Red Wings and Red Rhônes 2011
January 15th, 2011 | 
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Long time readers might be surprised that we’re going into our fourth month of the current National Hockey League season and I’m only now posting my first Red Wings and Red Rhônes entry of the campaign. Truth to tell, I’m a little surprised myself. The lapse isn’t due to any lagging enthusiasm for either Detroit’s skaters or those big, hearty reds from southern France; au contraire, both are still near and dear to my heart. The simple fact of the matter is that a lot of other things have been laid on our plate and when you got ‘em, you gotta go with what’s timely. Still, we’ve been enjoying some really nice red Rhône selections so timely is as timely does. We’ve been getting to know a great little Côtes du Rhône QPR All Star really well over the last few weeks, and recently, I ran into an old friend still available at its original release price, a real rarity these days. We’re always happy to try new wines the Perrin family of Chateau Beaucastel fame, and we’ve also included notes on two white Rhônes, just for the halibut. Here submitted for your consideration is my first Rhône-down of the new year, and it most assuredly won’t be the last.
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Three from Stark-Condé
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As far as I can tell, Stark-Condé isn’t any more a household name here in the US now than when I last reviewed six of their wines a little over four years ago. They were distributed here in the Detroit area back then; I actually sold them in a wine department I managed at that time, but I don’t see much of them in my travels these days. Stark-Condé Wines is a family-run winery, operated by graphic designer-become winemaker José Condé, with total production of less than 3000 cases yearly. Their intent is “to make carefully crafted wines that speak with personality of a particular place” (all grapes are sourced from their “Oude Nektar” farm vineyards in Jonkershoek Valley in Stellenbosch), but for my tastes, they could come from a variety of regions around the world, so “internationally” styled are they.
I was pleased to see these three in a box of review samples that we recently received from our friends at Vineyard Brands, because I enjoyed those that we’d surveyed previously. Now, as then, they seem to show more in the way of “house style” than any “sense of place,” and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Alan Kerr’s Vintage’s January 8th Release – Tasting Notes
Happy New Year and welcome to Vintage’s “Smart Buys” issue, one that puts affordable wines on the shelf to help relieve the stress after buying all those high end wines from previous releases. Is quality a factor with these bargain basement prices? In many cases yes, but nonetheless, trust me; there are a few gems that will make the trip to your local store on Saturday morning worthwhile.
Wines from the “Smart Buys” release.
467951 ALAMOS MALBEC 2009 Mendoza, Argentina $13.95
Always a bargain, no complexity, but plenty of black fruit flavours, a touch of mineral and gentle tannins. Acidity is lively and the finish is clean. Find this wine
016071 MONTES LIMITED SELECTION CABERNET SAUVIGNON/CARMENÈRE 2008 Apalta Vineyard, Colchagua Valley, Chile $14.95
Sweet aromas combine with Moroccan spice, black cherry, currant and dried herbs. Nice oomph on the palate, some tannin, but none to offensive and a balanced and juicy finish. Find this wine
Louis / Dressner – Three Trees
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We’ve been fans of Louis/Dressner-LDM wines for several years now. We admire their devotion to naturally made, small batch artisanal producers, and while I can’t say that we’ve never had a bad wine from them, those have been few and far between. So, when we ran across these three from Three Trees, we were intrigued; when the salesman, who has never steered us wrong before described them as “awesome,” we were sold. Unfortunately, the wines themselves didn’t quite live up to that lofty, if overused, descriptor. Read on to see why.
Zinfandel Lives!!! Three from Wine Guerrilla and more
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Last month, we were contacted by Bruce Patch, head honcho at a Sonoma County outfit called Wine Guerrilla, asking where he might send samples for review. Patch, who spent most of his career in the music industry, moved to Sonoma in 1997 and started up a wine brokerage firm; eventually, he decided to turn Wine Guerrilla into his own label, with the mission of “Finding the very best zinfandel grapes, and crafting wines worthy of the grape’s unique characteristics, and introducing those wines to the public.” This strikes longtime lovers of the variety such as us a noble endeavor, and being mentored by no less than David Coffaro is certainly a bonus for Patch’s operation.
