Cafes & Wineries

One of the things I love about the wine world is the way in which it rewards people with vision, initiative, talent, and above all, passion. I find it magical that someone can fall in love with wine, and decide that the most important thing for them to do for the rest of their lives is to make wine, and then actually make a living following that passion.

Maybe the same thing happens in a lot of industries, but you just don’t hear such stories about accounting. Or maybe we only ever hear about the success stories in the wine industry, and just never hear about all the failures.

Regardless, some of my favorite wines in the New World are made by people who just decided one day to go off and make wine, simply because they loved it so much.

Michael Twelftree and Richard Mintz are two such people — a couple of Adelaide businessmen that decided they would like nothing more than to make their own versions of the Australian Shiraz they enjoyed so much. Twelftree, who originally started in the construction business, dipped his toe into the wine industry in 1998 by starting a small export business to bring some of his favorite Australian wines to the United States. Twelftree was emboldened by his success, and no doubt encouraged by his friend Richard Mintz who worked at Australia’s Heinrich cooperage, so the two decided to launch their own label the highest quality wine they could make from some of South Australia’s best wine regions.

The degree of business acumen that the two founders brought to their venture makes it clear that neither passion nor winemaking talent alone are not individually responsible for their success (though it’s clear they possess both in spades). Twelftree and Mintz set about not only to make wine, but to build a brand and a company besides, even going so far as to establish a set of core values for the organization: quality without compromise; differentiation through innovation and fun; best barrels go to the best wines; get the best grapes around deal with every bit of fruit separately through the whole process; make wines that feature fruit, not oak.

I don′t recall ever seeing a winery with a published set of core values like this. Not that they′re somehow remarkable values, but the fact that the winery has them, and publishes them says something about the way that Twelftree and Mintz think about their operations.

Two Hands Wines debuted with the 2000 vintage and quickly rocketed to fame, thanks to accolades from Robert Parker and The Wine Spectator among others. Within five years of their first vintage, which was only about 800 cases of a single Shiraz, Robert Parker was calling the winery “The finest négociant operation south of the equator.”

Today the winery produces five tiers of wines, their three flagship wines, their single vineyard bottlings, the Garden Series, the Picture Series of wines, and a set of wines only available at the winery. Of the groups, the Garden series has been around the longest and they are the wines that largely made the winery’s reputation.

The winemaking at Two Hands is handled by Matthew Wenk, with oversight and participation from Twelftree. As dictated by the winery’s core values, the fruit is babied every step of the way through the winemaking process. As a matter of philosophy, the grapes are picked only when they taste ripe. Twelftree claims to never use brix measurements to make harvesting decisions, and subsequently the alcohol levels of the wines end up being whatever they end up being (usually between 14% and 15%), with no apologies. Twelftree says he’d rather a wine come in north of 16% alcohol than to water it back or use any de-alching technology.

For this reason, and no doubt also because of the adulation heaped on the wines by Parker and the Spectator, Two Hands gets their share of flak for producing what some people consider to be “fruit bombs.” However, of the many top Australian Shiraz I’ve tasted, theirs are among the least deserving of this moniker. Certainly the wines are fruit forward, but they never approach the cough syrup quality that marks the over-extracted, extended hangtime that many find objectionable.

Rather, the Garden Series of wines (I’ve only had the Garden Series and a few of the Picture series wines) are among some of the consistently best Australian Shiraz on the market in my opinion, and for fans of the varietal and the style, well worth seeking out.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as press samples.

TASTING NOTES:

2006 Two Hands “Lily’s Garden″ Shiraz, McLaren Vale, Australia
Inky garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of black cherry, blackberry, and cola aromas. In the mouth it is spicy and deeply resonant with blackberry, black cherry, and roasted fig flavors. A hint of savory meatiness creeps into the finish, which lingers nicely. Score: around 9. Cost: $60. Where to buy?

2006 Two Hands “Harry & Edward’s Garden″ Shiraz, Langhorne Creek, Australia
Dark garnet in color, this wine possesses a rich nose of chocolate, blackberry, and blueberry aromas. In the mouth it explodes with bright juicy flavors of tart blackberries, blueberries and hints of milk chocolate. Luscious is an adjective that comes to mind, but a hint of woodiness underneath everything keeps it from being too frivolous. Score: around 9. Cost: $60. Where to buy?

2007 Two Hands “Bella’s Garden” Shiraz, Barossa, Australia
Inky garnet in the glass, this wine has a deep earthy nose of wet dirt and rich blackberry pie. In the mouth it is smooth and silky, with great acid balance and rich juicy flavors of dark boysenberry, blackberry, and cassis flavors that linger into a long finish. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $60. Where to buy?

2006 Two Hands “Max’s Garden” Shiraz, Heathcote, Australia
Very dark garnet in color, this wine has a nose of chocolate and blackberry bramble. In the mouth it is a little leaner than the other wines, with a hint of tartness to the blackberry flavors that meld nicely with the smooth tannins. The wine′s finish is not as impressive as it could be. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $60. Where to buy?

2006 Two Hands “Samantha’s Garden” Shiraz, Clare Valley, Australia
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells of rich blueberry pie with hints of mint and herbs. In the mouth it is silky and smooth with lightly gripping tannins and primary flavors of blackberry, black plum and hints of spearmint that linger into a long finish. Score: around 9. Cost: $60. Where to buy?

2006 Two Hands “Sophie’s Garden” Shiraz. Padthaway, Australia
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of blackberry bramble. In the mouth it is an explosion of juicy bright blackberry and cassis flavors that beg to be drunk. Boisterous is a word that comes to mind with this wine that simply bounces around the palate into a lingering finish. Super tasty. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $60. Where to buy?

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

I’m not entirely sure why some of the best wines in the world are made by people who are more than a little crazy, but there are enough wacko winemakers out there to make it clear that the connection between great wine and reclusive eccentrics is more than mere coincidence.

