what it will look like when completely finished. This building will be used to produce the winery’s flagship wines.

The estate’s vineyards still include much of the land purchased by Don Maximiano when he built the estate, including around 35 acres of vineyards that rise up behind the winery to meet the descending carpet of avocado trees laid down by the neighbors. The winery owns several other vineyards clustered around the town of Panquehue, as well as a newer vineyard much farther west in the valley towards the ocean in a fog-influenced that was, until recently, thought to be too cold to grow wine grapes.

Winemaking at Errazuriz is overseen by Swiss winemaker Francisco Baettig with help from Purisima Vergara, and consultant Nick Goldsmith. The approach to making the wines, even at the lowest end of the portfolio, remains as it always has, one in which the expense is not necessarily correlated with the profit to be gained. Unlike many wineries in Chile, all the fruit for the wines is hand-picked in small bins and heavily sorted before fermentation. The reds typically undergo cold soaking and extended maceration, and the top reds are also fermented (at least partially) in oak.

Here are my notes on a selection of the winery’s current releases that I tasted on my visit. Sadly, they did not include the La Cumbre wine, a Syrah that is one of the winery’s top three wines.

TASTING NOTES:

2009 Errazuriz Estate Sauvignon Blanc, Aconcagua Coast
Pale gold in the glass, this wine smells of unripe pear and fuji apples with hints of green herbs. in the mouth it is zingy, with very sharp acidity that makes for very juicy fuji apple flavors and little hints of grassiness on the finish. Yum. From the winery’s super-cool-climate vineyard near the coast in the Aconcagua valley. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $14. Click to buy.

2009 Errazuriz Single Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc, Aconcagua Coast
Pale gold in the glass, this wine has a nose of green olives, cut grass. In the mouth it is quite mineral in character with nice unripe apples, wet stones, and a beautiful finish that is slightly savory. Also from the winery’s coastal vineyards, the fruit from this wine was macerated for six or seven hours and then fermented on the lees. 2800 cases were made. Score: around 9. Cost: $16. Click to buy.

2008 Errazuriz “Wild Ferment” Chardonnay, Casablanca Valley
Light yellow-gold in the glass, this wine smells of melted butter, lemon curd, and pastry cream with an interesting savory note. In the mouth that savory note continues in a quite compelling way as the melted butter quality and pastry cream take on a little bit of a salty aspect that makes you want to swallow every bit of wine that gets in your mouth. Apple and lemon flavors make up the majority of the fruit, which linger with the salty note into the finish. Unique and compelling. 30 percent of the wine is aged in second-use French oak, the rest in stainless steel. 3400 cases are made. Score: around 9. Cost: $21. Click to buy.

2007 Errazuriz Single Vineyard Carmenere, Aconcagua Valley
Very dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of chocolate, sweet tobacco, and cherry with a light herbal greenness. In the mouth it is plush and medium bodied, with a velvety texture to its soft tannins. Oak influenced, the wine is airy, and white quite tasty with cherry, red licorice and vanilla flavors, it seems to be missing a little something from the middle of the wine. High toned, but nonetheless delicious. It has a wonderful coffee with milk and vanilla finish. Contains 3% Syrah, which was macerated along with the rest of the grapes for 30 days and then aged in 50% French, 50% American oak (of which 70% of both were new) for 12 months. 20,000 cases were made. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $21. Click to buy.

2007 Errazuriz Single Vineyard Shiraz, Aconcagua Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of stony black cherry and licorice aromas. In the mouth it is rich and round with back cherry and blackberry flavors touched with the sweet vanilla and toast of oak. Very faint tannins and good acidity make this wine an easy wine to drink as does a light mineral aspect. This wine has a very smooth quality. Quite tasty. Macerated for 20 days, the wine was aged in a blend of French and American oak of which about 30% was new. Score: around 9. Cost: $21. Click to buy.

2008 Errazuriz Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Aconcagua Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of cassis and what I like to call grapey-purpleness. In the mouth it is somewhat thin with cherry and violet notes, very light, woody tannins and a high toned finish. 13.5% alcohol makes it quite easy to drink, but lacks complexity and excitement. Score: between 8 and 8.5. Cost: $14. Click to buy.

2007 Errazuriz Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Aconcagua Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of cherry, wet slate, and a light briary note. In the mouth it is beautifully smooth, with cherry, black cherry, and hints of cedar. A mocha note emerges on the finish. Very nice, super smooth faint tannins, and this gorgeous texture make this a really seamless wine that is incredibly easy to drink. My notes have the word WOW underlined three times. In the quantities that this wine is made, and for the price, the wine is utterly stupendous. Run, don′t walk, to your nearest wine store and buy as much as you can. A blend of 91% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Cab Franc, 2% Petite Verdot, and 1% Syrah, 110,000 cases are made. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $21. Click to buy.

2007 Errazuriz KAI Don Maximiano Estate, Aconcagua Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of beautiful black cherry nose. In the mouth it is incredibly smooth with black cherry, mocha, very velvety tannins, the mocha note continues on the impressive finish. Beautifully structured and smooth with incredibly velvety tannins. Without a doubt one of the best Carmenere’s I’ve ever tasted. Actually a blend of 86% Carmenere, 7% Petite Verdot, and 7% Syrah, the wine is aged in 100% new French oak for 18 months. 1100 cases are made. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $80. Click to buy. (2007 vintage not fully released yet)

2007 Don Maximiano “Founder’s Reserve,” Don Maximiano Estate, Aconcagua Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of dark black cherry, wet slate, with notes of graphite and cedar. In the mouth it is broad shouldered and expansive with gorgeous rich flavors of black cherry, cherry and dark chocolate with incredible balance and acidity. Wonderfully drinkable. Loooooong finish. Classic. A blend of 82% Cabernet Sauvingon. 6% Cabernet Franc, 6% Petite Verdot, and 6% Syrah, the wine is aged for 20 months in 100% new French oak. 1600 cases are made. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $90. Click to buy. (2007 vintage not fully released yet).

