Searching for Syrah

Lately I've been craving meaty, smoky Syrahs - the kind that remind you of bacon at Sunday brunch. It started when I first moved out here and visited a wine bar in my neighborhood where we got a glass of 2009 Emmanuel Darnaud Crozes-Hermitage Mise en Bouche, a classic Northern Rhone French Syrah. I've been looking for something similar ever since. Recently I encountered 2 that fit the bill. The first one materialized at an event we co-hosted last Friday night at the San Francisco Wine Center with Wine Gavel, an online wine auctioneer. We invited our storage clients, and someone ran down to their storage locker during the event and grabbed a bottle of this to share with everyone:

Alesia Santa Lucia Highlands Fairview Ranch Vineyard 2006

Unfortunately I didn't see the person and no one I asked could tell me who it was. But it was really delicious, and I'm glad this mystery person donated it!

Then, this week, one of the guys at work was making a delivery for a storage client and they gave him a couple bottles of wine as a thank-you. He brought them back to SFWC and shared them with us. The storage couple made the wine at Crushpad, a custom crush facility in Sonoma. I loved their 2006 Syrah "The Bailout." Really smoky and meaty with a touch of dark fruit. Full bodied, really smooth. I'm going to look into getting some of this - I hear they are looking to sell some bottles.

Both these wines are from Santa Barbara county, which I've heard is a great place for Syrah. Clearly I already have a preference for this area. Maybe I better plan a weekend trip down there.

Just in time for Memorial Day - Grilling Wines!

This week at SFWC we hosted a class on Grilling Wines. We purposely left out Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Chardonnay so that we were forced to explore other BBQ wines. I love food and wine pairing, so this was really fun and educational. I actually found a Gruner Veltliner that I like - usually I am underwhelmed by this varietal. I discovered an awesome Italian Lagrein that was really enjoyable on its own and with each of the foods we had.

Unfortunately, the software on my Blackberry updated recently and now my camera takes really blurry pictures. They used to be so good! I don't know what happened. So the labels on these wines aren't clear but you can catch the full names on the SFWC blog.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Let me know if you do any interesting wine/grill pairings.

Lagrein Wine

A couple months ago there was an article in the New York Times about Lagrein, a red grape varietal from northeastern Italy. I read the article and instantly wanted to try this wine, which Eric Asimov described as "deliciously plummy, earthy and chewy, dark and full-bodied but not heavy, with a pronounced minerally edge." Shortly thereafter, I was in Napa with a couple visiting friends and we came across a Lagrein at Imagery Estate Winery. I was primed to like it, and I did. Maybe because I wanted to, because of the article. I got a bottle to take home to my boyfriend, who had sent me the article. We drank it one night with dinner, and we noticed the high alcohol. It was jammy in the California style, and I'm not sure I liked it as much as when I tasted it at the winery. The next morning we were both hungover.

This week at SFWC's Grilling Wines class, I tried one of the well-known Italian Lagrein producers, Hofstätter, and I loved their Lagrein. It was balanced, rich, spicy, and full-bodied without being heavy. The alcohol was probably around 2% lower than the California had been. It was interesting to see the new world vs. old world comparison. I admit I am getting more used to California wine, my tolerance for alcohol and tannin is getting stronger and I have found a lot to like. But in this case I prefer the old world version.











New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/dining/reviews/30wine.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Old World vs. New World

This week's class at San Francisco Wine Center was a comparison of Old World (Europe) and New World (everywhere else) wines, and I donated a sample of Hermann J. Wiemer Dry Riesling 2009 to the cause! The 2009 Dry Riesling was recently released, and I am very proud of this wine because I helped make it during my time working at Wiemer. I sorted the grapes, monitored the fermentation, racked the wine, contributed my sensory opinion in putting together the final blend from our 3 Riesling vineyard sites, filtered, bottled and labeled it. Last night, we pinned it against a German Kabinett Riesling from the Rheingau and I thought the Wiemer showed fantastically. I was excited to share this wine with the other employees at the SFWC and the students in the class.

The rest of the comparisons were interesting and intriguing:

Elegant white Burgundy led the way for creamy California Chardonnay:
Olivier Leflaive Puligny Montrachet Les Folatières 1er Cru 2009 (Cote de Beaune, Burgundy) vs. Deovlet Soloman Hills Vineyard Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay 2009 (Santa Barbara, CA)

Delicate Pinots from Burgundy and Oregon stumped many:
Erath Estate Selection Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 2008 (Oregon) vs. Domaine Jacques Prieur Beaune Champs-Pimont 1er Cru 2008 (Cote de Beaune, Burgundy)

Popular Argentine Malbec found its roots in Cahors, France:
Château du Cèdre Cahors 2007 (Cahors, Southwest France) vs. Norton Malbec Reserva 2007 (Mendoza, Argentina)

Cabernet-dominated Margaux confused the California Cab drinker:
Blason D’Issan Margaux 2007 (Bordeaux, France) vs. Meteor Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 (Napa Valley, CA)

Burgundy-land

On Monday at SFWC Mary Burnham was using the space to taste a bunch of wines that she is reviewing for Food & Wine Magazine's 2012 wine buying guide. She had tons of samples open, so she said I could taste them. After I finished work I went through the lineup. Mary was evaluating 2009 white Chablis and Burgundy with a few red Burgs at the end. There were so many to like! I tasted through the whites multiple times, trying to find my favorites.

2009 was a warm vintage in Chablis, a sub-appellation of Burgundy, so these wines are less austere and minerally than usual, but what it means is they are very ready to drink now. I liked the offerings from Domaine Billaud-Simon and Domaine Christian Moreau:

These 2 Burgundy's were awesome. It was the Latour family who transformed the now-famed Corton Charlemagne vineyard from dead Aligote and Pinot Noir vines after prohibition to the coveted Chardonnay that grows there today. The one on the right is a tank sample of Domaine Jacques Prieur. My guess is the wine hadn't been filtered and bottled in time to submit the sample, so they grabbed a tank sample for submission, and therefore it was cloudy. But how delicious it was! Creamy but tart at the same time, lots of layers and complexity.

