Posts belonging to Category Barbaresco

After a leisurely evening sampling a lineup of Italian wines red and white while dining on a mouthwatering pork roast that followed pasta i funghi made fresh… you really need something to help with the digestion… something flavorful, a proven cure-all. Something from the Old World. Something made with quinine! More on this wonderful potion shortly.

First, let us examine the testimony of excess that necessitated relief.

NV Casa Coste Piane Frizzante Naturalmente Prosecco $15: One of the only Prosecco wines fermented in bottle just like champagne. Supposed favorite among Piemontese who know better. This is not the fruity giggly sparkler that charms everyone soon as you meet her [ed. you are a sexist chauvinist comparing giggly bubbly effervescence to a female caricature]. This is not the fruity giggly sparkler that charms everyone soon as you have a chance to sip and swallow. This is Prosecco with spine. Sexy. Makes you want some more. Not easy to find out here on the Best Coast. 12%

2011 Massieri Angiolino Moule $35: Another Garganega wine (!!!) like the one reviewed here a couple posts back recommended by the somm at the Santa Monica restaurant Tar and Roses. Call it Soave but this is not the BevMo/Costco staple Santa Margarita style. This white wine has acid, some body, and it is a nice precursor to the soldati heavies in the lineup. The grape is experiencing some kind of renaissance as are other lesser known indigenous varietals on the verge of extinction now resurrected thanks  to the dedication and moral sense of natural winemakers. Good story on the hillside vineyard and the relatively new family business. 11.5%

2009 Brangero Nebbiolo D’Alba Briccobertone $25: A Langhe young vines non-tannic road runner from the Langhe. Lighter weight intro to Barolo and wines made from the Nebbiolo grape that is delicious and easy to drink. If we were in a museum this would be the dogent. Look for it.

There were other Italian red wines including the 2006 Ar Pe Pe Grumello which stole the show recently and once again. Check out the earlier tBoW review.

We were so excited about trying the Chinato we hardly regretted indulging the food and drink. The Chinato proved to be an amazing drink. We had it after but I am sure it would work just as nicely on its own. Like we enjoyed it over the next week. Read the review on the Eno Fine Wine site.

NV Vergano Nebbiolo Chinato $43: [kee-not-toe] This wine comes in a 500 ML bottle. This does not taste like any drink with which we are familiar. The wine is “aromatized.” The wine is made from a quinine base and includes tinctures and extracts of Nebbiolo wine, cinnamon, ginseng, etc. The winemaker is the story much like the Almencistas who specialize in Sherry. This wine was not loved by all. But it was not roundly disliked either. Some were on the fence where they remain today. I love it and hate it. Like my marriage. Hey you! Get off that fence! [ed. Mike Myers moment]. For tBow this is a bog wow. Absolutely brought a feeling of digestive assistance. Flavors included licorice and Sen Sen! Bravo!! We prefer water con gas to flat anyway so the taste is familiar. One can smell and taste the quinine. The mixture of the other ingrediments is where the winemaker’s skill makes the difference. It is the perfect after dinner drink. 16%.

This fine Italian interpretation by John Renbourn is also good for settling down the demons.

Hissy fit! Minerality is such an overused term we banned it from the tBoW wine lexicon. Like “it is what it is.” Not on this blog. However, upon consulting with cooler heads and more clear minds the “m” word is back in the game with the caveat that we will only use it to describe wines with high acid and stony character including sulfuric aromatics. High acid and strong citric flavors will not suffice to invoke “minerality.” It’s a new day and we have wines to review.

The Stupid Bore is over. With it the holidays have officially completed. We have a clear pathway to summertime which means Roses and bright summer white wines. It is also means severe drought conditions in California. At least the East and Midwest regions will dry out. Maybe one last crippling character building snowstorm in April. Hope not.

DomaineLA is a somewhat new wine shop on Melrose Avenue in WeHo. They have “more wine and less attitude.” We can say they have wines we are looking for and a highly informed floor person – Courtney – who was able to answer nearly every question we had… about wines. We found the impossible-to-find-on-the-West-Coast Close de la Roillete Vendange Tardive at the shop at a very fair price discounted 10% with overall case purchase. We also found a very decent selection of “natural” wines [ed. new obsession alert!], Burgs and wines from other regions we like including Beaujolais and the Loire. She also had a nice group of Italian wines but not the Sagrantino which Alice Feiring writes about that we were looking for. tBoW also checked at WHWineCo. They have had these unusual wines – specific producers, read the book – but not for several vintages.

