A Year in Wine

New Players On The Los Cabos Wine Scene

2012-01-23T07:26:00.000-08:00

Ricardo Martinez in the new El Wine Shop

I see that northern California finally is getting some rain and wind to go with winter's typically chilly temperatures. That means, I'm sure, that more northern Californians will be flying south to take advantage of the sunny and balmy weather here, in Los Cabos, at the southern reaches of Mexico's Baja peninsula. For wine enthusiasts among the immigrants, I'm here to help.

Here's what to expect if you plan a winter retreat or spring break in Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo or one of the resorts or timeshares along the 20 miles of coastline between the two settlements:

- Argentine and Chilean wines dominate the local market, in both restaurants and grocery stores. By and large, their quality is superb, their value even more impressive. Solid South American brands like Cono Sur, Morande and Santa Julia readily are available in such stores as Costco, Soriano, City Club, Chedraui, La Europea and Mega.

- California wines almost solely are limited to such mainstream producers as Kendall-Jackson, Sutter Home and E.&J. Gallo, in particular Gallo's Barefoot brand. By and large, brace yourself for sticker shock even for wines that in the United States generally are priced at $15 or less. They're apt to cost a third more here, largely because of permit fees and taxes levied by the Mexican government, as well as shipping costs.

- Cabo San Lucas has a fine wine shop in the expansive if somewhat stuffy and dear Vinoteca along the Carretera Transpeninsular on the north edge of the city; it's right in front of the Home Depot set back from the west side of the highway. The only branch of Costco in Los Cabos also is in Cabo San Lucas, also on the west side of the four-lane, not far from Home Depot.

- The real retail wine action in Los Cabos, however, is concentrated along a short stretch of the Carretera Transpeninsular in San Jose del Cabo, just a short walk from such beachfront resorts as Barcelo, Cabo Azul, Posada Real and Holiday Inn. Within about a mile along the east side of the highway are four stores whose selections of wine are extensive enough and intriguing enough to delight just about any enophile.

The four, incidentally, include Walmart. I'm not kidding. In Mexico, Walmart officials seem to have adopted a far different wine-marketing attitude than they have in the United States, where the selections run to mass-produced wines that while cheap also are pedestrian. The San Jose del Cabo branch of Walmart, on the other hand, has one of the broader and deeper wine departments in the region. Yes, it includes plenty of cheap brands, including Beso de Vino, 3 Blind Moose, Black Swan, Lucky Duck and Barefoot, but it also includes an almost equal number of premium releases, such as a Mexican cabernet sauvignon under the Teziano label for 621 pesos (about $50 in U.S. currency at the current rate of exchange) and the reserve "409" Ribera del Duero from the producer Condado de Oriza for 1,209 pesos (about $93). I've yet to see those kinds of choices at a Walmart in the U.S., but I wouldn't be surprised if Costco's success in the marketing of premium wines is giving Walmart's directors an incentive to head in that direction.

- This short stretch of the four-lane also includes Carlos Fernandez's La Casa Del Vino, where he stocks only wines made in Baja California, principally from the Valle de Guadalupe just northeast of Ensenada. At any given time he's apt to carry more than 100 wines, providing anyone curious about the state of Mexican wine with plenty of material for tasting.

El Wine Shop, San Jose del Cabo

- The newest player among wine merchants along this concentrated stretch of the Carretera Transpeninsular is El Wine Shop, a small but snazzy store tucked between the Mega supermarket and the cluster of galleries called Villa Valentina. Open just a month, El Wine Shop is an outgrowth of the wine importing and distribution business ECM de Vinos in Los Cabos. Business partners Ricardo Martinez and Alberto Cubilla had talked for years of opening a wine shop, and the San Jose del Cabo branch is the first of five or so that they hope to launch throughout Mexico over the next few years.

Here, their selection is drawn from throughout the world, with California represented with more variety and more upscale brands than is found in other wine shops in the area. When I stopped by the other day for the first time, a bottle-shaped blackboard that takes up much of one wall listed the Caymus Vineyards 2006 Napa Valley Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon for 2,400 pesos (about $185 U.S.; in California, BevMo sells it for $160). Other choice West Coast wines include the Pahlmeyer 2008 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay for 1,680 pesos ($130), Randy Dunn's Feather 2006 Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon for 903 pesos ($70), the Morgan 2009 Santa Lucia Highlands "Highland" Chardonnay for 420 pesos ($32), the Rubicon Estate 2006 Rutherford Cask Cabernet Sauvignon for 1,404 pesos ($108), and the Hess Collection 2009 Napa Valley Chardonnay for 399 pesos ($31). To balance out the selection, Martinez and Cubilla carry several everyday wines, such as the Delicato white zinfandel for 133 pesos ($10).

Their goal is to stock more than 200 wines, and their inventory already looks to be nearing that total. Still to arrive is a selection of wines from Berkeley wine importer Kermit Lynch, as well as a new stockpile of zinfandel from Lodi's Klinker Brick Winery, for which Martinez and Cubilla have found a surprisingly strong local market.

Many of the wines they carry also are available in Los Cabos restaurants, but not necessarily in other wine shops, with which they don't want to compete out of concern about jeopardizing the distribution branch of their partnership. Several Italian, Spanish and French wines are available only at El Wine Shop. Among Mexican wines, they carry several releases by one of the more experienced wineries in northern Baja's Valle de Guadalupe - Monte Xanic. They also offer an assortment of artisan Mexican beers (Rosarito Beach, Bufadora, Cucapa and Tempus), as well as brews of the local Baja Brewing Co., and they are just starting to stock small-lot tequilas.

The design of the place is a light interpretation of industrial chic, with wines displayed in shipping crates and the counter and its backdrop built with wooden slats salvaged from about 40 forklift pallets. El Wine Shop is open 11 a.m.-7 p.m. daily except Sunday.

Competition Results Reinforce Reputations

2012-01-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

As mosaics go, the 84 glasses in front of each judge formed an intricate, colorful and telling picture of the nation's wine trade at the start of 2012. The arrangements constituted the sweepstakes round of the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition in Cloverdale this past Friday. Each of the 84 was a best-of-class wine, deemed worthy of serious consideration for one of the competition's five top honors - best sparkling wine, best white wine, best pink wine, best red wine, and best dessert or specialty wine.

Of the 84, more than half - 52, to be precise - were red. Of the 52, nine each were cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel, eight were pinot noir, six were merlot, five were syrah/shiraz, and four were blends based on traditional Bordeaux grape varieties such as cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot. Why were so many nominees from these six styles? The breakdown reflects the production and popularity of the six, which the Chronicle competition aims to make manageable by dividing into price categories, such as pinot noirs $30 to $34.99, and zinfandels $50 and above. In contrast, less-popular varietals generally were grouped into one class, regardless of price, such as tempranillo, sangiovese and barbera, with only one each going into the sweepstakes round. That would seem to improve their odds of winning the big prize as partisans of one or the other of the mainstream varietals split their votes over their favorite interpretation of, say, zinfandel or pinot noir.

Best red wine

That isn't how it worked out this year, however. The red-wine sweepstakes went to a cabernet sauvignon, the McGrail Vineyards & Winery 2008 Livermore Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ($36). This outcome won't surprise anyone familiar with the Livermore Valley's long history of growing cabernet sauvignon of both force and finesse. The McGrail wasn't even the only Livermore Valley cabernet sauvignon in the sweepstakes round. Another was the Bent Creek Wines 2009 Livermore Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($25). Just one of the cabernets was from Napa Valley, widely regarded as the nation's most esteemed producer of the varietal. That just one cabernet from the area made it to the sweepstakes stage also should come as no surprise, however, given that Napa Valley vintners generally are loathe to enter their pricier cabs in blind competitions, calculating that they have nothing much to gain if they win and a whole lot to lose if they don't. Also not surprisingly, the only Napa Valley cabernet in the sweeps was the most expensive take on the varietal, the Black Stallion 2008 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($65).

Three of the cabernets in the finale, incidentally, were from the northern Sonoma County appellation long respected for especially lush yet graceful takes on the varietal, the Alexander Valley. They were the Carruth Cellars 2009 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($32), the Dutcher Crossing Winery 2008 Alexander Valley Cooney Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($43) and the Trione Vineyards & Winery 2007 Alexander Valley Block Twenty One Cabernet Sauvignon ($58).

In several other instances, the sweepstakes round also verified the high standing of particular regions for particular varietals. Five of the eight pinot noirs in the finale were from the Russian River Valley. Of the nine zinfandels, four were from Dry Creek Valley and two were from Lodi. The only gewurztraminer in the running for best white wine was from the Finger Lakes district of New York, and it ultimately was declared the competition's best white wine; it was the Dr. Konstantin Frank 2010 Finger Lakes Gewurztraminer ($25). Of the 12 chardonnays in the running for best white wine, five were from various appellations of the Napa Valley, four were from the Central Coast. The only barbera to compete for best red wine was from California's Sierra foothills, the region generating the most buzz for the varietal. It was the Boeger Winery 2009 El Dorado Barbera ($17), a wine featured in my weekly column for The Sacramento Bee this past fall. In all, 54 barberas won medals in the judging, 26 of them from the Sierra foothills.

Of the 84 best-of-class wines up for sweepstakes consideration, 18 were from Sacramento's backyard - the Sierra foothills, the Delta and Lodi. Two each were from Michael-David Winery of Lodi and McManis Family Vineyards of Ripon. Among best-of-class wines, however, the strongest performance by a local winery was turned in by Charles B. Mitchell Vineyards of Fair Play in El Dorado County, which had three wines in the sweepstakes round: Charles B. Mitchell Vineyards Fair Play Estate Madame Omo's Pure Sunshine ($12), Charles B. Mitchell Vineyards Fair Play Monsieur Omo's Red Sunshine ($12) and Charles B. Mitchell Vineyards Fair Play Cotes du Consumnes ($12).

In addition to the sweepstakes winners already mentioned, the Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards 2006 Carneros Blanc de Blancs ($28) won as best sparkling wine, the Bernard Griffin 2011 Columbia Valley Rose of Sangiovese ($12) won as best pink wine, and the Castello di Amorosa 2010 Anderson Valley Late Harvest Gewurztraminer ($35) won as best dessert or specialty wine.

A total 5,667 wines from 1,379 American wineries were entered. California wineries, naturally, were responsible for most of the entries, but wines from 24 other states also competed, giving an indication of the spread of the nation's wine trade. A public tasting of award-winning wines will be at Fort Mason in San Francisco on Feb. 18; for more information, check out the competition's website.

Wine Writing Draws A Fresh Crop Of Talent

2011-12-30T14:18:00.000-08:00

I'm back. More importantly, I like to think, this here blog is back. I've been in Thailand; the blog has been in Blogger limbo. As I packed for my trip I forgot to renew the annual fee for my domain name. When the due date arrived, Google was quick to disable it. And very slow to straighten out the issue and get the blog back online when I returned. Fortunately, a real-live Google support person in Canada worked diligently and patiently to help correct the issue, which proved much more complicated than it should have been.

On the up side, the interruption gave me a chance to catch up on some of my reading. A big chunk of that involved going over the submissions of 41 applicants seeking 10 fellowships for the annual Symposium for Professional Wine Writers at Meadowood in Napa Valley. For several years now I've been one of three judges who review their writing and pick the 10 we feel are the most deserving candidates. Each submits two examples of something about wine they have been written. Many have been published in newspapers or magazines. Some are raw manuscripts. They can be feature articles, scripts for podcasts, blog postings, essays and the like. We don't know who wrote them or where they might have been published. We are to judge them primarily for writing quality, knowledge of wine, how informative, entertaining and inspirational their approach is, and their potential.

In the past, the packet that symposium director Jim Gordon dispatched to the judges has left me more disappointed than uplifted. Much of the writing was uninspired and trite. Candidates too often returned to the same tired topics; they rarely took risks. This year, however, the writing, by and large, was a pleasant surprise. Rather than write of Napa Valley and Bordeaux, they addressed such underappreciated regions as Madeira and the Languedoc. Rather than cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay, they wrote of moscato, marsala and even scuppernong. Here's how I put it to Jim when I turned in my scores:

"Wow! What happened this past year? This batch of fellowship candidates is the strongest ever, to judge by their writing examples. Almost without exception, the reporting and writing is smarter, clearer and more balanced and compelling. Several examples are fresh and daring in subject matter and approach. Their subjects are more diverse, and their articles, scripts and posts show more personality, more timeliness, more details and more color, with a much firmer grip on the topic at hand. A more professional attitude runs through the stack of material, but without sacrificing the enthusiasm that wine generates. Wine writing clearly is attracting people well grounded in related topics - science, travel, food - and for that the future of the craft is looking pretty bright this morning. In short, the screening was tougher than ever. On my tally sheet, six of the 41 writers scored in the 90s, 21 in the 80s. Only one was below 70. Sure, there were some organizational shortcomings, and some over-writing, but these generally were with raw manuscripts, not published works, and a competent editor could help rectify those."

I've a hunch why the material overall was more professional this year: Word has gotten around about the strength of the program that Jim coordinates. This year's program, for example, includes presentations by Eric Asimov, chief wine critic of The New York Times; Guy Woodward, editor of Decanter magazine in London; Joshua Greene, editor of Wine & Spirits magazine in New York City; Michael Gelb, author of "How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci"; and Antonia Allegra, a culinary and writing coach who several years ago founded the symposium.

This year's symposium will be at the posh Napa Valley resort Meadowood Feb. 21-24. For more information, check out the symposium's website. Incidentally, I've no vested interest in the gathering; my involvement is voluntary. I've never attended, but Jim has extended an invitation to do so, and I hope to one of these years.

Losses To Wine Culture, Here And Abroad

2011-12-07T11:02:00.000-08:00

- Grab a hat. Practice your dance steps. Prepare to share or at least hear giddy stories about the jovial and colorful Ralph Kunkee, who died last month. Officials and graduates of the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis, where he had a long and influential career teaching and researching the microbiology of wine, have settled on Jan. 7 as the date for a memorial service and celebration of the life of Ralph Kunkee. It begins with the memorial service at 11 a.m. in the Buehler Alumni Center at the southern reaches of campus, to be followed by the celebration in the Sensory Building of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. Organizers stipulate that persons who plan to attend must register here so they can be sure to have enough food and wine for everyone. There will be no charge for the events. More information is to be posted on the department's Facebook page. The dancing, incidentally, no doubt will be to the Village People's "Y.M.C.A.," with which Ralph Kunkee liked to cap a party.

- In this homage, veteran wine writer Dan Berger reports that plans also are taking shape for a memorial service for another grand old man on the wine scene, writer and teacher Robert Lawrence Balzer, who died last week at 99. In addition, Michael Rubin, a seasoned Napa Valley wine publicist, posted this telling anecdote on his Facebook page: "I think they invented the phrase 'one of a kind' for the late Mr. Balzer. One of his charms was the ability to laugh at himself. He told of a wine trip to Australia back in the 1970's. Somewhere off tracks way back in a wine region that took a small plane to reach, he'd gone to lunch with his hosts in a local pub. Often attired in eye-catching garb, he was wearing bright red pants, a checked red vest and a large red bowtie. He said he was in the men's room standing at a unrinal when a dusty local in blue jeans and boots walked in, gave him a thorough up and down look and said, 'Say, mate. Wore on a bet, didin't ya?' Rolbert knew everyone, at a time when that was possible, and his books on California wine remain classic historic looks at a sleepy industry before the explosive 1970's and onward. He wasn't alone in thinking he'd make it to 100. A personality from a very different time." Also, the Wine Spectator's James Laube provides this affectionate and comprehensive look at Robert Lawrence Balzer's impact on the California wine trade.

- Thailand isn't exactly recognized for its wines, but it does have a nascent winemaking trade. One such brand goes by the name Mythical Garden in Thailand, Radee in the United States. The wines are made with fruits other than grapes, notably mangosteen, pineapple and litchi. I was looking forward to visiting the facility where they have been produced during a forthcoming visit to Bangkok, but just learned that the plant was inundated by about five feet of water during the city's prolonged recent flooding and has been abandoned. Production may resume eventually, but for now it's on hold, says one of the principals behind the product. In the meantime, persons looking for a rare kind of wine during the holiday season - and one that basically is about to be extinct, at least for awhile - they best get over to the grocery store Corti Brothers, where Darrell Corti still has about a case each of the mangosteen ($31.50) and the pineapple ($27); the litchi is sold out.

Robert Lawrence Balzer, Character

2011-12-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

From left, Robert Lawrence Balzer with fellow judges Ann Littlefield and Don Galleano, Long Beach Grand Cru, 2007

Robert Lawrence Balzer, an effusive and engaging wine writer for much of the 20th century, died this past weekend, half a year shy of his 100th birthday. What a soiree that would have been. I didn't know him well, but by what contact I did have I found him to be a rare embodiment of sensuality and intellect. Given his innate confidence, theatrics and grace, he might have been more at home in ancient Rome than in modern American culture, which could explain why he settled in Los Angeles after growing up in Iowa.

I'm not really surprised that his passing has gone largely unrecognized by writers of the wine blogosphere, with the notable exception of Cyril Penn's fine tribute at winebusiness.com, available here. As Penn notes, Balzer wrote a wine column for the Los Angeles Times for 32 years. Balzer wrote his first wine book about 70 years ago. His contributions to wine culture were monumental - he still was teaching wine-appreciation classes until just a year or so ago - but he was a member in good standing of a different era, when not everyone had a keyboard and the nerve to expound on what he tasted. What's more, he did his homework. He talked with grape growers and winemakers, and learned why a wine had this or that to say.

When I first sat on a judging panel with Robert Lawrence Balzer, I suspected that we'd have to make some allowances for him, not for his age but for his tendency for storytelling. He was colorful, precise and captivating, and when he got to talking of his time on the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary, or about when he sold this or that bottle of wine to this or that Hollywood celebrity, you didn't want to interrupt him to point out that the next flight of wines was aging more than it should. No less an American icon than Will Rogers Jr. is said to have urged Balzer to start writing a wine column...in 1937.

I was seated with Balzer at the Long Beach Grand Cru in the summer of 2007. He was 95. I was struck by several things about Balzer. He tasted faster than the rest of us. He put off telling his many stories until the cocktail hour afterwards. He was uncanny in his ability to pinpoint just what appellation produced this or that wine, whether it be Santorini or Napa Valley, something we could confirm only later, after the coded results from the blind tasting were made available. He showed us the proper way to taste and evaluate a wine, which involves placing one hand over the top of the glass, swirling it a few times on the table, and then quickly releasing your hand and sticking your nose into the glass. And when we took a break, Robert Lawrence was the first up and out of his chair, charging for the exit, pulling a cigarette from his pack, ready to strike a light the moment he punched open the door and stepped outside. His agility and timing were a wonder to behold.

Robert Lawrence Balzer with fellow judge Ellen Landis

Such was Balzer's standing in the California wine community that when he celebrated his 90th birthday with a gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, actress Olivia DeHaviland flew in from her home in Paris to deliver a warm tribute, longtime wine writer Dan Berger recalls in his week's issue of his newsletter, Dan Berger's Vintage Experiences. Berger, a close friend of Balzer's for decades, recalled that Balzer, despite being surrounded by Hollywood money for much of his wine-selling and wine-writing career, was a champion of everyday wines. Early on, for one, he called E&J Gallo's Hearty Burgundy one of the nation's great wine values. When I last chatted with Balzer, he spoke warmly of the Franzia family and the quality of the bargain wines it was releasing under such brands as Charles Shaw ("Two Buck Chuck") and Salmon Creek. Of course, the Gallos and the Franzias long have been power brokers in the California wine trade, and Balzer was no dummy; he saw the benefits of cultivating the favor of movers and shakers.

While Balzer was most closely identified with Los Angeles, there's a Northern California angle to his story. As Penn notes, after World War II, during which Balzer was a pilot and flight instructor following graduation from Stanford University, he became a Buddhist and was ordained a teaching monk by a temple in Cambodia. His spiritual side drew him to Renaissance Vineyard & Winery at Oregon House in Yuba County, an offshoot of the Fellowship of Friends, a religious retreat and cultural center. He wrote favorably of the settlement's wines, and he'd planned to retire to the enclave, but changed his mind and stayed in Southern California for the rest of his life. If I remember correctly from our Long Beach chats four years ago, he had reservations about changes in the makeup of the community and about its isolation. He was one gregarious fellow, and perhaps a remote religious settlement might have been too tame for his tastes.

Balzer wrote and published 11 books. For years, he'd been working on his memoir. I hope he finished it, but I suspect he didn't. At Long Beach he said he'd written nearly 400 pages, and was up to only about 1940.

Cab Or Zin: Can You Tell The Difference?

2011-12-02T09:52:00.000-08:00

For decades, I've heard it: Give cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel of the same vintage a decade or so of bottle age and in a blind tasting you can't tell one from the other. On the face of it, this seems preposterous. Cabernet sauvignon is the noblest of California wines, characterized by telltale fruit, complexity, solid structure and potential longevity; it commands the highest prices and the most prestige, and the more of it you have in your cellar the more highly regarded you must be as a connoisseur. Zinfandel, on the other hand, is your everyday blue-collar wine, inexpensive, rustic and best consumed in its youth; only the most enthusiastic fans give much precious cellar space to the longterm aging of zinfandel, so goes the conventional thinking.

A few months ago, I jumped at a chance to put this belief to a test. Sacramento Home Winemakers asked if I'd donate a lot to its annual auction. Coincidentally, I'd been rearranging and sorting the contents of my small wine collection. In doing so, I was surprised by the number of cabernet sauvignons and zinfandels I'd gathered from the 1997 vintage. Why I had so many was a mystery to me, but there they were. (The 1997 harvest in California, incidentally, was huge, 2.7 million tons, a record at the time. Yields were up in virtually every region, from 5 percent to 40 percent. Despite the jump, growers and vintners were ecstatic about the quality of the fruit, which they credited to a "very wet winter, an early spring and a long growing season of ideally dry and mild weather," the Wine Institute reported at the time.)

At any rate, when the request from the home winemakers came in I remembered that oft-repeated claim about how the aging of wine can obscure varietal characteristics, thereby either reducing or elevating cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel to something else on the wine spectrum, perhaps something grand, perhaps something not so distinguished, perhaps something equally rewarding, despite the varied expressions of the two varietals in their youth.

So in my lot for Sacramento Home Winemakers I offered a blind tasting that would involve three cabernet sauvignons and three zinfandels, all from the 1997 harvest, all from California. We'd taste them, attempt to identify which was cabernet, which was zinfandel, and choose our overall favorite of the six. The appellations were Napa Valley's Mt. Veeder, Sonoma Valley and Sonoma County for the cabernets, Shenandoah Valley, Amador County and Dry Creek Valley for the zinfandels.

Scientific? No way. This was purely casual, a fun exercise more than definitive study, though it was structured to be fair and, hopefully, enlightening. I knew the identities of the wine, and the order in which they would be tasted, so my vote didn't count. The three other participants didn't know which wine was which.

So, could the tasters, all of whom are experienced, enthusiastic and inquisitive, tell the difference between cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel after the wines have been aged for 14 years? For the most part, yes, but the margin was so thin that the results bordered on verifying rather than contradicting the belief that the two varietals are virtually indistinguishable after prolonged time in bottle.

On only one of the six bottles did three tasters concur it was a zinfandel. It's distinctive black-pepper spice, characteristic of zinfandel but not cabernet sauvignon, seemed to be what persuaded the three to dub it a zinfandel. The wine was the Sobon Estate 1997 Shenandoah Valley Rocky Top Zinfandel.

The votes on all the other wines were split 2-1, generally in favor of the correct varietal. The only exception was the second wine in the lineup. Two tasters were sure it was zinfandel. "Totally Amador," said one. "It's got the spice of zinfandel," said another. The wine, on the other hand, was the Chateau Potelle 1997 Napa Valley Mt. Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon.

To me, the most gratifying aspect of the tasting was how well the wines had stood up. An aged wine is rewarding in ways difficult to convey. The expression of fruit for which California wines are recognized isn't very pronounced in an older wine. It slinks offstage, letting other elements command the spotlight. Those elements fall under the broad and loose umbrella of "bottle bouquet," scents that don't convey so much the sunshine of fresh fruit as the filtered and somewhat hazy sunlight coming through a small window in a quiet attic, settling on trunks and crates packed with surprises and memories. By and large, the '97s had tension, balance, surprising acidity and smells and flavors in which a fleeting dustiness virtually eclipsed the remaining fruit, herbs and spices. The overall favorite was the elegant, complex and long Chateau Potelle 1997 Napa Valley Mt. Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon, its traces of eucalyptus, bay leaf, olives and cherries supported by a fine superstructure, gentle tannins and refreshing acidity. I also liked very much the Shenandoah Vineyards 1997 Amador County Vintners Selection Zinfandel, which while ripe and thick also was refreshingly refined and lasting.

The tasting may not have answered whether older cabernet sauvignons and zinfandels can be easily confused, but beyond that it provoked a few other thoughts. For one, the two wines with the highest alcohol also by far tasted the sweetest. The were the Sobon Estate 1997 Shenandoah Valley Rocky Top Zinfandel (14.6 percent alcohol) and the Forchini Vineyards & Winery 1997 Dry Creek Valley Old Vine Clone Papa Nonno Zinfandel (15.3 percent alcohol). They didn't taste so much of the jammy fruit for which zinfandel is celebrated as they did of just plain sweetness, which left me wondering about the possible correlation between the high alcohols and that sweet impression.

Secondly, I was left pondering about whether the vineyards responsible for the wines had yielded substantially more fruit than usual. Again, the crop in 1997 was larger than ever. Some of this had to do with newer vineyards coming online, but growers also reported that long-established vineyards gave more fruit than usual. A prevailing belief in California vineyards is that if they are limited to producing just a couple of tons of fruit per acre at harvest the wines will be superior. For a wine to be vivacious and graceful in later years, so goes the argument, it has to come from a relatively stingy vineyard. But what if the vineyards behind these wines gave up crops significantly more ample than that? In time, perhaps the yields of the contributing vineyards will become known. For now, we found that as a group these wines were glorious, their concentration vivid and persistent. Regardless of whether cabernet sauvignon or zinfandel, or the size of the crop, their energy and equilibrium made a pretty persuasive case for the aging of fine wine.

Light Crop

2011-11-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

- Whether by oversight or in recognition that its initial report wasn't up to its usual standards of detail and balance, "60 Minutes" this week skipped a staple of American journalism, the anniversary story. Twenty years ago, the CBS-TV news magazine aired a four-minute report in which correspondent Morley Safer speculated about why the French have relatively few heart problems despite their high-fat diet. His conclusion, based on mighty thin evidence, had to do with the nature of the cheese that the French eat, or maybe it was because of all the red wine they drink. That last part is all that Americans needed to hear. They began to buy wine by the pallet, and haven't let up. In the meantime, scientists have come to recognize that the "French paradox" - that is, a rich diet coupled with comparatively little heart disease - may be more complex than "60 Minutes" suggested. Other aspects of the French lifestyle not addressed by the "60 Minutes" report could contribute to their well-being. Their fondness for fresh produce, for one. Their tendency to walk or bike wherever they can. Their eating patterns, which include helping themselves to generally small portions, then eschewing seconds. And so it goes. Nonetheless, thanks to that brief televised segment, Americans jumped at the opportunity to take their medicine in a most pleasant way, and they still are.

- This was a tough vintage for California grape growers and vintners, starting with spring freezes and prolonged rains, continuing through an atypically cool summer, and ending with unusually early fall storms. It was a "winemaker's vintage," vintners are saying. In other words, if anything good is to come of it the credit will be due in large part to the skill of the winemaker in overcoming the bins of sorry grapes he or she received at the cellar door. If that's the case, the winemaking monks of the Abbey of New Clairvaux at Vina in Tehama County have a talented winemaker in Aimee Sunseri, or maybe they have a higher power on their side, or perhaps both. At any rate, they've released what to my knowledge is the first California wine of the current harvest, just wrapping up in some vineyards. The monks have nothing to apologize for; the wine is clean and quietly distinct. It's the New Clairvaux Vineyard 2011 Tehama County St. James Block Nouveau Tempranillo. It isn't a blockbuster, but nouveau-style wines aren't meant to be. Rather, they're expected to be light, fresh and immediately quaffable. While simple in its fruitiness, the New Clairvaux is a touch more complex and compelling than the standard nouveau wine, principally because of it its suggestion of juicy cranberries in both color and flavor, its satiny feel and its dash of spice. It may not have the spine to stand up to the richer dishes of the Thanksgiving table, but as a bright greeting for arriving guests it will help set the mood for a festive celebration of this year's harvest. It sells for $14 at Corti Brothers in Sacramento.

- And speaking of Corti Brothers, I was standing in the store's wine department the other day, scanning the latest issue of Darrell Corti's periodic newsletter, when I came across a list of recommended barberas assembled from his judging at the California State Fair and his attendance at the first Barbera Festival in Amador County, both this summer. Of the seven barberas, the one at the very top of the list is the 2009 from Beemer Winery in El Dorado County. Corti praises the wine for its "pretty red color," its "varietal character of notable intensity," and its "excellent acidity and fine body." He also notes without comment that the wine packs 15.5 percent alcohol. I had to ask him about that, and, fortunately, he was standing nearby. In the spring of 2007, recall, Corti kicked off a brouhaha within the international wine community when he announced that his store no longer would stock table wines with more than 14.5 percent alcohol. The level of alcohol in California table wines has been creeping up in recent years; varietals that routinely weighed in with 13.5 percent alcohol two decades ago now just as routinely carry 14.5 percent alcohol, sometimes as high as 17 percent, far beyond the historic standard for table wines from most of the world's wine regions. The rise is attributed to several factors, from the impact of climate change to the influence of wine critics whose palates prefer wines exceptionally ripe and big, one consquence of which is higher alcohol. Corti snapped when he tasted one high-alcohol wine too many. While such wines can be balanced and captivating, they also often can be cumbersome and harsh. That's what irked Corti, so he put on hold any interest in tasting them. Now, he's clearly relaxed that vigilance. Whether at the State Fair, where wines are evaluated without judges knowing their identity, or at the Barbera Festival, where wines were tasted without their identities being concealed, Corti found several to his liking, including, clearly, the high-octane Beemer. When I pointed at the wine's 15.5 percent alcohol, all he had to say was, "If I make the rules, I can break the rules."

Happy And Helpful, That Was Ralph Kunkee

2011-11-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

Dr. Ralph E. Kunkee

I can't claim to have known well Dr. Ralph E. Kunkee, but I admired the intellect, patience and candor he showed whenever I asked him a question of winemaking. More than a source, however, he was a fun guy to be around, however brief and casual the encounter. The good doctor died early Saturday of cancer while under hospice care in Davis, where he'd been a longtime member of the department of viticulture and enology at UC Davis. He retired 20 years ago, but remained active in the wine culture as a consultant, lecturer and judge on the competition circuit.

His academic specialties involved the microbiological spoilage of wine, malolactic fermentation and yeasts. Beyond the classroom, he embraced life with the same curiosity, zest and joy with which he studied winemaking and with which he inspired his students. He told funny stories, he quipped bluntly, he enjoyed a party as if he were student rather than professor. For years, he ran the Bay to Breakers. He toured wine regions about the world, wrote about 150 scientific articles and co-authored two enological textbooks. His research was pivotal as California transitioned from sweet, rough, high-alcohol dessert wines to dry, clean and smooth table wines over the past half century. In 1998, scientists from Washington State University and the Institute of Food Research in the United Kingdom found a new microrganism implicated in problematic fermentations; they named it Lactobacillus Kunkeei in tribute to Ralph Kunkee's many contributions to understanding the microbiology of wines.

For a more intimate measure of the man, check out this posting by Sandra Oldfield, winemaker at Tinhorn Creek Vineyards in British Columbia, one of perhaps more than a thousand practicing commercial vintners influenced by Ralph Kunkee's instruction, research and counsel. In his final days, others added their thoughts to a CarePage set up for him. Read those tributes and give thanks for the selflessness, industry and spunk of this remarkable guy.