Even more telling are the number of these “eno savants” (to perhaps coin a phrase) that live in Friuli, in northeast Italy.

Once upon a time, there was no Italy, there was only the river Isonzo, winding its way down out of the Alps towards the Adriatic sea. From the high peaks it looped and loped, laying down beds of granitic gravel to make a sloping country which sprouted many things. Protected from the harsh continental weather by the Alps, and warmed by the humid breezes off the Adriatic, this mild region naturally attracted the various nomadic people that passed through the region, some of whom knew a good thing when they saw it, and settled down.

Some of the earliest settlers of the region were likely Celtic peoples who brought with them not only the skills of cultivating grape vines, but the inventive skills of aging their wines in wooden casks, a technology which surprised and delighted the Greeks and the various other Mediterranean cultures who came to trade in the 4th century B.C.

The region that would eventually become known as Farra d’Isonzo to those who live there, passed through the hands of many an empire before it settled down into the little nook of Italy that it represents today. But throughout the centuries Friuli has always been known for two things: grapes, and people who do things their own way.

Fulvio Bressan represents the 9th generation of winemakers carrying the Bressan name and working a small plot of land in the Farra d’Isonzo since 1726. And given the way he runs his winery, you would think that he might just be channeling all 9 generations of prior expertise, with little care for how the rest of the world might make their wines.

OK, so he does make one concession to modernity, which entails fermenting his wine in stainless steel tanks which he cools with water from his well. But apart from that, Bressan is as old school as you can get, down to the fact that he seems to run the family estate nearly single-handedly.

The Bressan recipe for wine is as simple as it is maddeningly extreme. Take lots of old vines growing various indigenous varietals, as well as Pinot Noir. Dry farm them with the most extreme pruning methods possible, to the point that each vine bears only one or two clusters of fruit. Pick after personally tasting every single cluster to make sure it is ripe, then cut off only the shoulders and the most perfect clumps of berries on those clusters and throw them into the tank, leaving the rest to be made into jam or grappa.

Ferment the wine for months with only ambient yeasts after a month-long maceration period, letting the wine do its thing as long as necessary in the tanks, including malolactic fermentation after the juice has been pressed off the skins. After this secondary fermentation, the wine is transferred to 2000 liter, ancient oak casks, where it receives regular battonage (a process where the particles of yeast that settle to the bottom of the cask, known as lees, are agitated and stirred around in the wine). Fining and filtration are also eschewed.

After that, it’s anyone’s guess. The cellar dissolves into alchemy. Bressan regularly mixes vintages, forgets casks of wine, makes special blends never to be repeated, and generally disregards all the modern traditions of winemaking and bottling (no doubt breaking some laws in the process, but hey, this is Friuli, not Brunello). Some of the labels are handmade, some don’t bear any vintage date whatsoever, and those that do are never guaranteed to be correct. The wines are released and sold when Bressan damn well pleases, and in such minute quantities (as small as 20 to 40 cases for some wines) that most people have never even heard of them.

Which doesn′t bother Bressan one bit.

Tasting Notes:
Light to medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of dried herbs, raspberries, woodsmoke, and dried meat. In the mouth it is gorgeously textured, smooth to the point of being otherworldly, with a mysterious concoction of cranberry, raspberry, cedar, incense, wet leaves, and leather flavors that linger for a long time. With more time and air, this wines fruit becomes more crystalline even as the sharp acids mellow to a tangy note amidst the earthy qualities. Quite distinctive, this wine is not for everyone, but those who are looking for personality will find it here in spades.

Food Pairing:
Of the things that I drank this with tonight, I thought it did best with the prosciutto and fresh burrata on warm foccacia.

Overall Score: around 9

How Much?: $37

This wine is sometimes available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

To paraphrase Shakespeare, there are wineries that are born great, those that achieve greatness, and those that have greatness thrust upon them. To explain: some fantastic wineries are started by people who are superstars already, and it hardly seems to matter what they do — these properties are destined for success. Some top wineries seem to come from nowhere, and indeed have greatness thrust upon them, when out of the blue, their wine scores highly somewhere and they are vaulted from obscurity to fame.

The majority of the best wineries in the world, however, fall into Malvolio’s second category through their own achievement. Achievement seems perhaps not quite the correct term, however, for the amount of sweat and energy that goes into building a world class winery over decades, even centuries. Wine lovers early in their education (and in their earning power) are often flummoxed by prices for wines that start to head north of $80 or $90 per bottle. Should they pursue their love of wine long enough to really learn (and see for themselves) what kind of work goes into some of the world’s best vineyards, and to taste the wine that they produce, such prices no longer seem outrageous.

Indeed, there are some wineries and vineyards in the world that seem to produce wines of such quality and consistency as to be nearly magical. In Europe, and especially France, such pieces of land are often given special designations, such as Grand Cru, to signify their quality.

There are very few plots of land in California that might be accorded Grand Cru status, should Americans decide to institute some method of classifying vineyards for quality, if only because many of California’s vineyards are so relatively new. There are some very few, however, that have definitively proven their distinctiveness and quality over several decades.

Unquestionably, the first vineyard on my list would be Rochioli Vineyards in the Russian River Valley. Tucked in between Westside road and the meandering curves of the Russian River as it heads south past Healdsburg, Rochioli Vineyards produces some of the most sought after Pinot Noir in California.

Since the early part of the century, the 162 acres of flats and sloping hillsides that run down towards this particular bend in the river have been farmed by someone with the last name Rochioli. After working the land for decades, Joe Rochioli, Sr., began buying up the land, bit by bit. By the 1950’s, he had been joined by his son Joe Rochioli, Jr. and together they spent several decades growing grapes that were sold to wineries throughout Sonoma County.

It wasn’t until the early Seventies, however, that the farm produced Pinot Noir which it continued to sell to various wineries. Like many long-running family winegrowers, however, eventually the hankering to make their own wine started to germinate, and in 1976 Joe Jr. made a few thousand cases of Pinot Noir at one of his customers’ wineries.

