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Study of Port: Great Restaurants
You know, I’m continuing this series about great experiences in Portugal (here are part 1, part 2 and part 3), and there is this annoying little voice inside which says “stop talking about it… Keep it for yourself… Once people will find out, they will all start going there, and all the great and inexpensive food and wine will become expensive and inaccessible… Keep it a secret…”. Never mind, the inner voice lost, and one can’t keep great experiences secrets anyway, so let’s proceed, shall we?
Today I want to present to you three restaurants, all three different, but literally one better than the other.
Let’s start with the place called bbGourmet. Actually, bbGourmet is a group of restaurants, and the specific one we visited is called bbGourmet Bull&Bear. The restaurant has good rating on Trip Advisor, but when I walked by the restaurant, it looked modern and not very inviting from outside, so at first I thought we can skip it. But then people on Trip Advisor probably know a thing or two about food, and the place was relatively close, so why not give it a try, right?
Restaurant indeed looked very modern inside, but with the nice ambiance. The menu had tasting option for €35 for four dishes. For another €15 you could add a wine pairing to all the dishes. Yes, you don’t need any hard guesses – of course this is what we did.
To give you a brief summary: perfect dishes + outstanding wines + very good pairing = great experience. I’m an engineer, remember? Of course it is fun to think in math terms, right? Okay, just ignore. Moving along…
First dish: Scallop with risotto. Perfectly gentle array of flavors, with sweetness of scallop complemented by mild tartness and zest of risotto.
Pairing: 2011 Prova Regia Arinto Vinho Regional Lisboa – 100% Arinto grape, bright acidity, some grapefruit notes, very similar to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc – worked perfectly together with the dish.
Second dish: Sea Bass with black quinoa and fennel puree – that puree was particularlyoutstanding, overall an excellent dish
Pairing: 2012 Portal Colheita Branco Douro DOC, a blend of 45% Vinsinho, 20% Moscatel Galego Branco, 20% Malvasia Fino and 15% Rabigato. A bit drier than the previous white, more saddle and herbaceous flavors. Paired very well with the dish.
Third dish: Stuffed calamari. May be the best, definitely one of the best calamari dishes I ever had – perfect texture, perfect balance of flavors with the creamy sauce.
Pairing: 2011 Niepoort Redoma Rosé Douro DOC – a blend of 30%Tinta Amarela, 20%Touriga Franca and 50% others. A bit austere, needed a touch more fruit in my opinion. This was probably least successful pairing.
Fourth dish: Roasted veal. I’m not big on veal in general, but this was perfectly succulent dish. Those “potato chips” you see in the picture? They are not chips at all! They look like chips, but they soft literally like soft taco shells. Delicious!
Pairing: 2010 Portal Colheita Douro DOC Vinho Tinto – a blend of 60% Tinta Roriz, 25% Touriga Nacional, 15% Touriga Franca – very nice overall, good amount of dark fruit, soft and approachable, good oiverall balance.
And then – liquid desert! Secret Spot 40 years old Moscatel do Douro – I would guess, this is how winemakers play in Portugal – while they make the port all the time, every once in a while they make something for themselves – that is possibly the story behind this Moscatel (well, you will have hard time proving me wrong…). The wine was heavenly, with enough acidity to prevent it from becoming a syrup, and lots of complexity which can be rather expected considering the age. That was a perfect finish for a great meal.
40 years old Moscatel
The next restaurant was called ShiS (at the time of writing, the #21 out of 376 on the TripAdvisor’s list of restaurants in Porto). The first thing to mention about this restaurant is its location. It is located right by the wall which protects Douro river from the ocean, and the views are just exceptional. Before we talk about food and wine, here are couple of pictures I managed to snap right by the restaurant:
ShiS offers lots of choices of sushi and sashimi. This was our dinner in the making:
And this was my dish (chef’s selection sushi and sashimi combination):
Here is also a sea bass dish:
We had few of the very good wines. For the white we had 2012 Quinta do Crasto Douro Branco (a blend of Gouveio, Roupeiro and Rabigato) – somewhat on a fruity side, but overall dry, with good acidity and good balance. Quinta do Crasto produces some of the best wines in Portugal, especially when it comes to red, and these wines should be available in US.
The red wine was 2010 Quinta do Vale do Meandro Meão Meandro Douro DOC, a blend of 45% Touriga Nacional, 30% Touriga Franca, 13% Tinta Roriz, 5% Sousão, 4% Tinta Barroca, and 3% Tinto Cão. Good dark fruit on the nose and on the palate, soft tannins, overall well balanced. It should be available in US and worth seeking.
Dessert – Crème brûlée with chocolate sauce and of course, Port! Taylor’s 20 years old Tawny was very good, with dried fruit and nutty notes, quite light and balanced (we finished the only two bottles the restaurant had, unfortunately).
