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.

Ready to drink? Yep.

One of the questions I get a lot is "when is this wine ready to drink?"

The answer, of course, is always complicated.  Define "ready to drink," first of all!  I mean, once it's in the bottle, wine is ready to drink, in the sense that it's able to be poured into a glass, consumed, and won't do you undue harm (aside from intoxication, of course).

That being said, the assumption is that most wine needs to be aged for some length of time to be "ready to drink."  Completely incorrect, I contend.  I recall being told at a seminar once, "90% of all wine sold in the US is consumed within 4 hours of purchase.  95% within 4 days, and 98% within 4 weeks."

Admittedly, I'm not sure if it's 98% of all bottles sold, or just 98% of the money spent on wine, but either way, remarkably little wine is consumed after any aging at all.  As the joke goes, "everyone has a wine cellar -- it's called the back seat of the car, as they're driving home from the store."  It's unusual to age wine in the US; most people simply don't do it.

You don't think producers are aware of that fact?  You must be insane.  Of course producers know people don't age wine here!  Why in the world would you make a wine that "needs" to be aged, when only an insignificant portion of the wine sold is aged even as long as a couple weeks?

That being said, there are some -- very few -- wines that benefit from aging.  Generally, these are the big boys of the wine world; Bordeaux in a good year (by way of example, I've had a number of 2006's -- the last release for most producers -- that were ready to drink right out of the bottle, while the 2005's are still tightly wound and need time), Brunello, Barolo, vintage Port, and top-flight new-world wines come to mind.  That's really about it.  Exceptions exist, as they always will, but they're few and far between.

So relax.  It's OK to get a bottle of wine -- even a moderately pricey one, or indeed some very expensive stuff -- and pop it open that night.  Most people do, and most producers are smart enough to make wine that fits that market segment.

Does that mean that there's no need for a wine cellar?  Oh, indeed not; I've got one, as do most wine aficionados that I'm friends with.  The bulk of the wine in my cellar is Bordeaux -- 2005's and 2003's.  I've got a couple of Barolos in there, and some upper-end California wines (two Stag's Leap District cabs, and a Diamond Mountain cab) that I'm not intending on keeping for a long time, but want to keep at proper temperature for when I decide to pop them open.

That's it.  Everything else is stored out, for quick consumption.  Because that's what the winemakers intend us to do -- wine isn't an object to be stared at behind glass doors, it's an accompaniment to a fine meal, a good evening snuggled up with a loved one on the couch, or a celebration with friends.  It's meant to be consumed.

Photo by Renzo Grosso, used under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0.

Better than bark.

Since the 1700's, wine has traditionally been sealed with corks made from the bark of the cork oak (quercus suber).  Of the nearly 20 billion bottles of wine produced each year, around 80% are still sealed with this natural material, as it's elasticity and impermeability to fluid make it ideal for shoving into the narrow neck of a bottle to provide a barrier between delicate wine and the outside environment.  

Of course, cork has it's issues -- not least of which is the problem of "cork taint."  A chemical, called 2, 4, 6 tricholoroanisole (it's a benzine ring with 3 chlorine groups evenly spread around the ring and a OCH₃ group between two of them).  TCA taint can cause wine to smell and taste "off" -- like musty basement, cardboard, or newspaper.  Roughly 5-10% of all cork-bottled wine is affected to some extent (where the flavor and aroma are noticibly changed), and in my experience about 1% of all wine is completely overcome by TCA.  Note that TCA taint has nothing to do with the quality of either the wine or the cork; Haut-Brion gets affected by TCA the same as Ravenswood.

So what to do?  Vintners have been utilizing alternative closures to avoid cork taint (although, in fairness, TCA taint can also happen in the barrel room -- if wooden barrels are used -- it's just much less likely, and will therefore affect a much smaller proportion of wine).  The 4 most popular are the Stelvin (pictured above), the Vino-Lok, the Zork, and crown caps.  Of course, plastic corks are also made, but this blog entry is going to be about the nontraditional, tool-free closures.

The Stelvin closure is also called the screwcap -- it's the most popular alternative closure, having gained significant ground in Australia and New Zealand, with a large number of American vintners using it as well.  It's probably the simplest to use -- if you've ever opened a 2 liter bottle of soda, you can operate a screwcap.  Having the biggest market share of the alternative closures, screwcaps are probably going to be the one that's best accepted by consumers.  