Italy, Spain Rope Winners In Houston

2011-11-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

Wake-up call? Reality check? Whatever. The prolonged sweepstakes round at Rodeo Uncorked yesterday ended with a sweep of the top honors by European wines, breaking the hold California has had on the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo commercial wine competition since its inception eight years ago.

The Grand Champion is the Marchese Antinori 2007 Bolgheri Superiore Guada al Tasso, a "SuperTuscan" blend from the Antinori family's estate on the Tuscan coast southwest of Florence. Though it's an Italian wine, the grapes that went into it historically have been most closely identified with France. It consists of 57 percent cabernet sauvignon, 30 percent merlot, 10 percent cabernet franc and 3 percent petit verdot. It had been grouped in the class called "Old World Bordeaux Blends," and was one of 58 wines to be nominated for the competition's highest honors. It got my vote as for both best red wine and Grand Champion on the strength of its graceful opulence, complexity, freshness and length. Though from Italy - something we didn't know - it defined Bordeaux for the lushness of its cherry fruit and its suggestion of underlying olives and herbs. It also carries a Bordeaux price tag, customarily selling for between $70 and $125. The Antinoris did well in Houston. The Antinori Cervaro della Sala 2009 Castello della Sala from Umbria was declared the best white wine in the judging. It's a chardonnay very much in the California style - deeply colored, thick in body, buttery in texture and tasting of ripe cirtric fruit with notes of lemon verbena.

The Reserve Grand Champion - basically, the runnerup - is a Spanish wine, the Cellers Costers del Ros 2004 Priorat L'Obila, another blend with French breeding. The wine is made largely with grenache, but it also includes cabernet sauvignon and carignan. It's inky and firm, but with a fruitiness that shared with the Guado al Tasso lushness and approachability.

Until this year, California wines pretty much dominated the Houston competition, winning the Grand Championship since the judging's inception in 2003. The winner usually was a cabernet sauvignon or a blend based on cabernet sauvignon. That preference among judges continued this year, except that the winning cabernet is from Italy rather than California.

Competition in Houston was stiffer this year. A record 2,444 wines were evaluated, a 40 percent increase over last year's total. Organizers attributed the rise to their efforts to personally contact and cajole distributors into entering more wines. (To qualify for the judging, wines must be available in Texas.)

Next spring, during the month-long run of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, a wine auction will be held, during which a 9-liter bottle of the Grand Champion wine will be up for bid. Last fall's Grand Champion wine, the Alexander Valley Vineyards 2006 Cyrus from Sonoma County fetched $210,000 at the auction. Overall, wine events of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo raised $1.3 million, which underwrite schoolarships for college students studying agricultural subjects.

Califonia wines weren't entirely shut out from high honors. The award for best red wine went to the aptly named Niner Wine Estate 2008 Paso Robles Twisted Spur, a richly textured blend of grape varieties traditionally associated with France's Bordeaux and Rhone Valley regions. For the award, the winery gets chaps. The wineries that produced the Grand Champion and Reserve Grand Champion get saddles.

Qupe Isn't Just Santa Barbara Any More

2011-11-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

For three decades, Qupe Winery has been synonymous with Santa Barbara County, in particular Bien Nacido Vineyard. You'd hear "Bien Nacido" and automatically you'd think "Qupe," or vice versa. They're so closely affiliated that in 1989, when Bob Lindquist, owner of Qupe, teamed up with his old pal and mentor Jim Clendenen, owner of Au Bon Climat, to build a joint winery they put it right in Bien Nacido Vineyard.

Thus, when tasting through Qupe's current releases at a gathering in Sacramento the other day, I was struck that my two favorite wines weren't from Bien Nacido Vineyard at all, but from some place called Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard in the Edna Valley of San Luis Obispo County. Oh, most of the Qupe wines from Bien Nacido Vineyard were their old reliable selves, which is to say forthright in smell, fresh and true in flavor, and gracefully balanced from first sip through lingering finish. They included a sleek and persistent blend of half chardonnay and half viognier from 2010 called "Bien Nacido Cuvee;" a 2008 chardonnay under the banner "Block Eleven" that was powerfully built yet agile; and the 2006 "Hillside Estate" syrah, positively jammy with mouth-filling fruit.

Yet, the two wines I will be watching for in wine shop and on wine list are from the Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard in San Luis Obispto County. It's a hilly 40 acres that Lindquist and his wife Louisa began to plant only in 2005. This is no old-vine vineyard, but the composition of its soils, its exposure and its long and cool growing season, coupled with the couple's biodynamic farming, is yielding wines of astonishing depth, breadth and complexity.

The Qupe 2009 Edna Valley Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard Syrah ($35) is a righteously meaty take on the varietal. It attacks nose and palate with intense fruit flavors punctuated with several dashes of dark peppery spice. It's a rarity among syrahs in that it is so forthright while also remaining so diplomatic. You can drink it now and be completely satisfied, but later you'll kick yourself for not hanging on to it for another few years just to see how magnificent its expression will develop. Better stock up on several bottles. It's totally syrah; its complexity comes from the sort of breeding and manipulation you don't find on wine labels - five clones, three blocks of grapes, harvesting spread across an entire month, fermentation in 14 separate lots, and months later a blending of only the most dramatic barrels.

The Qupe 2009 Edna Valley Sawyer Lindquist Vineyard Grenache ($35) is the poster child for the potential of grenache in California, showing that almost entirely on its own the varietal has the stuff to persuade legions of winemakers to fall in line. It isn't grenache alone - 13 percent syrah from the same vineyard was added - but it seizes with authority and spunk the variety's strawberry, cherry and black-pepper attributes like few other renditions in the state. An herbal thread and a touch of astringency in the finish will take some getting used to, but once that appreciation of those characteristics is acquired it will be an addiction impossible to shake, as if anyone would want to.

Both wines are at the Davis Food Co-op, and 58 Degrees & Holding in Sacramento will be bringing in the grenache before long.

Lindquist certainly hasn't turned his back on Santa Barbara County, but by branching out into Edna Valley he's showing with steel and flair that there's more to San Luis Obispo County's wine landscape than Paso Robles.

Familiar Theme, New Wrinkle

2011-11-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

Advice on buying bargain wines has been a staple of the wine-writing craft for years, originating long before today's persistent economic woes, which has pumped new life into the genre. Today, let's look at the latest entry in the field, George Taber's "A Toast to Bargain Wines: How innovators, iconoclasts, and winemaking revolutionaries are changing the way the world drinks" (Scribner, 311 pages, softcover, $15).

Taber is an old-school journalist who relishes the reporting as well as the writing of a story. In his wine writing, he seems to love the legwork of reporting - reading, interviewing, traveling, double- and triple-checking anecdotes and facts - at least as much as the palate-work. Just about all that needs to be said to point readers to bargain wines can be summed up in around 150 pages, which is more or less what Taber devotes to that angle of the story he has to tell. He dedicates just as much space, however, to the "innovators, iconoclasts, and...revolutionaries" of the book's subtitle, folks responsible for challenging old shibboleths about winemaking, wine marketing and wine appreciation. They not only are making value wine more accessible but they're helping make consumers more comfortable with their choices.

Those people include Tim Hanni, a Master of Wine who has conceived a "taste profile" that he's convinced will help consumers determine wines better suited for them than traditional reviews and ratings, and Taber includes in the book Hanni's taste-sensitivity test to help buyers better meet their expectations in buying wine. He profiles Robert Hodgson, the California researcher whose multi-year study of judges at the State Fair in Sacramento calls into question the significance of commercial wine judgings. He reviews the immense if often underappreciated impact of California's Franzia family on the accessibility of value wine to the multitudes. And speaking of multitudes, Taber also looks closely at the forces awakening and shaping the wine trade of China, already the world's sixth-largest producer and fifth-largest consumer of wines, and positioning itself to be a much bigger player, despite a frequently unreceptive climate for growing grapes.

Aside from his timely report on China's wine industry, much of the first half of the book is old news to seasoned wine enthusiasts, though Taber's authoritative voice and brisk pacing add fresh perspective to each chapter in the first half of the book.

As to bargain wines outlined in the second half, I have no argument, based on my experience with many of the same releases. A bargain wine to Taber, incidentally, costs $10 or less; he also lists, however, a few "splurge" wines, priced about $25. These are grocery-store and wine-shop prices, not restaurant prices. His specific recommendations are grouped by varietal or style, followed by chapters about what he considers the top value brands from 12 wine-producing regions, such as Santa Julia and Crios of Argentina, Yalumba and Hardys of Australia, and Cousino Macul and Veramonte of Chile. In his estimation, California's top-10 bargain brands are Barefoot Cellars, Beaulieu Vineyards, Beringer, Charles Shaw, Delicato, Fetzer, Gallo, Oak Leaf, Sutter Home, Three Thieves, and Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi. Wait, that's 11, right? Well, Taber does have a few nit-picky errors in the book.

Taber is ecumenical in his approach, finding many bargain wines to his taste from California as well as regions more often associated with value buys, such as Australia, South Africa, Argentina and Chile. Of local interest, he includes two varietals from Bogle Vineyards at Clarksburg, the chenin blanc and the sauvignon blanc, but, curiously, not the petite sirah, of which Bogle is the largest producer in the country. Just two other of the 10 chenin blancs he lists are from California, and both, like the Bogle, originate in the San Joaquin/Sacramento River Delta - the Dry Creek Vineyard and the Pine Ridge.

As timely as Taber has attempted to be, the book comes up short in addressing the impact that "social media" and "crowd sourcing" is having on the wine trade. To be fair, however, the rise of wine reporting and criticism in cyberspace still is in its infancy, perhaps too young for its influence, range and duration to be evaluated studiously. Nevertheless, Taber sounds smitten with wine bloggers, writing, "This group is able to avoid the conflicts of interest that haunt its predecessors, and many in this group advocate inexpensive wines." Get that? The implication is that oldtime wine writers for magazines and newspapers not only have been unduly influenced by the trade, they haven't given due respect to bargain wines, even though value wines have been the subject of scores of articles and columns over the past several decades. I see no evidence that the new wave of wine writers and critics is devoting any more attention to bargain wines than the old, nor are they any less susceptible to the enticements of vintners. Taber points to Gary Vaynerchuk as "the most important member of the wine blogosphere" Vaynerchuk is the instigator and star of the online video series "Wine Library TV." Later, however, Taber also notes that "the focus of (Vaynerchuk's) attention is generally on the high-priced, premium wines that give him the best profit margins in his store." When it comes to conflict-of-interest, they don't come much more blatant than that.

With "A Toast to Bargain Wines," Taber has turned out a fast, smart and supportive overview of high-value everyday wines very much in the extensively researched and even-handed vein of his earlier wine books, which include "Judgment of Paris" and "To Cork or Not to Cork."

Exhilarating Drive To Exhilarating Wines

2011-10-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

Highway 4 east from Stockton to Murphys may not offer the color and drama that moves poets to rapture, but I sure enjoy driving it. The time of year is irrelevant, for the landscape invariably captures the light and life of each season with clarity, even if it is subtle.

But fall is the best. You can count on long shadows, a fresh crispness in the air, and a haze suggestive of gold dust falling on the hills that rise gently from the flatland as you get closer to Copperopolis and Angels Camp. On Friday, however, the haze was more blue than gold, thanks to smoke from a control burn in the forest of the Stanislaus River canyon, locals explained.

Steve Millier, left, John Kautz, at Ironstone

I was on my way to catch up with Steve Millier, winemaker. I was confident no haze would obstruct his measure of the Calaveras County wine trade over the past three decades. Millier came to Murphys in 1982 to work for Barden Stevenot, the godfather of the modern wine industry in Calaveras County. Millier, a 1975 graduate in viticulture and enology at Fresno State, had been working for another trailblazing winemaker in another largely unexplored terrain, David Bruce in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Millier has remained in Murphys ever since as one of the quieter yet more influential and successful disciples of Barden Stevenot, who believed that the landscape and climate of Mountain Ranch, Sheep Ranch, Angels Camp and other old mining and farming hamlets were as capable of yielding fine wine as they were for producing gold and cattle.

In 1989, prosperous Central Valley farmer John Kautz came to Murphys to build what subsequently became the largest family-owned winery in the Mother Lode, Ironstone Vineyards. He gussied it up with a 44-pound specimen of gold leaf, the pipe organ from the grand old Alhambra Theatre in Sacramento, and an amphitheatre where the likes of Sammy Hagar, Willie Nelson and Don Henley perform each summer. But one of Kautz's first and more enduring moves was to hire Steve Millier as winemaker, a role he continues to fill, 22 years later.

Earlier, in 1983, Millier and his wife Liz established their own winery, Milliare, at their home. In 1990, they moved it to a former Flying A gas station along Main Street in Murphys, where the tasting room remains today, one of some 20 scattered through the heart of the settlement. (Murphys isn't yet the Carmel of the Mother Lode, but the concentration of tasting rooms has helped foster a diversified business core of first-rate restaurants, fashion boutiques, art galleries, a branch of the famed Nelson's Candy Kitchen from Columbia State Historic Park on the other side of the Stanislaus River, and the most enthralling plumbing shop in the West, Bathroom Machineries.)

Then, four years ago, the Milliers bought another small local winery, Black Sheep, whose tasting room is across and down the street a bit, in a house that may be a century and a half old, behind a small grove of redwood and fig trees.

Millier is soft-spoken but frank. His answers to question often take a philosophical turn. He's stout and round, the only hair on his head his trademark mustache, now white. He moves easily between the flash and bustle of Ironstone to the calm homeyness of Millaire and Black Sheep. He prefers to let his wines do much of the talking for him, but relishes telling tales of people and incidents behind the vineyards where he buys his grapes. At Ironstone, he oversees production of about 400,000 cases of wine a year. At Milliare, he makes 6,000 cases. At Black Sheep, 2,000.

I'd asked him to pour and discuss his wines that most enthused him, that most represented his signature, that held the most promise for the areas where he likes to get his fruit. He works with grapes from all over the region, and has cultivated long and close relationships with growers throughout the region - Calaveras County, Amador County, Clarksburg and Lodi.

His lineup at Ironstone is long and varied. At peak production around 2004 he was making nearly a million cases per year for Ironstone's various brands. That output has been cut by half as Ironstone backs off from high-volume cheap wines to concentrate on refining its core products. Many of them are still bargains, including Ironstone's single most popular wine, "Obsession," a caressing sweet white made with a grape developed by Dr. Harold Olmo of UC Davis, symphony. Ironstone makes 35,000 cases of Obsession each vintage, the 2010 version of which is as floral and spicy as gewurztraminer, but finishes with an acidity so crisp and refreshing it leaves the residual sugar hanging high and dry; it generally sells for $8.

My favorite, however, was the Ironstone 2010 Lodi Cabernet Franc, a youthful, upbeat and vividly herbal and fruity take on the varietal. Early on, Millier and Kautz anticipated that cabernet franc would become their flagship wine, but things haven't worked out that way. Millier speculates that consumers might often get it confused with cabernet sauvignon, and look for parallels that aren't there. And he recognizes that interpretations of the varietal vary widely across the state, perhaps leaving customers confused about what style they will get, so they back off from it altogether. He's kept working at it, however, and urged largely by wine merchants in the United Kingdom, where the wine has been well received, has taken it into a lighter, fresher and more fruit-driven direction. It isn't Beaujolais Nouveau - it's darker, deeper, broader and longer - but it has the same spunk and snap. And it customarily sells hereabouts for $10.

At Milliaire Winery, he concentrates on producing small lots of wine exclusively from vineyards in the Sierra foothills. His style runs to wines hefty and rich yet agile on their feet; he takes patient care to seize the character that each of the many vineyards he works with provides. The zinfandel off Clockspring Vineyard in Amador County, for one, is celebrated for its black-pepper spice, but whereas other winemakers may squeeze the equivalent of two twists of the grinder from the grapes Millier goes for three or four. The biggest surprise in his current Milliaire lineup, however, is the 2009 Mokelumne River Pinot Noir. A pinot noir of this much assertiveness, body, spice, complexity and equilibrium is virtually unheard of in either the foothills or Lodi. The banks of the Mokelumne River, a sub-appellation within the Lodi American Viticultural Area, have a rich loaminess in which pinot noir apparently thrives, though few have discovered it so far. The red wines at Milliaire customarily sell for between $22 and $28 the bottle.

Over at Black Sheep, Millier continues the winery's original focus on forthright zinfandel, but he's also mixing up the selection with such newcomers as the rarely exploited cinsault and the increasingly high-profile grenache. His 2009 cinsault, from a vineyard outside Modesto, is light but spirited, with an alluring spiciness to its suggestions of cranberries and raspberries. The 2009 grenache, from a Calaveras County vineyard, is surprisingly aromatic, and while it is dry it delivers enough sweet fruit to suggest otherwise. Black Sheep reds generally sell for $14 to $24.

While visiting with Millier, and during subsequent visits to other wineries in and about Murphys, I learned that very few Calaveras County wines get beyond the immediate area. Most of the area's wineries are family businesses turning out just a few thousand cases a year. They've learned that the concentration of wine sales in the hands of a few major distributors in recent years has left them with little voice in the marketplace outside of their own neighborhood. The large distributors best represent major brands with thousands of cases they can place, not small operators with a couple of hundred cases of this and maybe 50 of that, explains Millier. As a consequence, most of the wineries at Murphys sell just about everything they produce through their tasting rooms and wine clubs. Millier is tickled that his Black Sheep cinsault is poured at the highly regarded restaurant Girl and the Fig in Sonoma, but he also appreciates that 75 percent of his Black Sheep wines are sold directly at his cozy tasting room.

That shouldn't be an issue for adventurous wine enthusiasts. The drive up to Murphys just can't be beat.

Let's Hear It For Older Wines

2011-10-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

Over at the online wine magazine Palate Press, fellow blogger W. Blake Gray ponders 10 things he learned during a brief stint of working directly within the wine trade. At the very top of his list is this: "Old wines are more unattractive to wine shops than old people." (It needs to be noted here that Blake's experience in the wine industry didn't involve working in a wine shop. If it did, he might better appreciate that wine-shop proprietors generally appreciate old people, or they should. Old people often have traveled widely, broadening their palates to such an extent that they welcome the diversity that a well-stocked store offers, including a range of well-aged wines. Of course, that experience also likely has immunized them to the hollow if hyperventilating hyperbole in which many wine merchants indulge, which could explain their alleged antipathy to the elderly. And then there's all that disposable income that several old people have accumulated.)

At any rate, Blake goes on to explain that consumers are skeptical about old wines because old wines make the store look out of touch. "It doesn't matter if a 2005 red is still approaching its peak; most stores don't want to buy it and can't wait to get rid of it."

Coincidental with his posting, I'd stopped by the Sacramento grocery store Corti Brothers. While browsing about the wine department, I spotted a stack of the Harbor Winery 2002 Napa Valley Narsai David Vineyard Merlot, whose price sticker said $13.79. How could I pass that up? After all, four savvy longtime participants in the wine trade - winemaker Charles Meyers of Harbor Winery in West Sacramento; all-around San Francisco Bay Area food-and-wine personality Narsai David; Berkeley graphic artist David Lance Goines, who designed the label; and grocer Darrell Corti - all had a hand in getting the wine from Napa Valley to Sacramento.

I took it home, opened it and poured it with a dinner of short-rib stew on creamy polenta with a side of roasted green beans, onions and walnuts, and a salad of tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. Let me tell you, this happenstance pairing was pretty darn great. The wine's color was more bright than faded, the aroma was all sweet plums and a hint of the kind of airy attic that prompts more adventurous exploration than intimidation, and the flavor ran to cherries and berries with a dash of spice. The texture was supple, the tannins far in retreat, yet it had the backbone and fruit to stand up to the richeness of the short ribs, spicy with paprika. The wine isn't approaching its peak; it's there. I just may have to get back to Corti Brothers before long to grab some more.

Yes, wine-shop owners may hesitate to stock older wines out of fear that they make the store look dated. More likely, merchants don't want to deal with consumers who return to complain that this or that aged wine didn't taste like the young wines they customarily drink. That's true, they won't. Age adds folds, lines and shading that wine doesn't possess in its youth. Thus, many proprietors won't have much to do with them. Fortunately, some still recognize that aged wines, while different, can offer and deliver compelling and rewarding stories.

Yep, It Can Get Hot In Paso Robles

2011-10-20T07:33:00.000-07:00

As I review my tasting notes after sampling wines in Paso Robles the past two days I'm struck by the high proportion with surprisingly elevated alcohol levels. Here's a cabernet sauvignon with 15.6 percent alcohol, a mourvedre with 15.3 percent alcohol, a syrah with 15.3 percent alcohol, a primitivo with 15.2 percent alcohol, a zinfandel with 15 percent alcohol. These are not aberrations. Wines with 14.5 percent or more alcohol account for most of the wines we've tasted so far. And they aren't all red wines. A roussanne clocked in at 15.8 percent alcohol, a rose also at 15.8 percent alcohol.

What's going on here? Again, I've listened to winemakers say that to get wines to speak loudly and impressively they've got to get their grapes really ripe. California wines are California wines only if they fairly shout with fruit, and to get them to stand up and proclaim their fruitiness means harvesting the grapes when they are so mature that they are just a day or two from ending up in a Sun Maid box of raisins. If Paso Robles growers and winemakers didn't let their grapes get so saturated with sugar, one vintner said today, they'd end up with wines that were, well, relatively French like. Let that sink in awhile.

Understand, I don't much care about a wine's stated alcohol level, just as I don't much care about whether a wine was blessed with 97 points or 89 points from some highly regarded critic. They're just numbers, open to all sorts of manipulation and interpretation. I rather base my estimation of a wine on how it tastes to me, and hope to convey those impressions to other wine enthusiasts in a lingo that is accessible and helpful. I've tasted, enjoyed and endorsed wines with relatively high alcohol levels. If they've been balanced, lively, fresh and long, among other qualities, that's been fine by me, regardless of whether they have 13 percent alcohol or 16 percent.

The frequent knock on high-alcohol table wines is that they taste hot, as if they have been fortified with a jolt of brandy, and that they are clumsy, heavy and sweet. Some of those high-octane wines I've tasted in Paso Robles could indeed be faulted on those grounds. Mostly, however, the high-alcohol wines simply haven't been as well enunciated as they could be. It's as if the alcohol is some sort of rigid barrier, preventing rather than amplifying the expression of fruit and place that winemakers are striving to grasp.

Yesterday's tour ended last night with a dinner at the home of Gary and Marcy Eberle. Gary Eberle has been making wine in Paso Robles for nearly four decades. His fellow vintners universally credit him with introducing and setting the standard for Rhone Valley varieties in the Paso Robles area. In his eagerness to make his guests feel welcome he did something that was actually pretty wicked. He pulled from his cellar two of his early cabernet sauvignons. One was from 1981, the other from 1982. Both were brightly colored, both were sleek in build and both were surprisingly complex and compelling, though both showed their age, politely called bottle bouquet. Some guests favored the 1981; I preferred the 1982 both for its somewhat intensified complexity and for its more forthright expression of olives, a trait that lingered in both vintages. The 1981 had just 13.1 percent alcohol, the 1982 only 12.6 percent alcohol. Yet, both were elegant, representative of the variety, and clearly capable of bringing satisfaction to the table; in the case of the 1982, for several more years. If they are French-like, well, I can live with that, and quite happily.

The lesson: High alcohol isn't needed for a wine to express itself, live long and provide pleasure. In talking of how vintners have come to convince themselves that high alcohol is needed in table wines to have something remarkable to say of California, Eberle was his usual disarmingly candid self. Winemakers let themselves be seduced by the lure of high scores handed out by critics who favor wines of weight, concentration and jammy fruit, regardless of their alcohol content, and that's the prize they have been chasing, said Eberle, including himself in the throng of vintners pursuing high points. Now, he's dialing back on ripeness in his grapes, and is working toward reducing the alcohol levels in his wines to around 13 percent and 14 percent. "These wines have 30 years in them and they're still not over the hill," he said of the 1981 and 1982 cabernet sauvignons. In short, he's listening to the lessons he sensed three decades ago, not to critics whose high points spring from a style of wine that may be impressive today but may not successfully carry many wonderful memories a decade or two from now.

Paso Robles, Where Blends Rule, Or Do They?

2011-10-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

Ordinarily when I visit the vineyards and wineries of San Luis Obispo County I drive. This time, however, I flew. As it turns out, flying is slower for getting from Sacramento to San Luis Obispo than driving, nearly seven hours for the former, four to five for the latter. The difference was due in large part to a two-hour layover at LAX. On the upside, however, the views of the California coastline from 12,000 feet between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo are enthralling and enlightening.

I'm now in Psso Robles. I have, frankly, an agenda. I'm increasingly convinced that the next great thing in California winemaking will be the rise in popularity and esteem of blended wines marketed with proprietary names. Paso Robles, I believe, is the epicenter of that development. That's my storyline, and nothing I experienced in my first few hours here has persuaded me otherwise.

The evening began with a reception at the posh Hotel Cheval in downtown Paso Robles. I gravitated, understandably, to the blended wines being poured by the glass at the hotel's horseshoe-shaped bar. I was not at all let down in my choices, a wonderfully aromatic and abidingly floral blend of gewürztraminer, malvasia bianca and marsanne marketed under the proprietary name "Genesis," and an exceptionally complex and rich yet lively and approachable mix of syrah, viognier and grenache called "Elephant in the Room." (It's important to note here that the marketing of domestic wines in the United States depends largely on varietal designations - cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot and the like. In hopes of capturing the fleeting attention of wine enthusiasts, vintners keen on blended as opposed to varietal wines are relying on imaginative, often mysterious and hopefully compelling names like "Genesis" and "Elephant in the Room.")

Dinner followed at the restaurant Artisan, where three of the five wines were blends with proprietary names. Two were by Tablas Creek Winery, whose founder, Robert Haas, was on hand to talk of the wines. In short, Tablas Creek is one of a handful of wineries instrumental in putting Paso Robles on the map of modern fine-wine regions, and the Haas family has done it with unappolegetically blended wines. Tablas Creek models most of its wines on the historic blends of France's Rhone Valley. After two decades of focused effort it is producing such remarkable emulations as its 2010 Patelin de Tablas Blanc, at once plump with melons yet also angular with minerality, a blend of grenache blanc, viongier, roussanne and marsanne, and its 2003 Esprit de Beaucastel, a mix both earthy and elegant of mourvedre, syrah, grenache and counoise. The 2010 Patelin de Tablas Blanc carries a suggested retail price of $20; the 2003 Esprit de Beaucastel long has been sold out, with Haas bringing it to dinner to demonstrate how well it has aged.

When asked how he convinces consumers to pop for proprietary blends for which their frame of reference is shaky, Haas succinctly said, "One by one." In other words, wine enthusiasts interested in exploring proprietary blends best had find themselves a trusted wine merchant or sommelier, then let him or her sell them on the merits of this or that blend. That's the way it's been with proprietary blends, and that's the way it will remain until Americans come to recognize that the whole can indeed can be greater than the sum of its parts.

Myself and several other wine bloggers and writers are in Paso Robles as guests of the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance, which is keen on getting out the word about the area's fast-growing wine trade, now up to about 220 wineries. We'll visit several of them today. I suspect we'll find a few other proprietary blends that have something profound to say of Paso Robles.

Like Wine, Inductees Age Well

2011-10-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Each fall, officials of the Vintners Hall of Fame on the Napa Valley campus of the Culinary Institute of America announce a newly elected class of inductees. Just as predictably, the selection is criticized in some quarters for failing to reach far enough back in California's wine history to pick candidates whose monumental contributions have faded from memory with the passage of time. Too many of the elected candidates, so goes the grousing, are relative youngsters whose contributions, however notable, often have been built from the solid foundation laid by the overlooked oldtimers.

This year's class of seven inductees should quiet at least some of that criticism. The youngest is 70. Two are in their 90s. Four are deceased. They are:

- Joe Heitz, a winemaker best known for the Martha's Vineyard cabernet sauvignons he made under his eponymous Napa Valley label. Less well known is that between 1958 and 1961, just before establishing his winery, he drew up the enology curriculum for Fresno State College, a program that to this day is distinguished by its practical hands-on teaching.

- Peter Mondavi Sr., owner/winemaker of Charles Krug Winery in Napa Valley. Few California vintners have been as progressive and daring as Mondavi. In 1937, while still a university student, he researched cold fermentation, and his subsequent use of the technique and of sterile filtration improved, virtually overnight, the cleanliness and crispness of California white wines. His legacy includes several firsts, including the first chenin blanc to be released as a varietal in California.

- Myron Nightingale, whose long and illustrious winemaking career culminated at Beringer Vineyards in Napa Valley, where he gained celebrity not only for propelling the old estate into a new era of respectability but for mastering in a laboratory setting the noble mold botrytis cinerea, responsible for yielding marvelous late-harvest dessert wines.

- John Parducci, a Mendocino County winemaker since 1940, whose many contributions to the trade include the first french colombard released as a varietal and some of the earliest vintage-dated California wines to appear on the market. Mostly, he's known for his relentlessly experimental and adventuresome ways and for his commitment to turning out solid wines at accessible prices.

- Richard Sanford, who when he got out of the Navy in the late 1960s began a quest to find the ideal location in which to pursue his passion for pinot noir. He settled in the chilly Santa Rita Hills of western Santa Barbara County, and there, first at his Sanford Winery, then at Alma Rosa Winery & Vineyards, proved that the area could produce many of California's more expressive Burgundian-style pinot noirs.

- Albert J. Winkler, chairman of the department of viticulture and enology at UC Davis from 1933 to 1957. Before, during and after that stretch, he as responsible for so much pivotal research concerning grapevine physiology that his principles concerning trellis systems, pruning techniques and vineyard placement still resonate across the state's vineyards.

- Eugene Hilgard, who arrived at the University of California at Berkeley in 1874 to head the College of Agriculture, and over the subsequent quarter century lobbied convincingly for the teaching and research that has transformed an ailing wine industry into the success it is today.

If a theme other than age runs through this year's class it's that these inductees reaffirm the value of striving for ever more understanding of grape growing and winemaking, in particular on college campuses. There and beyond - in field and cellar - they took risks, built upon their successes, and shared their discoveries selflessly with others in the trade, both here and abroad. The California wine trade is immeasurably strong and vibrant for their contributions.

The class of 2012 was chosen by 87 voting participants of the hall's electoral college, made up of earlier inductees and members of the wine media. (That is, six of the seven were selected by the electoral college; Eugene Hilgard was voted in unanimously by the hall's nominating committee early in its deliberations.) The newly elected will be inducted Feb. 20 during a reception and dinner at the CIA's Napa Valley campus, on the northern reaches of St. Helena. The event is pricey - $175 per person - but proceeds in part underwrite scholarship funds for students in the CIA's professional-wine-studies program.

For the record, I'm one of 11 members of this year's Vintners Hall of Fame nominating committee. For more information about the Vintners Hall of Fame, go here.

Fiddling With Zinfandel, Among Others

2011-10-17T11:46:00.000-07:00

Caves at Helwig Winery, site of the competition

Fiddletown is one of the country's smaller and more isolated American Viticultural Areas, but the wines it yields don't lack for diversity, as long as they are red. This was evident again the other evening at the annual Fiddletown Wine Competition. Just 18 wines bearing the Fiddletown appellation were entered, and while they all were red they represented a wide range of varietals - montepulciano, petite sirah, barbera and grenache, among others.

The biggest class with five entries was zinfandel/primitivo, not surprising, given that Fiddletown long has been recognized for producing pretty and lithe zinfandels vibrant with fresh raspberry fruit, snappy acidity and peppery spice. It also was the competition's strongest class, yielding two of the four gold medals to be awarded, including the judging's only double-gold medal. (Double golds are awarded when all the judges of a panel concur that a wine warrants gold.)

That wine was the Sobon Estate 2009 Fiddletown Zinfandel ($22), which came off a bit richer and riper than standard interpretations of the varietal from the appellation. Nevertheless, it was bright with fresh raspberry fruit, firm but not unforgiving tannins, and notes of spice ranging from pepper to cinnamon. The wine weighs in with 15.2 percent alcohol, but doesn't taste hot. The fruit is from the historic head-trained vines of Lubenko Vineyard, dating from around 1910.