Crème brûlée with chocolate sauce
20 years old tawny – always appropriate
By the way, the wine list at ShiS has one interesting detail – it lists ABV for all the wines – I think this is pretty neat and I would be glad to see that in restaurants in the US:
Wine list at ShiS – note ABV ratings for all the wines
And now last, but not the least experience I want to share with you – Cometa Restaurante.
At the moment of this writing, it is #16 out of 376 on the Trip Advisor restaurant list in Porto. Very small restaurant, may be 8 or 10 tables, located on a top of a very long and steep set of stairs leading to the river. We had a very interesting experience at the restaurant with the set of small setbacks getting in the way, but not preventing us from having a great time overall.
The first issue was with wine – the restaurant had pretty small wine list, and even out of that small wine list, our first and then next choice were not available. Finally we settled on the white wine which restaurant had available. Then food became an issue too – most of us quickly set our minds on having a grilled squid – and it appeared that the restaurant only had one portion available for the five of us, so we had to come up with the other choices. The menu also had roasted chestnut soup with pomegranate seeds – but in reality, it was not available (sigh).
As the bottle of wine finally arrived at the table, things started to turn for the better (wine can fix all the problems in the world, right?). Then some appetizers arrived, and it was time to get another bottle of wine – only the same wine was not available anymore. Truth to be told, it was unfortunate that restaurant didn’t get the delivery of the wines they were supposed to get, so that was the reason for the shortcomings with the inventory. Okay, we went through the exercise of selecting the bottle of wine again, I would say, quite successfully – we picked 2010 Herdade Dos Grous Branco Vinho Regional Alentejano, a blend of Antão Vaz, Arinto and Roupeiro (typical for Alntejano white wines) – a medium to full bodied white, with good amount of white stone fruit, very round, good acidity and good finish.
Herdade dos Grous branco
Next – our entrees arrived. I ordered the dish called “Portuguese sausage”, which was effectively a collection of poultry pieces, served with the sweet sauce. By the way, take a look at the china – I love those plates… Real food served on real plates – wow, what a concept! But it feels so unique nowadays, when even in the best restaurant you might get paper napkins instead of a real cloth… This Portuguese sausage was delicious – I’m not sure if it was a duck egg or not on top of it, but the whole dish tasted perfectly.
Considering all the troubles we had with our food and wine selection, the restaurant decided to compensate for that a little bit, and offered us complementary bottle of Sparkling wine, which didn’t encounter much enthusiasm on our side, as we were mostly done with the food. Seeing our reaction, we were offered a bottle of 2011 Niepoort Tiara Douro Branco (at €34, it is one of the most expensive wines on the list) – and all of a sudden, all our troubles seemed well worth having.
2011 Niepoort Tiara Douro Branco
This wine is a blend of Codega, Rabigato, Donzelinho, Boal, Cercial and other grapes. Bright and full bodied, excellent acidity, very uplifting. This wine has great textural presence, you really feel it in you your mouth, you can roll it around – but it is so balanced, the fruit, the acidity, the whole package is perfectly together. Reminds me of the great Pigato wines I experienced at the Gambero Rosso event. One of the very best white wines I ever had (yeah, my list of “very best” might be a bit too long…).
And then the dinner conclusion with dessert – I’m clearly abusing the “very best” here, but this was one of the very best apple desserts I ever had – apple tart with the scoop of ice cream:
Apple tart
The apples were not visible, but very noticeable – big, juicy apples which say “bite me”. If you like apples – this was an outstanding dessert.
One parting note regarding Cometa Restaurante – the restaurant doesn’t accept international credit cards, so you should have cash on hand with you (well, there is an ATM near by, but it is always unpleasant when you can’t pay for your meal on the spot). By the way, care to guess how much this dinner cost us? We can skip the drum roll, but – it was only €35 per person!
And we are finally done! Every time I promise to myself to write short little posts, easy going for quick consumption – and I still end up with multi-page monstrosities with tons of pictures. Well, I hope I conveyed my main message – there are many great restaurants in Porto and I’m sure in the Portugal overall and they are still reasonably priced, so if you are thinking about going to Europe… No, I’m not encouraging you. Cheers!
Study of Port: Food and Wine Tidbits
Here I’m, continuing to report on my food and wine adventures in Portugal (here are the first and second posts from the series). Well, I guess “adventures” is really too much of a word for simply excellent food and wine experiences, but “adventures” put the things in the right prospective, isn’t it? Never mind, let’s just talk about food and wine.
