Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

I remember the first time I ever smelled sage in a wine. Not just a little hint, but plunged my nose into the glass and immediately felt as though my entire nasal passage was filled by the smell of fresh sage. (The wine was 1997 Beaune 1er Cru Greves "Vigne de l'Enfant Jesus, Bouchard Pere et fils).

While I've always been a huge fan of sage, across the board I love all fresh herbs. They are highly under-utilized by the home chef, who can add just a touch to almost any dish and improve its flavor and expression immensely. Since my plants are finally coming up, I thought I'd pass on some quick and easy ideas for what to do with your herb garden. If you DON'T have an herb garden, consider it this year. For the price of a handful of plants ($10), a few flower pots ($15) and some soil ($7) the results are, to steal a phrase, priceless.

Rosemary - cut up new potatoes, douse heavily in olive oil, garlic salt pepper and finish with fresh rosemary. Put it under the broiler. A great side for your next cookout. Or get some baker's yeast, flour, water and olive oil, mix in some fresh rosemary and put your choice of olives, sund-dried tomatoes, etc on top for easy foccaccia.

Basil - Insalata Cabrese is a favorite. Fresh buffalo mozzarella, slice tomato, and basil leaves drizzled with olive oil. Or ender fat from pancetta, sautee garlic and shallots, add whole tomatoes and basil and cook low, slow and long for a great pasta sauce.

Sage - one of my all-time favorite appetizer/first courses, from David Rosengarten: Sausage-Stuffed Radicchio Cups.

Parsley - Add chopped parsley, capers and a bit of dry mustard to Chopped Tuna for the best tuna tartare.

Send me your ideas if you have more to add, we'd love to add it to our recommendations.

(My mint is still coming alive, but you can be sure that when it does, I will be mixing up a mint julip and doing some sun tanning).

I have some interested wines to taste later in the week, and hope to explore a much discussed question, to age or not age in my next post...

It's a Girl!

After a false alarm Monday and another 20+hour wait on Thursday, I am finally an Uncle. Riley Elizabeth Puckey needed a bit of time in the oven but I'm happy to that she is doing fine and came home to my sister's today.

Now, I'd imagine her parents are thinking about things such as college, whether she'll be a ballerina or a teacher, you know, the important things. Of course these are the last things that a Wine Consultant like myself would want to be bothered with right now; the most obvious question is, how will the 2007 Vintage turn out, since these will be Riley's birth year wines. I admit that I'm pretty twisted.

It's an important consideration. Very few years produce excellent wines in every wine region, and not every well-made wine will age for the requisite twenty-one years or more required to head into adulthood in style. As a wine consultant, if I had a dime for every time I was asked, "My daughter was born in xxxx, what wine should I buy to celebrate her 21st Birthday", I would already be retired. So without further ado, for your consideration and reference, here's my far-from-complete, super-unofficial birth year wine chart:

2005 Bordeaux, Sauternes, Burgundy, Northern Rhone, Southern Rhone, Spain, Australia
2004 Port, Spain, Italy, selected Bordeaux and California Cabs
2003 Rhone, Burgundy, Bordeaux
2002 Burgundy, California Reds, Australian Reds
2001 California Reds, Burgundy (Cote de Nuits), Sauternes, Rhones north and south
2000 Bordeaux, Port, Rhones especially Southern, Italy
1999 Burgundy, Rhones especially Northern, Italy
1998 Rhones, Bordeaux (Right Bank), selected Burgundy
1997 Italy, California
1996 Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux (Left Bank), Spain

That'll give you a decade to play with for starters. Keep in mind that buying the best producers as well as the producers noted for longevity will go along way in making sure Birthday #21 is special, but without proper, that is, impeccable, storage, you might as well just flush your money (and wine) down the toilet...

Bing!

“When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.”

Being a big fan of Bill Murray (a living White Guy) and Anton Chekhov (a Dead White Guy) I couldn’t help but think of the above quote from Groundhog Day this afternoon as continued working my way through some of the latest releases of Pope Valley Winery. It was the Rose that had me particularly yearning for this weather to break.

The new apartment into which I moved several months ago has the perfect little area for a picnic with some vino and me as the grillmaster. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to make an assortment of light appetizers for a handful of my good friends – tapas – which if you read this blog regularly, I’m sure you already realize that I’m a pretty big fan of quite a few simple yet interesting dishes, much like my wine.

I cracked a bottle of Pope Valley Winery’s 2005 Sangiovese Bella Rosa this evening and it had me thinking of my upcoming gathering. First, my projected menu:

pan a la Catalana // pimientos estilo gernika // aceitunas mixtas
toasted bread topped with garlic, tomato & coriander
grilled poblano peppers with sea salt
mixed Spanish olives

serrano y manchego // champiñones al ajillo
Spanish cheese wrapped in ham
fried oyster mushrooms

paella de chorizo // pollo y limon // coredero moruno
seafood & sausage paella
chicken cooked in white wine, lemon juice and thyme
skewered marinated lamb

Now there’s no doubt in mind as I drink this wine that I’m going to have to add some tuna tartare to the list, but this wine is what I’ll be serving – along with some Sangria and some sherry and probably some Madeira when it’s time to relax.

I have always personally thought that the White Zinfandel Craze is kind of off base. Not that I have a problem with pink wines – by all means I love rose wine. But White Zinfandel comes from the (red) zinfandel grape. Zinfandel generally achieves uber-maturity, and so when making White Zin, rather than fermenting it to 16% alcohol they leave a bit of sugar. (Sugar converts to alcohol in fermentation. To simplify, if a winemaker leaves some unfermented sugar in a wine, the alcohol is less.) I generally don’t like sweet wines unless they have quite a bit of acidity to counterbalance them (such as in a well-made German Riesling). That’s why I’ve always thought lower-alcohol grapes such as Pinot Noir and (as is the case here) Sangiovese make better rose – pink wines.

In the bottle I have before me, the Pope Valley Winery 2005 Sangiovese Bella Rosa, I have a wine that served just slightly chilled (European Cellar Temperature – about 55 degrees), would pair with just about anything – and certainly please the most discerning palate when served with a diverse menu of foods such as those listed above. I’m looking forward to my upcoming picnic and more bottles of Pope Valley’s Wine. Dry, versatile and spicy with a touch of clay and a touch of chocolate. Nice acidity, fresh and aromatic. I can already taste it with pan a la Catalana and some paella. I suggest you to do the same! For the record, this would be great with one of my favorite slightly pretentious but inexpensive brunch items - an omelette of tomatoes, leeks and steamed mussels. Or Quiche. Or just about anything else one can dream up for a nice brunch...

So although I am starting to belive the words of Phil Connors, who tells us, “There is no way this winter is *ever* going to end as long as that groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any way out of it,” I’m looking forward to some tapas and rose REALLY SOON, on the deck with some friends!

What clear liquor is drunk more often than Vodka, Gin or Rum?

The surprising answer is Soju, a Korean distilled spirit with which thanks to many very good Korean friends I have quite a bit of experience. Although it's a bit of a departure from my normal topics, a recent and very informative episode of The Thirsty Traveler got me thinking that it might be a good topic to explore.

Admittedly I have had A LOT of Soju at select celebrations with some of my best freinds in the world, but knew little bout the beverage itself until now. What follows is mostly information collected from The Thirst Traveler and from Wikipedia. But I hope you enjoy learning about this exotic beverage all the same.

