Browse Tag

port

TJ hooker

TJ Wines “Jonesy Old Tawny Port” (Australia) – Tastes like balsamic shiraz, minus the boisterous fruit; it’s heavy, it’s dark, it tastes of molasses and prune, and it demonstrates by counterpoint that, despite the brickbats, there’s some redeeming structure in pedro ximénez after all. (8/07)

TN: New Heitz

Heitz 1999 Grignolino “Port” (Napa Valley) – Can anyone actually afford to plant grignolino in Napa these days? Anyway, this was a favorite post-prandial quaffer back in my early wine-drinking days, and it tastes pretty much as I remember it: strawberry and candied/spiced apple, with a bright, smiling, simple face. Fun. Don’t overthink it. (5/07)

TN: The grapes are always sweeter

Rolly Gassmann 1997 Auxerrois Moenchreben de Rorschwihr (Alsace) – Wind-blown spice with crystallized peach, vague mixed vegetable notes (perhaps mostly carrots?), and a sweet fatness only slightly mitigated by acidity. It’s very appealing, but in a slobbering, affectionate dog sort of way. (12/06)

Trimbach 1990 Riesling “Cuvée Frédéric Émile” “Sélection des Grains Nobles” (Alsace) – From 375 ml. Crisp orange, apricot and creamy peach – slightly unusual for CFE, though this is an SGN – but fear not: the massive, molten steel minerality soon asserts its dominance over all else. There’s plenty of sugar here, still, yet the wine is drying in a most delicious way. It’s partly the aforementioned metal, partly the acidity, and partly the process that seems to happen as botrytized & unoaked sweet wines age. But whatever the chemistry, this is an incredibly poised wine, still not fully mature, and perhaps not even drinking to 75% of its potential. (12/06)

Fonseca 1963 Port (Douro) – Ripe, roasted and cooked cherries loaded with sticky fruit syrup and big sugar. Soft and fully resolved. This is a truly delicious wine, and yet…I don’t know, there’s something missing. Maybe a bit of structure would be welcome, or maybe it’s just the tiniest bit simpler than one would like. Then again, maybe I have ridiculous expectations. It is a heck of a wine. And yet… (12/06)

TN: Is it a door, or a port?

[Texier]Texier 2003 Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc “Vieilles Vignes” (Rhône) – Fruity pear, apricot and white peach with a vaguely spicy ginger soda component. It’s not fat, though it is slightly chubby, and there’s a bright and fresh-faced balance that defies the vintage’s reputation. Good, highly drinkable stuff. (9/06)

Clairette, bourboulenc and grenache blanc. Web: http://www.adonkeyandgoat.com/texier/home.htm.

Kanu 2004 Chenin Blanc (Stellenbosch) – Simple, off-dry melon and filtered stone fruit with the faintest suggestion of wax. Quaffing wine. (9/06)

97% chenin blanc, 3% chardonnay, 6.7 g/l residual sugar. Alcohol: 13.5%. Closure: cork. Importer: Cape Classics. Web: http://www.kanu.co.za/.

[Pieropan]Pieropan 2004 Soave Classico (Veneto) – Very tight at first opening, and only coming into its fabulously brittle aromatic maturity with an hour of aeration. Mixed rocks and dried white flowers dominate this wine, which straddles some sort of line between Teutonic and Italian with flair and masculine style. (9/06)

90% garganega, 10% trebbiano di Soave. Alcohol: 12%. Closure: cork. Importer: Empson. Web: http://www.pieropan.it/.

Sella & Mosca 2004 Vermentino di Sardegna “La Cala” (Sardinia) – Wet garden vegetables and solid, albeit monolithic, yellow-green citrus. There’s a lot of heft and a not insignificant alcoholic presence here, which is slightly less than ideal for a flavorful but medium-bodied white wine. Still, the flavors are appealing. (9/06)

Alcohol: 11.5%. Importer: Palm Bay. Web: http://www.sellaemosca.com/.

[Jadot]Jadot 2005 Beaujolais-Villages (Beaujolais) – Hard-edged red cherry and raspberry with a dark, sun-burnt gravel base. There’s little complexity or fun, yet the wine is varietally-correct. It’s the overstructuring that kills the sprightly gamay verve, but one could certainly do worse in a pinch. (9/06)

100% gamay. Alcohol: 12.5%. Closure: cork. Importer: Kobrand. Web: http://www.louisjadot.com/.