On the first night we ended up at the small place called Restaurante Nova Europa. The place looked very authentic in the sense that they had a hard time to find an English menu, and our server spoke practically no English – that didn’t prevent us from having a very good dinner. Most of the people at the table ordered some version of the local fish called Bacalhau, which is a cod. It was offered in different variations – mine had a lot of potatoes:
Bacalhau
And as I often ignore food and wine pairing rules, the wine was red:
2010 Evel Tinto Douro
As most of the wines from Douro, this 2010 Evel Tinto Douro, this wine is made from the “classic set” of Portuguese grapes – Touriga Nacional, Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz a Tinta Barroca. The same grapes are also used as a foundation for most of the Port wines, which are made in exact same Douro region. Good body, good depth, not necessarily spectacular but easy to drink and pleasant.
Now I would like to mention two of the very local products. First one is beer. I’m not sure how many different beers are produced in Portugal (I’m positive though that US microbrewery revolution didn’t take any roots in Portugal so far). The beer is called Super Bock, it comes in lager, stout and few other versions, and it is produced in the area just outside of Porto – according to Wikipedia. I only tried the stout, which was dark, rich, smooth and creamy. I have to mention though that it is somewhat dangerous to rely on my opinion about beer – for the most of the time I prefer dark beer and on contrary to many of my friends, I don’t find Guinness bitter. And here is the picture for you – the picture was taken by my friend Kfir, not by me – but he was using my camera, so I guess I have some rights to it…
Super Bock stout, as captured by Kfir
Next item to bring to your attention is a local sandwich (supposedly it is Porto’s specialty) called Francesinha. This sandwich is made out of two slices of crust-less bread with various meats (or even veggies) in between – we saw it on the menu in most of the restaurants in Porto, and it can come with steak, white meat, various ham cuts and so on. The sandwich is completely covered by melted cheese (top and all sides), and it is served with the secret sauce which is supposed to be some combination of tomato sauce and beer. I had a steak version and it was very tasty. Believe it or not, but I’m not always carrying my camera to the restaurant, so Francesinha is probably the only dish I regret not taking my picture of – but someone thankfully did on Wikipedia, so below is the picture for you, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Francesinha sandwich, picture courtesy of Wikipedia
And then there was Cufra. Pardon my little drama here, and let me explain. We saw the restaurant while walking by, checked it out on the web, and it looked appealing enough. Service staff spoke not too much of English, but the menu was possible to understand, so we all ended up with decent food – but the wine was more memorable. For the white we had 2011 Castello D’Alba from Douro, a blend of Codega do Larinho, Rabigato and Viosinho – very typical blend for Douro white wine, all indigenous grapes (Wine Centurions, take note!). The wine was very nice, with good acidity and somewhat similar to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, only with less of grapefruit.
Castello D’Alba Douro White
Then we had a bootle of 2009 Quinta do Cardo Selecção do Enólogo Beiras DOC, a blend of Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz and Touriga Franca, produced by Quinta do Cardo. The wine was nothing short of being spectacular – with the exception of vintage port, during the whole week I only had one other red wine which was on the same level or may be even a touch higher – but I will talk about it in another post. Dense and concentrated, with dark fruit, plums and blueberries on the palate, all very round with the hint of smokiness. The wine was so good for the money (€14, in a restaurant!) that I even got two bottles right in the restaurant to take them back home.
Quinta do Cardo Selecção do Enólogo
When we went to the same restaurant second time, about a week later, the menu was quite different, and the wine were too. But – one of the reasons for the second visit was the desire to try the crab dish we saw someone ordering during the first time. Considering that Porto is located right on the cross of ocean and the Douro river, it is rather expected that fish and seafood should be very good – and this dish didn’t disappoint (hope you will find the below picture being enough of the proof):
Crab and shrimp at Cufra
I can’t say the same about wines – there was different 2009 Quinta do Cardo wine on the list (about €4 cheaper), and while it was not bad, it was not anywhere as good as the first one. All in all, if you are in Porto and if you will be in the area, Cufra is well worth visiting.
Last place I want to mention (but not least by all means) is a restaurant called Rabelos. Just to give you some prospective, Rabelos are actually flat bottom boats which were used to transport barrels of Port from the wineries to the Port house cellars for aging. Nowadays the wine is transported by the tanker trucks, and Rabelos are only used to move tourists around.
Rabelos Restaurante
Anyway, the restaurant is actually located in Vila Nova de Gaia, a town which houses all the port cellars across the river from Porto. It is located very close to the bridge which connects Porto and Gaia, right along the boardwalk in a place which in general should be considered a tourist trap. But it was no tourist trap at all. The service was outstanding, and we got great recommendations and had great experience overall.
One of the starters was local feta cheese, dusted with Parmesan and slightly roasted with olive oil (take a note – I think it should be as easy to make it at home as it is delicious, and as a very least I’m going to try it…).