As an interesting side note, the Founder’s Reserve wine has been made for about 30 years, making it one of the oldest “icon” wines of Chile. Apparently, though, those early years weren’t all that great, nor were they widely available, so only the last 15 years are considered truly commercially viable. But even so, that is a longer vertical of flagship wine than most producers in Chile can claim.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

It’s hard to get attention in the world of wine. Many wineries and winemakers struggle their entire careers for recognition, both deservedly and some, not quite. In the days of big marketing budgets and cult wines that are only figuratively on everyone′s lips (and literally on the lips of very few), it’s easy to overlook wineries that have quietly been doing their thing for decades.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven by the understated Corison Winery on Highway 29 without ever going in. The number must literally be in the hundreds. While I’ve still not actually stopped to pay Cathy Corison a visit, I’ve had a chance to taste her wines (and chat with her) on several occasions and under different conditions, from barrel samples to cellar aged verticals, and it’s clear that for being in plain sight amidst all the glossy wineries on Highway 29 in Napa, she is one of the more under-appreciated wineries in the valley.

Cathy Corison fell in love with wine as an idealistic and romantic college student in Biology at Pomona college. Fascinated by the “living” microbiology of wine, she went on to get a degree in Enology in the hallowed halls of U.C. Davis. After graduating in the Seventies and starting her career in winemaking at a time when Napa was just coming into its own again as a major wine producing region, she worked at a number of major wineries in the valley, including York Creek Vineyards, Yverdon Winery, Chappellet Vineyard, Long Meadow Ranch, and Staglin Family Vineyards.

Getting started in winemaking at that time afforded Cathy the opportunity of realizing a dream that many new winemakers will never achieve: to own their own vineyard in Napa. It took her 12 years, but eventually in the late 1980’s, Corison Winery was born. Since its first vintage in 1987, the winery has been a labor of love and life’s work for Cathy and her husband William Martin, who wears most of the hats that Cathy does not, including barn builder, back-office manager, and system administrator.

Cathy’s roots in Cabernet Sauvignon run deep. Inspired by the old world wines of Saint-Julien, Bordeaux, she has spent decades learning everything there is to know about growing and making Cabernet in the Napa Valley with a single-minded, quiet intensity. Apart from a small production of Gewurztraminer, and occasional dabblings in other varietals for second labels, Corison winery makes only two wines, both of them Cabernet Sauvignon from her 10 acres of alluvial vineyards on the sloping west side of the Napa Valley between Rutherford and St. Helena.

Even at a time when it was harder to find reasonably priced land in Napa, the Corison property was a diamond in the rough. In an interview a few years ago in the San Francisco Chronicle, Cathy noted that the property was passed over by many buyers because of an old, likely-to-be-condemned farmhouse on the property and a Cabernet vineyard that most believed needed to be ripped out and replanted. It turns out that neither supposition was quite true, and both the farmhouse and the vineyard continue to fulfill their original purposes today.

Cathy’s Kronos Vineyard, as she named it, has been dutifully producing her vineyard designated Cabernet for almost two decades now. I have had the good fortune to taste nearly every one of the last ten of fifteen years of this wine and I find it to be one of Napa’s most expressive single vineyard Cabernet Sauvignons — expressive of both its individual vineyard characteristics, but also of the particulars of the vintage. In an age when technology and vineyard management practices allow winemakers to make highly polished wines that are remarkably consistent between vintages, Corison and her wines seem bent on expressing a bit more of the personality of the each year than many of her neighbors.

Not unrelated to this expressiveness, I find Corison wines undergo quite an evolution in the bottle over time. In short, they seem to age incredibly well, developing wonderful aromatics and more finesse over time. Quite possibly the best Corison wine I have tasted was the 1996 Kronos I tasted several years ago at a public tasting. I had appreciated the Kronos vineyard before that taste, but I had not taken it seriously enough. Corison’s wines, like the ancient pottery shards that grace the labels, are of another time and place, even as they are firmly and undeniably some of the best of what’s available in Napa today.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as press samples.

TASTING NOTES:
2006 Corison Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells of tobacco, wet dirt and perfectly ripe black cherries. In the mouth it is beautifully restrained, with flavors of black cherry, mulberry, and wet wood — sort of like untreated redwood decking in the rain — making for an elegant, complex flavor profile. Excellent acidity is what helps Cathy’s wines age so well, as this one undoubtedly will. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $70 Click to buy.

2005 Corison “Kronos Vineyard” Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of black cherries, wet earth,and tobacco leaves. In the mouth it is rich and layered with cherry, tobacco, and cola flavors mixed with a darker cassis or blackberry quality that has a gorgeous aromatic sweetness to it. Faint powdery tannins remain in the mouth along with a bright fruit essence in the finish. Lovely. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $98. Click to buy.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

I take a special interest in a particular class of winery. I call them estateless wineries, but they are wineries that have no permanent physical presence. These types of operations have no vineyards, own no buildings, and sometimes don’t even own any equipment. Such wineries are most often the result of someone taking small steps towards their personal dream of being in the wine business, and are often sources for great wines at reasonable prices.

Olson &amp Ogden winery is a perfect example of such a label.

Proprietor John Ogden worked in the high tech corporate world for most of his life, doing business development, marketing, advertising, and sales. Through the boom and bust of the Internet, he quietly socked money away for the day he could leave that world behind. The only problem was, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life. Taking a year off in 2000 to answer precisely that question, John traveled the world with his wife. One of their stops around the globe was the South of France, where John had actually spent several years of his childhood. Their time there triggered many memories of family, food, and wine, and in the process John started paying more attention to wine than he ever had. Call it falling in love, call it an awakening, call it whatever you want, but Ogden returned to San Francisco with the desire to work in the wine business in some way.

With no background, training, or context other than his newfound passion, John simply just started talking to everyone he knew, trying to make connections in the business. In the process of his networking, he met Tim Olson who was just finishing up a stint as the winemaker for Tarius vineyards and looking for his next project. Together they batted around the idea of a small production label focused on Rhone varietals and a partnership was born.

Tim does the winemaking, and through previous connections has brought with him several contracts for fruit from Unti Vineyards in Dry Creek Valley among others, while John does the business management, marketing, and sales. Both work on the wine part time, and think it will probably stay that way for the foreseeable future. Like many other small estateless labels, they don’t have huge aspirations, just a desire to make small quantities of great wine. “Right now we just want to make interesting wines from interesting places,” says Ogden, who emphasizes that this means first and foremost sourcing great quality fruit from top vineyard locations.

Olson & Ogden offers two small portfolios of wines, one focused on Rhone varietals, the other on Pinot Noir. The wines are made at a custom crush facility in Sonoma and both Ogden and Olson work out of their homes when they’re not in the vineyard or cellar. Ogden and his wife have a playground equipment construction company that pays most of the bills.

