Author Archives: Christopher Pratt

Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2000

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Graphically at least, this bottle seems to suggest a radical break with Penfolds tradition. Gone is the slightly daggy, endearingly old school label that looks as if it were designed by a TAFE graduate armed with nothing more than a biro and a ruler. Instead, we have a perfectly ordinary, utterly corporate, yawn-inducingly generic label that strikes me as if it were designed solely to lend Penfolds product an air of internationally respectable cachet that would allow them to be sold alongside, oh, Mouton-Cadet on duty free shelves in Heathrow airport. It’s sad, really: packaging is important, and this just screams ‘Hey, we sold out to Southcorp, home of awesome heating equipment. Oh, and we make wine! International style wine guaranteed to never, ever raise eyebrows!’ Oh well.So: how’s the wine? In the glass, it’s deep, dark, rich and visibly aging at this point, a dark, rich red tinged with a hint of molasses. The nose seems just a little bit dumb, promising nothing more than aged wine, hinting at well-scrubbed linen closets and air-dried laundry. Things finally get going when you actually drink some: there’s still a good sense of sweetness and heft here, amplified by very subtle cedary oak, that expands into a somewhat simple, slightly sour, really rather delicious finish supported by some well-rounded tannins.Given the somewhat bright acidity here, this wine really doesn’t work well on its own. Add a steak, though, and I think you’re in the right place in terms of doing what the winemakers presumably were hoping you’d do. This is fairly decent cabernet, not really international style (the sourness! the moderate alcohol!) and also definitely not Bordeaux (no minerality! no greenness!), so I suppose it really is uniquely Penfolds. Not bad, and yet somehow lacking (at least to me). Would I buy it again? Yeah, probably. Would I wait so long to drink it? No – something appears to have gone missing along the way. I’m not getting particularly interesting aged characteristics here, and I’m thinking this might’ve been more interesting five years ago.Penfolds
Price: $18
Closure: Cork

Château Rocher-Calon Montagne-Saint-Émilion 2006

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I’m in the teeming metropolis of Morgan Hill, California at the moment on another business trip. This is pretty countryside just a ways south of San José; the Besson vineyard that gave us the inestimable Clos de Gilroy grenache is nearby. Thinking I’d drink locally, I headed to the local Trader Joe’s – the Aldi-owned cheap-gourmet grocery store – and intended to buy a bottle of something local. However, what they had was mostly stuff from Napa and Sonoma, and the French wines were keenly priced by comparison – I didn’t want to put $25 worth of alcohol on an expense report – so I wound up with the second most expensive Bordeaux that they had. (Interestingly, the most expensive French still wine was a $20 Ch.-de-Pape.)How is it? Very good indeed. It looks young, all majestic purple and vibrancy. The nose, such as I can make it out given the, ahem, inadequate stemware at the Courtyard Inn, is very soft, with hints of red berries and spice. The entry of the wine onto the palate is all lightfooted elegance, but before you have a chance to notice it firm-footed tannins come sneaking in, which broadens the wine out into a fairly impressive heft. Rich, ripe primary fruit is offset by tannins and smoky, spicy notes presumably from barrels; this is (let’s be straight here) very impressive given its price, and a good introduction to what decent French claret tastes like.The finish lingers, tannins gradually overcoming the supple fruit, until all that’s left is a memory of a distant wildfire. All in all, probably the best wine I’ve drunk at this price point in some time, and probably what the Wayne Gretzsky meritage from the other night wants to be when it grows up.Château Rocher-Calon
Price: $13
Closure: Cork

