Archive for the Tasting Notes from the Underground Category

Last week, I decided that it was high time to try some Michigan wines with the Friday night tasting group at the retail outlet in which I am gainfully employed. The bulk of the selections were from the 2 Lads Winery on the Old Mission Peninsula. Cornel Olivier and Chris Baldyga have established an impressive level of quality with their wares in a relatively short period of time, and I’m a fan, so here was an opportunity to try some of their newest selections with our intrepid band of regulars. We started things off with some bubbles.

2009 2 Lads Old Mission Peninsula Sparkling Pinot Grigio, 12.5% alc., $24.99: Clean and crisp; medium bodied, with very good mousse and excellent acidity. Bone dry green apple and grapefruit character, and very refreshing. Here’s what the lads have to say about this on their web site: “The cool (what? I meant cold!) summer of 2009 was perfect for sparkling wine production, and our Sparkling Pinot Grigio proves it. Produced in the traditional Champagne method, this sparkling wine underwent primary fermentation in tank before being transferred to the bottle for secondary fermentation (thus the beautiful bubbles!) It then aged 10 months en tirage (on the lees) before disgorging and finishing each individual bottle by hand.” Find this wine

Since the next selection maintains a solid presence on retail shelves in the area, I thought it would be both fun and instructive to see how it’s developing, so I included it in the mix.

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I host a weekly Friday night wine tasting at the retail outlet at which I am gainfully employed, and last week, I decided to abandon a more structured theme in favor of just sampling whatever odds and ends I thought our guests might enjoy. I also took the opportunity to pull the corks of a couple of things I hadn’t tried yet myself, so everybody won. Here’s the rundown on what we tried, starting with an old friend that we ran out of at Gang Central a few years back.

I still rue the fact that the last two distributors who carried Steve Edmunds‘ wines here in Michigan couldn’t do them justice, for whatever reason. Both are good independent companies, not the two or three monstrosities that have formed over the last several years through mega-mergers, and to be fair to them, the problem is likely more the fault of area retailers who simply didn’t know what to do with these great wines. Whatever the reason, I doubt that we’ll see the Edmunds St. John label in Michigan again anytime soon, and this was undoubtedly one of the last bottles to be found at retail anywhere around here, so I thought it would be a perfect choice to start things off.

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So I’m reading through this week’s Diner’s Journal by Eric Asimov in the New York Times and I see that Francis Ford Coppola has acquired “Inglenook,” the original name of Gustave Neibaum’s estate that he purchased in 1975. I also note that Coppola’s Rubicon Estate (previously known as Neibaum- Coppola) shall henceforth be known as Inglenook, which I find especially interesting, since I attended a “Rubicon Estates” tasting here in the Detroit area just last week, which goes to show how quickly things can sometimes change in the wine biz. It was also intimated last week at said tasting that a new winemaker would be taking over soon, following Scott McLeod’s departure last year, but that it was a big secret as to who that person would be. Now, it has been announced that Philippe Bascaules, who has spent the last 21 years at Château Margaux, will be taking over as estate manager and winemaker at Inglenook this summer. Big news indeed!

I attended one of these tastings back in 2004, then, as now, courtesy of our friends at Vintage Wine Company; at that time, the 2000 vintage of Rubicon was tasted blind alongside the same from Châteaus Haut-Brion and Mouton Rothschild. It was an interesting affair, though the Rubicon was quite obvious in its New World opulence. Driving to Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Troy last week, I wondered what the tasting format would be this time and if there would be another “taste-off” of sorts. As it turned out, it was a straightforward survey of four of Ingle…, er, Rubicon Estate’s most visible labels.

I didn’t pay much attention to the speaker’s by-rote talk about “Francis this,” “Francis that,” the estate and its vineyards or the wines, because I’ve either heard or read it all before; the information is readily available on the Rubicon Estate website, which I imagine will now have to be converted to the Inglenook website. (I hope they drop the flash format.) I focused on the wines, which were all pretty good, if a bit…; but wait a minute, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
As you might expect, we started off with a white.

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Of the brilliant 2007 vintage in Napa Valley, it has been said that if you can’t make great wine in a year like that, you never will. And so it was with great anticipation that we took possession of two review samples of ’07 Cabernet Sauvignon from Cornerstone Cellars, a producer for whom we gain increasing respect for every time we try their wares. (You can read about previous encounters of the favorable kind here, here and here.)

We gave these two puppies a little over a week to settle down from their cross-country, journey, then invited our ITB friend Rebecca Poling over to see what they are all about. We paired them with all things grilled  – lamb, potatoes and veggies – along with some richly caramelized onions and Kim’s freshly baked bread. Here are our impressions.

2007 Cornerstone Cellars Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, 14.5% alc., $60: Clean, dark color, with a pretty nose of rich cassis, blackberry and black cherry; Rebecca adds an impression of chocolate covered blueberry cordial. Flavors generally echo on a full bodied, well-structured frame, but Ms. Poling commented on some grainy tannins, a slightly chalky mouth feel and drying tannins on the finish. While they are present, I found these qualities to present only a minor drawback, and I expect that this will age into a lovely Napa Cabernet with several years in the bottle. 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, blended from three Napa Valley AVA’s: 33% Howell Mountain (Ink Grade Block), 33% Oakville (Davis Block, Casanova Vineyards) and southern Napa County (Hardman Road). Each vineyard was harvested in late September and early October in perfect conditions. All lots were hand sorted and fermented separately. After a three day cold soak, tanks were inoculated with selected yeasts. Extended skin contact in the fermenter helped round out the tannins, with alcoholic fermentation taking about ten days and skin contact lasting up to fifteen days. Aged for 21 months in French Oak Barrels, 75% new. Find this wine

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Over the years, we have had very little experience with the Paso Robles producer Eberle Winery, which is perhaps surprising, considering the fact that Gary Eberle was a co-founder of the Paso Robles Appellation in 1980, opened his winery in 1983 and has been an important player in that region ever since. We liked the two Zins that we tasted way back when we covered ZAP ’99 (look at those garish page colors!), but truth be told, their availability in Day-twah has been sporadic, so when we got our hands on four late model bottlings last week, we made a point of trying them over a four-day period, so as to spend some time getting to know each of them individually. The wines are made by Ben Mayo, who took over those duties in 2003, and as it turns out, offer good QPR for their respective prices.

