Wine Beneath The Palms

Big occasion wines for hard times

  Life goes on despite the economy. Graduations, weddings, anniversaries are rites of passage that call for celebratory meals with fine, congratulatory wines. This can be hard with money tight.

   So I'm highlighting three superb wines worthy of the best occasions, priced from
$14 to $30 -- wines you'd serve if the Obamas or Martha Stewart dropped by. All three are highly recommended.

   • 2007 Casa Lapostolle Carmenère Cuvée Alexandre, Colchagua Valley, Chile; $28. When I visited this winery, 100 miles south of Santiago, Chile, in 1996, the year it pened, I stood in awe in front of  thick, gnarled grapevines, some of which were 80, even 100 years old. And wine experts agree that old vines make the best wine.

   I was told the vines were merlot. More recently, DNA testing has revealed that some of them were really carmenère. It's a noble grape that was wiped out in France's Bordeaux region by the root louse phylloxera in the 1890s, and was thought to be nearly extinct. Turns out it's been thriving all along in phylloxera-free Chile.

   Casa Lapostolle is run by Alexandra Marnier-Lapostolle, daughter of the French family that makes the liqueur Grand Marnier. The wine, named for her father, is beautiful: complex, dark, rich, mellow, ultra smooth, with flavors of black raspberries and cinnamon and ripe tannins. To me, it's as good as any $50 wine. It's not a grilled-steak wine. Serve it with roast duck, slow-roasted prime rib of  beef, grilled pork, rosemary roast chicken or coq au vin, for example.

   

• 2007 Clos de los Siete, Valle de Uco, Argentina; $19. Michel Rolland, origi-
nally from the Pomerol region of France, is called ‘‘the flying winemaker''
because he consults with more than 100 grape growers and winemakers around the world, from Chile to South Africa to Hungary. His style is powerfully fruity wine with hearty oak-barrel aging.

   Now he's making a wine of his own in the foothills of the Andes in Argentina. Bringing in six  French investors, he calls the wine Clos de los Siete, or "vineyard of the seven." He starts with Argentina's signature grape, malbec, for its mullberry and chocolate flavors, adds merlot for smoothness, cabernet sauvignon for its tannic backbone and syrah for its hearty richness. He ages it in expensive new French oak barrels.

   Rolland turns out a wine that's wonderfully rich, with shifting flavors of mulberries, black cherries and black raspberries. It's an amazingly complex wine for under $20. This is one for red meat -- grilled steak and roast lamb.

   • 2005 Merlot Encore, Christian Moueix, Bordeaux; $14.  This Bordeaux-based winery owner's top wine, Chateau Pétrus, sells for nearly $3,000 a bottle, so it's astonishing that he's now also producing a French merlot for $14.

   It lacks the power, finesse and longevity of the Pétrus, of course. But it's a great value for the price -- earthy, with flavors of black cherries, black pepper and herbs and soft tannins. It's a good wine for backyard barbecuing.

   Quick hamburgers are OK, but I'm really talking about all-out grilling -- massive haunches of beef dry-rubbed with spices, slow-grilled for hours over indirect heat. At this price, it's a good candidate for big, multi-bottle parties.

 

Mountain retreat becomes winery in California

 

   If you were going to create a winery, wouldn’t it be nice to start from scratch? You could if you were a multimillionaire businessman like Jerry Brassfield. The son of a Fresno, Calif., rancher, he left home at 19 to found his own empire -- direct sales of vitamins and nutritional supplements in 50 countries, half a dozen car dealerships, restaurant stock.

   In 1973, seeking a quiet refuge for his family, he bought High Serenity, a 2,500-acre cattle ranch and wildlife preserve. It was beautiful -- rolling hills in a volcanic valley on the shores of Clear Lake, north and east of California’s main Napa-Sonoma wine area, two hours north of Sacramento.

   He meant to leave it like that. But one day, helicoptering in from work, he noticed a neighbor planting grapevines. “I can do that?” he asked.

   Soon, the cattle were sold, says winemaker Kevin Robinson, and in 1998, 350 acres were turned into vineyards. The winery followed in 2003.

   With the confidence of beginners, Brassfield and Robinson decided to plant everything -- pinot grigio, zinfandel, gewürztraminer, Johannisberg riesling, sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, pinot noir, syrah, merlot, petit verdot, grenache, petite sirah, malbec and mourvedre.