The other gold in the class went to the Fiddletown Cellars 2009 Old Vine Fiddletown Zinfandel ($19), a take not only zesty but seamless and graceful, the precise definition of the varietal when it originates in Fiddletown.

The other gold medals went to the dark and earthy Scott Harvey Wines 2008 Amador Mountain Selection Syrah ($20) and the rich and juicy Calabria Vineyards 2009 Fiddletown Petite Sirah ($18), well laced with the varietal's telltale black-pepper spice.

I especially liked a few other wines in the competition, all of which got silver rather than gold: The lively, long and remarkably spicy Legendre 2009 Deadman Fork Vineyard Syrah ($19, but sold out); the edgy yet refreshing Thomas Fogarty 2007 Fiddletown Barbera ($30); and the aromatic, forward and sweetly fruity Martella 2009 Fiddletown Oleta Vineyard Grenache ($26).

The competition, managed by Brian Miller and Deirdre Mueller, who also originated and coordinated this summer's Barbera Festival, was at Shenandoah Valley's new Helwig Winery, which didn't enter any wines.

Laura Spinetta, Shenandoah Valley Pioneer

2011-10-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

The personality of a tasting room can say as much of the aspirations and values of a winery as its wines. Whenever you walk into the tasting room of the Charles Spinetta Winery in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley you sense right away that this is a hands-on family business with each member pursuing their chores with as much joy as pride. Charlie, the patriarch, could be behind the counter, cracking wise while pouring tastes for touring wine enthusiasts. His wife, Laura, could be just across the aisle, in her work station, painstakingly framing paintings for the wildlife art gallery upstairs. Their three sons would be here and there, tending fermentation tanks in one wing, moving around pallets of cased wines in another.

That dynamic and the warmth it radiated will be different now with the death Wednesday of the family's exuberant matriarch, Laura Spinetta. She'd put up a valient struggle with a stubbon illness, seeming never to relinquish one bit of the positive spirit with which she embraced life. We last saw her two months ago, at the annual barbecue of the Amador County Grape Growers Association. She was as upbeat as ever, urging us to try her brownies on the dessert table. And for the last time, as it turns out, we again shared a hearty laugh provoked by our memories of an amusing incident when we were part of a group touring Italy several years ago. Her quips and her laughs were spotaneous, genuine and catching, giving lift to any moment.

Last fall, when I stopped by the family winery to check on the progress of the harvest, she gave me a jar of jelly she'd just made. It was a blend of primitivo and zinfandel from the vines about the family home. Each autumn, just before her husband and sons calculated that the grapes were ready to pick for wine, she'd grab bunches of the fruit, figuring correctly that they were just at the right maturity for a jelly bright and sweet. She was a marvelous cook, as well as craftsman, farmer and artist.

She and Charlie were married in 1965, making their first home at McCloud in Siskiyou County. He was in the timber trade. He still was when they relocated to his home county of Amador in 1972. Three years later they settled in Shenandoah Valley as one of the area's first pioneers to see potential in a revival of the region's historic though slumbering grape and wine industry.

They had fun building their twin business of grape growing and winemaking, rearing their sons, and being engaged in the community - church, school, county fair. She was a real farmer, capable of completing any and all chores with spunk and glee, including gardening, sewing, baking, volunteering as a music teacher at the local school. Her family will miss her most, but the entire Shenandoah Valley and Plymouth community is experiencing a profound loss. May her questing and sharing spirit live on in the couple's three children and three grandchildren.

A funeral mass will be at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Sutter Creek at 11 a.m. Tuesday, with a reception to follow in the church hall.

First, Read, Then Shop

2011-10-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

A couple of hours after I posted the item just below, a nice driver from DHL stopped by the house to drop off a copy of the newly published "1000 Great Everyday Wines From the World's Best Wineries" (Dorling Kindersley, 352 pages, $25).

The theme of the book fits right in with yesterday's post, in that it is a comprehensive guide to high-value wines. I wasn't expecting a copy, but was pleased to get it, in that I was one of 19 contributors rounded up by editor Jim Gordon to write of wines we think provide "sophistication, authenticity, and regional character" without costing more than "the price of an entree at a good restaurant."

"They were not to select specific outstanding vintages that may be sold out or fluctuate in price, but to endorse brands, varietals, and types that are consistently high quality and affordable," writes Gordon in the book's foreword. We weren't instructed to limit our choices to wines released at or below a specific price, but in scanning the book I think it's generally safe to say that few cost more than $20 per bottle. My contributions, for example, include Boeger Winery's Hangtown Red (usually around $11), Bogle Vineyards pinot noir ($13), C.G. Di Arie's verdelho ($18) and Sobon Estate's Old Vines zinfandel ($12).

In flipping through the book, I find the sections on Bordeaux and Burgundy especially exciting, and I'm tempted to head out to wine shops in search of several of the suggestions just as soon as I get this posted. It's also gratifying to see some old favorities from Italy (Fattoria di Felsina's Chianti Classico Berardenga, Castello di Volpaia's Chianti Classico), Austria (Laurenz V's gruner veltliners), Argentina (Familia Zuccardi's Santa Julia Malbec Reserva), Chile (Leyda's Pinot Noir Las Brias Vineyard), Australia (Jim Barry's The Lodge Hill Shiraz) and New Zealand (Mt. Difficulty's Roaring Meg Pinot Noir) in the roundup.

Beyond a brief description of each of the 1,000 wines, the book includes helpful sections on such topics as how to read old-world and new-world labels, pairing specific styles of wine with food, the proper serving of Champagne, biodynamic grape growing, and alcohol levels.

Anyone hoping for a happy return on their investment in wine just might want to start shopping by popping for a copy of "1000 Great Everyday Wines." Though the suggested retail price is $25, Amazon.com is selling it for $16.50 and Walmart.com is selling it for $15.28. I was paid up front for my involvement, incidentally, and don't stand to profit by sales of the book.

Wine Playoffs Are Here, Cheap Division

2011-10-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

First, the New York Times this past weekend published an infographic in which 20 wine merchants, sommeliers and restaurateurs revealed their best buys in wine to serve at a cocktail party, pour with barbecue, pair with paella and the like. The wines were to cost $13 or less, presumably in shops and not restaurants.

Of the 20 recommended wines, not a single one was from California. France led the pack with eight choices, followed by Austria and Spain with three each. Two were from Italy, and one each was from Germany, New York, Oregon and Greece.

These results prompted wine-writer Tyler Colman to explain in his blog Dr. Vino that California wines didn't show up in the chart because "precious little" inexpensive wine is estate made in the state, and that the wine authorities surveyed for the Times "don't exactly champion tanker wine," by which he means wines "often assembled from far-flung vineyards in steel tanks so large they could double as nuclear silos."

Fair enough. Much of California's cheaper wines are from Central Valley vineyards, and processed into wines that have little to say of varietal or place; they can be cheap, but only occasionally are they exhilarating. Reader comments following Colman's remarks generally support the endorsements of the Times panel while repeating the familiar complaint that California wines tend to be overpriced and that those that are cheap are dull. An exception noted by two readers, incidentally, is the petite sirah made by Bogle Vineyards of Clarksburg, which customarily sells for $9 to $11.

Coincidental with this discussion, the Wine Enthusiast just released its 100 "best buys" for 2011, culled from the staff's tasting of more than 16,000 wines this past year. Unlike the list in the Times, the Wine Enthusiast roundup includes several wines from South America, Australia...and California. Indeed, 18 of the 100 are from California. To qualify for consideration, all the wines on the list are to carry a suggested retail price of $15 or less.

Top California Buy

Several of the California releases on the Wine Enthusiast list are no doubt "tanker wines," made with grapes not necessarily grown on a winery's estate. Nevertheless, quite a few bear specific and prestigious appellations, including Livermore Valley (Concannon 2009 Conservancy Chardonnay, $15), Dry Creek Valley (Pedroncelli 2008 Bench Vineyards Merlot, $14) and Yountville (Cameron Hughes 2007 Lot 157 Cabernet Sauvignon, $15).

Three are from the Sacramento area - No. 67, the Renwood 2008 Red Label Sierra Foothills Syrah, $12; No. 5, the Delicato 2009 Domino California Pinot Grigio, $7; and No. 3, the Bogle Vineyards 2010 California Sauvignon Blanc, $9, the highest ranked California wine in the compilation (Bogle's petite sirah, however, didn't make the cut). The No. 1 wine is the Pacific Rim Columbia Valley Riesling, $10, not to be confused with versions labeled "dry" or "sweet," but just "riesling."

At any rate, I don't seem to have much problem finding bargain wines of aesthetic merit for the column I contribute weekly to The Sacramento Bee. Today's column, for example, is on Jed Steele's Shooting Star 2010 Lake County Sauvignon Blanc, an unusually vivacious and complex interpretation of the varietal, and its suggested retail price is just $12. It may not be an estate wine, but it has as much if not more authority than many sauvignon blancs that are.

Other similarly inexpensive but singularly expressive wines I've written about this year include the richly fruity and finely layered Boeger Winery Lot No. 39 El Dorado Hangtown Red ($11), the lean and lively Loredona Veineyards 2009 Lodi Viognier ($11), the frisky and supple Kirkland 2008 Amador County Old Vine Grandmere Zinfandel ($12), the sunny and snappy Shenandoah Vineyards 2010 Amador County Chenin Blanc/Viognier ($14), the bright and layered Colby Red 2009 California Red Blend ($10/$12), and, yes, the lithsome and buoyant Bogle Vineyards 2008 California Petite Sirah ($9/$11). Cheap California wines with something sharp to say of vineyard, varietal and aspiration can be found; often, they're right under our noses.

Holiday Wines Rolled Out In Old Sacramento

2011-09-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

Old Sac/West Sac, yesterday meeting the future

In Sacramento, the year-end holiday season doesn't start with Thanksgiving or even Halloween, but when a local wine distributor holds a tasting of new releases from its portfolio of wineries. This year, that honor goes to Astoria Wine Group, which this afternoon convened at The Firehouse restaurant in Old Sacramento a tasting of wines from 16 client wineries. Its lineup of producers is impressive, including such highly regarded brands as Preston of Dry Creek, Grgich Hills, Rombauer, Boeger and Ridge.

Most of the attendees were restaurateurs and wine merchants from the greater Sacramento area. If I were in their shoes, I know which wines I'd be ordering to enhance wine list and store shelf as the holiday season draws near:

- Just about anything from Frog's Leap Winery of Napa Valley. Its reputation for wines of clarity and finesse was reaffirmed by its snappy 2010 Rutherford sauvignon blanc ($18), its wiry yet vibrant 2008 Rutherford merlot ($34), and its remarkably complex yet approachable 2008 Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon ($42). Owner/winemaker John Williams has been recognized for decades for crafting wines of understated elegance, their alcohols restrained yet their voice profound. The merlot, for example, contains just 12.9 percent alcohol, yet it's difficult to imagine an interpretation of the varietal with more fresh and lasting juiciness.

- Under the brand Pey Marin, Jonathan Pey has been showing for years that California can yield a riesling of abiding European flavor and structure, but until today I wasn't aware of another label under his command, Textbook. With Textbook, he aims to provide consumers with wines of Napa Valley quality and stature, but at prices more likely to be associated with Sonoma, Mendocino or Lake. He does it by buying fruit from growers he regards highly, locking up longterm contracts, and crushing the fruit in borrowed quarters. In other words, his overhead is low. Thus, he can turn out a 2009 Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon chock full of cherries and mocha, yet with pliable tannins and refreshing acidity, and at just $24 or so the bottle. He calls it a "Tuesday night" cabernet, but it has such imperial breeding (Rutherford, Atlas Peak, Yountville) that no one will turn it away from the Saturday table. Pey also makes a wonderfully intense and long pinot noir under a third label, The Forager; his 2010 Sonoma Coast pinot noir under that label sells for only around $25, even though it is packed with the sort of concentrated fruit expected of the varietal at about twice that price.

- Late last week, I visited Preston of Dry Creek in northern Sonoma County, but in the tasting room I somehow passed up the 2009 L. Preston. I was able to correct that oversight at the Astoria tasting. The L. Preston ($38) is a blend of grape varieties traditionally associated with France's Rhone Valley, such as syrah, cinsault, carignane and grenache. This wine is a holiday party all in its own; it has brightness, glamour, drama and complexity. Imagine the most mysterious yet alluring guest you can meet at a crowded soiree; by way of introduction, all you have to say is, "L. Preston, I presume."

- Everybody seemed to congregate at the end of the table where Ridge Vineyards was pouring its Monte Bello, which year after year is perhaps California's most eagerly anticipated and highly acclaimed cabernet-based wine. The 2007 that was being poured lived up to expectation with such monumental yet balanced proportions that it should be put in the cellar for the next decade to experience just how grand it ultimately will be. But Ridge also is recognized for its zinfandels, which provide a lesson in just how varied California's terroir is. The 2008 Geyserville ($35) is a study in ripeness and suppleness, while the 2007 Pagani Ranch ($35) is all brutal sunshine and abiding earth. But the Ridge zinfandel I'd put first on wine list or shelf is the 2009 Ponzo ($28) from Sonoma County's Russian River Valley, where the dicey conditions of the vintage yielded a take on the varietal that slaps you in the face with its prickly raspberry fruit, but doesn't sting you so much that you don't ask for another taste, and another after that; here's a zinfandel to appreciate today for all the freshness and spiciness the varietal can delivier, but it also has the acidity and equilibrium to age well for the next five years, if you can hold on to any of it for that long.

- Boeger Winery in El Dorado County has built its following on a quality-to-value ratio that must be the envy of the trade. In short, you almost always get more than what you thought you were paying for when you picked up a bottle with Boeger on the label. That was reaffirmed at the tasting with both its 2009 barbera ($16), characterized by no less fruit but brighter acidity than earlier vintages, and the 2008 tempranillo ($12), which with its light earthiness and essence of tobacco made it the perfect companion for a plate of tapas heavy on the rich smoky meats.

Let the partying and the gift giving begin.

Back To The Future In Sonoma

2011-09-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Judge Jill Ditmire during a break from the competition

Sonoma County can run from its history, but it can't hide. In recent decades, Sonoma County vintners have tried to raise their esteem by promoting most ambitiously their cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and pinot noir. They are the noble grapes, much more highly regarded than plebian zinfandel, the native son so responsible for establishing Sonoma County's reputation for solid, forthright wines. Zinfandel, however, doesn't come with the breeding or polish to sit comfortably alongside cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir at a handsome dinner table in an ornate chateau.

For sure, Sonoma County has such varied topography and such wide-ranging microclimates that the more cherished grapes have found settings in which they excell. Just consider the cabernet sauvignon of Alexander Valley, the pinot noir of Russian River Valley, the chardonnay of Carneros.

Several examples of each varietal were in the running for sweepstakes honors at this week's Sonoma County Harvest Fair commercial wine competition in Santa Rosa. In the end, however, a marvelous zinfandel, specifically the big, juicy and unusually spicy Wilson Winery 2009 Dry Creek Valley Sawyer Zinfandel ($36) won the red-wine sweepstakes, arguably the most eagerly sought of the three highest awards the competition bestows.

The populist bent of the sweepstakes judges continued with the white wine sweepstakes, where a zippy pinot gris won their palates over four chardonnays, two sauvignon blancs and such fashionable newbies as viognier and albarino. The winner was the Kenwood Vineyards 2010 Russian River Valley Pinot Gris ($16).

The specialty-wine sweepstakes, in which various styles of wine, from sparkling to late harvest are grouped, was won by the brassy and balanced Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards 2007 Carneros Brut Rose ($42).

In an earlier posting here, I speculated that the gorgeous petite sirah our panel sent to the sweepstakes had originated in the Russian River Valley, in large part for its floral smell, lush fruit and supple tannins. Had I wagered on that, I would have lost. The wine is the Carol Shelton Wines 2008 Rockpile Reserve Petite Sirah ($40). Rockpile is a small appellation that parallels much of Lake Sonoma just to the northwest of Dry Creek Valley. Of our six gold-medal petite sirahs, whittled down from an original field of 38, the Carol Shelton was the only one from Rockpile. Four of the six were from Dry Creek Valley, and just one was from Russian River Valley.

Our panel also judged pinot noirs priced $35 or more. We had 74 of them, and gave gold medals to 10. From that group, we named one best of class, making it eligible for sweepstakes consideration. I've no idea where it finished in the voting, just that it didn't win. Of the 10 gold-medal pinot noirs, eight were from Russian River Valley, including our sweepstakes candidate, the T.R. Elliott 2008 Russian River Valley Burgonet Pinot Noir ($42). It's one big pinot noir, but not with a whole lot of the cherry/berry charm I look for in the varietal. My votes for best of class went to the silken yet august Balletto Vineyards 2009 Russian River Valley Burnside Road Vineyard Pinot Noir ($40) and the sweetly juicy and adroitly balanced Morris Ranch 2009 Sonoma County Middle Block Pinot Noir ($48). (Our panel chose its best-of-class wines by acclamation voting, meaning each of the five panel members could vote for as many or as few of the candidates as he or she wanted; the T.R. Elliott got three votes, while four other wines got two each.)

Sonoma Pinot Noir: Why The Excitement?

2011-09-22T16:37:00.000-07:00

As I said in a post earlier today, our five-person panel at the Sonoma County Harvest Fair wine competition would spend much of this Thursday judging perhaps the most cherished class of the event - pinot noirs priced $35 or more. Why should this class prompt more excitement than any other? Well, while Sonoma County is respected for the assertiveness and grace of its zinfandel, its pinot noir generates the most buzz among wine geeks these days. The county, after all, encompases such highly regarded pinot-noir districts as Russian River Valley, Sonoma Coast and Carneros. And any wine that sells for at least $35 better deliver juice of extraordinary caliber; after all, many wines priced at half that or less can be more than just satisfying. At any rate, we just completed our assignment.

I wish I could say we were more excited about the high-end pinot noirs than we were. We were pleased with the candidate we nominated for Friday's sweepstakes consideration, but I doubt that any of us came away from the table convinced that we had an overall winner, or that we even would lobby aggressively for its consideration as the best red wine in the competition. It's a fine pinot noir, but not characteristic of what Sonoma County is capable of producing. That's my opinion, not the panel's. Other judges to my left and right well may feel differently.

As a group, the 74 pinot noirs we judged were concentrated, muscular and truly representative of the strawberry and cherry fruit that the varietal can yield at its best. We ended up giving 10 of the wines gold medals, a pretty high percentage for any class. That said, I nevertheless left the chamber wishing that the wines had expressed more complexity, intricacy, uplift and focus than what we found. By and large, the wines were true and lush, but their charm was all up-front, without subtlety, complexity and longevity. There were exceptions, certainly, but as a group they didn't articulate why so many Sonoma producers are so high on the varietal, particularly for releases priced $35 or more, and I have a hunch that many of these are priced at much more than $35. At that price niche, I expect pinot noirs of more layering, complexity and elegance than what we found today.

That said, the fog has lifted, the temperature is balmy, and tonight's barbecue looks to be a highlight of the gathering. Now I have to go check on how the Dow did today.

Sonoma Bright Spot: Petite Sirah

2011-09-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, our panel at the Sonoma County Harvest Fair wine competition tasted 106 wines. Our smallest class consisted of six gewurztraminers, our largest 38 petite sirahs. All 1,000 wines in the judging must come in bottle or box bearing a label with one of Sonoma County's many officially recognized wine appellations. We were told that; we won't see bottles and boxes until after the judging, which is conducted entirely blind. All we are told is varietal or style and in some instances the price category. None of California's wine counties is as diverse as Sonoma, which includes such highly regarded districts as Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley, Alexander Valley and Chalk Hill. That makes this competition especially exciting.

For me, the most enlightening and encouraging opening-day class was the petite sirahs. I'd no idea Sonoma County is turning out so much petite sirah, though the grape long has played a significant role in the county's wine development. Of the 38 petite sirahs, six got a gold medal. After tasting through four flights, we chose our best of class, which will go up for sweepstakes consideration on Friday. The voting wasn't close. All five judges of our panel agreed that a petite sirah we know only as No. 9 in Class 24 was the best in the group. It's a wonderfully supple take on the varietal, with bright fruit flavors, approachable tannins, refreshing acidity and a note of spice. Bring on the cassoulet. Mostly, it was one graceful wine. As to appellation, I'd wager on Russian River Valley, recognized more for chardonnay and pinot noir than petite sirah, though past experience has taught me not to disregard the area in looking for petite sirahs of lushness and equilibrium.

Other classes weren't so enthralling. We struggled to come up with gold medals in the class of merlots priced under $25 (just one out of 22 entries) and the class of cabernet sauvignons priced under $25 (just one out of 30 entries). Why were the wines such a letdown? I can't speak for the other judges - Deborah Parker Wong, Ann Littlefield, Wildred Wong and Paul Lukacs - but for me too many entries in both classes didn't pop with varietal clarity. The merlots generally were pleasant but without distinction, the cabernet sauvignons bulky, warm and ripe, with little lift; I think it safe to say that we were expecting more from Sonoma County, even at that price range.

As I write this, fog clings to the hills about Santa Rosa. The Dow is down nearly 300 points. But aside from that, it will be a bright and uplifting day, I'm confident, if for no other reason than that our panel has been told that our assignments today include a class of pinot noirs priced above $35; we're to judge 74 of them. Given Sonoma County's reputation for much of the more captivating pinot noir in California, how can we miss?

A Riesling Scrum

2011-09-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

New Zealand: Sauvignon blanc. End of story.

Not so fast, says David Strada, longtime U.S. marketing manager for the trade group New Zealand Winegrowers. Actually, he didn't precisely say that. But his actions did.

Every once in awhile, Strada convenes a tasting of New Zealand wines in San Francisco. His latest, at the Vietnamese restaurant Ana Mandara in Ghirardelli Square, didn't include a single sauvignon blanc. He also didn't include pinot noir or chardonnay, two other varietals generating buzz for New Zealand's young wine industry.

Instead, Strada presented a lineup of what he likes to call "the aromatics" - white wines distinguished in part for their forward, delarative scents. We're talking gewurztraminer, pinot gris and riesling. In today's marketplace, they're underdog wines, much like Namibia, Georgia and Japan in the Rugby World Cup, which, coincidentally, is under way in New Zealand.

Nevertheless, Strada is confident that New Zealand's "aromatics" can find a place in the American wine scene. After tasting through most of the wines, I don't share his confidence so much for pinot gris as I do for riesling. The most inventive wrinkle to the tasting was the "Riesling Challenge." Twelve New Zealand winemakers were delivered riesling grapes harvested virtually simultaneously during the 2010 vintage from a single block of Mound Vineyard in Waipara Valley, an appellation of varied topography and soil just north of Christchurch, the capital of South Island.

The 12 winemakers were free to make wines in their own individualistic styles. Not surprisingly, therefore, the results showed significant variation in the nature of the wines. A couple were dry, but most were off-dry to downright sweet. Several were fat, a couple were lean. Most were New World fruity, while a few were shot through with the petrol notes often associated with European riesling. What they tended to share in common was their voluminous aromatics, their blustery fruitiness, their surprising length, and their refreshing acidity, regardless of whether they were plump or slim.

Beyond that, what did they say of the Waipara Valley terroir for riesling? The currents I found from wine to wine ran to generally sunny aromatics, builds more medium bodied than either muscular or slight, and flavors that were rich without being weighty. As a riesling enthusiast, I'll look for an example of the varietal from the Waipara Valley when I want a riesling to accompany the sort of spirited food that was served after the tasting - a modern approach to Vietnamese cooking that included steamed dumplings of pureed edamame with truffle oil, laughing buns filled with sweet sauteed beef, tuna tartare with a hint of wasabi, and shrimp potstickers.

When the "Riesling Challenge" was conducted formally in New Zealand, the wine made by Matt Donaldson of Pegasus Bay Winery was declared the overall winner. He also probably took the most inventive approach to the grapes he received. They'd been picked earlier than the riesling he customarily uses from his home vineyard. His solution was to freeze the bunches, therefore effectively raising their sugar content at press. The resulting wine was decidedly sweet, even borderline cloying. I favored a leaner and less sweet interpretation by Ant McKenzie of Te Awa Winery of Hawkes Bay and a forthright and steely take by Paul Bourgeois of Spy Valley Winery of Marlborough.

Aside from the "Riesling Challenge," the tasting included several current and older releases of the varietal, including a 2004 from the Wairau Valley that showed with its complexity and enduring freshness that the varietal is as capable of aging as handsomely as riesling from longer established areas; it was made by the winery Forrest Estate. Current notable releases worth watching for in the California market include the foresty and limey off-dry Forrest Estate 2009 Doctors Riesling from Marlborough, the refreshingly crisp Spy Valley 2009 from Marlborough, the stony and elegant Waimea 2009 Classic from Nelson, the peachy, slatey, angular and persistent Mt. Difficult 2009 Roaring Meg from Central Otago, the understated and crisp Villa Maria 2010 Dry Cellar Selection from Marlborough, and the exotic and spicy Waimea 2010 Edel, which is actually a blend that includes pinot gris and gewurztraminer as well as riesling.

Make no mistake. Sauvignon blanc is well entrenched as the varietal most closely identified with New Zealand. Eight of every 10 bottles of wine exported from the country is sauvignon blanc. It accounts for nearly 70 percent of the nation's wine production. Of the 33,600 hectares planted to wine grapes in New Zealand, sauvignon blanc amounts to half. In contrast, riesling is far down the list of the country's leading varietals, accounting for just 1,000 hectares. It's the underdog, but don't count it out. Just look at little ol' Ireland, which over the weekend upset mighty Australia in the Rugby World Cup.

Pinot Noir's Versatility Rules The Day

2011-09-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

A couple of things I learned this weekend at the 26th annual Lake Tahoe Autumn Food & Wine Festival in the Village at Northstar just outside of Truckee:

Smoked duck with caramelized fig, by Six Peaks Grille

- Pinot noir really is the most congenial wine at the dinner table. I didn't actually just learn that. But that longstanding lesson was reinforced during a festival competition in which 23 restaurants teamed up with 23 wineries to see which could create the best pairing of food and wine. I was one of five judges to spend Sunday morning sipping this wine and tasting that dish and doing it once or twice more for each of the 23 entries before submitting our scores for best wine, best dish and best pairing. We were given a brief description of each dish, but beyond that we weren't told the restaurant, the winery or even the style or varietal of the wine. When our scores were tabulated three hours later, pinot noir played a key role in three of the five top honors. A pinot noir not only was judged the best red wine of the day (the Santa Barbara Collection 2008 Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir), pinot noir also accounted for the best white wine of the day (the Scott Harvey Wines Jana Napa Valley Blanc de Noir Brut). Finally, another pinot noir was the wine in the best pairing of the day, a camembert crostini topped with smoked duck breast and caramelized fig, prepared by cooks of the restaurant Six Peaks Grille at the Resort at Squaw Creek in Squaw Valley. The smokiness of the duck and the sweet earthiness of the fig were matched precisely by the fresh strawberry fruitiness and the leathery tone of the Villa Maria Winery 2008 Marlborough Pinot Noir from New Zealand. Yes, several other varietals were in the competition. Aside from four pinot noirs, the field included cabernet sauvignons, chardonnays, cabernet franc, zinfandel, petite sirah, barbera and merlot. The two awards that didn't involve pinot noir were the best pairing of food with a beverage other than wine - a rich take on the Vietnamese sandwich bahn mi, prepared by Hard Rock Cafe International, coupled with green-tea lemonade made with a spirit by Charbay Winery & Distillery of St. Helena in Napa Valley - and the single best food of the day, a selection of house-cured meats by the restaurant Hawks in Granite Bay, which also was the runnerup in the pairing category by matching its meats with the Jana sparkler made from pinot noir.

Lars Kronmark leads tasting seminar

- There is, after all, a place at the table for high-octane wines, but maybe only when barbecue is on the menu. At a festival seminar appropriately called "Some Like It Hot," Lars Kronmark, an instructor at the Napa Valley branch of the Culinary Institute of America, walked participants through a series of tastings in which the weight and heat of both grilled ribs and the accompanying zinfandels intensified. When the meat had little or no barbecue sauce, the lighter zinfandel hung in there, but as the sauce increased in richness, complexity and spice, the attending wine also had to rise in ripeness and alcohol to stay in the game. By the end, the ribs not only were draped with a sweet and fiery sauce, they were splashed with Tabasco, and only the porty zinfandel with 16.1 percent alcohol still was hanging with the ribs. If you want to put that lesson to your own taste test, the wine was the Rosenblum Cellars 2008 Sonoma Valley Monte Rosso Vineyard Zinfandel.

Pay To Play: New Wave Wine Writing?

2011-09-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

When I read of Sam Kim, my first thought was, "Damn, why didn't I think of that?"

My second thought, which followed in a nanosecond, was that while Sam Kim's business model makes sense when it comes to making money, it rubs me the wrong way.

Kim came to my attention through a column posted by wine blogger and wine-trade publicist Tom Wark. The headline on Wark's posting sums up his views of the issue: "Pay to Play Wine Reviews...It's All Good."

Sam Kim

Kim is a New Zealand wine critic. As such, he publishes a wine newsletter, Wine Orbit. To have a wine reviewed in his newsletter, Kim charges vintners a "submissions fee" of $34 in New Zealand currency per wine (about $28 U.S.). The wines are reviewed blind, according to Kim and to Wark, and Kim writes up only those wines that on his palate deserve 80 points or more. This behavior is so antithetical to the standards of a group called Wine Writers of New Zealand that it has "ostracized" Kim from the organization, reports Wark. That's a shame, suggests Wark. After all, he notes, Kim is showing "(wine) critics how to make an honest living."

Kim is showing wine writers how to make a living, all right, but how honest is his approach? Has any independent observer, for one, verified that his tastings are blind? Also, what proportion of the wines he reviews score fewer than 80 points? For the moment, let's assume Kim is entirely aboveboard, that his palate is astute, that his tastings are blind and that a fair number of the wines he tastes don't warrant his blessing. What, then, is the problem? Well, it goes to accepting payment from people who produce a product that you, as a critic, ostensibly are reviewing independently. I suspect that subscribers to Wine Orbit think the opinions they are buying are free of any self-serving influence exerted by the trade the critic is criticizing. Maybe I'm a simpleton, but if I subscribe to Connoiseurs' Guide to California Wine, Dan Berger's Vintage Experiences, The Wine Advocate or any other wine newsletter financed soley by subsribers I expect that publication to be free of any conflict of interest or even any appearance of a conflict of interest. Kim's approach doesn't measure up to that standard.

Wark suggests that what Kim is doing is no worse than the behavior of wine writers who accept invitations to dinners, tastings and junkets underwritten by wineries or trade groups. He likes to refer to these gatherings as "perks," which suggests that he and possibly critics themselves see them as an entitlement or a fringe benefit of writing of wine. True, such soirees can be pretty damn nice, and I occasionally take advantage of such invitations. I'm pretty judicious in my selections, however; my bottom line isn't remuneration but whether the outing will provide something of value to my readers, real or imagined. Sometimes, such treks don't provide posting, column or feature at all; I strike out. They're a gamble, something I want to do, and to a certain extent need to do, but they're more work than leisure. If an outing provides me with material, I almost invariably put the tasting in context, which is to say I'm transparent about the staging. I've never been paid a cent by any winery or trade group.

Something else that bothers me about Kim's method is that it potentially locks out from consideration wines from small producers who may not be able to afford his fee. If that's the case, is he not only denying mom-and-pop operators a chance for exposure but limiting his own perspective to just those wines from producers who willingly pay up? (This also concerns me about wine competitions, where more and more, it seems, large international wine corporations dominate the list of entries while smaller producers are dropping out; maybe it's time for a competition to base its entry fees on scale of production rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, but I digress.)
I've been fortunate. I've never had to rely solely on writing of wine for my livelihood. For much of my career, it was one of the three or four legs to support the chair that kept me at the keyboard, and in retirement I continue to write of wine because I enjoy the culture, people, issues, trends, history and, naturally, the wine.

