Posts belonging to Category Rhone



The Best of Inter-Summer Holidays

Atlanta Botanical Garden

Atlanta Botanical Garden

Spring ended May 23. Summer begins June 21. The weeks between are the Inter-Summer. The Inter-Summer party is held sometime over the Memorial Day extended weekend. Sunday seems ideal. Prepare leisurely on Saturday and recover even more leisurely on Monday. There is little going in the way of sports distractions. No Stupid Bores or Solemnly traditional golf tourneys. Just a nice long weekend to think about those who have served in wars… hang with pals, serve some food and pull some corks. Keep an open mind.

2010 Vignobles de Balma-Venitia Vacqueyras Cuvée St.-Roch $20: Vacquerays is a southern Rhone region that is generally under-publicized unlike neighbors Gigondas and Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Wines are Grenache dominant. Simply put, expect value from Vacquerays wines. Notes borrowed on this bottle from the Internet say “Pure and focused, showing blood orange, St-Roche-VaqueraysWEBplum sauce and bitter cherry notes laced with plum pit and anise, with a mineral-tinged finish. Drink now through 2016. 32,400 cases made.” Plum pit? If tBow warn’t so lazy he might write… “nice, easy to drink red wine with character, ordered off the list in foreign city east of Sepulveda. A welcome compromise that satisfied the palates of a zin lover and a couple of related Old World tasters. Friendly with all food ordered by 14 people with wandering and alien palates.” A label we would never see in LA! 13%

oiseletWEB2011 Domaine Yannick Pelletier Saint-Chinian L’Oiselet $20: This bottle presents the problem with natural wines. As the somm presented, quickly grasping our naive interest in n-a-t-u-r-a-l wines he mentioned L’Oiselet uses no sulfides whatsoever at all no way no how. When he mentioned the wine is grown in schist it was game point and set for Matt the Somm. We bought. He decanted. Took 45 minutes to open. The juicy “attack” [ed. nice old school “taster” gab, you geek] finally lost energy but not in the new style taster geeky vocab way. The wine just got tired like some thoroughbreds do in the final stretch and the race looks like it is in slo’ mo’. This wine blends Grenache, Cinsault, Carignan, and Syrah. That’s two grapes of which tBoW is not fond. In sum, we would not buy again altho’ we are now huge fans of Husk Somm Matt. Did we mention the wine list is organized by soil type? Smart. 14.5%

cebeneWEB 2010 Domaine de Cébène $25 (Garagiste): This is the last of the great Garagiste offers. Or at least the last we ordered. This is a wine of some celebrity. As Jancis Robinson has posted online “Brigitte Chevalier acquired in 2007 a ​​few acres of vines on amazing terroirs in the Languedoc. 20 km from the Mediterranean, its first vines rooted deep within a single large land and marine sediments villafranchien. bc-oligny1WEBThe other vineyard is perched on the balconies of shale oriented due north at the top of the Faugères. Judicious choice of this great terroir shale, associated with very low yields and its work in the service of their acidity.” Allow me to translate for foolish wine tasters who will buy anything written in a style that immediately penetrates the subconscious mind. Countrified winemaking woman grows small production on perfect soil in last place you would expect to find it, quantities are sufficiently small so that you might never see it. Bingbaddabing. BUY NOW. Languedoc winemakers are wonderfully free to blend whatever they like. There is a nice array of vinifera available from the recognizable mainstream to the less recognizable local fruit. This wine delivers kinky character, high acids and dry flavors that with some air rounds out just enough to put on toe shoes. Winnah. The blend is Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre which omits the two Languedoc grapes [ed. i.e. Carignane and Cinsault] that make us wrinkle our nose. 13%

Memorial Day down south

Memorial Day down south

Mr. and Mrs tBoW were surprised to see CSA flags in the Magnolia Cemetery a week before Memorial Day. We did see a very few Union flags next to ancient headstones. There are many Revolutionary War soldiers buried in this incredible cemetery outside the city. There was a separate plot for the dozen or more crewmen of the Hunley, a CSA submarine that sank in Charleston harbor before it could do much damage. Many Civil War soldiers were returned to their native homes for burial on Southern soil.

Johnny Horton had a hit in 1960 with “Johnny Reb.” Horton was born and lived in Los Angeles but he lived most of his life in the South. He was a career songwriter who wrote “saga” songs like “Battle of New Orleans” and “North to Alaska.” He died in 1960 while driving at the height of his success. He was in an inescapable head on collision on a Louisiana bridge. Here is Johnny Cash giving all the glory he can muster to this hit record from 1960. Funny world.

Red Wine with Fish and Other Blasphemies

fried for Burgundy

fried for Burgundy

Wine like all institutions has plenty of shibboleths. Red wine with red meat and white wine with white fish. Pinot with salmon. Natural wine poses an entire new set of strictures that at least make more sense than simply red meat and blanche fish. Ask your doctor. Don’t look back something might be gaining on you. Buy low sell high. It is what it is. Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear. Once upon a time in France Jerry Lewis was a comic genius.

tBoW drank a 2005 red Burgundy with a whole fried red snapper at the Santa Monica restaurant Tar & Roses. And all three were very very good: restaurant, fish and wine. Lettuce cut to the chase. We have tasted some nice wines and learned a couple things about ourself.