Soju is an alcoholic beverage with origins in Korea. The main ingredient is rice, almost always in combination with other ingredients such as wheat, barley, sweet potato, or tapioca (called dangmil in Korean). Soju is clear in color and typically varies in alcohol content from about 20% to about 45% alcohol by volume (ABV), with 20% ABV being most common. Its taste is comparable to vodka, though it is often slightly sweeter due to the addition of sugar in the manufacturing process.

There are two styles of Soju - old style and new style. Old Style Soju is extremely high in alcohol, and as far as I can tell pretty similar to a grappa or something similar. Old Style Soju is made with rice. New Style Soju has more variable contributions, often beginning with rice but also other additions such as tapioca or sweet potatoes. It's probably this mixture of ingredients that makes Soju remind me of Gin more than other "White Liquors".

Along with the mass-produced brands, which are widely available in Korea, there are several regions which are famous for making soju in a more traditional way, with the soju made in Andong being the most famous ( apoint that The Thirsty Traveler episode pointed out). I must say that for me watching elderly Korean women making artisan Soju in Andong as featured on the television program was one of the most truly fascinating things I have ever seen.

Soju is typically consumed in small shot glasses. The traditional toast is "Kombe!" A guest (and host) will often show respect by pouring and/or accepting the shot of Soju with two hands. When drinking with an elder, it is customary to turn your body entirely away and do the shot facing away from this person as a sign of respect.

What to eat with Soju. Again The Thirsty Traveler showed a beautiful recipe. A thin slice of flattened beef is layered with cooked black rice and julienned carrots. It is rolled and tied. The exterior is seared and flambeed in flaming soju, about 30 seconds a side. Set it aside so the jusices stay inside and then slice medallions.

Kombe!

Uncle Pythagoras Would be Proud

I wanted to talk today about the use and misuse of the word "terroir". I will not give in to my desire to defend my beliefs as a "terroirist" despite my yearning to do so. But, whether one agrees with terroir or not, its frequent misuse only adds to everyone's confusion. Continuing with my theme of Dead White Guy refernces, I was thinking of how similar it was to the Pythagorean Theorem: in a right-angled triangle the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse, c, is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides, b and a, that is, a2+b2=c2. One of the simplest equations ever written, but the greatest minds tried to prove it for centuries to no avail. Terroir is the Pythagorean Theorem of Wine.

Terroir is the combination of natural factors that affect the way grapes grow. I personally stick with a pretty rigid definition, namely that within the larger arena of climate, one can largely determine the character of a grape by knowing the vineyards soil, altitude, slope and aspect. The point is not whether you agree with my assessment of terroir or not. What bothers me is the misuse of the term terroir.

I FREQUENTLY see posts on discussion boards or white-collar-professionals-cum-weekend-wine writers who think that terroir means earth. "The 2005 Chateau _____ Vintage Champagne was full of terroir with earthy tones throughout." Without delving to far into details and exceptions, Champagne grows on Cretaceous Chalk, so if it was "full of terroir" or tasted of the soil, wouldn't its flavors be dominated by chalk?

The French word for earth is terre not terroir. True terroir comes from the root terre, but it's not a direct correlation. The word sinister has its Latin roots in decribing one who is left-handed, but I have yet to hear someone refer to Osama Bin-Laden as that bastard, left-handed murderer.

The use of the word terroir is not restricted to wine. Its used for other agricultural products such as cheese, but also things such as forestry, specifically oak. Scholarly research, such as that of Drs. Paul Kolesar and Bruce Beaver of Duquesne University, doesn't examine how much earthiness an oak barrel imparts on a wine (and certainly not how much the wood tastes like earth!), but rather the characteristics of oak due to the sum total of natural influences and how this in turn affects the chemical composition of the wood. It's the same thing for grapes.

March Madness Update
In an earlier post "The Ides of March", I revealed my pick for the NCAA Tourney, Georgetown. I also revealed that I am usually out of contention very early. Turns out I was spot on, as Georgetown is heading to the Final Four, and I am in the bottom 3% of ESPN's Tourney Pick 'Em.

An Apple a Day...

Wine writers and professionals write tasting notes very differently. The "old way" consisted of less flavor and aroma descriptors and concentrated a bit more on charcteristics more fundamental to a wine and its development: texture, balance, length in the palate, etc. Most of the traditional British Wine Writers favored this method. Among them is the venerable Clive Coates, M.W. (Master of Wine). Here is an example of one of Coates' tasting notes, from one of my favorite Red Burgundies, 1965 Volnay Premier Cru Champans from the Marquis d'Angerville.

"Medium-full color. This is a little lean for the vintage. But perhaps it is still closed. The nose is classy and aromatic - nutty. The finish long and satisfying. The genrosity I'm sure will appear. Very good but not the class and depth for great."

It doesn't matter that I enjoyed the wine more (several years later). What is important is how his tasting note differs from the more modern approach, generall attributed to or at least having its beginnings with Robert Parker. An example from Mr. Parker. It is the same wine, vineyard and producer, but from a more recent vintage, the 1999 vintage:

"The medium to dark ruby-colored 1999 Volnay Champans, from a 4-hectare parcel where 50% of the vines are 40 years of age and the balance over 10 years, displays a sweet blackberry nose. Medium-bodied, this wine has an excellent depth of fruit, a supple, velvety texture, and a fresh personality. Loads of intense blackberry, cassis, plum, and spice flavors can be found in its juicy and expressive character. Drink it over the next 7-8 years."

It is not my intention to debate these two disparate techniques here, but rather examine the oft-asked question: can wine writers really taste such sensations? I emphatically say yes, though I admit that my notes tend to be somewhere in between the two examples given here and if anything are usually less wordy than either.

Nonetheless, as I was sitting down for a wholesome meal of pork chops, sauerkraut and baked apples Sunday, I did my own taste test, that I invite you to repeat at home. I had purchased three types of apples, Macintosh, Fuji and "green" apples to bake with some brown sugar and to accompany my main course. If wine writers and professionals are going to distinguish between Macintosh and Fuji, they'd better have distinguishing characteristics. So I sliced away and set about my tasting.

Very quickly it became clear that the three apples smell and taste very dissimilar. The green apples as expected were typified by a brief sugar-sweetness as they tocuhed my palate and then dominated by the pronounced attack of biting, lemony acidity that followed through forever in the finish. The texture of the Macintosh struck me as it had a waxiness that was not present at all in the green apples and appeared only in traces in the Fuji apples. Flavors and aromas of bananas distinguished the Fujis. In fact the dry, waxiness coupled with the aromas and flavors in the end reminded me very much of the taste of banana as well. I'd like to repeat the experiment with other families of foodstuffs, but my initial observations are that when I say I taste green apples and when I say I taste Macintosh apples, that I am correctly pointing out very distinct flavor sensations. I suspect that with a little practice, or maybe your own experiment or two, you can do the same.

The Ides of March

This will be the last bit of culture of any sort that will be squeezed from me until at least after I'm effectively eliminated from my NCAA Tourney pool. If history is any indication (and this post will have a bit of history or at least historical context for the nerds among us), that will mean that I will again be blogging away about wine no later than Sunday, but possibly earlier. (For the record, I picked the Hoyas, and my sentimental favorite to do well was NC State because Sophomore Ben McCauley is from my home town. They got screwed by the committe and didn't make it much to my surprise. Also for the record, I coached his older brother and also defeated his father's team in a parents versus coaches game at our Championship Celebration, but the last time I saw Ben in person he was in second grade: I gather he's a bit bigger now.)

