Talk-A-Vino

This past weekend was filled with different wine events, which I want to share with you. First and foremost – arrival of the No Girls wine. No Girls wine is made by Christophe Baron, the wine maker behind Cayuse – one of the cult wineries from Washington state. What is so special? No Girls wine is available only through the mailing list. If you ever dealt with winery mailing lists you probably know that before you get on the mailing list, first you spend time on the waiting list for the mailing list. It took more than two years for me to move from waiting list to mailing list with Turley, makers of the great Zinfandels. I think for more than 3 years I’m still on the waiting list for Alban, Cayuse and Carlisle. With No Girls wine, despite the fact that I signed up literally on the same day as the offer came in, initially I got an e-mail that I didn’t make the mailing list, with the follow up e-mail in a couple of month saying that I got an allocation.

Hence the excitement and anticipation associated with arrival of No Girls wine – 2008 Grenache and Syrah from La Paciencia vineyard in Walla Walla. I can’t tell you anything about the wine itself – I plan to give it some time first. However, even packaging alone can make you excited – and to explain what I mean, here are few pictures for you.

Very bright and clever – what do you think?

Now, on the subject of the wines I actually tasted over this weekend, there were few I wanted to talk about.

First one is a Spanish wine 2010 Laya D.O. Almansa (14.5% ABV). This wine is a blend of Garnacha (70%) and Monstrell (30%). When you open the bottle and take a first sip, it comes out very grapey and young. It took this wine 3 days to develop a nice undertone of richness, with some ripe red fruit, a touch of spices and smokiness. Considering the price ($7.99) this is a great everyday wine (Drinkability: 7+).

Next one is a 2009 Textbook Cabernet Sauvignon Fin de journee Napa Valley (14.5% ABV). I had this wine for a few months, waiting for the right moment to try it and building up expectations – somehow the name “Textbook” caused a lot of warm expectations, especially with the back label promising a “textbook Napa Cabernet”. The wine had a nice nose of the dense black fruit, not too jammy, but present. On the palate, the fruit grew together with nice tannins and silky texture, only to somehow stop short of delivering the “oompf”. Almost like watching the golf ball slowly rolling after the putt “almost, almost, almost, ahh”. Signature black currant was almost there, but didn’t really show up in its clean beauty. Don’t get me wrong – for a $20 Napa Cab, this was a good wine, but it had to battle my inflated expectations… and lost. Drinkability: 7+.

Last but not least was 2009 Catastrophe Red Cattail Creek Estate Winery, Four Mile Creek VQA, Canada (12.5% ABV). We brought this wine back from Canada after the last year’s trip. It is a blend of Gamay Noir, Merlot and Cabernet. On the nose, it has a bright red fruit. On the palate, there is more red fruit, such as sour cherries, hint of earthiness, good clean acidity, very balanced. Medium body and very easy to drink. This wine also would be a great food wine – too bad, I only brought one bottle back. Drinkability: 8-.

That’s all folks. Don’t forget that April 25th is a Wine Blogging Wednesday, with the theme “Barossa Bumerang”  – find a bottle of Barossa wine from Australia, enjoy it, and write a blog post or at least leave a comment here. Have a great week! Cheers!

I haven’t done one of these ”daily glass” posts in a while, and at some point I really thought that these posts will be written daily. Some plans, huh? Okay, let’s talk about wine, shall we?

I have to tell you – once people know that I’m seriously ”into wine”, one of the first questions I hear is ”so, what’s your favorite wine?” – and this is the question I’m dreading literally the most – because I don’t have an answer. Depending on the mood, food, company and tons of other factors, I will be glad to drink different wines all the time. Better question might be – what wines I don’t like? You think you got me, right? No so fast.  The only wines I don’t like are those which are bad (yes, I know – very lame and predictable answer) – and luckily, there are really very few of those. But – as we are having an honest talk here – I have to tell you that there are wines which I’m generally trying to avoid. Not that I don’t like them, but I don’t get much out of them – on average, barring any exceptions. Not trying to create any loaded pause here – one kind of wine which I often trying avoid is Chianti.

Why? A lot of Chianti wines I tasted are flat in their flavor profile – Chianti is usually considered a nice and easy wine to drink – which it is, but this ”ease” also takes away most of the excitement for me. Of course we can not and should not generalize – as I said, I’m avoiding it, but this is not vegans-do-not-eat-meat kind of avoidance – I’m always ready to be surprised.