There is no easy way to find out about small wineries like this. By definition they don’t have large marketing budgets or widespread distribution, and their lack of a physical presence means there aren’t signs on the side of the road as you drive through the Sonoma Valley. However, for those who choose to seek them out, they can be a source of excellent wines that represent the passions and dreams of a new generation of winemakers.

TASTING NOTES:

2007 Olsen Ogden “Stagecoach Vineyard″ Syrah, Napa Valley
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of sweet blackberry and violets. In the mouth it is beautifully balanced with lovely texture and rich flavors of cassis, blackberry, and black cherry. A hint of black pepper and white pepper spiciness creeps into the finish, which also has an aromatic sweetness that is disarming. Excellent. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $52 Click to buy.

2007 Olsen Ogden Syrah, Napa/Sonoma, California
Medium purple in color this wine smells of cassis, violets, and blackberries. In the mouth it is bright with blackberry fruit and black cherry fruit. Juicy with acidity and structured with faint but lingering tannins, this is a delightful wine if somewhat less than profound. Easy to drink and delicious. Score: around 9. Cost: $28 Click to buy.

2007 Olsen Ogden Unti Vineyard Syrah, Dry Creek Valley
Dark purple in the glass, this wine has a nose of cassis, wet earth, and violets. Beautifully silky in texture, very well balanced and juicy as hell, this wine has a rich core of cassis, black cherry, and cocoa powder flavors that linger along with smooth tannins through a long finish. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $38 Click to buy.

2007 Olsen Ogden Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast
Medium garnet in color, this wine smells of wet earth and black cherries. In the mouth it is rich with black cherry and cranberry fruit, plus a nice spicy component that is married to the good acid levels. Missing some complexity and elegance however. Score: around 8.5. Cost: $32 Click to buy.

2007 Olsen Ogden Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley
Medium garnet in color, this wine has an aromatic nose of raspberry, cedar, and candied redcurrant aromas. In the mouth it is soft and lush with tart cherry and raspberry flavors with a very nice herbal quality on the long finish. Well balanced with great acidity, this is a wonderful wine. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $42 Click to buy.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

As some of you know, I spent the last week traveling around Chile trying to get a sense of the country and its wines. It was my first trip there and I was quite excited to taste a lot of wine — education by immersion, so to speak. With that in mind, my hosts for the week, the Wines of Chile organization, pulled together a tasting of what in Chile they refer to as “Icon Wines.” These wines are usually the top wines in many wineries′ portfolios, in some cases they are the only wines, and they generally retail for $40 or more.

The vast majority of Chilean wines, and by vast majority I mean literally 99.95% are priced under $40, meaning that these icon wines are a small, and relatively new development in Chilean wine. While some of the older, more established producers have sold an Icon wine for more than a decade, such as Concha y Toro’s Don Melchor or Errázuriz’s Don Maximiliano, the existence of such wines represents something of a new chapter for the Chilean wine industry, which for the past three decades has really been focused on lower priced wines (though of increasing quality). Look for more thoughts later this week on the evolution of the Chilean wine industry.

In general these wines ranged from fairly good to excellent. While many are heavy-handed in their use of oak, the vast majority managed to stay away from cloying jamminess, and almost without exception the wines had excellent acidity and were generally medium-bodied, which made most of them extremely easy to drink.

Apart from the liberal use of oak, my main criticism of the wines as a group is that many of them, despite being very well well-made, and in some cases delicious, lacked a bit of soul — some distinct personality that would better distinguish them from on another. My personal belief, based simply on my gut instinct and nothing more, is that many of these wines have had their souls filtered (and potentially acidified) out of them. Most were quite glassy in texture, which I tend to associate with heavy filtration, rightly or wrongly, and which produces an effect like an airbrushed photograph: a little too perfect.

As a result of this lack of deeper individuality some of their prices seemed unreasonable (and that is not taking into account the current economic conditions, which will doubtless make them an even tougher sell, at least in the American market).

Having said that, these wines, especially the better among them, show that Chile MUST be taken seriously when it comes to making high-end wines. While my visit proved that Chile continues to offer some of the world’s best values when it comes to wine (more on this, too, later in the week) the top end of the market proves that with the right grapes, in the right place, and with serious attention to quality winemaking Chile clearly can produce some seriously world-class wines.

But let’s get to the tasting notes. With the exception of the two whites present, most of these wines are Bordeaux blends, with a few single varietal Carmeneres, Cabernets, and Syrahs thrown in. Carmenere, of course, has become a signature grape variety for Chile, and in addition to the single varietal wines, it is present in many of the red blends noted below.

Notably absent from this tasting were the wines of Casa Lapostolle and Almaviva, both of which declined to send bottles to the tasting, as well as the wines of La Rosa, who did send wine but both bottles of which were badly corked. There are other wineries who are probably missing as well (at least one of which, Odjfell, I will review later in the week). This tasting did not represent a comprehensive set of Chilean wines over $40, merely a substantial amount of them.

The retail prices provided are the suggested retail prices from the wineries. In almost all cases, the wines can be found in the U.S. market at some level of discount, especially in today’s economic times.

TASTING NOTES:

Notably absent from this tasting were the wines of Casa Lapostolle and Almaviva, both of which declined to send bottles to the tasting, as well as the wines of La Rosa, who did send wine but both bottles of which were badly corked.

WHITE WINES
2007 Maycas “Quebrada Seca” Chardonnay, Limarí Valley, Chile
Pale gold in the glass, this wine has an incredibly aromatic nose of cold cream, wet stones, and sweet lemon pastry cream. In the mouth it is stunning with amazing lemon curd and pink grapefruit flavors bouncing with great acidity. Wonderful notes of tangelo emerge on what the very lovely, long finish. Wow. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $50. Click to buy.

2009 Casas del Bosque “Gran Bosque″ Sauvignon Blanc, Casablanca Valley, Chile
Nearly colorless in the glass with a light greenish hue, this wine has a nose of passionfruit and kiwi aromas. In the mouth it is beautifully crisp with lovely passionfruit and kiwi flavors, a great wet stone quality, and a very smooth texture. Gorgeous. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $40. Click to buy.