Wayne Gretzky Estates Meritage 2006

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At the fairly ritzy SAQ Sélection on boul. De Maisonneuve Ouest Saturday afternoon, I put the bottle of Osoyoos-Larose I’d gone there to buy in my card… and then I noticed a pitiful clump of neglected bottles nearby. What? One of Canada’s best known sportsmen had produced a wine? What the hell? The capsules were dinged up, the back labels all had French language labels hastily applied, peeling already, with typefaces that didn’t match anything; underneath were labels that appeared to have been designed for US export. The URL on the back didn’t work (it’s outdated), there were still more slapped-on labels talking about a charitable foundation… ugh, what a mess.Of course, I immediately put back the prized bottle of Osoyoos-Larose and bought this wine instead. After all, Wayne Gretzky, eh?So: how is it? Fairly ordinary looking in the glass, the nose offers up simple, attractive, cherry-berry flavors with just a hint of oak and/or glue; I’m not sure which. In the mouth, you get a somewhat thin, somewhat fake wine with body that seems largely derived from alcohol with maybe a little bit of residual sugar, not extract; there really isn’t much by the way of flavor here, but at least what little you get isn’t bad, especially not compared to the Jackson-Triggs merlot from last week. With some aeration, it improves a bit to the point where voilá, you’ve got a decent pizza wine: little red fruits, some smoky oak, decent acidity, and a good enough finish. Not too shabby! Overpriced by Californian standards, it didn’t seem that expensive in a Canadian context. I’d be interested to see how their current wines are faring; there could be some potential here for a exceptional sub-$20 wine in the future.No. 99 Estates Winery
Price: C$17.99 (US $17)
Closure: Synthetic cork

Jackson-Triggs Proprietors' Reserve Merlot 2005

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It’s Friday night here in Québec, and I just got back from the long walk to the local state-owned liquor store. I asked (in bad French) where the red Canadian wines were, and the clerk switched to English, joking that they didn’t have many owing to the “border skirmishes” between here and Ontario. Sorry, folks, but it was either this wine or the Dan Aykroyd, so I went with what they had.If there’s a nose to this wine, I’m sorry, but it’s escaping me at the moment. Although it’s a lush reddish color with just a hint of browning (presumably due to the somewhat iffy plastic cork), it doesn’t smell of much more than somewhat dusty (ready: oak-chip-y) red fruits with a whiff of something not quite right like nail varnish. It’s not exactly appetizing, alas.Rich, full-bodied, and nicely tannic in the mouth, the primary flavor is something that I don’t associate with Merlot, and I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. There seems to be an unwelcome greenness or stalkiness here, which suggests to me that this wine has been chaptalized; there’s plenty of alcohol here (beaucoup de jambes, mes amis), but the flavor profile doesn’t match. It reminds me of frozen Supreme Pizza, the kind with a lot of green pepper on it and industrial pepperoni that tastes of little more than pepper. In short, folks, this wine is kind of nasty. Unfortunately, it’s all I have until I can get into Montréal proper tomorrow (I’m out by the airport in a generic business hotel at this point), so it’ll just have to make do. In the meantime, let’s hope that room service gets here quickly.Jackson-Triggs
Price: C$16.35
Closure: Synthetic cork

Hill of Content Sparkling Red NV

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I have a small confession to make: the first two bottles of this were so delicious that I didn’t bother to write about at them at the time: my apologies. Let’s try this again, shall we?A fine, persistent bead builds to a solid mousse, ringing the glass with faint cranberry, set off nicely by a dark, rich, deep crimson red. The nose offers up straightforward rich, creamy red fruit, with a hint of dusty library and book bindings: it smells like there’s some age on this bad boy, and yes, there was; the label mentions two and a half years in French oak, which shows itself again on the palate, which is (and I hate to use this word) hedonistic in the best possible way, beautifully tannic and supportive of the delicious rosy fruit. It all comes together as fresas con crema served in a cedar bowl might: wonderfully young, exuberant, and yet with hints of pedigree and age making it all seem somehow more serious than it really is.Absolutely delicious and a steal at this price, even the packaging makes me smile: it’s a wonderful thing buying sparkling wine under crown seal, I think; just as Chandon markets their high end New World sparklers this way, the effect is of industrial elegance; after all, the church key is far from a Laguiole corkscrew and reminds you that this is, after all, just another agricultural product and not a hedonistic lifestyle accessory. But still: wow, what a wine.Hill of Content
Price: $14
Closure: Other

Monte Xanic Malbec Limited Edtiion 2006

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Unctuous and richly spicy at first, the nose of this wine reveals itself in short order to be more than that. There’s a fleeting sweetness, a hint of acidity, and then a full-on reveal of rich red fruits. At other times, there’s a dusty, dry spiciness that reminds me of things in the back of the spice cabinet that haven’t been opened in a while: something along the lines of allspice, bay leaf, and nutmeg.

