Wine Cellar

Flichman Vineyards

Eleuthera — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:57:25 -0800

I recently had a chance to attend a wine tasting for Flichman from Argentina. I especially enjoyed the experience because I had a chance to chat with the winemaker, Luis Cabral de Almeida. From my standpoint, it didn't hurt that he was pretty hot also.

We began with a bottle of their Chardonnay for $8. Frankly I didn't want to taste a bottle of $8 Chardonnay as I hate that overly oaked buttery flavor of vanilla predominating, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was delightful and easily equal to wines I have enjoyed at twice the price. In fact every one of the wines' price points was spectacular. Although there were some I preferred more than others, I enjoyed all of them. All the others, with the exception of an interesting and delightful champagne (for about $8!!) all the rest were red. In fact, even the champagne was made in part from Malbec also!
The biggest surprise of the afternoon was how much I enjoyed Malbec. Several years ago a friend tried to tell me how great the Argentinian (and Chilean) Malbecs were, but I wouldn't even taste them. However the grape I knew from living in Bordeaux was a far cry from the one I finally tasted in South America: Malbecs from Argentina are rich, jammy and luscious with some surprising complexity. Malbec thrives in Argentina, Luis explained, because of the low humidity. This explains their ability to get the delightful jammy qualities which I thoroughly enjoy.
One I liked is called Gestos (2007) (gestures in English) and it was made from Malbec at two different elevations. You have to be careful because there are several varieties of Gestos, including one with Cabernet. The first thing one notices was the lovely aromas, like blackberries and maybe blueberries. the taste was even richer with jammy qualities mixed with the French oak and the earthy background. Luis was kind enough to explain to me at length that he uses two different elevations of Malbec in order to achieve an extremely well rounded wine. It is somewhat interesting that Argentina seems one of the few places where this combination can be exploited, although to a lesser degree, California winemakers have been touting mountain grown fruit for years. I rated this wine at least 88 points and perhaps even 89 out of 100. It was $12 or 13 and worth every penny.
Another wine I liked and purchased was the 2007 Expresiones reserve which was 60% Malbec and 40% Cabernet. I would rate this slightly better, perhaps 89-90 points as it had a lingering finish. The complexity reminded me greatly of a Bordeaux style wine and it had the great structure of the Cabernet with the luscious sweet berry qualities of the Malbec. Personally I think this will do better with a few years of patience, although it is delightful now.
The last one I tasted was called Dedicado (2004) and it was clearly the top of the line. At almost $20 it was hitting my price point, but rarely have I had a wine this good for this money.. and so I bought two. The bottle weighs a ton and it is a mixture of Cabernet, Syrah and Malbec (30%,10% and 60%). It spends 12 months in new French french oak and 12 months in the bottle. according to the label but I thought Luis told me this one spent 2 years in wood. In short, I thought the result was stunning, perhaps even 91-92 points. The deep intensity and aroma of the berries and black pepper is wonderful and its opulence is nothing short of amazing with a lovely lingering finish. It will benefit from a year or two more in my estimation but it's fantastic just the way it is, at least with an hour or two of breathing.
Because of the high inflation in Argentina and the fact that they are ties to the Euro which is strong (the owners are a Portuguese group) the wines get the benefit of great prices on oak barrels. As far as price point is concerned, I thought each of these wines was wonderful and they certainly impressed me a great deal. Luis wasn't all that bad either!

Happy Hour: 2005 Bad Boy Bordeaux

YumSugar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:15:02 -0800

When I first received this bottle of Bordeaux in the mail, its Bad Boy name and whimsical label, which features a black sheep and an arrow labeled "garage," meant little to me. But after doing some research, I discovered the whole thing makes quite a bit of sense.

The inky red wine, which is 95 percent Merlot and 5 percent Cabernet Franc, hails from the famous French region of Bordeaux, which is known for its style of highly tannic, collectible wines. But this bottle is different: It's the venture of Jean-Luc Thunevin, a leader in what's known as the garage wine movement, an effort that's focused on developing bolder, fruitier Bordeaux wines that can be enjoyed right away.

Wine critic Robert Parker deemed Bordeaux's black sheep, Thunevin, a "bad boy," which explains how the wine's name came to be. It may be a silly name, but the wine is satiny, with earthy plum notes, and the subtlest hint of smoke. And, at $17.50, it's priced rather affordably. Are you familiar with this wine and Bordeaux's garage wine movement?

