Author Archives: Christopher Pratt

Domaine Jomain Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Pucelles 2006

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Impossibly muted at first, with suggestions of seaside mornings, all blinding sun, freshly applied cologne, and the faintest hint of a hangover, this wine is hella classy, and I mean that sincerely. I’m transported to an imagine holiday on the Côte d’Azure – scratch that, more like the Costa Brava, home of slightly too much money, blinged-out sunglasses, and overindulgence with negligible repercussions the morning after.OK, let’s try that again. Relatively light yellow in the glass, the wine is subtle, elegant, distanced. The nose is absolutely gorgeous, with faint traces of suntan oil, a distant lemon grove, freshly-churned butter, and just-baked bread. There’s a faint hint of green, almost vetiver in its earthiness, and yet it’s overshadowed by toasty hazelnut and bracing lemon rind.Smooth and poised on the entry, the wine takes its time to announce its refreshing acidity, sliding louchely into a long, gentle fadeout into a slightly woody butter-toasty finish that is smoother than a con artist working the American tourists clutching their Rick Steves guides outside Notre-Dame on a sunny August afternoon. It’s an absolutely mesmerizing effect, and to replay it all all you need do is take another sip: rich, slightly mineral fruit, gentle framing acidity, subtle spicy oak, and then it all runs out again in slow-motion.If this wine were a song, I’m sure Steely Dan would have written it. This is an absolutely delicious wine and yet there’s something slightly dirty behind it that you can’t quite make out. Absolutely recommended for a summer’s afternoon spent undressed with someone to whom you’re not married.Domaine Jomain
Price: $40
Closure: Cork

Finca El Portillo Rosé Malbec 2008

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When I’m shopping for a relatively cheap pink wine (and for me, that means ten bucks or less), there are very, very few things I’m concerned about, to be honest. The wine should be screwcapped so that I am able to quickly bust it open when I get home from work; the wine should be dry as I think that sweet pink liquids are best left to manufacturers of children’s medicines, and (ideally) there should be some flavor in the wine, preferably something you’d want more than one glass of.This wine works for me on all counts. It’s easily opened, it’s bone dry, and it tastes vaguely like a rhubarb fool: slightly acidic, with pretty red berry flavors and a fine, creamy texture. It is just fine. No, it will not leave you rambling on about garrigue and Provençal herbs. The color is pink, Jolly Rancher Watermelon pink, and not an elegant onionskin pinkish yellow. The flavors are straightforward and good, no pussyfooting around.It’d be hard to do better than this at this price point – yes, I would rather have a bottle of Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare or the Crios de Susana Balbo malbec rosé – but if this is on sale, it’s as cheap as you’re gonna get without venturing into “do not put in mouth” territory. Honest.By the way, if you ever find yourself on vacation in Mendoza, do take a trip down to the place where this wine is made. It is absolutely one of the most overwrought wineries I’ve ever seen (somehow without being vulgar) – if I remember correctly, it was built by Dutch orthodontists spending their retirement money in South America or something along those lines. It features the most insanely ridiculous spittoons I’ve ever seen: stand-alone plinths that look like they were ganked from a travelling Star Trek prop exhibition. I’ve never felt quite as self-conscious as I did horking up Syrah into those things; best of all, it’s a cavernous chai, so every tiny noise you make is amplified to truly epic gross-out proportions. Highly recommended: do book ahead and stay at the nearby Postales del Plata Valle de Uco Lodge if you get a chance. It’s awesome.Bodega Salentein
Price: $10
Closure: Stelvin