Wonderfully complex, the initial impression is of simple, generous fruit, but then tannins sweep in at once to announce the serious intent of this bottle. These are quickly joined by sweet-leaf dried tobacco notes accompanied by just a hint of well-toasted barrel spice; then, it slowly, slowly, slowly fades into a ridiculously lengthy finish of slippery tannin, dark plummy fruit, and a hint of rosewater.

Delicious in ways that Malbec often isn’t, to me this is another example of how good Mexican wine can be. The climate in Baja California works well for grapes that thrive at greater levels of ripeness, and yet it has been judiciously harvested here, giving you the fullness of a New World wine and yet all of the spice and complexity of the Old. If anything, this reminds me greatly of some of the French producers in Argentina such as Lindaflor; the overall result is intoxicating, sophisticated, and just plain delightful.

Monte Xanic
Price: MXN 438 (US $34)
Closure: Cork

Champbrulé Brut NV

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I flew to Mexico City yesterday for the first time in 25 years: I’m spending a week here on vacation with friends and family. Walking around after the afternoon thundershowers, I thought I’d see if I could buy some Mexican wine. Thankfully, the locals were incredibly friendly and pointed me towards a small wines and spirits only shop two blocks from my apartment that was filled to the roof (literally) with the kind of international wine selection you’d expect in any world class city: Champagne, Chablis, Rioja, Brunello, all of the world’s greatest hits. I was hoping to find some of Freixenet’s Mexican wines, but all they had was their Spanish wines. I asked in terrible Spanish if they had any Mexican sparkling wines… and yes, they found two wines in stock. They fetched it from the top shelf, dusted it off, sold it to me, and here’s what I remember about it from last night:

This appears to be traditionally vinified with second fermentation in the bottle. Beautifully packaged, with all of things you’d expect (perforated foil, custom printed cage, etc.), it appears to have been produced by something called Wine Products of Tijuana, which to my American ears isn’t appetizing. However, the wine itself is most definitely appetizing, with a fine, persistent bead and appealing yellow color. There’s not too much by way of smells, here, alas, but that’s no problem as the wine is eminently drinkable, full in the mouth, and (thankfully) no more residual sugar than any other wine in this class. This is a well crafted wine and can definitely hold its own with any American wine in this price range; to me, this is even slightly preferable to Korbel thanks to its restraint with regard to sweetness levels. I’d buy it again.

Luca Syrah Laborde Double Select 2006

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There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to be using a bottle this heavy: to do so is just rude. It makes it harder to hold and pour, more expensive to ship, and of course there’s the whole doing right by Mother Earth thing to consider. Worst of all, buying this wine will make you feel like a total prat. After all, what idiot wants to be seen buying the biggest, heaviest, most ostentatious bottle in the shop? Please.On to the wine. Shortly after opening the bottle, I noticed that I had a huge sticky smear of something all over my left hand (I’m a southpaw). Yuck. I retrieved the cork from the garbage and sure enough, there’s a bunch of sticky, gooey mass at the end of the cork and smeared up the side of it. I haven’t had the pleasure of this experience before; I trust the wine is OK and that this is just an one-off, a production oddity.The nose is curiously slight: if Vosges made a chocolate bar called “Gentlemen’s Dark Chocolate with Cedar,” then this is what it would smell like. Oak oak oak and oak… and yet, there’s a pleasant, fleeting floral sourness hiding in there somewhere too. Still, I don’t get a real sense of place, just a sense of cash flow: this wine smells like money.Amazingly purple-y youthful, the wine looks ravishing. Tasting it, though, leaves me a bit less a-flutter: it seems just a bit insubstantial in the mouth at first, quickly hiding behind massive woody tannin and finishing on a slightly sweet note, again managing to taste more expensive than anything else.In short, this is a wine for a hedge fund manager with a penchant for bling. This wine would be absolutely perfect with a steak dinner at the finest steakhouse in town: I’m thinking El Gaucho in Seattle would sell cases of this to Microsoft marketeers dining prospective clients in town to visit the Executive Briefing Center. Drinking it on its own is a bit of a chore, rather like gargling with lavender water and sawdust, but add a fine cut of meat and even a cigar and now you’re talking serious money.Luca
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2002