Care to share a recent wine experience with the rest of us? Post your tasting notes in our Wine Cellar! If you are new to the YumSugar Community, here's a detailed guide to posting to groups.

Napa Valley

0fashionqueen — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:08:48 -0800

Hello Everybody,
How is everybody doing? I hope that everybody is having a great day.
I am currently planning a trip during the Christmas Holiday up until New Year's Day to Napa Valley. Does anybody know any great places to visit? Please let me know.

Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters: A Review

Eleuthera — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:10:48 -0700

I was reading the NY Times' book reviews and I came across an interesting review on the book, Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters by Jonathan Nossiter. (262 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux $26)
As background, I would hope that every serious wine drinker has seen Modovino by this time, a movie ostensibly about the world wine trade. if nothing else it is fascinating. I will admit here and now that I am no fan of Robert Parker nor of that other popular wine magazine which seems like it is at every checkout counter. however I dislike them for different reasons. Parker, at very least, knows something about wine, but his mere favorable mention of a given wine has been known to send it soaring. There are many popular examples. The other magazine, which shall go unmentioned, has attempted to manipulate wine drinkers into various drining habits. Not without its merits, especially in areas of travel articles, there is a common joke in the wine trade that when a wine is panned in the magazine, it is said that the winery probably forgot to pay its bill.
In any case, I thought this review was a pretty good one, of not only the book but the way in which we find the wine world today, so I am posting it here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
LIQUID MEMORY
Why Wine Matters
By Jonathan Nossiter

A review by JIM HOLT
Published: October 15, 2009
For the last three decades, I have enjoyed the better part of an interesting bottle of wine with nearly every dinner and many a lunch. I know my vintages and rarely mistake a Burgundy for a Bordeaux. In short, I am a wine enthusiast - though not a wine snob and never, I hope, a wine bore.
So I’d heard about the big controversy that has been roiling the wine world recently. It’s about tradition versus modernity. It’s about subtly complex wines versus “fruit bombs.” It’s (supposedly) about big money versus ethics. Above all, it’s about globalized taste versus something called terroir.
What is terroir? That is not easy to say. It is a French word, and everyone agrees that it is untranslatable. The disagreement is over whether it exists. To its defenders - notably the Old World winemakers of France, Italy and Germany - terroir refers to the ineffable way that soil, light, topography and microclimate conspire, over generations of human stewardship, to endow a wine with its unique soul. It’s a sense of place you can taste. To its detractors - especially the New World winemakers of the Americas and Australia - terroir is a marketing slogan dressed up as a poetic reverie. In other words, it’s a hoax - and they should know, since they’ve had precious little luck getting any terroir into their own wines.
Nobody has done more to keep this debate on the boil than Jonathan Nossiter - filmmaker, former sommelier at various New York restaurants (including Balthazar) and son of the foreign correspondent Bernard Nossiter. Like his father, Nossiter takes pleasure in goring sacred cows. A few years ago he made a subversive documentary about the wine world called “Mondovino,” which was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Now, in “Liquid Memory,” he extends his brief against the global cabal - made up of power-mad wine critics and consultants, arriviste vintners, pretentious restaurateurs, greedy marketers and rich collectors with Americanized palates - that (he thinks) is destroying the tradition of terroir.
This can be an irritating book. It is full of little eruptions of pomposity (“Wine is bedrock truth, blood of the earth”) and self-regard (“I sensed that I’d made the right choice in opting . . . for taste over power”). But it can also be extremely entertaining, especially when Nossiter’s hackles are raised, which (happily for the reader) is a lot of the time.
