If you think there are a lot of group tastings around this time of year – you’re right.
We just did a trade tasting the other day (which had been preceded by a consumer tasting the day before) featuring wineries from the Santa Rita Hills appellation. In the interest of full disclosure, we did the trade side on a press pass. We’ve got another trade tasting next week.
One of the reasons you see so many of this style show or tasting this time of year is that this is one of those rare times when there really isn’t that much to be done in either the winery or the vineyard. There’s always something that can be done, but it’s not quite the same as harvest or pruning time or bottling time, when stuff needs to be done at that time and nothing short of apocalyptic disaster is going to get the winemaker to leave.
Of course, there are those winemakers who consider having to do a tasting or show an apocalyptic disaster. But they do the tastings anyway because that’s how you sell wine.
Which we’re fine with. As we’ve noted before, tastings are a great way to get to know a lot of wine really fast.
And this most recent tasting was a total blast. For one thing, it wasn’t quite so huge. And for another, we caught up with some of our faves, like Peter Cargasacchi (one of the wilder guys out there) and Morgan Clendenen. We also made several (we hope) new friends – thank you, Chris Curran.
The Santa Rita Hills is the area on the other side of US 101 from the Santa Ynez Valley, made famous by the movie Sideways, in the northern part of Santa Barbara County. Because of the cooler climate there, thanks to its proximity to the ocean, it is becoming one of the most talked about appellations for pinot noir. And they are doing some beautiful things with the “heartbreak grape” out there.
But it’s not just pinot – although that was definitely the majority of the wines we tasted. Morgan Clendenen’s Cold Heaven label features some divine viogniers. We caught some very nice chardonnays, which is not all that surprising since both pinot noir and chardonnay first got known as the grapes of Burgundy, France. And somebody had a really yummy pinot grigio and someone else had a syrah that we liked. We think. We’ll have to check the notes.
The 2007 Frogmore Creek is more about texture than flavor. That doesn’t mean it’s flavor-less. It just means that what you’re eating is not compromised or overwhelmed by the wine but enhanced by acids or the feel in the mouth.
Stick your nose in the glass and you’ll catch dark fruits like blackberry, blueberry and some currants. Those fruits carry through to the taste.
But the best part is the mouth feel. It’s a medium weight, which means you can tell you’ve got something in your mouth, but it doesn’t weigh things down, like a syrup. There’s also a lighter texture which blends into sauces, meat juices or the natural oils from, say, salmon.
In short, the 2007 Frogmore Creek needs to be drunk with food to really show off its stuff. But that’s okay, because we love wines that work well with food.
Dana Delaney’s new show Body of Proof premieres Tuesday (March 29) at 10:01 p.m. on ABC, but Anne actually caught up with her last summer at the TV Critics Press Tour in July.
Delaney’s been a pretty busy actor since she first splashed onto the scene in China Beach. In Body of Proof, she plays an emotionally out-of-touch former neurosurgeon who becomes a medical examiner and solves crimes.
We’re also guessing that while she really likes wine (“I’m a wino,” she told Anne), she doesn’t like too much at one time.
“Why?” you ask.
Because this was her wine question: “Why can’t we get better wines by the glass? Because you end up having to buy a bottle just to have a decent glass of wine. I really want to know the answer to that.”
Well, Ms. Delaney, the answer is actually pretty simple. It’s all about the money.
Wine by the glass, for a lot of restaurants, is considered a losing proposition. That’s why you will rarely find a restaurant’s best wines available by the glass. Instead, you’ll find the most popular wines or the less expensive house wines.
Part of it is that wine, once the bottle is opened, can go bad pretty quickly if it’s not preserved right and/or drunk soon enough, especially red wines. It’s called oxidation and it can leave a wine tasty pretty nasty. So if you buy one glass of a premium pinot noir and no one else does that night and the wine goes bad the next day, the restaurant is not only losing the price of the bottle, it’s losing the profit to be made on the other four to five glasses they could have sold from that bottle.
