A great pairing

The other night, having found a great special on ribs at the local supermarket, my fiancee and I decided it was time to cook some barbecue with a slightly spicy sauce, with corn and baked potato on the side.  Of course, that meant we had to crack open something nice from the cellar; in this case, we popped open the bottle of Two Hands Angel's Share '07 that I got her for Christmas (hey, she's an Aussie Shiraz fan, what can I say!).

The ribs were easy -- slather on sauce with a brush, cook at about 350 for an hour, then re-sauce and crank up the heat to 450 for 15 minutes to get a nice caramalization.  Add corn and potatoes, and serve.

The wine?  Glad you asked:

Inky purple with a neon-violet rim. The nose shows plenty of spicy berry notes -- think raspberries in baking spice. In the mouth, full, mouth-filling flavors of raspberry, cedar, and more of the spice. Some cherry on the finish, slightly bitter. Surprisingly velvety tannins round out the finish; quite tasty. A bit over-the-top; the wine feels almost too heavy in the mouth, but the finish is long and lingering.  91 points.

Incidentally, I can see why this was one of Wine Spectator's Top 100 wines of 2008 (#83, if you're keeping track).  It was a truly uplifting wine -- a surprisingly decently-balanced wine given it's 15.5% alcohol level.  True, it's going to be topheavy at that point, but that's to be expected.  It's a darn fine wine, and for the cost that the Two Hands non-Garden wines command ($30 or so), it's pretty reasonable.

Alas, these are not the ribs we ate -- Photo from bbq-ribs.com.

A wishful tasting...

Friday, Dr Vino (a blog I highly recommend, by the way) posted about an amazing tasting attended by James Halliday, including '55 and '71 Grange, '55 Wynns Coonawarra Shriaz, '62 Penfolds Bin 60A, some '85 Hill of Grace, and '96 Clarendon Hills Australis, amongst others.  The whole list is here.

This is, if you don't know it, a hitlist of the heavy-hitters of the Australian wine scene, and most of them were aged either to perfection (yeah, even after railing against aging wines... but these ones deserve a chance to develop!), or in fact were over the hill.

All in all, I'm highly jealous.  I've had some great Aussie wines -- a mid '90's Grange, back in 1999 (alas, I didn't make notes, and it was before I got into the wine business in a serious way), William Randall, Amon Ra, and The Gate, amongst others.  But never this many on one table.

So, in that vein, here's the tasting note for arguably the best Australian wine I've ever had -- 2006 Amon Ra, which I had about a year ago.  I can still see the brick-red color of the wine, smell it's toasted oak and fruit, and feel the velvet of it on my throat.  Truly a wine to remember, and one that I happily pulled out of my personal cellar for a friend's going-away party.

The color is a deep, brick-red, almost opaque. On the nose, a rush of blackcurrant and rich berries. The nose intensity is overwhelming; I poured less than half an ounce into a glass when decanting the wine, and it almost knocked me over taking a short sniff from over the rim of the glass; I didn't even try to put my nose into the bowl. On the palate, the wine is indeed overwhelming in flavor. Notes include distinct cedar and oak notes, an overarching flavor of dark chocolate, red fruit, coconut, spice, and espresso. The mouthfeel is velvety. There's a richness to the flavor that's hard to put into words; it's mouth-coating, intense (even in a 1/2 oz tasting pour). The wine sets up camp in your mouth and stays there for seemingly ever. Truly amazing.  99 points.

All in all, too intense to have on a regular basis, but wine like that is amazingly nice to have for a special occasion.

Photo from K&L Wines, where you can buy 2006 Amon-Ra, and who did not contribute in any way to this update.

Maestro, the wine, please...

Over on Dr. Vino (a fine blog that I recommend whole-heartedly if you're into the politics and economics of wine), I learned of a new Champagne closure, called "Maestro."  Duval-Leroy is introducing it with their 2004 Clos du Bouvieres.  A video of it in action can be found here.

Basically, to open the bottle, you pry the lever up, and with a pop, the cap comes off.  Under the tip of the lever is a crown cap, which is what Champagne is aged under, and a plastic hood that covers the crown cap and lever mechanism.

Effectively, it's a single-use beer-bottle opener for Champagne.

Which is pretty cool.  I like alternative closures!  For still wine, there's basically 5 methods of closing off a bottle of wine:  real cork, plastic cork, Stelvin/screwcap, Zork, and Vinolock.  Real and plastic cork are pretty well known, as is Stelvin.  The Zork is a primarily Austrlian closure (you can find it on Whoop Whoop and Red Knot wines from Australia, although Don Sebastiani uses it for his Plungerhead zins from California), made of plasticized vegetable oil, it looks like nothing if not a single-malt Scotch or LBV Port closure -- there's a bit that sticks into the neck of the bottle, and a covering cap.  It also makes a satisfying pop when removed from the bottle (something I find sadly lacking in the Stelvin).  Vinolock is a similar method, using inert glass and a silicone O-ring that are covered by a foil.  It looks quite similar to a normal cork, and has all the advantages of Stelvin in addition.  It's mostly used for wines from Sicily (Cusumano uses it on their wines), although Molly Dooker used it last year.