He takes us on a scathingly opinionated tour of some of Paris’s most renowned restaurants and wine shops. We cheer him on as he picks an argument with the sommelier at the fashionable Atelier de Joël Robuchon, where, he is outraged to find, one of the new-style wines he deplores is priced at 803 euros (“The extra three euros seems deliriously arbitrary: a Gombrowiczian - or Duchampian - touch on top of a Marx Brothers gesture”). He ends up likening this would-be gastronomic temple to a Red Lobster.
As a restorative, Nossiter arranges a rendezvous with the radiant British actress (and longtime Parisian) Charlotte Rampling, who has appeared in one of his films. Together the two friends sip an honest Chablis at Le Dôme, an enduringly authentic Montparnasse fish restaurant cum literary hangout. “Charlotte, who is always surprising, fixes me with her beguilingly aqueous gaze,” he writes, eliciting in this reader a pang of jealousy.
In among such adventures, Nossiter makes a passionate case for the cultural importance of wine. Disdaining “winespeak,” he uses literary and historical metaphors. A Bordeaux wine, for instance, is structured like “a hefty novel,” whereas a Burgundy has the “staccato lyricism” of a poem. (That sounds pretentious, but when I tried it out on my wine buddies they thought it hit the mark.)
He also tells us about his taste. Here is what he likes: wines that are low in alcohol and high in “wild, exhilarating acidity”; wines that are light and aromatic; “skanky” wines that are “unpredictable” and “ornery” wines that “provoke an emotion”; wines “fully expressive of a place and its history.”
Here is what he hates: rich, fat, sweet, super-concentrated, overripe, jam-dense, high-alcohol, oaky, inky-colored, vanilla-y wines with no sense of place or identity.
And here is why he’s angry: since the late 1970s, the wine world has been trending away from the former and toward the latter, in a process of global homogenization that, he claims, is erasing local identity and historical memory.
One of the main culprits, in Nossiter’s eyes, is the enormously influential American critic Robert Parker, the so-called “emperor of wine.” Parker grades wines from all over the world on a numerical scale of 50 to 100, like in elementary school. Consistently among his highest-scoring wines (which consequently fetch astronomical prices on the international market) are the big, sweet, high-alcohol fruit bombs. Nossiter blames Parker, along with the winemakers and consultants who hew to his judgments, for infantilizing taste by directing it toward “sweet and easy things.” Even in France, wines are being made to please an American palate attuned to soft drinks and hard liquor. Nossiter’s vendetta against Parker is hair-raisingly comprehensive, taking in everything from the mega-critic’s “nonsensical, frequently ungrammatical” tasting notes to his “blandly kitschy suburban home” adorned with autographed pictures of Ronald Reagan, no less.
Confronted with this polemic, one might be tempted to shrug and say chacun son goût. What’s wrong with liking rich, jammy wines that “make statements” in preference to subtle, delicate ones that “ask questions”? But Nossiter insists that this is not just a matter of subjective taste. Terroir, he submits, is an objective value. And, toward the end of the book, as he tours the Burgundy region of France, he does his best to show how this value arises from a long historical symbiosis among family, landscape and vine.
Nossiter didn’t completely win me over. I still like a fruit bomb now and then. And I had to wince at some of his rhetorical flights, like “Without terroir, we will all lose all freedom and individuality.” But his book did enrich my experience of wine - I now drink it more slowly, for one thing - and Nossiter’s racy rudeness left me half drunk with pleasure. In fact, if this book were a bottle of wine, I’d describe it as having a firm structure, a core of mature but voluptuous fruit (Charlotte Rampling!), lots of bracing acidity, with just a hint of manure on the nose.
Jim Holt is the author of “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes.” He is writing a book about the puzzle of existence.