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 9.5

2005 Valdivieso “La Primavera” Red Blend, Sagrada Familia Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of cherry, cut fresh herbs, and hints of gorgeous floral notes. In the mouth it is wonderfully light on the palate, thanks to perfect acidity and wonderful balance, with bright redcurrant and cherry flavors. Hints of fresh herbs emerge in the complex swirl of flavors, and exotic woods surface in the exceedingly long finish. Fantastic. $49. Click to buy.

2006 Valdivieso “La Primavera” Red Blend, Sagrada Familia Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a perfumed nose of bright cherry fruit, with lovely exotic wood overtones. In the mouth beautiful bright cherry flavors tinged with cedar and exotic spices swirl with juicy acidity and faint tannins to longer linger through a very long finish. $49. Click to buy.

2006 San Pedro “Cabo de Hornos″ Red Blend, Curicó Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a lovely eucalyptus and cherry aroma filled nose. In the mouth it is juicy with cherry fruit, leathery tannins and the same light signature of eucalyptus found in the initial sniff. This menthol note lasts for a long time in the finish joined with hints of cocoa. $40. Click to buy.

RED WINES SCORING BETWEEN 9 AND 9.5

2004 Valdivieso “La Primavera” Red Blend, Sagrada Familia Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of red cherry fruit, and hint of green herbs or bell peppers — enough to give personality but not to turn me off. In the mouth the wine offers intense cherry and cut herbs flavors. Great acidity and lovely soft tannins provide a nice backbone for the wine, and a long floral finish offers hints of sweet oak. $49. Click to buy.

2006 Terramater “Mater” Red Blend, Maipo Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of rich blackberry aromas with hints of black plum. In the mouth it is bright and juicy with cherry, cola, and a lightly mineral undertone. Silky as hell, the wine offers a wonderful lingering airy finish. Lovely. $80. Click to buy.

2006 Errázuriz Don Maximiliano Bordeaux Blend, Aconcagua Valley, Chile
Dark ruby in color, this wine has a nose of rick blackberry and cassis aromas with a hint of raisins and exotic spices. In the mouth it is quite interesting, with an incredible camphor wood and incense quality, with dried cherries and raisins, and a long chocolatey finish. Lightly drying tannins and good acidity keep it from being too jammy, but the fruit is certainly on the drier side. Confounding on the one hand stunningly unique on the other. I like it an awful lot. $75. Click to buy.

2006 Cousiño Macul Lota Red Wine, Maipo Valley, Chile
Medium ruby in color, with hints of garnet, this wine smells of dried cherries and cedar. In the mouth it is rich and bright with cedar, cherry and spicy red pepper qualities, that translate to a little heat on the finish, but not enough to mar what is a very rich quality to the wine. Medium bodied with nice acidity and soft velvety tannins, this is a very well made wine. $75. Click to buy.

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 9

2006 Concha y Toro “Terrunyo” Carmenere, Peumo Valley, Chile
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells beautifully of perfumed cassis and vanilla. In the mouth it is smooth, restrained, lovely, incredibly easy to drink, wonderful cassis, light, lithe on the tongue, hints of sandalwood. Beautiful. Lacks any hint of the greenness that often mars this grape variety. $40. Click to buy.

2006 Montgras Ninquen “Mountain Vineyard” Red Blend, Colchagua Valley, Chile
Medium purple in the glass, this wine has a nose of cherries, redcurrants, and a lovely floral quality. In the mouth it is soft, with lightly gripping tannins and nice acidity. Flavors of cherry, vanilla, and even strawberry emerge on the long finish. Missing something more complex, but overall a very nice wine. $45. Click to buy.

2003 Botalcura “Cayao″ Red Blend, Central Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of dried cherries, black cherry, and well worn leather. In the mouth it is juicy, with dried redcurrant, cherry, and a hint of raspberry flavor. Great acidity makes it juicy, and light tannins bring in an earthiness that is quite nice. Aging quite well. $50. Click to buy.

2008 Casas del Bosque “Estate Selection” Pinot Noir, Casablanca Valley, Chile
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of pungent blackberry and black cherry fruit with a hint of mint and a hint of funk. In the mouth it is much lighter in body than the nose would suggest, with anise cherry and lightly minty quality in the body that lingers with light tannins in the finish. Could use some more substance, but delicious nonetheless. $40. Click to buy.

2006 Undurraga “Altazor” Red Blend, Maipo Valley, Chile
Dark garnet in the glass, with a nose of cherry, tobacco, and hints of wet earth aromas. In the mouth it is lithe, with bright cherry cola flavors, nice acidity, notes of vanilla on the finish. Not quite as complex as it could be, but a very pretty wine. $60. Click to buy.

2007 Los Vascos “Le Dix″ Cabernet Sauvignon, Colchagua Valley, Chile
Medium ruby in color, this wine has a nose of exotic woods, cherries, and hints of cassis. In the mouth it offers interesting exotic incense flavors mixed with bright cherry and hints of green herbs. Nice acidity and glassy textures prove this is a well made wine, but while tasty, it could be more interesting. $50. Click to buy.

2006 Morande “House of Morande” Red Blend, Maipo Valley, Chile
Medium to dark ruby in color, this wine smells of cherry, plum, cola, and the barest hint of green bell pepper. In the mouth it is softly tannic, with flavors of cherry, wet earth, and nice wet redwood bark character that lingers in the finish. Good acidity makes this wine easy to drink, but it would be more exciting if it were a little more complex. $45. Click to buy.

RED WINES SCORING BETWEEN 8.5 AND 9

2006 Miguel Torres “Conde de Superunda” Cabernet Sauvignon, Curicó Valley, Chile
Medium to dark purple in the glass, this wine has a nose of cassis, pencil lead, and ripe black cherries. In the mouth it is earthy, with cassis, black cherry, and aggressive tannins. Nice incense quality plus a surprising hint of wet dog in the finish — not enough to be truly objectionable — but definitely a surprise. $40

2006 Casas del Bosque “Pequeñas Producciones” Cabernet Sauvignon, Rapel Valley, Chile
Medium bright purple in the glass, this wine has a nose of rich cassis and blackberry jam. In the mouth it offers bright clear fruit — blackberry and cassis but not much beyond this. Nice acidity makes for a juicy package but lacks some substance, especially on the back of the palate. Light tannins emerge in the finish. $50