Roasted feta cheese with parmesan
Then we had beef carpaccio and shrimp salad – the pictures don’t do justice to those dishes, but both were delicious
beef carpaccio
shrimp salad
Next we had two dishes made from Bacalhau in different styles – one was baked with cheese sauce and one was grilled – both were outstanding:
Bacalhau in cheese sauce
grilled bacalhau with shrimp
Again ignoring the pairing rules, we went with the red wine called 2010 Borges Quinta da Soalheira Douro Red, a blend of classic Douro red grapes, Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Barroca, Touriga Franca and Tinto Cão, made by Vinhos Borges. The wine had medium body, good acidity, nice red fruit on the palate, well balanced – perfect for every day drinking, considering you can find it.
Borges Quinta da Soalheira
For the desert, we had lemon cake (paired with white Port) and chocolate cake paired with simple tawny. Below are a few pictures – the first one is taken by me ( boring, sigh), and then two others taken by Kfir – I will need to learn how to really use my own camera…
Lemon cake, no excitement in the picture
lemon cake, now with excitement, courtesy of Kfir
extreme chocolate cake, as captured by Kfir
And of course nobody can leave the restaurant without coffee, right?
Espresso!
That’s all, we are done for today folks. Sorry for all the pictures, hope you found them at least moderately entertaining. Until the next time – cheers!
Study of Port: First Port Experiences
I’m continuing my notes from Portugal (you can find previous post here). On Sunday we had some free time to walk around the town, so I have more pictures and some actual port tasting notes for you.
Let’s start with the pictures. We walked past beautiful cemetery (is it appropriate to use the word “beautiful” in conjunction with cemetery? not sure, but still). As my friend P likes to say – “lines!”:
Lines!
more lines!
Isn’t this pretty?
Someone has good sense of humor:
stop sign being carried away…
One of the modes of transportation in Porto:
Just look at this beautiful town:
Porto
Port, I’m coming:
So we finally made it across the river (technically, all the port houses are located across the river from Porto in the town called Gaia). We made our first stop at Quinta do Noval. Quinta do Noval has all the operations in Douro valley, and only a small store in Porto, where you can taste limited number of their Ports. All the ports you can taste are packaged in the form of a single-pour tiny bottles, so as the result you can’t try any of their vintage ports, as those can’t be put in the small bottles. Let me explain.
There are many different types and styles of port, but at this point we only want to distinguish between vintage and non-vintage ports. To begin with, all the ports are made in the same way as any wine – the grapes are harvested, crushed and fermented until desired level of sweetness is achieved. From here on, Port making deviates from the regular wine making process – fermentation now is stopped with addition of very young brandy (neutral grape spirit), and then Port wine goes for aging in the barrels or vats, depending on what kind of port is in the making. Here the distinction will be also made between Vintage and non-vintage ports. If quality of the wine is outstanding, the Port house might declare a vintage year, and then the port will age in the oak cask only for 2 years, and then continue aging in the bottle. Otherwise, the port wine can age anywhere from 5 to a 100 years in the barrels, and it will produce ports with the age ( but not vintage) designation on them.
The key difference (important for us, consumers) between vintage and non-vintage port is that non-vintage port can be kept for extended amount of time after the bottle is open, while vintage port should be consumed within a day or two, same as any other wine. This is also the reason for Vintage port (which is typically very expensive) not being available for the tasting in the tiny bottles.
Okay, going back to our tasting – so we decided to try the 40 years Tawny port from Quinta de Noval:
It was good and very complex, with lots of almond variations on the palate, dried fruit and pronounced acidity, which was taming the sweetness. It was good but not amazing (I would be disappointed if I would pay a full price for an actual bottle of it).
barrel table and stools at Quinta de Noval
Next we stopped at Sandeman:
In most of the port houses you can go for the tour and then do the tasting – we decided to skip the tour and just do the tasting.
For the first time I tried White Port – and it was outstanding!
Sandeman Apitiv White Porto was aged for 3 years in the vat. It had golden color, good amount of sweetness ( but not cloying by all means), lots of white fruit, particularly white plums on the palate, good acidity. It was bright and uplifting, very refreshing wine overall.
Sandeman Imperial Reserve Porto ( 8 years of aging in the barrel) had sweetness perfectly supported by the structure underneath – dark fruit, good body, good acidity – overall, probably one of the best ports I ever had.
That’s all I have for you for now – in the next post we will talk about food experiences in Porto. Cheers!
Study of Port: Prologue
I have to break the tradition today – there will be no wine quiz for you to solve. Instead, I’m going to share the experience with you.