Neudorf Nelson Chardonnay 2007

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The second time I flew home from New Zealand this year, I was fortunate in that I was on a nonstop flight back home to California – no stops in Fiji this time! – which meant I was able to grab a few bottles at the airport. The Auckland wine shop isn’t half bad, but the prices are nothing special and they tend not to have particularly interesting wines, but of course compared to Los Angeles it’s a godsend; last time I flew out of LAX, I think I remember seeing Robert Mondavi Coastal Chardonnay for a whopping $25 a bottle. Ouch!As mentioned previously, I was fortunate enough to stop by Neudorf winery last January, where an overwhelmed tasting staff dealing with too many customers towards the end of a day on a holiday weekend graciously put up with my wanting to taste but not buy (due to lack of luggage space on the way back home from vacation). Looking at Neudorf’s Web site I now see that there’s a fancy version of this wine that Bob Campbell and Jancis Robinson really really liked – and of course what I have is “the cheap one,” the less-fancy one relegated to airport wine shops (but apparently not exported to the USA). Operating on the principle that only the very best wineries put out less expensive wines that are worthy of the same name the fancier ones have, let’s see what this wine is like…An absolutely beautifully soft goldish-green in the glass, I’m grateful that they’ve bottled under screwcap so that it made it home safely without turning that awful oxidized golden color. The nose is very, very Burgundian, with a sort of reduced burnt-match smell that’s reminiscent of just a small amount of sulfur. Frankly, it’s mouth-watering. The overall effect is of roasted nuts and straw, with no particular buttered-popcorn notes that would ordinarily mess with California wines at this price point.The entry of the wine is smooth, lush, and full at first, before being briefly – very briefly – overwhelmed by racy acidity that screams New Zealand to me. Quickly, though, it quiets back down into an resolved dance back and forth between the ripe fruit and the supporting acidity, finishing on a lengthy descent through well-grounded notes of roast hazelnuts and fresh stone fruits. It’s all perfect for a summer’s day, somewhat less oppressive than a Meursault with a real sense of lightness and finesse. Finally, I should say that if there’s any wine this reminds me of, it would almost be a riesling from Burgundy (if such a thing existed, of course): the light delicacy of the aromatics is a wonderful match for the acidity and heft of the wine.Really delicious, great value, and beautifully packaged, it’s a bummer this wine doesn’t seem to be easily available locally. If the less fancy wine is this good, I’d love to know what the “really good” one tastes like.Neudorf
Price: NZ $30
Closure: Stelvin

BenMarco Malbec 2003

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Still almost a caricature of juicy-ripe fruit a fairly long time after harvest, this wine’s held up amazingly well. Squid ink and raspberries, iodine and white pepper come together as if the seaside’s been transported to central Oregon: there’s also a touch of dusty leather and dried tobacco leaves there as well. Lovely and complex, it promises quite a bit that (thankfully!) it mostly doesn’t fail to deliver.Initially somewhat thinly acidic, the wine quickly spreads out somewhat into a tart, taut, elegant midpalate suggestive of rhubarb tarts before mellowing into a softly tannic finish with subtle spiciness. Give yourself plenty of time to enjoy the inky dark color of the wine while waiting for the finish to complete itself; it takes its time disappearing quietly.Quite good, although I’d personally prefer stronger oak influence here, this wine is surprisingly light for an Argentine malbec, tending towards elegance rather than brute force. Try this one with salmon in a heavy sauce.Dominio del Plata
Price: $18
Closure: Cork