By the early Eighties, the Russian River Valley had clearly proven its potential for growing Burgundian varietals, and Pinot Noir in particular, and the Rochioli’s saw a gradual increase in the demand for their fruit. One small winery named Williams Selyem became a particularly good customer, and the single vineyard wines they made from Rochioli fruit rapidly made their fortunes and brought Rochioli to national and international attention.

Around this time, Joe Jr.’s son Tom had grown dissatisfied with his business career and decided to return to the family business. Capitalizing on the rapidly increasing demand for the family’s fruit, Tom helped transform the Rochioli ranch from a farm to a full working winery. With the help of another of their customers, Gary Farrell, the family produced its first vintage under the Rochioli brand in 1982, a 150 case production of Pinot Noir from a vineyard plot known as the West Block.

Within a few years, Tom had taken over as winemaker, a position which he continues to hold today, even as his father Joe Jr. continues to direct the management of the family’s vineyards.

Producing about 13,000 cases of wine each year, Rochioli produces appellation designated wines under the Rochioli Vineyards label, and single vineyard and block-designated wines under the J. Rochioli label. These latter wines, including this West Block Pinot Noir, are available only to their mailing list customers.

Tom Rochioli’s winemaking style, as well as his entire family’s philosophy of wine production are based in the traditions of Burgundy, and in particular the Cote d’Or. Exacting quality standards, clonal diversity, and vineyard management techniques produce top quality fruit, which is then babied through a traditional hands-off winemaking process that attempts to manipulate the wine as little as possible through its lifecycle.

More so than almost any other Pinot Noir in California, Rochioli wines are built to age, and do so beautifully, as this wine clearly attests. I have had the pleasure of drinking bottles dating back to 1991 in the past few years, and they are holding up magnificently. Whether they have the 50+ year longevity of old world Burgundy, only time will tell, but if any Pinot Noir America will likely age in that fashion, it will most certainly be Rochioli.

Whenever possible I avoid favoritism, as I believe my life and the lives of my readers benefit from a diverse exploration and recommendation of wines. However, when it comes right down to it, I am hard pressed to think of another California wine that I care for more than Rochioli’s block designated Pinot Noirs. And if I could have them all with 12 or more years of age on them? Well, as they say, just shoot me now.

Tasting Notes:
Medium blood red in the glass, with very little fading towards the rim, this wine has a mouthwatering nose of rosemary smoked meat aromas mixed with a background hum of raspberry and hibiscus. When the wine enters the mouth, it’s like John Coltrane snuck up behind you and started playing — the world slows down, and everything rings like crystal. Perfectly balanced between acid and tannin, fruit and earth, this wine sings with a delicate concoction of raspberry, leather, and the mix of herbs that the French refer to as garrigue. Like all fantastic aged Pinot Noir, those core flavors are just the beginning, however, as layers build and build headed into a long finish. This wine in particular has a gorgeous high note of tart red apple skin that hangs in the air (or is it the mind?) long after you’ve swallowed the wine. Drinking phenomenally well now, and likely to last at least another 10 years, and maybe more?

Food Pairing:
Good lord, who wants to eat food when you could drink wine like this? I served this wine in a still moment between courses at a recent dinner. While some people were content to pair the wine with the roasted leg of lamb we served, I found myself merely waiting for the wine to release me back into the flow of dinner, which it eventually did a few minutes after I drained the last drop from my glass.

Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10

How Much?: This wine was sold only to mailing list customers, meaning it must be bough on the secondary market. Current prices at auction are around $180.

It is possible to purchase this wine on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

The wine industry spends a lot of time and energy fighting for the attention of global consumers. In particular, they’ve tried hard to market seasonally to consumers, but they just can’t quite compete with the likes of Oktoberfest for beer drinkers. The best that the wine industry has been able to come up with sends even the most tolerant wine lovers running for cover every November, as the rollout of Beaujolais Nouveau reaches ever more spectacular heights of commercial bling.

It would be one thing if the wine was even somewhat drinkable. But these days, what passes for Beaujolais Nouveau is, by and large, utter crap. That’s just my professional opinion, of course, and no offense meant to those who enjoy a bottle of the banana and bubble gum concoction that is foisted on consumers the third Thursday in November each year.

It’s sad that such wine, and the marketing hoopla that goes with it, has become so entrenched in the industry, and even sadder still that we can’t come up with a better event with better wine. OK, maybe New Year’s Eve and Champagne are a saving grace here.

But let’s get back to Beaujolais. Because today I want to talk about the other Beaujolais — the quiet, shy sister to the airhead that is Nouveau.

Beaujolais, is of course, a wine region that snuggles up to the southern borders of Burgundy in East-Central France. For centuries, Beaujolais was simply a neighbor of Burgundy that happened to grow more of the grape Gamay Noir than the land to the north, thanks to the grape’s preference for the granitic soils of the region rather than the limestone of Burgundy. In 1395 Philip the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, ordered that all the Gamay vineyards of Burgundy be torn up, and forever banned from the region. Rather suddenly, Beaujolais became a much more unique wine region, and a safe haven for a grape that went from widespread popularity in France to nearly being unknown thanks to Ducal decree.

Beaujolais as a region produces several classifications of wine, the vast majority based on Gamay, from the wine simply labeled Beaujolais to appellation designated wine from Beaujolais Villages, or the ten “Cru” appellations of the region: Morgon, Régnié, Brouilly, Côte-de-Brouilly, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Juliénas, St-Amour, Chénas, and Chiroubles.

These latter appellations, and in particular Morgon, play host to a resistance movement that is slowly proving to a widening circle of wine lovers that the region deserves a better reputation than Nouveau is capable of supporting.

This new reputation for more serious wines is largely the work of a band of winemakers that have retrenched to more traditional Burgundian grape growing and winemaking methods. Known as the Gang of Four, these winemakers have spent the last twenty or more years making wines that are the complete opposite of Beaujolais Nouveau.