Anyways, do you know what a Hoya is? You would if you knew greek. It was once a requirement for all Georgetown students to learn both Greek and Latin and their cheer was accordingly half Greek-Half Latin, Hoyas Sextus, literally Behold that Man. You would only know that if you either went to Georgetown, knew both Greek and Latin or were a sink of useless knowledge like me. If you are one of the few that know either Greek or Latin, you may have read the words of the Greek historian Strabo, a contemporary of Caesar, who comments that, “the vine, as you thus proceed [north of Provence], does not easily bring its fruit to maturity.”* Why might that be? Because the further north one proceeds, the cooler the climate and ripeness is more difficult and alcohol is generally lower. Two milennia ago, when the wine trade was first really kicking in among the civilized world, Julius and Brutus and friends went for the sweet stuff with high alcohol.

(While we're on the subject of dead white guys, was it not Santanaya who proclaimed that, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."?)

Human beings are born with a propensity toward liking things that are sweet. (I can't find a reference for this although I've read it often, so you MD types please comment or otherwise chime in.) Since alcohol has an apparent sweetness to the palate, the macro-wineries of California basically give the consumer what they have always wanted (from the time they were children), wines with high-alcohol or wines with a bit of RS (Residual Sugar) or both. There's nothing wrong with that in of itself, I'd just like to think that most people would like their palates to advance to enjoy a wider diversity of flavor sensations than they did when they were just out of the womb. I always try to sell someone the wine that's right for them, but occassionally I fail. One of my best friends hates practically every wine that I pour, and even when I have one that I think he might like, he hates it. I simply tell him, if you have a wine (or a food item) that you don't like, try to enjoy it as best you can and think to yourself, "What might someone else enjoy about this?" That way, slowly but surely, you very well may enjoy the flavor the next time around.

* Strabo. Geographia. IV.1.2.

Millionaire's Salad

I have to be perfectly honest: before I started this entry, I had never heard of millionaire's salad. It came to me in a roundabout way. It also as far as I can tell is the most inappropriate name for a dish that I have ever seen, since the ingredients will likely cost you under $10 if you're serving less than an army. But let's backtrack a bit first.

Back in the day, I used to regularly attend wine dinners at the now defunct Judson Grill in Midtown Manhattan. Judson was great, the service was outstanding, and the food was really solid, especially for a place of it's size. I loved ending dinner with a milkshake of vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, seltzer water and a shot of Jack Daniel's. It is porbably my favorite dessert in the world to this day.

Every time I ate ate Judson Grill, there was at least one dish that blew you away, and one such dish was a hearts of plam salad. It was so perfect in it's simplicity, yet so refined. ever since then I have been a fan of hearts of palm.

Heart of palm, also called palm heart, palmito, or swamp cabbage, is a vegetable harvested from the inner core and growing bud of certain palm trees (notably the coconut (Cocos nucifera), Palmito Juçara (Euterpe edulis), Açaí palm (Euterpe oleracea), sabal (Sabal spp.) and pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes) palms). It looks a bit like the white part of a very small leek, and when it is cut up, its white concentric circles look the same.

I popped in to Trilogy Restaurant in Pittsburgh for a simple appetizer or first course and a glass of wine a few nights ago. I had a nice glass of 2003 Summerland Chardonnay from Santa Brabara and took a peak at the menu. Sure enough, hearts of palm salad. Now as I just learned prior to sitting down to type this up, hearts of palm is traditionally served in what is called millionaire's salad (who knew?). Since I had never heard of this, and because it's quick and simple to make, I thought I'd mention it here, before I move on to telling you about the Trilogy Salad I did have.

Millionaire's Salad is artichoke hearts, olives, pimentos, and muchrooms with a red wine vinaigrette and some spices (the recipe I found calls for garlic, thyme and parseley). Since it sounds so delicious and simple, and since I suspect that many of you have heard of such as salad I though it deserved mentioning. I also think it would be a nice spring salad and alternative to your normal antipasti.

But here's what I had, and my very abstract recipe for it as I remember it from Trilogy.

* 1 14oz can hearts of palm, drained and sliced into dimes sized circles
* 1/2 lb shrimp, boiled or otherwise pre-cooked however you'd like
(grilling the shrimp might actually be nice come to think of it)
* 1/2 box of pre-cooked pasta, al dente, erring on the harder rather than softer side for texture

I'd put some oil and vinegar on them and let them sit and chill for about two hours and then add about 4 Tbsp. of basil pesto and salt and pepper to taste. Sqeeze some lemon juice over it, mix it up one last time and serve...

So there you have it, two simple, inexpensive salads that will add a liitle bit of diversity to your next gathering. Try it with a clean light to medium white, such as:

2005 Bourassa Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc
2004 Adastra Chardonnay, Carneros
2004 Temecula Hills "No Oak" Chardonnay, Temecula

Ernest Gallo 1909-2007

It is with sadness that I report that Ernest Gallo has died. I have had my hand on the keyboard and eyeballs on the computer screen all day and was unaware of this event until just now. To paraphrase the CNBC announcement that just played in my background, "Ernest Gallo took a recipe for wine that he found in the Modesto Public Library and turned E & J Gallo into the world's largest winery". That's the embodiment of the American Dream.


Here's how Gallo changed the industry. Gallo was the first wine company to hire and train a sales staff spefically to market its brands in individual markets. For example, let's say I sell Chateau Alan at a retail store in New York. I speak to a rep for the New York distributor if I have questions. That rep also sells 300 other wines form all over the world. He gets Chateau Alan from another company in California who has about 50 different wineries they represent. With Gallo, there's a Gallo salesperson in all markets, who is responsible for Gallo products and that's it and he or she works for Gallo. That's the case a little more often with other large wineries and wine conglomerates, but Gallo was first.

I found this amusing write-up from the James Beard Foundation:

"After the war, Ernest devised a bold new advertising campaign for the company, transforming America's relationship with wine with his famous "lifestyle" billboards and ads. And in 1945, he brought his little winery to national attention by convincing Life magazine to attend a grape crush at the winery (the key selling point was a scantily-clad woman bathing in wine). But Ernest's success was due as much to little things as to big ones. He constantly visited stores across the country that stocked his wine, checking on bottle positioning, displays and sales. (He was, as Anthony Dias Blue of Bon Appétit recalls, once arrested in a tiny town in Texas for lurking in local liquor stores. When he explained that he was Ernest Gallo, the sheriff reportedly replied, "and I'm George Washington," and carted him off to jail). Ernest was tireless-and effective. Between 1948 and 1955, sales rose 400%. He set down his precepts in a three-hundred-page secret marketing "Bible" that the family still uses. He is, Dias Blue asserts, unquestionably "a marketing genius."

Here is the E&J Gallo Press Release.

So, raise your next glass to a wine industry innovator and legend who lived the American Dream to the fullest...

Glory Days

I ended last night in conversation with a friend about modern business classics such as Den of Thieves, Liar's Parker, The Smartest Guys in the Room and A Random Walk. We were discussing the efficiency and inefficiency of financial markets. It got me thinking again about wine prices and my most recent "random walk" down the aisles of a wine store.

As I perused the selections available, a few bottles of Calera Pinot Noir, the single-vineyard stuff, caught my eye. $55 a bottle. If you have been into wine for a while, you'll remember the following. If you're new to wine, the story is as meaningful as ever.