Sella & Mosca 2002 Cannonau di Sardegna “Riserva” (Sardinia) – Boisterous strawberry bubblegum fruit, with an exploding tapioca texture and lots of obvious but fun spice…some of it wooded. (9/06)

Cannonau is a synonym for grenache. Alcohol: 13.5%. Closure: cork. Importer: Palm Bay. Web: http://www.sellaemosca.com/.

[Jean David]Jean David 2004 Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages Séguret (Rhône) – Thick, dense leather and blueberry compote with a dry, mistral-swept mouthfeel and a surplus of lingering Provençal herbs. Highly structured and ungenerous. This needs time, but I wonder if there’s enough non-structural extract to reward extended aging. (9/06)

62% grenache, 17% carignan, 8% counoise, 6% cinsault, 4% mourvèdre, 3% syrah. Alcohol: 14%. Closure: cork. Importer: Violette. Web: http://www.domaine-jean-david.com/.

TJ Wines “Jonesy” Old Tawny Port (Australia) – Akin to pedro ximénez, though perhaps without quite so much prune. It’s painfully sweet, showing overripe, baked and caramelized blended sugars and a dark raisin concentrate character that speak of long, old-barrel aging. The acidity is a bit volatile and spiky. This is really much more reminiscent of one of the Aussie liqueur muscats or “tokays” than its authentic Portuguese namesake. (9/06)

Alcohol: 18%. Closure: screwcap. Importer: Grateful Palate. Web: http://www.kellermeister.com.au/.

TN: Wineries in glass houses (Oregon, pt. 9)

15 July 2006 – Willamette Valley, Oregon

[McMinnville Turkey Rama dancing]McMinnville Turkey Rama – Some things cannot be described, but simply must be experienced. This is one. It must be said, however, that there appears to be a general undersupply of turkeys.

Van Duzer – Once upon a time, I had great affection for this winery as a commercial but solid producer of nice pinot noir, plus eminently drinkable pinot gris and bubbly. So, despite it being a really, really long way from just about everything else, we make the long drive from Dundee to the extreme south of the winemaking Willamette Valley to check up on things.

And so it is with dismay that I must report a significant downturn in quality. I don’t know where to place the blame – some sort of change in vineyard or winery practice, ownership, or the inconsistencies of my palate – but this is a very disappointing lineup of wines. What’s not exceedingly commercial is disjointed and unbalanced, the newer wines are decidedly worse than the older versions, and there seems to be a rather disheartening wandering of the winery’s attention towards other labels and regions.

Van Duzer “Stone’s Throw” 2005 Sauvignon Blanc (Lake County) – Slightly fetid grass and pink grapefruit with gooseberries on the finish. The wine has a strange texture that turns gummy as it rests in the mouth. Disturbing.

Van Duzer 2005 Pinot Gris (Willamette Valley) – Tart pear and grapefruit. Big and fruity, this tastes more like freshly-crushed grapes than wine. It’s not bad, just uninspiring.

Van Duzer 2005 Pinot Noir Rosé (Willamette Valley) – Raspberry bubblegum and tart green beans wrapped in plastic. Odd, and very acidic.

[Van Duzer]Van Duzer 2005 Pinot Noir “Vintner’s Cuvée” (Willamette Valley) – Smoky plum and juicy blueberry with Juicy Fruit Gum™, jam and canned peas. Red apple and raspberry emerge on the finish, but the vegetal thing is a deal-breaker.

Van Duzer 2004 Pinot Noir “Estate” (Willamette Valley) – Big spiced blueberry and blackberry with anise liqueur. There’s some structure, but heat will always be the wine’s dominant feature.

Van Duzer 2003 Pinot Noir Homestead Block (Willamette Valley) – Roasted cashew, dark plum and moody blackberry with leathery black earth underneath. This, at least, shows remnants of the quality I remember from this winery. The fruit edges towards liqueur (kirsch or mure, perhaps?), but there’s structure and aging potential here.

