Archive for the Tasting Notes from the Underground Category

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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Our friends at Pernod Ricard sent us some things to try recently, and as we are always up to try new things, we gave them a go. (Actually, I’ve enjoyed Mumm Napa Brut Prestige on more than a few occasions, but it’s always a good thing to collect the latest data points, eh?)

While New Zealand’s Stoneleigh has been on my radar for at least a few years now, I’d only tasted their Sauvignon Blanc on one previous occasion, and didn’t take notes at that time. My general impression was favorable then, so I expected wines of good quality, and that’s what we found with these two.

2010 Stoneleigh Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, 13% alc.: Clean color, pale to medium straw; mineral, moss and gooseberry nose follows through on the palate, where the moss fades, the mineral steps forward and the tart gooseberry holds its ground. Medium body, good intensity and varietal character, and the requisite acids that should be expected from the variety, no matter where it’s produced. Nothing flashy here, just a straightforward Sauvignon that performs well with a variety of foods and as an aperitif. I like this at a price point anywhere between $9.97 and $13.99, but when it starts to creep above that ($17.99 at Wine.com ?!), I’ll pass. Find this wine
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Periodically, we dig into our stash of Sean Thackrey wines here at Adams, Heritier and Associates to find out how this or that is coming along. The latest items on our agenda were two vintages of Mr. Thackrey’s flagship bottling, Orion. These are wines that have a track record for cellaring a decade or more, but sometimes, you just have to pull the cork on one or two to see where they’re at in their evolution. These were the first Orions we’ve had since our visit with Sean back in May, 2010. Here’s our report on what we tasted.

2004 Sean Thackrey Orion California Native Red Wine, Rossi Vineyard, St. Helena, 14.4% alc. Find this wine
2005 Sean Thackrey Orion California Native Red Wine, Rossi Vineyard, St. Helena, 14.9% alc. Find this wine
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We’re always happy to try whatever comes our way from our friends at Tablas Creek Vineyard, because since we filed our first report on their wines, we’ve never had anything they’ve made that rated lower than a “very good,” and more often than not, the stuff is “really, really, really good.” We recently got to try a new bottling from TC, their Patelin de Tablas Rouge. You can read the full story on how this, and its pale counterpart, came to be on their blog, but the short story is that successive drought vintages cut into TC’s production, while a bad economy left many fine Paso Robles vineyards with grapes that they had a hard time selling. The happy solution to these problems was to create Patelin de Tablas; Patelin is roughly translated from the French slang for “country neighborhood.” In years with high production, wines would be comprised predominantly of estate fruit, while in leaner vintages, non-estate fruit from growers with good track records could be included. Most of these vineyards are planted with TC cuttings, and all are farmed sustainably, many through organic or biodynamic principles.
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We’re always happy to taste new offerings from the Perrin family of Château Beaucastel fame, as they rarely fail to satisfy. We weren’t at all disappointed with the six we tried most recently, and here’s the full Rhône-down.

2010 La Vieille Ferme Luberon Blanc, 13% alc.: Perhaps the most appealing La Vieille Ferme Blanc bottling we’ve yet tasted, showing clean, medium color and offering pretty white peach, lanolin and mineral flavors and aromas. Full bodied, with good cut and length, this pairs well with a variety of chicken and seafood dishes. Find this wine

2010 Perrin & Fils Côtes du Rhône Réserve Blanc, 13.5% alc.: Clean, medium color, with mineral-driven white tree fruit character; deceptively soft and a bit fat, but with enough acids to work nicely with pounded, pan-fried chicken breast. Full bodied, with good length; rich and satisfying, as it opens with air and warms in the glass. A blend of Viognier, Grenache Blanc, Roussanne and Marsanne. Temperature-controlled fermentation in tanks; aged in stainless-steel tanks. Find this wine
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We’ve enjoyed pretty much everything that our friends at Cornerstone Cellars in Napa Valley have sent us to sample over the past few years, from both their flagship Cornerstone label and their second, Stepping Stone. Recently, we took possession of five of the current Stepping Stone offerings, and tried them over a series of evenings. We mostly liked what we tasted, but did find one selection excessively ripe for our tastes. Read on for our detailed impressions.

2010 Stepping Stone by Cornerstone Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc Cuveé Musque, 13.5% alc., $18.00/bottle: Clean, medium color, with textbook clonal character and a subtle creaminess lurking quietly in the background that might give the mistaken impression that it saw some oak. Medium bodied, with flavors and aromas reminiscent of grapefruit, pine, lime and a hint of grassiness; medium-to-medium full bodied, with good cut and length. Pairs nicely with grilled salmon and red snapper. Sourced from a vineyard in St. Helena; underwent an extremely cool, gradual fermentation in stainless steel. “The Sauvignon Blanc Musque clone is responsible for some of the finest Sauvignon Blancs in California. Used by many wineries as a blending component, a few wineries (Stepping Stone by Cornerstone being one) are now using the Musque clone as if it were a distinct grape variety: Sauvignon Musque.” – Cornerstone Cellars Find this wine
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The sample boxes from our distributors were backing up at the retail operation in which I was, until recently, gainfully employed, so we divvied up the take and went our separate ways to taste and report back. Happily, the six I took home are all from our good friends at Wines of Distinction/J&J Importers and J et R Selections, and better yet, most were new vintages of old friends from producers that we’ve enjoyed over the years. They were tasted one by one, over a period of several evenings, and here are the notes that I shared with my colleagues.

2009 Sacchetto Ca’ Berto Pinot Grigio delle Venezie, 12% alc., $8.99: Clean, medium color, with nice intensity of flavor and pure varietal character; medium bodied, with very well balanced acids and good length. This is a Pinot Grigio I could drink on a regular basis during the warmer months, and I can’t say that about that many that I’ve had. Find this wine

We’ve enjoyed the wines of Domaine du Pellehaut Côtes de Gascogne in the past; they offer great value for relatively little money, and these two follow the lead of those previous vintages.

2009 Domaine du Pellehaut Côtes de Gascogne Harmonie de Gascone Blanc, 12% alc., $8.99: Clean, medium color, with straightforward green apple and grapefruit flavors and aromas, underscored with some subtle minerality. Medium-to-medium-full bodied, with good acids and length; fairly rich and flavorful, very food friendly and a fine choice for an everyday white. Not flashy, just good, and that’s fine by me. Find this wine

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