Calera is an outstanding producer of California Pinot Noir. For a while in the mid-1990's, Calera was fairly cultish, tough to find, expensive vis-a-vis its peers at the time, but certainly of high quality. I dug out my notes on a seven-year old Calera from a wine dinner on February 3rd, 2001:

1994 Calera Pinot Noir, Selleck
Very good concentration of raspberries and cassis. Structured by nice, ripe tannins. Nice wine...etc, etc.

A fine showing by a seven-year old California Pinot Noir being that most are made in a more fashionable, drink-me-know fashion.

It was right around this time give or take a year or maybe a few months, that Josh Jensen of Calera came out with his now (in)famous newsletter of new releases wherein he explained that the he was rasing the price of Calera's single vineyard offering from $55 to $80 per bottle in order to keep his prices even with other top Pinot Noirs from California. Everyone in the wine business walked around with the same type of buzz that many of us had Tuesday morning as we saw months of growth in our 401(k)'s vanish (okay, perhaps I'm being a bit melodramatic, but you get the point). Not long thereafter, although quality has never waned, Calera dropped off the radar quite a bit.

So, during my recent "random walk" it was fitting that I saw Calera Selleck vineyard waiting for me on the shelf. After a period of time where Calera Pinot Noir was overpriced, the Calera stable has experienced a "market correction" and has returned to $55 dollars a bottle, right back where it was about seven years ago. I had visions of Jim Cramer in my head ("Buy!Buy!Buy!") and picked up a bottle to enjoy with a steak that evening. Admittedly, I enjoyed every last sip.

[Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days plays in the background. Fade.]

California Dreamin...

As the checkered flag dropped on yesterday's Auto Club 500, a 500-mile race in Fontana, California, I couldn't help but think to myslef that I wish I had made a weekend of it. I could've left Fonatana in the early evening following what was a pretty exciting race, caught some zzz's and been off early this morning to head down Route 15 to Temecula. Temecula is a great starting point for one's exploration of California's relatively unknown South Coast wineries, and one couldn't do better than beginning the morning at Temecula Hills Winery.

Admittedly, Temecula Hills winery is quite a bit larger than the micro-wineries we normally represent, but that doesn't mean there still isn't that homey feeling. The reason most wineries in the surrounding areas are on the larger side is part geography, part history. First of all, it is generally less mountanous here, and as a result there are less obtrusive geographical boundaries that naturally separate tracts of land. Secondly, this area is relatively new to commercial planting, and so a small number of (in my opinion very wise) investors were able to walk in and find the space to plant vineyards without restriction. This is not unlike what happened in the "lesser" AVA's located in the Central Coast in the 1960's.

Here's the difference. There are several ways to make the "rich, buttery" Chardonnays for which California wineries were long noted. The two most common are through full malo-lactic fermentation and the other is through the use of oak. If a winery employs both techniques without care, the result is an opulent, blowsy white that is more of a meal than a refreshment, and not entirely what I want.

This needs explanation. When Chardonnay grapes ferment - that is, turn their natural sugars into alcohol - that is called primary fermentation. The wine that results has a lot of green apple flavor and acidity, something known as malic acid. There another conversion that takes place, malo-lactic or secondary fermentation, that changes this more biting acidity into a creamier textured acidity, lactic acidity. (Think malic - milk, it is the same acid.) So there is a smoother mouthfeel. Winemakers allow malolactic fermentation to occur in varying degrees, some may choose no malolactic, full malolactic or somewhere in between. If the grapes are ultraripe, ultrasweet and high in alcohol (alcohol adds apparent sweetness to alcoholic beverages such as wine) then the wine becomes too "soft" in the mouth, very full, too creamy and overall not that friendly with most foods.

The same thing can happen with oak. Oak adds a certain vanilla, coconut flavor to the wine (in varying degrees depending on a lot of factors, a topic I hope to explore in the future). With the vanilla, coconut flavoring from oak and full malo-lactic fermentation and a lot of heat (and hence ripeness and alcohol), the wine becomes unbearably clumsy, weighty and sweet.

Luckily, one of our favorite stops in Temecula, where it is quite warm, is Temecula Hills Winery. Realizing that balance is always required in a wine (balance, as my regular readers already know, is what I most prize in a wine), Temecula Hills makes their Chardonnay sans oak, offering instead, pure, natural Chardonnay flavors and the essence of sunny Southern California. They opt for an unoaked Chardonnay, skipping the sweet oaky flavors that might throw the wine out of balance. The wine that results is fresh, flavorful juice that has a nice backbone.

Those of us on the east coast about now could probably use a bit of sunny, Southern California in a bottle. If you do, like I do, I recommend 2004 Temecula Hills Winery Unoaked Chardonnay without hesitation. Sunshine in a bottle - without the sunburn: Enjoy!

The Results Are In: Double Gold Best in Show

I discussed one of our latest additions, Escafeld Winery, earlier in this blog, and, having already covered their peppery, chocolatey Zinfandel, as promised I wanted to follow up on my outstanding recent tasting of Escafeld's 2004 Petit Verdot.

Many of you may be unfamiliar with the grape Petit Verdot, but even those of you who do not know it, may have had it, at least in small doses. Petit Verdot is typically an element in Red Bordeaux, adding tannins and color to the better known Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes. Being part of the "classic Bordeaux Blend", California vintners eventually planted the grape as well.

If you drink only California Cabernet Sauvignon's and similar wines, you may still think that you have never had Petit Verdot: think again. Petit Verdot plays a supporting role in many of the most popular Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines made in California today. Names such as Rudd, Murphy-Goode, Seavey and even last year's Wine Spectator Wine of the Year, Jospeh Phelps Insignia, all contain Petit Verdot.

What's great about Escafeld is that rather than being and endnote to the story, their Petit Verdot is the body of the work. Don't be led down the path to fool's gold in thinking that if Petit Verdot is never seen alone in Bordeaux that it won't make anything special; Monterey County is a long way from Bordeaux. Given that it is often quite easy to tell the difference between Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa as opposed to Sonoma, wouldn't it make sense that Petit Verdot would take on different charcteristics than it does 6,000 miles away in France's famous Medoc?

I think that this wine is quite simply outstanding. The wine has a firm texture, full fruit, a sleek mouthfeel and great length. You could drink it with anything from Burgers to Spicy Pasta (like the Italian Sausage Marinara concotion simmering on my stove right now). Either way, I'll skip the sales pitch and let the judges decide. The results of the recent San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition:

All Other Bordeaux Varietals - 2007 Award Winners


SCHOTT ZWIESEL Double Gold Best of Class
Escafeld 2004 Petit Verdot San Antonio Valley, Monterey County, CA


SCHOTT ZWIESEL Gold
Cinnabar Vineyards 2003 Malbec

SCHOTT ZWIESEL Silver
Berryessa Gap Vineyards 2004 Malbec Berryessa Gap Vineyards
deLorimier 2003 Malbec Alexander Valley Estate
Mosaic 2004 Malbec Alexander Valley
Opolo Vineyards 2004 Petit Verdot Paso Robles
Rancho Sisquoc 2004 Malbec Flood Family Vineyards
Reininger Winery 2003 Carmenére Walla Walla Valley 7 Hills
Snake River Winery 2004 Malbec Wood River Vineyard
Stonegate Winery 2003 Petit Verdot Napa Valley, Wappo Vineyard
Stryker Sonoma Winery 2004 Petit Verdot Knights Valley Speedy Creek Vineyard

SCHOTT ZWIESEL Bronze
Forest Glen Winery 2003 Malbec
Lapis Luna 2004 Petit Verdot San Luis Obispo
McKenzie-Mueller Vineyards & Winery 2003 Malbec

As an addendum, the 2004 Escafeld Petit Verdot is the first ever winery to bear the AVA name of San Antonio Valley .. things look pretty promising so far!

