Posts belonging to Category Rioja Alta

Lake Tahoe is a World Class Winter AND Summer Resort

Crystal clear view from Tahoe City on North Shore to Heavenly Valley Ski Resort on South Shore Eleven Miles Across the lake

Young people live and ski around the lake all Winter. When they are ready for babies they come for a couple weeks in the summer. When you are no longer crazy enough to race down a mountain for the pure thrill you come back in the summer. Sleeping in is the aim. The thrill comes when you can sleep again at 3:00 while enjoying the Alpine view.

For excitement tBoW gets up at 6:15 with the sun and drives down the Truckee River on the road to Reno. The trick is to catch some trout waiting for breakfast as the sun comes up. This rainbow fought like an Attorney General trying to stay in office. However, a few hours later he was helping feed the needy just rising at 8:30 [tBoW not Sessions].

Once the word got out tBoW caught a couple fish the early morning meditative moments were replaced with family ‘n friends time. No problem. Everybody wants to go fishin! The next day with PeeWee on the river with me a 15 foot rubber raft floated by on the opposite bank. It was Lewis & Clark in the 21st century. Three men in their 30s, two tossing fly lines in every 5 seconds, while one guy in the middle handled the fast flow and the large rocks with two oars and his scraggly beard. A 19th century mirage outfitted by Patagonia. Fantastic. Video posted below.

tBoW made sure dinner on the cabin deck or in one Tahoe’s fine restaurants was paired with wines worth attention.

We brought two bottles of Tablas Creek that had been in the cellar since release. TC is our first favorite vineyard winery in California. There is no question they have the vision and the dedication to execute that. For the record we would like to embarrass our favorite domestic winemaker – who sources all his juice – once again with this link. Back to TC and aging “big reds.” You may find the story to be familiar.

2009 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel: For many years the Esprit line was the winery’s top end red. This is the FIRST TC top-end red we have opened that was ready to drink. We have opened earlier vintages of Esprit before a decade had passed and found them to be “challenging.” Toffee flavors, soft, knitted well (wine snob speak). Delicious with Halibut and veggies on the deck. It was remarkable.

2007 Tablas Creek Panoplie: Two years older than the Esprit, one of the earliest Panoplie line that succeeded the Esprit [maybe Jason Haas will see this and tell us the thinking behind going one step higher]. Not so good. A bit firm, not well knitted (more wine snob speak), I did not finish my glass. I had risotto with veggies and some shellfish. Just not ready.

We opened the Panoplie at Garwoods in Carnelian Bay. This restaurant has long been known for having the best site for dining on the North Shore and the worst food. No longer. The birthday dinner and the company were outstanding. We addressed the Panoplie fail by ordering the Scharfenburger Rose sparkler. Perfect.

Why do wine-os wait so long to pull the corks on their most reputed – even cherished – wines? One reason is because the wines are not ready. The only way to know if a wine is ready is to take your best guess and pull that cork! Figure a wine built for aging should be ready after a decade but sometimes not! So we play with the region – Burgs (Pinot Noir) should not need as much time as Bordeaux (Cabernet). This is much to simple. We know our wines. There must be other factors. Bring out those bottles you are holding onto for emotional reasons. Take a stab at mystery.

Other wines and dines worth mentioning…

2008 Beronia Rioja: We ordered this off the list at one of two very good restaurants we visited. Soule Domaine is located where Kings Beach hits state line in a very quaint log cabin built by Charlie Chaplin [good story]. We brought our own red – following – however we did find this delightful Rioja on the list; the “last” bottle in the bin. The wine list had very interesting selections. At $53 this seemed like a good value. Sam the host knew the label and showed restrained excitement. The waiter encouraged us by offering to waive corkage if we order the Beronia off their list. Everyone was happy and the Slovenian cork was pulled next!

2015 Burja Reddo ~$35 Hi Time Wine in Costa Mesa. The gal who “found” the wine in Slovenian thought it was the best offered. She could not describe even tho’ she tasted in Slovenia. Do you know where is Slovenia? OK. How about the Vipava Valley. Here is the winery website. Time for our local wine snob shop Woodland Hills Wine Company to host a regional tasting! This wine was very fruity with enough acid to keep the flab out. Very berry somewhere between cran- and boysen-. Buy it again? Not likely.