    Robinson's winemaking philosophy is simple: ‘‘I want wines that just taste good. Wines you can bring to a menu. A lot of people make bigger wines, forgetting that wines are enjoyed best with food. I try for fruit-forward wines with good acid, modest oak aging and lower alcohol."

   He concedes it's possible Brassfield will follow the example of other new growers and gradually cut back production to the grapes that do best on their land.

   "We might trim some out," he says. "On the other hand, we've been
talking about planting some Rhône grapes, some viognier."

HIGHLY
RECOMMENDED

   • 2007 Brassfield
Estate "Serenity'' white
wine, High Serenity Ranch
Vineyard, High Valley (sau-
vignon blanc, pinot grigio,
gewürztraminer, semillon):
soft, lightly sweet, with ripe
pear and apple flavors; $15.

   • 2006 Brassfield
Estate Pinot Noir, High
Serenity Ranch Vineyard,
High Valley: black cherry
and spice, full-bodied and
rich; $24.

RECOMMENDED

   • 2007 Brassfield
Estate Pinot Grigio, High
Serenity Ranch Vineyard,
High Valley: light and crisp
with floral aromas and fla-
vors of green pears; $15.

   • 2007 Brassfield
Estate Sauvignon Blanc,
High Serenity Ranch Vine-
yard, High Valley (85 per-
cent sauvignon blanc, 13.5
percent semillon 1.5 percent
gewürztraminer): crisp and
rich with flavors of green
melons and ripe pears; $16.

   • 2005 Brassfield
Estate Zinfindel, Round
Mountain and Volcano vine-
yards, High Valley (92 per-
cent zinfandel, 8 percent
syrah): soft and hugely rich
with red raspberry and
chocolate flavors; $22.

   • 2005 Brassfield
Estate Merlot, High Seren-
ity Ranch Vineyard, High
Valley (77 percent merlot, 18
percent cabernet franc, 5
percent petite verdot): rich
and ripe with black cherry
and black pepper aromas
and flavors; $23.

   • 2004 Brassfield
Estate Syrah, Round
Mountain, High Valley: rich
and ripe with earthy aromas
and black raspberry flavors;
$24.

Reader seeks wine, food in New York's Finger Lakes

Dear Fred,

I'm going on a road trip this summer in the Cayuaga Lake / Seneca Lake area in New York State.  I understand there are a lot of wineries in that area.  Do you have any advice on good wineries or restaurants in that area?

Thank you,

Vicki Pearlman

Dear Vicki,

            I envy you the trip. The Finger Lakes area is a delight. Here are a few paragraphs from a travel story I wrote about the area:
            Unlike California's wine country, the Finger Lakes wineries can show you flavors from three distinctive eras of American wine.
            At Bully Hill Vineyards the wines are catawba, elvira, Delaware -- hardy American native grapes that have grown along the Eastern Seaboard for centuries. The taste: grapy, simple, sweet. 
            At Cascata Winery, the wine is baco noir, a hybrid grape developed by French vintners around 1900 seeking better-tasting wines and vines that could withstand the frigid winters of North America. The taste: charry oak, resin, black cherries; a step up, but still unfamiliar to most American palates.
             At Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinifera Wine Cellars, the wines are chardonnay, riesling, pinot noir. The taste: crisp, rich and dry - as main-line and familiar to American tastes as anything from California or Europe. The riesling in particular wins medals in national competitions.
              For dining, I like the bistro at Red Newt Cellars on the east side of Seneca Lake in Hector, N.Y. They make some nice wines as well.
               You can find more info at visitfingerlakes.com
                Let me know how you make out.

Fred

Historical wines from Down Under

   In 1992 two Aussies, Kim and Mark Longbottom, started a winery in Australia's Padthaway district, in the country's cool southern region, a three-hour drive from the chilly Antarctic Sea.

   They were history buffs, so they named the winery Henry's Drive, after the carrier on the mail route plied in that area by horse and stagecoach in the 1850s. As new wines came along, they, too, were named in the old postal theme. Pillar Box red and white were named for the colorful mail boxes that dotted the then-remote hillsides.

   Dead Letter Office shiraz got its name the same way. Parson's Flat shiraz honored the minister who rode the postal coach to tend to his scattered flock. The Trial of John Montford Cabernet Sauvignon was named for the outlaw who was hanged for robbing the mails.

   Last year -- sad to say -- Mark Longbottom died. But his wife Kim, and new winemaker Renae Hirsch, are carrying on making wines, working 500 acres of vines that produce 160,000 cases a year.