During the recent trip to Bottle King, I saw there 2008 Mazzei Ser Lapo Chianti Classico Riserva on sale. I did like the label, like the name (Ser Lapo, somehow it sounds good for me), like the price ($16.98), plus I have a bottle of 1988 Mazzei waiting to be opened – and I didn’t drink Chianti in a while – do you think that this is enough reasons to get a bottle? Yep, so did I.

Last Wednesday night bottle was opened. Beautiful dark garnet color – intense and promising. On the nose, there is energy – acidity, earthiness, some intense cherry flavor. Good start, right? I take a sip and…it is flat. Nothing is happening on the palate. I know I’m drinking wine, but that’s all – even after intense swirling in the glass, not much is happening. Gasp. This is precisely what I was talking about before.

It happens to be that recently I came across some notes from the ”unhappy” taster on Twitter, where ”leaf day” was suggested as a possible cause for wines not tasting right. After doing some research, I found lots of interesting read on Biodynamics – this is where the terminology is coming from (there is a lot of interesting discussions in blogosphere on the subject – here is one of the links for you). There is also an app for iPhone/iPad, called Wine Tonight, which I downloaded after doing the research. As you can imagine, when you have a problem nowadays, you look for an app for it, right? Yep, I decided to consult the app. Here is what I got:

Okay, that explains it, right? Let’s leave biodynamics aside, as this is actually the post about Chianti, and let talk about the wine. I had to run some errands, so I left the bottle opened for about two hours. When I’m came back, I poured another glass of the Ser Lapo, and…should I stop here and say ”to be continued”? Nope, will be too cruel, I agree – let’s continue. Swirl, sip – and ”hello, gorgeous” moment. The wine opened up beautifully, offering lots of dark fruit, like cherries and blackberries, hint of dark chocolate, earthiness and bright acidity with serious tannins coming in the long finish. Very balanced, great wine giving you lots of pleasure (Drinkability: 8+).

The wine opened up even further the next day, so it definitely will evolve in the cellar. By the way, I consulted ”Wine Tonight” app out of curiosity again, and it told me that it was a ”root day” and drinking of the wine should be generally avoided. So if I would listen to that app, I would have to avoid drinking wine for two days in the row – I don’t think I like that app at all.

That actually concludes my story – and I wish you to have a ”fruit day” every time you have a glass of wine in front of you. Cheers!

The idea behind “daily glass” posts was that they will be done, well, daily. This never materialized, so the Daily Glass posts take place really from occasion to occasion. Today happened to be one of those occasions – this wine was so nice and simple that I just had to write the “Daily Glass” post.

We brought this bottle of 2009 De Lavoie La Tourelle  from Quebec, Canada last July. The wine is made out of St-Croix, Le Marechal Foch and Baco Noir grapes and boasts 12% ABV. It has hint of sour cherries and smokey almonds on the nose (the nose is reminiscent of a Pinot Noir). The wine has medium body and on the palate shows raspberries and gooseberries, hint of minerality and vivid acidity. The acidity lingers the longest, creating mouthwatering finish, uncharacteristic of a typical red wines – I’m sure this would be a perfect food wine, very simple and very easy to drink. Drinkability: 7+.

I have one problems with this wine though – I had only one bottle, and Canadian wines are hardly available in the States… That would be my only complaint. Cheers!

Yesterday, I was doing my usual search for the bottle to open – happens every time if I don’t have a plan upfront. May be this one? No, probably too young. That one? That’s a last one, may be not now. Ahh, this one? No, not now – need a special moment. Then I finally reached out and grab a bottle of 2005 Castelmaure Grande Cuvee Corbieres Rouge – one of the two bottles I had. I was thinking about opening it many times before, but somehow the decision was always to wait until some other time.

This wine is a blend of mostly Syrah and Grenache (45% each) with addition of Carignan. Opened the bottle, and the wine is beautiful from the get go – deep, concentrated, showing good dark fruit, some cedar box, nice peppery mid-palate, great acidity and very balanced overall (Drinkability: 8). Next thing I’m going on Twitter to post the message about this wine and there I catch a glimpse of something while scrolling through the updates – Languedoc? #LanguedocDay?