That being said, there are a few issues with them -- primarily that they don't let enough oxygen through, so that can throw the flavor off by being reductive in some wines.  Many consumers also view them as "cheap," primarily due to the fact that Americans were introduced to screwcaps on wine by Ernest Gallo and a little fortified wine called Thunderbird (as Gallo famously said, "bums don't carry corkscrews").  Stelvins also lack the "pop" of a cork leaving the bottle, something that many consumers (including myself) subtly look for in a wine.  Finally, studies by Haut-Brion in the 1970's indicated that after about 10 years, the silicon pad of a Stelvin closure becomes brittle, and can crack, overexposing the wine.

Still, for wine drunk within a decade of bottling (which is pretty much all wines save a minuscule percentage), it's a pretty good closure.  The convenience tends to outweigh the problems.

Next up would be the Vino-lok (pictured here).  This is used primarily in Europe, although at least one Australian producer (Molly Dooker) used it last year.  It's got a pretty small market share -- under 1000 wineries use it -- but it's a good closure on a technical level.  It consists of an aluminum cover over a glass stopper with a silicon pad in a slightly wider-necked bottle.  The seal is as tight as a Stelvin, and you can reseal the bottle with the stopper (although, you can only use the stopper on other Vino-lok bottles).  In fact, resealed, no wine will leak out, even if the bottle is inverted (I've tried this).

On the down side, it's a little more confusing to open, since there's no real frame of reference for it -- and you have to slightly twist the stopper to get it out.  Also, if you reseal the bottle, it seems that when you remove the stopper to reopen the bottle, you always get wine on your hands.  A small problem, but a problem nonetheless.  And, again, there's not much of a "pop" when you open the bottle.  More of a "clink."  Finally, from a vintner's perspective, these are much more expensive than other alternative closures, costing about 70 cents apiece -- about 2 to 3 times the cost of the competition.

That being said, again, it's better than cork.  Glass is as inert as we'll find -- that's why we use it for bottles, after all -- and the resealability is quite nice.  Plus, there's a certain elegance to the glass stoppers -- it's hard to quantify, but I feel that these are just less "cheap seeming" than a Stelvin.

Next up, we have a Zork.  No, it's not named after the old-school text adventure from Infocom (I'm showing my age here, I think...), rather it's a play on the word "cork."  It's made of vegetable-oil-based plastic, and primarily used in Australia, although Don Sebastiani uses it for his Plungerhead Zinfandels from Lodi and Dry Creek.

As you can see, the Zork is opened by peeling back a tamper-evident seal, kind of like on a jug of milk.  Then, the plug is pulled out, kind of like in a bottle of port -- there's a little plastic nub that goes into the neck of the bottle, which provides a satisfying "pop" when the bottle is opened.  Zorks are also resealable.

Alas, I've not found any data on the efficacy of the Zork for long-term storage, nor do I know how well it keeps out air when the bottle is resealed.  It's not a very popular closure, for some reason (and I can't figure out why, really.  But, I know of exactly 3 producers using it -- Plungerhead, Red Knot, and Whoop Whoop), so there's not that much information on it.

This is a crown cap -- some wines are bottled using them, mainly sparkling ones.  In fact, while the bottles are being riddled (the yeast encouraged to go into the neck of the bottle so that it can be removed and the dosage added), it's what sparkling wines are closed with.  Some producers are using them now for their finished wines -- Chandon uses it in California, as will Duval-Leroy with their Maestro closure, and some producers do in Tasmania, and artisan producers elsewhere.

The main problem with this is that it reminds people of beer, not wine, and that it requires a bottle opener (although the Maestro has that built-in).  If the point of using an alternative closure is to eliminate the need for corkscrews, why replace it with another tool?

So, the perfect closure for wine has yet to be found.  The Stelvin is probably the closest, if only we could get over the idea of "screwcaps = cheap," as a wine-consuming culture!

Active tasting.

I've realized, nowhere on this blog is the procedure for tasting wine described!  Yes, actively tasting wine -- as opposed to passively drinking wine, which is what most people tend to do.

So, here's the routine I go through, which is abbreviated as "see, swirl, sniff, sip, swish, slurp, spit and/or swallow."