As you know, my day time work had nothing to do with wine. But – because of that work, I’m spending this week, in Portugal – hence the title of this blog post. I’m not just in Portugal, I’m actually in the city called Porto – and this is where the Port was born. Over the next few days, I plan to learn as much as I can about Port – and share that with you. But, considering that I’m still jet-lagged, there is not much I can share at the moment – besides a few pictures. Rest assured – more pictures and notes are coming soon!
I have no idea what house is this, but I like it
Love the combination of old and new – only in Europe…
I’m sure you knew that I will not leave you without flowers
and more flowers
and more flowers…
When was the last time you saw $2/bottle wines?
Actually, a lot of very inexpensive wine
yes, I’m a sucker for the red roofs… Never can get enough of them…
That’s all I have for you for today, folks. Don’t worry – the wine quizzes will be back, just after we will talk a bit about Port. Cheers!
Wine. That. Transforms.
If you followed this blog for a while, you know that I have a tendency to get excited around wines. May be “overly excited” is even better way to put it. Especially when I come across the wines which wow. Like this time.
Field Recordings wines are no strangers in this blog (2010 Fiction by Field Recordings was my 2011 wine of the year). Produced by Andrew Jones, grape-grower-turned-wine-maker, these wines are his personal accounts of people and places – every label on his wines will tell you where exactly the grapes came from, and who grew them – you can see an example above. And his wines have tremendous personality associated with them. What these wines do the best – they don’t leave you indifferent. Like this 2010 Field Recordings Petite Sirah Crockett Hill Vineyard Santa Ynez Valley (15.9% ABV, $22).
The very first smell of this wine just takes you away. Away from the day that passed. Away from all the little things which (of course you knew it), in essence, are not important at all. It is clean. It is powerful, It is beautiful. You can imagine any happy picture you want – the smell will support and carry it. Yes, it is pure fruit forward California wine – but it presents itself in such a bright and uplifting fashion, that this might be the way to spell “happiness” with wine.
The wine appears almost black in the glass. It is dense, it is concentrated, it is powerful. Blueberries, blueberry jam and blueberry pie all together – but without sweetness, all in very balanced, round form. You can have food with this wine – but what you really want is just this wine by itself. From the smell, the happiness continues in the glass.
Then your glass becomes empty. But you sit there, still smiling. Still carried away. To the happy place.
Is this an overly emotional account? You bet. But I invite you to find this wine and experience happy journey in the glass. Of course your personal happy wine might be different. I hope you will discover it. And I will drink to that. Cheers!
And Then There Was Zin…
Only yesterday I wrote the post about difficult task of figuring out when the wine is at its peak. And then I opened a bottle of 2007 Zinfandel. Unscrewed the top and poured into the glass. Quick swirl, sniff – and I’m blown away. Pure dried figs. Beautiful. Pure. Clean. Nothing gets in the way. Not overpowering. Just clean and firmly present. May be there were other flavors there – from that moment on, I didn’t look for anything else. It was reincarnation of 1997 Le Ragose Amarone, the magnificent moment I keep re-living on and on.
The first sip brought in the same level of perfection. Dry. Round. Crisp, if you can apply that to the red wine. Dried figs, blueberries, sage, eucalyptus. No fruit jams of any kind. No sweetness at all. Prefect balance and harmony. Yes, this kind of wine makes you emotional and forces you to reflect.
The wine – 2007 Wine Guerrilla Goat Trek Vineyard Block 6 Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley Sonoma County (15.5% ABV). A blend of 87% Zinfandel, 7% Cabernet Franc and 6% Petite Sirah. This wine is made by Wine Guerrilla. And when the have a slogan “Wine Guerrilla – The Art and Soul of Zinfandel”, they are really not kidding. Take a look at their line of Zinfandel wines here.
6 years old wine. Did I manage to hit the peak? I have no idea. Is it possible that the wine would improve further. Quite possible, but this was my last bottle.
Oh yes, and there is a culprit here. The wine I enjoyed so much was a little warmer than the cellar temperature – my wine fridge is set for 55°, so I guess the wine was about 62°-64° when I was drinking it. The next day when I finished the bottle, it was much warmer, probably at about 72° – and while it was good, it was not magical. And the temperature of the wine is literally the last thing I want to deal with instead of just enjoying the wine. Oh well… I’m glad I had this experience in my life. Cheers!
When Is The Wine Really (Really!) Ready To Drink?
About a week ago, I opened the bottle of 2004 Heritat Mont Rubi Durona Penedes D.O. This is my second experience with the wine. The first one was about a year ago when I opened a bottle to celebrate Wine Century Club’s 7th anniversary (one of the grapes this wine is made of, Sumoll, was a new grape for me). Here is how I described the wine at that time:
“very interesting herbal nose of sage and may be some oregano ( lightly hinted), and some nice red fruit on the palate, medium body, well balanced with pronounced tannins – I think it can still age for a while. Drinkability – 7+“.