2006 Casas del Bosque “Gran Bosque” Red Blend, Casablanca Valley, Chile
Medium to dark ruby in the glass with purple highlights, this wine has a nose of cherries and cranberry compote. In the mouth it offers bright cherry fruit, with hints of pomegranate and cranberry. Very light tannins grip at the edge of the palate, as the wine finishes with a beautiful clean fruit quality. Hints of green herbs at the front of the palate, but lacks some soul. $50

2006 Errázuriz “La Cumbre” Shiraz, Aconcagua Valley, Chile
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of mulberries, farmyard, and briary blackberry. In the mouth it is smooth, with suede-like tannins and good acidity that wraps around an interesting concoction of dried cherries, cinnamon, dried currants, and an odd, hard-to-place floral quality. Comes across as slightly strange, with lavender on the finish. $75

2008 Casas del Bosque “Gran Bosque” Syrah, Casablanca Valley, Chile
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of something quite unusual, which I’ll call a cross between eucalyptus and cucumber, wrapped in a nice package of cassis fruit. In the mouth it is bright with juicy cassis and black cherry fruit, but all in the front of the palate. Missing the soul needed to turn this from delicious to profound. $40

2005 Millaman “Casa Millaman″ Red Blend, Central Valley, Chile
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of bright black cherry and cassis. In the mouth it is bright and fresh with cassis and black cherry flavors, but lacks some stuffing. Light tannins and good acidity, but missing something in the back of the palate. $60

2006 Ventisquero “Vértice” Red Blend, Colchagua Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a perfumed nose of cassis, cherries, and hibiscus. In the mouth it is juicy, with soft nearly imperceptible tannins, and a core of cherry fruit with hints of kirsch and pomegranate flavors on the finish. $40

2006 Concha y Toro “Don Melchor” Cabernet Sauvignon, Pte. Alto Valley, Chile
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of barnyard and cherry aromas. In the mouth it also has a light funkiness that underlies bright cherry fruit wrapped in grippy tannins. Interesting because of the funk, but not nearly as exciting as it could be. $70

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 8.5

2006 Casa Silva “Microterroir” Carmenere, Colchagua Valley, Chile
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of green alfalfa and black raspberries, with notes of dried cherries. In the mouth it is exceedingly velvety, with fine grained tannins, moderate acidity and flavors of leather, cherries (fresh and dried) and hints of green bell pepper and leather. The finish is long and aromatic, incense like. Somewhat top heavy, with not enough fresh fruit. $45

2006 Ventisquero “Pangea” Syrah, Colchagua Valley, Chile
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of black cherries, violets, and sweet oak. In the mouth it is bright blackberry dominated by sweet vanilla oak. Unfortunately this sweet oak flavor dominates the palate, leaving it high toned through the finish, with little chance for what is clearly good fruit to shine through. $50

2006 Luis Felipe Edwards “Doña Bernarda” Red Blend, Colchagua Valley, Chile
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of blackberry, black cherry, and cedar. In the mouth it is high toned, with lightly grippy tannins, and good acidity, but slightly candied cassis and blackberry fruit that lingers, slightly warm, in the finish. $40

2008 San Esteban “Laguna del Inca” Red Blend, Aconcagua Valley, Chile
Light to medium garnet in the glass, this wine smells of cedar and cherry cough syrup. In the mouth the wine is bright and very young, with leathery tannins, candied cherry flavors and light cedar notes, with sweet oak emerging on the finish. $40

2006 J. Bouchon “Mingre” Red Blend, Maule Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in color, this wine smells of flowers, cherries, and oiled wood. In the mouth it is juicy and bright with cherry and cassis fruit but very little to back it up in the way of substance. Sweet oak emerges on the finish. $40

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 8

2006 Los Boldos “Grand Cru″ Red Blend, Rapel Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a nose of sweet, almost candied cherry, raspberry, and redcurrant aromas. If I didn’t know better I would say I was smelling a Chateauneuf-du-Pape. In the mouth it is somewhat empty, with high toned cherry fruit, raspberry notes, but hollow on the mid-and back-palate. $55

NOT RATED:

2004 Miguel Torres Manso de Velasco Red Blend, Curicó Valley, Chile
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of cassis, raisins, and a funky barnyard quality that suggests some Brettanomyces. In the mouth it is funky, with cherry, and unfortunately lots of Brett mixed with sweet oak. Both bottles of this wine suffered from this problem. And the other bottles Torres wine above had a hint of it as well. I haven’t tasted enough Torres wines to be able to draw any firm conclusions about the winery, but these four data points suggest a potential problem with Brett in the winery. $60

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

This is one of those wines that I live for. The kind that begins with an unknown bottle thrust in front of me by a friend with a twinkle in their eye, and ends with a profound memory of taste that becomes one of those moments that wine lovers cherish. Such wines are not common, at least not for me, but they are what keep me passionate about drinking and writing and enjoying the world of wine.

Occasionally still described by romanticizing writers as “off in a forgotten corner of Northwestern Spain,” the winegrowing region of Bierzo can no longer be described as truly unknown. While it remains off the radar of most mainstream wine drinkers, this little appellation has gained some attention from wine lovers and wine critics in recent years thanks to a few spectacular wines some of which were made by, and all of which owe a debt of gratitude to a man named Alvaro Palacios.

Palacios is in his early forties, but he has dramatically shaped what we know as Spain’s modern wine industry. The Palacios name has been associated with winemaking in Spain for several generations, and Alvaro eventually decided to continue the family tradition. He studied winemaking in France and went on to work at Chateau Pétrus with Jean-Pierre Moueix. But instead of returning to work on his family’s estate in Rioja he traveled around Spain looking for places where he could make wines of the character and grace he had experienced in France.

Palacios eventually stumbled onto the disused Priorat region, which he singlehandedly proceeded to put on the map, both through evangelization and by example, with wines that have now become some of Spain’s most sought after and most celebrated.

As if completely revitalizing one of Spain’s historical winegrowing regions wasn’t enough, Palacios went on to do it a second time with Bierzo. Known only 10 or 15 years ago for making fruity, innocuous wines of little consequence, Bierzo’s valley floor vineyards were not of interest to Palacios. What caught his eye were incredibly steep schist and shale hillsides where select plantings of the local Mencia grape were still hanging on to life after more than a century.