1. Pour about 1 - 2 oz of wine into the glass.
2. Look at the wine with a white backing (generally a tasting note sheet).  Note the color of the main part of the wine and the color of the rim.
3. Swirl the wine in the glass -- coat the inside of the glass with wine, to give the maximum surface area for the aroma to develop.
4. Sniff the wine -- both long and short sniffs.  Really get the nose into the glass, to detect aromas.  Generally, at this point, I close my eyes here, to remove visual distractions and force me to concentrate on what I smell and later taste.
5. Sip the wine -- a little bit goes a long way.  Note the immediate flavor of the wine on the tongue; is it the same as the nose, or different?  How acidic is it, how sweet?
6. Swish the wine all over the tongue, to get a fuller picture of the flavor profile.  Is it dry in the back?  How does it feel?  Generally, this looks like I'm chewing the wine.
7. Slurp some air over the wine; this allows the aromas to work up through the sinuses onto the olfactory bulb -- which is where 90% of what you "taste" really is noted (ever notice that when you can't smell stuff, everything tastes bland? That's why.).
8. Spit -- if I'm at a tasting, where I may be tasting multiple wines in a row, as the alcohol in the wine will dull the senses.  Of course, at home, I swallow.

Note that this is real, active tasting.  That is how you people find "a hint of mint, and some creme de cassis" in a wine.  The best thing to do, to learn to pick out these kinds of flavors, is to actively taste everything.

Yes, you can even actively taste milk.  And water.  And soda.  And steak.

Image from Wine-Community.It.

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.

Wines for summer.

I spent the weekend out and about doing touristy stuff in the Florida heat, and it got me to thinking, "what wines would I like for this?"  

First thing I'd look for in such a wine would be chillability -- I don't want wine that has to be served at room temperature, not if it's hot out.  Much better is something I can throw into (or onto) a cooler of ice to keep cold and chill me down.

Next thing I'd want would be low alcohol levels; when it's hot out, I don't want my wine to be heavy, and the lower the alcohol level is, the lighter feeling the wine is.

Finally, a bit of fizz might go well; there's nothing quite as refreshing as some bubbles!

So, here's a dozen wines to get you through the summer:

1. A good sweeter Riesling; anything from a QbA, like Dr. L (Dr. Loosen's QbA), to a good Einzellagen (again, I'm a fan of Loosen's Erdener Treppchen Auslese), it's all good.  Riesling like this is incredibly great just for sipping while watching a sunset, or with light food, especially seafood and fresh vegetables.
2. Chilean Sauvignon Blanc; not quite as juicy as the New Zealand version, but quite excellent in general.  Also about half as expensive (Chilean runs between $7 and $11 in my local wine store, while NZ costs between $9 and $27 or so), so it's perfect quaffing wine.
3. Cava.  Nothing like light, fizzy, and cold to take the edge off of the summer -- not to mention how well Cava goes with light foods!
4. Pinot Noir.  I'm a fan of Monterrey as a region, especially for value.  Just a hair lighter than Russian River or Willamette in style, but with great flavor intensity.  Serve them slightly chilled.  I find half an hour in the fridge does them wonders, and I often leave them on top of -- that's "on top of", not "buried in" -- ice in a bucket.
5. A rosé.  Pink  ≠ sweet -- the sooner we, as drinkers, get that through our heads, the better (not that sweet = bad, but too many people dismiss all rosé as the same as White Zin.  Not so!).  Dry rosé is perfect picnic wine; it goes with almost anything, from ham sandwiches through a plate of shrimp and scallops!  The ideal, for me, would be a Rosé de Provence, but there are great New World rosés as well -- a personal favorite is Elizabeth Rose Rosé, a great Syrah-based wine.
6. Vihno Verde.  Slightly sweet, slightly effervescent, low-alcohol, high acidity, and best of all inexpensive ($5 to $9 in my local store)... what more could you ask for in a wine for relaxing by the pool!  Serve it ice cold.
7. Tempranillo.  Personally, I like this one from Toro, but this grape in general is great with grilled meats and barbecue.  Slightly higher-alcohol than the former six suggestions, and not as much for being chilled (although, a couple of minutes in the fridge does wonders for this, too!).
8. Unoaked Chardonnay.  The best in the world, in my opinion, come from Burgundy (inexpensive Burgundies are almost all either unoaked or use neutral barrels -- ask at the store if you can't find one), but there are great examples from Argentina, Australia, and even some from the US (although we do still have a bit of an oak fetish in our Chardonnay).
9. Gamay.  This generally means Beaujolais -- and if all you have experienced from Beaujolais is Beaujolais Neuveau... give it a shot.  Cru Beaujolais is a wonderful wine (and generally under $20), so try a Moulin a Vent, or a Fleuire!  Dryer, much more complex than you wold think, enjoyable food wine.
10. White Bordeaux.  This is wine made from Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle, and Semillon; much more mineral in style than New World Sauvignon Blancs, and a much more elegant food wine -- a good white Bordeaux with fresh bass fillets is heaven.
11. Torrontes.  I posted about this grape a while ago, but it deserves some more attention; it's perfect for summer cocktails!
12. Rhone wines.  Both whites and reds; the reds go perfectly with grilled steaks, while the whites would be beautiful with pork chops.