Which is to say that they are actually quite good.

Jean-Paul Thevenet is one of the Gang members (the others being Guy Breton, Jean Foilard, and Marcel Lapierre) and perhaps best embodies the “old school” qualities that these winemakers have championed in the region.

Thevenet works a plot of extremely old vines in the Morgon appellation. The average age of the vines is 70 years and they are cultivated organically and yield very little fruit. The grapes are fermented with natural yeasts and, quite remarkably, often without the addition of any sulfur dioxide (commonly used by winemakers as a preservative and to prevent bacteriological growth). After fermentation Thevenet ages the wine for six to eight months in used oak barrels that he manages to get from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. It is bottled without filtration.

Thevenet’s wines, as well as the rest of his gang (and those of a number of producers that have started to follow suit in the region) represent a fundamentally different side of Beaujolais and the Gamay Noir grape. A side that frankly deserves a lot more celebration than the millions of liters delivered with fanfare every November.

Tasting Notes:
Light ruby in color, this wine has a rich, loamy nose of cassis and cranberry aromas with darker notes of fruit and earth underneath. In the mouth it is lush — silky, smooth, and very nicely balanced with flavors that bounce between the red tart fruit of cranberry and the darker, juicier notes of cassis. The tannins are faint, nearly imperceptible, and tinged with notes of smoke and wet dirt. This wine is concentrated to a perfect degree, rich without being overpowering, and pure without being too polished. Lovely.

Food Pairing:
I′d love to drink this wine to accompany pork tenderloin with pomegranate sauce.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $23

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

We don’t have a Cru classification in California (we just have mailing lists and release prices) but there are a few vineyards in the state that would most certainly be at the top of the list. Their names are well known to those wine lovers who can afford the generally expensive wines they produce, and one of them is unquestionably the Hirsch Vineyard.

First planted in 1980 by farmer David Hirsch, the Hirsch Vineyard is located on the mountain ridges above the northern California town of Fort Ross at 1500 feet above the ocean surface and 3.5 miles as the crow flies from its crashing waves. One of the pioneers of a region known as the Extreme Sonoma Coast, this 72 acre vineyard is planted mostly with Pinot Noir which thrives above the fog line in the unique and powerful mix of sunlight and cool ocean breezes. Within several years of its planting, the vineyard was recognized as one of the top sources of Pinot Noir in the country.

Williams Selyem winery is one of the main advocates and customers of the Hirsch Vineyard, and the Pinot Noir they make from this vineyard every year is almost always one of the finest in California.

Williams Selyem was founded in 1981 by Burt Williams and Ed Selyem, two friends who started making wine together in their garage in Forestville, California in the late seventies just because they loved the stuff, wanted to drink more wine together, and loved a challenge. A few years later, what started as a hobby became an avocation, and in a few more years, a cult phenomenon. Over the course of a decade or two Williams Selyem winery played a major role in establishing Sonoma County as a premier winegrowing region, and establishing California as a world-class Pinot Noir producing region.

Surprisingly, the two didn’t start with Pinot Noir as a goal. They were more excited about Zinfandel (which William Selyem still makes) but it was ultimately Pinot Noir that captured the majority of their attention, and the attention of the wider world when their 1985 Rochioli vineyard Pinot Noir was the winner at the California State fair in 1987, and the winery was simultaneously awarded the designation Winery of the Year.

At that point Williams Selyem was still just two guys in a garage, marshaling an army of friends to meticulously hand pick, hand sort, and hand crush small lots of grapes from what were at the time, relatively young but clearly very high quality vineyards. They quickly found themselves with the demand, and the capital, to invest in a proper winery.

By the early Nineties, William-Selyem had become one of Sonoma County’s first cult wineries. People were waiting years to get on their mailing list, and the wines were selling out before they ever got the chance to hit retail stores. But about that time, Burt and Ed were ready for a break after nearly 20 years of winemaking, and sold the winery to its present owners, John and Kathe Dyson in 1998. While the ownership and winemaking team has changed, the demand for the wines has not.

Currently the winemaking is done by Bob Cabral, Lynn Krausmann and oenologist Adam Goodrich, with little deviation from the strictly minimalist approach taken by the founders. Even today, no mechanical pumping is ever done to the wine, nor any filtration, and the wine is aged in a mix of French oak of which about 50% is new. Babied through the entire winemaking process process, apart from a forklift and a press, nearly everything is done by hand by this small group of individuals under Cabral’s careful direction.

Williams Selyem’s success as a winery has afforded it the luxury of being able to make no compromises when it comes to winemaking, which includes the ability to be a bit more European about working with the wine — the wine takes as long as it takes — to ferment, to age, to sit in the bottle.

This particular wine was aged in 67% new oak and 37% 1-year-old oak barrels for about 16 months before being bottled unfiltered.

Tasting Notes:
Light garnet in color, this wine has an elegant nose of raspberries, cherries, and crushed herb aromas. In the mouth it is equally as elegant, even distinguished, with gorgeously textured flavors of raspberry, red apple skin, hints of citrus oil, and a woody undertone that provides a base note to the brighter flavors. Perfectly balanced, this is a beautiful rendition of Pinot Noir that gives ample time to reflect as much in its long finish.

Food Pairing:
This would beautifully accompany a nice charcoal roasted quail.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $72 to mailing list customers, though it goes for $95 and higher in retail stores.

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

One of the greatest experiences that a wine lover can encounter is a wine that stops them in their tracks. I’ll admit that I’m excitable in general, but there’s nothing that gets me quite so giddy as a schoolboy as when I stumble across a wine that truly bowls me over. Such wines are the closest I get anymore to the emotions of that first passionate kiss in a new relationship — they electrify me. While the world slows down to a crawl around me, all I want to do is stick my nose in the glass and inhale slowly.