Cockburns Vintage Port 1967

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When my father and my mother married in 1967, they had their reception at the Islander, a classic Tiki-themed restaurant in my home town of Stockton, California. Mai Tais were served in tiki-shaped glasses; the wedding pictures are a hoot. I wasn’t around then, but while I was growing up, I knew they were about to celebrate an anniversary when my Dad fetched a bottle of this wine from his cellar the week before, careful to give it plenty of time in an upright position, hoping to reduce the thick sludgy sediment that would wind up in their glasses.There were originally four cases of this wine, I think; my parents aimed to drink one on every one of their anniversaries until their fiftieth. In the meantime, they’re still happily married, but the bottles are a bit scattered: they joined the Peace Corps when they retired, I took over maintenance of the remaining cases, and it’s always been a small hassle getting the bottles to them in time for their anniversaries (they live in London, a short twelve-hour plane ride away from San Diego).When last I checked, I still had seven bottles in my cellar – just enough to make it to their 50th anniversary in 2017 as they’ve still got one in their flat. I reported this to my Dad last weekend and he said, you know what? You and Dan are celebrating your first anniversary this weekend, so I think you should share one of those bottles yourselves – and this is why I’ve got a glass of this wine in front of me right now.Amazingly, opening the bottle wasn’t the disaster I was fearing. The remaining bottles have started to weep a bit over the past few years, climate-controlled storage notwithstanding; the capsules are sticky and they smell, well, porty. I chose the one with a huge dried stain of escaped liquid on its side, washed it as best I could, and hacked away at the capsule with a knife. Thankfully, it came off fairly easy. I tried to wash the gunk off of the neck, but didn’t get too far. Removing the cork was surprisingly easy; although it was soft and not particularly tightly sealed, I managed to get it out all in one piece. Yes, it looked like a Stilton cheese you’d forgotten in the back of the fridge for a year, but at least it didn’t fall apart.Similarly, there wasn’t a lot of sediment still suspended in the wine; it all flowed smoothly into the decanter and left a huge block of crud behind, which promptly fell off the bottle walls shortly after I set the bottle back upright.The wine’s a very thin, pale liquid at this point, and yet it looks like watered-down pomegranate juice in the right light, still dappled with some brighter reds mixed in with the weary browns. It’s starting to look a bit like sangria at this point, but it’s also over-still, seemingly devoid of life.The smell is a shock: this wine does not smell forty-two years old. If I didn’t know anything about it, I’d have mistaken it for a run-of-the-mill decent quality Port at first, something like a LBV. However, a bit more time thinking about it and it smells of finely ground, lightly roasted coffee, with hazelnuts and milk chocolate, neon red strawberries, rancio notes, pistachios and rosewater… there’s a lot going on here. Overall, the effect is of imaginary Turkish coffee served next door to a bazaar specializing in oudh.Rich, unctuous, and plush in the mouth, an initial sip is briefly overwhelmed by very fine, sharp acidity before fanning out into a slightly hot, calming whirl of semi-dried sultanas, Nutella, and Turkish delight – but the overarching flavor is ironically that of simple, direct, rich red fruits, a strong echo of a good harvest nearly half a century later.If, as Randall Grahm recently tweeted, the mysterious, zen-like point of all wines is to bring us back, then this wine certainly brings me back. It brings me back to an imagined 1967 Portugal, where I’m standing in the Douro Valley wondering where all of this work will lead. It brings me back to the Islander in Stockton, California, drinking a mai tai out of a Tiki-shaped mug. It brings me back to childhood memories of my parents celebrating their marriage with a shared ritual year in, year out. It brings me back to standing in a port lodge with good friends just a few years ago, drenched from winter rains. It brings me back to bad truck stop bacalao, to the first time I ever tasted port at my uncle and aunt’s house in Oakland, to the first time I fell in love, to the first time I ever met my partner.Finally, I get the sense that this wine has someone returned full circle as well. I remember it when it was younger, deeper colored, stronger. I remember my Dad expressing disappointment that it had started to fade several years ago. And yet here it is, quite possibly no longer what it once was, and yet it brings me right back to the beginning.Thanks, Dad.Cockburns
Price: $NA
Closure: Cork