So, there's a mixed case of great wines for summer -- mostly white, with a rose, and two or three reds.  What will you drink for summer?

Image from Wine-Community.It.

More Champagne!

My prior post got me to thinking about the labels for Champagne.  There's some useful information to be found on them, so here's the quick-and-dirty on it, using this Deutz Rose 1999 label as an example.

First of all, since it says "Millésmé 1999," we know that this is a vintage wine -- most Champagne will not show a date, and is therefore nonvintage (it's a blend of juice from different years, so they can't label it with a vintage).  "Rosé" means the juice should be pink, either because of sangineé (leaving the juice from the pinot noir and pinot meunier in contact a short while with the skins to get the color from it), or because some still red wine was added (Champagne is the only region in France, as far as I know, where that's allowed).  Other types of Champagne would be Blanc de Blancs -- 100% Chardonnay -- and Blanc de Noirs -- 100% Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier.

This wine does not list a cru status, so we can infer that either the wine was made with a blend of crus (some grand, some premier, and some plain ol' cru), or that the village where the grapes were harvested were neither grand nor premier cru.  Either way, there's probably not going to have a lot of terroir in the wine.

On the bottom, next to the bottle size, there's a code: NM-178-005.  The "NM" tells you that the wine is a négociant wine -- more than 5% of the grapes, juice, or finished wine were purchased from someone else.  Yes, it's practice in Champagne to purchase finished bubbles and blend it into your own cuveé!

Now, there are several other codes that could be used here:

• RM: Récoltant-Manipulant.  Grower-maker.  Less than 5% of the grapes, juice, or wine was purchased.  The remainder was grown by the producer.
• CM: Coopérative de Manipulation.  A co-op; the wine was made by a group of growers getting together and sharing their grapes.
• RC: Récoltant-Coopérateur.  Grower-cooperator.  This is a grower who turns over their fruit to a co-op, but takes back the wine before it's done.
• SR: Société de Récoltants.  Group of growers; this is a family business, where one part of the family grows grapes, and another makes wine.
• ND: Négociant Distributeur.  This is a merchant selling finished wine under their own name.
• MA: Marque Auxiliaire or Marque d'Acheteur.  This is wine sold under a name unrelated to the grower or producer.

In general, the quality level of the RM's, SR's, and RC's is fairly high (likely, you'll only see RM's -- there are few SR's and RC's out there).  The CM's are pretty good, generally, depending on where they get their grapes from -- so check the cru status and/or village name on the bottle.  NM's can be good, but the big ones tend to be pretty cookie-cutter, so tread lightly into them; look for a cru status (yes, there are Grand Cru NM's), and ask questions at your wine store.

Avoid the ND and MA wines, generally.  They're the stuff that couldn't be sold to the NM's.  There are exceptions, but they're very few and far between.

Now, if the name of the wine includes the word "Château," it means that the wine was bottled and cellared entirely on the estate.  There are, I'm given to understand, only a handful Château Champagnes, and I can heartily recommend one (Château de Bligny -- in the sense of full disclosure, I got to taste it for free with the owner's son at a tasting event).

Edit: Thanks to Boris for pointing out I'd incorrectly referenced the villages below Premier Cru as Cru Bourgois -- it's just plain "Cru," at that point in Champagne.