This is one of those wines. I was minding my own business, tasting away through a public wine tasting in San Francisco. As a matter of course, I marched up to the Guigal table, and tasted through what they had to offer, like I have done before at other tastings. I enjoy Guigal wines a great deal, especially their more exclusive bottlings.

But while I’ve had Guigal wines that have been great, even exceptional, I’ve never had one knock me on my ass in quite the same way as this wine did when I put it in my mouth.

Etienne Guigal founded his winery in the tiny Northern Rhone village of Ampuis in 1946. The vineyards he purchased to begin producing wine had been growing grapes for as long as anyone can remember. So long that some of the stone walls in the fields dated back more than 2400 years to Roman times.

The enterprising 32-year-old Guigal was no stranger to the wine business when he bought his first vineyard, having worked as a winemaker for several years before striking out on his own. By the time his blindness forced him to turn operations over to his son in the Sixties, he had personally worked more than 67 vintages.

The estate is now beginning its third generation of family ownership, and is widely recognized as one of the top wine producers in both the region, and the world. From its humble beginnings, the estate has grown to sizable proportions, or what amounts to sizable proportions in the relatively small appellations of the region. The estate now owns vineyards in Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, and Saint-Joseph, and buys a significant amount of fruit from producers all over the region.

I’m not entirely sure of the estate′s current production levels but they are somewhere north of 340,000 cases, with the bulk of that being wines made from purchased grapes. The wines are currently made by Philippe Guigal and his father Marcel.

This particular wine is 95% Syrah and 5% Viognier, culled from some of the oldest blocks among 6 of Guigal’s vineyards:

Le Clos “Côte Blonde”,
La Garde “Côte Blonde″,
La Grande Plantée “Côte Blonde”,
La Pommière “Côte Brune″,
Le Pavillon Rouge “Côte Brune”,
Le Moulin “Côte Brune”

Some of these vineyards were planted in the early 16th century. Of course, they have been replanted over the ages, and the average age of the vines now is around 50 years. While the vineyards are not certified, they are essentially farmed organically.

The grapes for the wine are hand harvested, meticulously sorted, destemmed, and then undergo a cold soak for sometimes more than a month before fermentation is allowed to begin in steel tanks. After fermentation, the juice is transferred to the estate’s own barrels (since 2003 the estate has run its own cooperage on the property) where it ages for at least 38 months before bottling.

Tasting Notes:
Medium garnet in color this wine leaps out of the glass, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags your ass into a field in the middle of southern France and then stands back laughing as you stumble blissfully among sage, lavender, rosemary, and a small lake of fresh cassis. In the mouth the wine is equally explosive with an incredibly juicy core of cassis that is riddled with crystalline granitic minerality. Perfectly balanced, with the texture of satin and tannins that don’t grip so much as they caress. And just when you think it can’t get any better, the floral notes from the Viognier sweep in like valkyries to carry you away into the finish. Please, sir, may I have another? This is definitely the best current vintage of Côte-Rôtie I have ever tasted.

Food Pairing:
I’d love to drink this with a slow roasted leg of lamb with rosemary.

Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10.

How Much?: $130

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

One of the greatest experiences that a wine lover can encounter is a wine that stops them in their tracks. I’ll admit that I’m excitable in general, but there’s nothing that gets me quite so giddy as a schoolboy as when I stumble across a wine that truly bowls me over. Such wines are the closest I get anymore to the emotions of that first passionate kiss in a new relationship — they electrify me. While the world slows down to a crawl around me, all I want to do is stick my nose in the glass and inhale slowly.

This is one of those wines. I was minding my own business, tasting away through a public wine tasting in San Francisco. As a matter of course, I marched up to the Guigal table, and tasted through what they had to offer, like I have done before at other tastings. I enjoy Guigal wines a great deal, especially their more exclusive bottlings.

But while I’ve had Guigal wines that have been great, even exceptional, I’ve never had one knock me on my ass in quite the same way as this wine did when I put it in my mouth.

Etienne Guigal founded his winery in the tiny Northern Rhone village of Ampuis in 1946. The vineyards he purchased to begin producing wine had been growing grapes for as long as anyone can remember. So long that some of the stone walls in the fields dated back more than 2400 years to Roman times.

The enterprising 32-year-old Guigal was no stranger to the wine business when he bought his first vineyard, having worked as a winemaker for several years before striking out on his own. By the time his blindness forced him to turn operations over to his son in the Sixties, he had personally worked more than 67 vintages.

The estate is now beginning its third generation of family ownership, and is widely recognized as one of the top wine producers in both the region, and the world. From its humble beginnings, the estate has grown to sizable proportions, or what amounts to sizable proportions in the relatively small appellations of the region. The estate now owns vineyards in Côte-Rôtie, Condrieu, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, and Saint-Joseph, and buys a significant amount of fruit from producers all over the region.

I′m not entirely sure of the estate’s current production levels but they are somewhere north of 340,000 cases, with the bulk of that being wines made from purchased grapes. The wines are currently made by Philippe Guigal and his father Marcel.

This particular wine is 95% Syrah and 5% Viognier, culled from some of the oldest blocks among 6 of Guigal’s vineyards:

Le Clos “Côte Blonde″,
La Garde “Côte Blonde″,
La Grande Plantée “Côte Blonde″,
La Pommière “Côte Brune”,
Le Pavillon Rouge “Côte Brune”,
Le Moulin “Côte Brune″

Some of these vineyards were planted in the early 16th century. Of course, they have been replanted over the ages, and the average age of the vines now is around 50 years. While the vineyards are not certified, they are essentially farmed organically.

The grapes for the wine are hand harvested, meticulously sorted, destemmed, and then undergo a cold soak for sometimes more than a month before fermentation is allowed to begin in steel tanks. After fermentation, the juice is transferred to the estate’s own barrels (since 2003 the estate has run its own cooperage on the property) where it ages for at least 38 months before bottling.