Domaine Jomain Puligny-Montrachet 2006

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As Douglas Coupland recently tweeted, 2009 feels like a party you can’t wait to leave so that you can go off and do something else you’d actually rather be doing.Over the last year, I’ve watched nearly one in four of my friends lose their jobs – and those of us that are still working are watching our incomes erode in the face of increasing costs for virtually everything. (Those of you in Washington state who now have to deal with newly raised prices at state-run alcohol stores? My heart truly goes out to you.)So where’s the silver lining in all of this? Well, quite frankly, I haven’t seen it yet. Although I’m reading about grape harvest gluts in Napa and Marlborough, I haven’t been lucky enough to score any deals on wine. Heck, I’ve bought virtually nothing at all this year: the Scholium Project raised their prices to $100 a bottle, Quilceda Creek is asking $98, and so on. Even if these were the best of economic times, these prices are out of the reach of virtually everyone (save for, I suppose, those of us who work in finance or the health insurance industry). But surely there are huge stocks of unsold wines being marked down to bargain basement clearance prices, right?Alas, no… except for this wine, apparently. This is one of only a few wines I’ve seen so far this year that are being marketed largely on the basis of cost. I paid $27, but the label says “Retail $50!” And did anyone ever pay $50 for this wine? Well, I have no idea… but if I had, I wouldn’t be disappointed.A wonderfully smoky burnt match nose tinged with sea salt, burnt cream, and buttery stewed quince sets things in perspective right away. Yes, the wine is over-bright, somewhat pale, and not much to look at, but oh, what a smell. There’s also a faint hint of night blooming jasmine and other pale flowers; there’s also just a hint of sulphur, but it’s restrained.Cacophonous at first, the wine pulls in half a dozen different directions. At first, there seems to be a strong suggestion of sucrosité, but blink and it’s gone, replaced by a finely textural sensation of slippery elm, buttressed by fine, subtle oaky notes and carried along by the kind of jovial acidity often lacking in California chardonnay. There’s a sort of toasted nut effect here too, no buttery flavor to speak of in particular (although I suspect there’s definitely malo in full effect here, texturally speaking). It all trails off into a lovely, hazy finish that reminds me of dried apples.This is absolutely delicious and good value at $50 – and fantastic at $27. If you can find it, buy it; I’d even hazard a guess that some cellaring would be in order here.Domaine Jomain
Price: $27
Closure: Cork

Dominique Portet Shiraz 2002

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Sadly, I only had one bottle of this left – and I opened it just now only to find that it was corked. Based on the previous bottles of this I’ve enjoyed over the years, though, I’ll leave this not-a-tasting-note up here as a reminder of the quality of the other bottles; this wine is a good example of New World wine made with a nod towards Old World sensibilities: it’s not over-oaked, not overly alcoholic, and yet hasn’t artificially been limited in its elevage so that it slavishly mimics Old World wines. Instead, what you get is a wine that walks the line between the two: fully ripe New World fruit, yet with earth and minerality (subtle, but it’s there). Even relatively soon after its release – a year or two, if memory serves – it had characteristics of older wines: a relatively flat, gracious palate with fine grained tannins and a rich nose of sweet brambly fruit.I’ll miss this stuff and hope to find more of it again in the future.Dominique Portet
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Sandstone Cellars V

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There’s something to be said for a wine that makes itself smelled even from across the table. I poured a glass of this, sat down at the computer, and at no point forgot that it was there: it positively exudes perfume. The color is remarkable: rich and deep, dark red with a slightly watery rim, at first giving the appearance of an older wine but somehow it’s all very youthful at the same time.

One smell of this and I’m transported: this does not smell like any wine I’ve had before. All kinds of random associations come to mind: the crisp, dry, crinkly skin of fresh tomatillos; dusty corridors in government buildings in distant counties, dessicating in the summer heat; the smell of the upstairs closet with Mom’s college papers, reel-to-reel tapes and all; a warm summer’s night in the house where grew up in the San Joaquin valley, crickets and trains on the night breeze, the warmth never fully gone from the hay bales outside. It’s remarkable.

Trying to think more traditionally about this for a minute, there seems to be a dry, dusty mint or basil note hovering over dry baker’s chocolate on the nose, wet earth, dried meats (not smoked), and (remarkably) something like dried violets. In all honest, I find it absolutely fascinating: so many different smells, such odd suggestions of things that really don’t have tastes or smells. If a mark of a great wine is that it somehow manages to remind you of things in your past that you’ve forgotten, well, then this wine’s a great one.

The first thing that strikes me about this wine in the mouth is the texture: it seems much richer, unctuous, fat, wide than most others do. Taking a minute to experience the physicality of the wine, I sense that it seems to slip away quietly, somehow vanishing towards the middle-back of the mouth while leaving that same impression of fullness behind. There’s good acidity here, which I suppose guarantees the soft disappearance; the tannins are finely checked and leave a lingering sense of elegance.