Trust me...

A recent post by our CEO, William Bellomo gives further details on Silver Mountain owner Jerold O'Brien.

Selling wine is a tough job in some ways. My clients who have known me for five or ten years get used to trusting me and know that I will do my best to bring them the best wine for them. Those long-time customers, who I prefer to think of as friends, understand my sometimes simple and straightforward words. For those friends of mine, I tell them "listen buy Silver Mountain wine".

The pinots are great. The chard is great. These are wines that are priced well below what they are worth and deliver. Given the facts that William has presented in his blog, it is clear that Mr. O'Brien is an interesting an accomplished gentleman. But more than that, we have a great time in Santa Cruz when we visit him. He is extremely pleasant anmd very welcoming. When I can sell great wines, at great prices, made by great people, my job suddenly becomes easier.

I would love to have you visit Silver Mountain's product page. Our inboxes and phones are always waiting for you. If you have any questions, give us a call. These are great wines, at great prices, made by great people. Trust me.

The Great American Grape

As a follow up to my previous post that included my resipe for Al's Super-Easy Chili, I wanted to discuss what wines to drink with it. Instinctively, maybe refelxively, if I am asked what wine to drink with Spicy Tex-Mex dishes or just anything on a grill save grilled fish, my answer is usually Zinfandel. After all, we are talking about "the Great American Race" and from a gastronomical standpoint, grilling is as American as Apple Pie and chili probably figures in there somewhere as well.

So why Zinfandel? From wikipedia,

Although similar to other varieties of the Vitis vinifera imported from Europe, Zinfandel was long considered "America's vine and wine." Zinfandel was brought to the United States (Long Island) from a varietal collection of the Imperial State Nursery of Vienna in the 1820s. In the cooler climates it was grown in greenhouses. In California the first Zinfandel vineyards were planted in the 1830s. Its popularity grew swiftly, and by the end of the 19th century it became the most widespread variety in the US.

Vintners have grown Zinfandel in quantity for over one hundred years. Many of the oldest wineries in California grow Zinfandel and the vines are now treated almost like historic landmarks. At the start of prohibition Zinfandel was California's most popular and successful variety. During prohibition, limited home winemaking and the production of sacramental wine was allowed, and Zinfandel remained popular with Northern California's home wine makers. However, on the East Coast Zinfandel fell in popularity and was replaced by thicker-skinned varieties. Zinfandel's tight bunches left its thin skins susceptible to rot on the slow train rides to Eastern home wine makers. The creation of White Zinfandel in the 1970s further saved the vines by providing a larger market for the grape. In the 1990s the market for premium wine increased sufficiently that old vine Zinfandel became valuable on its own.

(Further reading of the article will show that we have in more recent times come to the conclusion that Zinfandel is probably actually from Italy, a realtive of the Primitivo grape; even so, Zinfandel secured it's place as "the Great American Grape" long ago.)


So if Zinfandel is "the Great American Grape" and foods such as Burgers and Chili are our cook's badges of honor, wouldn't be lucky if the wine and the food paired well together, so that we, like the French, Italians, etc. would have wines that go with our regional cusine? The fortunate answer is that they do.

Take, Escafeld Winery's 2003 Monterey County Zinfandel, one of our latest discoveries. Even Al's Super-Easy Chili is an incredibly complex blend of flavors - cumin, chili peppers, green peppers, black peppers, tomatoes, kidney beans, onions, beef, pork, vinegar, garlic, sharp cheddar cheese - that's a lot of different flavors in one little bowl. A wine with subtle flavors just simply doesn't work. I regualrly make the argument that Red Burgundy (Pinot Noir from France) is the world's most versatile red wine, but the Musignys and Gevreys of the world need not apply here: although they have remarkable complexity, Pinots, especially those from Burgundy, are more about finesse than pronounced flavors (not too mention haunting aromatics that would get lost in the robust scents of chili). Escafeld's Zin on the other hand, hits the spot. The interplay of spice and sweet fruits (raisins, ripe berries) not to mention the chocolatey finish mimcs the contrapuntal flavors of, for example, spanish onions and chilis.

We have already implied the nextrequirement for a Chili-wine: it must be robust, an appropriate descriptor for the Escafeld Zin. What I like a lot about the Escafeld Zin is that, while it is a full-bodied ande robust wine, it is still a wine of balance, the most important element in any wine for me. Robust yes, but all the elements are in equilibrium; not unlike the addition of vinegar in the chili, as I described it in my previous post. Too much, and you get a really strong acetic taste and smell, and you might as well start agin. But there is a certain point in any dish where the right amount of salt or acid (acetic, i.e. vinegar, or citric, i.e. lemon, lime, orange, etc.) or any wine where the right amount of alcohol, sugar, ripeness, tannin and acidity are all in perfect balance. So once you have the chili down pat, it will require much less effort to pull the cork on Escafeld's 2003 Monterey Zin. A "Great American Wine" with a "Great American Dish" during the "Great American Race": robust, balanced and simply delicious.

For more on Escafeld winery, visit their product page on www.avawine.com or visit the entertaining Vineyard Diary of our friend Elsbeth Wetherill, co-owner of Escafeld vineyards. Among other things, you can read Elsbeth's comments on Escafeld Winery's 2004 Petit Verdot, Double-Gold "Best of Class" Winner in the recent San Francisco Wine Chronicle Competition - the subject of my next blog entry.

The Great American Race

With "the Great American Game" just finished and the "the Great American Race" coming up on Sunday, it seemed like the perfect time to make a large a pot of chili and then to follow it up with a good dose of some of our new arrivals.

Part #1) Let's start with the chili.

A lot of people ask me for my chili recipe because, well, I make a good bowl of chili. The problem is, I don't really have a recipe. I also don't really do the whole measurement thing when I'm cooking, preferring instead to let my sense of smell and taste guide me. But since, it's a frequent question, here's a approximated version in a nut shell. Most people don't know the secret indgredient IMO of a good bowl of chili - vinegar. Believe me - it makes all the difference. The most common mistake people make when cooking is not using enough of the handful of things that enhance the wonderful flavors of your dishes (that is, salt, citric juice such as that of lemons and vinegars iof various types). If you don't believe me, make gazpacho some time. It's real easy. Try one bowl with no vinegar to finish it off. Try another with cheap red wine vinegar. Try a final one with good, aged red wine vinegar. I'll bet that you can tell the difference. It's the same idea here.

My easy version is as follow:
- One large chopped green onion
- Two large chopped spanish onions
- 1/4 cup chili powder
- 1 T garlic
- 1 lb. ground beef
- 1 lb. ground pork
- beef suet
- 3 large cans of diced tomatoes
- 3 small cans kidney beans



Put a large saucepan over medium heat. Put a few chunks of beef suet into the pan until it becomes liquid. Add the minced garlic, being careful not to burn. Add green pepper and cook until begins to soften. Add onion until it begins to soften. Add pork, beef and chili poweder and begin to brown. One the meat has browned the whole way through, drain tghe excess moisture and fat from the chiili. Put in your tomatoes and kidney beans and a salt and pepper to taste (this is more than you think - maybe a 1/4 cup each). Cook for as long as you can on a slow simmer, three hours or even over night if you can. Take a taste about 1/2 hour before serving and vinegar to taste. Try about a third of a cup, let it simmer for 10 minutes, and if it's still not piquant enough ad some more and repeat until you have chili with some flavor.