The other part is that the restaurant really does want you to buy the whole bottle of that premium pinot noir. It’s called the restaurant mark-up. Restaurants generally get their wines at wholesale prices, just like retail stores do. But they charge two to three times what you’d pay at a retail store for that bottle.
Sometimes, it’s justifiable, because to keep wine properly does add to a restaurant’s costs and you’re talking about a business that is traditionally run on razor-thin profit margins. So that extra profit from wine sales can mean the difference between staying open or closing. However, there are a lot of restaurants that do abuse this – as in $25 for a bottle of Columbia Crest, a mass-produced wine that sells in supermarkets for $8 when it’s not on sale. Puh-leeze!
The interesting thing is that the restaurants least likely to abuse the mark-up are the ones that are the most wine-centric. And the good news is you’re also going to find a lot more wines available by the glass at those restaurants. Why? They generally have the argon gas or other preserving methods that will keep an opened bottle of red fresh for several days. And they’re generally selling a lot more wine, so it’s less likely that they’re only going to sell one glass from that bottle of nice pinot noir.
You still won’t get the finest wines by the glass. But you’ll get wines that are better than the cheap house wine. And if you are in a restaurant with a good wine sensibility, don’t be afraid to try the house wine. It may, in fact, be pretty tasty.
A tasting table at the Family Winemakers of California tasting event - and that's just one table!
This is the third year we’ve done the Family Winemakers of California tasting event, featuring over 200 California wineries, from all over the state. They do two – one in Del Mar, California and a trade tasting in Pasadena. It’s probably the most fun thing we do all year.
We think tasting events are a great way to learn about a lot of wine in a short time, and to try new stuff, or maybe re-try stuff we thought we didn’t like.
While tasting events can get pricey (we, fortunately, get admitted via a press pass), they are actually more economical than going to a wine bar or visiting the wineries. Family Winemakers of California featured over 200 wineries, most of them pouring four to five and more wines. Think about paying for 10 to 15 flights at your local wine bar, then do the math. In most cases, you’ll come out ahead at the event.
And if you want to make it even more cost-effective, you can volunteer to help at these events (and they always need volunteers). That will generally get you in for free, with plenty of time for tasting. You just have to work for it. Please. We don’t want to encourage freeloading.
The thing that makes this event extra special is that the uniting theme is the wineries, themselves – relatively small family-owned operations. Most of the wineries were represented by the owners and/or the winemakers. And sometimes, the owner and the winemaker were the same person.
Compare that to going to one of these large, corporate wineries and being served by someone who’s never even met the winemaker, let alone the owner.
The other advantage to this particular tasting is the breadth of wines poured. Unlike Pinot Days, which is all pinot noir, there’s a little bit of everything represented at the Family Winemakers’ tasting. Which makes it the perfect venue to try wines you’ve never had before, such as a nebbiolo, an albarino, a petit verdot or a marsanne. We even tried some wines we don’t traditionally like and found one we actually did (more to come).
If you’ve never been to a tasting like this, you might be a little shocked when you see folks spitting out wine into cups. Spitting is a total necessity when you’ve got this much wine to taste (and you’re not even going to come close to hitting all 200 wineries). That’s why there are dump buckets everywhere.
No one expects you to swallow, so don’t feel like you’re implying you don’t like something when you spit it into a cup. And it’s no big deal if you don’t like something. Obviously, you wouldn’t spit it right back into the pourer’s face and scream, “Yuck! Blech!” But you don’t have to say you like it when you don’t. We prefer the silent nod or even a murmured, “Interesting.” Which isn’t a lie. You just don’t say that what’s interesting is how these guys stay in business selling such miserable plonk.
You might also consider that what you think is miserable plonk, somebody else thinks is utterly transcendent. We were reminded of that while tasting at a table where we thought about half the wines had this odd, icky off-taste to them. But while talking to the winemaker/owner, we were interrupted several times by a broker who was just ecstatic over the wines and setting up a major purchase, and the two the broker liked the best were the two we hated. Oh, well.
This little unassuming sparkler is a delight. It’s refreshing and light, not so sweet it’s like soda pop (never mind the soda pop top), and not too dry, either. It’s perfect for brunch or maybe to begin winding down after a long, hard day at work.
Made primarily from chardonnay and sauvignon blanc grapes, the wine was tank-fermented – an easier, less fussy way to make bubbles in wine than the traditional methode champagnoise, which involves dosing the wine in bottles, turning the bottles, and so forth and so on.
In tank-fermenting, the individual wine is fermented in the normal way in steel tanks to avoid oak flavors. Then, in this case, the chard and sauv blanc are blended together and pressurized to allow carbon dioxide to dissolve into the liquid, which creates the bubbles. In addition to being less fussy than methode champagnoise, it’s a lot cheaper and faster, too.
Flavor-wise, the Ca’ Secco is light and almost dry with a little bit of fruitiness that isn’t overt. At 11.5 percent alcohol, it’s so easy to keep sipping and sipping. Try it with fruit or a shrimp cocktail without the red sauce. Or French toast and bacon. Or with your shoes off, your feet up and a good mindless book.
You can get it via the website at camomi.com. Please be aware that they are under construction on a new site, so if this link doesn’t work, try just camomi.com.
Aha! We are vindicated – at least, Anne is. We’ve said for a long time that Charles Shaw wines (the infamous Two Buck Chuck) aren’t so bad. And this weekend, we saw proof that what Anne has been saying for years – namely, that if you didn’t know you were drinking Trader Joe’s ultra-low cost wine, you wouldn’t think it was so awful, and might even like it.
What happened? We attended a special annual event through our home winemaking club, Cellarmasters in Los Angeles. Every year, our friends Fred Shaw and Lisa Guravitz put on a spectacular tasting at their place in Carpinteria, California, which usually includes about 18 wines bound together by a theme and a potluck dinner with some insanely good tri-tip beef.
This year’s theme was cabernets, and we will post tasting notes on some of the stand-outs at a later date. But the best part of an event like this is that it’s a really fun way to get to know a lot of wines. And it’s not that hard to do.
Fred and Lisa pick up interesting wines from all over the place over a course of months. They have tables set up with three glasses per place, a dump bucket (way necessary), bread to cleanse your palate and water. The placemats usually have circles to match the glass bottoms and numbers on them so that you can keep your wines straight.
This is because what they do is called a blind tasting – the bottles are placed in paper bags, so you can’t see the labels or other identifiers. We have no clue what wine it is we’re drinking. Heck, one year, they didn’t even tell us the variety. They bought the whole range of wines and made us guess which one was which.
As noted above, we had cabs this year, and we were invited to guess which one was the Australian and which one was… Two Buck Chuck.
Charles Shaw Wines are made by Bronco, the company behind the generally awful Franzia boxed wines. That, and the fact that Trader Joe’s generally sells them for $2 a bottle ($3 a bottle in some parts of the country), have had wine snobs sneering down their long bony noses for years, never mind that the chardonnay has won multiple competitions, including a double gold at the California State Fair a few years ago.
Nobody is saying these are fine wines. A lot of the varieties can be wildly inconsistent, ranging from fairly tasty to completely undrinkable. But the two most consistent have been the chardonnay and the cabernet sauvignon, and they are a pretty decent everyday table wine.
Let’s be real. Most of us can’t afford a $10 bottle of wine with dinner every night. And if you’re new to wine, spending that much can be a little intimidating. Plus the softer profile of the Charles Shaw cab, in particular, can be an excellent way to ease into the glory of a good red wine.
We had 20 people in that room and only about six of us picked out the Two Buck from the panel of 18 different wines. At least three of us (possibly four) drink the stuff regularly.
I don’t know how many folks said they liked the Two Buck – it probably wasn’t the favorite. But we will say this, there was an $80 Silver Oak hidden in that group and most of us were not wowed by it.
We do lead wine tastings, ourselves, if you’d like to hire us for your party. Or we can consult. Or you can have fun figuring it out yourself. Either way, it’s a lot of fun to pull together some good friends, several bottles of wine in paper bags and have at it.
Due to our limited travel budget, when we get a chance to do a large-scale tasting such as last January’s Pinot Days, we love checking out the wines from the really far out places – like Tasmania, Australia. So, of course, when Linda Kidwiler showed up at Pinot Days representing Frogmore Creek wines for their U.S. distributors, Michael made the proverbial bee line to her table and liked what he tasted.
Tasmania is an island about 200 miles south of the Australian continent, so it has a pretty cool climate, making it an excellent place to grow our favorite heartbreak grape – pinot noir. Not only is pinot noir the basis for the great wines of Burgundy, it’s also the main grape used in Champagne. (Remember, all grape juice is white. Red wines happen when the juice is soaked with the skins during fermentation. If you press the grapes and get the juice off the skins before your ferment it, the wine turns out white.)
The winemakers at Frogmore Creek do both straight up pinot noir and a bubbly or two.
“We are mostly sparkling wine,” Kidwiler said. “Our sparkling wine is our biggest seller.”
Frogmore Creek has been selling wines in the U.S. for about three years now. You’d think there might be a problem with people not knowing squat about Tasmania besides a Looney Tunes character. But Kidwiler said that the opposite seems to be true.
“I think that’s the reason we’ve been so successful,” she said. “Usually sommeliers know right away when they see ‘Tasmania’ and I get the appointment [to do a sales meeting] right away. And when a customer comes in and sees Tasmania on the menu, they get very enticed by that and say ‘I didn’t know Tasmania made a Pinot Noir’ and I think that’s one of the reason our sales have been so strong. And it’s also where the cleanest air and water is on the planet. It’s the exoticness of Tasmania. We don’t produce a big Pinot. More restrained and elegant – more French style than they do in Australia.”
The recent heavy rains in Australia will probably affect the winery, even though most of the rains hit northern Tasmania and the winery’s vineyards are in the south.
“Our business is really going to affected for Brisbane,” Kidwiler said – Brisbane was the hardest hit by the storms and flooding.. “We do a lot of our business there. We do most of our business in Australia, so we’ll have to see what happens there. We have some places there that sell a pallet of wine a week in Brisbane between right now during our summer. Especially our sparkling and we’ll have to see what happens but we’re going to be hit pretty hard.”
On the other hand, that could mean more Frogmore Creek wine will be available here in the U.S., a small ray of sunshine for us in an otherwise bleak outlook. You can go to the website, www.frogmorecreek.com/wines.html, and check the left-hand menu for the Where To Buy link to find out where in your area you can get Frogmore Creek wines.
Okay, maybe they don’t look all that much alike. But add the ‘tude and TV personality Guy Fieri and Jimmy Smith, national sales manager for Ca’ Momi wine in Napa, could definitely be brothers.
We’re featuring this wild and woolly pair in honor of the Family Winemakers of California tasting happening in Pasadena on Tuesday, March 15. They had an open-to-the-public event in Del Mar on Sunday, but we had to miss it. However, we will be there on Tuesday, at the trade-only event, to check out what’s new and exciting. Or at least interesting.
Jimmy Smith of Ca' Momi
We met Smith at last year’s event, and Anne was struck by his resemblance to Fieri – the celebrity chef who started out doing Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network, and went on to host Minute to Win It, on NBC. Then, in January, Anne caught up with Fieri.
Neither of the guys are terribly worried about having a doppleganger.
“Well, let me send him some of the bills, then,” Fieri joked.
Smith just suggested that he actually looks more like Billy Idol’s father.
Both get asked a lot about wine, but Fieri said that folks mostly want to know what he likes and Smith said folks are looking for the next big thing.
“In general, the question I get more than anything from anybody is what’s hot? What’s new?” Smith said.
Fieri said he mostly gets asked what his favorite wine is, but that’s a little hard for him to say .
“I get into favorite wineries more than I get into favorite wines,” he said. “And if you really believe in your winery, then you’ll have a chance to move yourself through different varietals.”
One of his current faves is Bonny Doon Vineyards and while he didn’t say much about the wine, he does love the label on Le Cigare Volant, Bonny Doon’s seriously good Rhone-style blend, particularly because of the notation that in France, a law was passed in the 1950s that outlawed alien landings in the vineyards.
“Such and eclectic imagination of wine,” Fieri said.
Smith – who is doing a lot of public tastings and so can be expected to be asked about trends – says that a lot of people are asking for sweet wines.
“It’s amazing how many sweet tooths have appeared and reared it’s ugly head,” he said, adding that while he does like sweeter wines, he doesn’t like the really, really sweet ones.
Smith also noted that there’s a big difference in how younger wine drinkers approach wines.
“They ask a lot of questions but they don’t ask detailed questions,” he said.
Most 20-somethings want to know where the winery is and what the wine tastes like, whereas the 40-plus crowd is asking the real geeky stuff and are more selective about what they drink.
“It’s a wine tasting. The point is to try the stuff,” Smith said, which the younger drinkers do. “It’s real interesting to see the dichotomy.”
Okay, maybe they don’t look all that much alike. But add the ‘tude and TV personality Guy Fieri and Jimmy Smith, national sales manager for Ca’ Momi wine in Napa, could definitely be brothers. We’re featuring this wild and woolly pair in honor of the Family Winemakers of California tasting happening in Pasadena on Tuesday, March 15. They had an open-to-the-public event in Del Mar on Sunday, but we had to miss it. However, we will be there on Tuesday, at the trade-only event, to check out what’s new and exciting. Or at least interesting. We met Smith at last year’s event, and Anne was struck by his resemblance to Fieri – the celebrity chef who started out doing Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network, and went on to host Minute to Win It, on NBC. Then, in January, Anne caught up with Fieri. Neither of the guys are terribly worried about having a doppleganger. “Well, let me send him some of the bills, then,” Fieri joked. Smith just suggested that he actually looks more like Billy Idol’s father. Both get asked a lot about wine, but Fieri said that folks mostly want to know what he likes and Smith said folks are looking for the next big thing. “In general, the question I get more than anything from anybody is what’s hot? What’s new?” Smith said. Fieri said that it’s hard for him to say what his favorite wine is. “I get into favorite wineries more than I get into favorite wines,” he said. “And if you really believe in your winery, then you’ll have a chance to move yourself through different varietals.” One of his current faves is Bonny Doon Vineyards and while he didn’t say much about the wine, he does love the label on Le Cigare Volant, Bonny Doon’s seriously good Rhone-style blend, particularly because of the notation that in France, a law was passed in the 1950s that outlawed alien landings in the vineyards. “Such and eclectic imagination of wine,” Fieri said. Smith – who is doing a lot of public tastings and so can be expected to be asked about trends, says that a lot of people are asking for them. “It’s amazing how many sweet tooths have appeared and reared it’s ugly head,” he said, adding that while he does like sweeter wines, he doesn’t like the really, really sweet ones. Smith also noted that there’s a big difference in how younger wine drinkers approach wines. “They ask a lot of questions but they don’t ask detailed questions,” he said. Most 20-somethings want to know where the winery is and what the wine tastes like, whereas the 40-plus crowd is asking the real geeky stuff and are more selective about what they drink. “It’s a wine tasting. The point is to try the stuff,” Smith said, which the younger drinkers do. “It’s real interesting to see the dichotomy.”
We had a blast last month, celebrating Valentine’s Day with port and bubbly. And we got to meet Anteres Anderson, who actually had two and a half wine FAQs to add to our upcoming list.
First up, What do you serve with hamburgers? And the half question, what do you serve with ribs?
And the second question was what are some good starter wines?
Come back soon to get the answers. We do plan on putting up a wine FAQ page sometime this spring.
We started out serving a Cockburn’s Special Reserve Porto (non-vintage).
A couple quick words about port. The wine traditionally comes from Portugal (hence the port in the name), from Porto, so that’s why you sometimes see it labeled Porto. The British really loved the stuff. If you’re a Dorothy Sayers fan, you know that Lord Peter Wimsey had a real thing for fine vintage ports. And it’s all over British literature. In any case, they started bottling it themselves and that’s why most ports you see in the States have labels from British companies. It is intended as a dessert wine, so that’s why it’s so sweet.
And here are the tasting notes we came up with for the wines that night.
Chandon Blanc de Noirs, NV
Type: Sparkling white
Plays well with: Chocolate strawberries, cheeses.
The wine has a lovely off-white, almost amber color, with a nice toasty nose. Like toast made from bread, as opposed to a toasted oak barrel. The toast carries through to the taste, that also has just a hint of sweetness, balanced with the slightly tart taste of acids. The finish, as the wine slides over the back of your tongue, is light and wonderful.
Cockburn’s Special Reserve Porto, NV
Type: Port/Sweet
Plays well with: Chocolate
Port is a sweet fortified wine – meaning that they added some extra alcohol at the end of the fermenting process to kick it up a bit, since the wine was not allowed to ferment all the sugars out (which would have made it dry). This is a ruby port – which is kind of obvious because it has the traditional dark red color. The nose has stewed fruit, or raisins and prunes (the good kind). The latter two carry through to the taste, which wasn’t overly sweet (although still too sweet for Anne’s liking). There were some mild acids and a little bit of heat from the alcohol – typical of a good port – and the finish lasted a good long time.
Here are the notes from the Sunday evening event celebrating the Altadena Public Library’s 85th Anniversary. As if we needed any more reason to appreciate our public libraries – our computers got a virus and Anne is using the APL computer to post this. Thank you, Altadena Public Library!
We also want to thank Chronicle Wine Cellar for providing the below wines. You can check them out at 919 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91106, (626) 577-2549.
Villa Alfieri Pinot Grigio 2008
Type: Dry white Plays well with: salad, cheese plates, seafood
The nose was slightly spicy and the color was very clear and clean. It had a medium weight in the mouth. The dryness went all through the palate to the back of the mouth.
Pinot Grigio tends to be a subtle wine and is built to accompany food. This wine is typical of that profile.
Cantaruttie Friuli, 2008
Type: Dry white Made with: Local grapes such as Friulano, Pinot Blanco or… We don’t know. Plays well with: Salad, seafood, sharp cheeses
This is one of those wines where the regional information doesn’t help with understanding the grape itself. Many indigenious grapes are grown all over Italy that are blended into other wines or such small productions that most are never seen outside the region itself.
The clean light color of this wine opened to some nice florals on the nose with a hint of lime and these flavors carried through the taste as well. The mouthfeel was somewhat lush – meaning full in the mouth with some very bracing acids. An excellent palate cleanser between bites of seafood ceviche or shrimp cocktail – hold the cocktail sauce. Alcohol was a polite 12.5 percent.
Chateau de la Roche, Touraine, 2009, Sauvignon Blanc
Type: Dry white
Plays Well With: Fettucine Alfredo, or other rich, creamy foods.
The signature grapefruit nose and taste of sauvignon blanc was all over this wine. The color is light and clean, the flavor filled with dry, crisp acids. Figure this one will balance out perfectly with a lovely, creamy Alfredo sauce or even some mac and cheese.
PKNT Chardonnay, 2009
Type: Dry white from Chile’s Maule Valley.
Plays Well With: Light fish and cheese and crackers.
There’s just a touch of oak on the nose of this one, maybe a little toast, as well. But that hint of oak played nicely into the flavor, in which Michael also caught some apple and tropical fruit notes. Anne just caught a nice, light wine that stands pretty well on its own, making it great for parties. But it would also be nice with a fish dinner, say, sole or red snapper.
Segura Viudas Brut Reserve, Non Vintage
Type: Sparkling white cava, from Spain.
Plays Well With: Just about anything!
For Anne, this one comes as close to real Champagne as any bubbly she’s ever tried. It’s soft, but crisp without some of that in-your-face tartness some dry bubblies have. Michael liked the clean nose, with a hint of apple, and found the flavor dry and crisp, dissolving into bubbles at the back of the palate, just like good bubbly should.