Why am I telling you this and even citing my own tasting notes? Let me explain. This time, I opened the wine for a casual evening glass of wine, not for a dinner. I had one glass, and put it aside (using my faithful VacuVin to remove the air). The wine was tight and firm, with some cherries and good acidity on the palate. It was pleasant, but there were no problems with putting the glass down.
The next day, I opened the bottle again. There was not much of a difference with the previous night. May be the fruit became a touch softer, may be some raspberries showed up in addition to cherries, but tannins and acidity were still firm – not biting, no, but firm and present together. I had a glass or two, and closed the bottle again.
On the third day, something happened. The wine transformed from “ok, nice” to “WOW” (by the way, I think we need a new rating system for the wines – “yuck, ok, nice, wow, OMG” should do it – what do you think?). The wine became luscious, velvety, layered, showing the wide range of dark fruit – plums, cherries, touch of blackberries, touch of spices, all very balanced – it was impossible to put the glass down (no need too – there was nothing left in the bottle). In the three days, this wine transformed. It transformed from just an okay to wow, from the wine you can drink if you need to, to the wine you crave.
The subject of wine and time is one of the most fascinating. It is literally impossible to know what time will do to the wine. But I can honestly tell you, for the most of the “drink by” recommendations from the wine critics, I’m almost at the point of laughing. Okay, may be not laughing, but definitely ignoring. No, not all the wines will improve with time. Yes, there are general rules, like “drink Beaujolais Nouveau by the next May”. Yes, there are wines which are not intended to age, especially among the white wines, and especially if the white wine is Pinot Grigio or may be Sauvignon Blanc. Yes, I probably wouldn’t age most of the Rose – but have you ever tried Lopez de Heredia Vino Tondonia Rioja Rosado? The wine was 11 years old when I tried it, and it was stunning.
The way I look at the wine aging is this – most of the wines can age, until it is proven otherwise. I had 1947 Rioja recently, which was youthful, exuberant and outstanding. During recent Rioja seminar, I listened to our presenter to describe his experience with 1917 Rioja. He tried the wine in the group of 8 wine professionals at the dinner – after the first sip, the table got quiet for the next 5 minutes – people simple had to reflect on the wine. If you look through this blog you will find my accounts with well aged California wines, such as 16 years old Flora Springs Chardonnay, 20 years old Justin Cabernet Franc, 15 years old Estansia Meritage and Toasted Head Cab/Syrah blend (probably $12 at the time of purchase!) – the list can go on and on – all the wines I’m mentioning were outstanding, however I’m sure none of them would be declared aging-worthy by conventional wine critics or even winemakers.
The tricky part of wine and time relationship extends even further. We want to drink the wines at their peak. How can we know when the peak will be? I don’t have much experience with red Burgundy wines in general. But I understand that their aging process looks rather interesting – very drinkable form the beginning, they shutdown after a while, and then they come back. How can you know you are drinking the wine when it is ready, and not only that – when it is at its best? I’m not sure… I had my own experience last year with 2002 Dunn Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. From the moment the bottle was open, it was literally undrinkable – dense, rough, no fruit, just tannins – and it was like that for the 4 days. I didn’t try any aggressive decanting, but I tasted the wine every day. And then on the day number 5, the same magic happened as the one I described at the beginning of this post – the wine opened up into a beautiful WOW nectar – but I could’ve dump it just the day before!
Where am I going with all of this? I don’t have the destination. I want to make you to think about wine and time. I wonder where we, oenophiles, collectively are on this subject. I will hold my position no matter what – “the wine can age until proven otherwise” – but what do you think? What is your experience with “wine and time”? Can we do something to educate all the wine drinkers about it, do we even need to do it, or should we just drop the subject as you don’t believe it’s worth the bits, bytes and emotions? I will keep bringing up this subject from time to time, but hey, don’t be shy – see that comment box below? Cheers!
3/415/1863
Let me ask you a question (no, today is not Saturday and this is not a quiz post) – what do you think the numbers in the title represent?
Any ideas?
Okay, here it is.
3 years.
415 posts.
1863 comments, which translates into more than 900 dialogs.
Today is third anniversary of Talk-A-Vino blog.
This blog started on March 29, 2010 with this post. Started is somewhat of a big word, as the very next post came out almost 4 month later, on July 20th (interestingly enough, it was about Wine Century Club, same as my post from yesterday).