Older Bordeaux tasting notes

Eleuthera — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:59:44 -0700

I haven't seen any posts in ths area for quite some time so I hope no one will mind my notes on a recent tasting.

I had the opportunity recently to taste a few of the many good bottles from the 80's and the results were delicious. I tasted an 83 Boyd Cantenac and Prieure Lichine both from Margaux, an 82 Lanessan from the haut medoc and finally an 85 Lynch Bages which is a Pauillac. The bottles had been stored reasonably well and the fills were very good, although the two Margaux had corks which were almost wet to the top and crumbled. Having just found a bottle from 1998 which was leaking in a case of my own, there can be no better advice than to constantly monitor your wines, especially if they are still in a wooden case.
While 82 Bordeaux put Robert Parker on the map (he declared it the wine of the century) and subsequently led the way to his favorable word on any review raising the price of wine, it was fun looking back and seeing what these were all about. Though fortuitously donated by another cellar, I was looking forward to tasting mature wines I had never been able to experience when they were young. Each was carefully standing upright for 4 days and then decanted carefully one hour before serving.
The Lanessan was exactly what old Bordeaux should be like, glorious and lovely and still powerful in all senses of the word. It tasted and smelled like cassis and allspice with a surprising amount of balance between the fruit, acid and tannin. One taster said that this was exactly what old Bordeaux should taste like and the rest of us agreed. The finish was elegant and it was indeed a great pleasure to drink. I would rate it perhaps 94 points out of a hundred, losing a bit because of a slight lack of finesse so notable in the greater chateaux..
The two Margaux were both soft, the Boyd Cantenac being remarkably brown and clearly on its descent. Still it had lovely flavors of blackberry and one person described violets in the nose. Although lacking in tannins and well rounded, it reminded us of rich juicy plums in a certain regard. Someone else described the flavors as jammy, but there was a hint of tanned leather on the palate too. The finish was much better than average and I would rate this wine about 91 points.
The Prieure Lichine, a winery I have never found to my taste, was much more focused with a beautiful display of ripe fruit and structure. Although normally somewhat austere and thin, this vintahge carried a velvet punch, displaying its many different flavor layers and an elegant finish. Compared to the other margaux, this wine was in a sharp focus, clearly having layers of interest cebntering around again the blackberry aromas with hints of mint and perhaps eucalyptus. I would rate this a 92 out of 100.
The Lynch Bages 85 was expectedly soft and I was afraid that it might be fading or over the hill because of reading previous tasting notes. Still it had a fabulous nose of cedar and cassis with coffee overtones and a bit of black pepper at the top. The flavors were the favorite of the group, probably because of the lack of tannins. however the lack of tannins made me wonder how it had kept together this long, at least in a reasonably well balanced state. Still this wine was far younger tasting than the Boyd Cantenac and probably good for another 5 years at very least.Its pedigree showed the excellence of the wine and I would rate this as possibly 94-95 points, deducting because of its vintage. Still I have seldom drunk wine as good as this.
If you get a chance to have an old bottle of Bordeaux, you have to be careful where it comes from. Still if you are invited to taste someone else's wine, don't hesitate. It's an eye opening experience to taste what all the fuss about maturity means. It's also nice to know that something really does improve with some age.

No more wine rings on your table or serving surface!

jenious — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:11:42 -0800

Found this on Chow.com listed as one of their picks. The best deal I found is on the website
http:// www.customcurling.com/proddetail.asp?prod=DropStop2pack which was also posted on the chow.com review. They offer free shipping for $50+, 5% off for the holidays (no code necessary) and an additional $5 off if you use google checkout!

I think they're cute gifts and great for more formal, white tablecloth gatherings, too! They are little Mylar discs that you roll to fit in the wine bottle.

SOURCE

chow.com's review:

No More Red Wine Stains

Handy gadget keeps wine dribbles off the table.

Just in time for holiday dinners and lots of red wine drinking, I spied this great invention. It’s called Drop Stop, and it’s a simple circle of shiny silver plastic-y stuff that you roll up and stick in the mouth of an open wine bottle for pouring. It acts like the metal versions you see in restaurants, so that when you set the bottle back down, the wine doesn’t dribble out the side. No ruined tablecloths.

Drop Stop, $5.95 for two

http:// www.chow.com/pick/6801

Pinots are Boring?

jenious — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:51:00 -0800

http://www.chow.com/stories/11408

Down with Boring Pinots
Genetic diversity makes for better wine

By Jordan Mackay

I‘m a sucker for fall foliage, but San Francisco, where I live, doesn’t get much of a show. So, taking Amtrak from Seattle down to Portland the other day, I was transfixed by the swaths of red, gold, yellow, and orange streaking by the window. As we sped down the line, I wondered why the leaves of one maple turn red while the oak right next to it is a lovely bronze. Nature’s love of diversity, I guess. And thank goodness, because if all the trees turned the same color at the same time those hillsides would be rather boring to look at-uniform blocks of nice fall colors, not that gorgeous pastiche.

Modern American vineyards are not like those northwestern forests. They are filled not with millions of trees that are slightly different from one another, but rather millions of plants that are exactly the same. And this sameness is the subject of an intense biodiversity debate. Recently, Allen Meadows, who writes a newsletter called Burghound, published an open letter to American Pinot Noir producers, saying that he thought that, in general, their wines had become boring. Eric Asimov of the New York Times also discussed the topic in a recent column.

As Pinot Noir’s popularity has exploded, California and Oregon vintners have rushed to get it in the ground. They purchase their baby vines from nurseries that offer a small selection of various USDA-approved clones. Some clones are known for early ripening, some for disease resistance, some for their cherry flavors. Then to ensure even ripening and for vineyard efficiency the winemakers plant these thousands of clones in blocks of the same soil, same orientation toward the sun (aspect), etc.

This practice can be contrasted with the way that Burgundian vineyards are typically replanted, which is by taking lots of clippings from an existing, mature vineyard and planting its great diversity of vines in a new place, thus replicating its quirks and variety. In California vineyards, all the identical clones in the same environment ripen at the same time, have the same flavor characteristics, and make a wine that tastes, well, boringly monodimensional. Conversely, in Burgundy, come harvest, some grapes will be more tart, some more ripe, some will be cherry flavored, some raspberry. To the contemporary American vintner all these irregularities are a headache, but to the French, vive la différence.