It turns out that on November 10th, the world of social medial celebrated a Languedoc Day – Languedoc is a wine region in the South of France. The wine I opened, Castelmaure, comes from Corbieres, which is one of the appellations within Languedoc! Great thing about Languedoc wines is that the appellation rules allow making of the wide variety of wines from wide variety of grapes, and due to the fact that the region is not as famous as Bordeaux or Burgundy, lots of great wines are available at a great QPR. I even wrote a post about Languedoc wines at The Art Of Life Magazine in the “Best Hidden Secrets of the Wine World series”.

Now, let’s go back to the subject of the post. At any given moment, I have about three hundred bottles of wine in the house, very few of those are from Languedoc (may be 2-3 bottles at the most). I had no idea about #LanguedocDay before I selected the bottle. What is the probability of opening a bottle of wine from Languedoc specifically on that particular day, considering that we drink wine literally every day? I believe it is very (did I say “very”?) small. I don’t know how this worked, but somehow it did, so we happened to enjoy right bottle of wine on the right day.

If you got any good “coincidences” stories, please share them! And no matter what was in your glass yesterday and what will be in it today, I hope you enjoy it. Cheers!

P.S. Don’t forget about PJ Wine Grand Tasting, which will take place next Friday, November 18th – if you want to taste Dom Perignon, Cristal, Krug, 2006 Cheval Blanc, 2000 Chateau d’Yquem, 1990 Mouton-Rothschild, 1985 Chateau Haut-Brion, 1952 CVNE Vina Real Gran Reserva and many other incredible wines, all in one night, click here to get your tickets and don’t forget to use your $10 discount code Talk-A-Vino.

I’m continuing the quest for the best bottle of my favorite wine, Amarone (the concept of the “best bottle” also assumes great QPR). Last time we talked about Le Ragose Amarone, where I had big hopes which didn’t materialize (you can find the post here). This time, let’s talk about Amarone from … Trader Joe’s.

In the last post I told you about my discovery of value wines at Trader Joe’s in Massachusetts. Value Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay – of course. But value Amarone? Until now, my idea of value Amarone was Valpolicella Ripasso, the wine made by running juice through leftover grape skins after actual Amarone was already pressed. In general, good Amarone are hard to find for under $40, and typical range is $60 – $100 in a good wine store. And when it comes to price, same as for any other wines, the sky is the limit – the amazing Masi Amarone I mentioned in the post about Wolrdwide Tasting, would cost you about $150 (good luck finding it), and Giuseppe Quintarelli Amarone would set you back by about $350 (however, I found some rave reviews saying that this wine worth every penny).

Now forget everything I told you about the prices. Here are two examples that don’t fit into the ranges I mentioned before, thanks to Trader Joe’s. First, 2007 Pasqua Amarone, $18.99 in Trader Joe’s. While lacking traditional Amarone nose of juicy raisins, this wine exhibited power and balance. Lots of dark fruit, some coffee notes, hint of earthiness,  good acidity – very enjoyable wine. Drinkability: 7+.

I liked 2008 Valpantena Amarone Conte di Bergonzo ($16.99) even more. Bright dark fruit, some jammy notes supported by overall balance, minerality and good acidity – great all around package – very drinkable and leaving you craving for more. And QPR? At $16.99, do I need to even bother? Yep, I thought so. Drinkability: 8-.

Just to conclude – yes, Trader Joe’s is a place for great value wines. Even more importantly, it is a place for excellent Amarone with amazing QPR.

What are you waiting for? Have you being to Trader Joe’s wine department already? You owe it to yourself to find nearest Trader Joe’s with the wine section in it, and go enjoy it yourself – you can thank me later. Cheers!

When it comes to Trader Joe’s stores, I’m a big fun – I think that everything sold there has good quality and fairly priced (in our wine terms, has good QPR).

I also heard that some of the Trader Joe’s stores also sell wine. Living in Connecticut, the most you can find in supermarket or a food store is beer (wine is sold only at the liquor stores). While visiting friends in Brookline in Massachusetts, I suddenly realized that Trader Joe’s is literally across the street from their house – and it might be selling wine!

Guess what? Yep, it does. The store itself was bigger than any Trader Joe’s I’ve being to before, but besides that, wine section was  – Wow! Looking at the prices – double wow! Lots of wines at $4.99 ( outside of Trader Joe’s line called Charles Shaw, which is priced at $2.99), and overall, very substantial selection. Yes, I had before wines which were good and very inexpensive (same price range), but in general it is hit and miss.

