My Picks: Vintages Release -- April 30 2011

The primary theme of this week’s release is “Aussie Dynasties” with 21 wines from various family-run wineries. Good variety and some good Picks. 3 make it here.

Southern Italy is the supporting theme. It’s one of my favourite areas, full of indigenous grape varieties that we don’t see elsewhere. 3 more of My Picks come from this region.

At last, we’ve got some organic and Biodynamic wines to snap up from this release: 4 of them (one from Ontario) made the cut. The word “sauvignon” shows up in all 4.

Selections from Chile and Spain round out the list.

Learn more here about My Picks.

Organic & Biodynamic

PAUL DOLAN SAUVIGNON BLANC 2009, Mendocino County (California); #46334; Price: $19.95; 13.5% ABV
100% Sauvignon Blanc from Mendocino County, north of Sonoma along the Pacific coast. Fermented and aged in stainless steel. Certified organic by CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers). Paul Dolan has a Biodynamic wine, but this isn’t it. Try it with sushi. Check out this Wine Spectator video with the winemaker.

CONO SUR SAUVIGNON BLANC 2010, San Antonio Valley (Chile); #213587; Price: $12.95; 13.5% ABV
100% Sauvignon Blanc from San Antonio, way up north in Aconcagua but just 20 km from the coast, so it’s influenced by the cold waters of the Humboldt current, ideal for Sauvignon Blanc. Handpicked. Fermented and aged, for 3 months, in stainless steel. Certified organic by BCS Oeko Garantie GMBH of Germany. They say the bicycle on the label represents the method of transportation used by the workers to get to the vineyards. Great value.

SOUTHBROOK TRIOMPHE CABERNET FRANC 2008, VQA Niagara-on-the-Lake; #237065; Price: $22.95; 13.3% ABV
A blend of Cabernet Franc (85%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (15%). Hand-harvested. Fermented in both stainless steel and oak vats with indigenous yeasts for four weeks. Aged in French and American oak. No fining. Certified Biodynamic. Anybody for some steak tartar?

NATIVA SINGLE VINEYARD GRAN RESERVA CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2007, Maipo Valley (Chile); #975359; Price: $19.95; 14.0% ABV
100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Cold macerated for 2 weeks, then fermented in stainless steel tanks. Aged in French oak barrels for 14 months. Certified organic by the IMO (Institute for Marketecology). No synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. Perfect with a grilled steak.

Off the Beaten Track

White

YALUMBA VIOGNIER 2009, Eden Valley (Australia); #954644; Price: $24.95; 13.5% ABV
100% Viognier. Fermented with indigenous yeasts: 60% barrel-fermented, 40% fermented in stainless steel. Aged on its lees for 10 months in older French oak barrels. The winemaker recommends “anything lamb” with this wine. Well, the Aussies know lamb and they know wine, so why not?

Reds

VIÑA PERALILLO ARENAL CARMENERE 2009, Colchagua Valley (Chile); #211409; Price: $14.95; 14.0% ABV
100% Carmenère. Hand-harvested. Just a touch of oak: 30% of the wine aged in first- and second-use barrels for 6 months. It’s a wine for (slow-cooked) ribs on the BBQ.

D'ARENBERG THE TWENTYEIGHT ROAD MOURVÈDRE 2007, McLaren Vale (Australia); #677617; Price: $29.95; 14.5% ABV
100% Mourvèdre, a warm climate grape that’s easy to find in southern Rhone, Languedoc-Roussillon, and Spain. Typically high in acidity and tannins, it’s a black-fruit, spicy mouthful. Fermented in old French oak vats and barrels. Aged for 10 months in French and American oak barrels on its lees. No fining or filtration, so decanting is a must. Needs aging. I’m thinking of some game…venison on the grill?

HOWARD PARK LESTON CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2008, Margaret River (Australia); #923565; Price: $29.95; 14.0% ABV
100% Cabernet Sauvignon from Western Australia, a region that is overlooked, or simply lumped in with Southern Australia (a little like confusing Okanagan with Niagara). Fermented in stainless steel tanks, then left on its skins for another 20 days. Aged in French oak barrels (35% new; 65% 1-year-old) for 18 months. Minimal fining and filtration. Decant. Leave it in the cellar for at least a year or two.

