Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Identifying wines by location or by varietal.

Interesting article in the NY Times talking about the labelling of wine by location or by varietal: the history of each, and the strengths and drawbacks. As an oversimplification, with Old World wines, the vineyards have been around long enough that decades or centuries of experimentation have shown that pinot noir and chardonnay are the best wines grown in the region of Burgundy, so labelling a red wine as Burgundy also identifies it as pinot noir; New World vineyards are still experimenting to find out what wines they can grow best, so you can't just label a red wine as "Napa" and have much of an idea of what varietal it is.

Friday, October 17, 2003

1995 Willamette Valley Vineyards Oregon Pinot Noir (Whole Berry Fermented).

Another one of the wines I bought in Oregon seven years ago, and have only now gotten around to opening. The last of the wines from that trip, I believe. The Willamette Valley Vineyards is in, well, the Willamette Valley, near Salem. And not that I'm giving stock advice, but they're listed on NASDAQ.

And, as with the wine I mentioned on Sept. 7, this was a bottle I should have had a couple of years ago.

This wine was fermented completely from uncrushed Pinot Noir grapes, and the theory is that helps retain the fresh, fruity quality of the wine, and allows for its early release. (I bought this wine in October 1996, presumably only 12 or 13 months after its harvest.) The label also recommends that you drink it "now"; their website recommends "within 2 or 3 years" for the current similarly produced wine. Nothing about holding it for 7 years, though, so even they would think that wasn't a great idea.

Slightly oxidized color. Hints of cherry and strawberry in the aroma. Some staleness in the aroma, along with something slightly sulfuric that doesn't blow off. Almost barnyard-like, but not in the normal, earthy pinot noir way. Still some flavor - cherry and banana predominate, with some other red-fruit flavors around, like strawberry. Still some fruity acidity, which with the banana and strawberry remind me of one of my usual choices of yogurt. Soft tannins present, very smooth. I had it with grilled salmon with minimal seasoning; anything with more aggressive flavors would have overwhelmed the wine.

I bet this wine was absolutely dynamite about 4 or 5 years ago, and I wish I'd had it then.

$14 - $18 (?), purchased at winery.

Friday, October 10, 2003

2000 DeLoach Russian River Valley Estate Bottled Zinfandel.

Nice, smooth-drinking zin. Wonderful ripe Russian River valley fruit. Good, basic, hearty zinfandel. DeLoach was named a 2003 "Winery of the Year" by Wine and Spirits magazine, one of four Sonoma and four Napa wineries to be given the award.

Young, red ruby color. Bright burst of red cherry aroma and flavor, with hints of raspberry and pepper. Enough tannin to provide structure to the flavor, without being overpowering. Nice fruit/acid tang, with lingering raspberry in the finish.

Drinking fine now. Usual zinfandel matches: roast fowl, red meat, pasta with red sauce, pizza.

$14.99, Raleigh, Carolina Wine Co.

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

2003 Monticello Wine and Jazz Festival.

I went to the annual wine festival at the Boar's Head Inn in Charlottesville this past weekend. They've had a festival there each year for 23 years; I've been to 21 of them, and I have good excuses for the other two years.

The festival was okay, although no better than that. They had no idea what they were doing with parking, other than not letting you park in the nearby (and unused) lot where I've parked for the past 10 years. Incredibly disorganized. The awards, as usual, bore no relationship to the actual quality of the wines. A couple of the gold medalling wines were abominable, and the same wines from someone else were wonderful and completely unmedaled.

Barboursville had some new wines out. A malvaxia; first release in 3 years. Pretty good, and I'd realized how much I'd missed it at festivals over the past couple of years. A new cab franc, a new release of Octagon, and a new cabernet sauvignon. The Octagon and cab sauvignon were for sale this weekend only, and then won't be officially released until next spring or summer. I picked some of the cab sauvignon to stick into my cellar for a couple of years.

Cardinal Point's cab franc got a silver medal - one of the deserved medals - and is drinking well. Wintergreen finally released their "Black Rock Red", a Bordeaux blend. Rich and smooth, in large part because it's had another 10 months aging in the bottle beyond what they were expecting, while the BATF (or whoever they are this month) approved the label.

And the music was pretty poor. This wine festival is called the "Monticello Wine and Jazz Festival" and it had one guy with an acoustic guitar, singing 60's era hits. Fine for geezers like me, I suppose, but even I know that wasn't jazz. Still, it's a whole lot better than the bad country singers they've had for the past decade.

Back from the Hurricane.

Hurricane Isabel hit this blog hard. No electricity for ten days, no cable modem for thirteen. And one of the things I discovered while I had no electricity is that I really don't enjoy drinking wine in the dark. (I'm taking this to be a good discovery, indicating a lack of alcoholic tendencies.)

But now I'm back, and ready to start reporting again.

The word from local vineyards is that they weren't all that badly hurt by Isabel. Mostly, they got their whites in before (or just before) the hurricane arrived, and left the red wine grapes on the vines. Those grapes seem to have weathered the storm okay - either they weren't so ripe that they were going to be badly hurt by the rain and wind, or the storm passed quickly through the area, or the grapes had had so much rain all summer long that a few more inches weren't going to make that much of a difference. Bottom line, though, is that they came through the storm okay, and should be in good shape when they're finally harvested.