2009 Guenoc Cabernet Sauvignon—A Crowd-Pleasing Value

My friend Linda recently brought over a bottle of the 2009 Guenoc Cabernet Sauvignon for a pot-luck Christmas party I was hosting. I had tasted this wine before but it had been a few years ago and I was happy to be reacquainted with this good value cab.

On the nose there was some big blackberry fruit backed up by some pleasing vanilla and spice. The wine was wonderfully mouth filling with flavors of cherry pie and earth. This was a surprisingly complex wine for its price (under $12.00) and it lingered nicely on the finish, a bit hot, but tempered with yummy mocha and stone fruit.

As you can imagine, our pot-luck buffet offered many pairing options. It paired well with the yam casserole and Linda’s roasted pork loin. It was equally tasty with the chocolate-coated éclairs.

If you are looking for an accessible Cabernet that will please most palates you can’t go wrong with the 2009 Guenoc Cabernet Sauvignon. And it’s cheap enough to share with all your friends!

2001 Cameron Willamette Valley Pinot Noir

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to preface this post by admitting that I am a big fan of Oregon Pinot Noir.

I love the big fruit flavors, the diversity of microclimates and soils, and the passion these winemakers bring to crafting wines from this challenging grape. So when I opened a bottle of 2001 Cameron Willamette Valley Pinot Noir the other night I did expect that I would like this wine. What I did not expect was how well it had aged.

Close to ten years in the bottle, I did see a clear lip when I poured the wine into a glass along with a slight brick tinge to the bright art glass color I was used to seeing in these pinots. But on the nose there was no hint of a wine in decline. I inhaled raspberry, cherry licorice, clove, sweet tobacco, and new oak.

On the palate I picked up the plum brandy flavor that I associate with some age, followed by bramble and mineral and a refreshing sparkling acid on the tongue.

This pinot finished long with a mild but lingering cherry pastille flavor. Yum, just the ticket for a cold, blustery night.

If you have a bottle of this wine in your cellar, I would recommend you liberate it— perhaps when there’s a turkey roasting or when you need just a little something…for medicinal purposes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What wine should you serve with the best-dressed bird? My preference has alway been a Californian Pinot Noir or a dry Rose. I will be bringing a 2008 Dry Rose from Valhalla Vineyards to our neighbor's home along with a couple of hefty mircobrews from Canada for my host Bob who enjoys a beer before his meal.

But really, I think you should serve whatever wine you think your guests will enjoy. That might mean a Beringer White Zinfandel for Grandma and a beer for Uncle Chuck. The reality is with all the dishes that are typically served at a Thanksgiving meal it's difficult, if not impossible, to choose one wine that complements both the spicy stuffing and the marshmallow-topped sweet potatos.

Don't sweat it. This is one day where no one will care. We will just be grateful for the food, the company, and a little bit of acid and alcohol to cut the grease and grease the conversation.

2005 Bargain Bordeaux

I had the privilege of tasting a barrel sample of the 2005 Mouton Rothschild when were visiting there in June of 2006. Despite its impressive showing as a young wine, I knew then that I would not be buying this wine by the bottle. The hype surrounding the 2005 vintage drove prices up quickly and even in this recession I would have difficulty finding a bottle of the 2005 Mouton Rothschild for under US$700.

Instead we stayed away from the top producers and their pricey real estate and have purchased quite reasonable 2005 Bordeaux wines for under $40. The Roanoke Fine Wine Society recently did a blind taste of eight bottles of 2005 Bordeaux wines from St. Emilion, Pessac-Leognan, and Medoc to see what these relatively bargain wines offered in the glass.

Some were in a funky stage but most were very drinkable now if you can endure the mouth-drying tannins. These are definitely food wines. We paired these wines with braised beef and potatoes and hard cheeses and we were richly rewarded. Some of the evening’s highlights included a 2005 Chateau Joanin Becot (St. Emilion), Rollan de By (Medoc), and a Chateau Larrivet Haut-Brion (Pessac-Leognan) all of which were rated 90 by Robert Parker and can be found for under US$40.

Of course, had we bought the 2005 Mouton Rothschild at release it would have been a very good investment but you can buy a case and a half of these less renowned Bordeaux wines for the $700 plus it would cost to buy one bottle of the Mouton today.

Which brings up the question: Are you a wine collector or a wine drinker?

Wine or Water?

My mother sends me jokes over the internet once in a while and this one made me smile:

As Ben Franklin said: In wine there is wisdom,
in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. coli) - bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember:
Water = Poop,
Wine = Health

Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit.

2005 Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is Still #1 in My Book

This month the Roanoke Fine Wine Society sat down to taste 10 of Wine Spectators Top 100 wines of 2009.

There were a lot of great wines on the table including the group favorite, a 2007 Two Hands Bella’s Garden Shiraz, but the wine that most impressed me was the 2005 Columbia Crest Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve.

On the nose it was yeasty with lots of black cherry and spice. On the palate it offered up coffee, leather, vanilla and charred oak and some gripping tannins that carried though to a 30 + second finish. It’s a monster of a wine sure to have a few more good years.

A whopping 5,000 cases of this wine were offered up for sale but the supply is quickly dwindling. At release a bottle of this juice could be had for around $27.00. Now you’re lucky to find it on-line for under $90.

How’s that for wine appreciation?

1999 Markham Merlot Napa Valley Reserve

Maybe it was evening—the sunset, the warm breezes—or maybe this was just a darn good bottle of wine! We tasted the 1999 Markham Merlot Napa Valley Reserve right out of the cellar. It was July in Virginia so it took no time to warm in the glass and reveal its stuff. I was surprised how young it looked, having had ten years in the bottle, and on a series of sniffs I picked up black cherry, blackberry, oak, coffee bean, and tobacco. Dreamy.