TERREDORA AGLIANICO 2008, IGT Campania (Italy); #602284; Price: $14.95; 13.0% ABV
100% Aglianico...find out what you’ve been missing, for only $15. Maceration for 7 days. Aged partially in oak and partially in stainless steel tanks. Why not try it with some pizza?

LEONE DE CASTRIS RISERVA 2006, DOC Salice Salentino (Puglia); #597534; Price: $16.95; 13.5% ABV
A blend of Negroamaro (90%) and Malvasia Nera (10%). Handpicked. Maceration for 8 days. Aged 12 months in oak barrels, 3 months in bottle before release. Another wine for a tomato-based sauce.

FIRRIATO ROSSO 2008, DOC Etna (Sicily); #219592; Price: $16.95; 14.0% ABV
A blend of Nerello Mascalese (80%) and Nerello Cappuccio (20%), both of which they usually blended with Nero d’Avola. Handpicked. Fermented for 14 days in stainless steel. Aged 6 months in oak barrels, followed by 2 months in the bottle before release. I’d try it with pasta with a meaty sauce or a lamb stew…so you may want to save it for next winter.

DON JACOBO GRAN RESERVA 1995, DOCa Rioja (Spain); #923748; Price: $27.95; 12.5% ABV
That’s right…1995. The tradition is that this is the way that winemakers release wines in Rioja: the winery holds on to the wine until it’s at its peak. A blend of Tempranillo (85%) and Garnacha (15%). Hold onto it until next winter and try it with a stew or braised meat.

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The Facts, Ma'am, Just the Facts

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks, down south visiting another national capital and tuning up the golf game in anticipation of sunny, warmer days here in Ottawa.

I avoided checking email and Canadian news while I was away. Disconnecting for a while surely does have its charms, although coming home to hundreds and hundreds of emails is somewhat discouraging. And some kind of orange wave apparently is about to swamp Canadian politics.

One goody that I came across while catching up on things was this commentary by Decanter’s Andrew Jeffords, in which he bemoans the abysmal state of winery websites.

I couldn’t agree more.

If it isn’t already so, winery websites are rapidly becoming THE primary medium for how consumers learn more about an individual wine, particularly when portable web technology is at so many fingertips.

As Jeffords points out, people who take the time to visit a winery’s website want to know some fundamental things about the wines: the terroir, the grapes, vinification techniques, tasting notes, and food suggestions. Pretty pictures, music, and stories about winemaker’s dogs…these are all OK as add-ons but if you don’t have the fundamentals on each of your wines, you’re wasting our time.  Canadian wineries are some of the worst offenders.

The second great sin of many winery websites is stale information. I cannot count the number of wineries that have made the “one-shot” effort to launch a website, only to down tools at that point, with their latest vintage reports anywhere from one to ten years out-of-date.

The formula for a good winery website is simple: tell us about the wine, all the wine, and nothing but the wine. Keep it up to date.

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Corked!

Sometimes you need a bad experience with a wine to remind you of how much some things have improved.

Back in the 80s, when I really started getting interested in wine, it wasn’t that unusual to get a bottle of wine that was “corked”; i.e., spoiled by a cork that was infected with 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA to its enemies…it has no friends). Conventional wisdom and common experience was that poor quality corks spoiled around 1 out of 8 to 12 bottles. That frequency has gone down, thanks to two factors: the rise of screwcaps and artificial corks as well as improvements in the quality control over corks. Certainly, my experience is that corked wines are fewer and farther between.

But memories of the bad old days came back to us a couple of weeks ago when we opened a bottle of Chateau Leoville Las Cases, AC Saint-Julien 1986 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our first date. (Chateau Leoville Las Cases is a second growth Bordeaux from the famous 1855 classification.)

It’s a wine that I had bought about 20 years ago in anticipation of just this occasion. Storage conditions were faultless.

But I was somewhat suspicious about its condition as I noticed that the cork had pushed its way slightly above the lip of the bottle (maybe a couple of millimetres).

We took the wine to Beckta to celebrate. But after the folks at Beckta very carefully removed the cork, it was clear that the cork was in poor condition: mouldy and damp.

The wine was undrinkable (we did try), perhaps the worst case of cork taint (old, wet cardboard) that I can recall, even though its colour was still surprisingly youthful with no signs of aging even after 25 years. Much like us (ahem).

Fortunately, we had ready access to Beckta’s wine cellar and the evening remained celebratory in spite of our disappointment with the wine.

But it was a strong and smelly reminder of how disappointing wines from that era could be, and how poor quality control was, even at a top winery.