Tasting Notes:
Medium garnet in color, this wine leaps out of the glass, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags your ass into a field in the middle of southern France and then stands back laughing as you stumble blissfully among sage, lavender, rosemary, and a small lake of fresh cassis. In the mouth the wine is equally explosive with an incredibly juicy core of cassis that is riddled with crystalline, granitic minerality. Perfectly balanced, with the texture of satin, and tannins that don’t grip so much as they caress. And just when you think it can’t get any better, the floral notes from the Viognier sweep in like valkyries to carry you away into the finish. Please, sir, may I have another? This is definitely the best current vintage of Côte-Rôtie I have ever tasted.

Food Pairing:
I’d love to drink this with a slow roasted leg of lamb with rosemary.

Overall Score: between 9.5 and 10.

How Much?: $130

This wine is available for purchase on the Internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

As you likely know, I make it my business to keep my eye on new California wineries, especially in Napa and Sonoma, as much as I can given the fact that I do a lot of other things besides write about wine. Whenever possible, I like to taste the first releases from these wineries. They are not always fantastic - some are good, some show potential, and some simply need to be written off as first efforts and retried again later. That’s the thing about wines, just because they’re not good now, that doesn’t mean they won’t be later, and, of course, vice versa.

It’s quite rare, however, for the very first vintage of a wine to knock my socks off. But when I got my first taste of Blackbird Vineyards out of the barrel a couple of years ago, I quite literally couldn’t bring myself to spit it out. I was immediately in love. And how delightful (and against all odds) that the best Napa wine I had tasted in many months was a Merlot.

Blackbird proprietor Michael Polenske is used to beating the odds unexpectedly. By all accounts he never should have gotten into wine in the first place. Spending one’s teens and early twenties in a fraternity at Chico State generally favors the the cultivation of a strong affinity for beer and bikinis rather than fine wine. But in between his finance classes, thanks in part to a roommate who turned him on to wine, he dabbled in the wine curriculum and spent weekends exploring Napa Valley visiting what were becoming his favorite wineries.

When he graduated from college, Polenske again took an unexpected turn, getting into the pragmatic financial planning industry just as everyone in that industry was moving towards more active money management. Polenske had the bright idea that he could do financial planning for people in the wine business, and so managed to find a firm in the Midwest that was willing to give him Napa and Sonoma as a territory. In addition to the territory of his choice, they also asked him if he′d be willing to cover the zip code 94025 as well.

It turned out that there wasn’t much interest in wine country, but Polenske found quite a lot of both interest and money in that other little zip code, which happened to be Atherton, California, and for which he found himself the sole representative in his company. Through a lot of trial and error, a ton of cold calling, and a significant amount of elbow grease, Polenske spent 10 years building a sizable book of business in Silicon Valley, learning more about and continuing to fall deeper in love with wine in the process.

And then one day, relatively out of the blue, JP Morgan called and offered him a job as a private banker. Like a small town kid picked up out of high school by the Major Leagues, Polenske walked starry eyed into his first day at work, sat down next to his colleagues with their Wharton, Kellogg, Harvard, and GSB diplomas on their desks, and when no one showed up to tell him how to do his job, he just did what he knew how to do. He started making calls.

At the time, the average JP Morgan banker brought on between seven and nine new clients per year. At the end of his first year Polenske had 35, a figure so shocking at the time, that executives at the highest levels of the company told his manager to get him on a global conference call so they could demand an explanation. Based on that call JP Morgan changed its approach to new client acquisition, and it wasn’t long before Polenske was in charge of the San Francisco office, and beginning to dabble in his other interests, including antiques (he would eventually go on to own Patina Atelier Antiques in San Francisco).

As Polenske′s star continued to rise in the financial services world, he kept his eye on Napa, thinking that someday it might be nice to build a lifestyle business. But each time he nearly got to the point of buying some land, another job opportunity would come along, and he′d be swept up into running a new company, division, or fund.

After years of almost buying vineyards, Polenske eventually decided to scrap the idea, and instead simply settle for a house on a hill in Napa with a pool. He ended up with a couple of houses on the flats, and a 10 acre vineyard. These things tend to happen in the valley.

Napa has a way of turning people into winemakers overnight simply because they stumble on the right piece of property. Polenske’s acquisition, as you might expect, was a little more strategic than that. Call it a compulsion to seek out the undervalued parts of the market, or just call it instinct, but Polenske found himself staring at a Merlot vineyard that was selling fruit to prominent buyers who were making 90 point wines from it, yet the prices they were paying for the fruit were below market rates. Never mind that Merlot was on the down and out. Polenske saw the raw ingredients for the perfect boutique wine brand, and his idle fantasies about building a lifestyle business instead of another hedge fund began to crystallize. The vineyard was named Blackbird, and when Polenske found out that in French Patois, Merlot means “little blackbird″ the key turned in the lock and everything fell into place.

Today, with the help of winemaker Sarah Gott and winegrower Aaron Pott, Polenske farms the 10 acre estate vineyard to produce several wines under the Blackbird label (after initially launching the brand with a single “Proprietary Red”). That wine, now called “Illustration,” has been joined by “Paramour,” “Contrarian,” and “Arise,” (all varying blends except the Arise which is 100% Merlot). The winery also now produces a rosé called “Arriviste.”

The 2006 Illustration contains 86% Merlot, 11% Cabernet Franc, and 3% Cabernet Sauvignon from the estate’s 12 year old vines in Napa’s Oak Knoll District. After meticulous sorting and careful crushing and fermentation, the wine ages for 20 months in French oak barrels of which 70% are new and 30% are older. The wine is bottled completely unfined and unfiltered. 1,195 cases are made.

I′ve been watching the Blackbird brand evolve, and tasting the wines along the way and I continue to be thrilled with them. I don’t personally buy many Napa wines on release, but Blackbird is most certainly one of them.