Kim has a model that addresses one of the enduring vexations of writing of wine: How do you do it and remain solvent? Thus, his strategy no doubt will be emulated by countless aspiring wine writers who love what they do and would like to make a living at it. Few writers support themselves only by writing articles and books about wine. Many have a vested interest in the trade, such as sommeliers, importers, retailers and the like, which also raises questions of propriety and transparency. There are probably more poets making their living by only writing poetry than there are wine writers supporting themselves by only writing of wine. Kim has a solution, and its appeal could spread, but I don't have to like it.

Marriages Made In Heaven (Lake Tahoe Branch)

2011-09-07T13:41:00.000-07:00

As educational, helpful and fun as wine competitions can be, they are hampered by a logistical obstacle: The wines almost without exception are judged in a culinary vacuum, which is just the opposite of how wines generally are consumed, which is at the table, with food.

An exception is the competition at the yearly Lake Tahoe Autumn Food & Wine Festival. While judges will select their favorite wines, the principal award will go to the winery and the restaurant that come up with the best pairing of food and wine. Because of this twist, the judging, which will be Sunday at the resort village of Northstar at Tahoe, is a competition I especially anticipate each fall. Often, the matchings are inspired. Occasionally, on the other hand, you have to wonder whether winemaker and chef actually collaborated and tasted their pairing before it was delivered to judges, who know neither restaurant nor winery. Customarily, between 25 and 30 wineries and restaurants vie for honors. Most of the restaurants are in the Lake Tahoe basin, while the wineries generally are in a North State appellation. The competition is closed to the public, but guests can size up the pairings for themselves at the festival's finale, the Grand Tasting, 1-4 p.m. Sunday, during which the best pairings as determined by the judges will be announced. Tickets for the tasting are $75 online through Friday, $90 at the door.

Lars Kronmark on grilling at last year's festival

Aside from the tasting, visitors who sign on for the festival - this year's is the 26th - have an opportunity to be brought up to speed on a wide spectrum of the culinary arts. Lars Kronmark, a cooking teacher at the Napa Valley campus of the Culinary Institute of America, and a frequent popular instructor at the festival, will conduct a seminar on matching "big, bold California wine" with staple dishes of the American barbecue ($45, Saturday). Lara Ritchie, chef/owner of the Nothing To It Culinary Center in Reno, will conduct a class involving parents and children making Thai spring rolls ($10, Saturday). And distiller Marko Karakasevic and his wife Jenni of Charbay Winery & Distillery of St. Helena will be back to introduce their latest spirits, which for this year will be whiskeys distilled from popular Sonoma County beers ($65, Saturday).

The festival also provides wine enthusiasts with a chance to catch up on what's going on in several California appellations without driving all over the North State. Vintners from Napa Valley's Spring Mountain District, the Santa Cruz Mountains and Lake County will conduct seminars and tastings Saturday, ranging from $40 to $65.

While tickets are needed for most programs, several cooking demonstrations are free, including Saturday sessions by Douglas Dale of Wolfdale's Restaurant in Tahoe City, Jason Gronlund of Hard Rock Cafe International, and Mark Estee of Moody's Bistro & Lounge and Burger Me, both of Truckee.

This Crew Has Faith In Tempranillo

2011-09-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

Today is the first International Tempranillo Day. This recognition is the inspiration of the Tempranillo Advocates Producers and Amigos Society, or TAPAS, a trade group hoping to raise the profile of wines made with grapes traditionally identified with the Iberian peninsula. Chief among these is tempranillo, the backbone for the proud red wines of Spain's Rioja and Ribera del Duero regions.

From left, John and Lane Giguiere and winemaker Dan Cederquist

Strictly by coincidence, I spent a few hours yesterday with John and Lane Giguiere, among the first grape growers and winemakers in California to release a tempranillo made in the United States. They've had faith in the variety since 1990, when they started to plant the grape. At the time, they owned R.H. Phillips Wine Co. at Esparto in northern Yolo County. In those days, they weren't known so much for tempranillo as they were for a wildly popular chardonnay marketed under the name "Toasted Head."

In 2000, however, with annual production approaching a million cases, they sold out. In the years immediately after, they hung around in executive capacities, but by 2005 they'd retired. That lasted a year. Eager to start over in the trade, they established Crew Wine Company in 2006. After two years of making wine in borrowed facilities, they built their own winery in the gently rolling Dunnigan Hills just outside of Zamora, about 35 miles northwest of Sacramento. Their new facility, a cluster of simple steel structures equipped with the latest winemaking equipment, is four miles southeast of R.H. Phillips, now vacant after its current owner, Constellation Brands, relocated winemaking to Lodi; R.H. Phillips lives on as a brand for Constellation.

I'd gone to Zamora to catch up generally on the Giguieres, but the conversation quickly centered on tempranillo, helped along by a tour through one of the couple's tempranillo vineyards. In the years immediately after they planted tempranillo, the Giguieres' enthusiasm for the variety lagged. It just wasn't as exciting as they'd hoped. For the most part, they blended it into other red wines.

At Crew Wine Company, tempranillo is nearly ready to pick

Their curiosity about tempranillo was reignited, however, when they got a new clone from Marcus Bokisch, a Lodi grape grower and winemaker specializing in Iberian varieties. They've been delighted with the results, first under their brand EXP at R.H. Phillips and now under their brand Matchbook at Crew. They now tend 40 acres of tempranillo - does any other grower in the state even come close to that total? - and directly across Road 92B from their winery they're ripping the soil with plans to put in 30 more acres of tempranillo.

Given their experience with and faith in tempranillo, the Giguieres and their winemaker, Dan Cederquist, seemed the ideal source for a reality check on the wine's prospects, especially on the eve of International Tempranillo Day. You see, I'm conflicted about tempranillo. Few have excited me with bright fruit, racy acidity, winking complexity and a lingering finish. Too often, they've been shallow and listless, or, on the other hand, overly ripe, overly tannic, overly woody and overly alcoholic.

At Crew, the crew tends earlier vintages in barrel

TAPAS, eager to help vacilating wine writers like me warm up to tempranillo, recently sent me six samples of the wine from vineyards in Northern California. This was on the heels of the group's annual tasting in San Francisco about three months ago. Because that tasting was just before the start of summer, I dwelled primarily on white wines. Before I left, however, I did sample several tempranillos. As a group, they were less than enthralling. Many were heavily extracted and highly tannic, best stashed in the cellar for several more years in hopes they would soften. A few were pleasant, with a freshness to their fruit and a buoyancy to their body that made them not only immediately accessible but downright charming.

As to the samples that TAPAS shipped me, I opened them, tasted them and poured them in pairs with dishes that ranged from sausage-and-cheese ravioli in tomato sauce to chicken curry. By the end, the six were about evenly divided between a style lithe and bright and a style ripe and dense. I gravitated to the lighter interpretations, which is to say that the fruit was fresh, the acidity snappy and the alcohol generally well tempered. The heavier style was characterized by ripe flavors pushing the prune and raisin end of the fruit spectrum, intrusive whiffs of vanillin and smoke from oak barrels, and the chesty warmth of high alcohol.

My sense is that American winemakers still are learning their way with tempranillo, by and large. Those who have been at it the longest, such as the Giguieres and Chuck Hovey, former winemaker at Stevenot Winery, now with his own eponymous brand in Calaveras County, are turning out interpretations of both substance and finesse. And the promise in tempranillo is that they aren't alone.

If I were to take some time this International Tempranillo Day to shop for a tempranillo of balance and length, I'd look for examples turned out under the Matchbook, Hovey, Bokisch, Berryessa Gap, Yorba, Wilderotter, Boeger, Harney Lane, Turkovich and Alta Mesa brands, all Northern California wineries. Recent tastings of tempranillos from these producers, whether at home, the TAPAS gathering in San Francisco, or a vineyard in the Dunnigan Hills, showed that the variety has much potential in California. While recent releases from these producers varied slightly in density and weight, they all spoke to a vibrant strawberry, raspberry and cherry fruitiness, with textures supple, acidity bracing and a finish lingering. They were tempranillos of balance and intricacy, providing a diverting labyrinth of multiple scents and flavors - lavender one moment, dried yet sweet cranberries another - that could be enjoyed just on their own or matched with a wide range of spirited foods.

As an example of just how versatile tempranillo is, John Giguiere noted that the single most popular account in the nation for the couple's Matchbook tempranillo is the midtown Sacramento restaurant Biba, which sells a stunning 100 cases of the wine a year. Remember, Biba is an Italian restaurant, with an extensive list of Italian wines. Its clientele, however, has found just how flexible and satisfying a finely honed tempranillo can be.

Two Buck Chuck's New Home In Sacramento?

2011-08-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

I've often wondered why Fred Franzia doesn't just pony up $5 million for the department of viticulture and enology at UC Davis so his name can go on the school's new teaching and research winery. That would put him in the same neighborhood with the Robert and Magrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts and the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, thereby raising in prestige Franzia's home territory, California's Central Valley. He may yet. For sure, Franzia seems to be warming up to the Sacramento area, to judge by this startling article from the trade magazine Wines & Vines.

In short, consultants to Franzia's Bronco Wine Company, long based in Ceres, have indicated to County of Sacramento authorities that winery officials are thinking of building a new production facility, possibly in the county's southwest reaches. Thus their appearance at a public hearing convened by county planners earlier this month to discuss a proposed new winery ordinance.

Bronco, as writer Jon Tourney notes in the Wines & Vines article, is the fourth largest winery in the nation, producing 12 million cases per year. With 40,000 vineyard acres, Bronco is the largest wine-grape grower in the state. Its dozens of wine brands inclue Napa Creek Winery, ForestVille Vineyard and Salmon Creek Cellars, but it is best known for wines under the label of Charles Shaw, better known as "Two Buck Chuck," sold exclusively through the Trader Joe's chain of specialty markets.

Of nearly 20,000 acres of wine grapes cultivated in Sacramento County, Bronco owns 1,000, concentrated in the Herald area east of Galt, in the shadows of the mothballed Rancho Seco nuclear power plant, whose twin cooling towers could house Bronco's biggest fermentation tanks yet, though no one has suggested that. Indeed, beyond indications that Bronco is looking at building a new production facility, no one with the company would discuss the proposal with Wines & Vines.

How About Wisconsin Wine With That Cheese?

2011-08-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

Wendy Staller, with milk tanks used to ferment wine

In deciding what grapes to plant, California vineyardists don't have to consider varieties bred to withstand temperatures that plunge some 30 degrees below zero. Historically, they've looked to comparably temperate climates in Europe for what they should cultivate, and consequently have had success with such long-established and highly regarded varieties as cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and chardonnay.

Growers with a hankering to cultivate wine grapes in the challenging upper Midwest of the United States, on the other hand, haven't had that luxury. They've had to look elsewhere, mainly inward, to breed grape varieties able to withstand brutal temperatures and deep snow in winter, high humidity in the summer, and a fleeting and compact growing season. After decades of experimentation, they're succeeding. Today, in states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois a nascent wine culture is taking hold, helped along, no doubt, by the locavore movement.

We got an inkling of what Wisconsin winemakers are up against when we stopped by Staller Estate Vineyard and Winery in Richmond Township last week. It's in the southeastern portion of the state, just east of Janesville and south of Whitewater. This is traditional dairy land, the gently rolling landscape lush with densely planted soybeans and corn.

A former dairy farm, in fact, is where the husband-and-wife team of Joe and Wendy Staller, Wisconsin natives with degrees in biology and chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, set up Staller Estate in 2007. The farm's former machine shed houses winemaking gear in the back, a sunny tasting room up front. Their stainless-steel fermentation vats are former 600-gallon milk tanks. Outside, two acres of grapes back up to a field of corn. The couple tends a second vineyard of nearly an acre a few miles to the north. With their own grapes and with fruit they buy from equally daring nearby growers, they're making around 2,500 cases a year, most of it sold locally through retail shops, restaurants and their tasting room. Not surprisingly, guests at the tasting room can refresh their palates with tastes of Wisconsin cheese, which on the day we visited were a first-rate parmesan and a fruity and rich cranberry cheddar.

Wendy Staller in the home frontenac vineyard

Their lineup is extensive - 11 wines were being poured when we stopped by - but their varieties are likely to be unfamiliar to Californians. "We have no chardonnay, no cabernet sauvignon, and nothing that tastes like them," warns Wendy Staller at the outset. She oversees day-to-day operations of the winery while her husband works off-site as a chemist in the research and development of polymers. Both were home winemakers and brewers before going commercial. She periodically flies to Sacramento for short-term concentrated classes in viticulture and enology at UC Davis.

Their packaging differs from the California standard in two respects. For one, they market their wines by proprietary name (Whitewater Rush, Maiden Blush, Lady in Red) rather than by varietal. Secondly, they don't vintage-date their wines, usually a sign that a winery blends wines from more than one harvest; at Staller Estate, however, vintage dating is eschewed because the wines almost without exception are made for consuming within a year of their release, explains Wendy Staller. Incidentally, their wines customarily weigh in at around 12 percent alcohol, and prices are in the $10-to$16 range. (For more information, check out their website.)

Fronteanac, close to maturity for harvesting

If their wines were marketed by varietal, California visitors would become acquainted with such unusual grapes as la crescent, marechal foch, marquette, niagra, isabella and frontenac. Many of them were developed at the University of Minnesota, several with the assistance of the late Wisconsin dairy farmer Elmer Swenson, dubbed "the patron saint of cold-climate grape growing." His goal, as well as the goal of other grape breeders, was to come up with varieties that would capture the flavors and complexities of traditional European strains while being hardy enough to survive the upper Midwest's trying weather.

The wines they yield at Staller Estate are cleanly aromatic and refreshingly fruity. Several of them are sweeter than Californians are used to, but their acidity generally is so high that the wines come off more snappy than sticky. The only clearly dry white is the Blanc de Crescent, whose apricot notes and razory finish suggested a finely honed riesling. Their most popular wine is Horizon Cuvee, a distinctly sweet white blend based mostly on the grape catawba. I especially liked their Estate Reserve, an herbal, earthy, peppery, medium-bodied dry red made with marechal foch.

Wendy Staller was correct. None would be mistaken for cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay, but several could fill the same role at the table. Indeed, a bottle of the Estate Reserve filled in splendidly for zinfandel or syrah when it was opened to accompany a slab of grilled tri-tip when we got back to the farm where we were staying.

Wisconsin grape growers and winemakers, whose numbers are growing, face more challenges than a brief season and cold temperatures, though those obstacles are formidable. The growing season, for one, is tight; the threat of freezing temperatures lingers deep into spring, and snow is apt to fall even in October. "Mid-May to October is our growing season," says Wendy Staller. "It was cold this year to June." A torrid summer throughout the Midwest, however, helped develop the grapes quickly, with the frontenac just outside the tasting room looking mature enough to be picked most any moment, three weeks ahead of the customary start to the harvest.

Raccoons, turkeys and Japanese beetles complicate the couple's hopes of bringing in a full crop. "They live in the corn and soybeans," says Wendy Staller of the especially troublesome Japanese beetles. "They annihilate everything." Deer also can be a nuisance, but in contrast to California vineyards, generally secured with high fences, the Stallers haven't fenced their vineyard. A pretty effective deterrent for deer, they have found, is to carve up bars of Irish Spring soap into eight pieces, wrap indvidual squares in nylon, and tie them to a trellis every two or three vines. It might not be much of an endorsement for Irish Spring, but so far the technique repells deer and their voracious appetite.

Estate Reserve, made with marechal foch

The Stallers are showing that fine wine can be made in uncharacteristic styles with unfamiliar grapes, and that they have an audience. Wisconsin likely will never challenge California's dominance in the production of domestic wine. But it is showing that fine wines can be made in areas traditionally seen as more suitable for hay, corn, oats and cheese. Indeed, a survey earlier this summer by the Wisconsin Wine Growers Association found that the number of bonded wineries in the state jumped from 50 a few years ago to 73 today. Most of them supplement homegrown wine with wines made from grapes or juice imported from other states, primarily California, New York and Washington - the Stallers use some fruit from the Finger Lakes district of New York - but the report was optimistic that demand among the state's vintners for Wisconsin-grown grapes would continue to grow.

By what we tasted at Staller Estate, we'd have to agree that despite the challenges of making wine in such a seemingly inhospitable setting there is a place on the table for Wisconsin wine, right alongside the many cheeses for which the state already is celebrated.

Sweet Talk About Sweet Wine

2011-08-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

Grape grower Terri Harvey tends lamb on the grill

Farmers fret - about the weather, the market, the pests, the unpredictable tastes of consumers. The wonder is that this tension so rarely shows itself in frustration and anger. On the contrary, farmers aren't just stoic, they're steadily charming and gracious regardless of whether business is bright or dark, by and large. Their glasses are perpetually half full.

They were last night, at least, when members of the Amador County Grape Growers Association met beside a quiet pond on the bucolic grounds of the Amador Flower Farm for their annual potluck and barbecue. For good eating and plenty of good wine, there's nothing quite like a gathering of grape growers to bring it all together.

After cuts of hog and lamb from the county fair's livestock auction were devoured, but before the dessert table of berry pies and brownies got raided, the growers paused to hear a few talks concerning the state of the trade. Fiddletown grower Dick Martella moderated the session, recalling at the outset that "some of us were hit pretty hard" by a spring freeze, then wrapping up the evening by noting that the ripening of grapes is running a month later than usual, raising the possibility that fall rains will move in before all the fruit is off the vines. "We're going to need all of October and half of November probably," he said of the forthcoming harvest, sounding not at all fretful, even if he is. Overall, however, he was downright upbeat. The extent of damage from the spring freeze, for one, won't fully be known until the fruit is brought in. And then there's the strength of the American wine trade, despite the shakiness of much of the rest of the economy. The wine market in the U.S. grew by between six percent and eight percent the past year, with exports particularly impressive, up 16 percent to 18 percent, said Martella.

Another speaker, Erica Moyer, a partner in Turrentine Brokerage of Novato, which deals in the buying and selling of wine in bulk - wines without a retail commitment - drew an even sunnier picture for Amador County growers. Of all the reasons she outlined for optimism - a weak dollar that encourages exports of California wine while discouraging imports, two successive years of relatively light crops that mean higher prices for dwindling inventories - her most surprising observation concerned a sharp rise in winemaker demand for zinfandel, the backbone of Amador County's wine industry.

But Moyer wasn't talking so much of zinfandel bottled as a varietal but of zinfandel as the base for proprietary blends in the hot $10-to-$15 price niche. These wines are meant for everyday quaffing, and they're generally made somewhat sweet, a style with which American consumers are quickly becoming more comfortable. "Proprietary blends are coming back, and zinfandel is the base for that product," said Moyer. "We didn't see this coming. For growers, this is the time to take advantage of it...I wish you had more grapes on the vine."

So, no doubt, do the growers, but they showed no signs of anguish over the matter as the party broke up and they ambled toward their vehicles.

Two To Tango In Amador

2011-08-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

"Established in 1993, Renwood Winery quickly gained a reputation as a premier producer in California's Gold Valley."

Gold Valley? Don't try to find that in a list of California wine appellations. Shenandoah Valley is more like it. The reference to "Gold Valley" is deep in a brief press release announcing that Ren Acquisition Inc. has completed its purchase of Renwood.

Ren Acquisition was the sole bidder for the winery last month at an auction in federal bankruptcy court in Sacramento. The price was $6,950,000.

Ren Acquisition is a privately held company chaired by Alejandro Pedro Bulgheroni, an Argentine whose wealth up to now has relied largely on oil and gas exploitation. In addition to being president of Bridas International Holdings Ltd. with corporate headquarters in Houston, Bulgheroni is counselor of the Buenas Aires Stock Exchange, vice president of the Argentine-Uruguyan Chamber of Commerce, and vice president of the Argentine Chamber of Hydrocarbons Producers, according to Bloomberg Businesweek.

Though the press release doesn't discuss his specific plans for Renwood, it says the winery will retain its commitment to "preserving the region's flagship varietals" while adding innovations and resources "to elevate winemaking to the highest quality level possible."

While Dave Crippen will remain as Renwood's head winemaker, Ren Acquisition's board of directors includes veteran Argentine winemaker Carlos Pulenta, who will be Bulgheroni's primary wine consultant in Shenandoah Valley. Pulenta owns Bodega Vistalba in Mendoza, where he makes wines under the Vistalba, Progenie and Tomero labels, and olive oil under the brand Corte V. His expansive and modern estate also includes a posh lodge and the French restaurant La Bourgogne.

"It is an exciting new opportunity for our team to work with the terroir of Renwood," the press release quotes Bulgheroni as saying. "We believe that the addition of zinfandel from Amador County to our portfolio of wines will be the first step in our international commitment to pioneer winemaking."

Prospecting In Placer County

2011-08-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Coincidence or conspiracy? Whatever, wineries along the Placer County Wine Trail this weekend had plenty of competition from their neighbors. Around just about every bend motorists were greeted by signs tacked to utility poles and fence posts beckoning them to this garage sale or that yard sale. We took so many detours from our programmed route that the generally pleasant and helpful GPS lady really got on my nerves with her repititious reminders that she was "recalculating" our way.

Only a handful of Placer County's nearly 20 wineries join this yearly event, which includes educational seminars, food pairings and tastes of current or pending releases at wineries scattered from Auburn to Lincoln. Don't know why more wineries don't sign on to the tour, but I suspect some may be so small they'd be overwhelmed by attendees if they did participate.

Irie Gengler of Source, at Lone Buffalo

At any rate, the outing provides the curious with a snapshot of where Placer County's wine trade stands and where it may be going.

Where it stands: It's young, and still learning to walk. Vintners aren't yet sure of the direction in which they should head. A couple stubbornly are gambling on chardonnay, despite its dismal record in the Sierra foothills, seen as too hot and arid for this cool-climate variety. A couple also believe in cabernet sauvignon, which also has yielded mixed results in the Mother Lode. With cabernet sauvignon, however, the outlook is more promising, to judge by a couple of sturdy and lingering interpretations by the new but quick-out-of-the-gate Wise Villa Winery of Lincoln.

Where it's going: Based on this weekend's admittedly casual exploration, if I were a Placer County grape grower or winemaker I'd be sure my vineyard and cellar were devoted to such Rhone Valley varieties as viognier, grenache and mourvedre. Either as varietal or blend, they provided the spunkiest wines of the tour. Mt. Vernon Winery of Auburn has a new winner in its 2010 Cuvee Blanc, a 50/50 blend of viognier and roussanne packed with surprising spice as well as the honeysuckle and peach traditionally associated with the varieties. Vina Castallano of Auburn was pouring a 2006 mourvedre that was all earthy fruit and heavenly silk. Lone Buffalo Vineyards of Auburn had both a vivacious 2010 viognier and a perfumey and complex European-styled blend of syrah, mourvedre and grenache under the proprietary name "Where the Buffalo Roam." And Casque Wines of Loomis was pouring its newly released 2008 Calotte, a blend of grenache, syrah and mourvedre that combined deftly a briary earthiness with a bright cherry fruitiness. The grapes that went into these wines weren't necessarily grown in Placer County, but if not they were from neighboring foothill counties with similar growing conditions, underlining their chances of also doing well in and about Auburn. As to the grape and wine most closely associated with the foothills, zinfandel, it's also showing well in Placer County, with interpretations ranging from the ripe and rich at Dono dal Cielo Vineyard & Winery of Newcastle to the lean and spicy at Wise Villa Winery.

At Dono dal Cielo, Karen McGillivray shows that veraison is under way

In Placer County, the wine trade still is family-run and hands-on. At every stop, the principals were behind the counter pouring samples, conducting exploratory and educational tastings, or leading tours into their vineyard. When they delegated a chore, it generally was to son or daughter, niece or nephew. There are no corporate wineries in Placer County. Vineyards and wineries almost invariably are owned by people who have been in the area for years. They've studied the terrain and the climate, and calculated that just maybe they could make a living - or supplement their living - by growing grapes and making wine here.

The longterm viability of the wine business in Placer County is still uncertain, but it shares with its foothill neighbors north and south similar soils, rainfall, exposures, temperatures and the like, so its prospects are positive.

No need to wait until next year's Placer County Wine Trail to visit the area's wineries, most of which are open at least on weekends. And without so many garage and yard sales competing for your attention now, you'll have more room in the car trunk for wine. Of course, you'll also miss the bargains we scored - four pairs of shoes, four candles, a new metal pull for the back gate, and a surprisingly unsoiled copy of "Gardening for Dummies."

Bill Easton Lets Each Wine Speak For Itself

2011-08-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

Bill Easton of Terre Rouge and Easton Wines

Earlier today I had my yearly lunch with Bill Easton. He's a longtime Amador County winemaker who owns two brands, Domaine de la Terre Rouge and Easton Wines. He's a rarity in that his wines don't reflect a singular house style, even though, ironically, he releases wines under a secondary label called House. Indeed, one of the five wines we shared was the House 2010 California Rose, based largely on grenache but also including mourvedre and roussanne. With clarity and balance, it fulfilled rose's traditional assignment, which is to be a wine uncomplicated, unchallenging and most of all just downright refreshing. It's the kind of wine I've come to expect to find at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op. Bill Easton just makes the wines, he doesn't market them, so he didn't know whether the Co-op actually stocks the wine, though the store has been a fan of his releases in the past. Though he isn't much into sales, I think he was headed in the direction of the Co-op as we went our separate ways.

But to get back to Easton's lack of a "house" style. One of the pleasures in tasting his new and pending releases is their variability. As you start to taste his wines you can't predict what's in store for your palate, unless you recognize at the outset that Easton is principally a student of place and time. He seeks to seize in his wines a sense of their origin, both their setting and their vintage. He's pretty much locked in to variety and clone at the outset, but beyond that he's careful to delineate ripeness, yeast, oak and other factors that contribute to a wine's overall statement.

As a consequence, each wine has to be taken on its own. Each has something different to say beyond the frame of reference provided by varietal. When you drive through the foothills, a new vista or something new in a familiar vista greets you at each curve, and that's what it is like to taste through a flight of Easton's wines. The Easton 2010 Sierra Foothills Monarch Mine Vineyard Sauvignon Blance was true to the varietal in its fresh and forward tropical fruit, but the two clones he used, the high elevation of the vineyard where the grapes were grown, and his fondness for keeping the wine for a long time on its lees resulted in a wine not far removed from key-lime pie in its tang and creaminess. The Terre Rouge 2008 Amador County Viognier wasn't over the top with honeysuckle, peaches and oil, as is common with so many California interpretations of the varietal, but leaned toward a more European take, its faintly apricot aroma and flavor bearing a spiciness both unusual and welcome.

Easton makes several zinfandels, but the Easton 2009 Fiddletown Zinfandel is a new addition to his portfolio. It's a departure from the standard definition of zinfandel in the foothills in its suppleness and elegance. The fruit runs as much to plums as the region's customary raspberries and blackberries. The tannins are more reserved than usual for the area. Despite its youth, it's ready to drink now, but it isn't shy; it has the backbone to stand up to sweet and juicy meats.

The most curious wine in his lineup was the last, the Terre Rouge 2006 Shenandoah Valley Sentinel Oak Pyramid Block Syrah. As with zinfandel, Easton makes several syrahs each vintage, but year after year this is my favorite. I can't recall an earlier version as rich, gamy, feral and even French as this. In its earthy and exotic smell, it will snap back your head, but it is so alluring you won't be able to help yourself, and you'll return time and again not only to sniff but to sip, then drink enthusiastically. It would be fun to see how this wine would do in a commercial wine competition. It could go either way. Judges could love it or loathe it, but I suspect that those with an open and adventurous mind would fall for it. Then they'd end up wagering among themselves just what estate in the Rhone Valley produced it.

We met, as we do each year, at the restaurant Spataro. I always go in there kind of holding my breath, not knowing what to expect in terms of service or food. The place was jammed, a good sign in these troubled economic times, especially today. Service started jerky but soon settled into a groove. As in the past, Spataro does a commendable job with fritto misto, the calamari and chickpeas crisp, the garlic mayonnaise fitting in weight and balance, but watch out for the slices of jalapeno chile peppers; if not for that heat, the sauvignon blanc, the viognier or the rose would be an ideal match. The Thursday lunch special each summer week is skirt steak with arugula, parmesan and fried onions; I don't know how they provide such a substantial and complete dish for $10, but the juicy sweetness of the beef was perfectly matched by both the bright berry fruit of the zinfandel and the savory exoticism of the syrah. I'm glad Bill Easton brought the wines; none of his wines, oddly, are on the wine list.

Harvesting The Online Vineyard

2011-08-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

- Over at Palate Press, Robert Ehlert, a former colleague from The Sacramento Bee, emphasizes the positive from Friday's torrid wine tasting at the California State Fair. Scheduling and budgeting issues prompted the fair's executives to scale down the annual soiree (no restaurants were dispensing signature tastes this time around) and to move it from inside the Convention Center downtown to an outdoor setting at Cal Expo. It was a gamble, and it didn't pay off, especially by starting the event at 3 p.m., only about the hottest time of the day. Winemakers could have left their cork pullers at home, given that the heat did a pretty good job of pushing corks from bottles regardless of whether vintners wanted them open. Wine pourers were steamed, with several bailing out before the party was to end. Indoor space is difficult to come by at Cal Expo during the State Fair, and that isn't likely to change unless the city's often-discussed proposed basketball arena and entertainment complex is built on the fairgrounds. As a consequence, this year's experiment isn't likely to be attempted again next year; if it is, move the start to 6 p.m., and bring in about 100 more giant fans and misters.

- Yep. Yep. Nope. Nope. Yep. Yep. Nope. That's more of less my checklist as I read W. Blake Gray's posting about what he learned during his first trip to wine regions in Argentina and Chile earlier this year. Coincidentally, I also made my first trip to the two countries this spring (fall in the southern hemisphere). I suspect we visited different wineries, and that may explain why I don't agree with a couple of his observations. For one, most of the vintners I visited didn't suffer from a "house palate," by which I think he means that many winemakers in the two countries have an elevated perception of their flagship wines. By my experience, the vintners with whom I tasted seemed eager to learn about both the strengths and weaknesses of their wines, and rarely were they defensive if a wine was seen to be one-dimensional, overwrought, short and the like. And before our next trips to the two countries Blake and I need to swap the names of the restaurants we've visited. That way, I'll know which to avoid and he'll know where he can find succulent Argentine beef and finely handled Chilean seafood.

- For those of us who have lost track of the score in the wine community's continuing debate over the good and bad of rating wines by points, Paul Franson brings us up to speed with a timely and comprehensive report in Wines & Vines. Basically, his feature looks closely at a group of industry heavyweights who are circulating a "manifesto" urging wine enthusiasts to abandon the practice of relying on scores to buy or sell wine. Among other things, the manifestas claim scores are "clumsy," "condescending," "simplistic" and "often largely inaccurate." I agree with just about everything they say, and while I've never used scores and find them amusing in their hopeless precision and irksome in their proliferation, I just can't get too exercised about whether they should or shouldn't be used. Robert M. Parker Jr. may or may not have been the first to apply the schoolhouse 100-point scale to wine, but he's certainly largely responsible for popularizing it. Nonetheless, even he has pointed out that points are just a shorthand guide to a wine's overall quality, like stars in restaurant reviews. Just about everything the manifesto-signers want in a wine review - talk about structure, balance, tannin, fruit and so forth - is in the commentary that accompanies the scores given by Parker and other thoughtful critics. Just as no one should expect much depth from tweets, no one should expect much insight from scores.

Lake County Wines: Lean, Lithe, Luminous

2011-08-01T07:44:00.000-07:00

At first glance, the vineyards of Lake County don't look exceptional. Granted, some struggle up fairly steep slopes, but for the most part they sweep across valley floor, angle up draws and curve over ridges in the same lush and tidy order as vines in most other California appellations.

With a closer look, however, you begin to realize just how different this setting is for grape vines. There's that lake in the middle of them all, for one, the largest freshwater body of water in California. Then you notice how red the soil is, much of it deposited by the county's most monumental physical landmark besides Clear Lake, the volcano Mount Konocti. What catches your eye next is the glint of sunshine off bits of obsidian in the soil, something you aren't likely to run across in many other California vineyards. Then someone will mention that Lake County's more than 8,000 acres of vineyards are among the highest in the state, starting at around 1,500 feet and stretching up to 2,400 feet. And then someone else will point out how clear the air is, and how intense the sunlight. That's when you realize that you haven't seen a shadow all day, the light being so blinding.