The rocky soils of the region are apparently both very poor in nutrients, but also quite varied in their composition, especially on the steep hillsides around the town of Corullon. Reminded of the detailed variations in terroir he had observed in Burgundy and Piemonte, Palacios decided this region held the promise he was looking for. Just as he did in Priorat, though this time with his nephew Ricardo Perez, Palacios has snapped up several ancient vineyard sites and transformed them into something magical. The diminutive, scraggly vines, eking out an existence on hillsides of almost solid rock, yield very little fruit, but what they do give under the patient hands of Palacios and Perez is nothing short of astonishing.

Named after Palacios’ father and Perez’s grandfather, Descendientes de Jose Palacios makes an entry level wine named Petales, as well as its flagship bottling known as Villa de Corullon. In addition, however, the winery makes 4 single-vineyard bottlings from the oldest, most extreme vineyard sites around the town. These are named Las Lamas, San Martin, Faraona, and Moncerbal. The winery produces very little wine to begin with, and these single vineyard bottlings are made in even more minute quantities, somewhere between 200 and 400 cases apiece.

The Moncerbal vineyard is a step schist hillside about 2200 feet above sea level. The vines average 80 to 100 years in age and produce less than one ton of fruit per acre. Despite these somewhat austere conditions, Palacios and Perez farm the vineyard Biodynamically. All work in the vineyard has to be done by hand, with occasional assistance by a mule.

The wine is made just as manually, with hand harvesting and hand destemming. The grapes ferment using native yeasts as gently and as long as they need to. After fermentation the wine ages in 100% new French oak barrels and is bottled without fining or filtration.

This is one of the most unique and impressive wines I have had from Spain, and certainly the best from this appellation I have ever tasted. If you can manage to get your hands on a bottle, I highly recommend it.

Tasting Notes:
Opaque, inky ruby in the glass, this wine has a stunning nose of wet stones, black pepper, black cherry, and a vague pruney / leathery quality that emerges with some time. In the mouth it is nothing short of astonishing for reasons that are difficult to describe. This wine offers a mysterious dichotomy between what can only be described as liquified rocks — an earthy mineral backbone that takes the breath away — and a very thick, ripe, black cherry and plum fruit that avoids all trace of sweetness. These flavors actually taste more like the skins of these fruits than the flesh, and the impression of tartness is aided by a remarkable acidity given the ripeness that the fruit must have actually achieved (this was, after all, the year of the deadly heatwave). Overall this wine ripples with muscled power, its tannins glassy-smooth and incredibly sculpted. The finish is minutes long, and resonates with both sides of this wine’s personality — wet stones, and dried cherries. Outstanding.

Food Pairing:
I had this with a pasta in a wild boar ragu, but frankly it would have been better with wild boar morcilla.

Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10

How Much?: $85

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

I suppose you might measure my enthusiasm (or insanity) for learning about wine by the glee with which I look forward to the opportunities to taste several hundred wines from a particular region, vintage, or variety. The public tastings that afford any wine lover the chance to taste in this fashion are the single most valuable way to educate the palate as well as to find out what’s going on in a particular place or vintage.

So when the chance came to hang out on Treasure Island for a few hours to taste the wines of Lodi a couple of weeks ago, I jumped at the chance. While the Blue Angels streaked overhead on the chilly, overcast day, I milled about with several hundred other attendees in a tent, trying to taste every wine on offer from about 40 Lodi wineries.

This tasting, put on by the Lodi Woodbridge Winegrape Commission was the first ever tasting of its kind in San Francisco — an attempt to bring the wines of the region to the Bay Area instead of the other way around. For me, the tasting was the single largest collection of wines from Lodi that I had ever had the chance to taste. I usually get a good dose of Zinfandels at the annual ZAP festival, but other than that, I encounter Lodi wines only occasionally in restaurants, in the collections of friends, and as occasional samples that I receive to review.

In short, before this tasting, I did not feel like I had a grounded perspective on the region. But now, having comparatively tasted wines from roughly sixty percent of the wineries in the region I′ve got a better sense of the place. Unfortunately that sense can generally be summed up as: underwhelmed. While there is clearly some excellent Zinfandel grown in the region (and often made by wineries that don’t have a presence there), I′m quite disappointed at how few wines out of the nearly 140 I tasted that actually excited me. Almost without exception, the Cabernets were vegetal, surprising given that the primary flaw of most Zinfandels and other reds from the region is over-ripeness. There were far too many red wines that tasted raisined, dried-out, and just plain bad.

The whites were quite lackluster (with a few notable exceptions).

Apart from Zinfandel, some folks are making credible efforts with Spanish and Italian varietals, perhaps most notably Bokisch vineyards, whose work with Spanish grapes is laudable and tasty.

Aside from this slightly downbeat assessment, it’s worth pointing out that if there′s one thing that Lodi seems to get right it would be their pricing. Bargain hunting readers will find some exceptional values below, perhaps most notably the Delicato Viognier and the Heritage Oaks Vino Tinto which were both outstanding for the price.

The tasting itself was nicely put together, if a bit oversold, with nice facilities for hand washing, getting drinks of water, and a reasonable proliferation of spit buckets. I didn’t get a chance to look over the food on offer until quite late in the tasting, but there seemed to be a lot of hungry people milling around the dregs of what was on offer, suggesting that perhaps things had run out a bit prematurely, or at least before the crowd would have liked them to.

Without further ado, here are my scores for the tasting. All wines below are from the Lodi appellation unless otherwise labeled.

White Wines

WHITE WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 9
2008 Delicato Family Vineyards Loredona Viognier. $10. Click to buy.
2008 Bokisch Vineyards Albariño. $16. Click to buy.
2008 Harney Lane Winery Albariño. $19.
2007 Peltier Station Peltier Station Viognier. $16. Click to buy.

