Thanks to one of my colleagues switching classes with me, I was able to get to London and taste a little of what we, the wine loving public, can expect to find on the shelves this Saturday and two weeks down the road. Although the focus this release is on some very good wines from Tuscany and Piedmont, I surprised myself as I was more impressed with the wines from Argentina, that although not cheap, were in fact exceedingly tasty.

October 15th.

Wines of Piedmont.

225227 LA QUERCIOLA CHICCHIVELLO LANGHE ROSSO 2008 $13.95
Lots of tar, spice, clove, black ground pepper and black fruit that runs across the palate with the right amount of acidity and oomph. Its finish displays the black fruit and adds a note of sweet red berry and dusty tannin. Nice wine, well priced and very quaffable. Find this wine

232454 PODERI DI LUIGI EINAUDI DOLCETTO DI DOGLIANI 2009 $18.95
This wine has layers of fresh berry coulis, cherry and black raspberry with floral notes, dried herb and mineral. It is fleshy on the palate, blueberry joins the fruit mix, it carries some weight, but at this point in its evolution it is a little chunky. Find this wine

233890 GUASTI CLEMENTE & FIGLI FONDA S. NICOLAO BARBERA D’ASTI SUPERIORE 2005 $21.95
A pretty wine, showing fresh cut flowers, damson cherry cola, mocha and maturing fruit, excellent balance, nice texture, gentle tannins and a touch of mineral on the finish. Find this wine

233908 GUASTI CLEMENTE & FIGLI RISERVA BARBARESCO 2005 $35.95 DOCG
As with the Barbera, this wine carries the maturing fruit and mocha notes plus a whiff or two of dried herb, game and meat. However, the palate is dry, has excessive tannins and a note of heat. 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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With much anticipation, Cowan Cellars has announced its first release. Way to go, Jim and Diane!!  We wish you both much success in this and upcoming releases.

The wines are:

2010 Isa (skin-fermented white)
2010 Pinot Noir, Bennett Valley
2010 Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast.

You can read about these wines on here.

You can read a little about the history behind these wines here.

You may purchase these wines here.

Unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict, getting to the next several Vintages tastings will be problematic for me.  Therefore in the interim period, I intend to scribe about some of the foods I like to play around with and talk about how some of the wines I’ve had worked particularly well with the finished dish.  CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

I change my approach to cooking often. I read a book that allures me and I am off to wherever to procure the ingredients required. Which I might add is part of the fun! Right now, Korean food rocks my world, or at least it impacts a lot of what I do in my kitchen.  Reading David Chang’s insightful cookbook Momofuku has clearly had an impact on me. I love flavour balance, and Chang has a masterful ability to blend flavours with the precision of an alchemist.

A few weeks ago on now quite frequent trips to a certain New York State supermarket  I came across a well aged prime grade hanger steak. Ask for this cut in a Canadian store and one mostly gets a look of complete non comprehension.

The usual treatment of such a prized protein is to pop it in a marinade, sear it on the grill and slice it rare. Nothing wrong sticking to the tried and true, but I wanted to play around and do something different. Having used a heat circulator at school, I decided to construct one at home, saving the thousand dollars plus price tag on the real McCoy. My ghetto sous vide machine was composed of a large pot of water, an extremely low setting on my stove, Styrofoam and a digital thermometer. With a quick stir now and then, the water temperature remained constant within two degrees for the forty five minute cooking time. Read the rest of this entry »

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 had a very odd, but interesting experience this week. The telling takes a few turns, but stick with me here, it’ll all makes sense at the end, or will it…?

During the course having new water pipes installed in our basement, I had to empty out all the wine that we keep in our makeshift cellar, which is also the room where our water meter is. We now keep our wine in wooden cases or on racks, as we’ve graduated from those cardboard cases that used to populate “the cellar from hell.” One of the cases was a 6-pack that carried a half dozen 1998 Sena Red Wines that we purchased well over 10 years ago. Those wines are long gone; we enjoyed them all, and never detected any kind of taint in any of them. Since the case itself was still functional, about three years ago, we put five bottles of red wine in it for safe storage from a producer who has sometimes been accused of producing corked wine.

As I was putting the cellar back together a few days ago, I noticed the unmistakable odor of TCA emanating from the box, so I took the five bottles out, put them on the wine rack and took the box outside. I let Kim take a whiff (she’s even more sensitive to corked wine than I am), and she recoiled in disgust, as I knew she would. I put the box over by our shed about 50 feet from the back deck, and over the next few days, we both noticed that not only could we smell the taint when the wind was blowing in the right direction, but also that it seemed to get worse, just like corked wine that “opens” in the glass after it’s poured.
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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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It’s that time of the year again when the LCBO boffins come out full tilt with the critically acclaimed big boys, otherwise known as the “Top Marks 90+ Wines”. Vintages has assembled a few liquid treats from around the wine world that have been blessed and highly touted by some of the most influential wine gurus, applying a score of 90 points or more. Some are worth their high degree of hype and some are clearly not!

Do you like Sauvignon Blanc? Good, I do too and there are a couple I particularly enjoyed, so best read on.

TOP MARKS 90+ WINES

927582 KILIKANOON PRODIGAL GRENACHE 2007 Clare Valley, South Australia $29.95
One of two excellent Grenache wines from down under, this one spending time in both French and American oak, flaunting aromas of chocolate, black fruit, mineral, slate and lavender. Its palate is ripe, but balanced, showing layers of blackberry and currant, some Asian spice flavours and perfect acidity to complement the fruit. Find this wine
Jay Miller, erobertparker.com, 90 points
Yours truly, Gangofpour.com 91 points
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When I realized the focus of June’s latest release is to be wines from Argentina, I was not overly thrilled, not that I don’t like the odd bottle of Argentinean wine now and then mind you, but drinking a flight had little appeal for me. However, much to my delight, I am able to report the release offers many solid wines, which are well priced and several are drinking nicely now. Please read on……………….

WINES FROM THE “HEAT IS ON RELEASE”.

232678 ALTOCEDRO AÑO CERO TEMPRANILLO 2009 La Consulta, Mendoza $16.95
Lots of mocha with whiffs of balsa, underbrush, milk chocolate, dark fruit and funk, a little chewy on the palate, notes of blueberry and currant, plenty of teeth coating tannin, but not much length on the finish. Find this wine

233973 ANTUCURA CALVULCURA 2005 Uco Valley, Mendoza $23.95
This blend of 60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon has some smoky meaty notes, layers of blackcurrant, chocolate, mineral and slate, plenty of tasty dark fruit, some red currant and still some tannin to resolve. Find this wine

232637 BENMARCO CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2009 Mendoza $16.95
Blackcurrant laden aromas with a dose of sweet oak, a floral note, carrying an enjoyable texture on the palate; it is balanced nicely with just a few soft tannins appearing on the finish. Find this wine

235085 CARLA CHIARO RESERVE MALBEC 2007 Mendoza $14.95
Sweet Moroccan spice, some dark chocolate, mint and lovely black raspberry and blackcurrant aromas run through to the juicy palate, laden with refreshing black fruit acidity and a touch of dusty tannin. Find this wine

640854 SALENTEIN RESERVE MALBEC 2009 Uco Valley, Mendoza $19.95
A spicy peppery wine showing nice black fruit, a touch of wet earth, a lively palate, black and blue berry fruit bound by chewy tannins. Find this wine
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