Some American vintners are starting to get it, and are making some of the loveliest, most complex Pinots in the country. Kevin Harvey of Rhys planted some of his vineyards with “suitcase clones”-varieties of plants of unknown or secret origin that were brought into the country without necessarily going through the USDA testing system. Tony Soter of Soter Vineyards isolated a clone he liked during his time as winemaker at Etude, which has a famous vineyard of heirloom clones that the winery’s collected over the years (and a wine called Heirloom made exclusively from that field). And Scott Wright of Scott Paul Wines has planted his new vineyard with four different clones mixed randomly in the vineyards. “People told me, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to do it that way,’” Wright explains, “but I said that uniformity is exactly what we didn’t want.”

Pinot Noir is famously unstable genetically, which means that over time vines mutate in the vineyard. It thus creates its own diversity, promising that in time American Pinot vineyards will be as genetically varied as Burgundy’s and will make wines as beautifully complex as a perfect autumn forest. But who wants to wait that long for wine that isn’t boring?

Jordan Mackay is a San Francisco–based wine and spirits specialist whose work has appeared in publications such as Gourmet, the Los Angeles Times, Food & Wine, and Decanter. His Juice column appears every Thursday.

Domaine Drouhin, Willamette Valley, '04

jenious — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:49:20 -0800

I just wanted to jot down this highly recommended wine. It is one of the finest I've had the pleasure to enjoy for a very long time. I chose this wine without much thought, and was surprised to find out it was actually one of the reserves. I'm glad I didn't know ahead of time because I was able to objectively give it a go. I had decided upon a non-Cali wine and this vineyard is located in Oregon (link follows).

Even if you are typically not a red wine fan, this one is fabulous with anything from simple Ahi tuna to roast duck or traditional filet mignon. It's pricey, but for a special occasion or just to indulge, try this Pinot Noir!

If anybody has tried this selection, I'd love to hear your opinion!

I'm planning on this is going to be one of three holiday wines I pour for gatherings. With one bottle going in my personal reserve!

http:// www.domainedrouhin.com/en/

A Book Club Meeting featuring Julia Child's "My Life in France"

WineUnleashed — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:34:26 -0700

On the heels of celebrating my visit with Elisabetta of Sono Montendoli, I had the opportunity to delve into the life of yet another great woman-Julia Child. I was leaving for Europe and a good friend had just finished reading My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme. She was completely taken by the book and thought that I MUST read. And as it turns out, it was also the latest selection for our book club. I hosted the meeting at my home.

So last Friday night, I hosted a fun-filled event for 10 women. We started the evening off with a Crémant from Alsace that was paired with Julia’s mussels. Her butter-rich recipe was a bit different from my usual preparation (straw, please). For the main course, I made Julia’s cassoulet and a simple arugula salad. The scramble to get all this done on a Friday night was well worth it (well, maybe not for the one surprise vegan present). For the pairing, we had the 2005 Domaine Santa Duc Côtes du Rhônes Les Quatre Terres. The earthiness nuzzled in nicely with the robust meat flavors. As classic pairing formula goes “Grown Together, Go Together.” And for dessert, an apple tarte tatin! C’est formidable!

Over the course of the evening, we each took turns talking about what we liked/disliked about the book, and why Julia Child is still relevant today. For the most part, we were all inspired by Julia-a woman who blossomed late in life acopyright 2008 A Camacho all rights reservednd was able to follow her passion. Her stories about post-war Paris, her sweet relationship with her husband and her dedication to recipe research were all things we enjoyed. Julia’s candid comments about Simca and other friendships showed us that she was human, and in the words of one woman, “Her honesty made the book believable.” There was one naysayer in the group. She felt that Julia Child was a bit of an ingrate and she should have been more politically tolerant of her father, since she benefited from his wealth. She also felt that Julia’s intolerance with Simca’s point of view was problematic.

In the end, Julia Child is just as relevant today as she was 40 years ago. From a cooking and business leadership standpoint, she is a great role model. She made smart decisions that helped her achieve her success. I, for one, loved this book and am inspired by yet another powerful life force.

Wine Trivia #6

WineUnleashed — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:32:07 -0700

Ok, you have a 25% chance at getting this one right....

Take the quiz