Van Duzer “Stone’s Throw” 1999 “Skipping Rock Red” (Mendocino) – A blend of syrah and zinfandel, still full-bodied and fat despite seven years of age, showing wild blueberry and leather with a smooth, creamy texture. It’s all quite enticing, until one realizes that the wine is absolutely formless, as if its skeleton had simply been removed.

Van Duzer “Windfall” Port (Oregon) – This is, to my knowledge, the first “port” of pinot noir that I’ve tasted. It’s big and strong, with strawberry and red cherry cough syrup sweetened by milk chocolate. It nods, briefly, towards balance, but soon slips into unstructured flabbiness. Plus: cough syrup. Blech.

Drinking with Dick

Ringing in the new year with friends, food, wine, and Mr. Clark’s famous dropping ball:

André Blanck 2002 Riesling Schlossberg “Vieilles Vignes” (Alsace) – Two bottles tasted, with consistent notes. Clean, wet industrial metals with dried grapefruit rind and a slightly acridity. It’s full-bodied and hollow at the same time; not because it lacks a midpalate, but because it just doesn’t “say” much of anything. Perhaps age will improve things.

The Schlossberg, a grand cru vineyard situated above the towns of Kientzheim and Kaysersberg (and a very pretty, if rough-hewn, slope), is best known for its rieslings…less so for its gewürztraminers…but it’s a site I’ve never entirely warmed to. There’s a force to the wines similar to those from Brand (another grand cru vineyard), but it too often seems that the force overwhelms complexity and nervosity. It’s not a producer-specific problem, because the site is worked by producers of varying styles (Weinbach, Mann, Sparr and Paul Blanck are the most famous), but while the wines are often very, very good, they rarely reach the pinnacles of certain other sites. It could just be personal preference at work, of course; most others seem to adore these wines, and it would be hard to argue persuasively against the high quality of the best Schlossberg rieslings of Weinbach and Paul Blanck. But I wonder if there isn’t something about the combination of searing sunlight (common to the entire south-facing band of vineyards here, including Altenbourg and Furstentum) and cooling air coming down from the Vosges via the Lapoutroie gap (Schlossberg is tucked right up into the Vosges foothills) that knocks these wines a little off-kilter, at least for my taste. Alcohol: 13.5%. Importer: Vineyard Road.

Bollinger Champagne Brut “Special Cuvée” (Champagne) – Two bottles tasted, with fairly consistent notes. Smoldering fall leaves and roasted cherry skins with fat peach and spice jar aromas and a thick texture offset by smooth pétillance. This is one of those rare NVs that actually needs age to come together; it’s a little hedonistic right now…almost slutty, in fact…and could use a little more refinement. That will come in time.

I admit it: I am an unrepentant Bollinger fan. I love pinot-dominated sparkling wine, and something about the combination of grapes, soils, and blending skill at Bollinger just tickles my Champagne fancy. I do wish the wine wasn’t so expensive, which causes it to be decidedly less than a house Champagne for me, but the quality is undeniable. Alcohol: 12%. Importer: Paterno Wines International. Web: http://www.champagne-bollinger.fr/.

JJ Christoffel 1995 Erdener Treppchen Riesling Auslese ** 10 96 (Mosel-Saar-Ruwer) – Beautiful creamed iron dust and long-decayed pollen with hints of lemon-strawberry custard. Firm and well-structured, very sweet, and lacking just a bit of the edge that would push it into the stratospheric realms of riesling. But it’s still excellent.

Everyone’s waiting to see what’s going to happen to this venerable house now that it has changed hands. In the meantime, there remains a decent supply of older Christoffels from which to taste the real genius at work among the former ownership. Upper-level auslesen are rarely my favorite style of German riesling; I find “normal” auslesen (which are getting rarer by the year) to have better balance and verve, and full-on beerenauslesen to have more of the sweetness one wants in a true dessert wine. This two-star auslese, however, has always retained a certain poise despite the sugary palate weight, and for that I’ve gone to it time and again when needing a well-aged riesling to convert the uninitiated. Alcohol: 8%. Importer: Terry Theise/Milton S. Kronheim/J&H Selbach. Web: http://www.moenchhof.de/.

