Author Archives: Christopher Pratt

Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2002

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On the nose, dry woods and black olives. There’s also a subtle hint of lilac perfume that sneaks in past the relatively standard smell of an older Cabernet, but only just. Ultimately, it reminds me of salt caramels abandoned in the dusty hallway of a grand Swiss hotel, snowy pines just outside.

Fairly rich and full in the mouth, the taste is lithe, young, round. Barely perceptibly sweet, the wine trends upwards, increasing in brightness and freshness, ending on a bright note of soft cedar and rich bramble fruit.

Delicious.

Penfolds
Price: $20
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: November 2008

Vinoterra Saperavi 2003

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I’m up in the (San Francisco) Bay Area for the weekend – tomorrow is day 2 of Bonny Doon’s annual winery festival, which sounds like it’s going to be fun – and I stopped by K&L Wines on the way to an East German restaurant. I wasn’t planning on buying anything, but when I saw that they had Georgia wine that didn’t cost five bucks, I had to buy a bottle immediately and take it back to the hotel after (an alcohol free) dinner.

The nose here is strongly reminiscent of a number of rich, fruity New World reds such as Michel Rolland’s Clos de los Siete, Mollydooker in South Australia, or Boekenhoutskloof in South Africa. There is, however, something slightly different here, with a note of coffee that doesn’t really seem like it should be from oak – it’s hard to describe.

More tannic than I was suspecting, the wine has rich, dark fruit nicely counterbalanced by some very well judged (French?) oak – it really is a generic international style wine far different than the Georgian stuff I’ve had from local Russian ex-pat delis in California. I’m not convinced that there’s anything here that you can’t find in a number of other wines in roughly the same price range, but it is tasty, the bottle is attractive, and there is a subtle taste here that is unfamiliar. It might make a good change for the overly jaded wine drinkers among us.

Vinoterra
Price: $22
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: November 2008

Bonny Doon Vineyard Old Telegram 2001

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Walking along the Sacramento River delta when I was younger, I found myself in a town called Locke. Locke, founded by Chinese immigrants who’d largely come to build the Transcontinental Railroad, still exists today as a ramshackle mud-bound town, known for peanut-butter hamburgers at Al the Wop’s and the secret whispers of opium dens long, long disappeared.

One summer’s afternoon, when I was younger, I found myself there, sitting in the cooling shade, looking out over sugar beet fields to the east, smelling the sweet mud drying a ways from the bent-pipe irrigation mechanics. There’s a fleeting smell of rich soil drying in the Delta sun, and there’s some of that to this wine.

A loosely purple color that seems too bright, watery at the edges somehow, this wine doesn’t look right, but who stares at the color of wine unless they’re remembering that all good tasting notes have a description of that? Dusty cedar shavings, cassia left in the pantry far too long, and dried Cape Town sausage distract from the violet pastilles somewhere on the other side of the room, long forgotten in Maman’s boudoir.

Still rich in the mouth, there’s a quick burst of crimson sweet and then it’s gone, with a dusty warmth on the return. Paying proper attention, it’s actually a delicate progression typical of an older wine, from sweetmeats and damson through to hints of pipe tobacco, shoe leather, and the part of the library where they keep the incunabulae.

Delicious.

Bonny Doon Vineyard
Price: $30
Closure: Stelvin
Date tasted: November 2008

Ònix Priorat 2001

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In 48 hours (hopefully), we’ll have elected a new President. In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to keep a low-level buzz going so that I don’t have to think about it too much (I voted last Tuesday and really, really wish it were all over with at this point).

Anyhow: on to this bottle of wine. Right off, it smells like a somewhat dirty raspberry compote. That is, raspberry fruit cup with something like low quality cinnamon (er, cassia, not cinnamon). It’s surprising in that this wine is (a) Spanish and (b) seven years old; of course, I’m not complaining.Medium weight in the mouth, to be frank I don’t taste much for acidity until the flavor peeks on in the finish here; it reminds me of Himbeergeist, which is a fancy German way of saying “grain spirit with raspberry flavor.”Did I say raspberry? Oh, I did? Sorry.