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My Picks - Vintages Release: April 16 2011

I didn’t find the selection of theme wines (from New Zealand) that compelling and none of them made it onto My Picks.

But 3 organic wines did make it, after an absence for 2 months of pick-worthy organic wines.

Organic & Biodynamic

GRGICH HILLS FUMÉ BLANC 2009; Napa Valley (California); #346296; Price: $29.95; 13.0% ABV
100% Biodynamic Sauvignon Blanc. What turns Sauvignon Blanc into Fumé Blanc? Oak! Fermented in 900-US-gallon oak casks (80%) and neutral (used 3+ times) French Oak barrels (20%). Aged for 6 months on its lees in neutral barrels. Try it with a light, white fish or roast pork tenderloin.

FATTORIA LA RIPA 2008, DOCG Chianti Classico (Tuscany); #651596; Price: $18.95; 13.0% ABV
A blend of Sangiovese (90%) and Canaiolo (10%). Aging in oak casks, then in the bottle before release. Made from organic grapes. Try something “Classico” like pasta in tomato sauce.

FATTORIA LA RIPA 2006, DOCG Chianti Classico Riserva (Tuscany); #984401; Price: $26.95; 13.5% ABV
This Riserva is from the same producer as the “regular” Chianti Classico listed above. Also a blend of Sangiovese (90%) and Canaiolo (10%). Traditional fermentation and aging in oak casks for 2 years, then in the bottle for 6 months. Made from organic grapes. This wine deserves something more substantial, like steak Florentine.

Off the Beaten Track

Whites

DORNIER DONATUS WHITE 2009, WO Western Cape (South Africa); #597278; Price: $18.95; 13.5% ABV
An interesting blend of Chenin Blanc (77%) and Semillon (23%). Separately fermented in new and second-use French oak. Aged 8 months on their lees in the barrel. Match to a heavier fish, like swordfish…only sustainable.

LES PILIERS VIOGNIER 2009, (Languedoc); #669531; Price: $15.95; 13.0% ABV
100% Viognier. Hand harvested. Skin contact for 12 hours. Fermented in stainless steel, then aged on its lees. No oak. Fined and filtered. Drink now with seafood in a cream sauce.

MICHELE CHIARLO LE MARNE GAVI 2009, DOCG Gavi (Piedmont); #228528; Price: $14.95; 12.5% ABV
100% Cortese grown in a maritime climate. Fermented with indigenous yeasts, with part cold maceration. No oak. Light, fresh. Is summer here yet?

Reds

MAS DES DAMES LA DAME 2008, AC Coteaux du Languedoc (France); #223214; Price: $15.95; 13.5% ABV
A blend of Grenache (50%), Syrah (30%), and Carignan (20%). Hand harvested. Fermented in cement tanks, then left on its skins for 5 weeks. Aged in cement tanks. No oak.  Try it with lamb chops.

CARPINETO 2004, DOCG Vino Nobile Di Montepulciano Riserva (Tuscany); #368910; Price: $28.95; 13.0% ABV
A blend of Prugnolo Gentile, aka Sangiovese, (70%) and 30% Canaiolo (although they are allowed to throw a few other varietals into the blend).  Maceration on the grape skins for 10 days. Aged 2 years in 5,500 litre Slovenian oak barrels, with a small quantity aged in French oak barrels. Aged for 12+ months in bottle before release.

ENCOSTAS DE ESTREMOZ QUINTA DA ESPERANÇA 2005, Vinho Regional Alentejano (Portugal); #160465; Price: $13.95; 14.0% ABV
A blend of Touriga Nacional (70%), Trincadeira (20%) and Aragónes (10%), all indigenous Portuguese grapes. Fermented for 8 days, followed by 12 days of maceration. Aged for 7 months in new American and French barrels.

ONTAÑÓN RESERVA 2004, DOCa Rioja (Spain); #725895; Price: $24.95; 12.4% ABV
A blend of Tempranillo (95%) and Graciano (5%). Aged 24 months in French and American oak.

VIÑAS ELIAS MORA 2008, DO Toro (Spain); #209650; Price: $18.95; 14.5% ABV
100% Tinta de Toro (aka Tempranillo). Aged just 6 months in American oak. Drink it ASAP.