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Six months too late to call it spring cleaning, I found three bottles of this hidden in the bedroom closet last weekend. Oops. Talk about suboptimal cellaring conditions: nearly 80 degrees in there all summer long. I decanted it, set the decanter in an ice bath to cool it off a bit, and waited an hour before drinking: I hope that mitigated any damage I did as best I could.There’s a visual texture to the wine that’s unusual: there’s a blackly rich core of fruit in the glass, thinning out to a less intimidating rim at the edge of the glass. Better yet, there’s a suggestion of particulate matter, with bits stuck to the sides of the glass; presumably, more of the same in the wine itself lends it all an impression of body and richness. I have no idea why, but the older I get, the happier I am when my wines have a certain look of, well, relation to the world of the natural. I don’t like wines filtered to a glossy smoothness; I want to be reminded that they were grown in dirt and raised in wood.At first, the nose is off-putting, smelling sweet, strangely sweet, the sweetness of blackcurrant jam. It’s only temporary, though: wait half an hour at least and its true nature will out. There seems to be an overall level of Brett here that teeters between “ugh, no thanks” and “OK, I can deal with this”; harsh patent medicines duel with roasted smoky notes, and no one comes out on top. Ultimately, the off notes mostly win out, which is a disappointment in the extreme; the quick flashes of roast coffee and bacon fat are there all too briefly before being one-upped by slightly metallic aromas of the medicine cabinet.Still, there’s enough interest here to make me want to finish (just) a (single) glass before tossing the rest of the bottle and waiting another year or two to try one of the six bottles remaining. The texture is beautiful, a rich, solid mass that glides forward on lovely, smooth tannins into a long, silky finish that most wines would kill for. Ultimately, though, the strange qualities of the wine carry the day, and you’re left wondering what happened – I remember this wine being profoundly beautiful five years ago, but I’m just not feeling the love right now. Sadly, the warm cellaring spot probably didn’t help matters. Oh well. Clonakilla
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Cavas de Weinert Gran Vino 2002

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Gorgeous, rich pretty cherry black in the glass, you could almost mistake this for raspberry sauce gone missing from your cheesecake. However, trepidation sets in on the nose: there’s a slightly raspy note promising difficult acidity, a somewhat off-putting charred, smoky note, and just the briefest hint of a curious sweetness I generally associate with yeasts that may or may not be intentional. Very strange.Round and full at first if somewhat unstructured, it quickly resolves into a clunky, tannic finsh that leaves you with that tell-tale did I just accidentally lick a hamster? feeling. Again, the odd yeastiness is briefly here and there, just not consistently; I wish I could better describe what it is what I’m feeling here, but it’s (to my mind) very much a marker of New World winemaking. Over time and with additional air, however, the wine does open up a bit, turning into cherry coffee tincture with chewy tannins.Ultimately, I suspect that there’s a very, very low level of TCA contamination here, which would account for the odd, fleeting, yeasty-sweet off notes, I suspect. Sometimes this wine taste like a serious contender for well-judged, nicely ripe New World Bordeaux; sometimes, it tends more towards telltale wet cardboard. It’s a shame I don’t have another bottle to compare against this one; for now I’ll chalk this bottle up in the ‘might be good but I don’t think I can honestly judge it’ category.Bodega y Cavas de Weinert
Price: $20
Closure: Cork