This wine still had some nice structure on the palate with a silky mouthfeel and finished long and firm. Oooh, that’s rather suggestive!

I suggest opening and enjoying this wine now while it’s still got the goods.

Off the Beaten Path: Town House in Chilhowie, Virginia

Last week members of the Roanoke Fine Wine society took a field trip to the Town House, a forty seat restaurant in Chilhowie, Virginia which has carved out a niche in the destination dining corridor between Bristol, Tennessee and Roanoke,Virgina thanks to a generous helping of good press from Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, and Wine Spectator.

With easy access from Interstate 81, chefs Karen Urie Shields and John B. Shields, a 2010 Food & Wine Best New Chef, are luring foodies and wine lovers to this tiny town (pop. 1,800) to enjoy their exquisite and creative offerings, including a rib-eye of beef cooked in ash and dressed with bonito flakes and a parchment of black garlic, and an egg mousse with steelhead roe which had David Tenzer, a onetime food writer for the Roanoke Times, quivering with delight.

Our group of ten was presented with a special menu of four courses, with wine pairings chosen by sommelier Charlie Berg. At first sip we questioned his choice of the NV Emilio Lustau “Jarama” fino sherry, but when tasted with the paired appetizer of Peekytoe crab meat roasted in brown butter with lime and salt cod we ate our words.

The presentation was sparse but beautiful and the ingredients for the entrée selections were sourced from the finest regional providers. I doubted that any morsel on our plates had seen the inside of a freezer but where Karen and John Shields really distinguished themselves was in the small but thoughtful selection of desserts. Who would have dared pair powdered chocolates with a “salad” of local herbs? A mad genius, that’s who! But I tell you, it works!

Town House
132 E. Main Street
Chilhowie, Virginia 24319
276.646.8787

Not Too Late for this 1999 CDP!

Robert and I were pulling wines from the cellar when we came across this 1999 Clos de L’Oratoire Des Papes Chateauneuf-du-Papes. When we bought this wine it was US $30 and I put a sticker on it instructing us to drink between 2007-2010. It was June 14, 2010. We sat down to a simple dinner of potato leek soup and a salad with blue cheese and cherries and poured ourselves a glass.

The clear lip and red brick color gave away its age but much fruit remained. Cherry, plum, and leather on the nose. On the palate it was a very elegant wine and there was enough tannin left to complement our eclectic menu. I corked the bottle with one glass remaining and it still had some life when I tasted it the next night. It’s not too late to drink this wine but it’s showing its age. Get on it!

A Value from South Africa

I was recently in World Market looking for wine bargains and found a featured wine from South Africa that looked interesting. First of all it was a Cabernet Sauvignon which is not commonly bottled as a single varietal in South Africa, it was labeled Coastal South Africa (which made me wonder where the grapes originated), and it was a bargain at $10 US.

The producer of this wine was MAN Vintners (an unknown to me) and it was a 2008 vintage--relatively young. However, I bought a bottle to try and shared it with my parents, pairing it with some grilled pork chops and roasted squash. We were very impressed with the wine's pleasing blueberry and cherry fruit, the impressive color, and round and sumptuous mouthfeel. A few days later I returned to the World Market to buy a few more bottles and was disappointed to find they had since sold out of this wine.

Luckily I was able to order this wine through my local Kroger supermarket and I enjoyed another bottle with grilled chutney glazed chicken and grilled corn and portobella mushrooms. Yum.

I went online to find out more about the producer and learned that their wines had been chosen as "Best Value" by both Wine Enthusiast magazine and South African Wine magazine. Their portfolio of wines also include Shiraz, Pinotage, Rosé, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, and Sauvignon Blanc.

I also found out that the 2008 cab was a blend of 80 percent Agter-Paarl and 20 percent Stellenbosch grapes and that 2010 Platter's Wine Guide had given it 3 ½ stars out of five for its "Fleshy succulence and drinkability."

I couldn't agree more!

D’Arenberg’s The Laughing Magpie: Love at First Sip

We first tasted this wine in 2004 and we were instantly smitten. I don’t recall the vintage (it was likely a 2002 or 2003) but I recall my surprise and delight. I had never before tasted a Shiraz blended with a splash of Viognier. Adding this fragrant and full-body white grape to a deep-colored, muscular and spicy Shiraz seemed to me, at the time, a stroke of genius. It still does many years later as we pulled a 2004 out of the cellar.

The 2004 still had the same deep purple color, the same herbal, floral nose I recalled from the earlier vintage. It had the same velvet mouthfeel which I credited to the Viognier which, even in a small dose at 6 percent, took the edge off of a tannic in-your-face McLaren Vale Shiraz. The dark fruits from the Shiraz remained firmly in control on the palate and carried on with spice and tea-like tannins on the finish. It proved to be a great pairing with the chicken curry I had prepared that night.

We were so impressed with 2004 we ordered a bottle of the 2006 at a Valentine’s dinner with our neighbors a few nights later. Again, that impressive deep purple color, same round velvety mouthfeel but this time we tasted more dark chocolate and cherry than in the 2004 which seemed perfect for the occasion as we polished off a second bottle with the pot du crème au chocolate dessert.

I have often wondered how this Australian blend came to be. At first I suspected it might have been a marriage of convenience between a sweet and fragrant young vine Viognier and a curmudgeonly old vine Shiraz. But it turns out this wine was not a hasty blend, but rather a thoughtful and deliberate co-fermentation process that suggests an arranged marriage. No judgment here, as they seem happy together in a marriage that seems to have held up over many good years.