Sparkling

RAVENTÓS I BLANC L'HEREU RESERVA BRUT CAVA 2007, Spain; #221796; Price: $19.95; 12.2% ABV
A blend of Macabeo (60%), Xarel-lo (20%), and Parellada (20%). Hand harvested and fermented using the traditional method with 15 months of bottle aging. Great value.

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What's Wrong with Tasting Notes - Part 3

I've ranted here and here about wine tasting notes.

OK, then, what should be in a tasting note?

Let’s start by getting rid of the pretence of objectivity in wine tasting. Too much of wine tasting, and the descriptions that flow from it, attempts to portray the subjective experience (or intensely private sensation) as an objective analysis. Wine tasting is mostly subjective; it varies not only from one person to the next, but varies from bottle to bottle, glass to glass, sip to sip. (Mind you, I had more than one Prof who insisted that there was only one right answer to “what do you taste in this wine?” Of course, that one right answer was the Prof’s answer.)

Are there objective aspects that we can bring to the description of a wine? I think there are. Describing terroir is objective. Describing climate is objective. Describing vinification is objective. These are factors that can explain why a wine tastes the way it does.

Tasting notes need a balance of the subjective and the objective. Terroir…climate…vinification. That’s objective. But yes, explain how a wines tastes. That’s subjective. Don’t over-specify. Don’t impress us with your tasting vocabulary. Perhaps it reminds you of an experience. (I’ve written before about how often tasters will refer back to aromas and tastes from childhood.) But explain why it tastes that way. Use the objective factors to help explain the subjective experience.

Be mercifully brief. Not as brief as Eric Asimov’s deliberately provocative suggestion of “sweet or savoury”.

Be uncomplicated.

I come back to what wine drinkers want to know: Will I enjoy the wine? Is it worth the price? What food, if any, would go well with it?

Will I enjoy the wine?
A wine drinker should be able to get a good sense of how the wine tasted. Condense the wine tasting analysis down to the essence.

• Describe the dominant aromas and flavours. Remember, it’s not a shopping list. Don’t get me wrong; unlike a well-known wine reviewer here in Ottawa, I still want aromas and flavours in the description. Use evocative but familiar references. The more specific a descriptor is, the more useless it becomes. For example, “floral” is good; “rose” should be OK; “Wild Rose of Alberta” is too obscure … unless your audience grew up on the Canadian Prairies. (Coco Krumme at slate.com has a great example from Parker’s latest edition, which describes a Bordeaux wine as having “notes of graphite, black currant liqueur, incense, and camphor”. Evocative? Yes. Familiar? Not to me! Parker not only pioneered the 100-point system; he also pioneered over-the-top wine descriptions.)
• Tell us about structure and texture, but only the foremost features.
• Above all, please, please, please, we need to know about complexity and balance.

Is it worth the price?
I’m not a fan of numerical scoring; it’s subjective, inconsistent, and are we really supposed to believe that there’s a discernible difference between 89 and 90? But wine drinkers want an assessment of “value for money”. (“Why should I pay $60 for a 90-point wine if I can buy one for $20?”) But if value for money is subjective, then what’s wrong with a simple “Yes, worth the money” or “No, pass it by” as part of the conclusion?

What food, if any, would go well with it?
Tricky, this is. Creating great food and wine pairings requires imagination, experience, and knowledge of cuisine. It’s one reason that many sommeliers spend time in the kitchen. It’s a great way – maybe the only way – to learn. And yes, very subjective. But although great matches may be elusive, good matches are not.  The key in a tasting note is simplicity and familiarity.  If we don’t want you to impress us with your tasting vocabulary, we don’t want you to impress us with your culinary knowledge either.
Is this a “food wine” or not? Many wines from the New World show better without food. Other wines, mostly from the Old World, are better with food, particularly food from the same region. It’s no accident; regional cuisines and regional wines developed in tandem; they make their wines to go with their regional food.

Brevity, simplicity, familiarity, relevance…that’s what we need in tasting notes.

For more on what's wrong with tasting notes, check out one of my favourites bloggers...Alder Yarrow...who has 2 recent related posts, one on tasting notes and the other about Gerald Asher on Wine Writing.

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What's Wrong with Tasting Notes - Part 2

In my previous post, I started my rant about wine tasting notes.

I’ve been mulling over this for a while now, and mulling inevitably leads to Googling, which brought me to a wonderful article in the Journal of Wine Economics from 2007, On Wine Bullshit: Some New Software?, written by Richard E. Quandt of Princeton University.

