Browse Month

January 2012

Well-worn Touraine

Roussel & Barrouillet “Clos Roche Blanche” 2004 Touraine Sauvignon (Loire) – Probably too old. Then again, maybe not. It’s a little pre-oxidized, but the fulsomeness of it is richly appealing, and while there’s precious little that could be tied to the variety here, there’s rather a lot of Touraine-ity. Wet chalk, mostly, but also a sloped minerality that flows always-downward in a very linear sort of way. I love this, but its appeal is clinging to a slender thread. (12/11)

Viva Arianna (a/k/a VA)

Occhipinti “Alea Viva” 2009 Lazio Rosso (Lazio) – There’s too much volatile acidity for me to really enjoy this wine, but for those less sensitive to nail polish remover as a beverage, there’s a fizzy sort of black’n’blue berry soda quality to the wine that’s a lot of fun. It’s intense, it’s in fact very nearly impossible to ignore, but it manages to play pretty well with food. Food slathered with a sauce based on ethyl acetate, though. (12/11)

Yes or no?

Guillot “Ultimatum Climat” 2010 Chénas (Beaujolais) – Hard. Surprisingly hard. The hipster label design leads me to think I’m going to get some fresh, frothy, spiky, ultra-natural take on Chénas. Instead, what I get is something Brun-like in its structural geometries. It is, frankly, hard beyond my ability to enjoy it at the moment. That said, I perceive a lot of churning (albeit dark) fruit underneath the planes and angles, and I think either age or, alternatively, aggressive decanting would have helped this bottle’s showing. My fault for not allowing either, I guess. (12/11)

Yalumbaring

Yalumba Muscat “Museum Reserve” (South Eastern Australia) – 375 ml. My interest in wines of this overwhelming sweetness has waned over the years, and while it’s certainly impressive in its molasses-like texture and endless, sugary lingering, I just don’t want more than a few small sips of it. None of these are really criticisms – the wine’s a fine exemplar of what it purports – so much as a realization that our relationship has moved on. (12/11)

Sprat bunny

Renwood 2000 Zinfandel Jack Rabbit Flat (Amador County) – 15.3%. Concentrated and coalesced into a tight, knotted core of angry jam and coal. Which is, perhaps surprisingly, fairly appealing. It’s a punch in the mouth, but the punch is a lightning-fast jab. This has gone as far as it’s going to go, I think. (12/11)

Vmgbr

Tablas Creek 2002 Côtes de Tablas Blanc (Paso Robles) – 36% viognier, 30% marsanne, 26% grenache blanc, 8% roussanne. Years ago, I consumed a bottle of this wine and posted the note to my then-blog, drawing a response from Jason Haas (from the winery) saying that my suppositions regarding future potential were probably off the mark, and the wine was almost certainly fully mature. It’s not that I didn’t listen to him, it’s that I had no idea I owned another bottle. Well, here are 750 milliliters of Jason-was-wrong, which I say not to tweak him but to reiterate one of the much-ignored wine truisms: any given bottle can be a surprise, and there are few absolutes…especially when it comes to aging.

Enough meta. The wine: deep bronze, and perhaps not coincidentally with the consistency of tanning oil, spice turned to the dust of deep antiquity, still powerful, but the power is a deep basso throb. It brightens, slightly, with food, but the intention throughout is to dominate rather than complement. Which is fine, because the wine’s extremely interesting. Hold it longer? No, I wouldn’t. But people have been wrong about this before… (12/11)

Second Cazin, once-removed

Cazin “Le Petit Chambord” 2009 Cour-Cheverny “Cuvée Renaissance” (Loire) – Presents as quite sweet, and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t an above-threshold level of residual sugar in this wine. It doesn’t detract at all, but it’s good to know before trying to set the wine up on a date with any particular food. Aside from the ripe, round sweetness, there’s honeyed brass, white peach, and a suffusing inner glow of summery warmth that seems…well, almost un-Loire-like, in the sense that most of the region’s wines tend to present as being of just about any other season. Fulsome and long. I can’t quite decide if it lacks sufficient acidity or if the fruit is just so generous that it seems like there’s a lack. In any case, history is on this wine’s side regarding future development, and while it’s immensely appealing at the moment, the appeal is like a more sophisticated version of the fresh, youthful appeal of South African chenin blanc. The things that make this wine potentially great, rather than just appealing, will not be apparent for a while. (12/11)

Almanac

Yards “Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce” (Pennsylvania) – Tastes like something you’d expect to flow, darkly, from a tap in a locals-only joint somewhere where they actually enjoy beer. Like drinking a tangled forest at twilight. Really quite good. (12/11)