Dubourdieu “Château Graville-Lacoste” 2003 Graves (Bordeaux) – Fruity gooseberry and lemon-lime with Granny Smith apple and a boisterous, attention-grabbing personality…only once it has your attention, it has very little to say.

Bottle after bottle, this wine reminds me of a New Zealand sauvignon blanc rather than a sauvignon/sémillon blend from the more restrained soils of Graves. Blame 2003. Alcohol: 12%. Importer: Kermit Lynch.

Papin-Chevalier “Château Pierre-Bise” 2002 Côteaux du Layon Rochefort Les Rayelles (Loire) – Stunning waxy/creamy chalk and honeysuckle with the most flawless texture of liquid silk and an endless, clean finish of delicate white nectarine and spice. Beautiful, with a long, long road ahead of it.

If you haven’t stocked up on 2002 Loires, you’re going to be sorry. Exquisite dessert wines of this quality are rare on the ground, and this particular botrytized chenin blanc does something the category rarely does: it tastes fantastic right out of the gate. Let me be clear about this: buy as much as you can afford, and then buy some more. Alcohol: 12.7%. Importer: Louis/Dressner/LDM.

Roederer Champagne Brut “Premier” (Champagne) – Full-bodied and red-fruited, though with a significant offset of ripe and sweet lemon, showing less assertive but cleaner and more focused than the Bollinger.

I’m not the only one to have occasionally expressed a preference for this house’s Mendocino County products over its authentic Champagnes. No doubt the effortless international market for Cristal, a cash cow if there ever was one, reduces the motivation for producing high-quality wine. Nonetheless, this is a fine Champagne for the short term; another pinot-dominated wine that is less of a dominating presence at table than the previously-noted Bollinger. What it lacks is a sort of forward-looking complexity; the apparent effort to achieve something beyond pleasant bubbly. Roederer Estate in California is unquestionably less elegant and clumsier in its fruit-forward expression, but at least there one gets the clear sense that aspirational winemaking is at play. Alcohol: 12%. Importer: Maisons Marques & Domaines. Web: http://www.champagne-roederer.com/.

Charles Heidsieck 1996 Champagne Brut Rosé (Champagne) – Funky and very difficult, with some very advanced sweaty yeast notes coupled with tart red cherry and a somewhat indolent effervescence. It might just need more time.

Rosé Champagne walks a fine line, trying to retain its regional elegance and precision while embracing the powerful influences of blended red wine. It doesn’t always succeed, at least in youth (which is why the remarkably consistent Billecart-Salmon Rosé is so justifiably famous), and here’s an example of how it can fail. And yet, all the components are there, and from a solid house like Charles Heidsieck, one would expect ageability to take care of some of the current issues. Alcohol: 12%. Importer: Remy Amerique. Web: http://www.charlesheidsieck.com/.

Clos du Paradis “Domaine Viret” 2000 Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages Saint-Maurice “Cosmic” (Rhône) – Well-knit roasted plum and strawberry with hints of bubblegum, lavender and earth. Direct and to-the-point, though more complex than most wines of that description, with the potential for some limited aging but very little upside in doing so.

This remarkable winery produces a stunning lineup of differently-blended and sited wines from Saint-Maurice (home to them and a co-op, but no one else of note, at least on my last visit), all of which are rather forceful and (occasionally) impenetrable for a virtually-unknown village in the Côtes-du-Rhône. Plus, they’re expensive (again, in the context of an unknown appellation). What this means is that introducing the uninitiated to the domaine is problematic. The U.S. importer fought this by introducing this export-only cuvée, a grenache-dominated and “friendlier” product to provide immediate, and lower-cost, enticement on U.S. store shelves. I don’t know if the plan is working or not (the other bottlings still seem to be difficult sells), but I do know that I’ve bought cases of this wine in both its vintages. The ’99 was slightly better, but this is a quibble; good wine is good wine. Alcohol: 14.5%. Cosmocultural. Importer: Louis/Dressner/LDM. Web: http://www.domaine-viret.com/.

Clos-Fourtet “Martialis de Fourtet” 1997 Saint-Émilion (Bordeaux) – A beautiful wine at the beginning of its full maturity. Moist leather and dark, dried berries are coupled with dried thyme and pencil shavings (both the graphite and the cedary wood) in a beverage of elegance and balance. There’s still moderate and unresolved tannin, but the fruit is so nice right now that it might not be wise to wait too many more years.