Watch these guys fling their fly lines lashing the river to give up her stubborn trout. Not bad for taking it from 60 yards away with a cell phone. Thanks to YoungUn PeeWee.

The Krisses took an early summer trip to Spain. tBoW has selected from their notes and fotos for your reading pleasure. As usual, Kris-B is el voz and Kris-A is la fotografera. We join them after visiting Jerez and the Sherry region, traveling as the seagulls fly to San Sebastian and Basque country, and having arrived in La Rioja.

Lopez de Heredia: Our last full day in Rioja took us to the town of Haro, where traditional Rioja wine royalty is based. Lopez de Heredia

is the granddaddy of them all, founded in the late 1800s. We had few qualms about paying for a tour because a bottle of wine from their top vineyard is included in the cost [ed. tBoW is fond of LdH Vina Gravonia, a white wine]. We saw all their old barrel fermenters, traditional filters made out of bundles of grape vine stems(!), large old blending barrels (which are truly massive), and the half mile or so of tunnels where they store their wines aging in old barrels and in bottle. Lots of penicillin mold to help regulate humidity and spider webs to catch moths that eat corks. Lopez de Heredia’s “young” wine is released after five or six years. The youngest WHITE wine is released after 10 years. The reds are kept even longer. I think the most recent release of the Gran Reserva is from ’94. The rosé is even kept for ten years!

Gonzalo Gonzalo: Today was the day we’d been looking forward to. The day we meet Gonzalo Gonzalo. The winemaker who signs all his emails with “hiiihaaw.” The guy who films himself harvesting his grapes alone (a whole vineyard he harvests by himself!) with a handlebar mustache, throwing a cowboy hat in the air, all while rocking out. He could not possibly live up to our expectations, could he? After meeting in the town square we stopped by his little old aunt’s house to “pick up money.” She gave him about 30 euros, so not very much, making the stop seem like a weird one to make. He showed us the basement of her apartment/house, telling us it was built over a Roman road. Old Roman columns had been incorporated into the room’s architecture, which used to be a taberna. A poem had been translated from Spanish to Latin and painted on the wall.

It basically said to go to the country side and enjoy life there, instead of working in the city. Gonzalo is featured in Alice Feiring’s book Naked Wine. His bodega is a noted party stop for winemakers and the fortunate few.

We made a stop at his tiny warehouse at the end of the street to pick up some wines and a copy of the book he wrote on the wine industry before walking to the old bodega. We sat down at the long table and started to taste some wines. He was not exactly the carefree guy he portrayed in his emails and videos. In between discussing the wines, he told us how his father was ill and in a wheelchair because of all the chemicals he had used growing his grapes. Gonzalo is 100% organic with his own wines. It seemed like the wine business was kind of depressing for him, as he said he’s more into growing herbal medicines for people who are sick and then mailing them the plants for free. He made it seem like making wine was not easy at all from a commercial sense. He explained there is always a black sheep in the family. I think he was talking about himself. Gonzalo Gonzalo is one complicated dude.

His wines were quite good. We had an old wine he calls Orgullo, which is probably 100% Viura. It was ten-years-old, the first white wine he ever made.

It was very good. We compared it to the current vintage of white yeti, which is the same wine as the Orgullo, just younger. The white yeti was a bit thin but will likely become like the relatively weighty Orgullo in a few years. He makes a fairly standard Rioja (“Gran Cerdo,” named after the bankers who gave him problems early on) , which is quite good. A very fruity, but tasty, rosé (“Pink Kong”), an amarone style, and some crazy late harvest dessert wines. He found some old tempranillo of his father’s that he thinks rocks even though it was made from “toxic vines”.  We tried another one of his dad’s old wines and an orange wine from Castilla Y Leon. He told us how he doesn’t drink that much anymore because his liver is in really bad condition. He loves jurançon dessert wine.