By the way, this makes a lot of chili, but it even goes further (and tastes better I think) if you cook up a big bowl of white rice and top the rice with the chili and then chopped red onion and sharp chedder cheese. Also, if you are interested in Texas Style Chili (chili with no beans) this recipe is complicated but the results are worth it...

Next time: finishing your pit stop with wine.

Liquid Gold

I'd like to continue with my previous post and tie everything together. The fact of the matter is that my first bottle of Sauternes was a bottle by the massive French firm Barton & Guestier. It was a wine that most aficianados would frown upon. At that moment in my life, it was the most profound sensatory experience in my life.

The only experience that rivals my first Sauternes was my taste of a most celebrated one - 1975 Chateau d'Yquem. Chateau d'Yquem, in any year, is recognized as being quite a bit better than any of its rivals - for reasons not worth getting into here. It is so recognized that it is officially recognized as such by the French INAO, the governmental agency that classifies wines. Sauternes is classified as follows:

Superior First Growth (Premier Cru Supérieur)
Château d'Yquem, Sauternes


First Growths (Premiers Crus)
Château La Tour Blanche, Bommes (Sauternes)
Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey, Bommes (Sauternes)
Clos Haut-Peyraguey, Bommes (Sauternes) (Château Clos Haut-Peyraguey)
Château de Rayne-Vigneau, Bommes (Sauternes)
Château Suduiraut, Preignac (Sauternes)
Château Coutet, Barsac
Château Climens, Barsac
Château Guiraud, Sauternes
Château Rieussec, Fargues (Sauternes)
Château Rabaud-Promis, Bommes (Sauternes)
Château Sigalas-Rabaud, Bommes (Sauternes)

Second Growths (Deuxièmes Crus)
Château Myrat, Barsac (Château de Myrat)
Château Doisy Daene, Barsac
Château Doisy-Dubroca, Barsac
Château Doisy-Vedrines, Barsac
Château D'Arche, Sauternes
Château Filhot, Sauternes
Château Broustet Barsac
Château Nairac, Barsac
Château Caillou, Barsac
Château Suau, Barsac
Château de Malle, Preignac (Sauternes)
Château Romer, Fargues (Sauternes) (Château Romer du Hayot)
Château Lamothe, Sauternes

No one really doubts that Chateau d'Yquem is a one of a kind, even the legal authorities in France. The best wine I ever had was almost without doubt the 1975 Chateau d'Yquem (a particularly good year in Sauternes); it is scored 100pts out of 100 by Robert Parker the world's leading wine authority, in other words a perfect wine.

'75 Yquem goes for about $1200 a bottle give or take nowadays, but is it worth it? My opinion is "yes", making it the first time in my life that I agree with Robert Parker I believe. Nonetheless, my experience with '75 Yquem is equalled by my Barton & Guestier of unknown vintage drunk with a friend at 6AM in a fraternity house in Chicago. 100 pointers can be disappointing if they're not shared at the right moment, with the right company.

Never believe the hype of 100 point wines (or 95 or 90 pointers for that matter). A bottle of wine is an experience. I guarantee that over the course of my life I have a higher percentage of "90 point nights" with the most simple of wines, and I know for a fact that I have had too many disappointing nights with wines that were critically acclaimed.

In summary, every wine "is worth it" if you enjoy drinking it, the company with whom you share it and that moment in time where you felt more relaxed than you do every day at work or what have you. A good wine, like a book, or an opera, or a movie or a Steelers game is incomparable at that moment in time. If you don't enjoy it, no matter what the scores say, it's not worth it...

Are Gold Prices Rising?

No. This is not another investment blog (it seems that we have enough of them). I'd like to talk about Liquid Gold, or what we wine lover's call Sauternes. The real topic is the most difficult question I get asked as a wine consultant - "Is it worth it?"

When I was in college, I began to become interested in wine. I learned the fundamental principles of the snob - the only good wine is red wine, etc., etc. - most all of them were wrong. Being the inquisitive type, I researched more extensively on the subject of wine. Eventually, I cam across the concept of Botrytis Cinarea [BAW-TRITUS].

What? BAW-TRITUS...ahem...SIN-ER-REE-AH. Here's the big problem. From a biological standpoint - actually from the standpoint of a pure obsever - it's more disgusting than it sounds. So what is it? And what does this have to do with gold?

Wikipedia tells us that Botrytis Cinarea is:

Botrytis cinerea is a fungus that affects many plant species, although its most economically important hosts are wine grapes[citation needed]. In viticulture, it is commonly known as botrytis bunch rot; in horticulture, it is usually called grey mould or gray mold. The fungus gives rise to two different kinds of infections on grapes. The first, grey rot, is the result of consistently wet or humid conditions, and typically results in the loss of the affected bunches. The second, noble rot, occurs when drier conditions follow wetter, and can result in distinctive sweet dessert wines, such as Sauternes. The species name Botrytis cinerea is derived from the Latin for "grapes like ashes"; although poetic, the "grapes" disappointingly refers to the bunching of the fungal spores on their conidiophores, and "ashes" just refers to the greyish colour of the spores en masse. The fungus is usually referred to by its anamorph (asexual form) name, because the sexual phase is rarely observed. The teleomorph (sexual form) is an ascomycete, Botryotinia fuckeliana (see taxonomy box).

Let's rewind a bit. While "Is it worth it?" might be the most difficult question I get, the most frequent one is "How did you get in the wine industry?" Here's my answer...

I was in college in Chicago. I read about Botrytis. The descriptors made it sound amazing, in fact, at least one writer dubbed it Liquid Gold. I had to try it. So I took my bartending money and bought the cheapest Sauternes I could find - the only Sauternes I could find. It was about 25 bucks for the half bottle - not much in retrospect for a good bottle of Sauternes. I bought it before I went to bartend (looking back, it was likely an '83, a great vintage) and came home to my fraternity house, grabbed a bear and decided to go to sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later: I had to taste Botrytis, I had to taste Sauternes. Liquid Gold.

I said to myself "To hell with it", and there I was, in a Fraternity House in Chicago, uncorking a bottle of wine that would determine the future of my life. A "Brother" came downstairs as I sipped Liquid Gold with glee - at six AM.

...how does all of this tie in to the question "Is it worth it?"...if you are wondering, visit us tomorrow...

It's all in the balance...

Last night, I decided to relax and catch some Jazz at the Backstage Bar at Theater Square in downtown Pittsburgh. I sipped a martini while I perused the small wine list, and immediately gravitated to the 2003 Bourgogne Pinot Noir from Joesph Faiveley. Just a standard, every day Red Burgundy, just what I wanted and at $7 a glass it wouldn't break the bank. The aromatic profile of the wine was just beautiful - a melange of red cherries and raisins. Real pretty. The problem came when I took the first sip as the tannins immediately parched my palate, prompting me to order a club soda just to scrape the wine from my tongue.

Wine has to be in balance. There's a lot of combinations that will make for a balanced wine, but what does that mean. Emile Peynaud's The Taste of Wine is a seminal book that is as influential now as it was when it was first written over thirty years ago. I do warn that this book is more than a bit technical from time to time, but there are important parts that will be understandable to all. Particularly interesting is his rather extensive treatment of how to write a tasting note. And for our purposes, the parts where he discusses balance.

In a nut shell a balanced wine follows the equation:

Acidity + Tannin => Sugar + Alcohol.