The few reds sampled were also really awesome expressions of Burgundy. I hadn't had red Burgundy in a while, and after tasting California Pinot Noir for the last few weeks I had forgotten how much I love Burgundy. My palate remembers now, but my wallet does not.

The travesty of a wine reviewer - too many samples!
So I got to take some home :)

Amazing Bordeaux

Last week's Bordeaux class at SFWC was amazing - tasting 5 decades of Bordeaux was really a special sensory experience. It was unfortunate that the oldest samples were oxidized - 1964 Chateau Leoville Poyferre from Saint-Julien and 1970 Chateau Haut Brion from Pessac Leognan - but that is the risk with older wines, especially when you don't know how they were stored or traveled before you acquired them. Still, my sensory education of Bordeaux over the last few weeks has been fascinating, and in particular I've really enjoyed these wines:

1. Chateau Brane-Cantenac 2008 - Margaux 
2. Chateau Langoa-Barton 2000 - Saint Julien
3. Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou 1996 – Saint-Julien
4. Chateau Beychevelle 1981 – Saint-Julien
5. Chateau Longueville Baron de Pichon 1978 – Pauillac
6. Chateau Margaux Pavillon Blanc 2005 – Margaux (white)
7. Chateau Nairac 1976 – Sauternes (dessert)

I think of my friend Ghislain, Bordeaux native and winemaking student who interned with us at Wiemer for the 2010 harvest, and I wonder what he thinks of these?

Slainte!
(That's 'Cheers' in French!)

Common Scents

 This week's Aromatics class at SFWC was a lot of fun to prepare for and to experience. We gathered a wide variety of "natural" scents - fruits, flowers, spices, vegetables, etc.- to compliment the vials in a Le Nez Du Vin aroma kit, a common tool used by people in the wine industry to train their noses and palates. Since taste is very heavily linked to smell, aromas and flavors are often somewhat consistent. Students went around to different stations and smelled the scents, helping to creating a palate memory before tasting the wines. It is always good to exercise your nose like this, and for beginners especially it is a really useful exercise. I was excited to smell things like juniper berries and currants, scents that I know are way back in my palate memory but have been forgotten.

 After everyone had smelled everything, they sat down and went through the tasting blind, identifying aromas in the wines and then checking those identifications against the actual scents that we had gathered. It was very interactive, and everyone agreed that smelling the scents first was really helpful in identifying the scents in the glass. The wines we chose were aromatic expressions of the grape and origin: Australian Riesling, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Alsatian Gewurz, Oregon Pinot Noir, Rhone Syrah, and  red Bordeaux blend.

Next week: Old World vs. New World wines!

My new gig

I've started working part-time at the San Francisco Wine Center as their Marketing Manager. SFWC is really cool - the concept is based on private wine storage for people who need a place to store their wine (or age it, as the case may be), so we cater to collectors and offer collector services, like sourcing rare wines and handling their wine club shipments. SFWC also offers Wine School, where every week wine lovers can attend classes led by sommeliers, wine writers and other experts in the wine trade. Surprisingly, there are not many places in San Francisco that offer regular wine tastings or classes. When I lived in NYC there were always events like this going on, and finding a tasting class any night of the week was easy. But in San Francisco it is a rarity, so we are really the only game in town. The last two classes have been fantastic, and I've gotten to try some great wines.

Tasting and Describing Wine - April 12

Grand Wines of Bordeaux - April 19

Check out the San Francisco Wine Center blog, where I'll be blogging about the classes every week, and follow us on Facebook!

Over the Hill

Last weekend I went to a crazy party at a community center in San Bruno, featuring a Zydeco band and honoring the birthday of a friend's mother. I didn't know it was BYOB until I got there, so all I had was a bouquet of flowers for the birthday lady. Someone brought a bottle of 1975 Chateau Ste. Michelle Cabernet Sauvignon, and I was invited to try it. Chateau Ste. Michelle is Washington state's oldest vineyard, dating back to the 1950s after prohibition, and this was the oldest wine I've ever tasted! It was super interesting on the nose, with very developed, almost vegetal aromas plus some stewed fruit. On the palate it had good structure and flavor, very complex but with almost no fruit flavor left. Still, I was impressed, until I got to the finish, which is where it fell off. It was oxidized, unfortunately, so the finish was a bit sour. Maybe 5 years ago the wine would have been at its best. Still, it was really interesting to experience. Thanks to Michael and Stephanie for a great party and for grabbing me to try this!

Buds and Palms and an Iron Horse

We've reached bud break here in northern California, and I still can't believe that there are palm trees in the Bay area. Palm trees, to me, belong in tropical areas, not temperate, always-60-degrees-unless-it-goes-down-to-40 San Francisco. But still, there are palm trees in the city and in the surrounding wine areas. I went up to Sonoma this week with some visiting friends to check out more Pinot Noir and sparkling wines. The most exciting stop on the trip was Iron Horse, famous for the fact that its sparkling wines are served at the White House. Iron Horse is located in the Green Valley, a sub-appellation of the Russian River Valley. I loved their 2006 Russian Cuvee, aptly named both because the fruit comes from the Russian River Valley and because it was first served at the Reagan-Gorbachev summit meetings.

 I loved the richness and toastiness from the heavy Pinot and extended lees aging (4 years). The White House still orders it, but they prefer it say "Russian River" on the label, so Iron Horse makes a special label for them. (0.8% residual sugar; $38)