No Wine Over $20-Reviews and the LA Wine Scene

Rosé, Moscato d'Asti, fresh fruity bracingly acidic and low alcohol white wines. These are summer wines we have learned to adore. And every summer brings a new batch. What is it about summer wines that seem so fresh and new soon as the weather gets hot? As Dotoré might say these are the best days of the year.

2008 Le Saint Andre Vin de Pays du Var Rosé $11: Rosé de Provence that is 25% each Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Grenache and CInsault. Light salmon color. Tastes like a lightweight non-fizzy soda yet serious in a summer rosé context. Like it fine but it ain't the killer summer wine we know will eventually turn up. 12.5%

2007 Vida Organica Torrontes $8: Argentina's great white wine [ed. must you say this every time?] this from Mendoza produced by the Zuccardis, wine royalty in the heart of Argentina's wine country. Floral nose so common to Torrontes. Good acid and medium weight. Tropical flavors just like the label says. Torrontes is consistently lush with natural acidity that brightens it up. Viscosity makes it almost beefy. These are organic grapes, purchased at Whole Foods. It is a real deal at this price. Screw cap and 12.6%

2006 Domaine Gauby Les Calcinaires Cote du Rousillon Villages $24: The red version of the white wine from the same house. Imported by Weygandt. Dark almost black red color. Red berry fruit flavors. A village wine which means it is not very complex or it is exactly what you would expect to find in a local restaurant in southwest France. Put this next to your Qupe Syrah at $12. Is this Gauby twice as good? Is it worth another $12? I think it is twice as interesting as the Qupe but problem is there are some really nice Pinot Noir wines or otherwise in the same price range. So I would rather have the Gauby than the Qupe but then I wold rather buy the Dewey Kelly than both. 13.5%

2007 Belle Pente Wlliamette Valley Pinot Noir $19: Purchased at local wine shop WHWCo. Wanted to visit this the winery when up there last month but they were closed on Sunday. tBoW has reviewed Belle Pente wines a 2005 specific vineyard before. That was in the $30+ range. This is the entry level and we wanted to see if the quality trickled down into lumpen land. Color is light red brown as we expect in a 2007 Oregon PN. Looks like it is aging but it is not. More like tomato soup with burnt red peppers. There is no hint of oxidation. It is just a lighter vintage. The nose is all about the forest floor. Mushrooms, wet decaying leaves, earth. I know it sounds just awful but it is actually decadent. The wine is yummy and I would buy it again. An excellent example of what one can expect from the 2007 vintage in Willamette Valley. At $18 it is a U20 winner. Sorry Gauby. 12.5%

It is a very good weekend when jazz at the Hollywood Bowl is followed by visiting art studios in Topanga Canyon. The show at the bowl was better than anticipated. Women artists dominated on stage and in the studios. At the jazz festival Esperanza Spalding, the 24 y.o. singing bassist, was the most anticipated "find". But, who knew about Anat Cohen the Israeli wunderkind on saxophone and clarinet who was musically matched by her trumpet blowing diva hermana, Tanya Darby. The two "stars in the making" fronted Cosby's annual patchwork group of local pros elevating what is usually a fairly ordinary performance to unexpected heights. Esperanza Spalding proved to be the up and coming star every bit the young and fresh artist as the pre-buzz had it. The day of music usually has a couple dead spots threaded within the typically strong early lineup. Not this year. Where we feared an ordinary performance, instead we found Jack Sheldon and his old dude big band ripping the classics followed by Pete Escovedo with the rhythm section worthy of NASCAR. However, just when we were certain the bar would be lowered Wallace Roney channeled Mile Davis as he and his band recreated Kind of Blue to a rapt audience. [ed. click on link for Ed Bradley's video tribute] It was the final unexpected highlight and simply could not be followed. And it was not. A superb day.

Naturally, we brought wine. tBoW has refined the wine strategy for a day experiencing great jazz [ed. with an assist from Dotoré hello]. We have learned not to bring highly nuanced wines because there is just too much competition from the performers, the dueling entourages (Jamie Fox and his we-do-crew vs. Hef and the Ikki twins), not to mention the usual neighborly distractions, for a great Pinot Noir or Barolo. The right wines are summer styles mixing Rosés and light fizzy concoctions with a bright white and a medium weight Rhone style red. Here is what we came up with.

2008 Chateau de Rouét Rosé Cuvée Reservée Tradition $7 (in the split): Easily the best Rosé of this summer. But it is early. Plenty of acid with peach and pear flavors. Dark-ish salmon color. Mineral quality. Subtle and balanced. Absolutely outstanding and a major U20 winner. The Anat Cohen wine.