There are a few corollaries that result from this equation. Namely that if there is a lot of tannin in the wine, there shouldn't be a lot of acidity, and it certainly needs to be offset by either sugar or a good dose of alcohol. Why alcohol? I'm so glad you asked. :)

Alcohol has an apparent sweetness to the palate. Most people don't realize it but it's true. The easiest way to prove this (if you're either a real go-getter or the scientific type or both) is to set up this little experiment. Boil the alocohol out of glass of wine. Run it through glass tubing and into a beaker. When all the alcohol has boiled out replace the same amount of water into the wine as the amount of alcohol that came out. The result: the wine will be unbearably bitter, either too tannic or too acidic or both. That's because when the alcohol is in the wine, it's apparent sweetness balances the wine. Without it, the wine is plonk.

Many people criticise California wines for being too alcoholic, and it's true that some are. But in the best California wines, elevated alcohol can still make for a balanced wine - all you need is the appropriate level of tannin or acidity to work in concert with it. Conversely, if there's a lot of tannin in the wine (something that will happen naturally when it's warm out because the skins of the grapes thicken and that's where the tannin is), the wine requires high alcohol, or else it will become to tough to drink - a problem that occurred in the heat wave of 2003 in France - the very problem that tainted my experience with Faiveley's Bourgogne. It's all about the balance.

My Pick for the Year's Best Wine Book

I thought I'd take a moment since we're at year's end/beginning to highlight my favorite wine book from last year, Matt Kramer's New California Wine: Making Sense of Napa Valley, Sonoma, Central Coast, and Beyond. I first picked this book up in I believe late January last year, and I don't think that I've set it down since.

What makes Kramer's book different from the scores of other California Wine books that are available? The pimary difference is that rather than simply offering page after page of endless tasting notes, Kramer's book educates the reader. Karmer sets the tone with his entertaining first section (around 50 pages in all) entitled "Thinking California". Not a history in the traditional sense of the world, Kramer contrasts the California winemaking mindset with that of Europe, tracing the overall mentality from the industrial wineries of the past to today's cult wines.

Kramer then takes the reader through each of California's major wine regions. He looks at each region as terroir unto itself and is refreshingly frank in telling the reader whether or not this approach can be justified or not with regards to each region. In some cases, Kramer willingly admits that the region in question is merely a geographic deignation with wines of no particular distinguishing characteristics. When it is justified, Kramer takes a closer look at wines of more refinement. In addition, Kramer profiles the finest wineries, putting them of course in the context of the terroir in which they produce wine.

Overall, Kramer's New California Wine is a must-have for any serious wine lover and is written with his classic, amusing, accesible words that have made him one of America's favorite wine writers.

End the year with a boom ... or rather a Zoom!

A new year and a new winery for AVA Wine. I'd like to highlight this week the impressive and fairly priced (perhaps unfairly priced - for the winery - considering the quailty) of Zoom Vineyards. Zoom Vineyards is run by the two-headed monster of Matt Hughes who you may know from Verite, the ultra-premium Lake County affiliate of Kendall-Jackson and Christian Hackshaw, founder of Demeter Vineyards. While the winery itself concentrates on pure, small-lot Zinfandel from Lake County, I must say that a recent tasting of their 2002 Zinfandel from San Francisco Bay/Contra Costa County caught my eye, or rather my palate.

The 2002 Zinfandel, San Francisco Bay is one of the finest Zins I have tasted. It weighs in at 14.9% alcohol, but is not heavy on the palate, nor is its aromatic profile alcoholic, nor is its finish "hot". (A "hot" finish is one that tastes excessively of alcohol, perhaps reminiscent of terpentine, a common criticism of overly modern-styled wines - see my previous post for my thoughts on the subject.) This wine shows amazing restraint - and the price is tremendous for the quality of the wine, but in order to understand why, a bit of viticultural history is required. My continuous mantra through these blog entries is that a greater understanding of the individual wine leads to greater pleasure of the wine...

Old Vines
Old Vines are the key to this wine. There are arguments back and forth between old-world, old-school producers and modernists, but the proverbial thorn in the side of the modernists is that, quite simply, over the course of time the human race improves and learns. Wines from the prominent European viticultural areas do have an advantage, whether we Americans would like to admit or not: trial and error over the course of ten centuries has certain advantages to what is essentailly the cottage wine industry in California. Monks during the Crusades already knew the finest locations to grow vines. It's reasonable to think that in the forty years of the rebirth of the California wine industry, that they have learned less about the best-situated vineyards than Europeans have over many centuries. (This is not to say that they have not learned more rapidly, probably much more rapidly than any of the world's major viticultural regions how to do it right and fast.) Given this amazing head start of many hundreds of years, almost any other deprivement should have put the California wine industry irreperably behind, right? The fact that it didn't, is as a amazing as the story of the United States of America itself.

So what was the straw that somehow didn't break the camel's back? In 1919, 46 of 48 states ratified the Volstead Act making it unlawful to manufacture, transport or sell alcohol anywhere in the United States. Prohibition entered the constitution as Amendment 18 on January 16, 1920, and the California wine industry suddenly faced something more challenging than the head start that Europe had gained through centuries of expermientation. There were a little over seven hundred wineries in the budding California wine industry; by the end, it had almost dwindled to nothing. Many farmers ripped up their vines and planted other more lucrative, that is, legal crops that could be manufactured, transported and sold like any other agricultural commodity. The vines disappeared daily...

Of course prohibition was later repealed thanks the passage of the 21st amendment. There were obviosuly many long term effects, some of which I hope to discuss in future entries, but for now, I'd like to isolate the importance one factor in particular - that of the age of the vines.

The casual wine drinker may be unaware as to how important many seemingly insignificant factors are to producing top quality wines. Vine age is particularly poignant when considering the 2002 Zinfandel San Francisco Bay of Zoom Vineyards. In the 1920's, when nearly every vineyard was ripped up in California, it almost signalled the end to wine in America as we know it. Luckily a few vineyards and wineries perservered. While the French had their own problems (a vine pest named phyloxerra that destroyed most all their vines in the late 1800's), when prohibition was repealed in 1933, most French vines were already nearly 50 years old. In California, the wineries that gave it go following prohibition were forced to begin again, and the French now had an additional forty year lead. But why does it matter?

Old vines do something special. The longer a vine lives, the deeper it works itself into the soil. It can more easily reach water reserves far beneath the soil'd surface horizon and their more extensive network of vines has a greater area exposed to the soil, offering more outlets to seek nutrients from the earth. All other things being equal, old vines have the best chance of creating world-class wine.

Luckily, a small handful of vineyards continued through Prohibition. One of these was the Continente Family Vineyard in Contra Costa County. This is where we find the vines for the 2002 San Francisco Bay Zinfandel of Zoom Vineyards. The vines are 106 years old! I can think of only a handful of European vineyards whose vines exceed the century-mark in age: in the Unoted States, where five and ten year old vines are the norm, vines of this age are almost never seen!

So the 2002 Zooom Zin SF Bay is, despite it's youthful creators, a dinosaur of sorts, a beckon to the old days of California wine. Wines who siphon over 100 years of natural goodness directly into their grapes.