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

Tasting Notes:
Medium ruby in the glass, this wine has a nose of cocoa powder and cherries. In the mouth it is gorgeously smooth with bright cherry cola, chocolate, and juicy bing cherry flavors that dance on a lively bed of acidity. Velvety tannins sneak around the edges with a hint of sweetness and then pirouette slowly in the back of the throat for minutes. Fantastic.

Food Pairing:
Extremely food friendly because of its juicy acidity, this wine will pair well with a lot of foods. I’d enjoy it with a spiced, grilled rack of lamb.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: $90

This wine available for purchase on the internet.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

Greetings from Cape Town, South Africa! I’ve come down to the Cape Winelands to dive deep into South African wine in a way that isn’t possible in the United States. In most wine stores I’m lucky to find a handful of South African wines at most, and forget about restaurants, which often just have a single representative wine on their list, if anything at all.

So I’m here under the imposing shadow of Table Mountain to attend Cape Wine 08, the biannual South African wine convention — their equivalent of VinItaly or VinExpo. I’ll be visiting a few wine producers, having a few meals, attending a couple of seminars, but mostly I’m going to be doing one thing, and one thing only: tasting as much South African wine as I can.

At least, as much as my jet lag will let me. It hasn′t kicked in yet, but I expect it to in about 24 hours, so while I’m able to be rested, I’ve gotten started on my explorations.

My first event of the week was a lunch sponsored by the winemakers of the Simonsberg Ward of the Stellenbosch District. The South African wine regions take some time to get one’s head (and one’s tongue) around. Those familiar with California wine appellations will find the best analog to the Districts and Wards in the relationship between say, the Central Coast appellation and the specific AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) like Paso Robles and Arroyo Grande Valley. In South Africa, the Stellenbosch District represents the larger wine region, while the Wards are the equivalents of our AVAs.

The Simonsberg Ward takes its name from its primary geographical feature, Simonsberg Mountain, which nicely separates the Stellenbosch and Paarl wine districts, much as the Mayacamas mountains separate California’s Napa and Sonoma counties.

Simonsberg Ward is home to a mere 15 wine producers, most of whom focus on growing Bordeaux varietals and blended wines on the sloping, rocky hillsides that ring the craggy mountain.

After tasting a couple nice Sauvignon Blancs on the patio (with little space for me to take notes) we moved into a restaurant for lunch and tasting wines. Here are my notes from the wines I tasted. I found the wines competently made and varietally true, and some had great personalities. In addition to standard Bordeaux blends, some of the red blends in the area also contain Syrah as well as Pinotage, South Africa’s signature cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsault.

I believe that I may have missed one or two wines on offer, but I plan on seeking them out at the convention tomorrow.

TASTING NOTES:

2004 Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Inky ruby in color this wine has an intense nose of espresso and black cherry aromas. In the mouth it is soft and rich with flavors of cherry, plum, wet earth, and a spicy cedar note that seems to ride on the back of the suede-like tannins. Nice finish. Score: around 9. Cost: $27. Where to buy?

2000 Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Inky Garnet in the glass, this wine smells of cedar and sawdust with a hint of red fruit lying underneath. In the mouth it is lean and taut with flavors of cherry, sawdust, and caramel, and light, dusty tannins. The fruit has dried somewhat but has not been replaced by more interesting secondary aromas and flavors. Score: around 8.5. Cost: n/a

2006 Warwick Estate “Trilogy” Red Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Dark garnet in color, this wine smells of cassis and black cherry. In the mouth it is medium bodied with nice, smooth tannins that wrap around flavors of black cherry, and then on the finish, sweet cocoa. Pleasant but not amazing. Score: around 8.5. Cost: $??

2004 Tokara Cabernet Sauvignon, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of earth, leather, and tobacco aromas. On the palate it offers a straightforward combination of cherry, spices, and a heavy helping of oak and vanilla, that ends up being the lasting impression of the wine. Score: around 8.5. Cost: $??

2005 Rustenberg “John X. Merriman″ Bordeaux Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Dark garnet in color, this wine has a remarkably savory nose of mixed herbs and what I’ll call “tree bark″ aromas. In the mouth it centers on cherry flavors with a good helping of oak and dried herbs, and some unfortunate alcoholic heat towards the finish. Score: around 8.5. Cost: $20. Where to buy?

2004 Deleheim “Grand Reserve” Bordeaux Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium ruby in the glass, this wine smells of a very pretty concoction of cherry, mint, and leather aromas. In the mouth the leather quality persists both in flavor as well as the texture of its grippy tannins. The primary fruit is a bright cherry that mixes with a nice minerality that lingers in the finish. Very Bordeaux in style. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $??

2007 Laibach “The Ladybird” Bordeaux Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Dark garnet in color, this wine has a promising nose of mocha and hazelnut aromas. In the mouth, however, it leaves something to be desired. All the flavor sensations seem to be at the top of the mouth, as this high-toned wine slides by the palate without engaging it, leaving very pretty aromas of cassis and oak but not much body to show for them. Score: around 8. Cost: $??

1995 Kanonkop “Paul Sauer” Red Wine, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium garnet in the glass, this wine has a leathery nose, as if it brushed by a saddle shop on the way to the barrel. In the mouth it is smooth and lean, with sandalwood, and very soft cherry aromas that mix with incense qualities that show the wines age quite prettily. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: n/a

2004 Kanonkop “Paul Sauer″ Red Wine, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Inky garnet in the glass this wine has a powerful nose of dark cherry, espresso, and tobacco aromas. In the mouth it is round, lush and juicy with cherry and black cherry aromas that are nicely balanced with earthier, mineral complexity. Velvety tannins trace through this perfectly dry, poised wine that feels like a river of cherry silk in the mouth. A gorgeous finish rounds out this absolutely top notch wine. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: ??.

2005 Le Bonheur “Prima″ Red Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a bright cherry smell, and primarily cherry flavors in the mouth. The wine shows a bit too much of the green bell pepper characteristic that is common sometimes in Cabernet Sauvignon for my taste. For those who are not put off by such flavors (which are a lot of people) this is a straightforward wine. Score: between 8 and 8.5. Cost: $14.Where to buy?