Next I saw… 2 different Amarone at $16.99 and $18.99, a Barbaresco at $12.99 and Barolo for $16.99. Yes, you got it right – I got all of those except Barolo, and of course, tasting notes will be coming.

Let’s start from the basics – let me share my thoughts on Charles Shaw wines. First I tried 2010 Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon. It was quite drinkable, however resembling more Beaujolais Nouveau,  with its fresh fruit grapey taste. It was easy to drink, lighter bodied wine. Interestingly enough, on the second day this wine became very sweet and went beyond my style of enjoyment. Was it a great wine? No. Was it a good wine which you can drink occasionally – yes. Was it a great wine considering QPR, with the price of $2.99? Absolutely. Drinkability: 6+.

The next day I opened a bottle of 2009 Charles Shaw Chardonnay. The wine was very nice, had good amount of white fruit, some tropical fruit – but not overly fruity, with good acidity in the back. This was a good Chardonnay, with or without QPR. On the next day, wine developed some kind of chemical aftertaste, which disappeared as wine warmed up a bit, but overall it lost some of the brightness which was well exhibited on the first day.Drinkability: 7-.

To give you a bottom line, I think both wines were quite drinkable, and Chardonnay was more or less varietally correct (Cabernet was not so much). Would I want to drink these wines every day – not really, but occasionally – no problems at all. Do these wines have great QPR? You bet.  Should you try one – absolutely. This is your call for action for tonight – find a Trader Joe’s store which sells wine, get a few different bottles of Charles Shaw wines, try them and report back here. Meanwhile, I’m all ready for my Amarone, so I need to go now. Cheers!

Few days ago we had a magnificent experience with two great Bordeaux wines from Margaux Appellation (I love my friends!). Margaux appellation is located on the left side of Gironde river in Medoc, and it is a home to so called First Growth, Chateau Margaux, and it also has the biggest number of classified second and third growth out of all other appellations in Bordeaux. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot are the main grapes used in the wine production.

Two wines we had with the dinner were 1998 Chateau Palmer (classified third growth) and 2001 Chateau Lascombes (classified second growth). We decanted both wines for about an hour, just to get them to open up. Chateau Palmer showed lots of white truffles on the nose from the get go, and those white truffles stayed with the wine until the last drop. Chateau Lascombes started very tight, and opened up little by little to show some black truffles on the nose.

I can’t help but to mention that Chateau Palmer has a great web site, where you can find information about wines from the past vintages going back to 1959. The 1998 Chateau Palmer we were drinking was composed of 52% Merlot, 43% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Petit Verdot. If you like wines with the little age on them, this wine was just amazing. White truffles on the nose, white truffles on the palate. Round and polished, with great structure and tannins which are not firm already, but have enough grip if you swish the wine around in the mouth for a few moments. Good acidity, overall very balanced. One word description  – delicious. Drinkability: 9-.

Chateau Lascombes was three years younger, but of course that age difference has little meaning when it comes to wines which can last for 50 years or longer – growing conditions would have much bigger effect. 1998 had nice and dry summer, and 2001 had very hot summer and rainfall right before the harvest time (here is the link to the wine information on the Chateau Lascombes web site). This is all interesting, right? Well, okay – not that we could taste it in the wine. 2001 Chateau Lascombes was big and powerful. Hint of black truffles lasted for a while after the wine was open, but it was not present on the palate. The wine was very structured, still with the firm tannins and lots of dark fruit on the palate, very balanced. Drinkability: 8.

This was definitely a great experience with magnificent wines (I can’t thank Emil enough!). I don’t know how I would do in a blind tasting, but it was very interesting to find great similarities in the wines made in a close geographic proximity and technically having very similar terroir. White truffles or black, but the wines were similar on the nose, which I find fascinating – it was the first time I tasted wines of such level effectively back to back, so it was a great learning moment.

That’s all for now, folks. I wish you great wine discoveries – cheers!

Do you know how old tavern smells? The one were thousands of wine  bottles were opened, and wooden tables soaked up all the spills and drops of the wine during many tens or may be even hundreds of years? I don’t know about you, but for me this smell means “hello, vino was here!”. This is what you get when you pour this 2007 Epaule Jete Catherine and Pierre Breton Bourguiel in the glass. You get the most vinous nose you can imagine – not a hint of sweetness, not a hint of berries – only a noble smell of the ageless wine with the whiff of acidity. On the palate you get earthiness, minerality and more acidity, all delicately balanced by the early sour cherry kind of fruit.

