California Wine Spot

SELECTION SALUTE

Two hand crafted reds from the Sierra Foothills Madroña Vineyards

Madroña 2006 Cardanini Vineyard Syrah
•  This wine was recently bottled and has not yet been submitted to competitions or for review.
•  A luscious mouthful of black fruit, including blueberries and blackberries.  Nicely structured, its tannins are soft and invite another glass.
•  All of the fruit for this Syrah was grown at the Cardinini Vineyard next door to Madroña.  “We offered to tend the vineyard for Linda Cardanini several years ago, and it works out well,” notes Paul.
•  After hand harvest, fruit was fermented at the winery just steps away.  It underwent some extra time on the skins for color and texture.
•  This Syrah aged nine months in neutral oak.  “I believe wines focused on fruitiness, like Syrah and Zinfandel, need very little new oak character.  It can muck up the balance of the wine very easily.”
•  Madroña has bottled Syrah since 1997, but this is its first vintage from the Cardanini Vineyard.
•  Excellent with peppered steak, sausage, or spicy stews.
•  Enjoy now or hold 3-5 years.  “If you have balance in the wine it will hold the wine together as it ages out.  A wine with incredible fruit but without the balance will fall apart quickly.”
•  Alcohol:                14.8%
   Total Acidity:         0.52 gm/100ml
   pH:                        3.84
   Cases Produced:    1298 cases
   Bottling Date:        October 22, 2007   
   Release Date:        January 1, 2007   

Madroña 2006 Estate Grown Zinfandel
•  Like the Syrah, this wine was recently bottled and has not yet been submitted to competitions or for review.
•  A Zinfandel with a heady nose of black and red berry fruit that introduce more of the same in your glass.  Weighty in the mouth, with a friendly, smooth finish.
•  This wine was grown at Cardanini Vineyard next door to Madroña as well.  The vines were trained and tended by Madroña who used a trellising system like a vertical cordon, differing from the traditional “goblet” trellising for Zin.  “There is great sun exposure all around the vine, and the fruit is gorgeous,” notes Paul.  “It takes lots of hand work, but it’s worth it.”
•  After hand harvest, fruit was crushed, cold-soaked, fermented and kept on the skins for 11 days.  Paul gently irrigated the “cap” that formed over the wine “to soften the tannins and make a more approachable wine.”
•  This Zin spent six months in neutral oak.
•  A good companion with venison, a Jack cheese sandwich, spicy barbecue, eggplant lasagna.
•  Enjoy now, or hold for 3-5 years.  “This is a very ageable wine,” notes Paul.
•  Alcohol:                  15.6%
   Total Acidity:           0.53gm/100ml
   pH:                         3.81
   Cases Produced:      1292 cases
   Bottling Date:          September 19, 2007   
   Release Date:          January 1, 2007

Tasting on the Wheel

The wines of the world offer thousands of scents in their almost infinite variety.

As an aid to novice wine tasters - and experts too - Dr. Ann Noble at the University of California at Davis, one of the leading wine-making and grape-growing schools in the U.S., came up years ago with something called the "aroma wheel."

Noble and the oenologists at Davis consulted with scores of wine lovers and wine tasters to list all the descriptive terms they could imagine for the smells of wine. Then they organized them, categorized them, eliminated all that seemed ambiguous or less than clear, and ended up with a list of 12 major categories of wine smells, subdivided into 29 subcategories and in 94 specific terms.

It's called a wheel because it is a circular table, with relatively similar smells placed close together around its circumference.

Want an aroma wheel to call your own? This link will take you to Dr. Noble's own Website, where you'll find information about buying it in laminated form - or even on a T-shirt.

Robin Garr, publisher of WineLoversPage.com and its 30 Second Wine Advisor E-letter, will publish brief tasting tips every Friday.

Postgraduate blind tasting

So you think it's easy to tell red wine from white? Try doing it blindfolded sometime.

Some white-wine drinkers who rarely touch red are convinced that the differences between the types are deep and fundamental. Consider the stereotypes: White wine is light, fruity and refreshing, an anonymous tipple for casual sipping. Red wine is strong, complicated and (although fine for connoisseurs, perhaps) hard to get to know.

Are the stereotypes valid? If you're in an adventurous mood sometime, find out for yourself: Have a pal wrap a bandanna around your head and pour you a glass of Merlot, say, and a glass of Chardonnay. 