Lake County's 140 wine-grape growers and nearly 40 vintners are trying to get a handle on how this richly textured environment shapes their wines. They are convinced their wines stand apart from others in the state, but they're unclear on just what makes them distinctive and how to deliver that message to consumers. Thus, the 13 judges at the third-annual Lake County Wine Awards Competition late last week were urged to look not only for gold-, silver- and bronze-medal wines but for seams of familiarity that ran from wine to wine, regardless of varietal, blend, vintage and the like.

The exercise was complicated in that judges didn't generally know the appellation where a wine's grapes had been grown, other than it had to be in Lake County. In addition to the broad appellation "Lake County," the area has five sub-appellations - Clear Lake, Red Hills, High Valley, Benmore Valley and Guenoc Valley. They are widely scattered and widely variable in geology and climate.

So, broadly speaking, what distinguishes the wines of Lake County, regardless of specific source? If someone were scanning a shelf of wines from Napa Valley, Alexander Valley, Shenandoah Valley and various other California appellations, what could they count on in a wine from Lake County? After tasting half the 180 wines in the competition the first day of the judging, then all the gold-medal wines and the sweeptstakes nominees the second day, I felt that Lake County wines by and large stand apart for their lean structures, their firm but not unforgiving spines, and their dryness. With very few exceptions, there was no fat on these wines. They were lithe more than muscular, and with a stark clarity in their fruitiness. They were frisky wines; I can't recall one I would call tired. Among the whites, a hint of peach was often evident regardless of varietal. Among the reds, the fruit flavors were bright, pointed and red more than black or blue. The spiciness that emerged in several reds was reminiscent of pie spices.

When the results were unveilved, something else became clear: Lake County offers terrific value. This is largely because historically and to this day much of its fruit is sent to wineries outside the county, wineries in places like neighboring Napa Valley and Sonoma County, where it gets lost and unrecognized in blends. Lake County is a young California wine region, still scrambling to establish an identity for itself, and as it does the prices that consumers pay for its wines will rise. For now, you get a lot of wine for $10, $15 or $20 the bottle.

Lots of different grape varieties are grown in Lake County, but it is most closely identified with sauvignon blanc and cabernet sauvignon, though its zinfandel and petite sirah also attact avid followings. Sauvignon blanc is firmly established as the county's leading variety, yielding wines of uncommon assertiveness, complexity and length. The varietal's authority was reaffirmed at this year's competition when the white sweepstakes went to Jed Steele's Shooting Star 2010 Lake County Sauvignon Blanc ($11), a delightfully zesty take on the varietal.

The red sweepstakes round produced a surprise winner, the hefty and warm Chacewater Winery 2009 Lake County Red Hills Syrah ($18). It was a surprise in that Chacewater, based at Kelseyville, is a brand new winery, and in that syrah hasn't yet developed any more traction in Lake County than it has in most other California wine regions.

But maybe syrah is finding a happy home in Lake County. The rose sweepstakes went to the Ceago Vinegarden 2010 Clear Lake Del Lago Syrah Rose ($16), an extraordinarily juicy, spicy, balanced and long representative of the genre. It was nominated by the panel on which I sat, where it clearly generated the most unanimity of the day.

As to cabernet sauvignon, I'm mystified as to why it is so extensively planted in Lake County, and why growers and vintners talk it up so much. Maybe they have to, given that the varietal seems to have so little to say on its own. I confess, however, that I speak with something of a handicap. The panel on which I sat didn't judge cabernet sauvignons. The panel that did, however, sent only one to the sweepstakes round. While I rather liked its bright Bing fruit and its gracefulness, it finished far out of the running in the sweepstakes voting, behind wines made with petite sirah, barbera and Rhone Valley varieties like syrah and grenache, all of which may have more potential in the area than cabernet sauvignon, at least to judge by this year's competition results. Things don't seem to have changed much since I judged wine at the Lake County Fair in 1985, when not a single cabernet sauvignon won a gold medal. Neither did a sauvignon blanc, however, and look how far it's come over the past three decades, so maybe there's still hope for cabernet sauvignon in Lake County.

Picks From The Online Vineyard

2011-07-25T20:22:00.000-07:00

Gems from today's scanning of various wine-related websites:

- British wine columnist Jancis Robinson provides a concise yet comprehensive primer on underappreciated Italian wines from the grape aglianico. She mentions a couple of California producers working with the variety, including the ever-exploratory Kenneth Volk in Paso Robles, but not two others that deserve recognition: Terra d'Oro Winery and Amador Foothill Winery, both in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley. Just had a bottle of Terra d'Oro's 2008 the other night and found it to be light in build but with a lot of spunk and surprising complexity, including a floral smell and a flavor running to pomegranates and orange zest. Its suggestion of leather and its acidic snap brought to mind a finely tooled bullwhip.

- Coming to a natural-foods store near you any day now, no doubt: Vegan Vines, a line of wines made without the use of any animal products. While wine is popularly perceived as nothing more than fermented grape juice, several animal products commonly are used in making it, notably during fining and filtering. The list includes isinglass from the bladders of sturgeon, milk proteins and egg whites, the use of which is contrary to vegan principles. Though vegans constitute less than one percent of the population, their numbers are growing, prompting Clos LaChance Winery of San Martin to introduce three wines made without the use of animal products. Instead, the winery uses a filtering and fining method that involves bentonite and sodium bitartrate.

- Later this week I'll have a chance to reunite with my traveling buddy in Chile and Argentina this spring. That would be Joe Roberts, he of the wine blog 1 Wine Dude. We'll both be judges at the Lake County Wine Competition. Joe, who lives in Pennsylvania, gets around. For the past few days he's been in Charlottesville, VA, for the annual Wine Bloggers Conference. In his posting earlier today he lists and provides links to what was recognized as the country's best wine blogs in several categories - best writing on a wine blog, best new wine blog and so on. With his usual candor, he also discusses his role as one of the competition's judges. I'm looking forward to what he will have to say of the Lake County judging.

A Gathering Of Old Vines

2011-07-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

They're short and stooped. Their limbs are stiff and gnarled. They're thick through the trunk. Their skin is flaky. Many need to be propped up to keep from toppling over. No wonder they're so often likened to old men. But rather than old men, they're grape vines, very old grape vines. For 60 or 70 or maybe 100 years they've been yielding fruit that goes into many of California's more esteemed wines.

Lots of vineyardists and vintners cherish and fawn over older vines. A few of these farmers and winemakers, all based in Sonoma County, think the country's elderly vineyards deserve more respect and protection. About a year ago, they formed the Historic Vineyard Society. A few days ago they organized for a handful of wine writers a casual tour of four older vineyards in Sonoma County.

Mike Officer at his Carlisle Vineyard outside Santa Rosa

Weather-wise, they couldn't have scheduled the tour any better. The temperature was in the 70s. Low scuttling clouds kept the group in soft shadows much of the afternoon. The vineyards included the Carlisle just west of Santa Rosa, and the Whitton Ranch and the Lytton Estate just outside of Healdsburg. Soil compositions, exposures, drainage, slope and the like varied from site to site. Nevertheless, the elder statesmen of the vineyards more or less all looked alike - short, dark, stubby, hung with bunches of grapes still small and green, their canopies of leaves and tendrils full and wild.

At each stop, the vines for the most part were zinfandel. But each vineyard also was dotted with other varieties, scattered randomly through the rows. At Carlisle Vineyard, owner Mike Officer, who also is president of the Historic Vineyard Society, says he's counted 31 varieties other than zinfandel in his 10-acre spread, planted in 1927 by Alcide Pelletti, an immigrant from Tuscany. Officer hasn't identified all of the vines, but those he has include such historic workhorses of the California wine trade as alicante bouschet, petite sirah and carignane, as well as rarities like grand noir de la calmette.

This speckling of other grapes in a vineyard given over largely to one variety is repeated at the next stop, Whitton Ranch, though the diversity isn't as far ranging as it is at Carlisle. Whitton Ranch, owned by the Trentadue family, is believed to have been planted in 1882. Since 1966, Ridge Vineyards of Cupertino has been buying fruit off the vineyard for its celebrated "Geyserville" proprietary wine, largely zinfandel but also including petite sirah, carignane, alicante bouschet and mataro, also known as mourvedre.

At Lytton Estate, where the older sections were planted in 1901 and 1910, the mix is almost identical. Ridge Vineyards has been making a zinfandel from the vines since 1972, and in 1992 bought the winery on the site and the prized vineyards around it.

The first question these vineyards prompt is whether this seemingly haphazard array of vines was by accident or intent? Did the oldtimers who cultivated the vineyards simply lack the wherewithal to identify correctly the vines they were putting into the ground? No, said vineyardists guiding the tour, the pioneers knew exactly what they were doing. Certain patterns emerge in the blends, they note. As you move north in Sonoma County, more carignane can be found in the old zinfandel vineyards, said David Gates Jr., vice president of vineyard operations for Ridge Vineyards. It's warm up there, and the early vineyardists wanted carignane co-planted and co-fermented with their zinfandel to boost the wine's acidity, a trait highly valued in carignane. As you head south, petite sirah becomes more prevalent because it is valued for the color and structure it can give zinfandel that might not get as ripe as it does in the warmer valleys to the north.

David Gates, flanked by old vines at Lytton Estate

Such field blends are rare today, though some growers and winemakers again are experimenting with the technique. For the most part, however, winemakers prefer to receive and ferment one variety at a time, then blend afterwards in the cellar. That preference, in fact, has led to the pulling of some older mixed vineyards and replacing them with plots devoted to a single variety. The loss of older vineyards because of that sort of specialization is one reason that Officer, Gates and a few others took the initiative to create the Historic Vineyard Society.

Older vineyards also are jeopardized by economics; as vines age, their productivity drops, tempting vineyardists to replace them with new vines that yield more tonnage. Urban encroachment also can endanger older vineyards.

At its website, the Historic Vineyard Society has created a registry of more than 200 older vineyards. Several of the names will be familiar to anyone who relishes vineyard-designated zinfandels, including Nichelini, Puccini, Lubenko, Mohr-Fry, Grandpere, DuPratt and Zeni, among others. Any grower with a vineyard that he or she feels qualifies for the registry can add its name to the list. The society's officials then undertake a review to verify each vineyard's age, starting with a casual physical survey of the vineyard itself.

To qualify for the registry, a vineyard must have been planted no later than 1960, it still must be producing grapes, and no less than a third of its existing vines must date to the original planting. Though the society's directors feel they can fairly accurately gauge a vineyard's age simply by touring it, they also will consult agricultural-commission documentation, tax-assessment records and the like to validate a vineyard's age in cases of uncertainty and dispute.

The group, which has as a consultant the British wine writer Jancis Robinson, was inspired to create the society largely because it wants to help preserve older vineyards as important physical links to the country's wine heritage, says Officer. But he also draws a parallel with efforts to preserve the nation's older historic buildings; those preservation efforts often include tax breaks for people who own them. "Why not do the same thing for historic vineyards?" he muses.

So far, the organization has raised what few funds it's needed through "blind donations" and a sale last fall of wines made from several older vineyards. Eventually, the society would like to stage tastings of wines from historic vineyards both to raise funds and to raise public awareness of their existence and contributions. "We want to raise public awareness of how special these vineyards are so they can be kept in the ground," says Officer.

Renwood Winery Draws $7 Million Bid

2011-07-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

A federal bankruptcy judge in Sacramento today cleared the way for Amador County's troubled Renwood Winery to be sold for nearly $7 million.

The potential buyer is Ren Aquisition Inc., a newly formed California corporation affiliated with Nuevo Manantial, a South American energy company with diversified agricultural interests in Argentina and Uruguay. (Three Ren representatives at Monday's hearing sat silently through the proceedings, and afterwards declined to discuss their plans for Renwood.)

According to court records, Nuevo Manantial agreed in March to a letter-of-intent to purchase most of the winery's assets from CRG Partners Group, the court-appointed receiver that has been overseeing winery operations for nearly two years.

Under the terms of the agreement sanctioned Monday by Judge Robert S. Bardwil, Ren will pay $6,950,000 for Renwood's equipment, inventory and "intellectual property," among other assets. According to Winston Mar, Renwood's managing director under the receivership, the winery has 65,000 square feet of production and storage space and is capable of producing 150,000 cases of wine a year. Since it was founded in 1993, Renwood has been one of the more readily recognized brands in the foothills, gaining its following largely on the strength of vineyard-designated zinfandels.

Other parties to the agreement include Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank B.A. ("Rabobank"), which claimed a lien on the winery's assets for an outstanding $15 million, and W.J. Deutsch & Sons Ltd., which claimed a lien against Renwood for $6 million.

Earlier, one of Renwood's prime vineyards, Twin Rivers in neighboring El Dorado County, had been bought by the Napa Valley winery Rombauer Vineyards, which has long purchased zinfandel from the Sierra foothills.

Though Monday's hearing was billed as an auction, no bidders other than Ren Acquisition participated in the session.

Times When You Don't Want To Know The Score

2011-07-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

Peter Mondavi Sr.

The date isn't specified, but the meeting likely took place in the 1960s, maybe even the 1950s. Peter Mondavi Sr. is tasting wine in the cellar of his family's Charles Krug Winery in Napa Valley with Frank Schoonmaker, a pioneering American wine writer.

(Soon after the repeal of Prohibition, Schoonmaker wrote several columns and articles on wine for The New Yorker; in 1934 they were published as "The Complete Wine Book." Schoonmaker subsequently went into the wine business as an importer. He also was an early and persistent advocate of varietal names and informative back labels on American wines, innovations widely adopted by the nation's wine community and credited with raising the profile of the country's wines. Schoonmaker died in 1976, but his 1964 book, "The Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia," revised and updated in 1988 by Alexis Bespaloff as "The New Frank Schoonmaker Encyclopedia of Wine," remains one of the more reliable and comprehensive introductions to the world of wine.)

At any rate, Mondavi is escorting Schoonmaker through his wines, recalls Mondavi in the transcript of an interview for the oral-history collection of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Mondavi, eager to hear what Schoonmaker thinks of the wines, urges him to open up. Schoonmaker is using some sort of scoring system, Mondavi notes. Mondavi: "I asked him, 'How to you score these?' He says, 'Well, I don't want to reveal my scores.' He was tasting our wines, and he says, 'I don't like to reveal any of my scores.'" In telling this, Mondavi was laughing, not at all rueful about what could be taken as a slight.

But good for Schoonmaker. Whether he was using a 100-point scoring system, a 20-point or some other method is irrelevant. The point is he kept the points to himself. Not until years later did Robert Parker Jr. popularize the 100-point approach, since emulated by countless wine commentators and exploited gleefully by the marketing wings of wineries, restaurateurs, retailers and the like.

I've got no quibble with the 100-point system, but even Parker has indicated that he has two regrets about the technique, which he intended merely as a shorthand measure of a wine's quality and nature; he's taken much more pride in his written descriptions and backgrounding of the wines he reviews, and has suggested that he wishes wine enthusiasts would pay more attention to them.

He's also indicated that he regrets not having trademarked the method, which suggests he never expected his point approach to become so popular and imitated. Has it harmed the nation's wine trade? Hardly; the 100-point system, as something Americans almost innately can relate to, given their long exposure to that standard in the nation's schools, no doubt has helped introduce countless consumers to wine. In short, it's made wine more accessible. And while it doesn't on the surface make wine any more understandable, simply by getting people to taste wine it likely triggers in them a curiosity to learn more of a wine, and they may end up reading Parker's notes after all. The problem, if there is a problem, is that so many people at the forefront of introducing people to wine - marketing gurus, sommeliers, merchants - have taken the lazy route and relied solely on points by Parker or some other commentator, without explaining why a wine got this or that score; they make the sale but blow the opportunity to broaden and deepen a person's understanding of wine.

Did Schoonmaker sense that this would happen? I've no clue, but he did prefer to keep his scores personal. There's also the possibility that he just didn't think much of the Mondavi wines and didn't want to offend his host. However, I can't recall that Schoonmaker ever used scores in writing of wine. Coincidentally, while browsing about the fine used-book store Chanticleer in Sonoma yesterday, I came across a copy of Schoonmaker's "The Complete Wine Book." In skimming through it, I could find no scores whatever, but lots of other great stuff.

As The Dust Settles, Fine Wine Emerges

2011-07-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

Quintessa was a personal favorite at the tasting

Last night, to prepare for today's tasting of 2008 cabernet sauvignons from the sub-appellation Rutherford in Napa Valley, I skimmed writings of several masters more familiar with the region than I am. I was looking for aesthetic threads they have found in Rutherford wines over the years. Producers within the appellation include such highly regarded labels as Staglin Family Vineyard, Beaulieu Vineyard, Rubicon Estate and Quintessa. I also was looking for what is meant by "Rutherford dust," a characteristic often attributed to the area's wines, though ill-defined.

The cabernet sauvignons of Rutherford, the consensus seemed to be, are forceful and firm, their substantial fruit often shot through with suggestions of eucalyptus, herbalness and mint, characteristics I especially like in the varietal. Thus, I looked forward to the tasting.

I wasn't disappointed, though I was surprised, in large part because hints of eucalyptus and mint were more elusive than obvious. Rather, the wines - 22 of them, all from the 2008 vintage, tasted blind in two even flights - had more cherry fruit than I anticipated. Their structures were firm without being hard. Their acidity often was refreshingly tangy. Tannins were downright reserved, by and large, despite the youth of the wines. As a group, the wines were supple models of equilibrium. Rutherford dust? For me, the tasting didn't shed any light on what that means.

During a break between flights, I asked Charles Thomas, the winemaker at Quintessa, what had happened to the herbaceousness that at one time seemed to be a distinctive Rutherford trait. He explained that viticulturists and winemakers within Rutherford over the past 25 years have been attempting to master a complicated dance. Their aim is to get more fresh fruit flavors out of their berries while avoiding strong herbaceous characteristics that cross into the no-no land of vegetativeness. They've been paying a lot of attention to canopy management, striving to strike an ideal balance between sunshine and shadow on the grapes. Ideally, that would give them in the resulting wine expressions of both fruit and mint, but not too much of the latter. Too much shadow equals too much herbaceousness; too much sunlight equals too many shriveled grapes with too little juiciness and too much tannin. Over the past five to 10 years, he noted, the trend in the vineyard has been back toward more shading, so eventually notes of eucalyptus and the like might become more pronounced.

As to "Rutherford dust," he speculated that the term arose form a "certain spice character" found in many Rutherford cabernet sauvignons, but conceded that the term long has been difficult to pin down. "Some things in wine are best if they remain a mystery," he remarked.

During lunch, longtime Napa Valley grape grower Andrew Beckstoffer offered another explanation for what is meant by "Rutherford dust." The expression, he suggested, is purely metaphoric. He attributed it to Andre Tchelistcheff, the Russian-born, Paris-trained chemist instrumental in reviving the state's wine trade following the repeal of Prohibition, in large part as the progressive and influential winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyard. Tchelistcheff, said Beckstoffer, felt that to make outstanding wine a winemaker had to own or otherwise control what went on in the vineyard. "To make great cabernet you have to have Rutherford dust," he quoted Tchelistcheff as saying, and by "Rutherford dust" he meant vineyard. Whatever is distinctive about the soils of Rutherford, added Beckstoffer, continues to be a matter of research.

Francis Ford Coppola at today's luncheon

Today's tasting was at Rubicon Estate, the current name of a winery built as Inglenook in the 1880s by the Finnish sea captain and fur tradder Gustave Niebaum. In 1975, writer and film director Francis Ford Coppola and his wife Eleanor began to acquire property in the area, eventually buying the Inglenook winery in 1994. In the meantime, however, the Inglenook name had passed to a number of corporate wineries. Thus, the Coppolas named their own winery on the grounds Niebaum-Coppola, with Rubicon the name of their flagship wine. Subsequently, the Coppolas bought the old Souverain Winery at Geyserville in Sonoma County and christened it Francis Ford Coppola Winery. Recently, the Coppolas acquired rights to the name "Inglenook," which they will use for the estate they now call Rubicon, thus restoring its historic designation. (You can tell by this much drama and these many twists that Coppola is still writing and directing.)

Which raises the question: Does that mean that the Coppolas will remake the large and striking stained-glass window they installed at the top of the grand stairway at the Rutherford spread? It now says "Niebaum-Coppola," never having been made over to "Rubicon." Francis Ford Coppola, who quietly took a seat at the end of the table for the lunch that followed today's tasting, said he would like to change the window but hasn't yet committed to the project. For one, it's huge. And more than a simple name change could be involved. The original Inglenook logo involves a horizontal diamond. When he founded his own initial winery he made the diamond vertical. In short, a whole new window could be in order. Cost will be a crucial factor in determining whether to restyle the window, he said.

To become Inglenook?

As to the wines at the tasting, these turned out to be my favorites:

- Monticello Cellars 2008 Napa Valley Tietjen Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ($65, to be released Oct. 1): Suggestive of Bordeaux in its build (lean) and California in its flavor (sunny fruit), the Monticello is simply one gorgeous wine. The fruit runs to fresh cherries and plums, the oak hangs respectfully in the background, and the tannins aren't at all intrusive.

- Flora Springs Winery & Vineyards 2008 Rutherford Hillside Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ($100, to be released Oct. 1): Ripe but not over-ripe fruit flavors, mostly suggestive of small Bing cherries, with a tanginess so pronounced in the finish it leaves the mouth watering for one more sip, then another.

- Round Pond Estate 2008 Napa Valley Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon ($50, already in release): Now this one had Rutherford dust, if by dust we can agree that it means a light coating of something minerally on a dense patch of blackberries. Overall, a wine of terrific lushness.

- Frog's Leap Winery 2008 Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon ($75, to be released Oct. 1): The spine is steely, the dark fruit not only refreshing but punctuated with notes of the herbalness I'd been expecting to find in Rutherford cabernets.

- Quintessa 2008 Napa Valley Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon ($145, to be released Sept. 1): Perhaps the most complex and broadest wine in the tasting. The aroma is inviting, the fruit juicy. A seam of intriguing herbaceousness runs through the wine and accounts for at least some of its complexity. Also, one of the more lively wines in the lineup.

- Beaulieu Vineyard 2008 Napa Valley Georges De Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ($115, to be released Aug. 1): Big and forceful, but exquisitely balanced. Its dark and lush fruit flavor carries a thread of eucalyptus. While its tannins are somewhat rigid, the finish is long and smooth.

- Staglin Family Vineyards 2008 Napa Valley Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon ($185, to be released this fall): In the past, I haven't been a big fan of Staglin cabernets, finding them too hard. This one, however, is all charm, from its deep and alluring color through its black-cherry and green-olive flavors to its luxuriant finish. A textbook cabernet for its structure and spirit.

More Than Grapes Squeezed In Lake County

2011-07-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

Mike Thompson (Photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

Over the 4th of July weekend, editors of The New York Times dispatched reporter Eric Lipton to till Rep. Mike Thompson's vineyard, and the dust hasn't settled yet.

If you missed it, Lipton's report suggests that Thompson has benefitted financially by his twofold role as farmer and congressman. For one, according to the article, two wineries paid Thompson $500,000 for sauvignon-blanc grapes from his 20-acre vineyard in Lake County during a stretch when their executives were appealing to Congress on various legislative matters. The Times didn't have to dig far to get these figures; they're in a financial-disclosure form Thompson completed two years ago.

The article suggests that at least one of the wineries, Bonterra in Mendocino County, overpaid Thompson for the grapes, thereby hinting that maybe he got a bonus for his steadfast support of the North State's wine trade. Bonterra paid $978 per ton for the fruit when the Lake County average for sauvignon blanc was $877. Never mind that the article doesn't say that Thompson ever interceded on behalf of Bonterra in these matters. On top of that, lots of factors could explain the disparity in prices - the quality of the grapes, their sugar levels, the ability of seller to persuade or outwit the buyer about the nature of his fruit. An average is just that, an average; no doubt, some growers in Lake County got a lot less than the average for their sauvignon blanc while others got a lot more. (Last fall, the price paid for sauvignon blanc grown in Lake County ranged from $200 per ton to $2,800, according to state tabulations; Thompson told The Times that his vineyard last year brought him just an $18,000 profit.)

The article also claims that Thompson stands to gain financially if federal authorities designate the Big Valley area in which he grows his grapes an American Viticultural Area, a proposal he supports. The theory behind this allegation is that small appellations like Big Valley are more prestigious than larger appellations like Lake County, and therefore command more money for their grapes and wines. I think the theory is more wishful thinking than reality, but I sure would like to see members of the American Association of Wine Economists undertake a study to address the issue.

Lipton raises issues that deserve to be aired. He could have been more fair to Thompson and Times readers, however, had he done more reporting. He could, for example, have reported on the full range of prices paid for Lake County sauvignon blanc in vintages when Thompson was selling his grapes. And he could have explained why Thompson's vineyard has increased in value from the $228,000 he paid for it in 2002 to its current assessed value of about $775,000; it wasn't planted with grapes when he bought it, you think?

And in one paragraph that had me almost gagging on my morning coffee, he quotes Craig Wolf, president of the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America, as suggesting that Thompson's twin roles violate Congressional ethics rules. Couldn't Lipton find anyone more credible to offer that thought so high up in the story than Wolf? Wolf and Thompson are longtime adversaries, with the wholesalers doggedly trying to monopolize the sale of alcoholic beverages to their own benefit while Thompson advocates more freedom in how Americans go about buying wine. The article would be more convincing had Lipton found other critics of Thompson, especially within his congressional district. When you look at a map of that district, which includes at least parts of Yolo, Napa, Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties, including thousands of acres of wine grapes and hundreds of wineries, you can see why Thompson is so supportive of the wine trade. But it's an area rich with environmentalists and others who question the wisdom of converting so much open land to vineyards, and yet Lipton apparently couldn't find anyone to suggest that Thompson has been less than thoughtful and fair in accommodating their concerns.

Thompson has been curiously quiet in the wake of Lipton's article. Maybe he's shrugging it off because the piece simply didn't build a strong case that he's done anything wrong. Nonetheless, I'd like to see a specific accounting and justification for the $1.2 million Thompson has taken in campaign contributions from the alcoholic beverage industry during his seven terms. And I do think he should recuse himself from any involvement in deliberations concerning whether Big Valley will be an officially designated American Viticultural Area, even though I question whether any vineyard within such an appellation would benefit significantly by the designation. Overall, though, Thompson looks to be guilty of nothing more than bringing home to his district various cuts of Washington pork, which, ironically, generally pairs quite nicely with sauvignon blanc.

For A Change, A Good Word About Scores

2011-06-27T19:25:00.000-07:00

Though I have no intent to buy either carriage or horse, I occasionally mosey into the barn out back with ambitious plans to clear it of outdated automotive parts, electronics, furniture and the like, thereby making room for I don't know what; maybe a Harley.

Much of the clutter is box after box of wine memorabilia - auction catalogs, competition results, winery newsletters, tasting notes, labels, posters and assorted other detritus that eventually may end up on eBay or in the catacombs of some library.

I never get far toward my goal of sorting and organizing, however. Invariably, I'm soon distracted by some wrinkled, stained and faded piece of paper I'd forgotten I even had but nevertheless again find captivating, rediscovering why I saved it in the first place. I sit down and start to read. Before I know it, it's dinnertime, and I amble back into the house for the day. Such was the case over the weekend when I came across a copy of the one-page newsletter that Richard Peterson was writing and publishing at The Monterey Vineyard in Gonzales three decades ago.

In a pithy essay under the simple headline "Theory of Relativity," Peterson lays out his scheme to make sense of scores that just then were gaining currency in the reviewing of wines. At the time, 20 points was widely seen as the highest score a wine could receive. That's because competitions and critics frequently based their evaluations of wine on a 20-point metric developed by UC Davis. Today, 100 points is the standard used by several competitions and critics, its origin attributed to school tests with which most Americans are well acquainted, and thus easily could relate.

Regardless, Peterson's principles still apply. "I've never seen a consistent relationship between price and quality in wine," said Peterson at the outset of his essay. At the time, he'd put in more than 20 years in the wine trade. "Price sometimes depends upon the amount of a wine to be sold, but doesn't necessarily correspond to its quality," he added.

Then he showed wine enthusiasts how to apply his "theory of relativity" to everyday life. His intent was to help consumers find the best wine at the lowest price whenever they run across a list of wines whose reviews prominently feature a score. He knew from his long experience as both a winemaker and as a judge on the wine-competition circuit that there's apt to be little difference in the nature and quality of wines whose scores are relatively close.

"How maddening it is to see a wine ballyhooed in publications as a 'grand winner' because it received an average score of, say, 16.3 points - over another which averaged only 16.2 points. In reality, whichever of those two wines sold at significantly lower price should be the true 'grand winner,' as far as the consumer is concerned. I believe that if competent judges rate several wines as 'equal' in quality, then the lowest priced wine should always be reported as the 'winner' in value. Yet, this is rarely done by the wine press," added Peterson. Remember, he wrote this nearly 30 years ago. Things haven't much changed since then.

Here's how to put Peterson's theory into practice: Divide the score given each wine in a tasting by that wine's price. This will give you "quality points per dollar," and the higher the resulting figure the better the value. The July issue of Wine Enthusiast magazine, for example, lists 11 California chardonnays with scores between 90 and 93 points. Of the 11, the wine with the most points also was the most expensive ($65). According to Peterson's theory of relativity, it also offered the fewest "quality points per dollar" - 1.43 - and thus the least value. The wine with the most value, with 3.91 quality points, was the Talbott 2009 Santa Lucia Highlands Sleepy Hollow Vineyard Chardonnay, which scored 90 points and sells for a mere $23.

But don't stop there, Peterson says. He urges consumers to do their calculations, buy wines that stand out for combining high relative value with recognized quality, then taste them and decide for themselves which wines are truly high in value. "After tasting, you can score them and figure a new 'personal' relative value if you wish; but once you've made your own personal decision about various wines' relative values to you, then you must thereafter ignore the original tasting judges' scores," he writes.

It's an old story (encouraging consumers to develop their own tastes) with an enabling twist (the "theory of relativity"). In short, each consumer decides for himself or herself where they get the most value for their buck. Nearly 30 years ago, Peterson offered a quick and simple formula to help consumers on that journey, and it is as applicable today as it was then, if not more so, given the popularity and power of scores given wines.

Georgia On My Wine

2011-06-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

"What's that smell?"

Not exactly an unusual question at a wine tasting. But this time it was tinged with more than usual puzzlement, and maybe even suspicion. Should a wine actually smell like this - subterranean, murky, feral? None of the usual descriptors bandied about at a tasting came into play. This was a wine without strawberries, grapefruit, melons, plums or any other familiar fruit association. It was dark, alien, mysterious, more earthy than fruity.

Someone suggested smoked fish. Another suggested the grill of a Weber kettle the morning after it had played host to tri-tip or ribs. Another suggested root vegetables with a lot of dark, damp earth still clinging to the skin. None of this was unkind, just curiosity triggered by a wine with which only a handful of people in the room had a frame of reference.

"Fresh black truffles," ventured Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti. Exactly, virtually everyone immediately agreed. While not a smell commonly associated with most Californian, European or South American wines, it wasn't off-putting, just unfamiliar, and both threatening and delightful in its strangeness. Corti didn't quite know what to make of it, but did add that he's also smelled the same thing in older Burgundies from esteemed producers working with grapes off a great vintage.

This was no Burgundy, however. It was a white wine from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The grape that yielded it is called mtsvane kakhuri. It was cultivated in the eastern Georgia province of Kakheti, and the juice was fermented in clay vessels called kvevri, also spelled qvevri, coated with beeswax and buried in the ground. It soon was followed by another Georgian wine with an even more forthright smell of fresh black truffles. It had been made with another rare grape, rose rkatsiteli. Their aroma wasn't their only distinguishing characteristic. For white wines, they were unusually deeply colored, their yellow edging toward orange. What's more, they were unusually tannic for white wine, the offshoot of long fermentations in contact with the skins of their grapes in the clay jugs.