We then walked with him to the “new bodega”, built 30 years ago by his dad to house concrete wine vats. He quickly grabbed the wines we wanted to purchase from him. We asked him how much he wanted for the three wines and he deferred to us kind of sheepishly, saying he had no idea. We thought that 20 euros was a fair price given that he sells his wine wholesale for 1-2 euros and asked him for change for a fifty. He had exactly thirty euros on him (the money from his aunt), so it was meant to be.

tBoW here:What a lovely trip! Many thanks to Kris-B for sharing his travel notes. Many followup questions… to follow. tBoW recommends when traveling make it a wine tour. The only stops we like to add are castles which are often located in wine country. Let’s look at a Gonzalo Gonzalo video showing how he gets into the proper frame of mind for harvesting grapes. First job is to setup the turntable.

Tasting wines blind usually works well…usually. It turns out that bagging and tagging can challenge even the most widely traveled among us. RULES for bagging: Learn to hold onto the bags used at your local wine shop; i.e., Woodland Hills Wine Co. Place the wines in plain brown wine bags. Pull the corks first and put them aside. Use corks from other bottles that occupy an otherwise useless drawer in the kitchen. Tape the bags tightly just below the rims. Send someone else to number the bags.

Problems can also arise when the concept fails. The latter occurred recently when we tried to taste off Pinot Noir wines, all from Santa Rita Hills. We were hoping to discern the differences between winemaker styles: terroir vs. fruit driven, lower vs. higher alcohol levels, New versus Old World preferences. Other “territorial” nuances might have played a role but that would lower this blog to the level of “entertainment” rags like People, US, and OK or some other Rupert Murdoch publication [ed. just ask, he’s itching to gossip if only someone was interested!]. Suffice it to say the SRH Pinot Noir taste-off proved to be more cerebral than distinctive. Given the sameness of outcomes, i.e., all the wines were pretty darn fruity with alcohol levels above 14%, we turn to the science of measurement to present our findings.

Here then is a matching quiz where you THE WELL INFORMED READER will successfully match the label to the description of the wine. Record your matches at the end under COMMENTS. Enter the number for the wine with the letter for the description. If you believe the #1 wine 2010 La Grange aux Belles La Niña matches the letter F description then enter 1F under COMMENTS. Your complete finished answers will read 1F, 2G, 3D…

OK. Pick up your pencils and break the seal on your booklets. Like so. You may begin.

THE 5 WINES..

1. 2010 La Grange aux Belles La Niña (Gamay) 13%
2. 2001 Viña Ardanza Reserva Especial (80% Tempranillo) 13.%
3. 2010 Cold Heaven Peacemaker Pinot Noir 14.75%
4. 2006 D’Alfonso-Curran Pinot Noir Los Hermanas Vineyard, 14.1%
5. 2007 Talley Arroyo Grande Pinot Noir 14.1%

THE NOTES…

A. Fruity, balanced, not overwhelming. Tastes like Sangiovese. Forward cherry fruit. Medium weight. Pretty fresh for older wine. Fan favorite. $30

B. Alcoholic, big wine with peppery nose and flavors. Cherry cola. Powerful, like Syrah. $45

C. Funky nose and flavors. Is this Pinot Noir? Thick, unctuous, vinous. Sweet, cherry Robitussin, tannic. Off balance. $15

D. Sweet flavors. Smells and tastes like Pinot Noir but not distinctive. $25

E. Too big. Lots of alcohol. Hot. Everything wrong with SRH Pinot Noir. Gets more intense with time in the glass. Too focused. $45

Our tasting was undone not only by the lack of distinction among Central Coast Pinot Noir winemakers but also by the entry of two non-Pinot Noir wines. In the end the Spanish wine was most favored [ed. hint hint]. Once again, SRH Pinot Noir wines will go on hiatus. As took place with Paso Robles, we shall turn our attention to Rhone style reds from Santa Barbara. David Corey of CORE Wine Company has made the point in spades that these are the varietals which do best round these parts. In the queue for further testing on that proposition, we have Blair Fox of Blair Fox Cellars and Mikeal Sigouin of Kaena Wine Company; both premium and high rep Rhone style wine makers from the region.