Can you tell which is which? You've got a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right, but you may just find the differences are more subtle than you think.

Robin Garr, publisher of WineLoversPage.com and its 30 Second Wine Advisor E-letter, will publish brief tasting tips every Friday.

Compare and Contrast

I know of no better way to sharpen your palate quickly than to put two glasses of wine on the same table for a side-by-side tasting. The process of comparing and contrasting - consciously taking written notes of the ways in which the wines are alike and in which they're different - fixes their aromas and flavors and overall style in my memory better than any other technique.

If you're concerned about the extravagance of opening two bottles at a time, consider having friends over to share in the fun; use what's left as cooking wine; or hang on to the leftovers and use them for dinner on the following day.

Or as a compromise, taste similar wines on successive days, but take detailed notes and do your best to hold the first wine in your mind until you get around to the second.

Remember the pain of those "compare-and-contrast" essays that many of us suffered in freshman English Lit? This is a similar procedure, and just as effective at honing your logical skills - but it's a whole lot more fun to do it with wine!

Robin Garr, publisher of WineLoversPage.com and its 30 Second Wine Advisor E-letter, will publish brief tasting tips every Friday. He begins this series with a quick review of the basics, touching on fundamental tasting procedures for the first few articles.

Building your wine vocabulary

One of the most challenging things about judging wine - and telling other people about it - is that so much of its appeal is to our senses of smell and taste.

Since we humans don't use smell or taste nearly as much, or as effectively, as we do sight, hearing and even touch, we lack a well-defined, precise vocabulary to describe aromas and flavors.

What's more, some of the terms that most accurately describe the aromas and flavors of wine are not words that we usually associate with edibles: Oak, cedar and pine, moss, leaves and grass, even tar and leather are often desirable taste descriptors in wine.

It's important to understand that these scents and tastes rarely dominate the wine. They add a small but significant element to a larger pattern. In other words, the hints of chocolate and coffee in some red wines and the nuances of coconut, figs and dates in oak-aged Chardonnay don't make the wine taste like a milkshake or fruit salad; they are subtle, often elusive parts of a larger whole.

Robin Garr, publisher of WineLoversPage.com and its 30 Second Wine Advisor E-letter, will publish brief tasting tips every Friday. He begins this series with a quick review of the basics, touching on fundamental tasting procedures for the first few articles.

Swish before you swallow

Our taste buds can discern only four basic flavors: Sweet, sour, bitter and salty. But what we usually think of as taste is really more complicated, as it combines signals from our taste buds and our senses of smell and touch.

Touch? That's right: The feel of the wine in your mouth, its sense of lightness or weight, a quality that may range from watery-thin to viscous and oily, is very much a part of the experience of tasting wine.

To taste as a wine professional does, swish the wine around your mouth before you swallow; open your mouth a little and breath in, almost lightly gargling the wine. (Professional wine tasters quickly learn not to worry about what lookers-on might think of their antics.)  This technique isn't just for show; swishing the wine ensures that every taste bud is fully exposed to the wine; breathing through the wine in your mouth helps open up its aromas and flavors.

Robin Garr, publisher of WineLoversPage.com and its 30 Second Wine Advisor E-letter, will publish brief tasting tips every Friday. He begins this series with a quick review of the basics, touching on fundamental tasting procedures for the first few articles.

Nosing around your glass

One thing makes common scents: Smell is important to the wine taster. Much of what we think is taste really comes through our noses. If you don't believe it, try to enjoy a wine--or a meal--the next time you have a bad head cold.

When it comes to smelling, we take a distant second place to dogs and cats. Still, we humans can train our sense of smell, and you don't have to be an expert wine taster to learn to sniff out the differences among wines.

Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, often smells like ripe, juicy currants mingled with cedar. Merlot? Think chocolate-covered cherries. Aging the wine in oak may add hints of vanilla and tropical fruit.

Other grapes have their own trademark aromas. Just a few examples: Zinfandel evokes blackberries and raspberries. The fine Pinot Noir of Burgundy may recall cherries and spice. Fragrant black pepper often signals Syrah. Among whites, Chardonnay brings to mind crisp, ripe apples and may add notes of butter, figs and tropical fruits. A scent of peaches identifies Muscat; uncork a Gewurztraminer and you'll be smelling litchees.