Not many Georgian wines make it to California. These two and several others were being opened at Sacramento's Waterboy restaurant only because a delegation of a dozen vintners from Georgia was touring the United States. Corti was their local host.

Georgian vintners touring teaching winery...

Earlier that day, the group, sponsored by the Georgian Wine Association and the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia, toured the new teaching and research winery at UC Davis. Earlier, it had visited the Finger Lakes district of New York before jumping cross-country to Lodi. After leaving Sacramento it would be taking in Napa Valley and Sonoma County. The group was on a mission not only to better understand the American approach to winemaking but to learn how Georgia might emulate wine regions that have successfully capitalized on wine tourism.

The Georgians are convinced they have a story to tell that will entice American wine enthusiasts to come visit them, to learn of their wines and foods, and to explore the architecture, history, nature and celebrated hospitality of a country far removed and little understood. Georgia stretches east from the eastern shore of the Black Sea, with Russia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, and Armenia and Turkey to the south. Its most celebrated natural feature is the Great Caucasus Range along its northern border.

Georgian wine regions like Kakheti, Imereti and Kartli aren't yet ranked with Tuscany, Bordeaux and Mosel as choice destinations for wine lovers, but the group sees no reason why they shouldn't be.

They certainly have history on their side. Wine has been made in Georgia for 8,000 years. The country often is called "the cradle of wine." Even the looping letters of the Georgian alphabet suggest the tendrils of a vine. More than 500 varieties of wine grapes are native to Georgia, some 420 of which continue to be cultivated. If grape varieties like mtsvane kakhuri, rkatsiteli and saperavi are unknown in the West, it's largely because the wines they yield have been so appreciated for so long in their immediate neighborhood. Until about a decade ago, 80 percent of Georgia's wine exports were to Russia. Five years ago, however, Russia clamped an embargo on wine imports from Georgia, prompting the country's current search for new export markets as well as its eagerness to develop a program of wine tourism.

...then sampling a test cabernet sauvignon

The loss of the Russian market also is creating an identify crisis for Georgia's wine community. Georgian vintners appreciate the uniqueness of their grapes and their winemaking techniques, but they also fret that their wines may be too unusual for an international clientele for whom fruit-forward, unchallenging cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay and merlot have become the dinner-table standards. Thus, they are cultivating those varieties, and adopting more modern winemaking methods to make the resulting wines more identifiable and accessible to outsiders. At The Waterboy, however, they preferred to show off the sorts of wines that have developed avid followings in Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. In addition to the earthy mtsvane kakhuri and rose rkatsiteli, they included another interpretation of mtsvane kakhuri not far removed in freshness and spunk from a sauvignon blanc or pinot grigio; a solidly built orange-tinted white wine from the native grape kisi; an amber-hued white wine laced with the nutty suggestiveness of tawny port, made from the grape rkatsiteli; and a meaty and firm red wine from the grape saperavi. White or red, one characteristic many of the wines shared was a fetching peppery spiciness with which Americans who like petite sirah, zinfandel and syrah could relate.

Right now, not many Georgian wines are to be found in the United States. Whether that changes will depend largely on how they are priced when they do start to arrive, where Americans see them fitting in at the dinner table, and on how adventuresome the American palate wants to be. In the short run, Georgia's wine culture may have more going for it with wine tourism than with wine exports, given the country's diverse and stirring landscape, its ancient cathedrals and monasteries, its rich heritage of cloisonne enamel art, polyphonic singing and live theater, its isolated throwback villages, and its national parks. From the way the Georgians talked of their native land, it's ancient, rugged, varied and rich with surprises, with wines equally ancient, rugged, varied and surprising.

A Recap And A Look Ahead

2011-06-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

An update and an advance:

- In reporting here earlier of California State Fair commercial wine competition results I wasn't aware that the rules of engagement had changed this year. In the past, the top award recipients weren't announced until the State Fair was under way or about to commence. That embargo has been lifted this year, however.

Therefore, here are this year's major winners:

- Best-of-Show red wine: Shady Lady 2008 Amador County Primitivo ($30).

- Best-of-Show white wine: Greenwood Ridge Vineyards 2006 Mendocino Ridge White Rieslimg ($30).

- Best-of-Show dessert wine: Navarro Vineyards 2010 Anderson Valley Muscat Blanc ($59).

- Best value: Glen Ellen 2009 California Petite Sirah ($10).

More to follow as I have a chance to taste the wines.

- That isn't likely where I am right now, which is in Paso Robles, the setting for the Central Coast Wine Competition, which commences tomorrow. Though no Cental Coast wines placed high at
the Californis State Fair, I'm excited about this judging, largely because last year's results yielded so many award-winning wines that I'd like to have in my cellar. At dinner tonight in the Paso Robles restaurant Villa Creek we got to revisit several of those wines. I was especially impressed by the minty, spicy and refreshing Rancho Sisquoc 2007 Santa Barbara County Merlot, even though I'm generally not a big fan of merlot. But in freshness and distinctive varietal character, this was an exceptional model. Anyone about to grill skirt steak would do well by their guests to find this wine or a more recent vintage to add to the table.

Barbera, King For At Least A Day

2011-06-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

Dick Cooper welcomes guests to his landmark ranch

After sampling 30 or so wines at a tasting, I usually can point to three or four that stand out for their individuality, cohesiveness and impact. But when fellow guests at Saturday's first Barbera Festival on Dick Cooper's ranch in Shenandoah Valley asked me which wines most excited me, I was at a loss to rank three or four higher than the others. The problem wasn't in finding outstanding wines; it was that so many of them were outstanding. Rarely have I attended a tasting where the wines were so uniformly notable. Maybe I just have a liking for barbera, but the consensus among other participants with whom I chatted was that the wines almost invariably were clean, fresh and balanced, with bright fruity flavors, restrained tannins, modest oak and snappy acidity. As a group, they were wines remarkable for their consistent brightness and understated flair. As the day progressed, it became more and more apparent why so many producers of the varietal are nervous about running out of inventory before the next vintage is ready to release. Barbera is a wine that long has been under the radar, but its profile is rising fast.

Barbera is quite capable of yielding statement wines, as shown by the high honors it has taken at competitions in recent years. But as Saturday's exercise also showed, the grape deserves to be celebrated more for producing wines of exquisite equilibrium, smoothness and refreshment. For me, I realized as I tasted more and more of the wines, barbera's sweet point is when its aging regimen involves no more than 20 percent new oak barrels, regardless of whether they are American or French. Beyond that, the wood intrudes too much on the grape's inherently sunny fruit. But that's me. Plenty of other tasters welcomed the caress of vanilla and the toastiness of smoke that comes from new oak cooperage.

While Saturday's festival was a decidedly California event, with most of the participating 80 wineries from the Sierra foothills, Lake County and other North State wine regions, guests also were able to taste five wines from the northern Italian region of Piemonte, barbera's native land. Also on hand was Monica Pisciella, an Italian wine consultant who was representing the Piemontese vintners who had sent their wines to the festival. Near the end of Saturday's gathering, after she'd had an opportunity to taste some of California's takes on barbera, I asked her what she thought of them. "I was struck by the fact that California barbera is very fruity and that it has high drinkability," she said. "Today's California barberas are very fresh and fruity and easy to drink. You can open a bottle and the wine is ready to drink." In contrast, Italian barberas often are best if they are opened and allowed to breathe before they are consumed, she noted. "If you drink them immediately you don't enjoy them at their best," said Pisciella. "Italian barberas are leaner, a little bit more complex, and they need more time to be appreciated." Sure enough, people who revisited the Italian table and retasted the wines later in the afternoon found at least some of them to be more expressive.

Art, crafts and food as well as wine greeted guests

Beyond that, Saturday's Barbera Festival was a major success. I've been to a lot of wine festivals over the years, but few have been as thoughtfully conceived and as organized as this inaugural event. Wineries poured at tables clustered about the trunks of Dick Cooper's walnut orchard. The vines that produced many of the barberas being poured were off to one side. A band was off to another. Guests who weren't all that crazy about red wine could buy white wine by the glass, or beer. Crafts vendors looked to be doing a brisk business in everything from garden sculptures to hats. The lines for the food vendors were long, but I didn't run into a single guest who complained about the quality, nature or price of dishes from such purveyors as Beth Sogaard Catering and the restaurant Taste in Plymouth, the cafe Clark's Corner in Ione, or Tuli Bistro of Sacramento. About the only two people who didn't get to taste any barbera until late in the day were the organizers who came up with this vision less than a year ago and saw it to success were Brian Miller and Deirdre Mueller, last seen hauling a couple of trash containers through the orchard. It didn't hurt that the weather was exceptionally balmy for early June.

I don't know the date for next year's Barbera Festival, but as soon as it is announced, sign up. This year's festival sold out quickly, and tickets for next year's no doubt will be grabbed even faster. Throughout the day, Monica Pisciella tweeted to followers in Italy who were eager to learn more of the festival. "This is a great event, with a lot of people coming to discover the wine. In Italy, wine festivals are always smaller than this. This should be longer. It should last one week." Maybe next year.

Getting Prepped For Barbera

2011-06-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

Joanne Streubing warns festival guests of vineyard snakes

On the eve of tomorrow's Barbera Festival in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley, here are a few things I learned about the grape and the wine at yesterday's Foothill Grape Day on the Amador County Fair grounds in Plymouth, orchestrated by University of California Cooperative Extension:

- Barbera has been grown in California since the 1880s, when Dr. Giuseppe Ollino put down cuttings at Italian Swiss Colony of Asti in Sonoma County and John Doyle included the variety in his vineyard at Cupertino.

- As recently as 1959, however, only 200 acres of barbera were being cultivated in California. Over the next 20 years that total swelled to almost 20,000 acres. It's now declined to 7,000 acres, reported Glenn McGourty, the winegrowing and plant-science adviser for University of California Cooperative extension in Mendocino and Lake counties.

- As in the past, about 90 percent of the state's barbera is in the San Joaquin Valley, where the variety historically has been used to blend with such other grapes as carignane and ruby cabernet for inexpensive everyday jug wines. Nowadays, however, farmers in the San Joaquin Valley see more profit in other grape varieties and other crops, thus have reduced their acreage devoted to barbera.

- Growers and vintners elsewhere, on the other hand, see potential in barbera as a premium varietal, with plantings increasing in such prime regions as the Central Coast, North Coast and Sierra Foothills. Because barbera is a variety that needs heat to temper its naturally high acidity, the Mother Lode is especially poised to capitalize on the variety's rising esteem, indicated McGourty. "This is a variety you guys can own," he told farmers and winemakers, most of them from the immediate area.

- Diego Barison, director of field operations and customer relations for the Santa Rosa commercial nursery NovaVine, traced barbera's origins to the northern Italian province of Montisferratenis in Piemonte, where it has been tended since at least the 1600s.

- A wine labeled "barbera" almost always is 100 percent barbera, though sometimes winemakers will blend in a portion of such varieties as zinfandel, charbono and refosco, mostly to add color, body and spice. It commonly is aged in American or French oak barrels, but generally older rather than newer barrels.

- A panel of growers and winemakers concurred that barbera's principal appeal at the table is its adaptability. It customarily possesses the fruit, structure and acidity to accommodate a wide range of foods. "Barbera is what I bring to a dinner when I don't know the menu; it's versatile," said winemaker Justin Boeger, whose eponymous family winery in El Dorado County has been making barbera for 35 vintages.

One theme that developed during the day's presentations was speculation about the oldest barbera vineyard in the Sierra Foothills. No definitive answer was found, though barbera may have been grown in the region as early as 1888, when the University of California maintained a plant experimental station outside of Jackson, where ledgers indicate a grape called "barberesco" was cultivated. Though the Italian wine Barberesco is made with the grape nebbiolo, both varieties are from Piemonte. Today, nebbiolo is rarely grown in California, and while plantings to barbera are relatively small its presence in the state looks to be more enduring and promising. The first modern barbera planting in the Mother Lode is believed to have occurred in 1971, when Cary Gott established a plot at his family's Montevina Winery in Shenandoah Valley. Today, that property is Terra d'Oro Winery, which maintains 70 acres of barbera, likely the largest plot of the variety in the state.

Tomorrow's Barbera Festival is sold out, incidentally, though plenty of the wine is available in the area's tasting rooms and grocery stores.

State Fair Themes: Muscats, Blends, Foothills

2011-06-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Nearly 50 wines won high honors in last week's California State Fair commercial wine competition in Sacramento. That's because the State Fair gives more awards than perhaps any other judging in the country. For one, the competition divides the state into 11 regions, then selects a best white wine and a best red wine from each. Then it also chooses a best cabernet sauvignon, a best sparkling wine, a best "Rhone red varietal blend," a best "other dry white varietal" and so on and so forth. If you didn't already know that Sacramento is the center of politics in the state, this "let's-make-everyone-happy" philosophy would at least convince you it is a model of accommodation. Besides, the more opportunity you can give a vintner to brag, the more likely he or she will come up with the entry fees to keep the show rolling.

Nevertheless, I rather enjoy seeing how all these awards shake out, what patterns develop, and what the results seem to say of the state of California's wine trade. (The first official tabulation of wines entered in this year's competition came up with a total 2,647, all from California, but then someone discovered in the fine print of one label that the wine actually was a Chilean product.)

At any rate, here's a few broad conclusions drawn from the nearly 50 wines to win high awards at this year's California State Fair commercial wine competition:

- Several California growers and winemakers are speculating that muscat, whose wines almost invariably tend to be floral and luscious, will be the next big thing in the state's vineyards. This hunch is based on a surprising uptick in the sales of muscat wines. At the competition, judges also looked to have gotten pretty excited about muscat. Three of the top awards went to muscat wines: The Navarro Vineyards 2010 Anderson Valley Muscat Blanc was named the best "unfortified muscat" in the judging; the V. Sattui Winery 2010 California Muscat was named the best "other dry white varietal;" and the Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi 2010 California Muscat Hamburg was named best "varietal rose." These results also are a timely reminder that muscat is a wide and deep family of grapes, which range in color from pale green/yellow to deep blue/black. The wines they produce are equally diverse. "A catalog of the various sorts of muscat would be of more interest to a botanist than to a wine drinker," notes "The New Frank Schoonmaker Enclyclopedia of Wine," and for now we'll leave it at that.

- By and large, the State Fair's high honors reaffirm the perception that some grape varieties perform much better in some appellations than in others. The wine found to be the best cabernet sauvignon in the state, for example, is from Napa Valley, the source of most of the more profound cabernets of California; it's the Louis M. Martini Winery 2007 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Similarly, the wine declared the best riesling in the judging is from Mendocino County, where the varietal long has done exceptionally well; it's the Greenwood Ridge Vineyards 2006 Mendocino Ridge White Riesling. The best zinfandel is from Paso Robles, where the varietal has deep historic roots, though the region's winemakers nowadays seem hell-bent on recasting the appellation as best for grape varieties long identified with France's Rhone Valley. And maybe they have a point; the State Fair judges found that the best white wine from the area is the Eberle Winery 2010 Paso Robles Viognier.

- Wines of the Sierra Foothills still have to scramble to get any national media attention, but maybe the State Fair results will persuade the wine media to take the region more seriously. At the State Fair, no other region won as many high awards - eight. The best barbera in the state is the Jeff Runquist Wines 2009 Amador County Cooper Vineyard Barbera. The best sangiovese in the state is the Macchia Wines 2009 Amador County "Harmonious" Sangiovese. The best primitivo is the Shady Lady 2008 Amador County Primitivo. The best syrah is the Solune Winegrowers 2007 Sierra Foothills Syrah. The best "other red varietal" is the St. Amant Winery 2009 Amador County "The Old Soldier" Touriga. The best tempranillo is the Wilderotter Winery 2008 Amador County Tempranillo. And the best "other red varietal blend" is the Twisted Oak Winery 2008 Calaveras County "Parcel 17," a mix of mourvedre, carignane and graciano.

- And speaking of blends, perhaps the most surprising and gratifying theme in the results is the number of blended wines to be named best-of-region. Varietal wines dominate both the American market and the results of wine competitions, but gradually consumers and judges are recognizing that blended wines often deliver more complexity and intrigue. To the judges, blends that deserve special recognition include the Alta Colina Vineyard & Winery 2008 Paso Robles GSM, a mix of syrah, grenache and mourvedre (best red wine of the South Central Coast) and the Hahn Winery 2010 Central Coast GSM, another mix of syrah, grenache and mourvedre (best red wine of the North Central Coast).

The competition's best-of-show wines have been selected from this final field of nearly 50 high finishers, but the results won't be publicly announced until a gala July 29 at Cal Expo during the run of the State Fair.

Their Time In The Sun, If The Sun Agrees

2011-06-07T16:56:00.000-07:00

Despite this past weekend's gray, cold and damp weather, wines of spring prevailed in two vastly different venues.

Saturday, as rain swamped the Amador County Fair grounds in Plymouth, judges for the fair's commercial wine competition whittled away at the entries until they came to one final decision, the selection of Best of Show. Four wines were in the last round. Curiously, not one of the four was a zinfandel, the varietal most extensively planted in the Sierra foothills, from which entries were gathered. The only red in the quartet was the Dillian Wines 2009 Amador County Shenandoah Valley Barbera, which just moments before had been elected the competition's best red wine, fitting for a varietal that is challenging zinfandel's standing as the most celebrated red wine in the Mother Lode.

But the day's overall winner was a frisky white, the Bray Vineyards 2010 Shenandoah Valley Verdelho, which seized the title with its lilting fruit, citric snap and touch of spice. Verdelho is a green Portuguese grape not cultivated extensively in California, though it is generating interest among growers and winemakers for the refreshing wines it can yield, generally in the dry and delicate yet snappy style that helps explain the popularity of pinot grigio/pinot gris. As the Bray shows, however, verdelho can pack more fruit and weight on its fine-boned frame than generally is the case with pinot grigio/pinot gris.

Sunday dawned drier, warmer and brighter, especially as the day progressed, in particular at Herbst Pavilion on the grounds of Fort Mason in San Francisco. This was the setting for the fourth annual tasting sponsored by the Tempranillo Advocates Producers and Amigos Society (TAPAS), a trade group promoting the cultivation of grapes and the consumption of wines traditionally associated with the Iberian peninsula. In addition to tempranillo, a black grape celebrated most enthusiastically in Spain's Rioja, Penedes and Valdepenas regions, where it yields generous and lusty wines, varieties associated with the peninsula and with TAPAS include verdelho, albarino, graciano, torrontes, carignane and garnacha (also known as grenache).

I took two swings through the pavilion, one to concentrate on white wines, the other to focus on reds. I left feeling that the whites just might have more potential in the United States market than the reds, even though virtually every member of TAPAS - and some 40 were on hand - has at least one tempranillo in his or her portfolio. Granted, some fine tempranillos were on hand, but as a group they were heavily extracted and highly tannic, wines meant to be laid down rather than consumed young. Maybe after five years they might round out into something lush and approachable, but I have my qualms about that after tasting a couple of older releases that were on hand.

The whites, on the other hand, almost invariably were clean, refreshing and well balanced, splendid for accompanying lighter dishes during the warm and sunny days that finally may be arriving. When cooler weather returns, I'll return to tempranillo and other Iberian reds, but for right now here are my favorite whites from the San Francisco tasting:

- St. Amant Winery 2010 Amador County "Miss Independent" Verdelho: Lodi's Spencer family has been growing and making verdelho for about a decade, and that experience in the vineyard and in the cellar is well represented by a take on the varietal that is unusually substantial in body and feel. Despite that heft, the wine retains the varietal's signature liveliness, freshness and spice in generous proportions.

- Urbanite Cellars 2010 Lodi Caliberico White: Luis Moya, president of Urbanite Cellars in San Francisco, believes that if Californians are going to grow traditional Iberian grapes they should follow traditional Iberian cellar practices, and that means blending wines rather than releasing them as varietals. His Caliberico White is a blend of 47 percent verdelho, 35 percent albarino and 18 percent torrontes, producing a wine whose lilting melon and peach flavors are accented with telltale floral notes from the torrontes. Its acidity is crisp, its overall flavor and feel balanced and smooth.

- Forlorn Hope 2010 Lodi Alta Mesa "La Gitana" Torrontes: While in Argentina not long ago, I tasted a fair amount of torrontes, and this interpretation took me right back to the base of the Andes. In fact, though the family resemblance is there, Forlorn Hope's take on the varietal seemed to possess more backbone and sharper acidity while faithfully holding on to the grape's floral and spicy characteristics.

- Dancing Coyote Wines 2010 Clarksburg Verdelho: Looks like verdelho has as much potential in the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta as it does in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley. The Dancing Coyote is another bright interpretation of this underappreciated varietal. The aroma is pronounced and inviting, promising tastes of peach and pear, which it delivers not only upfront but throughout a lingering finish.

- Odisea Wine Company 2010 Clements Hills "Dream" Albarino: Albarino can be as much about intrigue as refreshment, and this one speaks to both sides of its personality. It's dry and fruity, with a cleansing tanginess, but it also has a bit more color and a bit more depth than most albarinos of my experience. Its tropical fruit rests on a seam of alluring minerality, making it an unusually complex example of the varietal.

- Harney Lane Winery 2010 Lodi Albarino: Another fairly rich and layered albarino, packed with summer peaches and melons, and finishing with a zesty snap that makes it ideal for pairing with seafood, including oysters just off the grill, light on the sauce.

Just How Lucrative Are Wine Competitions?

2011-05-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

In the old days - 50 or so years ago - a wine competition was fairly straight forward. Entries were grouped by varietal or style, and panels of judges from the winemaking, wine marketing, wine teaching and wine writing worlds tasted through the classes without knowing the identity of the wines, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals as they progressed.

That's still more or less the model of longstanding competitions. But in recent years novelty wine competitions have cropped up. One competition, for example, is judged only by people who buy wines for grocery stores, restaurants, cruise lines and the like. There's a competition judged by sommeliers. There's a competition where all entries are wines made by women, judged only by women. There's a competition where entries are wines made biodynamically, judged by biodynamic winemakers. There's a competition judged only by mainstream consumers. Another is judged only by members of the millennial generation. And a new competition will be judged by three panels of judges - one made up of wine-industry professionals, another of millennials, the third of Hispanics. Yet to be introduced is a competition of wines made only by gay winemakers, and a competition of older wines judging only by elderly vintners, but don't be surprised.

This proliferation of wine competitions comes at a curious time. With few exceptions, the number of entries at established judgings is stagnant or falling. Perhaps competitions are cannibalizing each other. Perhaps vintners are questioning the educational and marketing value of competitions. Perhaps entry fees have become just too darn high.

Nevertheless, the rise in the number of competitions suggests that there's money to be made in them, and not only by wineries fortunate enough to win gold medals and other high awards. Wine competitions must be profitable for the people who organize them, right? Nothing wrong with that, but I've been wondering just how much profit a wine competition can make, so I went to Norb Bartosik, general manager and CEO of the California State Fair, which sponsors two competitions, one for commercial winemakers, the other for home winemakers.

Let's look first at the commercial wine competition, this year's edition of which will be next week at Cal Expo in Sacramento. Bottom line: There doesn't look to be much money in running a wine competition, not even one as historic and as large as the State Fair's. Based on early entries and projected costs, all of which have been trimmed this year, the State Fair's general budget is expected to realize a profit of only about $17,000 from next week's judging. That's almost identical to what it earned last year. In 2009, the competition actually lost money, nearly $19,000, according to budget summaries compiled by Bartosik.

Revenues come largely from entry fees, expected to be around $156,000 this year, compared with $165,000 last year and almost $138,000 in 2009. Expenses this year include $24,600 for a cellar master who spends six or seven months organizing the inflow of wines and generally overseeing logistics (down nearly $7,000 from 2009), $46,360 for "professional services," which includes remuneration for the chief judge, computer programmer and volunteer coordinator, along with catering costs for the meals served judges (down nearly $7,000 from 2009), nearly $20,000 for judges fees (basically the same as they were two years ago), $13,000 for awards (no change), and nearly $23,000 for "overhead," which includes air conditioning for the facility where wines are stored before and during the competition, lodging for judges, website management, janitorial services, insurance and the like (down $2,000 over the past two years).

As to the State Fair's home-winemaking competition, it is expected to lose $2,387 this year, less than last year's losses of nearly $5,000 but a little more than the approximate $2,000 lost in 2009. Entry fees have risen over the past three years, now topping $13,000, and while the cost of "professional services" has dropped to $4,535 from nearly $8,000, "general expenses" have risen from less than $1,000 two years ago to more than $5,000 for this year's competition. No "salaries and benefits" are budgeted for the home-winemaking competition.

These figures provide insight to just one wine competition. They point to a lot of revenue going through Cal Expo, but don't indicate that anyone is getting rich off the judging, not even the State Fair.

Aside from the competitions, the State Fair is shaking up one of its wine programs this year. In the past it's put on Grape & Gourmet, a gala during which high awards from the State Fair's commercial wine competition were handed out. In recent years it's been at the Sacramento Convention Center. This year, however, it's being returned to Cal Expo and is being rechristened "Taste & Celebrate the Best," to be held July 29. The program will be much the same, with awards presented and participants able to taste winning wines, but the array of vendors providing food will be virtually eliminated, given the proximity of smoked turkey legs and corndogs.

Proceeds from both Grape & Gourmet and the State Fair Gala, which involves wine tasting and an auction on the eve of the fair's run, as well as profits from the fair's livestock auction, benefit the exposition's scholarship fund. Generally, between $25,000 and $40,000 in scholarship money is raised by various State Fair programs, said Bartosik. Attendance at last year's Grape & Gourmet took a dive, however, and little revenue was generated by the event for scholarships. Thus the move to Cal Expo. The State Fair, incidentally, runs July 14 to July 31 this year.

(Disclosure: Though I've been a judge at the State Fair's commercial and home wine competitions, I didn't participate last year and won't this year. I'm also a member of the State Fair's wine advisory task force.)

On Red Wine's Turf, A White Rules

2011-05-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

After 500 wines were sniffed, sipped and spat at the El Dorado County Fair commercial wine competition in Placerville today, the final round of voting to settle on a single sweepstakes winner came down to one red and one white.

This doesn't seem just, given that the Sierra foothills, the source of most of the entries, is primarily red-wine territory, celebrated largely for its zinfandel, barbera and syrah. Indeed, the last standing red wine was drawn from a crowded field of 24 nominees for best red. In contrast, just seven wines had been nominated for best white.

In the end, however, the white wine prevailed. It's the Montevina Winery 2010 California Sauvignon Blanc, an exceptionally zesty representative of the varietal, fresh with sweet fruit flavors running to grapefruit and lime, and vibrant with the sort of sharp and refreshing acidity that explains why sauvignon blanc is so popular with dishes highlighting seafood, especially shellfish. It shows by its pluck and persistence that the sort of sauvignon blanc typically associated with New Zealand also can be made in California. Sauvignon blancs of this much thrust are rare in the foothills. Indeed, while Montevina is a brand of Terra d'Oro Winery in Amador County, the grapes likely came from appellations far removed from the foothills, thus the "California" appellation. In the past, Montevina's sauvignon blanc has been made with grapes from such cooler climates as Santa Barbara County, and that practice likely had been continued with the 2010, though the winery's website isn't current with information about wines now on the market.

As to the red wine it edged for the sweepstakes title, that was the Macchia Wines 2009 Lodi Rebellious Petite Sirah, a big, juicy and rigid interpretation of a varietal well known for its mass.

The Montevina sauvignon blanc sells for around $10, the Macchia petite sirah for $24.

Trong Nguyen, Party Planner

2011-05-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of other people, Trong Nguyen hates to see a fun party end. But as it does, the good cheer he's shared is tempered by a disturbing vision - beer bottles only half empty, cocktail glasses mostly full, unfinished goblets of wine. Such waste, he thinks.

He has a hunch why so many guests don't drain their drinks, and it has nothing to do with a disappointing vintage or concern about inebriated driving. Party goers simply don't remember whose drink is whose, so they abandon them and fetch fresh ones, which they may or may not finish or lose.

Nguyen is a scientist and an inventor who when he sees a problem he's compelled to do something about it. Thirty years ago he couldn't find a decent croissant in Sacramento, so he opened a bakery along J Street. His big and buttery croissants were an immediate hit, and he parlayed their popularity into the La Bou chain of bakeries and cafes. He's closed a few of the stores in recent years, but there's still 22 of them in the Sacramento region.

In the meantime, he's tinkered on other projects, many of which spring from both his studies in genetics, chemistry and physics and his "do-gooder" instincts. His social consciousness was forged in the turbulent 1960s, he recalls, and he still has the urge to improve the lot of others. His inventions have ranged from compact housing for the homeless to a system for easily moving a stack of chairs. "A lot of them haven't been commercially successful, but they're very useful for the people who do use them," he said the other day.

But he's upbeat about his latest inspiration. Back to the party and the puzzle of the unconsumed drinks. His solution is called PartyPal. Basically, PartyPal is a sticker that guests are to apply to their bottle of beer or glass of wine to help them keep track of it. He's aware of the competition, such as individual charms to loop around the stem of a glass, but they're overpriced, he says. As to paper discs meant to work in much the same way, they're simply ugly, he adds.

Tag first is removed from sheet

He's given a lot of thought to PartyPal. There are 52 stickers to a sheet. In number and look the tags are identical to a deck of cards - ace of diamonds, jack of spades and so forth. But a person doesn't simply peel off one of the tags and stick it on his or her glass. These are precisely engineered stickers, meant to separate so the larger portion of each goes onto beverage container and the smaller identical attachment tears off easily to go on wristwatch, sleeve, ring or skin to remind the guest that his or her drink is the five of hearts, eight of clubs, or whatever.

Why the deck-of-cards theme? The number and their varied design, making them fitting for a fairly big soiree, but Nguyen also sees a possibility for guests to develop party games based on the stickers. He has none in mind, but is hoping that people who buy and use the stickers will come up with suggestions and post them on PartyPal's website, which he still is developing.

Small portion is put on watch or skin

Nguyen has gone to great lengths to develop a kind of paper that not only peels and separates easily but will stick to surfaces ranging from the warm and dry to the cool and wet. He's convinced that party guests will jump at the opportunity to use a simple, bright and easy means to help keep them from mixing up and misidentifying drinks.

But his goal goes beyond helping confused guests and avoiding the waste of leftover beverages dumped down the drain. Nguyen grew up in Vietnam at a time when potable water was scarce and cherished. This memory has prompted him to tie the sales of the stickers to A Drink For Tomorrow, a non-profit organization working to provide clean, safe drinking water by digging wells, installing pumps, building wash stations and the like in impoverished communities, principally in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A packet of three sheets of 52 stickers each is to sell for $5, with $1 going to A Drink For Tomorrow. "They make as much money as I do. I make a dollar and they make a dollar," says Nguyen of each packet of tags. ""I'll be happy if they get a million (dollars) and I get a million (dollars)."

Larger part is put on glass

Nguyen just got his first batch of stickers, which he hopes to start selling soon through winery tasting rooms, grocery stores and the like. Locally, Corti Brothers is the first outlet to stock the tags.

Meanwhile, Nguyen hasn't turned his back on croissants and other baked goods. He's experimenting with a brioche-style croissant that is lighter, moister and not as big or sweet as his original version, and he's looking at an upscale spinoff of La Bou, but that's a story for another day.

Drivers, Start Your Food Trucks

2011-05-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

The folks at Iron Horse Vineyards in Sonoma County have an inspired idea that just might resonate in and about Sacramento. If it does, it could help resolve two frustrations. One is the difficulty of finding good eats while touring wineries in the Sierra foothills, in particular in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley. The other is what to do about all those food trucks that are having such a tough time finding a place to park in Sacramento.

Dim Sum Charlie's, at Iron Horse on June 10

Over at Iron Horse, they're about to launch Food Truck Fridays. Each Friday from June through September a food truck will set up shop at the winery from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Thus, visitors will be able to select from a different kind of menu each Friday a dish or two that they can pair with Iron Horse wines by glass or bottle in the winery's gazebo. The early lineup includes Rosso Pizzeria on June 3 and Cochon Volant on June 17.