NV Bernard Rondeau Buguey Rosé Sparkling Wine $15: Contrasts perfectly with the FRV100. As fruity and seductive as is the FRV100 this pink labeled beauty is like Jane Russell to Marilyn Monroe. More acid, some spine without losing any of the curvaceousness. tBoW says it is a mistake not to bottle these wines in magnums only. The Esperanza Spalding wine. 8.5%

2006 Domaine St Andre de Figuiere Reserve Delphine $27: Bright acidic 100% Vermentino purchased at Palate Food+Wine. Excellent dry white wine imported by Paul Young. More minerals with bracing acids. Loved it. The Tanya Darby wine.

2007 Domaine Les Grands Bois Cuvée Les Trois Soeurs $12: Another Palate purchase. Imported by Peter Weygandt. Steve G has picked out a fabuloso U20 all-star lineup for summer. This Rhone blend features the favorite tBoW lineup, i.e., Syrah-Grenache-Mourvedre. Rich color, great ripe fruit, full bodied while staying medium weight. Another seductive drink that matches all food items and satisfies throughout. Bottled unfiltered. The Kind of Blue wine. 14.5%

And the Topanga tour? Always a treat seeing what the local very talented artists like Susan Haskell and Farideh Azed are doing with glass. The canyon offers vistas and sights we would never guess were up the hill and down the road.

Good night Granca.

This weekend June 13 & 14 consider doing the Topanga Canyon Artists' Studio Tour. It is tBoW's favorite summer event. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Topanga home you would never see except for this tour pictured below.

As we roll into summer you may enjoy a runup in invites to dine al fresco with friends and acquaintance. tBoW encourages using such occasions to raid the hosts' wine cellar. Why be just polite when you can also be rapacious? [ed. Mungo Jerry signals the official arrival of another LA SUMMER]

The scene is a Memorial Day last minute dinner at the home of good friends. The offer is to pull anything you like from the cellar. We came up with a Bordeaux and a Ribbon Ridge Pinot Noir. Not bad!

2002 La Tour Haut Brion $50 online: A holiday gift from someone in the same business as our host. Meant to impress. At 7 years old it is still young and showing tannins with plenty of Cabernet Franc fruit. The wine is very nice and since we rarely drink Bordeaux wines this is certainly a treat. Goes perfectly with the grilled steaks. It is impossible to write about Bordeaux wines without giving some background. The region is almost universally the introductory wine experience for wine snob novitiates. Bordeaux wines have the right features for newbies: "unquestioned" pedigree, comparatively few labels, prestige pricing, and decent wine. In some cases snobs-in-training start with California. What is interesting is how many wine-os never move past Cabernet Sauvignon thereby becoming faux snobs. For the record, LA Tour Haut Brion is the "second" label for La Mission Haut Brion. This means the wine is made from young vines (figure under 10 and probably closer to 5 years) and is not permitted in the premium batch. For an absolutely classic and haughty article on the Haut Brion wine scene click here.

2006 Aramenta Reserve Pinot Noir $43: Aramenta is the adjoining property and neighbor to Ayres, lauded in the recent Oregon Pinot Noir reviews. tBoW has had Aramenta in the past and enjoyed even though he found it too sweet to purchase it was not so sweet he would turn it down. This is from the ripe 2006 vintage. It is dark red but still not so dark to be mistaken for something other than Pinot Noir or Gamay. Sweet, burnt brown sugar. Kinda big. Would like to try this again in a year's time.

2006 H Pinot Noir $20: We did not get to pick this wine. It was offered as an example of the expanding ocean of "high end" wines now reduced and hitting the consumer market like bugs on the Interstate. Formerly $50 he picked up this H Pinot Noir for $20. The story is "right" with 198 cases and "hand-harvested" Sonoma fruit. Of course, good value requires two components: price and quality. The alcohol is way too high for this Sonoma wine produced and bottled in Paso Robles. The fruit that is there cannot fight its way past the ethanol curtain. Not to be confused with Oregon's Hamacher H wine from Willamette Valley. Or Macy's bedding line with the same logo. 15.55%

2007 Domaine du Vissoux Pierre-Marie Chermette Fleurie Poncié $20: This is the first Cru Beaujolais tasted from this vintage. tBoW flipped over the village Beaujolias from the same producer in the tBoW review last August. The contrast is striking. The cru wine is more intense overwhelming any of he other components such as alcohol and tannins. It is big and fruity. Word to Dotoré: While this Beuaj is very nice now tBoW looks forward to trying it again in a year. Reminds me of the 2006 Jean Paul Thévenet Morgon "Vieilles Vignes" that showed so much better one year later. $13%

The host made up for the BBQ-lighter Pinot Noir with a Canadian sweetie available at BevMo.

2006 Jackson-Triggs Proprietors Reserve Vidal Icewine $16: Out comes a specially packaged tube of Canadian late harvest something. Shows bright acid with ripe apricot and mango flavors. Very nice and refreshing. The region is Niagra and the grape is a 1930 hybird known as Vidal Blanc, named after the bio-engineer who crossed Ugni Blanc with Rayon d'Or to get a cold weather high sugar varietal. The bottle at 187.5 ml is the tiniest ever seen outside an airplane. A very good U20 dessert wine. 10.5%