I don’t drink a lot of merlot, but of course a good St-Émilion or Pomerol isn’t just a “merlot.” 1997 was a less than heralded vintage, but carefully selected bottles are drinking really nicely over the earlier term; perhaps few show any real notion of classic balance, but that hardly renders them undrinkable. The problem, as ever for Bordeaux, is that lesser wines from off-vintages (“lesser” by the definitions of the market, not qualitatively) are a very difficult thing to sell in a worldwide market where someone has always had an excellent year, and where fun and accessible wines are strewn like litter across the landscape. The Bordelais could compete more successfully if the wines were cheaper, but we all know that’s never going to happen. And so, we have wines like this: only the devoted (or the unwary) would buy them, and all but those few will miss out on the potential pleasures such wines can provide. Alcohol: 12.5%. French bottling. Web: http://www.closfourtet.com/.

Dow’s 1986 Single Year Tawny Porto “Reserve” (Douro) – Juiced plum candy and spiced figs with raw cane sugar squeezings and touches of cinnamon. Sweet, crisp and enticing, but without some of the extra complexity found in previous vintages of this wine.

I’ve often heard that the “English-owned” Port houses resist the term “colheita” (which is what this is; a vintage-dated tawny Port), but I haven’t done enough of a survey to verify the truth of the matter. What I do know is that this wine, in an earlier vintage (1982), is the one that opened my eyes to the lusciousness of aged colheitas, which are almost always cheaper and more accessible than their vintage-dated ruby brethren. Certainly, as pre-aged wines, they don’t require such overwhelming patience; one can just uncork and drink, and yet one isn’t getting a simplistic fruit bomb, but a delicious combination of tertiary wine complexities and spicy barrel influences. Alcohol: 20%. Importer: Premium Port Wines. Web: http://www.dows-port.com/.

9 wines (or, actually, more…)

A holiday week dinner at Boston’s justifiably-renowned No. 9 Park, with an eclectic selection of wines from the restaurant’s brilliant wine director, Cat Silirie

Chartogne-Taillet Champagne Brut Rosé (Champagne) – Gorgeous, silky-creamy preserved apple and black fruit with yeasty complexity and pleasant minerality, both of which build and roll through the midpalate and finish. Beautiful Champagne in motion.

This is one of those grower-producer Champagnes that one hears about so often, and it’s also one of the best. There’s something more indefinably soulful about these vs. the big industrial names. Try it for yourself.

Alain Guillot Crémant de Bourgogne Blanc de Blancs (Burgundy) – Simpler and more direct, showing a character that’s either off-dry, botrytized, or possibly both (though I suppose it could also be an excess of leesiness), with straightforward grapefruit and green apple characteristics..

Crémant, a sort of catch-all French term for “sparkling wine not from Champagne” (though there are other possible terms as well), sells like crazy in France, but is a hard sell elsewhere. Primarily, this is because the wines – though unquestionably cheaper than Champagne – don’t really measure up. There are exceptions in each region, but those are also the wines that usually get snapped up by the local market. As for this particular crémant: other than the fact that this producer is situated in the Mâcon, and thus the grapes for this wine are likely to be from there, I know absolutely nothing about this bottle. Web: http://www.vignes-du-maynes.com/.

Bisson 2003 Cinque Terre “Marea” (Liguria) – Rushing mountain waterfalls full of minerality and midsummer bursts of ripe green fruit. 2003 has rendered this wine slightly less unique, but more fun to drink; a fair tradeoff, though I wouldn’t want to make it every year.

The Cinque Terre, not unlike the Côte d’Azur, has a bit of reputation for overpriced yet underperforming wines. This one isn’t exactly cheap ($24 or so), but neither does it underperform; less hot vintages are more enticingly floral/mineral, and there’s something unique and interesting here that’s worth the extra tariff. The grapes are vermentino, bosco and albarola, with extra time on the lees to add body and complexity.