From there on, this blog went forward. Slowly. Sometimes, I was questioning the entire premise of this writing (believe me – I still do). Sometimes, the going was easy. And sometimes, getting a single word out was as easy as successful as convincing oneself that tooth pain is enjoyable. But – there was always something else to say. Something else to share. And the lucky day would bring a comment. An opportunity to talk and to engage, to have a dialog. I think ultimately, the dialog is what I value the most in the whole blogging paradigm. Yes, I can express myself, I’m talking about the subject I’m extremely passionate about – but I really strive for discussion, strive for dialog, strive for the feedback. Good, bad or ugly – doesn’t matter; having any feedback is much better than having none. This is why I included the number of comments as probably the only metric I care about. No, I’m not trying to lie to you – of course I look at the number of views and visitors. But – dialogs are what really matters, and it is the major reason for this blog to exist.
Okay, I think you got my point (can I please have a comment from each one of you, so I know my message went across? What, no comment? Well, please promise that you will leave one next time?).
Considering that any birthday is an opportunity to reflect, I wanted to give you my own retrospective and tell you what was planned, what worked, what didn’t work, what I liked and what I didn’t like. I dutifully scrolled through many posts, to no avail – I’m ashamed to admit, but I like a lot of them… Here is an “oenophile” mini-series – Fears of the Oenophile, Five Essential Traits of the Oenophile, Five Traps of Oenophile. And then there are Wine and Time, Wine = Art and Taste Of Wine – Engineering Approach, as well as the “wineries” mini-series – BV, Ridge, Paumanok, Chateau Ste. Michelle, … Wine quizzes, Daily Glass, Bars and Restaurants, Travel – all with pictures (can I share one more number? 1309 pictures are attached to this blog…).
Many things didn’t work as planned. My Daily Glass is very far from even weekly. My Categories are all over the place – grapes, wines, experiences and regions are all just lumped together, without any system. I don’t update pages on time (Top Wine Ratings is 5 month behind, for instance)…
Well, it is what it is. It is a live blog. And does create dialog. Thus, I’m happy. Cheers!
Daily Glass: Study of La Rioja Alta Viña Alberdi
On a given day, outside of any big holidays or special dinners, I have no idea what bottle I’m going to open in the evening. Sometimes it can be a painful procedure of looking at 20-30 bottles not been able to decide. Today, it was easy – @wineking3 mentioned on twitter that he had not the best experience with 2003 La Rioja Alta Vina Alberdi Reserva, which sparked my interest. You see, La Rioja Alta is one of the very best (and of my favorite) producers in Rioja, so I wanted to see if I can taste the same or similar wine – and I quite convinced that I should have some 2003 La Rioja Alta wine. Also it appears that Decanter magazine suggests that 2003 Rioja should be drunk now, however suggesting that better producers created powerful wines – which again only increased my interest.
La Rioja Alta was founded in 1890 by the group of five winegrowers in the Haro Station District. In 1941, the winery introduced its Viña Ardanza brand, which became one of the most famous in Rioja. In 1970, Viña Arana and Viña Alberdi were introduced, and since then La Rioja Alta wine had being produced under all three labels – but not in all the years. Each “brand” has it’s own unique source of grapes and grape composition, which is rather expected.
So as I pulled the 2003 La Rioja Alta Viña Alberdi Reserva from the wine fridge, somehow the thought came to my head – let’s use wine thermometer. You see, I have this nifty device called VinTemp, which is an infrared wine thermometer – it can perfectly measure temperature of the wine in the bottle without actually touching the wine. While I know that temperature has a great effect on the taste of wine, I practically never use this thermometer – but today I did, so the simple wine tasting became more of a study of the temperature effect on the wine.
According to the producer’s notes, 2003 was a very difficult year, due to the extreme heat and lack of the rainfall in July and August. As the result, only the grapes form the highest areas were used to produce the wine, which is made out of 100% Tempranillo coming from 3 different areas. The wine was fermented for 12 days, following by 26 days of malolactic fermentation and then aged for 2 years in American oak casks. The resulting wine has 13% ABV. That’s it – I’m done with all the technical and general stuff – let’s go to the tasting notes. Ahh, sorry, last detail – the winery notes recommend drinking the wine at 17°C (63°F).
The bottle is opened and the wine is poured. Initial temperature – 16.2°C (62°F). Color is dark ruby red, a color of mature red wine, but without brown hues. Rim variation – practically absent. The rim is clear and noticeable, which talks about some age, but it is clear. Nose: Mushrooms, earth, cherries, touch of barnyard – clearly an old world wine. Palate: Perfect acidity on the sides of the tongue, tart cherries, tannins. Tannins completely covering the mouth, very similar to Barolo, only with the wine been a bit lighter. And then there are more tannins. And they are going. And going. And going. For about one minute forty seconds ( yes, I looked at the clock). First verdict – perfectly dry wine. Need time to warm up and to open.
Second taste – about 20 minutes later, temperature measures 17.6°C (64°F). Nose – unchanged. Palate – more fruit, less tannins. Green notes, the wine almost tastes bitter. Worrying – is this the case of bad Rioja? Tannins are back, killing and overpowering.