2005 Uitkyk “Carlonet” Cabernet Sauvignon, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium ruby in the glass this wine has a promising nose of cherry, leather, and earth aromas. In the mouth it offers a core of cherry fruit with lots of earth tones that somewhat overwhelm the fruit. These darker notes, combined with the drying tannins make for a wine that seems more bitter than it should be. Score: between 8 and 8.5. Cost: $??

2005 Quoin Rock Syrah, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine has a pretty nose of cassis and floral aromas. In the mouth it has, classic, strong blackberry flavors, and an unusual touch of chocolate before it heads to a finish that brings in tones of violets. Score: around 8.5. Cost: ??

2004 Morgonhof Estate Red Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium to dark ruby in color, this wine has a wonderfully earthy nose. In the mouth it offers rich black cherry flavors with a nice spicy black pepper quality that tends a little towards the bitter side as the wine finishes. Score: around 8.5. Cost: ??

2005 Remhoogte Red Cape Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium ruby in the glass, this wine has an odd nose of aromas that seem both vegetal as well as gamey while at the same time being neither. In the mouth it is smooth and soft on the tongue with dried fruit characteristics of prunes, figs, and chocolate, with an undercurrent of the vegetal, that I attribute to the including of Pinotage in this blend of Cabernet and Merlot. Score: around 8. Cost: ??.

2005 Knorhoek “Pantere” Red Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a nose of cassis and wet earth aromas that are quite inviting. On the palate, the wine is a nice balance between rich earth tones of mud and leather and fresh cherry fruit. Nice texture and acid make it easy to drink. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: ??.

2005 Laibach “Widow’s Block” Cabernet Sauvignon, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine grabs your attention the moment the earthy, cherry aromas hit your nose. By the time you’ve got even just a little bit of the wine in your mouth you are tasting chocolate and cherries, bouncy with juicy acidity. And by the time the velvet tannins snake their way around your tongue and the wine is finishing beautifully, you already know you’re going to take another sip. Score: around 9. Cost: ??

2005 Muratie “Ansela vin de cab” Red Blend, Simonsberg Ward, Stellenbosch, South Africa
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a pungent nose of chocolate and smoky aromas. In the mouth that smoky quality persists quite strongly, incorporating woody, cherry flavors into a lean angular body. Quite distinctive, but not utterly compelling. Score: between 8 and 8.5. Cost: ??

Original post by Alfonso Cevola

One of the greatest, though imminently forgivable, crimes perpetrated by a large number of even the most knowledgeable wine lovers consists of the tendency to consume great wines before they have had the opportunity to fully develop. Sometimes referred to as “infanticide,” this practice varies in its levels of extremity depending on the category of wine.

In my opinion, perhaps the most slighted of all categories in this respect is California Pinot Noir. While it may not have the aging potential of Burgundy (though we don’t really know for sure — no one has been making really serious Pinot Noir in the state for the 50 years it would take to find out) California Pinot can age beautifully over two decades, a fate that it is unfortunately only rarely allowed to achieve.

I only started aging California Pinots beginning with the 1996 vintage, and only a bottle or two survived to recent years to shame me into the realization I had drunk many far too early. But I had the good fortune to purchase a portion of an acquaintance’s collection of old California Pinot a few years ago, and I have been reveling in my exploration of these older wines, of which this particular bottle is one.

Walter Hansel made himself a good living in the late 1970s as the owner of a number of car dealerships in Sonoma County, where he made his home. As a lifelong wine lover with a good deal of property in the Russian River Valley appellation, it was an easy choice as to what to do with some extra savings. Hansel’s vineyard plantings began in 1978, and were increased in fits and starts over the years to the present holdings of about 65 acres down the road from names like Kistler and Dehlinger. From the first plantings, the grapes were sold to surrounding vintners while the family made small amounts of wine for themselves.

Sadly, Walter Hansel died in 1996, the same year he and his son Stephen had decided to commercially release wine for the first time. That year the winery produced a mere 70 cases of estate Pinot Noir, which this bottle was a member.

After taking over the winery from his father, Stephen was mentored in his initial explorations as a winegrower and winemaker by friend Tom Rochioli, who knew a thing or two about growing Burgundian varietals in the Russian River Valley. With Rochioli’s help, Hansel carefully grew the estate with plantings of specific clones of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay matched to the three soil types that pervaded the family’s vineyards.

The estate continues to produce small lots of mostly single vineyard designated wines in quantities between 100 and 800 cases. The fruit for all the wines is carefully hand-harvested before or at dawn, and rigorously sorted in the field, and then again at the winery. The clusters of fruit are destemmed, sorted again, and undergo a cold soak before beginning fermentation. After that point, very little is done to the wine — it ferments with natural yeasts in open top fermenters, and is aged in various French oak barrels that vary in age from new to two years in age.

It was a distinct pleasure to revisit the first vintage of what has become a quiet member of the upper echelon of Russian River Valley Pinot Noir producers. The wine remains a great testament to the man whose name it bears.

Tasting Notes:
Light ruby in color, fading slightly to pink at the edges, this wine has a heady nose of hibiscus, raspberry, and hints of smoked meats. In the mouth the wine is beautifully structured with excellent acidity, velvet texture, and light tannins that merge with an overall earthy quality. The primary flavors on the palate are rooibos, wet dirt, raspberry, and exotic spices which linger into a finish that is literally minutes long. Outstanding, easily could age for another 5 to 10 years, and a slap in the face for those who think that California Pinot Noir has a short lifespan.

Food Pairing:
We drank this wine with a simple dinner of roast pork tenderloin and sauteed rainbow chard.

Overall Score: around 9.5

How Much?: unknown

This wine is nearly impossible to find except in the collections of those who were fortunate enough to take a gamble on the winery’s first vintage. If you ever see a bottle, snap it up.

Original post by Alfonso Cevola