Anyhow, there is a wine bottled right now  with something like the Maestro -- Chandon's Etoile, which is bottled directly under crown cap.  Yes, that's right, you need a beer bottle opener to pop that bottle open!

All in all, it's a bad time to be a cork farmer; more on that later, I suspect.

Photo from Alcan Packaging.

Starting out in wine.

A friend of mine just asked me the question, "I'm introducing a friend to wine. He doesn't drink normally, what would you recommend as a starter bottle?"  Since it was on Twitter, I was limited to 140 characters in responding, so I recommended a specific bottle of Merlot, or the idea of going to some tastings (either in-store or in wine country -- she lives in northern California, so Amador and Napa/Sonoma are a daytrip away).

Which leads me to think, how does one get started in wine?  What should a first introduction to wine, what to drink, what to know?

Whoa.  That's over-thinking it.

So, some specific recommendations (aside from "try this bottle," that is).

1. Go to a tasting, either in a store or at a winery.  Given proximity to Napa, a day trip would come to mind -- yes, it's slightly expensive, both in terms of gas and $10 tasting fees -- but there's bound to be something good there.  If paying tasting fees isn't in the cards, hop off to Amador, where most of the wineries are free or nearly so (eg, I know Sobon is free for the base tasting, and  $5 for reserve tastings, which allow you get to keep the glass).
2. Have friends over for a "bring a bottle" party -- this could be a blind tasting, in fact.  Again, a chance to taste a couple of wines might make more sense.
3. Take him to a wine store and put it in the hands of the staff there; they'll know their stock (or, at least, they should), and may be able to make good specific recommendations within the style and price point that's comfortable.
4. Don't limit the initial introduction to California wines; I've found Dornfielder (a German red grape) to be a great wine for new wine drinkers, it's soft, fruity, and just a bit sweet.  Ditto Scuppernog and Catawba (from North Carolina and New York, respectively); they're easy drinkers.  Australian wines are often good for new drinkers, as they're in a much more relaxed, low-tannin style with a bit more residual sugar.
5. Avoid the temptation to get a top-flight, reserve wine.  They're often very oaky, overpowering, and might turn off a new drinker.  In fact the "cheaper" wines often appeal more to a palate that's used to sweeter beverages -- Americans are raised on soda, so we tend to think "sweet=good."

Introducing someone to wine can be a great deal of fun, especially if they invite you along to explore with them!

Picture from keralaarticles.blogspot.com.

Quite a bummer.

One of the less-expensive "cult wines" in my area is a Shiraz called Layer Cake.  It's made by Jayson Woodbridge, of Hundred Acre fame; the Layer Cake line is, as Mr. Woodbridge would say, a chance to bring global fine wine to the American consumer at a low cost.

My take on the wine?  It's repackaged bulk wine, harvested uber-ripe, with high residual sugar levels, and high alcohol.

In fact, the wine's factsheet (PDF) supports that idea: "For our Shiraz, we pull from vineyards all over McLaren Vale; from the full-clustered, sandy soiled blocks on the sea coast of Gulf St. Vincent, to the Terra Rosa based, tiny-berried wind-blown hills across the Vale.  The vineyards are all within a few miles of each other, yet give us a broad array of flavors to blend into a complete wine.  Each year we pull a small amount of fruit from tiny vineyards in Padthaway and Wrattanbully for added layers; combined they represent less than 10% of the blend."

Traslating: "We got grapes and/or juice from a ton of places, and threw it together."

Their tasting note?  "Dark, dense and creamy, complex aromas of black plum, Bing cherry, blackberry and pepper merge with licorice, tobacco, mocha and dark chocolate.  This is one inky Shiraz; an explosion of dark, super ripe, wild blackberry, with a touch of cigar box finishing with a mélange of exotic spices. A pure fruit bomb…complete from attack through a long, lingering finish."

My tasting note?

Inky black/red. Fairly strong nose of raspberry and some herb. In the mouth, the wine has some slightly velvety notes, and is reasonably weighty. However, it is quite hot (14.9% abv) and the alcohol throws it out of balance. Flavor profile is mainly towards the raspberry-and-slightly-spicy side, with some mint on the finish. Balance is, as noted before, off -- it's flabby. Finish is average-length.

If you like slightly sweet, flabby wine, this is great. For me, not so much.  83 points.

There just wasn't a lot to the wine.  Here's the fruit, lots of heat, some spice, and done.  Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.  No backbone, no subtlety.  I had been hoping for something with some structure, and wound up with alcoholic grape juice.  Sigh.  And I'm forced to wonder, why is it that people lust after this wine so much around here?