This article from the LA Times website, pointed out by our friends @AlmaSolWinery via Twitter, speaks to the issue of corkage fees – something that people often find confusing. A corkage fee is a fee that you pay at a restaurant when you bring your own wine. It normally includes glassware, opening and pouring the wine by the sommelier or server, and disposal of the bottle.
Last night, another dinner with Mary Stec and Richard Clark. Mary made 40 Clove Chicken – AMAZING. Now all that garlic needs a big red wine, in my opinion, to make it work. It was also Dorianne‘s Birthday! So there was a rich, chocolate dessert. Quite a culinary evening.
The wines were, first, a 2009 Ampelos Pinot Noir Rho (LINK to the 2010). Ampelos uses Greek letters for each of their wines. The Rho is a fairly big Pinot Noir by Santa Rita Hills AVA standards, inky color, spicy with a nice sense of terroir both on the nose and in the mouth. Hints of pepper and dark fruit bring a fullness to the flavor of this wine. It is a wine that holds up to red meat well, and the 40 clove chicken was a good pairing.
Next, we opened a 2003 O’Shaughnessy Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon (LINK) that had been in the cellar for a while. Here is what Robert Parker had to say about it: “The 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain has a big, sweet nose of chocolate, blueberry, black raspberry, and currants with some crushed rock and a hint of toasty oak. The wine is long, rich, pure, and impressively endowed, but strikingly elegant and complex. It is already drinking well and should age nicely for 10-15 or more years. The final blend on this was 83% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Merlot, and the rest Petit Verdot and Malbec. (2006)” I agree with the master in this case, and would add that the wine has aged well.
The O’Shaughnessy was a good match for both the chicken laced with garlic, and the rich chocolate confection that followed. A very happy evening.
The Wine Stalker (LINK) is a wine blog by Joey Casco, CSW, who writes some interesting and knowledgeable stuff. He recently did two posts on “Wine Formulas” – how wineries get their wines to present the way they want them to. The techniques range from blending different varietals in larger quantities than you might think, to adding a variety of additives to the wine during the wine making process, to using procedures to add oxygen or color.
The posts are very fair and objective – giving wine lovers access to information that is otherwise hard to come by, given the lack of wine labeling regulations.
I found it very interesting to see how some of my favorite wines are manipulated to get to that certain place where the scores, and therefore the sales, will peak.
Here are the links to parts one and two of this series.
On Saturday, Dorianne had a late-morning appointment with her allergist, and it just happened to be in the same shopping center where the Sunland Vintage Winery Tasting Room (Link) is located in Thousand Oaks, CA. The proprietors, Michael and Debby Giovinazzo, were in when I peeked in the door at 11:00 am (the sign said they open at 1:00 pm). I asked if they were open and was invited in.
I blogged about their Tantalizing Thursday Events (LINK), where they combine $5 per glass wine with a food truck in the parking lot two weeks ago. That event was so crowded, that I was unable to have a conversation with Mike or Debby, so I returned to do just that.
Mike and Debby have been in the wine business for five years. Their wines are produced in Lodi, CA, and sourced from all over the state. His goal, he said, was to bring Italian Varietals to Southern California, which his Giovinazzo Wines label does, and does very well. There is also a newer label, SVI Wines with more traditional varietals – Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Malbec, and Albarino.
Total production this year is 1350 cases, making Sunland Vintage Winery a small producer, but one with great variety. Mike told me that he just contracted for some Dolcetto fruit from Northern California growers that he is excited about. Mike and Debby clearly love being in and talking about, the wine business, and it looks like they have carved out a nice niche for themselves with their Italian Varietals and blends.
If you are in the area, check them out.
This article (LINK) from WineFolly.com, has some very good information about decanting and serving wines. Decanting, and how long to decant, is often a mystery, and this article gives some good guidelines. There is very little about wine that is exact, so I recommend that you see these as guidelines, then explore and make changes as your experience dictates.
(LINK to Article) How to decipher a Bordeaux Wine Label.
A very good Wine Enthusiast article that also teaches you a bit about Bordeaux Wines
Two more stops on last Saturday’s group wine tour to the Santa Rita Hills AVA (LINK) – Tyler Winery (LINK) and LaFond Winery & Vineyards (LINK – lots of photos).