   The limestone soils produce wines with complex scents of minerals. The wines are made in the rich, fruity style equally popular with Australians and Americans. The bright sun produces fruit so ripe that their the juice's sugar levels can ferment into wines with
more than 15 percent alcohol.

   "In some of our grape parcels we use reverse osmosis to bring down the alcohol level to make more balanced wines," Hirsch says. "We want the wines to be fruity, but without too much alcohol in the finish."

   Some of Henry's Drive's red wines -- the Pillar Box Reserve Red, for example -- do end up at 15.5 percent alcohol (compared to a 12 percent average for wine), but they're so
intensely fruity that they can handle that alcohol.

   "We're happy with that," Hirsch says. "We don't plan to change."

  

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

  

   • 2008 Henry's Drive Pillar Box White, Padthaway (67 percent sauvignon blanc, 28
percent verdelho, 5 percent chardonnay): tart kiwi and lime flavors, very dry, crisp, very
fruity; $12.

   • 2005 Henry's Drive Parson's Flat Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon (70 percent shiraz, 30
percent cabernet sauvignon), Padthaway: aromas and flavors of lavender, violets,
mulberries and chocolate, opulent and smooth; $40.

   • 2005 Henry's Drive Reserve Shiraz (100 percent shiraz) Padthaway: intensely minty
black raspberry flavors, mocha overtones, voluptuous and smooth; $50.

  

  

RECOMMENDED:

   • 2007 Henry's Drive Pillar Box White, Padthaway (56 percent chardonnay, 30 percent
sauvignon blanc, 14 percent verdelho): green pear aromas and flavors, rich, opulent, sweet finish; $12.

   • 2007 Henry's Drive Pillar Box Reserve Shiraz (100 percent shiraz), Padthaway: very
dark color, aromas and flavors of mulberries and cocoa, velvety, deep, concentrated fruit; $20.

   • 2007 Henry's Drive Pillar Box Red (65 percent shiraz, 25 percent cabernet sauvignon,
10 percent merlot) Padthaway: black raspberries and mocha, big, bright and frity, soft
tannins; $12.

   • 2006 Henry's Drive Dead Letter Office Shiraz (100 percent shiraz), Padthaway: aromas and flavors of licorice and black cherries, very smooth; $27.

   • 2006 Henry's Drive Shiraz (100 percent shiraz), Padthaway: cassis and espresso, lush,
concentrated black fruit; $35.

   • 2006 Henry's Drive Trial of John Montford Cabernet Sauvignon (100 percent cabernet
sauvignon), Padthaway: earthy aromas, flavors of licorice and sweet chocolate; $30.

A soupcon of sea urchin in your chardonnay?

    I get in trouble from time to time for using terms like iodine, tar and cat pee to describe the aromas and flavors in wine.

    It could be worse.

    Decanter magazine has an article by a Chinese wine expert arguing that Asians find many Western wine terms inscrutable. She says we'd do better using descriptors more familiar to Asians -- like sea urchin, Kobe beef ot shark's fin.

     Keep an eye on my future wine columns.

Jacques Pepin popular on WLRN food & wine show

     I didn’t realize how beloved chef Jacques Pepin is until he was the guest on the WLRN food and wine show with Linda Gassenheimer and me on Thursday. Callers hardly even had questions for him. They just wanted to tell him how much they appreciated his cooking TV shows and recipe books.
     He talked about Mediterranean cooking, and I talked about the wines of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. Linda had gone on a cruise and visited the island and its famous winery, Sela & Mosca. I complained that I didn’t get to go, but had to talk about the wines.
     Still, they’re very Mediterranean grapes, so they’re appropriate for Jacques Pepin’s recipes.
Sardinia is a big island about 120 miles off Rome on the Italian mainland. Its eastern shore, the Emerald Coast, is full of Italian vacation villas, fancy yachts and jet-setters cavorting in the emerald waters. But its interior, especially in the north, is mountainous and rugged. And home to a giant winery called Mosca & Sela that makes some very good wines.
      For the most part, the grapes aren’t the usual chardonnay, merlot, cabernet and such. They are more unusual grapes and wines. Just to name a couple:
· Vermentino, a crisp, rich white wine with flavors of grapefruit and oranges.
· Cannoneau, the red grape called Grenache in France, with spicy strawberry and raspberry flavors.
· Terre Bianche, a white wine from the local torbato grape, which tastes like vanilla.
· Terrarare, a red wine from the carignano grape, that’s spicy and fruity.
     Jacques said he has visited the winery and particularly likes its vermentino. Give it a try. Supermarkets probably don’t carry it; you’ll have to go to a big wine shop.
     Oh, and check out the program on our podcast. Click on the icon at left.