This is a fun idea worth emulating in Sacramento's nearby wine regions, where cafes tend to be few and scattered. Meanwhile, food at wineries themselves tends to be standard picnic fare, little of it interesting. Food trucks at wineries would offer more varied and original options, and might even encourage wine sales.

Whether the trek and the traffic at any given winery would make the journey worthwhile for the operators of food trucks is an unknown element, but apparently both Iron Horse and the owners of several mobile kitchens saw enough potential in the plan to give it a try. The only question now is what winery in the foothills will be the first to invite a food-truck cook to pull up alongside the tasting room. Why do I think it just might be Driven Cellars in Shenandoah Valley?

A Shenandoah Valley Zinfandel Tops The Field

2011-05-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

Wines from Sacramento's backyard continue to win high honors on the spring competition circuit. The latest is the Shenandoah Vineyards 2008 Amador County Paul's Vineyard ReZerve Zinfandel, which earlier today was voted the top entry in the third annual Zin Challenge in Pleasanton.

It was one of 13 entries to win gold medals in the early stages of the judging, thus qualifying for the final best-of-show round. A total 75 zinfandels had been entered. The final 13 came from virtually every prime zinfandel region in the state, including Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley, Paso Robles and Lodi as well as Amador County. Among the wines with which the Shenandoah Vineyards competed in the final round was an entry from its sister winery, the Sobon Estate 2008 Amador County ReZerve Zinfandel. Both wineries are owned and run by the Leon Sobon family.

Though both wines pack 15.1 percent alcohol, they were two of the lighter, brighter and zestier candidates in the final flight. Both are relatively lean and lithe, but spirited with zinfandel's natural and sunny charm, an attribute lacking in many of the other contenders.

The best-of-show round concluded two days of judging on the soggy grounds of the Alameda County Fair. The first day was devoted to a separate competition, the Best of the Bay, which drew 123 wines by wineries in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Though the competing wineries had to be based in the Bay Area, they could enter wines made from grapes grown outside the region. In that contest, Fenestra Winery of Livermore won both of the highest honors: The Fenestra Winery 2008 Livermore Valley Ghielmetti Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon was named best red wine, while the Fenestra Winery 2010 Lodi Alta Mesa Silvaspoons Vineyard Verdelho was crowned best white wine. Silvaspoons Vineyard is at Galt, meaning grapes from the Sacramento area were responsible for two of the three top awards in the Pleasanton competitions. What's more, Fenestra is on a roll. Just last week the Fenestra Winery 2007 Livermore Valley Ghielmetti Vineyard Petite Sirah won the red-wine sweepstakes at the Riverside International Wine Competition in Temecula Valley.

Raising The Bar In Amador County

2011-05-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

Joh Shebl (left), Scott Helwig alongside picnic pavilion

Scott Helwig is showing me around his family's nascent wine estate, Helwig Vineyards & Winery. We're ambling about a knoll 1,640 feet up the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento, in the heart of Amador County's Shenandoah Valley. In virtually every direction vines ripple across the rolling terrain.

We walk gingerly, for the site is still a construction zone. A jackhammer pounds into a new concrete walk, tearing up an apparent mistake. A breeze lifts red dust, which settles on granite boulders in the middle of what eventually will be the estate's central courtyard. It's flanked by four buildings whose soaring and sloping shed roofs say today, while sidings of corrugated metal and board-and-batten suggest the barns, mines and farmhouses of yesterday Amador. If we were in a hot-air balloon overhead, looking down at the cluster of buildings, the layout would suggest an "H," as in Helwig, Scott notes.

One building will be the tasting room, its oval counter milled from two oak trees fallen on the site. Another is an events center; here, Scott pauses to gesture across the expanse toward a room designed specifically for brides preparing for their wedding. A third is the open-air picnic pavilion, with built-in fireplace and grill. Oddly, there's no commercial kitchen on the premises, but the Helwigs have retained the restaurant Paul Martin's American Bistro of Roseville as their caterer.

The fourth building is the winery itself. It's no larger than the others, though alongside is a crushing pad that easily could accommodate an entire fleet of forklifts.

And underfoot is a warren of caves capable of holding 350 barrels of wine. One wing will be a private dining room with a table that will seat some 30 guests. The caves represent what well could be the largest excavation in the county since the last gold mine was dug. "We did run into some quartz veins, but we didn't find any gold, at least none that the construction guys told us about," says Scott.

Some 60 of those workers remain on the site, scurrying about as if continuing a frantic search for nuggets. Actually, they're up against a tight deadline. The Helwigs aim to open the grounds to the public around Memorial Day weekend.

The Helwig amphitheater takes shape

Many of the workers are on the north side of the hill, sculpting rows of curved seating for the estate's amphitheater. It will hold 400 guests on tiers that bracket the north portal into the caves. They have to finish it by July 8, the date of the winery's first concert, headlined by the Celtic rock group Tempest, for which tickets already are on sale. That should be enough of a seismic test for the caves.

Given its striking design - by Sage Architecture of Sacramento - and its industrious hospitality and entertainment programs, Helwig clearly is the most ambitious and costly investment in Amador County's wine trade. As soon as the first visitor winds up the drive and is greeted by the south portal into the caves, comparisons with the affluence and aesthetics of Napa Valley will be drawn.

Scott sidesteps questions about the expense, but it's obviously substantial. The facilities sit on 42 prime acres, 17 of which the Helwigs have planted to vines; another three acres are devoted to olive trees. Eager to be active members of the local wine culture as soon as their winery was built, the Helwigs bought two former nearby wineries, Rabbit Hill near Fiddletown and Serenidad just to the west. They made their first wines at Rabbit Hill and use Serenidad for stockpiling their releases. They also bought a fully mature 35-acre vineyard in Suisun Valley just outside of Fairfield.

The first 3800 cases of Helwig wine are being released today, though it may be several days before they start to arrive in Sacramento outlets. The initial rollout involves 14 wines. Scott Helwig made them with guidance from seasoned Amador County winemaker Joe Shebl, the winery's general manager. "Our goal is opulent, succulent, mouthwatering wines," Scott says. And true to that model, the lineup includes a luscious rose of syrah, a smoky barrel-fermented sauvignon blanc, an unusually muscular barbera, a syrah with more power and complexity than usually found in the varietal, and four interpretations of Amador County's signature wine, zinfandel, from the swaggering to the lumbering.

Scott's parents, David and Nancy Helwig, live in Thousand Oaks. He's an executive with Blue Cross; she's a homemaker who tends some 30 head of alpaca - breeding, showing and shearing them, then spinning their wool and knitting it into purses, socks, hats and the like. Eventually, they'll settle in Amador County, bringing the alpacas with them.

Scott says his father, a Chicago native, long has been interested in wine, to the extent that he's tended vines in a small plot behind their home. Scott, a graduate in psychology at North Park University in Chicago, was following his father into the insurance business when his parents acquired the Shenandoah Valley property in 2007. Scott, figuring he'd rather work outside than in an office cubicle, returned west from Chicago and began his formal introduction to the wine trade, starting under the tutelage of Chaim Gur-Arieh, proprietor and winemaker of the Shenandoah Valley's C.G. Di Aire Vineyard & Winery.

When his parents began to toy with the notion of becoming vintners they first looked at Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County, but land prices were high and going higher, and they weren't crazy about the attitude, says Scott. They turned to Napa Valley and Sonoma County, but had the same reservations. In Amador County, they found what they were looking for, not only in land values and availability but in the county's familial atmosphere. Besides, Scott's mother grew up in Sacramento and was familiar with the foothills, where she still has family.

"We're a humble and quiet family. We're hometown people. We like community, and that's what Amador is," says Scott. "The (winemaking) bar has been rising in Amador County, and we would like to raise it a little more. My dad knows the potential of Amador, and he wants to help it keep growing."

Prescription For Pleasure, And More: Colby Red

2011-05-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

When we arrived at South Coast Winery Resort & Spa in Temecula Valley the other day - the site of the 30th annual Riverside International Wine Competition - the first familiar face we encountered was that of fellow judge Daryl Groom.

That face, which almost always is smiling, also was sweating. He was just ending a three-mile jog. It was late in the afternoon. The sun was beating down. The temperature had topped 90 degrees. He could have been lounging by the pool. But if anyone knows the value of keeping a heart pumping vigorously, it's Daryl Groom, a longtime Australian and Californian winemaker.

Groom has a son, Colby, who was born with a hole in his heart. Early on, that hole seemed to have healed itself. Subsequently, however, doctors discovered that he had a defective valve, and when he was 8 he underwent his first open-heart surgery. When that patch didn't hold, he went back under the scalpel 10 months later to get a mechanical heart valve.

As he recuperated, he took it upon himself to join fund-raising drives in hopes of advancing heart research so other youths wouldn't have to face what he'd endured. He participated in heart walks. At one event, he raised $1,000 by charging people to see his chest scar.

About a year ago, he suggested to his father that the two of them make a couple of barrels of wine to sell at auction, with the funds to go to the American Heart Association, St. Jude's Childrens Hospital and other groups helping youngsters with heart ailments. He anticipated generating about $500.

As word of his proposal began to circulate among his father's acquaintances and friends, the scope of the project grew. Treasury Wine Estates, an international wine company whose 54 brands include Castello di Gabbiano, Stags' Leap Winery and Penfolds, a celebrated Australian winery where Groom once was in charge of its red-wine program, jumped aboard. So did the drugstore chain Walgreens.

The first vintage of "Colby Red" began to roll into Walgreens stores in February. Those two barrels that Colby Groom first envisioned making with his father had grown into 25,000 cases. So far, sales of the wine have raised $115,000 for heart research. The Grooms are hoping to hit $250,000 by the end of the year.

"Colby Red," a 2009 blend of California cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel, syrah, merlot and petite sirah, delivers more fruit, harmony and complexity than its $10 price tag suggests. This isn't a wine getting by on its feel-good story and noble goal. It's a bright and supple wine whose sunny and forward red-fruit flavor is accented with a seam of herbalness and a couple of dashes of spice.

The day before running into Groom in Temecula Valley, I coincidentally picked up and tasted a bottle of "Colby Red." Be forewarned that not all Walgreens stock this or any other wine. I visted three of the drugstores before finally finding the wine at the Walgreens branch at Arden Way and Eastern Avenue.

Today, Colby Rex Groom is a vigorous 13-year-old who often accompanies his father and mother as they travel about the country to hand out checks for this and that heart-related charity. They make a point of dispensing funds to communities where the wine sells briskly. At "heart balls" he's become an effective pitchman in urging attendees to donate generously, helping raise $430,000 in Dallas, $285,000 in Chicago, where he also was invited to throw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field. He's developed into a wicked southpaw.

Mike Lee: Pioneer, Winemaker, Gentleman

2011-05-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

Mike Lee (Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

"He was just one of those people who loved other people." That's Sonoma County winemaker Charlie Tolbert, talking to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat about another Sonoma County winemaker, Mike Lee, who died of a heart attack while playing golf in Santa Rosa on Monday. Tolbert's comment sums up Mike Lee with absolute precision and accuracy.

Mike Lee's fondness of other people was unselfish, positive and persistently supportive. He helped aspiring winemakers find their way, and on the competition circuit, where he was an amiable and insightful judge, he approached wines with an appreciation for both what the winemaker seemed to be seeking and what the consumer likely was expecting. I last saw him a week ago, at the West Coast Wine Competition in Healdsburg. He was a person you were always glad to see for his relaxed demeanor, the equilibrium he struck between seriousness and playfulness, the persistent twinkle in his eyes, and the brightest and happiest smile on the planet. He was a person of quick and firm opinions, but he didn't try to dominate, and was always eager to give and take in a forthright yet respectable exchange of opinions. He was trim and vibrant, and his abrupt death has stunned his colleagues and friends.

Mike Lee, with other members of his San Francisco family, founded Kenwood Vineyards in Sonoma Valley in 1970. That may not seem so daring now, not with wineries scattered the length of Sonoma Valley, but four decades ago such a gamble only rarely was undertaken. And from the start, Mike Lee played a pivotal role in putting Kenwood Vineyards on a solid foundation by making clearcut wines at readily accessible prices, a philosophy he followed throughout his three decades overseeing the winery's cellar. (The family sold Kenwood in 2003, and in 2005 Mike Lee became the winemaker for Pattiana Organic Vineyards in Mendocino County. He assumed that role after a buddy, former Sacramentan Casey Burke, was killed in a plane crash. Burke was married to Patti Fetzer, the other principal behind Pattiana. She subsequently married Gregg Hileman, and he and Mike became good friends. It was Hileman with whom Mike was playing golf when he collapsed Monday.)

But what was Mike Lee's mark on California wine? For one, Kenwood's sauvignon blanc early on set a standard that other wineries strived to match. He sought out and capitalized on outstanding vineyards, then handled their grapes in a way that expressed fundamentally their place. This was true of other varietals as well, but sauvignon blanc is what brought him his first widespread acclaim. He made clean and fresh wines, released at prices that put them within grasp of an American audience that was only just starting to discover wine. This was a standard he continued at Pattiana.

Mike Lee wasn't a celebrity winemaker. He didn't promote himself. He wasn't as interested in raising his profile as he was in raising the profile of fine wine. In talking with him, his focus persistently was on the vineyard, the culture, the wine. He listened as much as he talked. He was a true gentleman. His sudden passing reinforces the values he represented so naturally - understand, respect, share, smile.

Showing Why It's Called 'Superior California'

2011-04-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

For the second straight week, a Sacramento-area winery has won a high honor in an international competition. Today, the Bogle Vineyards 2010 California Sauvignon Blanc ($10) was named the best white wine at the 2011 West Coast Wine Competition in Healdsburg. A week ago, the Jeff Runquist Wines 2009 Lodi Alta Mesa Silvaspoons Vineyard Touriga ($24) was elected grand champion at the 2011 Pacific Rim International Wine Competition in San Bernardino. (Jeff Runquist Wines is in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley.)

At Healdsburg, judges evaluated 1,128 wines, most from the United States, though the field also included entries from South America and Canada. After two days of tasting, the entries were narrowed to 29 candidates for best white wine and best red wine. Judges didn't know the identities of the wines. The Bogle, which stylistically is more European than Californian in its sleek build, balance, persistence and uncloying fruit flavors, was one of nine best-of-class wines in contention for best white wine. The other contenders included three chardonnays, a pinot gris and a muscat.

In the final tally of the day, however, the Bogle was beat out for the title of best table wine by the top red wine, the Scheid Vineyards 2008 Monterey County Pinot Noir ($32), a light-colored but rich, spicy and spirited interpretation of the varietal. The candidates for best red wine also included four cabernet sauvignons, four blends and two each zinfandels, malbecs and merlots.

The biggest winner at the judging may be Monterey County, the source of the grapes not only for the Scheid pinot noir but for a portion of the Bogle sauvignon blanc (the balance was from Russian River Valley).

Needed: A Reevaluation Of Wine Competitions

2011-04-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

It's much too pretty a day in Sonoma County to stay inside, but inside I am as a judge at the 2011 West Coast Wine Competition. Despite the allure of balmy temperatures and largely sunny skies, I'm actually enjoying myself in a cubicle inside the old hillside retreat called Villa Chanticleer, once allegedly mob-linked but nowadays the stylish setting for weddings and other fashionable soirees, at least when wine judges don't gather on the site.

The three-person panel on which I sit has gone through 39 chardonnays priced more than $20 (we gave seven gold medals), 13 sangioveses (no gold medals, which pretty much sums up the struggles that this noble Italian grape faces in California), 10 barberas (half the class got no medal whatever, perhaps further testimony to the challenge faced by Italian grape varieties in California, though perhaps none of the entries was from the Sierra foothills, where barbera is showing so much promise), 27 pinot noirs priced $10 to $20 (wow, what a delightful class), and 46 cabernet sauvignons priced $10 to $20 (another really strong class, showing why cabernet sauvignon is California's most highly regarded and most consistently rewarding wine).

We reconvene Thursday morning to decide the competition's sweepstakes winners, to be drawn from the best-of-class nominees. Because the judging is blind, we have no idea of the identity of the entries.

At this point, it's fun to pause and mull over what has been experienced so far and what the results might mean. Chardonnay, for example, is a varietal I don't often drink. When I want a white wine, it's usually going to be a riesling, sauvignon blanc or blend based on grape varieties cultivated historically in France's Rhone Valley. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed our class of chardonnays. In contrast to my past experience, they were fresher, fruitier, crisper and more lively, with their oak influence managed more astutely than customarily has been the case.

Throughout this competition, as well as during last week's Pacific Rim International Wine Competition in San Bernardino, my consideration of the entries would be disrupted occasionally by intruding thoughts about the status and value of such judgings. This is a topic I will explore in more depth at a later time, but for right now I'm starting to question their relevance for today's wine enthusiasts. For years, organizers of wine competitions have measured their success in large part by the increase in entries from one edition to the next. This year, however, the total number of entries at virtually every competition is down. The unsettled state of the economy has something to do with that, I'm sure. But I also sense that more wineries are questioning the value that competitions provide both themselves and the audience they hope to reach.

At the end of a competition, I like to drift into the "back room," the staging area where wines are organized, opened and poured. Until the end of a competition, this area is strictly off limits to judges. Nowadays, as I walk down aisle after aisle of bottles after a competition, I'm seeing more brands from corporate wineries with the deep pockets to enter judgings and fewer wines from small independent producers. If this is a trend, I don't like to see it, since I consider a principel benefit of competitions the exposure it gives a start-up winery that wins a gold medal or other high award.

I'm also developing a hunch that the more influential wine competitions of the near future won't be the largest and most embracing judgings, but the ones that focus on region. The day of the wine competition that tries to attract wines from throughout the world, or from throughout the United States, or from some other massive area, may be drawing to a close. The world of wine is just too large and too diverse for wine competitions to attempt to be all things to all people. The smaller the competition, such as the Central Coast Wine Competition or the Amador County Fair Wine Competition, ultimately may pack more influence because they are regionally based and because judges won't be expected to weigh the merits of so many wines representing so many grape varieties and styles.

While I need to give more thought to this matter, it's still a beautiful day in Sonoma County, and I'm going out for a walk,

From Galt, Via Plymouth, A Grand Champion

2011-04-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Jeff Runquist is picking up where he left off last year. As wine competitions gather momentum each spring, Runquist always seems to be in the middle of the action, gathering a disproportionate number of high awards.

Just look at what happened at the Pacific Rim International Wine Competition in San Bernardino earlier today: His winery, Jeff Runquist Wines, based in Amador County's Shenandoah Valley just outside of Plymouth, won seven gold medals and three best-of-class awards. What's more, during the final vote of the day the Jeff Runquist Wines 2009 Lodi Alta Mesa Silvaspoons Vineyard Touriga ($24) was elected grand champion. The touriga is a dark, dense and juicy interpretation of a Portuguese grape variety cultivated only in small, remote and easily overlooked patches in California. The Silvaspoons block, for example, is in Galt, not the most highly regarded wine-grape appellation in the state.

This was the second time in three years that a Runquist wine has won the sweepstakes honor at Pacific Rim. Two years ago the Jeff Runquist Wines 2007 Amador County Dick Cooper Ranch Barbera took home the competition's highest award. Last year, the Jeff Runquist Wines 2008 Amador County Dick Cooper Ranch Barbera was in the running for grand champion after being chosen the competition's best red wine, but was beaten on the final ballot by the Callaway Winery 2009 California Rose of Sangiovese. Today, the Callaway Winery 2010 Temecula Valley Rose of Sangiovese also was in the running for grand champion but get edged by the Runquist touriga. Given the consistently strong showings by Runquist and Callaway, a person might wonder whether any other wineries enter the judging. Actually, more than 1,400 wines were entered in this year's competition, coming from throughout the United States as well as Canada, South America, Australia and New Zealand.

Why did the Runquist touriga win? In short, Jeff Runquist makes wines that seduce the palate with their lush fruitiness, immediate accessibility, and generous exploitation of oak, which shores up his releases with a seductive suggestion of sweetness. Mostly, the touriga is an exceptionally expressive wine, with deep and lasting red-fruit flavors laced with brown spices. It got my vote in the final round, but so did the refreshing rose of sangiovese and a leanly structured but forthright gewurztraminer. (In the sweepstakes round, judges can vote for as many of the candidates as they like, or none.)

The gewurztraminer, incidentally, was the Chateau Fontaine 2010 Leelenau Peninsula Gewurztraminer from Michigan.

Other Runquist wines to win gold in San Bernardino were his 2009 Lodi River Oaks Ranch Carignane ($30), his 2008 Clarksburg Enver Salman Vineyard Petite Sirah ($28), his 2009 Paso Robles Syrah ($24), his 2009 Amador County Nostro Vino Zinfandel ($22), his 2009 Lodi Alta Mesa Silvaspoons Vineyard Souzao ($24) and his 2009 California 1448 ($16), a proprietary red blend.

Varietal Wines: Yesterday's Story?

2011-04-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

This has been a long and strange day, the first of two at the Pacific Rim International Wine Competition in San Bernardino. Some 1400 wines have been entered. They can be from any wine-producing area on any continent brushed by the Pacific Ocean. Panels of three or four judges each are trying to determine whether the wines deserve a gold, silver or bronze medal.

The panel on which I sit judged 137 wines. We were told the varietals, styles and vintages, but not the producers or the regions where the wines originated. Our classes included "non-vintage pinot noirs" and "2008 cabernet sauvignons under $20."

As the day progressed, several possible story themes developed, ranging from "do wine competitions really matter?" to "what was there about the vintage of 2008 that accounted for such a disappointing roundup of cabernet sauvignon?"

But for now, in keeping with the traditional positive impulse of wine writers, I'd rather ponder the significance of Class 359, otherwise known as "other white blends." We had 32 of them. In years past, this would have been seen as a kiss-off class, consisting largely of kitchen-sink wines - blends for which there was no purpose other than to market them under a catchy name and to hope that an audience materialized. Neither quality nor value was high on the list of steps to check off as they were made.

Customarily, "other white blends" has been a small class. Today, however, I first was impressed by the number of wines in the category. Then I was impressed by their range; they not only represented daring mixes of grape varieties - riesling and chardonnay, anyone? - they showed that wineries throughout the United States and beyond recognize the power and pleasure that can be delivered by blends, and thus are striving to come up with fresh and authoritative combinations. In short, this was the most provocative and uplifting class of the day.

Of the 32 wines, six got gold medals. One of them was our only double-gold medal of the day. (A double-gold medal is awarded when judges agree unanimously at the outset, without discussion, that a particular wine is worthy of gold.)

I won't know the identities of the wines until after the competition. Of this, however, I am confident: The gold-medal wines are as likely to be from Missouri, New York or even Pennsylvania as well as California. I find that both comforting and amusing. The United States not only now consititutes a wine-drinking culture, it is showing that wine can spring from a wide range of settings.

150 Years Later, Prospecting Resumes

2011-04-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

Winemaker Chris Pittenger, at Skinner tasting room

For the first time in a century and a half, two members of the Skinner family are gambling that the rolling Sierra foothills just east of Sacramento will yield riches.

The first two were James and Jessie Skinner, Scots who arrived in El Dorado County in 1852, drawn by the Gold Rush.

The latest couple is Mike and Carey Skinner, who have returned to El Dorado County to see if its soils will be as rewarding for them as they were for James Skinner, who was Mike Skinner's great-great-great grandfather.

James Skinner found enough gold in mining at Foster's Bar that he was able to buy some land and a cabin in the vicinity of what is now Cameron Park. As paydirt in the region played out, James and Jessie and their six children cultivated a vineyard and built a winery, one of the earlier significant players in El Dorado County's wine history. Their son George gradually took over the operation but eventually the business withered. Traces of the Skinner winery still can be found today at Cameron Park, though the site of his vineyard now is occupied by the community's airstrip.

Their winemaking legacy is being cultivated anew, however, by Mike and Carey Skinner, who divide their time between Southern California and Rescue in El Dorado County. He's the founder and president of the commercial insurance provider M.G. Skinner & Associates of Los Angeles; she's vice president and brokerage manager of Sotheby's International Realty in Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

Skinner winery flanked by tasting room

In returning to the family's winemaking heritage, they've established vineyards at Rescue and in Fair Play, where they've also built their Skinner Vineyards & Winery. The winery is a large and modern steel-and-stone structure topped with a sign that approximates the sign on James Skinner's barn in the 1860s, "J. Skinner Native Wine & Brandy."

The modern Skinners aren't yet distilling brandy, though they eventually hope to. And while their Fair Play vineyard includes a block of oldtime mission grapes, which they intend to use for a contemporary version of the original California dessert wine, angelica, they believe that the future esteem of the foothills as a fine-wine region rests largely on such Rhone Valley grape varieties as viognier, roussanne, mourvedre, grenache and syrah, and that's what they've planted primarily.

To oversee winemaking they've hired Chris Pittenger, a newcomer to the foothills whose background includes stints with several prestigous producers in varied settings, including New Zealand (Kim Crawford), Australia (Torbreck), Sonoma County (Williams Selyem, Marcassin) and Napa Valley (Robert Biale).

Sunday, when we happened upon the winery and its neighboring tasting room, built of stone and the reclaimed beams of an old railroad trestle, the place was just in its third day of being open to the public. The structures occupy an open knoll 2700 feet up the foothills, providing tasters with a view that stretches from Mt. Diablo to Pyramid Peak, at least on a clear day.

Pittenger's initial lineup under the Skinner brand almost certainly will generate buzz for both their force and finesse. Though the viognier tasted tired, everything else in the opening portfolio was bright and vibrant, including a couple of authoritative syrahs, a luscious mourvedre and an unusually complex yet lilting grenache. The standouts were proprietary blends, a profound and prolonged mix of roussanne, marsanne and viognier called Seven Generations (in recognition of seven generations of Skinners in the U.S.), and a juicy, smoky and leathery mix of grenache, mourvedre and syrah called Eighteen Sixty-One (in recognition of the year that James Skinner is believed to have planted his first vines).

Already, Skinner wines are being stocked by the Sacramento restaurants The Firehouse, The Kitchen, Grange and Ella, as well as the retail shop WineSmith in Placerville.

The winery's grand opening won't be until May 22, but in the meantime the tasting room is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday through Sunday. It's at 8054 Fair Play Road in Fair Play.

California State Fair Gets The Brush-Off

2011-04-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

I just received an invitation to judge at the California State Fair Home Wine Competition in June. I checked the calendar, and found that I have the date open. I'll do it, but not without pause.

The invitation came from G.M. "Pooch" Pucilowski, who has been in charge of the judging for six years.

The pause came via a posting by W. Blake Gray on his wine blog "The Gray Market Report." Blake also was invited to judge, but he turned down the opportunity and explained why in a commentary under the provocative headline "California State Fair exploits wine judges." Basically, Blake complains that in contrast to most wine competitions the State Fair - we're talking here only of the State Fair's home winemaking competition, not the State Fair's commercial wine competition - doesn't reimburse judges for their transportation costs or provide lodging at the end of what generally is a long and trying day. (Actually, by my experience most competitions don't provide lodging once the last award is determined.) What's more, the State Fair Home Wine Competition expects of its judges more work than customarily is asked. In addition to deciding whether each wine is worthy of an award, judges are asked to write a helpful and readable analysis of each wine. This information is intended to guide home winemakers toward being even more adept at their craft. (Many already are as talented as commercial winemakers. Years ago, I sat on a panel at the Amador County Fair commercial wine competition. This was when white-zinfandel sales were booming, and several interpretations were entered. A couple of them were darn good. Afterwards, however, a few of us were recruited to judge the homemade wines. Hands down, we concurred that the best white zinfandel of the day was in the home-wine competition.) What's more, the judges get rated on the quality of their feedback, in hopes that they, too, will become more adept at their craft. You have to love that symmetry.

At any rate, Blake likens Pooch to a latter-day Tom Sawyer, inveigleing the innocent to pay to whitewash his fence. Blake doesn't think this is much of a deal. As an alternative, he suggests that home winemakers be asked to add another $1 or so to their entry fees ($12 to $18 per wine) to help pay judges for at least their gasoline, which today is no small issue.

Stung by Blake's remarks, Pooch dispatched an email to the California State Fair Wine Advisory Committee (of which I am a member). Therein, he explained his dilemma: He strives to keep entry fees low to encourage home winemakers to enter the competition, even though that means that he can't afford to provide judges with anything more than "coffee, juice and rolls" when they arrive and an "elegant box lunch" during the mid-day break.

Here is his key point: Judges participate as a way to give back to the state's wine trade; they volunteer their time and share whatever expertise they can provide to help home winemakers become better at squeezing and fermenting grape juice. The competition does expect a lot of judges, but they know that going in, and, frankly, I think most of them appreciate being appreciated for their experience and their generosity. What's more, it's refreshing to judge a wine competition where nothing commercial is at stake. Sure, it would be nice to have at least travel costs reimbursed (the competition is in Lodi), but for most judges the distance there and back doesn't represent a substantial investment. I'm there because I like the feeling of maybe giving a little something to a culture that has provided me with so much, and because I have a weakness for breakfast rolls and coffee. But I also look upon the home winemaking competition as an opportunity to learn. During the judging, members of the competition's technical advisory committee circulate about the room, dashing from panel to panel to discuss with judges the peculiarities of this wine or that. This committee knows its stuff - Dr. Richard Peterson, Darrell Corti, Scott Harvey and Ed Moody, among others - so for me it's an opportunity to be exposed to a college-level tutorial without paying tuition. Call me exploited.

But Blake does bring up a point that is gnawing more and more at me: Where does the money raised by wine-competition entry fees go? No wine-competition director I know looks to be getting rich off running these judgings. Nonetheless, I'd like to see an accounting, especially for those competitions ostensibly set up to benefit this or that worthy service, program or institution. I like to think we are living in an era of spreading transparency, but so far no wine competition has stepped up to open its books. Maybe the California State Fair will be the first.

Hot Wine, Hot Water

2011-04-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

This is an alert for viticulturists and vintners who claim to cultivate and crush the "brunello" clone of sangiovese in the United States. Ignore this warming and be prepared to face the polite if awkward wrath of Ezio Rivella, president of the Consorzio Del Vino Brunelleo Di Montalcino, a Tuscan trade group working to protect and promote wines made with sangiovese grapes grown in Siena.

In February, The Sacramento Bee published a column in which I praised the Bray Vineyards 2008 Shenandoah Valley La Dama Oscura Sangiovese. In the column, I explained that Bray winemakers John Hoddy and Mark McKenna had chosen for the wine grapes from a block of the Bray vineyard planted to the "brunello" clone of sangiovese. This wasn't the first time I've heard vintners rave about this particular strain of sangiovese for yielding interpretations of the wine unusually forceful yet spirited.

It's the first time to my knowledge, however, that wine officials in far-off Tuscany took notice as well as apparent offense. A month later, Ezio Rivella dispatched to Bray Vineyards a two-page letter in which he claims that the word "brunello" can be used only in relation to sangiovese when the grapes are grown at Montalcino in Siena. "Nobody can, in any way, assume the word 'Brunello' to identify a wine made by grapes grown in a different place because it does not make any sense," writes Rivella, a copy of whose letter Hoddy just forwarded to me.

Rivella backs up his stand with various vague references to "plant variety rights" and "industrial property rights." He also refers to "intellectual properties," "registered trademark" and Italy's wine requirements and regulations, all of which he suggests have been affronted by talk about a "brunello" clone of sangiovese in Amador County.

"So, since a foreign producer does not respect all these requirements, it should be clear now that the word 'Brunello' is improperly used by him in any case," says Rivella. That foreign producer apparently is Bray Vineyards, though several other wineries in the United States and in other regions far removed from Tuscany have made similar claims.

Despite all the bombastic legalisms, Rivella doesn't threaten any litigation, and concludes his letter in a conciliatory tone, simply asking that Bray representatives henceforth choose their words more carefully. Actually, they had from the outset. Officials in Washington, D.C., who oversee the nation's wine trade already had told the folks at Bray that they couldn't in any way use "brunello" on their label. That's why the wine is called "La Dama Oscura," a phrase long used to describe the wines Brunello di Montalcino. Apparently, however, it is not as recognized or as sensitive as "Brunello" itself.