This was my first visit to Tyler Winery in Lompoc, CA. Located in a stand-alone building, it is not in Lompoc’s famous “Wine Ghetto.” This statement from their website (LINK) speaks volumes about this winery: “We currently produce 12 different bottlings each year from 22 parcels within 7 different vineyard sites. Total production is approximately 2500 cases annually.”
Tyler produces only Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. They source from a number of vineyards in the Santa Rita Hills and Santa Maria Valley AVA’s (LINK). We tasted Chardonnays from the Bien Nacido Vineyard (LINK), a storied vineyard in Santa Maria, and from the Sanford and Benedict Vineyard (LINK) in the Santa Rita Hills. Both were beautifully crafted wines with hits of oak – kind of a middle ground between the oak-bombs of older California and the unoaked newer styles that are becoming so prevalent.
We also tasted two Pinot Noirs from the same two vineyards, These wines were a nice balance of fruit, spice, and minerality. The Bien Nacido wine had a bit more body, but the winemaker’s style showed in both wines – restrained and likely to age very well.
The winery itself is very eye-appealing, a working winery with stacks of barrels adjoining the small tasting area. Tyler is a small producer, and the focus is obviously on the craft of wine making. I was very impressed with these wines.
Our next stop was LaFond Winery and Vineyards on Santa Rosa Road in Buellton, CA. The plan was to have lunch in the meadow outside the beautiful tasting room and adjacent winery – but it was raining, so tables were set up in the barrel room. Not bad.
Our subset of the larger group purchased a 2010 Lafond Vineyard Pinot Noir Martin Ray Clone ($50.00) and a 2012 SRH Santa Rita Hills Syrah ($27.00) to go with our boxed lunches. Both wines impressed. The Pinot was spice and well-balanced with a smooth finish; the Syrah was also fruity, but balanced with minerality and a heavier mouth feel.
After lunch we tasted a selection of LaFond’s current releases, Riesling, Chardonnay, Syrah, Pinot Noir – I must say that I was impressed. I first visited this winery in 2006, and found the wines generally promising but uneven. This time, everything was beautifully crafted, even elegant.
This is emblematic of the evolution of the Santa Rita Hills as a prime wine region in California. Good news all around for wine lovers!
On Saturday, I joined a group for a wine tour of four wineries in the Santa Rita Hills Appellation (LINK), near Santa Ynez, California. The four were: Tyler, LaFond, Margerum, and Ken Brown. I will blog about each separately, beginning with Ken Brown Wines (LINK). The Santa Rita Hills are located about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara. A unique geological area, they are on a circular land mass that separated from the North American tectonic plate about 12 million years ago. Since then, that circle of land has been turning about 1/4 inch per year, so that now, the mountain ranges and valleys run east to west instead of north to south. This provides a “chute” for cool breezes and moisture from the Pacific Ocean to come farther inland and created one of the perfect places on earth to grow Pinot Noir. The film “Sideways” (LINK) was filmed here (before the appellation was established), and the rest is, well, a rich history.
Ken Brown is a legendary winemaker in the Santa Rita Hills area. He began at Zaca Mesa Wines. His first name is actually Byron, and after Zaca Mesa, he started Byron Winery in 1985, selling it to the Mondavi Family in 1990. He said that both of those wineries got to the level of 80 to 90,000 cases in annual production, and by that point, actually before that, it was no longer fun for him. The current annual production at Ken Brown Wines is just about 3,000 cases in total.
Along the way, Ken Brown has trained a number of winemakers in the area, including Jim Clendenen of Au Bon Climat and Bob Lindquist of Qupé Winery. His tasting room is in Buellton, CA, just off the 101 Freeway. It is very nicely appointed, with a corkwood floor that got a lot of attention from some of the women on the tour.
Ken was very expansive in describing his process of winemaking and each of his wines. We tasted one Chardonnay, five Pinot Noirs and one Syrah. My general comment is that his wines are amazingly well-crafted in a Burgundian style, not big fruit bombs like many California wines. In fact, some in our tour group thought his wines were not big enough.
I found them to be nuanced, balanced, and each had different characteristics. I just about fell in love.