As we observed in Paso Robles White Rhone style wines from SRH are another story. Some local SRH winemakers are doing a bang-up job with Rhone varietals such as Viognier, Rousanne, Marsanne and Grenache Blanc. Kris Curran has been making very popular and luscious Grenache Blanc wines for longer than we can look up. We tasted two Viognier wines recently from producers with whom we were less familiar. We often find the Rousanne/Marsanne/Grenache Blanc blends fairly pleasing. However, we have consistently been unimpressed with Viognier as a varietal in general. Things have changed.

2010 Cold Heaven Sanford & Benedict Viognier $34: This is Morgan Clendenen’s signature wine. The next issue of Elegant Living magazine includes my incredibly perceptive interview/profile of her. This wine has a powerful nose. First flavors are steely, acidic, sharp. There is ferality but none of the dreaded feline quality. With a little more time citric and lemon flavors emerge. Kind of like ripe kiwi. Next stage shows peach. This is getting delicious. Excellent. Check the alcohol. 13.5%

2009 Blair Fox Paradise Road Santa Barbara County Viognier $24: Another winner. Comes out strong but not beefy. Think Marshall Faulk. A tough, persistent and shifty runner with enough power and strength to carry the ball the entire game. Solid fruit flavors. More peachy than lychee. Also more straight ahead where the Cold Heaven teases and tempts. Like the Cold Heaven version this wine has very good acid to support the fruit. Also featured in the November 2012 issue of EL. Another winner. 14.2%

Although these two wines are not U20 values they are still good value in terms of quality. Keep in mind these are very low production hand-crafted wines made very skilled local winemakers. It shows. If somebody wants to know what to bring to the holiday party suggest one [ed. or both!] of these wines and you will be watching the door. Timing is perfect for bigger red and solid white wines. We especially like these white Rhone varietals with their lighter alcohol levels. The weather will turn cooler and Turkey Day is on the horizon. Stay frosty.

tBoW team taster The Large got inside the ropes at the premiere party for Savages. Being this close to Benicio del Toro [ed. the Hunted, Fear & Loathing], and Salma Hayek [ed. lead vampire From Dusk Till Dawn – see video!] sent Large for a Loop crossing his appetite for blush wines with movie star fever. We all benefit from his pyretic vision shared herein: tasting notes, sexy babes, paired foods. Welcome to the Large location food truck.

Summer is the season of blush. You see it in the cheeks of that beguiling and shapely post-teen prancing the beach!…in her bikini — tiny sparks of sand fly off her electrically as he turns to notice her staring at him; she’s caught with an embarrassed smile, pale perfectly smooth skin scattered with freckles turning deep pink… her deep red hair masking the sun like some flaming halo…. Or is it just the way the late afternoon sun disperses as you twist your glass, its dancing rays sparkling atop a sea of pink. It’s the season of hotter days… our ecosphere is boiling over, starting to fry large swaths of the Eastern seaboard into the midwest.

Hollywood spews out sizzling summer thrillers, with tall blondes in pink dresses sharing bong hits while manacled, held hostage by a ruthless, decapitation-happy enforcer working for a struggling, ruthless Baja cartel (Benicio del Toro, could it be any other, I ask you?). And after cutting a maniacal workday short and putting your feet on the patio furniture, it’s time at last to savor another wine of countless variations: Rosé.. (more…)

Recently we’ve been thinking how the wine world has it all figured out now. The recession blew the socks off trophy wines taking down everyone with them. The “survivor-type” wine producers foresaw the end of the “wine bubble” and started moving to lower pricing without sacrificing quality. The intersection of CHEAP and QUALITY is precisely where most wine consumers get lost. The old signals no longer work. You really just have to taste the wines to know for sure. There are other indicators such as knowing the importer or distributor but that gets into advanced wine studies. Here are some tips for selecting and detecting which wine to buy and which wine to pass on. (more…)