I rather like the concept of geographical integrity in food and wine, and applaud Rivella and the consorzio for their vigilance. I just wish that in expressing their concern they'd been less pompous and more clear in outlining why geographically based traditions are important in preserving individual distinctiveness. At the same time, contrary to Rivella's fears, I don't see American wine consumers as so dim that they will think they are buying an Italian wine rather than a Californian wine just because the winemaker says he used a strain of grape cultivated historically in Tuscany.

I also suspect that Rivella and his brethern are trying to capitalize on Bray's small production - only 175 cases of the 2008 La Dama Oscura were made - to move Brunello di Montalcino back into the spotlight from which it has been shouldered aside by stellar takes on sangiovese from elsewhere. Look at the facts, as gleaned from a research paper published in 2006 by Susan Nelson-Kluck and JaRue "Jim" Manning for Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis: Sangiovese has been cultivated in Italy for more than 1,000 years. During that time it has shown itself remarkably adaptable to a wide range of settings. Indeed, by now sangiovese has morphed into more than 70 clones in Italy alone. No wonder the Consorzio Del Vino Brunello Di Montalcino is so intent on protecting and promoting its take on the variety as superior to others; the competition out there is stiff.

The paper by Nelson-Kluck and Manning, incidentally, never refers to a "brunello" clone of sangiovese. Rather, the 24 selections of sangiovese at Foundation Plant Services at UC Davis bear such innocuous designations as "FPS 03," "FPS 12" and the like. The closest the researchers come to designating a strain of sangiovese the "brunello" clone is "FPS 07," which they note derives from "VCR 6," a clone of the Montalcino biotype, "which is the biotype traditionally used to produce Brunello di Montalcino wine." Here you have the perfect if non-poetic solution to this little dust-up: Henceforth, the folks at Bray should refer to their clone of sangiovese as "FPS 07," if indeed that is what it is. They won't be happy with that, and neither will authorities of the Consorzio Del Vino Brunello Di Montalcino, denied the opportunity to raise the profile of Brunello Di Montalcino by crying "foul" over a wine in Amador County.

Send That Guy To The Head Of The Class

2011-04-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

As I walked up to the banos at the wine estate Errazuriz in Chile's Aconcagua Valley north of Santiago a couple of weeks ago, I had a vision. It told me to shape up, buckle down and start writing that book that's been teasing me from the far recesses of my mind. I could do this, I told myself, because it would be a book that required virtually no writing. Two words would do it, though they'd have to be in several languages, starting with the Spanish hombres and mujeres. Beyond that, it would be a picture book, focusing on the signs that cultures use to designate the whereabouts of bathrooms in restaurants, wineries, theaters and other public places. Don't you agree that it would be a grand idea if a publisher sent me around the world taking photos of bathroom doors? I've had some experience, and been neither arrested nor assaulted, though I have elicited a few chuckles and mystified and apprehensive glances.

Look, you've heard of sillier book proposals, right? Many have even been successful. Amazon.com lists no fewer than seven books about winery dogs. (There's another opportunity here; Amazon.com doesn't list a single book about winery cats, but I'll have my hands full with the bathroom project.) While Amazon.com does list one book about bathroom signs, I think it's a joke. It was published just this past April's Fool Day, for one, and the author is listed as "I.P. Daily."

Maybe my thinking has been twisted by three months in Latin America. Whether in Mexico, Argentina or Chile, I rarely saw the standard blue-on-white male-and-female silhouettes that make going to the bathroom in a restaurant or winery in the United States so predictable and cheerless. In Latin America, however, restaurateurs and vintners have fun in letting their clientele know which room is for men, which for women. Sure, they occasionally slip into old-fashioned stereotypes, such as using a lacy shawl or bright rose to designate the women's restroom, a set of spurs or a brushy mustache to indicate the men's. But for the most part their efforts seem to be meant in good cheer, to add levity and artistic expression to a routine chore. Why you don't see this kind of originality in the United States perplexes me, but there's probably a law that says restaurateurs, vintners and the like must conform to the silhouette standard for the safety and well-being of their customers. Thus, I can see the chapter on bathroom sings in the U.S. being pretty short. I face the same problem in France, where they don't seem to use many signs at all, probably because of their fondness for the unisex toilet.

As to the vision I had at Errazuriz, it was provided by Soledad Chadwick, described to me as a niece of the winery owner, Eduardo Chadwick. She apparently got the family assignment to highlight the men's and women's rooms at the winery. The wry original paintings with this posting was her response. While they reinforce the old belief that white wine is for women, red for men, that view is now so outdated that these signs can be seen more as artifact than command. Now to see if there's a book publisher about with a sense of humor...and a substantial advance and travel allowance.

Valle de Guadalupe's Wine? Consider Petite Sirah

2011-04-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

Camillo Magoni, Vinos L.A. Cetto

No wine region I've visited is more challenging for vintners who hope to make wines worthy of high respect than the Valle de Guadalupe at the northern reaches of Mexico's Baja peninsula. The area is stark and forlorn, so dusty and dry that even a cactus that can survive on a drop or two of rain each year anywhere else just barely gets by. Vines in the Valle de Guadalupe almost invariably are stumpy and skinny, more skeleton than fleshed-out members of the viticultural family, even at the peak of the growing season.

In some quarters, this barren and stingy landscape is seen as the perfect setting for assuring that vines struggle, and thus yield grapes with the most compelling stories to tell. I'm not convinced, though on two successive nights now I've had Valle de Guadalupe wines to indicate that site, grape and vintner are well placed.

The grape is petite sirah, the vintner Camillo Magoni, longtime winemaker for Vinos L.A. Cetto, Mexico's largest and most progressive winery. The winery is young, founded in 1974; it's in the difficult Valle de Guadalupe; and it's huge, with a run approaching a million cases a year. Yet, with each vintage it shows that petite sirah just may be the grape most at home in such an inhospitable environment, with the possible exception of grenache, a story for another day.

On successive nights now, I've pulled the corks on bottles of Vinos L.A. Cetto Valle de Guadalupe petite sirah. The first was the 2007, the second the 2008. Neither is expensive. I paid only about $8 for each, and this in Mexico, where taxes on wine and spirits is extorntionist. Nevertheless, both were among the more memorable Mexican wines I've had in some time. I preferred the 2007 for its sunnier fruit and more pronounced black-pepper spice. The 2008 was jammier and oakier, with the spice lingering in quiet authority in the background; in another year or so, however, I suspect it will be more vocal. Both were juicy, well built, muscular and nicely balanced, quite companionable with the rib-eye steaks with which they were served. I know, I know, that's too much fatty meat to eat in such a short span, but after first tasting the 2007 I just had to follow it up soon with the 2008. Vinos L.A. Cetto, incidentally, is distributed in California; one vintage or other of the petite sirah, or perhaps both, is apt to be available in the North State.

Reflectons On Medals Won At Dallas, Or Not

2011-03-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

Random thoughts while scrolling through the newly released results of the 2011 Dallas Morning News/TexSom Wine Competition, concentrating largely on gold-medal wines:

- Judges really liked pinot noir from the 2009 vintage. They awarded 17 gold medals to the group. A surprising number of the golds went to such value labels as Cupcake Vineyards, Redwood Creek, Forest Glen, Cono Sur and most notably for fans of Superior California wines, the McManis Family Vineyards 2009 California Pinot Noir, which customarily sells for around $10. (McManis Family Vineyards is at Ripon.)

- Just two other regional wineries won gold - Michael-David Vineyards at Lodi for its Earthquake 2007 Lodi Cabernet Sauvignon, one of just five gold medals awarded the vintage, and Fasi Estate Vineyard of Fresno for its 2007 Madera Private Reserve Fasi Crest Syrah, one of just five golds dispersed among entries from the 2007 vintage.

- No other local winery won gold, not even for petite sirah, primitivo, sangiovese, zinfandel and barbera, all highly regarded varietals coming out of the Sierra foothills, the Delta and Lodi. What's the issue? In glancing at the entire rundown of medal winners, I suspect the lack of gold and even silver and bronze for local wineries simply reflects the lack of entries from the area. Only a handful of local wineries came up with the entry fees for Dallas, which could say a number of things. For one, wineries could be cutting back on the number of competitions or wines they enter, given the unsteady economy. They also may not be seeing much in the way of benefits from even a strong showing in such a far-removed competition, however prestigious it may be.

- Aside from the local results, I was gratified to see gold medals go to a couple of wines from a winery I visited recently in Chile, Emiliana Organic Vineyards. Their wines that showed exceptionally well at Dallas were the Emiliana Organic Vineyards 2009 Valle de Casablanca Eco Balance Chardonnay and the Emiliana Organic Vineyards 2009 Valle de Colchagua Natura Carmenere. I didn't taste either at the winery, but can say that the sweetly fruity, lightly minty and delicately spiced 2010 version of the Natura carmenere is a terrific introduction to the varietal at $11. What's more, two other releases under Emiliana's Eco Balance label - the lean, sunny and deceptively complex 2010 Valle Central Cabernet Sauvignon and the crispy and limey 2010 Bio Bio Valley Sauvignon Blanc - are extraordinarily fresh and vivacious takes on the varietals, even at a mere $8 the bottle in the U.S. They may be a bit difficult to find, however, given the shrinking value of the U.S. dollar compared with the Chilean peso, prompting the folks at Emiliana to concentrate more on exports to European markets.

Familia Zuccardi: Branch Campus For UC Davis?

2011-03-16T04:57:00.000-07:00

Jose Alberto Zuccardi, with Mendoza malbec

Had I followed up yesterday's hunch with a wager at the casino just down the street from our Mendoza hotel, I'd be broke today. In a posting here, I speculated that before the day was over some Argentine vintner would point out how his vineyard or winery had benefitted by research or teaching in the department of viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis.

Nope, didn't happen. Indeed, our first stop, the sprawling and prospering wine and olive-oil estate of Bodega Familia Zuccardi, well could be a branch campus for UC Davis. During his tour of grounds and cellar, director Jose Alberto Zuccardi pointed out one research project after another. In a 40-hectare experimental vineyard, he's growing 38 varieties of wine grapes not generally found in Argentina, such as verdelho, albarino, nero davola, gewruztraminer, ancellota and greco. In a winery within the winery, he strolled about small fermentation tanks seething with juice from this year's harvest of those sorts of grapes. A separate room is devoted solely to the storage and study of natural yeasts he's been gathering for years from his vineyards. Another room is given over in part to concrete fermentation tanks, some whose interior is coated with epoxy and some that aren't, his effort to see how identical batches of wine would react to the different surfaces. Flanked by those tanks, he kicked off a tasting by pouring glasses of wine made from a new variety with which he is experimenting, caladoc, a genetic cross of grenache and malbec (dark, broad and rich, with an unusual green-peppercorn spiciness that all on its own calls for this encouraging experiment to continue).

Finally, I had to ask whether UC Davis had contributed anything over the years to the success of his winery, established in 1968, five years after his father planted his first vineyard in the region. Oh, yes, he said, his agronomists consult and study with the university fairly regularly. He also noted, however, that he works closely with a local research association and with an Argentine university in developing better ways to grow grapes and make wine. Nonetheless, more cooperation with UC Davis would be welcome, if for no other reason than that a research project could advance more quickly because of the two crops each year, one in the northern hemisphere, the other in the south. "With two crops a year, research could be faster," he remarked. In part for that reason, his son Sebastian, one of several of his children active in the business, routinely works for a California winery starting each September and then returns home to work the Argentine harvest starting in February.

The results of one of Zuccardi's experiments will comfort California vinters who specialize in zinfandel. Zuccardi had planted zinfandel in his experimental vineyard. The results have been a letdown. "The problem with zinfandel is that its skin is too thin for the weather here in Mendoza," he remarked. Mendoza is in a high desert that doesn't get much rain, but it can fall most any time. Hail also is an issue. Zinfandel grapes just couldn't take the onslaughts, he discovered. "Of our five harvests of zinfandel, two were good and three weren't," he said. "Zinfandel isn't the variety for this region. We need varieties with stronger skin." His comments may harm zinfandel's reputation as a rugged variety, but growers and winemakers in California should be relieved that at least with this one grape and wine they won't face competition from Argentina.

The Davis Reach Is Long, But Could Be Longer

2011-03-15T04:47:00.000-07:00

At Achaval Ferrer yesterday, malbec gets sorted

Today's itinerary for Vineyard Tour 2011 includes visits to the Argentine wine estates Familia Zaccardi and Trivento. After 10 days of touring vineyards and wineries in Argentina and Chile, I feel confident in predicting that the growers and winemakers we will see today will have something flattering to say of the department of viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis.
This is something I hadn't expected coming in. While I'm aware that Davis instructors and researchers long have made significant contributions to the development and improvement of grape growing and winemaking about the world, I hadn't appreciated how fondly vintners well beyond California think of the university. At virtually every stop they volunteer information about how the viticulture and enology gurus of Davis have done something to contribute to the stature of their wine trade. They like the quality and cleanliness of this or that clone of grape they get from Davis. They recall pivotal advice from the likes of such Davis giants as Maynard Amerine, Vernon Singleton and Ralph Kunkee. They talk of tweaking this trellis system or adopting that irrigation practice because of research by Davis. They send their children to Davis to learn the craft. And then there are personal memories: "My third daughter was born in Sacramento," said Carlos Tizio Mayer, gerente general of the wine estate Clos de los Siete as he drove us about vineyards south of Mendoza. That was 25 years ago, when he was working on his master's degree at UC Davis.

It's an old lesson: You sometimes have to go far to get a fresh perspective on something right in your own backyard. Against that backdrop, however, something kept gnawing uncomfortably at me. In preparing for this trip, I contacted a professor at Davis to ask for current findings on two topics I expected to look at in South America - the pros and cons of machine harvesting of wine grapes and the pros and cons of high-density planting of vines. In effect, I was told that there isn't anything substantial to help me. The wine trade these days simply isn't providing funds for that kind of research. I was surprised, because these are subjects generating buzz within the grape-growing and winemaking community. It seems as if the wine trade in the United States has surrendered leadership in viticulture and enology research to Australian and other campuses and institutes. But given the standing and reach of Davis, and in light of its the impressive new facilities for its department of viticulture and enology, responsibility for continued research shouldn't be put on the farmers and winemakers of the U.S. alone. If the department's administrators haven't done so already, they should start putting the touch on those South American, European and even Australian members of the trade who clearly continue to gain by what they got from Davis.

The Chileans Rebound, As Will The Japanese

2011-03-11T17:45:00.000-08:00

If anyone can identify with the shock, fear and loss that the Japanese are experiencing right now, it's the Chileans. In Santiago, Chileans are riveted by reports and videos coming out of Japan after yesterday's earthquake and tsunami. Just a little more than a year ago, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck Chile about 200 miles southwest of Santiago. More than 500 people were killed; the property damage was estimated at $30 billion.

As I tour wine valleys about Santiago, vintners recall the day of the quake but don't dwell on it. They talk fleetingly but not glibly about large stainless-steel fermentation tanks collapsing as if they were soft-drink cans being stomped on, a dam falling apart, barrels shattering. One vintner says he lost two million liters of wine. Another says he lost 1.5 million liters. A third put his loss at 1.6 million liters. In all, the Chilean wine trade lost around 125 million liters. Vintners don't shrug off the quake and its aftermath, but their attitude suggests that they are well acquainted with their environment and its history and that they recognize the need to move on.

At one winery, Casa Silva, marketing and hospitality manager Thomas Wilkins Biggs recalled how 80 laborers worked six months to repair the cellar, how its restaurant had to be relocated to another building on the edge of the estate's polo field, and how the on-site hotel only reopened in September. As he led me through a maze of tunnels under the cellar I couldn't help but ask, "Did any of the tunnels...." "No," he was quick to respond, apparently picking up the quiver in my voice.

At wine estate Vik, rebuilt dam awaits winter rains

At another wine estate, Vik, the quake broke a dam whose irrigation waters ordinarily cover some 60 hectares. The quake came at the end of the growing season, when the lake ordinarily is low, so downstream damage was small as the water flowed away. But the break in the dam couldn't be repaired in time to capture runoff from the following winter's rains, so farmers dependent on the water for their crops took a financial hit this summer.

The dam, however, has been rebuilt, its new rock gleaming in the intense Chilean sun. This winter, provided that normal rains return, it again will fill with runoff, and the region's farmers will rejoice. Here and there throughout Chile's wine regions, evidence of last year's quake remains in the rubble of adobe houses, in the water wheels that got knocked off kilter and still aren't again turning, and in the nervous chatter among residents and visitors when they discuss the length and intensity of the previous night's aftershock that awoke them.

Despite their losses and the apprehension they continue to feel with each tremor, Chileans haven't lost their sense of humor. At the winery Lapostolle, winemaker Andrea Leon Iriarte recalls the earthquake advice her grandmother gave her family: "'Wear nice nighties and don't close the door; they jam.'" Maybe that isn't so much humor as sound advice.

The Tournament's Early Top Seeds

2011-03-09T20:07:00.000-08:00

Resident alpacas, Emiliana Organic Vineyards, Chile

"March Madness" in the southern hemisphere: A sweet 16 wineries in Argentina and Chile in 11 days. In the first two days I've tasted 45 wines at five estates. My goal by the end of nearly two weeks in South America is to come up with a "Final Four" wines, the limit on the number of bottles I can bring home. I feel like a Sacramento King - in deep trouble in just the first quarter. Already, I have five take-home candidates:

- Emiliana Organic Vineyards 2010 Eco Balance Valle Central Cabernet Sauvignon ($8): The varietal most closely identified with Chile is carmenere, but the varietal most impressive so far has been cabernet sauvignon, starting with this bright and sunny interpretation. Best of all, it's a steal, delivering the kind of clearcut black-cherry fruit and notes of damp green herbs common to California cabernets two decades ago, but now dwarfed by the rush to interpretations that are heavier, oakier and more concentrated. They have their place, but the place for this friendly take is on the table with an invigorating stew or a homey ragu tossed with pasta.

- House of Morande 2009 Casablanca Valley Edicion Limitada Sauvignon Blanc ($21): Sauvignon blanc is the white wine most closely associated with Chile. Generally, they are zesty and crisp. This one is more complicated, with the sort of structure and richness that invites comparison with a ripe and round chardonnay. Yet, it's all sauvignon blanc, with floral aromatics, tropical-fruit flavors, and complex notes that stem from such vinification techniques as fermenting the wine in 2,000-liter French oak casks and then aging it on its lees. The local angle is that the two clones of sauvignon blanc that were planted for this wine are from UC Davis.

- House of Morande 2007 Loncomilla Valley Carignan ($21): The biggest surprise of the tour, so far. Planted in the 1950s by the grandfather of winery owner Pablo Morande, the Santa Elena vineyard is producing a carignan of atypical depth and complexity. This is a wonderful red wine, with pronounced fresh red-fruit flavors and a muscularity tempered by buoyancy and reserved tannins.

- Vina Leyda 2010 Leyda Valley Las Brisas Pinot Noir ($18): Here's a pinot noir underpriced by about half of what it could be. It delivers lush and seductive strawberry fruit on a carefully crafted frame. The flavors are complex, the finish long and caressing.

- Casa Silva 2006 De Los Lingues Microterrior Carmenere ($50): I've had a difficult time finding carmenere to excite me. This is the exception. It shows just how distinctive and alluring the varietal can be. It's packed with berry and cherry flavors, herbal notes and lashings of cinnamon and leather. A whole lot is going on with this wine. Casa Silva has its own polo field and its own polo team. Appropriately, this wine reflects that sport's emphasis on muscularity, precision and risk.

Though I'm over my limit, I'll continue to search for four wines that I'll try to jam into my luggage. And if I can't squeeze them all in, I won't much fret about it. All these wines are exported to the U.S., with California a major market for Chilean and Argentine vintners.

Patrick Campbell Sells, But He Isn't Going Away

2011-03-03T20:31:00.000-08:00

After dinner I returned to my computer to catch up on the day's news, only to find in my email a message even more depressing than tonight's wine: Patrick Campbell has sold his Sonoma Mountain winery Laurel Glen. This is unsettling because I've long looked upon Patrick Campbell as one of the more open and earnest winemakers in the California wine trade, a vintner to be valued both for his respect of place and for his knack of delivering quality at readily accessible prices. At first glance, I was baffled by his announcement, but then remembered that he's been in the game for more than three decades and is ready to take on new challenges, or perhaps just to relax a bit, though I suspect that relaxation to Patrick mean writing a book or composing a symphony.

Neither his name nor the name Laurel Glen may be readily recognized by a lot of wine consumers, given the modest profile he's been comfortable with and his limited production, but I'm pretty confident in saying that among smart sommeliers, restaurateurs and wine merchants both Patrick Campbell and Laurel Glen have been synonymous with integrity, character and value.

The up side to this development, however, is that Patrick Campbell isn't leaving the wine business. While some wine consumers may be unfamiliar with Laurel Glen, virtually everyone who appreciates a solid buy will know his other labels, such as Tierra Divina, Terra Rosa, ZaZin and most especially REDS, all everyday wines that deliver refreshing fruit, complexity and balance for just a few bucks. He may be selling Laurel Glen, but he's keeping his hand in the trade by continuing those brands, all under the umbrella company called Tierra Divina Vineyards.

"With 35 years of farming Laurel Glen under my belt, I had simply gotten about as much intellectual interest and satisfaction out of the vineyard and winery as I was ever going to get. Furthermore, during the past 20 years, my heart has been increasingly taken with the projects I had been developing in Lodi and Argentina, and it became ever more obvious that it was time to move on," said Patrick in his email. (For the Tierra Divina brand he gets fruit in Argentina, while for REDS he relies on grapes from Lodi.)

He's sold Laurel Glen to Bettina Sichel, a member of a prominent Bordeaux and German family invoved in the wine trade for several generations. She's the daughter of legendary wine promoter Peter M. F. Sichel, who was so instrumental in establishing the brand Blue Nun in the United States. The Sichels know prized properties, and in Laurel Glen have acquired a site with a remarkable record for cabernet sauvignon of singular distinction, celebrated for their concentrated fruit, layered complexity and long life. "I have been working on this sale for over three years, and after many hiccups and detours it has finally happened," says Campbell. He didn't disclose the terms of the sale, though more details may be forthcoming in a press release to be issued soon.

Long before today's buzz over the wines of Argentina and Chile, Patrick was exploring the two countries and striking deals to import wines. Consequently, as I prepared for a trip to South America I asked him who I should visit and where I should eat. As for dinner options, he highly recommended the pasta primavera at the restaurant Trevi in Mendoza. If I get there, the first thing I'll do is raise a toast to the pleasures his wines have provived in the past and no doubt will continue to provide in the future.

'Sweet' Or 'Savory'? Is That All We Need?

2011-02-23T19:59:00.000-08:00

Throughout tonight's dinner I kept asking myself, "Is this wine 'sweet' or 'savory'?" Early on, I expected only to figure out whether the wine - the Orfila 2008 Roble Malbec - would work with the tangy chile verde and the fruity Mexican rice that constituted our meal. But just before pulling the cork I'd read Eric Asimov's column in today's New York Times.

There, he argues pretty persuasively that informative descriptions of wine more or less can be stripped down to whether the wine is "sweet" or "savory." While I agree with his premise that too many wine descriptions are cluttered and counter-productive, including some of my own tasting notes, I'm not sure that "sweet" and "savory" alone are enough, especially given his extensive explanation of what each represents.

What bothers me most about his fresh and concise approach to describing wines is that he takes a word with a long-standing definition within the wine culture - "sweet" - and tries to transform it into something broader and not as precise. "Sweet," by his reasoning, should stand for wines that don't necessarily carry obvious residual sugar but rather convey a sense of sweetness via their "dominant fruit flavors and high concentrations of glycerol, a product of fermentation that is heavy, oily and slightly sweet." OK, "sweet" may be the impression left on the palate by this combination, but it isn't sweet in the customary sense, which originates mostly with sugar remaining in the wine. I'd have been happier had he chosen "fruity" rather than "sweet" as one of his two qualifiers, and even happier if he'd settled on "sweetly fruity," a term I often use to describe a wine whose sweetness stems from the intensity of its fruit and perhaps its glycerol rather than lingering sugar.

As to "savory," Asimov nails it. On the wine-tasting spectrum, those are the sensations that suggest nuts, herbs and minerals, which in many instances can trace their origin to the texture, acid and weight of a wine more than its fruit.

His thesis, as he notes, is full of complications and contradictions. Wines are ever evolving, for one, and a release that is "sweet" in its youth is liable to be "savory" as an elder. And within the wine world are all sorts of contrarians, rebels who like to tweak an established style to accommodate their vision of what the grape or region can or should say. Exceptions abound, Asimov notes.

At any rate, he isn't dictatorial, and suggests that he just wants to give wine enthusiasts food for thought as they evaluate wine and reach their own conclusions about character and value. "The point of this exercise, after all, is not so much to label every wine as one or the other, as it is to suggest a different, simpler way of thinking about these wines. And, perhaps, to help people make their own discoveries."

By the end of tonight's dinner I'd concluded that the malbec, while fruity with suggestions of pomagranate, was actually more savory than sweet, given that it was dry, taut and snappy, with hints of both minerality and mintiness. It went well with the chile verde. But so did a decidedly "sweet" wine, the viscous and floral Uma 2010 Mendoza Torrontes, which we'd had earlier with the dish. Maybe that's the solution - serve chile verde whenever you aren't sure whether the wine is "sweet" or "savory."

Chilly In The Valley, Chile On The Beach

2011-02-11T07:58:00.000-08:00

Here's some hopefully helpful advice for wine-loving snowbirds about to break from this year's brutal winter in the United States for a little sunshine and warmth on the beaches of Los Cabos at the southern reaches of the Baja peninsula:

- As far as I know, you won't have to be surprised and disappointed by this bright barricade, which appeared over the weekend across the usually wide-open wine department of the San Jose del Cabo supermarket Mega, hugely popular among visitors nesting at nearby time-shares, resorts and condos. This barricade, and others like it at other markets in the area, announced that an election was under way and that no alcoholic beverages were to be sold through the weekend. By Monday, business was back to normal.

- Get ready to enjoy wines from Argentina, Chile and Spain. That's easy to do on three counts: They dominate the Los Cabos market, they are the most reasonably priced, and almost without exception they are well made, offering varietal character without a whole lot of heavy baggage, such as oak, tannin and alcohol.

- Yes, you also can find Australian, Italian, German, French and even Californian wine hereabouts, but the selection is thin, the quality uneven, and some of the vintages curiously outdated. Broadly speaking, they also tend to be markedly more expensive than South American and Spanish imports.

- As to Mexican wine, most of which originates from the Ensenada area at the northern reaches of the Baja peninsula, it's readily available and worthy of exploring if you are an adventurous wine enthusiast. Because of Mexico's counter-productive taxation policies, coupled with shipping costs, Mexican wines tend to be more pricey than the quality generally justifies. Nevertheless, reliable everyday brands in the $15 to $20 range are L.A. Cetto and Monte Xanic. But if you are on vacation, and willing to spend $30 to $60 or more for a bottle of wine, look for a grenache, petite sirah, tempranillo or other warm-climate varietal by such producers as Casa de Piedra, Adobe Guadalupe, Vinedos Malagon, Vinisterra or Roganto.

- Stock up as soon as you get here; the peso is rising that fast in value as the U.S. dollar continues to shrivel and crack like a tortilla left in the afternoon sun.

- After a month in San Jose del Cabo, during which our wine purchases rarely exceeded $12 a bottle, here's the most interesting releases we've found; several also are likely available in California, though prices will vary a bit in one direction or the other:

- Secreto de Viu Manent 2010 Valle de Casablanca Chile Sauvignon Blanc (143 pesos, or about $12 in U.S. currency, at the Costco in Cabo San Lucas): The sort of zesty white wine you want to accompany that dorado you just hauled out of the Gulf of California. As lean, fresh and assertive as sauvignon blancs out of New Zealand, with a similar flavor profile - grapefruit, grass, lime, spice.

- Finca El Origen 2009 Valle de Cafayate Salta Province Argentina Reserva Torrontes (lost my receipt, but the wine commonly sells for around $11 in the U.S.): A varietal rising fast in popularity in the United States, though still largely undiscovered, torrontes at its best is a wine highly aromatic and intensely flavorful. The first sip of this one evoked associations to gewurztraminer in its floral smell, fruity flavor, spicy highlights and viscous texture. It's unusually rich for a white wine, and isn't without a touch of bitterness in the finish. Definitely an acquired taste. And best served with food, like the Thai chicken dish with which we paired it; it's got the body and sweet fruit to stand up to coconut milk, jalapeno peppers, ginger, basil and garlic.

- Del Pedregal 2008 Valle de Loncomilla Chile Reserva Privada Chardonnay (136 pesos, or around $11 in U.S. currency, at the supermarket Tiendas Chedraui in Cabo San Lucas): Not my favorite style of chardonnay in its denseness and oak, but the timber nevertheless doesn't entirely overwhelm the wine's refreshing citric fruit. It's also dry and a touch spicy, with a luscious texture not often encountered in chardonnays at this price.

- Miguel Torres 2008 Santa Digna Valle Central Chile Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon (125 pesos, or around $10.50 in U.S. currency, at the supermarket Tiendas Chedraui in Cabo San Lucas): Don't be intimidated by the color. Yes, it's dense, but on the palate the wine is readily drinkable, not at all brash or raggedly tannic. It's lively with Bing-cherry fruit, a few herbal notes, a kiss of spice, and a whiff of smoke. This is one of those rare cabernets where the price doesn't at all suggest the complexity that awaits the buyer.

- Bodegas Ateca 2008 Calatayud Garnacha de Fuego (74 pesos, or about $6 U.S., at Costco): By far, the best buy so far during this sojurn. The wine is leanly structured but layered with focused red-fruit flavors, prickly spice and a faint suggestion of chalk dust. The grapes were from vines 80 to 100 years old. Commonly sells for $7 or $8 in the U.S., though it's been listed as high as $16 in southern California. Robert Parker annointed this wine and this vintage with 89 points, which is high praise for such a modestly priced release.

- Circus 2007 Mendoza Argentina Malbec (169 pesos, or about $14, at Tiendas Chedraui): In its elegance, suppleness, balance and most of all the depth, clarity and refreshing tanginess of its blackberry fruit, this wine shows clearly why malbec is the varietal most responsible for Argentina's rise as a fine-wine region. I actually bought this wine about a year ago, but on my next trek to Cabo San Lucas I'll be stopping by Tiendas Chedraui to see if a more recent vintage is in stock; almost certainly the 2007 is long gone.

Mega-Purple: An Explanation

2011-02-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Wine Knows, a blog that concentrates largely on the wines of the Pacific Northwest, has posted this illuminating video about a topic that could be more relevant to the California wine scene. It's an interview with the seasoned wine-trade observer Dan Berger. The topic is mega-purple. The questions and answers aren't as geeky as the subject suggests.

Dan Berger's mention of rubired as one of the grape varieties commonly used to make mega-purple reminds me of some figures compiled by Allied Grape Growers Inc. and presented at last month's Unified Grape & Wine Symposium in Sacramento. According to the organization's Nat DiBuduo, 500,000 tons of last fall's California grape crush was for concentrate, of which mega-purple is a segment, though probably not a major one. (However, not a lot is needed to have a telling impact on wine, as Berger makes clear in the interview.)

Consider, however: DiBuduo noted that concentrate from California is in high demand, and that nearly a quarter of the state's 18,000 acres planted to rubired was put in just within the past few years and has yet to start bearing substantial amounts of fruit. What's more, the association's survey of nurseries last year found that 17 perent of the vines bought by growers during 2010 was rubired.

All of which raises a couple of questions: How much grape concentrate is used to hype the color of California's red wines? And how does rubired and other grape varieties used for mega-purple affect the nature of a wine? UC Davis has a brand new teaching and research winery. A dissertation already may be under way to answer these sorts of questions.