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.

Barbecue!

In line with my earlier post about what to have for wine in the summer... I got to thinking this morning, "how do I like to eat in the summer?"

The answer, of course, is barbecue.  What could be more summery -- no matter where you live -- than meat cooked low-n-slow over a fire, with sauce?

So, what kind of wine should go with barbecue?  Of course, it depends on the style.

North Carolina style barbecue, with it's vinegar-based sauce and hefty use of pork, screams out for a heavier white.  Interestingly, I'd be curious to try Chateau Carbonnieux -- a fairly hefty and rich Bordeaux blanc -- with it.  White Rhone would go well, as would an uber-buttery Chardonnay.

A pulled pork sandwich, with it's heavier tomato-based sauce and distinct smoky/spicy notes would go well with Tempranillo, or an Australian Shiraz.  The sweet and spicy notes in the wine would pair off with the food.

Kansas City, with it's dry rub and side serving of molasses-based sauce screams out for a high-test Aussie Shiraz.  Depending on how spicy the rub is, Zinfandel might go well here -- I'm particularly thinking of Macchia, which makes a very high-test (15.5%-16.5% ABV!) zin.

So, there you have it -- for barbecue, it's pretty hard to go wrong with Shiraz, Tempranillo, or Zin.  Big fruit, spice, lots of weight, often a touch sweet.

Barbecue -- it's not just for beer anymore.

Image from gbleem at en.wikipedia.org.  Used under GNU Free Documentation License.

Ranging through the Rhône

The Rhône is a darling of critics, with wines available in basically all price points, from under-$10 for Côtes du Rhône through "that wine is how much?" for the best from Châteauneuf du Pape.

Essentially, the Rhône is split into two regions, the northern Rhône, which runs between Vienne in the extreme north, to Valence in the south.  The dominant grape here is Syrah, although there are some white grapes grown here, primarily Viognier, with some Marsanne and Rousanne.  This area has the unusual distinction of being a place where red and white may be blended -- by way of example, the wines of the Côte-Rôtie generally has 5% Viognier blended into the Syrah, although they may be anywhere from 0% to 20% Viognier.  

These tend to be comparatively fruit-forward wines, lighter in style than comparable Shiraz from Australia, with lower alcohol levels.  There is often a pronounced earthy note to the wine as well, something you often don't find in the New World counterparts to these wines.

In the southern Rhône, by contrast, many grapes are grown -- primarily Grenache, with Syrah and Mouvedre, although a number of other grapes are allowed.  In Châteauneuf du Pape, for example, 13 grapes are allowed, and of those 13, 2 have both red and black varieties, allowing for up to 15 types of base wine!  As a bit of trivia, one producer, Château Beaucastel, uses all 13 varieties in their wines.

Good bets for places to get fine wine in the southern Rhône include the aforementioned Châteauneuf du Pape (where you do pay for the privilege of drinking well-known wine, but it's well-known for a reason), as well as Vacquyras (known for powerful wines), Gigondas, and indeed, the Côtes du Rhône (very accessible for new drinkers, the wines from here tend to be softer than their higher-priced cousins).

So why drink Rhône?  Especially with the summer coming up, Rhône wines offer great pairings with traditional cuisine.  Steaks on the grill with potato salad and cream corn?  A Vacquyras should be perfect with that!  Picnicing with sandwiches?  Côtes du Rhône works well!

Map from Wikipedia, created by Lofo7

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?