My notes, show that the wine is not overwhelming in spite of it's elevated alcohol (although in the grand scheme of things - under 15% is not all that high for powerhouse red Zins). The nose reminds me at first, not of Claifornia Zin, but of a complex, traditionally made Eurpoean wine, likely of Mediterranean climate. Its expressive, chocolately nose hints more of a top-shelf Italian wine - Brunello di Montalcino comes to mind - than California. The wine does not smack you in the face; in fact, it is rather subtle all said and done, and truth be told, it is quite intellectual, with each sip offering something new, than most every Zin on the market. The palate is so smooth, and finishes with a mouth-puckering note of tannin that will work perfectly with your braised red meats when it's cold, or your grilled steaks and burgers this summer. The rasin-filled palate has the weet, bitter and sour flavors of that dried dark fruit that hits and appeals all parts of the palate. The raspeberry highlights only a enhance the wine that develops and reveals itself in waves as it opens in the glass. What a beautiful wine! It's amazing what old vines can do...

I think Miles was wrong...for some

The movie Sideways made Pinot Noir popular and Merlot passe. Everyone remembers Miles' now famous proclamation, "I am not drinking ******* Merlot! If anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving!" As a Pinotphile myself, I understand where he's coming from. At the same time, the fact that sales of Pinot Noir are up 120% over the past two years gives me pause. As someone who has sold millions of dollars worth of Pinot Noir over the years, I can tell you this - I expect the sales to slow up in a hurry. If I were starting my own winery in California today, I wouldn't plant Pinot Noir. Let me tell you why.

First there are the basics - Pinot Noir is hard to grow. Pinot Noir is completeley different from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Shiraz. These wines derive their dense, purple hues from the thick skins of those grapes. The thick skins protect the wines from many harmful natural factors such as intense sunlight. The skin of Pinot Noir is usually quite thin. (A corollary of the thickness or lack thereof of the skin is that Pinot Noir is usually lighter in color.) Because the skin is not as thick as that of other red grapes, Pinot Noir is more likely to be damaged by natural elements and also highly susceptible to rot! Rot in your wine is bad! It tastes horrible. When Cabernet for instance is underripe, there is a vegetal green bean character that develops. I'd take a vegetal Cab over a rotten Pinot noir any day! If you don't believe me, try a bad 1983 Burgundy: then you'll understand why really quickly.

Because it's difficult to grow, and requires enormous attention, something of which I am largely incapable (I am mre the visionary-type than detail-oriented), Pinot Noir and I would be a bad mix. But that's not the real reason: the real reason is that, despite the current trendiness of Pinot Noir, I think most casual wine drinkers enjoy Merlot more than Pinot Noir, unless the Pinot Noir is made poorly (more on this below).

Because of the skin differential, the wines are fundamentally different. Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz age because of tannins. That is because tannins come (largely) from the skins of the grapes. Since Pinot Noir has substantially thinner skin, Pinot Noir doesn't age due to tannic structure. Pinot Noir actually ages due to acidity, or rather the balance of acidity and fruit. Whereas Merlot and its kin age because of the mouth-puckering tannin, Pinot Noir titilates the palate with mouthwatering acidity, much like most (non-sweet) white wines. Pinot Noir is a white wine in red wine clothing. And I don't think that's what most casual wine drinkers want in their wine. It's what I want, but what I want won't necessarily bring you enjoyment.

So we have a problem, as W. Blake Gray's recent SF Chronicle article discusses. Instead of making Pinot Noir the way they should make it, many California winemakers just leave the grapes hang on the vine longer to thicken the skins. It doesn't matter to them that in the first place, Pinot Noir is a cooler-climate grape and shouldn't be planted in 80% of the California vineyards in which it is found.

So we are left with one of three possibilities:

1) Until the Pinot Noir craze dies down (something I instinctively feel is already happening), people will continue wines that they don't like to be trendy.

2) Many winemakers will continue to try as hard as they can to make Pinot Noir taste like Merlot, Shiraz or Cabernet Sauvignon to cater to the latest trends, thus deceiving consumers into thinking they have developed a taste for Pinot Noir, when, in reality, they haven't yet learned the beauty of real Pinot Noir, that is, Pinot Noir that is graceful, light in color, svelte and equilibriously acidic.

3) The Pinot Noir craze will die of necessity, when most people realize that they prefer supple, fruit-forward Merlot to the vibrant, levity of Pinot Noir.

I can only hope as a true Pinotphile that three is the case. It will allow wineries such as Hunter Hill Winery and Adastra Vineyards to continue making Pinot Noir the way it should be made, from cooler climate sites (the Sonoma Coast and Los Carneros respectively). Although our visits to these wineries convince me that in spite of any trends in any direction, niether winery would budge from their current modus opperandi. That's why AVA Wine is proud to bring them to you. The goal here is to find representative exmaples of each of California's many AVA's (American Viticultural Areas), and in Hunetr Hill Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir and Adastra Los Carneros Pinot Noir, you have two fine examples of this. You can drink either one of these and say to yourself, "This is what Pinot Noir should taste like," and if you don't like it, by all means, drink Merlot and don't feel guilty. Drink what you like and forget the current trends.

More on a "sense of place"

As a follow up to my previous post, I’d like to direct you to a recent blog entry and discussion involving New York Times Wine Columnist Eric Asimov and winemaker Michael Twelftree. Asimov’s blog is here and you can find Twelftree’s side of story by following the link Asimov provided. While I generally agree with Asimov’s stance that in many ways expands upon my previous comments there are some additional points to consider.

Despite my relationship with AVA Wine, I am most noted for my expertise in Burgundy, precisely the lower-alcohol, food wines to which Asmiov occurs (at least in most cases). That being said, I unlike Mr. Asimov probably drink wine on its own at least half the time. And when I do drink it alone, I generally do prefer it to be lower in alcohol – in addition to Burgundy (both white and red), German Rieslings fit the bill nicely in this respect as well. If I opt for most California wines, Bordeaux or other fuller-bodied reds, I prefer to have them with red meat, a grilled steak usually does the trick. So in some ways, I guess you can say that I am in opposition to either Asimov or Twelftree in that, I only enjoy fuller, high-octane wines when they’re served with food; after all, if I going to binge, why not do it right and besides, if the wine has a good bit of alcohol, I’d prefer to have a big meal with it to try to avoid the negative affects of the alcohol. One of the worst ideas I’ve ever had was a a large tasting party where everyone was required to bring a bottle a Zinfandel – not White Zinfandel – but the alcoholic, intense, jammy red wine. After downing even small samples of 15 – 20 reds in excess of 15% alcohol, not one guest had their wits about them.

My I also posit the following? I know Asimov fairly well and appreciate his writing and knowledge as well. Twelftree I’ve met only briefly, but Mr. Asimov leaves out the fact that not only is Twelftree involved with Two Hands Winery in Australia but also runs a small, new negociant in Burgundy known as Mischief and Mayhem. The sources for Twelftree’s grapes in Burgundy are among some of the finest traditional producers in that region. So clearly Twelftree hasn’t lost sight of the fact that there’s room for more than one type of wine in the world.

Noting this takes me back to last weeks entry – where I basically told you that I like wines that taste the way they are supposed to taste. Wines from Diamond Mountain should taste like Diamond Mountain. Wines from the Napa Valley floor should taste just so. Even California Chardonnay comes in many forms - such as the steely, Silver Mountain 2001 Chardonnay from a cooler site atop high in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It may not be what most people think of when they think of buttery, full, sunny California Chardonnay, but that’s just the point: it shouldn’t be. When there’s snow on the winery ground’s at Silver Mountain, people are dining outside in downtown Soquel or a few miles up the waterfront on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. Every wine comes from somewhere, and if you understand from where it comes, you’re enjoyment of the wine will be enhanced greatly. Now that I understand what Twelftree is trying to accomplish with his Australian wines, I’m sure my next bottle will be more enjoyable.