Les Crêtes 2002 Torrette “vignes les toules” (Vallée d’Aoste) – Begins stale and cranky, but develops into an individualistic stunner, with raw iron blocks and vividly floral mixed berries. Fragrant and seductive, but not particularly feminine, this is a wine that takes some time to get to know, but rewards the effort a hundredfold.

Mostly petit rouge (a grape virtually limited to the Valle d’Aosta), grown in moraine, calcareous and sandy soils. One of the more unique wines I’ve tasted over the past year, and in fact I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted anything like it. Web: http://www.lescretesvins.it/.

Clos de Haute-Combes 2002 Juliénas “Cuvée Prestige” (Beaujolais) – Classic violet berries in agrodolce with a fairly firm, if not at all powerful, structure and a really gorgeous finish. Beyond food friendly; perhaps food-enrapturing, instead.

I’m not sure why I’ve been drinking so much Juliénas lately. Random chance, I guess. This one is decidedly prettier than either of the two Grangers recently consumed, and in fact is pretty much everything a person could want from cru Beaujolais.

Meix-Foulot 2000 Mercurey “1er Cru” (Burgundy) – Less pretty and a little sluttier than previous vintages, though it would be especially churlish to call it anything other than tasty. There’s some very slightly grating tannin that looms over the fruit a bit, but this should be a good deal of nice drinking over the short term.

A blend from premier cru multiple vineyards (Saumonts and Ropitons, one site advises), from a solidly consistent producer of lighter-styled Burgundy at a not-unreasonable price. That, in itself, is a major accomplishment.

Pibarnon 2001 Bandol (Provence) – Texturally lighter than the previous three wines, with funky horse sweat and vine-rotted, shriveled fruit; it’s good, but it’s a little hollow and shrill for the usual mourvèdre (and, probably brett) stink, and I wonder if it might not be in a difficult phase.

Mourvèdre can get stinkier, and it can get more forceful, but it achieves its personal pinnacle of a rustic sort of elegance in Bandol, the only Provençal appellation to really do much on the international stage. This wine’s a little odd, but one thing I’ve found to be true of Bandol is that the wines are almost always better with age. Web: http://www.pibarnon.fr/.

Schrock 2002 Ruster Ausbruch (Neusiedlersee-Huggenland) – Very thin at first, with clean but obvious crystallized citrus aromas. With air, however, it fills out to show lovely, fuller-bodied spice and sorbet characteristics with a succulent peach-candy finish.

An ausbruch must be made from shriveled, botrytized grapes picked at an exceedingly high level of ripeness. What this usually means is that the spicy/creamy botrytis notes overwhelm everything else; this isn’t a bad thing, but simple botrytis doesn’t have to be as expensive as these wines usually are. In this case, it’s the varietal characteristics of the pinot blanc and pinot gris grapes that first emerge, to be followed by the additional complexity of noble rot. This is a worthy accomplishment in itself, even though this bottling is far from the best that Ms. Schröck can do. Web: http://www.heidi-schroeck.com/.

Ferreira 1997 Vintage Porto (Douro) – Big, fruity, tannic and obvious; there is the very slightest hint of emerging spice, but fundamentally this is way, way too young.

I usually consider drinking young vintage Port a complete waste of time and money, and this wine does little to change that predisposition. There are plenty of fresh-tasting, blended ports if one craves berried exuberance, and tawnies from simplistic blends to majestic colheitas available if one wants instant complexity. But young vintage Port is rarely other than monolithic, so unless one’s purpose is evaluative, why waste the wine? Web: http://www.sogrape.pt/.

Pierre Ferrand Cognac 30-year “Sélection des Anges” (Cognac) – Unbelievable aromatics of barrel spice and long-aged fruit with very little intrusive heat; goes down much, much lighter than one might expect, then fills and warms again on the finish, with elegantly lingering touches of bitterness. Just beautiful.

I never used to like Cognac, thinking it wan and simplistic next to the Bas-Armagnac I preferred. Then an enthusiastic young salesperson came to Boston, showing the Ferrand and Gabriel & Andreu lines, and everything changed. Here were real digestifs, with character and differentiation and (pun intended) spirit. Plus, they remain underpriced vs. a universe of oversold but undermade “name” brands. What’s not to love? Web: http://le-cognac.com/pf/.