WHITE WINES SCORING BETWEEN 8.5 AND 9
2007 Michael David Vineyards 7 Heavenly Chards. $16
2008 Peltier Station Hybrid Pinot Grigio. $7
2008 Uvaggio Moscato. $14
2008 Uvaggio Vermentino. $14

WHITE WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 8.5
2007 Borra Winery Fusion White. $16
2008 Heritage Oak Winery Sauvignon Blanc. $15
2008 LangeTwins Winery Chardonnay, Clarksburg. $13
2008 LangeTwins Winery Viognier, Clarksburg. $13
2008 McConnell Estates Wackman Ranch Sauvignon Blanc. $14
2008 Michael David Vineyards Muscovy Duch Roussanne. $20
2008 Ripken Vineyards Under the Sea Roussanne Viognier. $20
2008 St. Jorge Winery Verdelho. $18

WHITE WINES SCORING BETWEEN 8 AND 8.5
2007 LangeTwins Winery Sauvignon Blanc. $13
2008 Vino Con Brio Estate Brillante White Wine. $16

WHITE WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 8
2007 Gnekow/Campus Oaks Viognier. $13
2007 Onus Onus Chardonnay. $17

WHITE WINES SCORING BETWEEN 7.5 AND 8
2007 Abundance Vineyards Bountiful Blanc. $11
2008 Heritage Oak Winery Chardonnay. $15
2007 LangeTwins Winery Pinot Grigio. $??
2008 Mokelumne Glen Vineyards Bacchus. $14
2008 The Lucas Winery Lucas Chardonnay. $30

WHITE WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 7.5
2007 Berghold Vineyards & Winery Viognier. $19
2007 Harmony Wynelands Chardonnay. $16
2008 Mokelumne Glen Vineyards Late Harvest Kerner. $15
2006 The Lucas Winery Lucas Chardonnay. $30
2008 Vicarmont Vineyards & Winery Sauvignon Blanc. $13

WHITE WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 7
2007 Barsetti Vineyards Chardonnay. $12
2008 Peltier Station Hybrid Chardonnay. $7
2008 Van Ruiten Family Winery Double Barrel Reserve Chardonnay. $13
2008 Woodbridge Winery Woodbridge Winemaker’s Selection Lodi Vermentino. $9

WHITE WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 6
2008 Mokelumne Glen Vineyards Dreirebe. $20
2008 Talus Collection Winery Chardonnay. $7
2008 Woodbridge Winery Woodbridge Winemaker’s Selection Lodi Viognier. $11

Pink Wines

PINK WINES (ALL SCORING AROUND
2008 Harmony Wynelands Rosé. $16
2008 Vino Con Brio Estate Passione Rosé. $14

Red Wines

RED WINES SCORING BETWEEN 9 AND 9.5
2007 Klinker Brick Winery Old Ghost Zinfandel. $37. Click to buy.

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 9
2006 Bokisch Vineyards Graciano. $26. Click to buy.
2005 Borra Winery Old Vine Zinfandel - Gill Creek Ranch. $20. Click to buy.
2007 Harney Lane Winery Old Vine Zinfandel. $23.
2007 Heritage Oak Winery Vino Tinto. $18.
2007 Klinker Brick Winery Old Vine Zinfandel. $18. Click to buy.

RED WINES SCORING BETWEEN 8.5 AND 9
2005 Abundance Vineyards Abundantly Rich Red. $14
2006 Bokisch Vineyards Tempranillo. $21
2007 Bokisch Vineyards Garnacha. $18
2006 Borra Winery 47.5 ° Syrah - Gill Creek Limited Edition. $35
2007 Delicato Family Vineyards 337 Cabernet Sauvignon. $14
2005 Harmony Wynelands Alicante Bouschet Premier Cru. $30
2007 Klinker Brick Winery Farrah Syrah. $18
2007 LangeTwins Winery Petite Petit. $16
2007 Mettler Family Vineyards Epicenter Old Vine Zinfandel. $19
2006 Michael David Vineyards Gluttony Zinfandel. $59
2007 Peltier Station Zinfandel. $18
2006 Ripken Vineyards Ripken El Matador Tempranillo. $22
2007 St. Amant Winery Barbera. $18
2007 St. Amant Winery Marian’s Vineyard Zinfandel. $24
2007 St. Amant Winery Mohr-Fry Ranch Zinfandel. $18

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 8.5
2005 Abundance Vineyards Old Vine Zinfandel. $16
2006 Benson Ferry 95240 From the Heart of Zination. $14
2006 Borra Winery Fusion Red. $18
2007 Delicato Family Vineyards 181 Merlot. $14
2006 Harmony Wynelands GMA - Rhone Blend. $30
2006 Harney Lane Winery Petite Sirah. $24
2007 Harney Lane Winery Zinfandel. $20
2007 Heritage Oak Winery Zinfandel. $22
2006 LangeTwins Winery Cabernet Sauvignon. $13
2007 LangeTwins Winery Zinfandel. $13
2007 LangeTwins Winery Merlot, Clarksburg. $13
2007 M2 Wines Ridgetop Syrah. $22
2005 Maley Vineyards Zinfandel. $18
2006 Michael David Vineyards Rapture Cabernet Sauvignon. $59
2006 Michael David Vineyards Earthquake Zinfandel. $28
2007 St. Jorge Winery Tempranillo. $20
2005 Trinitas Cellars Old Vine Petite Sirah. $18
2006 Trinitas Cellars Ratzinger Zinfandel. $18
2005 Uvaggio Barbera. $18
2007 Van Ruiten Family Winery Old Vine Zinfandel. $22

RED WINES SCORING BETWEEN 8 AND 8.5
2007 Delicato Family Vineyards Gnarly Head Zinfandel. $9
2007 Gnekow/Campus Oaks Old Vine Zinfandel. $18
2005 Mettler Family Vineyards Petite Sirah. $22
2007 St. Sophia St. Sophia Zinfandel. $22

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 8
2005 Abundance Vineyards Petite Sirah. $16
2006 Benson Ferry Benson Ferry Old Vine Zin. $12
2006 Benson Ferry Nine x Nine Zinfandel. $12
2007 d’art Wines Zinfandel. $18
2004 Grands Amis Winery Petite Sirah. $20
2006 Harmony Wynelands Zinfandel. $23
2007 Ironstone Vineyards Syrah. $10
2008 Ironstone Vineyards Old Vine Zinfandel. $10
2006 Jessie’s Grove Winery Westwind Zinfandel. $32
2004 Maley Vineyards Merlot. $11
2007 Mettler Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon. $22
2006 Mokelumne Glen Vineyards Dornfelder. $15
2005 Ripken Vineyards Syrah. $30
2006 Van Ruiten Family Winery Cab-Shiraz. $18
2007 Vicarmont Vineyards & Winery Zinfandel. $18
2007 Vino Con Brio Matzin Old Vine Zinfandel. $22

