Bea 2006 “San Valentino” (Umbria) – This is not beginner wine. Strappy, with glass shavings in the cat o’, tropical storm lashings of biting fruit somewhere between lavender and your darkest nightmare, with crushed flowers in coal dust tempura and high-speed injections of razor-wire acidity. Alive and elusive, with sharp teeth to bite and sever the arteries of the unaware. Reading back over this note, I’m reminded of the frequent reader complaint regarding similar verbiage: “yes, but did you like it?” Well, here’s the thing: the wine’s really not concerned with being liked, and in fact is about much more than that. It’s that, as much or even more than the usual organoleptic qualities, that I like. It’s not even that the wine’s an intellectual rather than sensual pleasure. In fact, I’d call it, at heart, a primarily psycho-cultural pleasure. (8/11)
October 2011
Cariola, wayward son
Ferrando 2008 Erbaluce di Caluso “Cariola” (Piedmont) – At uncorking, this is awful. It smells, and tastes, lavishly wooded (NB: it is not) and overly lactic. I loathe it so much that the cork goes back in the bottle after fifteen minutes of eye-squinching unpleasantness and stick it in the fridge, intending to give it another shot the next night. Which I don’t. Two nights later, the cork comes back out, and the wine is in full-throated song. All the worrisome tarting-up is gone, replaced by lush and lavish wild berries (gooseberry, perhaps, though not nearly that aggressive) belled with Yuletide herbs and greenery. Extremely dense, long, and in constant motion. And yet, that lactic-like note lingers on the finish. I wonder if something might not be wrong with this bottle – heat damage? – though the wine is so good that whatever might be wrong can’t do much except postpone the moment of enjoyment. Or maybe there really is something here that I don’t like. The most important lesson, however, is the always-needed warning against snap judgments. In a typical professional tasting, I would never have had the opportunity to revisit my initial dismissal, and that would have been a shame for me, and inexcusable for the wine. (8/11)
I Felton itch
Felton Road 2007 Pinot Noir (Central Otago) – I don’t know if the expanding range of single-site pinots being produced at Felton Road are changing the nature of the basic wine or not, but it seems a little simpler than I remember. Simpler, but fuller, so there’s a tradeoff in both good and less good ways. Here is the more familiar plum, beet, orange peel of the Central Otago, without the poise that the entire range used to show, but with more generosity. It’s quite tasty, whatever the circumstances of its birth. (8/11)
More vèdre, please
Tablas Creek 2005 Mourvèdre (Paso Robles) – 14.3%. Hefty, leathery, chewy fruit of the black-hearted variety. Tannins are large-scaled but soft…not quite cashmere, but something sturdier…and there’s a lush black peppery tone late in the wine’s lingerings, which are lingerful indeed. Very, very young, I’d say. (8/11)
Head of the class
Louis Tête 2003 Beaujolais-Villages (Beaujolais) – Very clearly showing the fundamental flaw of the vintage, which is not extreme overripeness but a ponderous weight paired with both fruit and structure that are not nearly as ripe as the gravity suggests. Even hot-climate gamay, fully ripened, would at least have boisterous fruit. (8/11)
Supermodels on MTV
St. Innocent 2009 Pinot Blanc Freedom Hill (Willamette Valley) – Wow, is this good. The nervy, angular side of pinot blanc, ripe to just the ideal point of apple, pear, and albino cherry, with firm acidity, a fleshy underbelly of minerality, and a very long finish. Impressive stuff. (8/11)
Ladies’ Union
St. Innocent 2008 Pinot Noir Temperance Hill (Eola-Amity Hills) – 13.5%. Dense and difficult. Sludgy berries, a dark stew of charred tree and straight-up tar, no fun at all to drink. A stage? I certainly hope so. (8/11)
Indica ink
Lioco 2006 “Indica” (Mendocino County) – Old-vine carignan with some petite sirah. 14.2% alcohol. And it does taste very carignan-ish, with boisterous bubblegum-tinged red cherries (8/11)
Santa Mishy
Chateau Ste. Michelle 2010 Riesling (Columbia Valley) – At first opening, sticky-sweet and very synthetic. Five days later, mostly drained and in the fridge, it’s still sticky but has the very beginning hints of rieslingish sharp-apple character. I think it’s only a dying gasp, though; this is the sort of thing that, while hardly undrinkable, gives riesling a bad name among future wine folk in their nascence. (8/11)
Raw grapes
Carpazo 2007 Rosso di Montalcino (Tuscany) – Grating and surly, with more tannin than its black raspberryish fruit needs, and with more anger than the drinker wants. (8/11)