tortochet05WEB2005 Domaine Tortochet Gevrey Chambertins 1er Cru Les Champeaux $unk: Complemented the fried fish perfectly. The deep fry removed all the fishy flavors that we associate with snapper. The fish was prepared such that one could pick a biteful cube at a time followed by a tasty sip of French Pinot Noir. The wine was firm at 8 years with restrained – not muted – fruit. Just the way we like it. No tannins to speak of. From the French website we raided: “male, with power, firm tannins, length and lots of structure.” Mais oui! 13%

cornas07WEB2007 Tardieu-Laurent Cornas Coteaux $42: Has the name, the vineyard, the vintage, all the pedigree. Well made wine with good flavors in harmony. Soft and seductive. But… we realized we are not fans of red Rhone grapes. There are exceptions such as the CORE wines from Orcutt which focus on Mourvedre. We have had most memorable Rhone reds but right now, in this long moment, we would not hurry to purchase any red Syrah wines from the Rhone. Blasphemous. 13%

anacapa04WEB2004 Rusack Anacapa Santa Barbara County $TAFI: Rusack is an under-the-radar winery for dimwitted wine snobs like tBoW. We think of Rusack and we think of the Wrigleys of which Mrs. Rusack is a member. Hey. Of course we know there are plenty of scions and high-ons and silly wealthy folks in the wine industry. But Wrigley? As in the oldest baseball park in the USA, chewing gum, the Chicago Cubs, and “26 miles across the sea Santa Catalina is waiting for me.” So we are impressed with the name. Now we are unexpectedly impressed with this wine. You know the situation. Good friend pulls the cork on taboo wine – in this case a Cabernet blend. We pinch our mental nose and take a sip of the Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot meritage. We would guess this blend is Merlot dominant with the soft rich fruit, and the absence of Cabernet Sauvignon chocolate and tannins. “Please sir can we have some more” we asked in our best Oliver voice? Picked up by our host at the historic 2005 Santa Barbara Wine Festival held at Santa Barbara’s El Paseo right around this time nine years ago. More blasphemy! 14%

coreGB10WEB2010 CORE Santa Ynez Valley Grenache Blanc $18: David Corey can’t get any respect. He has been turning top dog wines from well over a decade. He gets the high point reviews. He has a clique of devoted fans who consistently purchase his stuff. Some of the name reviewers visit his Orcutt tasting room and anoint his wines with 90+ points. Yet most wine people in the know [ed. you know who they are?] never heard of this label. This wine was pretty green at first. We applied immediate glass-to-glass aeration. About half a dozen sloshing pours later the fruit was able to collect itself and emerge in a full melon robe of moderate weight. This was lovely. We may have lost our taste for Syrah [ed. you could see it coming] but we remain loyal and hopeful whenever we see white Rhone varietals. If loving New World White Rhone wines is wrong… I don’t wanna be right. Picked up by Largenez at the CORE tasting room on our recent T-day trip. U20 winnah! 14.5%

Going to a hot shot tasting this week. Notes will be taken with the report to follow.

Golden Summer Evening with Goldun Fine Wines

just trying to earn a living

just trying to earn a living

Restaurants beg him to store his personal wines with them.

When he sniffs wine he pours it up his nose.

Jon Rimmerman asks him for travel tips.

Miles suggested they invent Barolo jazz.

He is.. the most interesting.. wine merchant in the world.

Eno Fine Wine is Steve Goldun’s new project. Goldun not only offers some of the best pricing we have seen for wines we A-D-O-R-E, he also loves to cook! If there is a better confluence of favors and flavors for an impromptu summer evening, we do not know one. Steve Goldun is 99% ready to go live with his online wine merchant site Eno Fine Wine. Even though it is not in our personal wine-snagging interest to publish what you are about to read, we are going to tell most of the truth regardless because we are reasonably confident only a handful of tBoW readers [ed. compared to the dozens of tBoW readers?]? will believe the hype. Here is the updown. (more…)

Morsi Out! Wine Re-education Time!

china_politart-3WEBThe military-aided popular ouster of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood is a defeat for hard-line movements everywhere. We have lived through many such popular movements that eventually converted to turgid repressive regimes in our brief lives: Castro’s popular uprising that liberated a nation only to create a dictatorship, Mao’s war machine that forever changed a thousands of years old culture only to install a new regimented national regime, and our own views of Santa Barbara County wines. The popular focus in that county has been on the Santa Rita Hills which is a relatively new region founded by winemaking ingenue/savant Richard Sanford who favors low alcohol Pinot Noir wines made in an Old World style was quickly upended by more successful winemakers who favor high alcohol Pinot Noirs that taste like New World Syrahs. There is much more there which we tend to forget. It is time to re-assess. (more…)

Waikiki: Wasteland / Wonderland

Hotel Street action

Hotel Street action ca. 1960s

Waikiki is Bourbon Street meets the Vegas Strip. People come to the Hawaiian islands and stay a week or longer in Waikiki. Same crew that buys all their wine from BevMO. Then there are other people who fly right past Oahu on their way to Maui, Kauai or the Big Island and stay in a destination resort. They include those who only buy wines rated 90 points or higher. There is more to wine and more to Oahu [ed. and more to the outer islands; g’head and be obnoxious].

new wine shop in Princeville

new wine shop owner in Princeville

After 5 days of rain and grey skies on the north shore of Kauai – and buying wine in the new Princeville Wine Market – we were ready to wash Hanalei right out of our hair. Fortunately, we had set aside three nights and three and a half days in Honolulu because we like the city and the island. It is much more cosmo than Dancing with the Stars. (more…)