RED WINES SCORING BETWEEN 7.5 AND 8
2007 Abundance Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon. $18
2005 Berghold Vineyards & Winery Zinfandel. $22
2007 d’art Wines Tempranillo. $24
2008 Jessie’s Grove Winery Jessence Blanc. $18
2007 M2 Wines m2 ‘Old Vine′ Zinfandel. $28
2007 Macchia Outrageous Zinfandel. $24
2006 McConnell Estates Wackman Ranch Tempranillo. $18
2007 McConnell Estates Wackman Ranch Zinfandel. $18
2006 Peltier Station Peltier Station Cabernet Sauvignon. $18
2007 St. Jorge Winery Zinfandel. $23
2005 The Lucas Winery Lucas ZinStar Zinfandel. $35
2007 Vicarmont Vineyards & Winery Merlot (Vicaramont). $16
2007 Vino Con Brio Estate Petite Sirah. $18
2004 Watts Winery Syrah. $24
2005 Watts Winery Dolcetto. $15
2005 Watts Winery Malbec. $20
2005 Watts Winery Zinfandel. $28

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 7
NV Barefoot Wines Barefoot Zinfandel. $8
2007 Christine Andrew Malbec. $18
2005 Stama Syrah/Zinfandel. $17
2007 Talus Collection Winery Zinfandel. $7
2007 Woodbridge Winery Section 29 Zinfandel. $12

RED WINES SCORING BETWEEN 6.5 AND 7
2005 Onus Onus Cabernet Sauvignon. $26

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 6.5
2005 Oak Ridge Winery Moss Roxx Zinfandel. $27

RED WINES WITH A SCORE AROUND 6
2006 Barsetti Vineyards Zinfandel. $13
2006 Christine Andrew Old Vine Zinfandel. $18
2007 Stama Zany Zin. $21
2007 Woodbridge Winery Select Vineyard Series “Red Dirt Ridge″ Cabernet Sauvignon . $12

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

A relatively compact landmass, New Zealand nonetheless seems to possess every possible topography and climate. Tropical rainforests, glaciers, arid plains, high deserts, rich low country farmlands, coastal beaches, and alpine foothills, to name just a few. While the country may perhaps be known best for its cool-climate winegrowing, it should really come as no surprise that its winegrowing regions mirror the diversity of its larger geography. The fact that the country has a growing region with a climate like Bordeaux or Rioja, however, still remains somewhat under the radar for most wine lovers.

The Hawke’s Bay region of the Northern Island fans out around and away from the spectacular crescent-shaped natural bay carved into the eastern side of the island. Sheltered from most cool seaborne weather and winds by mountains to the west, north, and south, this area sucks up enough sunshine to allow solar-hungry varietals like Cabernet and Merlot to ripen and thrive. Situated at roughly the same latitude as Madrid, Spain, the Hawkes Bay region, and in particular a sub-region known as The Gimblett Gravels, has become a bit of a Southern Bordeaux.

Far from the oldest wine producer in the region (it was founded in 1997), Craggy Range has quickly asserted itself as one of the most prestigious and ambitious. In the style of the great houses of Bordeaux, the winery seemingly spares no expense and overlooks no detail in attempting to produce not only the country’s greatest wines but wines that compete with some of the best wines in the world (an ambitious goal to be sure). From a stunningly situated winery, beautifully architected with well-manicured grounds, to the bottles themselves, heavy with the priciest glass, labels, and corks, Craggy Range definitely has an image it’s looking to project. But far from being all shine and no substance, Craggy Range not only produces wines worthy of the exquisite packaging and facilities that hold them, it seems well on its way to achieving the goals and vision of its founders.

Started by Terry Peabody, an international businessman, and Steve Smith, an extremely accomplished viticulturalist, Craggy Range Winery has been built in a fashion that few could afford, but to which any ambitious winemaker would aspire. Peabody and Smith sought out (and sometimes waited patiently for) only the best vineyard parcels in most of New Zealand’s wine regions with the goal of making only single-vineyard wines that expressed the best of each place. In addition to geological and agricultural sleuthing skills and sharp real-estate dealings, this required painstaking matching of rootstocks and grape varieties to specific blocks within each site.

Craggy Range’s winery facility is located adjacent to their Hawkes Bay vineyards, snuggled in a small valley between the rocky fins of Te Mata peak and the chain of small mountains from which the winery takes its name. But the winery’s winemaking and winegrowing activities aren’t confined to the Gimblett Gravels.

Craggy Range makes two series of wines, both of which are single vineyard designates from their estate vineyards and other selected vineyards throughout the country. The Prestige Collection is a group of wines which are each given names, and which are made only in the best years. These include a couple of red Bordeaux blends, a Syrah, a Chardonnay, and a dessert wine. The Vineyard Designate series of wines include mostly single varietal wines from sources spread out across both the North and South islands of the country and almost every one of New Zealand’s wine regions.

Winemaking for Pinot Noirs, Pinot Gris, and Sauvignon Blanc at Craggy Range is handled by Adrian Baker (another winemaker Rod Easthope focuses on the warmer climate Bordeaux wines and Chardonnay).

Grapes are hand harvested and sorted in stages, with individual vineyard blocks often vinified separately. When possible indigenous yeasts are used for fermentation which takes place in either steel tanks or oak barrels depending on the wine. Many of the wines are bottled unfined or unfiltered or both, though the winery doesn’t have a strict policy on these methods, preferring instead to do what they feel is required by the vintage. With the exception of the whites, most of the wines spend time in French Oak barrels often a mix of old and new.

This particular wine is from the Bendigo sub-appellation in the Central Otago winegrowing region on New Zealand’s South Island. One of the most visually stunning winegrowing landscape′s I′ve had the chance to personally visit, Otago is a wide ranging appellation that offers many different microclimates. Bendigo is one of the warmer and more arid sections of the region, and benefits from a terraced landscape of old river gravels which provide good sun exposure and rapidly draining soils.

2007 represents the inaugural vintage for this particular wine. The vineyard itself, owned by a winemaking family from Napa, oddly enough, was planted in 2003. As the first usable fruit from this vineyard, the wine is simply tremendous.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a press sample.

Tasting Notes:
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine smells of cherry, wet wood, and wet earth with an herbal aspect that emerges over time. In the mouth it bursts with sour cherry and plum flavors that are quite pleasing, bright with acidity and nicely textured. The tart juicy quality lingers in the finish, leaving my cheeks tight and my mouth watering.

Food Pairing:
I′d love to drink this wine with a perfectly crispy Peking duck.

Overall Score: 9

How Much?: $30

This wine can be difficult to find on the internet, but keep an eye out for it.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola