Celebrity Wine FAQ – Brooke Burke-Charvet Wants to Know About CA Vintages

Brooke Burke-Charvet
Brooke Burke-Charvet

Dancing With the Stars is a major guilty pleasure here at The Old Homestead, and there’s little we love more than settling into our easy chairs with our glass of wine, our phones and some popcorn, and critiquing along with Len, Bruno and Carrie Ann. So we decided that with the show starting the semi-finals for this season on Monday (Nov. 18), it’s time for another Celebrity Wine FAQ.

We’ve got DWTS co-host Brooke Burke-Charvet today. She told us that she and her husband, David Charvet, are building a cellar.

“We’re very passionate about wine. My husband is French,” Burke-Charvet said. “He’s a wine snob, whereas I’m more open to California wines. He likes the big French Bordeaux.”

They do have a goodly collection currently.

“The problem is, we drink so much wine, we’re having a really hard time buying smart and saving and collecting,” she said. “You know, ideally, you can buy a $30 or $40 bottle now and in 10 years, you’re drinking a fabulous wine.”

Ah, yes. The joy of collecting and saving wine. Collecting is a fun thing to do if you’ve got the right storage conditions, which can vary for types of wines. Generally you want a container or room where you can keep the temperature consistently cool. That’s why people like basements or literally, cellars, to store their wine. And as Burke-Charvet noted, if you buy wine when it’s first released, and lay it down in your cellar (which may be a 40-bottle fridge or a whole basement) for 10 years or so, you can have a truly transcendent experience.

But then there’s also the issue of vintage – as Burke-Charvet noted, lots of folks are excited about the California cabernets from 1992 to 1997. Are they worth it? We have no idea. Wine Enthusiast magazine has a vintage chart here that can help you decide if your particular wines are ready to drink, but there are no guarantees.

Also, truth be told, when it comes to California wines, vintage is not quite the same issue it is in France, where the weather varies a lot more from year to year. In France, it’s not that unusual to have really good years and not so good years for wines. In California, there’s a lot of consistency from year to year, so you don’t get “great years” in the same way as France. That doesn’t mean we don’t get great wines. It’s just that with California wines, it’s more about how old they are than which year is better than another. So a good vintage chart can help you avoid breaking into that gorgeous super-expensive cab before it’s ready.

And here’s to another great competition this season.

Dancing Coyote 2009 Verdelho

Type: Dry white
Made with: Verdelho
Plays well with: Cream sauces, sharp cheeses, non-oily fish

If folks know about verdelho, they know it  primarily as a blending grape in its native Chianti, Italy. But winemakers in Portugal have been making a pretty tasty white out of it for…  Well, a really long time.  And several California growing areas are starting to include it in their own blends or as a varietal of its own – including the nice folks at Dancing Coyote, in Acampo, California, part of the Clarksburg appellation.

The 2009 Verdelho has a nice floral nose. The taste is citrus and spicy with dry fruit flavors  – think fresh peaches instead of canned peaches in syrup. These are the kind of good acids that clean the palate and prepare the mouth for the next taste. It would be a shame not to enjoy it with food, like some nice sharp cheese, but it’s also very nice on its own. Alcohol is 14.5 percent, which is fairly moderate these days.

Be aware, it’s almost gone – so do make sure you skip over to the website, www.dancingcoyotewines.com,  sooner rather than later if you want some.