 

Eiffel Tower falling down

    Blame it on the recession or on France's newfound love for soft drinks, but the Associated Press reports that the French drank 10 percent less wine last year than in 2007. And their wine exports fell by 15 percent.

Bargain wines for tough economic times

 

   It's a little like the auto industry. Winemakers, understanding our sour economic mood, are scrambling to please us. They're not always lowering prices on existing products; instead, they're creating new blends, even new wines, at lower prices. And if they already have popular wines at popular prices, they're taking them off the lower shelves and placing them at eye-level so we will notice them.

   To create these wines, they tend to steer away from California's standard, expensive cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay and toward unusual grape blends created in France, Italy and Spain.

   It's amazing what you can buy for $20 and under. The iconoclastic Bonny Doon Vineyard in California, for example, is taking Italy's famous sangiovese grape and blending in freisa, syrah and grenache to produce a sturdy, extra-fruity steak wine for $13. It's quite different from the more traditional Banfi Centine from Italy, which blends sangiovese with cabernet sauvignon and merlot to create a richer, softer black-cherry scented wine. But the price is the same: $13.

   For white wine lovers, Bonny Doon turns to a wine that's popular in Spain's northern Galicia region. Butit uses grapes from Monterey County, Calif., to create a blend of albariño, loureiro and treixadura at $19.

   For lovers of Asian cuisine, Bonny Doon produces a muscat wine in the northern Italian style, with moscato giallo grapes blended with loureiro. It's slightly off-dry with very crisp acid -- a nice food wine. And $18.

   Also from Italy comes a pinot grigio from Stellina di Notte. This is a good recession-era choice, since an inexpensive pinot grigio, by its nature, is more likely to be good than, say, an inexpensive sauvignon blanc. It's more forgiving. And this one from northern Italy is actually quite nice. Especially at $10.

   And in California, Morgan Winery produces a tarter, more powerful pinot grigio for $17.

   So don't just grab the first bottle you see. Shop around a bit and you can ride out the bad times in style.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

   • 2008 Bonny Doon
Albariño, Ca' del Solo
Estate Vineyard, Monterey
(albariño, loureiro, treixad-
ura): powerful; crisp white
grapefruit and lemon fla-
vors; $19.

RECOMMENDED

   • 2007 Stellina di
Notte Pinot Grigio delle
Venezie IGT, Italy: light,
crisp green melon and tart
lime flavors; $10.

   • 2007 Stellina di
Notte Chianti DOC (san-
giovese, canaiolo): tart
cherry and cloves; light,
crisp and fruity; $13.

   • 2008 Bonny Doon
Muscat, Ca' del Solo Estate
Vineyard, Monterey (mos-
cato giallo, loureiro): aro-
mas and flavors of golden
delicious apples; very crisp,
slightly off-dry; $18.

   • 2006 Banfi Centine
Toscana IGT, Italy (san-
giovese, cabernet sauvi-
gnon, merlot): light and
bright, with crisp black
cherry and espresso flavors,
very smooth; $13.

   • 2006 Bonny Doon
Sangiovese, San Benito
County (sangiovese, freisa,
syrah, grenache): crisp tart
cherry flavors; firm tannin;
spicy; $13.

   • 2006 Artesa Vine-
yards Chardonnay, Carne-
ros: rich and creamy, with
flavors of peaches and but-
ter; $19.

   • 2008 Morgan Win-
ery R&D Franscioni Vine-
yard Pinot Gris, Santa
Lucia Highlands, Calif.:
Granny Smith apples and
minerals; tart and crisp; $17.

Cecchi wines from Italy: tasty, affordable

‘‘Tradition doesn't mean old wines," says Andrea Cecchi, fourth-generation winemaker of Cecchi Family Estates. ‘The future should not be a repetition of the past, but an improvement over it."

   Cecchi and his brother, Cesare, head a traditional winery making some very modern
wines. It was founded in Tuscany, the home of Chianti, in 1893 by Luigi Cecchi, an enterprising wine broker.

   Back then, the accepted "recipe'' for chianti was 70 percent sangiovese, 15 percent canaiolo and 15 percent malvasia bianca. Blending was done to coverflaws. The canaiolo was to give the wine a tannic backbone, the white grape was to soften it.

   "In those days the wines were unbalanced," Cecchi says.