As far as the flavor of the thing goes, it again doesn’t really taste like any other wines I know. There are fleeting hints of typical syrah and zinfandel – snatches of deep, plummy fruit and smoky bacon fat – and yet there’s some other flavor dominant which (and I do apologize for the suggestion) somehow reminds me of mucilage or packing tape: it’s definitely not the usual thing. At times I find it challenging and not quite welcome; at other times, especially when paired with some soppressata-style salami, it calms down into something more conventionally agreeable, with flashes of comforting sweetness amongst rich smoky earth and ripe red fruits.

I have absolutely no idea what Don Pullum and the rest of the folks at Sandstone Cellars are doing, but it’s some of the most interesting wine I’ve ever tasted. If there ever needed to be proof that Texas makes serious wine, this is it.

Sandstone Cellars
Price: $25
Closure: Cork

Bonny Doon Old Telegram 2000

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I’ll be the first to say that this wine isn’t pretty. Holding up to the light, it’s murky – it looks like river dregs, Delta muck, sediment. It all looks either very unsettled or in the process of disintegrating. Still, can’t say that I remember what this wine was like when it was young, so who cares, right?Right off the bat, the first thing I notice about the nose is that oddball candy-coated playtime of a nose that I associated with Bonny Doon’s experiments with micro-oxygenation from ten or so years back. There’s a strange, fruity, children’s-candy effect that I never particularly cared for; I prefer my mataro earthier, not fruitier. Once you get past it, though, there’s a lightly roasted/smoked coffee effect that’s intriguing, parried by a sort-of wild strawberry ostrich jerky effect. Curious.Relatively light-bodied at first, the wine quickly turns spicy in the mouth, tasting of candied orange peel and slab smoked bacon. Even if it seems light at first, solid tannins make themselves known soon enough, grounding it all in a heavy-handed, gripping manner perhaps better suited to the Detroit police. There’s a rich sweetness to the fruit yet, though, which rides above it all, lending it an air of deeply unserious seriousness that really doesn’t help pull it all together.To me, this wine tastes like the sort of thing a middle-aged winemaker would make: they’ve had some career success, sure, and the cognoscenti are familiar with the brand, but instead of doubling down and recommitting to better wines, middle-aged boredom has set in and now you’re playing around with shiny new toys instead of soberly paying attention to what you’re doing. I’m not disappointed by this wine – I think it’s decidedly unique and I’m glad it exists – and yet it seems that it’s a failure of sorts – a failure to pay attention to what Nature gave you and making that wine instead of whipping our your lab kit and making a wine that could only have been made technologically. What you get is interesting, sure, but it seems alienated from itself (alas, my attention span for Marxist theory was woefully short at university, so I can’t spin this out into a class critique of a wine that was forced to be something it wasn’t, alienating it from its true nature in the process).With more air, there’s a dark smoky fatigue here that suggests the wine is reaching its end of life (later rather than soon, I suspect). I’m enjoying it with pasta and red sauce; the meat of the wine is amplified by the meatballs and vice versa. If you’ve got this, drink it up now.Bonny Doon Vineyard
Price: $30
Closure: Cork

Di Rienzo Terre di Chietti Pecorino D'Abruzzo 2007

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Frustratingly, I bought this wine from a Web site that turned out to be located back East; this resulted in a lengthy transit time to my home in California, which has apparently resulted in it sitting around in some very hot places for an indeterminate amount of time, maderizing the wine beyond repair, dang it.If you can get past the weirdly sweet, somewhat metallic nose – cling peaches in a tin can, anyone? – then you get a sense that this might have been a good wine, with hints of sage and thyme. The mouth is similarly dumb, with a oddly flat appearance that disappears into (again) a strangely sweet, unwelcome finish that is vaguely fruity but not otherwise similar to anything you’d want to actually drink.Two out of the four bottles are cooked; the other two I’m giving to good friend but with the major caveat that the wine probably didn’t survive the cross country journey. Thanks, FedEx. :(Postscript, July 30: Much to my delight, the good folks at Wines ‘Til Sold Out graciously refunded my money; according to their staff, this wine should be just fine if it’s been stored correctly. Good to hear: one day, I’d love to know what this grape variety tastes like!Di Rienzo
Price: $9
Closure: Synthetic cork