The Alice Feiring book “Naked Wine” is exceptionally informative. She covers the original winemakers pushing the “natural” wine movement. She describes their methods and provides a very helpful running discussion of the underlying philosophy and vine to wine values. Feiring is a thorough reporter as well making sure to describe the squishiness of this “movement” and how hard and fast opinions on actions such as using sulfur are actually quite malleable. Still digging it. Here are some wine reviews; not one with minerality.

2008 Roty Marsannay Les Ouzeloy $35: With this bottle and the recent Pataille tasting that featured his Marsannay wines we believe we have a sense of this undervalued and, for us, under-investigated region in the northern Cote d’Or. This wine took 2.5 hours to open. Over that period we saw more action than was taking place on the “most watched TV program ever.” This wine opened masculine and finished that way going from rough and brutish to firm and manageable. This is manly Pinot Noir, sinewy and powerful like the Olympic ice racers [ed. not the “dancers”] we will be watching very soon. Impressive. Roty is a premium producer. Bought from Eno Fine Wine. 13%

2010 De Forville Langhe Nebbiolo $18: Young vine Barbaresco, Rosenthal selection. We had the 2008 version and just purchased the 2011 at DomaineLA. This is a great intro wine to premium Piemonte at a very good price U20 price. Rich and full, middleweight, will take some age to reveal the Piemonte Neb character. We sucked this down after the Marsannay ran out. That helped us through the 4th quarter. We have found older vintages at Liquid Wine. 13.5%

1996 Silvio Grasso Barolo Ciabot Manzoni $80: Special meal wine shared by Dotoré. Classic aromas of tar and roses. Meaty yet light on its feet. Boxers – lightweights, welterweights, middleweights – often crowd our consciousness when tasting aged Baroli. This is a Carlos Monzon [ed. Argentine 70s] bottle. Exotic, hitting power, elegance. The wine kept its power and finesse for the entire evening. 14%

2001 Navarro Gewurtztraminer Late Harvest Cluster Select $24: Picked off the shelf at Liquid. It is always somewhat of a risk when payng for a dessert wine in a split from a producer not known for such. Weighing in favor of the buy was that Navarro is a very consistent winery and Gewurtz is one of their staple white wines. But could it last 12 years? Poured out dark brown and clear. Looked like root beer without the fizz. The flavors were completely exotic: caramel, coffee and cola. All in harmony and so tasty. A perfect dessert wine for the fresh Meyer lemon possit pudding it accompanied. Spectacular. 10%

The image at top was taken in our local Target [ed. “tar-zjay”] store. The marketing genius displayed… Think about Colonel Kurtz explaining to Capt Willard how… never mind. Will the next generation of these Modern House Wines labels will include “minerality mania” and “natural wonder.” I kid you not: Oprah Favorite.

Recommended reply to the use of “it is what it is”: fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Try it. Fun.

On the topic of boxers…here is the commentary from the end of the 12th round from the 1962 Emile Griffith vs Benny Paret fight which Griffith won by knockout. Paret never got up. Televised boxing was suspended for a decade. Supposedly Paret had called Griffith “maricon” at the weigh in.

Imagine that wine was made in every state of the union and that this has been going on for 1,000 years. What if the best wine regions in the USA included North Carolina and Oklahoma, and there were hundreds of vinifera varietals from which so many different kinds of wines were made that we stopped thinking all American wines were made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay? This is wine in the Old World and a nation such as Italy fits these descriptions like Lady Gaga fits KINKY. (more…)

For some people wine is biblical, Old Testament, a holy gift from the earth. Hell dang tarnation. For some folks wine is a sacrament. For others… say heathen evolutionists, wine is folly, hedonistic, elixir of dadevilhisself. Disagreements of biblical proportions are old as sin. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan faced off in a small town Tennessee courthouse what seems like a century ago in the so-called Monkey Trial. (more…)

If you’re talking wine and truffles 2013 has gotten off to a fine start. Forget the sequester, the Lakers and the Oscars. The truffle season in Oregon is in its final throes. The Eno Merchant is about to go live. tBoW just feels good all over. Let’s talk about truffles and Barolo wines! (more…)