Once I tasted this wine, one of the first thoughts was – it reminds me of a recent experience. It was so light and transparent (noted after tasting: 12% alcohol) that it brought back memories of the natural and biodynamic wine tasting at the PJ Wine (here is the link to that post). Similar to the wines in that tasting, this Cabernet Franc wine also let the Terroir to shine through, unadulterated. After checking the web site for Domain Breton  – voila, it appears that this wine is also natural, organic and biodynamic!

All in all this was a great experience – I’m not sure it will be easy to repeat it, as it was the only bottle I had (I got in Lavinia wine store in Geneva). Oh well – this wine is worth seeking and experiencing, so talk to your favorite wine store guy – I will certainly talk to mine. Cheers!

I guess partially encouraged by all the #pinotsmackdown conversations on Twitter, I decided to open Pinot Noir tonight. The bottle I opened was 2009 Irony Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley.

My luck with California Pinot Noir varies widely (I think I can count more misses than hits, I just typically don’t write about those). To my delight, this wine was a hit. After a few moments of breathing, it came out very smooth and mellow, with beautiful smoky nose (one of my favorite properties of a good Pinot). Balanced fruit on the palate, lots of strawberries, some violets, good acidity and soft tannins. Very long finish. I will put Drinkability at 8-.

Next week, on September 1st, we will be celebrating Cabernet Day (#CabernetDay, for more information and rules of participation you can click here) – make sure to celebrate with all the wine lovers by opening that special bottle you’ve being saving for so long. Also, considering that there are more than 600 grapes used in winemaking, and only 365 days in a year, I’m sure we can make every day a special grape day. Cheers!

Over the course  of last week, I found it almost impossible to write even a line in the blog. There is plenty of stuff to write about – Spanish Wine Festival, Bordeaux Vertical Tasting, many great wine encounters – and, nevertheless, not a line. Like someone turned the switch off. Until today, when I happened to share my frustration with my 12-year old son. He asked how my writing was going, and explained that it is not going well, as I can’t produce anything. Ah, writer’s block, he said, nodding understandingly. That’s it. As it often happens in my beloved Fantasy books, once you know the True Name of something or someone, you can control it. Here as well, once I managed to name my inability to write as a “writer’s block”, situation magically became controllable, and here I’m am – or to be more correct, here is the post, which I wanted to write before I will get to the couple of big subjects.

I wanted to talk about life lessons and tasting of the 2004 Chalk Hill Estate Bottled Cabernet Sauvignon, coming from very respectful producer in Sonoma County, Chalk Hill. Why life lessons, you ask? Very simple. I pride myself with being a semi-pro when it comes to wine. One of the important traits of such a self-image (in my opinion, of course), should be an ability to take the wines objectively – even if I don’t like the wine, I expect myself to be able to declare that while the wine is not in my style, it is still a good/well made wine.

First sip of this 2004 Cabernet – and I don’t follow that “objective” rule even for a split second – I declare wine as not my style at all and also simply as not being a goods wine. Reason for such declaration? The first sensation I got on the palate was “burnt fruit” – this is not necessarily a standard term, but I use it to describe an over-ripe fruit flavor, which used to be very common in inexpensive Australian Shiraz. Therefore, after the first sip, I declare that I can’t drink this wine at all.

Now, talk about luck – I was actually lucky that the wine, which was opened during a dinner with friends, was not finished completely. Subsequently, I had an opportunity to finish this wine two days after the bottle was opened (bottle was preserved with vacuum pump). As you can see, the word “opportunity” was used to describe the experience, so I guess you can sense some change. Yes, magical transformation took place over those two days. The wine became incredibly elegant, with silky smooth tannins and very gentle, yet powerful mouth-feel. Classic Cabernet fruit flavors, such as black currant and blackberries were present, together with hint of eucalyptus and cedar, in perfect harmony with acidity and tannins. This was truly a magnificent wine, and I was simply upset with my inability to recognize great wine from the get go. Drinkability: 9

Oh well, I learned my lesson, and I also learned to control writers’ block (hope both statements are true). And I will have to prove that I did by not repeating these mistakes again. Of course you will here about it – through this exact blog. Until the next time – cheers!