Six QPR Bordeaux from Mad Crush
We’ve never been much for wine clubs. The only one we’ve ever participated in was Ridge’s ATP program, and even as dearly as we love our Mr. Ridge, not every one of those selections rose to kind of uniformly high quality that justified the shipping and Chicago storage locker expense, and after a few years, we canceled our membership. We’ve felt that while wine clubs are certainly a good idea in principle, in practice, it’s often another matter. So, we were most intrigued when we heard that our friend, Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon, and her wine team at Matt Prentice Restaurant Group, had started the Mad Crush wine club. (Mad = Madeline, get it?)
The club offers a variety of monthly plans with cute names like Playful Duo, Playful Quartet and Splurge All-Red Duo, priced between $30-50. There are also one-time shots, such as the package of six well-priced Bordeaux for $79 that we decided to try. When Madeline says “Trust me, trust us,” we do, without qualification, so we ponied up the cash and tasted these over the course of a week and a half. All of them are imported by our friends at A.H.D. Vintners in Warren, Michigan, a testament not only to the good footwork they’ve done in Bordeaux, but also to the fact that there are still plenty of fine selections to be had for very reasonable prices.
Marqués de Cáceres – Rioja Crianza and MC tasting notes
Our friends at Vineyard Brands sent us a couple of review samples from the venerable Spanish producer, Marqués de Cáceres. The regular Rioja Crianza is the latest version of an old friend, previous vintages of which we’ve enjoyed on many occasions. The “MC” is another matter. It’s the first time we’ve seen or tasted one of these, and it’s a separate bottling in addition to the Reserva or Gran Reserva.
2007 Marqués de Cáceres Rioja Crianza, 85% Tempranillo, 15% Garnacha Tinta & Graciano, $14.99 SRP: Clean, dark color; sports a vanilla, chocolate and cherry nose that fleshes out on the palate with a solid core of deeper, darker black currants, berries and cherries, all shaded with earthy undertones. Full bodied, but by no means heavy, with good tannin and acid structure that should easily take it through the next three-to-five years in the cellar. Nice with food now (we had braised veal breast), but it’ll only get better with time. A nice de Cáceres, this. 12 months in oak barrels, followed by at least 14 months in bottle, depending on the date of release. Find this wine
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December 22nd – Florida Jim Cowan’s 2010 Tasting Notes Archive-Part 2
Jim Cowan Photo by Chris Witkowski - click to enlarge
The 2010 archive is presented by date the notes were compiled and submitted. This is Part 2 of the archive. Part 1 may be found here.
December 22, 2010
2005 Luneau-Papin, Muscadet Pueri Solis:
12% alcohol; smells close to corked; tastes similar; not much here for me although, with the proper food this is better than something that really is corked. Find this wine
2002 Verget, Chablis Vaillons:
13% alcohol; rich on both the nose and palate with a full-ish delivery and good sustain. A damn nice wine – and I| don’t usually give Verget the props. Find this wine
2004 de Vilaine, Mercury Les Montots:
12.5% alcohol; pretty green to start with but this came alive with a spicy corn dish. Probably less than what I want (at least, right now) but has its place. Find this wine
Four from Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine
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It occurred to me a few months ago while drinking a nice bottle of ’09 Laurent Grégoire “Domaine de Beauregard” Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie that we haven’t been enjoying enough Muscadet at our house lately. Muscadet, white, bone dry and the perfect wine for oysters, and a variety of other seafood as well; we’ve been tasting the stuff going back to the late ’80s, but not so much recently, which is a shame, because the good ones are among our very favorite styles of vinous libations. I decided to correct that, and picked up on four selections that are available in our neighborhood, starting with an old favorite from one of the very finest Muscadet producers.
A Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc Mini-Vertical
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Because our tastes turn more towards the French models these days, we can pretty much count our favorite domestic wine producers on one hand, and Tablas Creek Vineyard is right there on that very short list. I suppose that might be expected, given the collaboration of families Haas and Perrin, but it wouldn’t make a bit of difference who was involved if the wines were just all right, or worse, hit-and-miss. Happily, such is not the case; they are consistently brilliant, and we’re always happy to have anything they make in our glasses. Our friend Anne Keller obliged us in that regard recently by opening three vintages of Tablas Creek’s flagship white Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc for our enjoyment, and enjoy them we did!