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Tom Mortimer, co-owner the Willamette Valley Pinot Noir producer Le Cadeau is a self-described “wine geek.” In 1997, he and his wife Deb purchased 28 acres in the Willamette Valley on a high-elevation volcanic basalt hillside. They took two years to clear the land and, in 1999, planted the first in a succession of vineyard blocks, to a variety of Pinot Noir clones, with the first wines being produced in 2002. Tom describes Le Cadeau as “a winemaker-designated vineyard;” each of the top four bottlings is made by a different person. Mortimer explains that he has a lot of friends in the business, but they’re all very busy, so it’s all just sort of worked out for the best this way. There is also turnover occasionally; earlier vintages of the wines were made by the likes of Harry Peterson-Nedry, Cheryl Francis and Sam Tannahill and Tony Rynders.  (click images to enlarge)

I had the opportunity to taste through the lineup of current releases from Le Cadeau with Tom this week, and I must say, I was impressed with them all. Mortimer is on a promotional tour of Michigan and stopped by with his local distributor, Jean-Jacques Fertal, of Eagle Eye Imports.

The wines all show a clean, ruby color, but beyond that, characteristics diverge somewhat. Prices listed are standard retail markups on special pricing being offered while Tom is in the neighborhood. We tasted through them rather quickly, as is necessary under such circumstances, but I was able to record these snapshot impressions.

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Jumpin’ Jim Lester rode into town last week on a trade mission, lookin’ to sell some of his always-delicious Wyncroft wines and spend a little time with his buddies Kim and geo. He dropped in at Gang Central after a very successful wine dinner and tasted me through most of what he’d poured earlier that evening; unfortunately, his latest vintage of Shou had been consumed entirely, but we’ll get to try that one at a later date, no doubt. He started me out on a couple of Rieslings before moving on to the red stuff.

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The last time we saw Anne Charlotte Bachas, co-owner of Chateau Font du Loup, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, just about a year ago, she was in town to promote her wines with AHD Vintners, who import and distribute them locally. We had a delightful time with Anne Charlotte, and loved the wines, so when I heard that she was returning to Day-twah with husband Laurent, I made a point of keeping my schedule open to attend the tasting at Cork Wine Pub, in Pleasant Ridge. Like his wife, Laurent is very friendly and easygoing, and despite his protestations to the contrary, his English is more than adequate for conveying information about his wines and vineyards; frankly, I wish I spoke French half as well.

AHD poured their entire Rhone lineup on this occasion, but I didn’t taste everything. I started out with a charming rose, and then moved right on to the Font du Loups. (Price ranges listed reflect standard retail markup of both post off (sale) and front line wholesale costs.)  CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

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Recently, we received the following email:

I’m Amber Hoxha from The Thomas Collective, a wine and spirits public relations firm in NYC. I’m writing to inquire if you had any interest in being added to our database so that we can send you updated wine information. Just an email address would be fine.

Thanks!
-Amber

Now, we’re always happy to get any “updated wine information,” and when we replied as such to Amber, she suggested that we might like to sample a couple of wines from one of their clients, Pernod Ricard USA, paired with regional dishes from Spain and Argentina. We like samples at Adams-Heritier and Associates, so, of course, we said , “Sure!” Sure enough, not long afterward, we took possession of two bottles of QPR red wine that, coincidentally, sell quite well at the establishments where I am gainfully employed, but which we had yet to try. These were accompanied by recipes for deceptively simple, yet quite tasty food pairings for each.

We started with a late-model Malbec and an Argentine carbonlia (recipe listed below tasting notes), a chili-like dish, spiked with cinnamon and prepared artfully by Kim.

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I’m going through something of a Zinfandel reawakening here in Day-twah, and more than a little of it has to do with the good things we’ve tasted from Wine Guerrilla in the last month. Sure, we still love our Mr. Ridge and drink them pretty regularly, but other than those, there have been precious few Zins coming through the door here at Gang Central over the last few years. Had we known what Bruce Patch and David Caffaro were up to, we would have made a point of paying them a visit and getting the lowdown from them directly when we were out left last spring. The ironic part of all this is that we actually stopped in at Caffaro’s place on Dry Creek Road to pick up wine for our buddy Frank Joyce in late April.

There wouldn’t even have been any “oh wells” or “if onlys” had Patch not gotten wind of us and sent some wine for us to try, which we quite liked and reported accordingly. Then, as these things often happen, I ran into three bottles of Wine Guerrilla Zinfandel at retail last week here in the Detroit area and did not hesitate to pick them up and give them a try, and guess what? These are quite good too, and being from the ’07 and ’08 vintage, they’ve given us a good read on how the wines do with a year or two in bottle, which is to say, very well indeed. Here are our impressions of what we tried.

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