Third taste – about an hour later, 19.3°C (67°F). Nose – coffee and chocolate showed up. Palate – beautiful. Fresh acidity. Bright fruit, cherries, blackberries. Still lots of tannins, but the fruit now comes first. Very round, smooth and expressive. Lots of pleasure.
Final verdict – Beautiful wine. Needs time!! Drinkability: 8
Let’s sum it up, shall we? In my opinion, this wine needs at least another 10 years to open up. And as you can see, the temperature plays key role here – considering level of tannins, the recommendation of 17°C is very surprising – you do need to drink this wine at a room temperature to let it show up in all its beauty.
Our study is complete. Now, can I have another glass? Cheers!
Re-post: Forgotten Vines: Madeira
During 2011 I wrote a number of posts for the project called The Art Of Life Magazine – of course talking about my favorite subject, wine. The project closed and even web site is down, but as I still like the posts I wrote, so I decided to re-post them in this blog. Also, in that project, posts were grouped into mini-series, such as “Forgotten Vines” you see here – I will continue re-posting them from time to time.
Also note that the series was written for a slightly different audience – I hope none of my readers will take offense in the fact that sometimes I’m stating the obvious…
Our first post in the Forgotten Vines series was dedicated to Jerez, a not-so-easy-to-find-but-worth-looking-for fortified wine from Spain. Continuing the series, let’s move a little bit to Spain’s west side neighbor, Portugal.
Talking about Portugal’s place on the wine map, what wine comes to mind first? Yes, of course it is Port. And while Port is single most famous Portugal wine, it is not the Port we want to talk about here (don’t worry, Port is squarely positioned in the line of “must-have” experiences, and we will talk about it later). We need to move a bit more down the map in the south-west direction, about 1000 km (600 mi) to the island of Madeira.
Madeira wine takes its name from the name of Madeira Island. History of Madeira, which started at around 15th century, is full of accidental discoveries, glory, overcoming of the hardship, raise and fall, and even love – if you are interested in the full story, you should take a look at Madeira Wine web site. In the 15th / 16th centuries, Madeira wine was created and transported in the barrels through the ocean to the far places such as India and China. It was found ( by accident, of course), that long ocean voyage improves the taste of wine compare to the original one which went into the barrel. After many trial and error experiments, it became apparent that prolonged exposure to the warm weather is the culprit, and then the method of heating the wine up to the 60C (140F) was invented. The process of heating up the wine is called Estufagem, and it is done after the wine is fermented in the oak barrels, same as any other wine – again, you can find more details online – you can find less colorful but more technical details on Wikipedia (click here). Just to give you a few more details from Madeira’s history, trade embargoes led to further improving Madeira by adding brandy spirits in order to preserve the wine. Barrels of Madeira left for prolonged time under the rain lead to development of the new style of Madeira wine, called Rainwater.
In the 18th century, Madeira was one of the most popular wines in the world, especially in England and United States. Madeira was used to toast United States Declaration of Independence, and was highly regarded as a drink of distinction. Unfortunately, first mildew and then phylloxera epidemic delivered way too powerful one-two punch, which Madeira wine industry was unable to overcome. Madeira subsided to nearly a cooking wine level, and was staying like that for the long time. Luckily, overall uptake on the wine industry throughout the world helps to revive Madeira industry, and now it is becoming possible to find a great drinking Madeira even in US – and you will see why. And I have to note that one of the great qualities of Madeira is in the fact that unlike practically any other wine, once you open a bottle of Madeira, it will stay the same more or less indefinitely, due to both Estufagem method and fortification with the spirit.
As we say here, time to open a bottle. Madeira comes in many different versions, from completely dry to the sweet. The Rainwater Madeira is somewhat of a simpler style, but still very enjoyable. This Sandeman Rainwater Madeira is deep and heavy on the nose, with hint of aged cheese and sweetness (overripe apple sweetness). On the palate, it shows the same concentration of the sweet notes, which is not really supported by acidity, so the wine comes somewhat unbalanced – however, as a desert wine to have with sharp cheese (like blue cheese, for instance), it will create a heavenly combination.
The next wine, Charleston Special Reserve Sercial is few levels up the previous wine. It comes as incredibly complex on the nose – nutty, with hint of sweetness and herbs, lots of herbs. Beautifully balanced on the palate with acidity and sweet delicate flavors of apple blending together perfectly. This Madeira has very long finish and can be used equally well before, during and after dinner – just take your pick. Definitely worth seeking.
Well, it is a great time to be a wine lover – abundance of experiences just grows daily. Now that you are empowered with the knowledge of Jerez and Madeira, it is time for personal encounter – find the bottle and enjoy it tonight!
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