Robin Garr, publisher of WineLoversPage.com and its 30 Second Wine Advisor E-letter, will publish brief tasting tips every Friday. He'll begin this series with a quick review of the basics, touching on fundamental tasting procedures for the first few articles.

Wine Tasting: Why Bother?

What's the point in taking wine so seriously? After all, it's just grape juice!

But it's grape juice that deserves a little respect.  Boasting a tradition that goes back to the Bronze Age, wine is the only beverage I know of that appeals not only to the senses but to the intellect.

Next time you try a glass, don't just gulp.  Slow down. Relax and take the time to think about what you're drinking and to enjoy it with all your senses. Examine its color. Take a deep sniff. Take a drink. Take two. Swish it around your mouth, sensing not only its taste but its texture and weight. Think about its history, where it came from. Put it all together in your head. Sip again and enjoy. You won't get all this out of a Pepsi!

If you'll remember a few simple rules as you taste and enjoy - think about wine, keep opening bottles and, ideally, get in the habit of keeping a casual tasting log in a handy notebook - you'll soon be on your way to a lifetime of enjoyment.

Robin Garr, publisher of WineLoversPage.com and its 30 Second Wine Advisor E-letter, will publish brief tasting tips every Friday. He'll begin this series with a quick review of the basics, touching on fundamental tasting procedures for the first few articles.

2003 "Monterey, Arroyo Seco" Chardonnay Gold Stripe

SELECTION SALUTE:  A stand-out Chardonnay from Monterey County.

• Silver Medals: New World Internat’l wine Competition
                        Grand Harvest Awards
                        San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition
                        Internat’l. Eastern Wine Competition
                        Riverside International Wine Competition

• Tangy apple, pear, lemon and honey are on the nose and in the flavors of this medium-bodied Chardonnay.  Vanilla, too!

• All of the fruit was grown at Ventana’s 400+ acre estate in the Arroyo Seco appellation of Monterey County 30 miles south of Salinas. Its rocky soils provide great drainage.

• Fruit was hand picked around October 10th and delivered immediately to the on-site press.

• The juice was settled for 36-48 hours, and then the clear juice was moved into steel fermentors. 

• This wine aged in 100% French oak (one-third new) for 10 months.  “This isn’t an oak bomb. Any village idiot can save up $900 and get a new oak barrel and get an oak bomb.  Historically, Chardonnays spent about a year in barrel and six months in bottle. It’s only in modern times of instant gratification that we must do things fast.”

• A stellar wine with Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad, Portobello Mushroom Lasagna, Angel Hair Pasta and Grilled Shrimp!

• Enjoy now or cellar up to one year.

Alcohol:            13.76%
Total Acidity:    0.57gm/100ml
pH:                  3.61

www.ventanavineyards.com

How Do I Treat My Wines?

There are a few simple ways to treat your wines so that they will last longest and show you their best.  Here’s a quiz from the California Wine Club that may have some surprising answers!

1. The best place to keep your wine is:
    a. on the kitchen counter
    b. in the refrigerator
    c. in a cool, dark place, like a closet

2. When wines are shipped, they can experience “shock”.  To be at their best, my CWC wines on arrival would like to:
    a. lie on their sides for a week before uncorking
    b. stand upright for a couple of days on my doorstep, before they decide to come in
    c. roll around in the back of my car for a month or so

3. Sometimes, a wine will have solid granules in the bottom of the bottle, called “sediment”, or crystals on the cork. I should:
    a. throw it out
    b. pour it slowly so I don’t pour the sediment
    c. store it longer so the sediment can clear

4. I should drink my California Wine Club wine:
    a. soon
    b. in several months, after it has aged more
    c. in several years, so it will be at its best

Answers:
1.    c. In a cool, dark place. Light and changing temperatures are part of kitchen life, and not so good for wine.

2.    a. Lie on their sides for a week before uncorking. This is why winemakers like Doug Meador of Ventana send their wines to competition weeks before they will be opened.

3.    b. Pour it slowly so I don’t pour the sediment. There is nothing wrong with the wine at all; this is the result of the winemaking process in some wines. Sediment doesn’t go away, no matter how long you store it.

4.    a. Soon! California Wine Club selections are always ready to enjoy right away. No need to age them.