   In the past few decades, the Tuscans have learned to grow better sangiovese. They plant the vines closer together, resulting in fewer but more flavorful grapes, and pick them riper. Winemakers have been able to stop using the blending grapes, and today many chiantis are 90 or even 100 percent sangiovese -- and all the better for it.

   As Tuscany has modernized, the Cecchi family has adopted some reforms, rejected others. They're growing top-quality sangiovese, and several of their wines are nearly entirely of that variety. So far, they're not making Super Tuscan wines, in which sangiovese is blended with such French varietals as cabernet sauvignon and mer-
lot, resulting in big, powerful wines with high alcohol levels.

   "We're traditional. We don't want heavy alcohol," says Cecchi. "We prefer elegance, a long finish."

   The Cecchi family also is growing two ancient, traditional grapes that have become almost extinct in Italy. One is ciliegiolo, from the Italian word for "cherry'' -- a dark, dense red grape that adds color and flavor to the sangiovese in Cecchi's $10 Bonizio
wine.

   The second is sagrantino, from the Umbria region south of Tuscany. It's inky in color, so tannic it needs nearly three years of oak aging to soften for drinking, but rewards the patience with a fruity, spicy wine with licorice flavors.

   "Each wine has its own history," Cecchi says. ‘‘Some are fruity, some are closer to the soil."

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

   • 2004 Val delle Rose Morellino di Scansano
Riserva, DOC Tuscany (100 percent sangiovese): aro-
mas and flavors of licorice and black plums; soft and
generous; $22.

   • 2005 Cecchi Riserva di Famiglia Chianto
Classico DOCG Tuscany (90 percent sangiovese, 10
percent colorino): aromas of violets; very rich, black
cherry and mocha flavors; big, ripe tannins; $28.

   • 2005 Villa Cerna Chianti Classico Riserva
DOCG Tuscany (95 percent sangiovese, 5 percent
colorino): dark violet color; flavors of black plums, bit-
ter chocolate and herbs; big tannin, long finish; $24.

   • 2004 Cecchi Vino Nobile di Montepulciano,
DOCG Tuscany (90 percent sangiovese, 10 per cent
other grapes): black plums and espresso; smooth, gen-
erous, rich, opulent; $30.

RECOMMENDED

   • 2008 Castello Montaúto Vernaccia di San
Gimignano, DOCG Tuscany: rich, ripe pears; full
body, opulent; $15.

   • 2007 Cecchi Bonizio Sangiovese di
Maremma, IGT Tuscany (90 percent sangiovese, 10
percent ciliegiolo); soft, lush; sweet black cherries; $10.

   • 2007 Cecchi Natio Chianti DOCG Tuscany
(90 percent sangiovese, 10 percent colorino): black
cherries and bitter chocolate; firm tannins; $16.

   • 2004 Alzatura Sagrantino di Montefalco,
DOCG Umbria: (100 percent sagrantino): licorice,
black currants and chocolate; rich, full-bodied; $45.

FIU wine prof finishes classes in China

    Florida International University wine professor Barry Gump has just completed three weeks teaching wine appreciation to English-speaking students in Tianjin, China. Pictured here are some of his students, many of whom adoped Western-style nicknames so their professor wouldn’t have to struggle with their Chinese names. From left, Wang Xiao, Huang Yanan (Fiona), Wang Shuang (Amy), Sha Wei, and Fan Quin (Wendy).
    Prof. Gump has been blogging from his Chinese post. This is one of his final entries:
 
     Last evening we had our final exam.  It consisted of the students tasting five wines -- all Chinese -- and making comments on them (color, clarity, aroma/bouquet, taste/texture) as a test of what wine terms they have picked up in our short time together.  I also asked them to describe any flaws they found, as three of the wines were corked (were spoiled by tainted corks).  I had two bottles of Chinese Grace Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon, and one was slightly corked.
    I was pleased upon grading the exams that many in the class picked up on the cork taint in several wines -- at the least saying the wine smelled terrible, and better describing a moldy, wet newspaper smell.  Of those who tasted both bottles of the Cabernet, again, most noted that they were different wines with one having nice fruit and not-to-objectionable tannins, and good balance while the other was lacking fruit, some vegy aspects to the nose, and was way too tannic.
    I had a Sauvignon Blanc that was left over from a class last week.  I left the cork out and would shake air into the bottle daily to get some oxidative character.  Again, a few in the class picked up on the oxidation -- for others it was the best wine presented.