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From the Quick-but-by-no-means-Dirty Dept.:

2009 Cuvee des 3 Messes Basses Ventoux, 60% Grenache, 20% Cinsault, 20% Syrah, 14.5% alc., 1.5 L, $16.99: This hearty southern Rhône red from our good friends at J et R Selections/Wines of Distinction in Bloomfield Hills, MI is an out-and-out QPR All Star, delivering more pleasure than it seems one has the right to expect these days for so few dollars. Clean garnet in color, with modest aromatics that only hint at the rich dark plum and berry flavors shaded with some leather and underscored with a solid anchor or earth; subtle hints of violet and licorice add to the appeal. Full bodied, with structure to take it two years or so down the road, but I doubt that 10 cases would make it into 2013 at our house. This deserves serious consideration, nay, this will BE our house red for the coming several months. Find this wine

Reporting from Day-twah,

geo t.

The more wines we taste from our friends at Cornerstone Cellars in the Napa and Willamette Valleys, the more we admire the great work they continue to do. Consider, if you will, the six samples from the 2009 vintage that we tried recently. Each exhibits the consistent high quality that we’ve come to expect from this producer, and does so with what is for us, an engaging and appealing style. We began our survey by pouring glasses of the 2nd vintage of Cornerstone’s Pinot Noir, which proved to be a worthy successor to the 2008 model that we reviewed in September of 2010. (click images to enlarge)

2009 Cornerstone Oregon Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, 13.9% alc., $50.00: Clean ruby garnet color; black cherry aromatics shaded with earth and mushroom follow through nicely on the palate, with oak influence well in the background. Medium-to-medium full bodied, with good intensity of flavor, smooth texture and deceptive structure that should take it several years down the road. A wine of class, substance and appeal, this is some very nice Pinot Noir indeed. Sourced from five Willamette Valley AVAs; Eola Hills (37%), Yamhill-Carlton (21%), Chehalem Mountain (21%), Ribbon Ridge (13%) and Dundee Hills (8%). 14 months in French oak barrels, 60% of which were new. Find this wine

As previously reported, the Stepping Stone line strives to offer high quality at lower prices than wines with the Cornerstone label, and the following two selections succeed completely in that regard.

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Jim Cowan Photo by Chris Witkowski - click to enlarge

The 2012 archive is presented by date the notes were compiled and submitted. Prior year’s tasting notes may be found here.

January 16, Winter Whites, etc

Florida “winters,” warm as they are, often suggest white/pink wine and lighter meals. For those rare days when we hit the 40’s, we break out the reds. By the predominance of white/pink noted below, you can pretty much guess how mild our January has been.

Red:

2010 Achaval Ferrer, Malbec Mendoza:
14.5% alcohol; a big wine, quite concentrated, round, rich and bordering on overdone, but it is saved by the absence of apparent oak and a fairly complex flavor profile. Not a wine for anything but the rarest steak; not even assorted cheeses paired well. About $15.

So, on another day, I grilled a porterhouse (rare) and tried again; good pairing. There is an aroma that I think smells like wet nori but is probably oak related; it’s not unpleasant but unusual; the wine seems to lose some of its weight and richness and gain complexity with the steak. And it’s a more balanced pairing. No doubt, this wine was made for rare beef. Thanks Tom. Find this wine

(Aside: For the style of wine this is, it is well executed. But this is not a style of wine that I have much use for as I eat very little rare beef and find this kind of wine overwhelming in its absence.)

2008 Calluna Vineyards, Calluna Estate:
14.9% alcohol; a blend of 35% cab. sauvignon, 32% merlot, 18% malbec, 12% cab. franc, 3% petit verdot, from the Chalk Hill AVA; too much new oak at this young age but considerable spice on the nose and palate sourced therefrom; concentrated, rich and weighty but has plenty of acidity, plush tannins, some complexity, and good sustain. We had this with a red-sauced pasta with egg plant and chicken sausage and it went very well. But by itself, this is simply too young and big for me. No overt evidence of the alcohol but identifiably CA. Decant and have with food unless you like ‘em BIG. About $50. Find this wine

(Aside: In the rarified world of CA Cabernet, $50 is well under the norm. But $50 doesn’t sound inexpensive to me. Everything is relative, I suppose, but when I think of what else I can buy with that much money . . .)

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SOMM Documentary Trailer 1 from Forgotten Man Films on Vimeo.

Somm is the story of four Sommeliers attempting to pass the Prestigious Master Sommelier Exam, a test with one of the lowest pass rates in the world. The exam covers literally anything having to do with the entire world of wine and that is just the beginning. Access to the Court Of Master Sommeliers has always been strictly regulated and cameras have never been allowed anywhere near the exam…. Until now. How much do you know about wine?

We received a review sample of the 2009 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc a few months ago, and although we tried it after a week or so of letting it rest up from its cross-country journey, I’ve been rather slow in posting said review. It turns out that this isn’t a totally bad thing, because a few weeks ago, we were also sent a bottle of the ’09 Rouge to try, thereby allowing me to combine our impressions on both selections. If you’ve followed our rants and raves for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that we’re big fans of Tablas Creek, and these two only serve to reinforce our admiration for this fine producer. Click images to enlarge.

The grapes for both the white and red Esprit de Beaucastel bottlings are grown on Tablas Creek’s 120-acre certified organic estate vineyard.