The Chardonnay was beautifully made, and very oaky – not to my taste, but you could readily smell, taste, and see the quality of the wine. Several bottles of this were purchased by tour members.
Each of the five Pinots, one a blend of two Santa Barbara appellations, the rest from Santa Rita Hills, two blends of vineyards and two single-vineyard wines, had a strong sense of place and a very nice blend of fruit, mineral, and spice.
I won’t go into all of the individual wines in detail – mainly because it is unlikely you will be able to get any! All are small production, and available only through the winery (LINK to wine shop site).
I purchased the 2012 Zotovich Vineyard Pinot Noir (LINK), a very complex Pinot; the 2012 Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir (LINK), his most approachable Pinot – fruity and very refreshing; and the 2012 Watch Hill Syrah (LINK), a rich fruit-forward Syrah with great complexity. If we were not moving soon, I would have bought more.
If you are in the Santa Rita Hills area any time soon, put Ken Brown Wines on you list of places to visit, You will not be disappointed (unless you only like the big, big wines. Then you better stick to Paso Robles).
A good article from VINEPAIR.COM on some terms used in wine making and consumption with which you may not be familiar.
Last night, we spent some time and had dinner with Brad Kieffer and Karen Oxrider, our good friends and wine buddies.
Initially, Karen came over to our house where she and Dorianne did some work for a non-profit they are involved with. During this time, we opened a bottle of 2007 Au Bon Climat Hildegard White Table Wine, the wine, from the stable of the great Jim Clendenen, is an amazingly well-crafted white wine; made from 55% Pinot Beurot (Pinot Gris), 40% Pinot Blanc and 5% Aligote inspired by the composition of the Corton Charlemagne vineyard in Burgundy as it was believed to have been planted during Charlemagne’s reign as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (Parker). I have blogged about this wine before (Link).
It made the non-profit work go very smoothly!
Unfortunately, it was our last bottle of this great wine.
After the work was done, it was time to meet Brad for dinner. We chose Galetto’s Grill in Westlake Village, one of my favorites – a mixture of Brazilian and Italian cuisine with an excellent wine list.
But tonight, we would be bringing a couple of bottles.
Brad and Karen had a bottle of Hungarian wine that they brought back from a trip to Europe a few years ago. The wine, a 2002 Sandor Pince Egri Pinot Noir, was an unknown quantity. Would it still be good in 2015? Was it a good wine to begin with? An internet search revealed next to nothing about this particular wine.
A bottle of 2010 Clos Pepe Estate Pinot Noir would serve as a back-up.
Our conversation ranged from travel, past trips and future plans, to wine to food, to our impending move away from California and our extended stay in Europe. It was an evening of good company, good food, and good and interesting wine.
The waiter opened the bottle of Sàndor Pince and poured a taste for Brad. He sniffed and swirled and very slowly tasted. After a pause, he said, “Interesting.”
The wine was very earthy – mineral on the nose, terroir (dirt) with a hint of rust was evident in the wine – not in an unpleasant way, but there was a nearly total absence of fruit on the nose and in the mouth. I liked the wine more than the others, but I agreed that we should see what it would be like in a few minutes. So we ordered.
I ordered a Brazilian style rib eye stake that would come with black beans and rice, pico de gayo, and other spices. Dorianne had a fish dish, Karen had salmon, Brad a skirt steak prepared much like my rib eye.
I will say that the Hungarian Pinot Noir was a good compliment to my steak with the dry Brazilian spices. The mineral nature of the wine was a good pairing. It’s relatively high acid and medium tannins went well with the dish. The others were ready to turn to the Clos Pepe, however.
As always, the Clos Pepe Pinot Noir did not disappoint. Smooth, with a wonderful balance of mineral and fruit on the nose and the pallet, with a hint of pepper and spice. It was a nice finish to the evening after the harsher Hungarian Pinot Noir.
In fact, that wine was book-ended by two splendid wines from the California Central Coast. Our experiment with the rare (for us) Hungarian Wine from the “Valley of the Beautiful Women,” was really not all that dangerous, as we were definitely working with a net, as it were.
So it was the best of both worlds – a chance to try something new and also to enjoy two well known wines that never disappoint.
Jim Lockard On Wine 