Professor Quandt argues that there are some topics that tend to induce bullshit and that there are some people who have a special propensity to bullshit.

In some instances, there is an unhappy marriage between a subject that especially lends itself to bullshit and bullshit artists who are impelled to comment on it. I fear that wine is one of those instances…

Oh dear…busted.

Wine tasters come in for particular attention from Professor Quandt, who assembled a list of wine descriptors that he culled from published wine tasting notes. His particular favourites are “bass” (the fish? the ale? the instrument?), olive-tinged black currant, scorched earth and spicy earth, liquorice (both root and melted), zesty mineral, velvet v. silky tannins, and the list goes on.

Like Professor Quandt, I think I know what a taster may have been trying to convey with each of those terms (OK, “bass” has me perplexed). But perhaps my perception is different from Professor Quandt’s, and different again from that of the author. Some tasting notes he found had 20 descriptors, including this one: “meaty, sweaty, and sweet Pinot fruit”! (To the credit of my sommelier Profs, I think that one would have received a failing grade.)

That’s what’s wrong with tasting notes: Too much deconstruction without reconstruction. Too much emphasis on the parts; not enough emphasis on the whole.

Now, I don’t underestimate the difficulty of trying to capture the whole experience of a wine. The Globe and Mail recently published a feature by Ian Brown, entitled, Foodies: Are food crazies getting their just desserts? Here’s an excerpt, but where the word “food” appears, I’ve substituted the word “wine”. It sums up the challenge.

The great [wine] writers have always known that writing or talking about [wine] per se, about the actual taste of something, is like writing about the sex act: it’s an intensely private sensation that doesn’t last long, and so should be attempted rarely, if at all.

Ah, but we have to try.

Next up...what should be in a wine tasting note.

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What's Wrong with Tasting Notes - Part 1

What do wine drinkers want to know about a wine? What’s important in a tasting note? What’s crap? And why is there so much crap in so many tasting notes today?

First, wine drinkers don’t want to know how a wine tastes. They want to know how a wine drinks. What’s the difference?

Wine drinking is the “simple” enjoyment of a wine, either alone or with food. A wine drinker wants to know, will I enjoy the wine? Is it my kind of wine? Is it worth the price? What food, if any, would go well with it?

Wine tasting, on the other hand, is an (overly?) analytical process that deconstructs a wine into 5 elements:

1. appearance (colour hue & depth, clarity)
2. aroma (individual aromas, intensity, signs of age)
3. taste & structure (individual flavours, intensity, dryness or sweetness, acidity, tannins)
4. texture (body, mouthfeel)
5. finish (length, consistency, complexity, balance)

(Some experts distribute the individual steps into different categories, but all of the components are the same.)

Wine tasting is the basis for tasting notes, those blurbs that wine writers and critics compose about a particular wine. Tasting notes incorporate the taster's experience along those five elements.

But the language used can be quite esoteric, over the top in complexity and obscurity. Sommelier programs (like the one from which I graduated) spend LOTS of time teaching wine tasting as the deconstruction of a wine, but not enough time in teaching students how to put the parts back together in a way that wine drinkers will find useful.

For example, only if we’re lucky, at the end of a tasting note, will these tasters tack on an overall conclusion and perhaps suggest a food pairing. Ah, but that last little bit is the most important, the stuff that most wine drinkers want to know.

What do we get instead? Too often it’s rambling notes that try to impress us (but only frustrate us) with listings of obscure fruits, flowers, vegetables, herbs, spices, and other elements. These notes reduce a wine to its parts, when we want to know is what the wine adds up to.

(By the way, I include myself among wine tasters who are guilty of writing overly complex tasting notes. Mea culpa.)

Like so many specialties, we wine tasters have developed a special language that those of us on the inside can understand. But that same language and analytical process can get in the way of explaining to wine drinkers why they might enjoy a wine.

It’s a bit like asking someone what it’s like to drive a Ferrari, and receiving a description of the car’s components. Yes, that can be interesting to the gearhead, but what does it FEEL like to the driver?

Next post:  More on what's wrong with tasting notes...

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You Can't Judge a Wine by Its Label...

...but it can be fun!

My friend, and fellow sommelier, Mitch sent me this link about cool wine labels.  Makes him a cool guy.

The Boarding Pass Shiraz might be my favourite. And a sparkling made from birch sap! Worth a trip to Sweden.

No foolin'

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