2009 Tablas Creek Vineyard Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc Paso Robles, 62% Roussanne, 26% Grenache Blanc, 12% Picpoul Blanc, 13.5% alc., $40.00 SRP: Clean medium straw to pale gold in color; expressive aromas of white tree fruit, especially peaches, with some apricot in support. Generous flavors echo with some underlying minerality. Full-bodied, rich, ripe and slightly oily, with excellent acids and length. As stated, this is quite approachable, but really, it would be a shame not to give it several years in the cellar to develop into all it can be, which is to say, a very fine white Rhone blend. Find this wine
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Alan Kerr (aka Canadian Zinfan) and this taster got it into our heads that it might be interesting, not to mention fun, to try a small group of Cabernet Franc bottlings from Michigan and Niagara for comparisons sake. It wasn’t hard for us to round up four, and we gathered one evening not long ago to see what they had to offer. We dismissed with formalities, other than my taking notes, and simply enjoyed them for what each had to offer; we didn’t score them or even pick a favorite. We got things started with a Michigan white. Click images to enlarge.

2002 Wyncroft Lake Michigan Shore Chardonnay Avonlea Vineyard, $35, 14.8% alc.: The years have not been kind to this wine since we first tasted it in 2006, if this bottle is any indication. Rich golden color; full bodied, with good acids and length, but the pineapple, pear and butterscotch flavors and aromas are overwhelmed by way too much oak (1/3 new, 1/3 one year and 1/3 two year old Allier). This was actually better in ’06, but the oak is so out of balance that we didn’t finish the bottle. Hopefully, this was an off bottle, as we’ve had other Wyncroft Chards of similar age that performed MUCH better than this one. Find this wine

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Recently, our friends at Vineyard Brands sent us samples from three Argentine producers whose wines they have introduced into the U.S. market. All eight of these proved to be some of the most enjoyable selections we’ve tried from South America in some time, and we would recommend any and all of them. Included here with our notes are links to pages giving background information on each of these wineries.  Click label images to enlarge.

Altos de San Isidro from the very northern Cafayate:

2011 Altos de San Isidro Torrontes Cafayate, 13.5% alc., $16 SRP: Clean medium color, with the typical orange blossom and honeysuckle nose, though perhaps not as effusive as with some models; still, it’s very pretty and follows through on the palate in a restrained manner, with a core of ripe red and green apple flavors and a note of mineral underneath it all. Medium-full bodied, rich and almost oily, not unlike Gewurztraminer in that regard; ripe, but not excessively so. Enough acidity to work well with food, and nice length on the finish; a pleasure to sip on while playing the old 12-string. 8 hour cold maceration and the cool temperature fermentation at 22° C.; no malolactic fermentation, no oak aging. Find this wine
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We happened upon these two delightful wines last Friday, whilst perusing the selection in a department I once managed in a previous lifetime. (It seems so long ago!) We’ve reported on them in the past, and indeed, I may have brought them into that department myself. Their presence seems to illustrate a problem that winemaker Steve Edmunds had in Michigan in that the last two distributors that carried his wines didn’t seem to know how to market them, and the buying public has been generally indifferent towards them here. (I put them in as many hands as I could, but I was just one simple country wine retailer…) Because of this, Edmunds doesn’t bother with our state anymore, which is a real shame, because his wines are wonderful. We enjoyed both of these with Kim’s birthday dinner, and they paired quite nicely with the no-hormone/antibiotic Delmonico steak and shrimp stir fry with fresh mushrooms and snow peas that we shared. It had been a little more than five years since we’d had the first selection.
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Jim Cowan Photo by Chris Witkowski - click to enlarge

The 2011 archive part 2 is presented by date the notes were compiled and submitted. Part 1 may be found here. Prior year’s tasting notes may be found here.

December 10, 2011

A very nice dinner with friends included the following:

2006 Overnoy, Arbois Pupillin:
Crisp, clean and deep – perhaps not typical descriptors for Overnoy but in this vintage, certainly appropriate. A unique flavor profile to any other poulsard I have tasted and a wine I never tire of. Lovely. Find this wine

2006 Allemand, Cornas both the Chaillot and Reynard:
The Chaillot is pretty open and forthcoming for being so young and it is complex, even now. The Reynard is a coiled spring and made of sterner stuff; clearly we are too early to this bottle, but its promise is evident. Both are obviously Cornas and obviously Allemand. And both accompanied my steak very well indeed. Thanks Justin. Find Allemand Cornas Chaillot and Find Allemand Cornas Reynard

I have given up writing any notes on my wines except those not yet released. There are only about 15 cases of the 2008 Skin-Fermented Sauvignon Blanc and I tried a bottle recently.

I am pleased with where this has gone; it’s darker than when first bottled (think burnished copper), softer and has developed some ginger and sauvage notes while maintaining its balance and skin-fermented character. Starting, I think, to tend into Gravner-esque territory. I do hope our 2010 Isa does this with age.

Beautiful with squash soup.

I also recently tasted the as yet unreleased 2009 Calluna Vineyards, Merlot Aux Raynauds and was surprised by how European it came across. This one needs several years in the bottle but promises to be the kind of merlot I actually like, that is to say, merlot without the chocolate, oak signature so many CA merlots have. No “booty” here, just a focused and layered wine. Impressive and dandy with beef stroganoff. Thanks David. Find this wine

Calluna is located in the Chalk Hill AVA here in Sonoma County.

The 2008 Occipinti, Frappato is a thing of beauty; smells a bit like gamay but reminds me more of something from the Jura when tasted. I have never had this grape before so I apologize for the comparisons but it was excellent wine with good grip and sustain. Thanks Garrett. Find this wine

And one last comment; for those of you in the Oakland area, do not miss the wine bar called Punchdown at 2212 Broadway. They have two wine lists; one by the bottle or carafe, and one by the glass. Both are extraordinarily well chosen, filled with things esoteric and unusual, and loaded with quality. The service is provided by the owners (always a good thing) and the noshes are delicious. Finally, a good reason to go to Oakland.

Best, Jim
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