So: Raspberry, acid, raspberry. Raspberry. More raspberry. I’m not sure what else I’m getting here. Ah well. Pretty bottle, though.

Vinicola del Priorat
Price: about $12
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: November 2008

2005 Domaine Alfred Chamisal Vineyard Califa Chardonnay

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Surprisingly – well, at least for me, because when I see California chardonnay, I usually expect butterscotch popcorn – this wine is one of the nuttier Chardonnays I’ve ever smelled. There’s also kind of an unusual, almost maderized effect here, something lees-y, that’s surprising as well. Overall, the effect is of something like a rich, honeyed Burgundy that is tellingly Californian only in that the acidity is a bit lacking on the finish. The closest thing I can compare this to would be Screaming Yellow Zonkers that fell into a dish of Ethiopian honey wine: it’s almost salty, there’s a rich yellowness that’s reminiscent of sweet popcorn, and the lush fatness of it all is fairly appealing as well. That being said, it really does veer a bit too much towards circus peanuts for me, and on the whole it is a touch disappointing. For this money, though, it’s good enough value – most wines at this price point don’t have anywhere near the character this wine does.

This is probably a great selection for any American fan of hugely alcoholic international style wines: it may not have a lot of typicité, but it is huge and every bit as enjoyable as Angelyne.

Domaine Alfred
Price: US $12.50
Closure: Stelvin
Date tasted: October 2008

Grand Cru d'Antsirabe Cuvée Rouge Viala

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[This wine was drunk as a special birthday wine whilst on vacation in Madagascar earlier this month. I may have mistyped the name – I still haven’t found the picture I took of the label, so bear with me for now if I got it wrong!]

On the way into Antananarivo from the airport at Ivato, I somehow convinced our tour guide to stop the bus at a Jumbo hypermarket so that we could do some souvenir shopping. Unbelievably, there was an absolutely humongous wine selection available, so I grabbed the most expensive bottle of Madagascan wine I could find, hoping that it would turn out to be OK. Having already spent a week in country at the time, I’d drunk enough Madagascan wine to know that it was pretty dire, ranging from absolutely undrinkable (Ch. Verger) to not entirely awful if you were already kind of pissed on beer (Clos Malaza).

Anyhow, for just over £3, you can buy a bottle of Grand Cru d’Antsirabe’s very finest red wine, which is produced from 80+ year old vines growing a few hours south of Antananarivo, the capital. Here are the tasting notes I took at the time:

Very fruity on the nose, more at Hawaiian Punch than wine. A hint of camphor or perhaps allspice. With some time, fine wild strawberries. Thin with a nasty green edge… slightly tannic, astringent finish. Sort of a white pepper edge. Better as you drink it. “Kind of like a Beaujolais that’s gone off” – this from Jeremy, one of the Englishmen who made up the bulk of our tour group (we were the only Americans). Really, this isn’t bad. Quite an accomplishment to have made a wine of this quality given the circumstances.

After we finished the bottle, it was kind of fun to note that the bottle was as thin and light as bottles used to be back in the days of the USSR. I wonder where they bought the bottles? The cork itself was a short, but high quality agglomerate cork. The label was, well, ugly, surprisingly so given that the “regular’ Grand Cru d’Antsirabe bottles don’t look half bad (we had one with dinner at the Hotel de France in Tana later on that week).

All in all, this stuff was like a cheap Beaujolais and really not too bad. Still, if you’re going to Madagascar, don’t expect delicious local wines. Try the beer. Three Horses Beer Light isn’t bad.

Grand Cru d’Antsirabe
Price: 10,800 Madagascar ariary, or about $6.50 US
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: October 2008

Mumm Napa Sparkling Pinot Noir NV

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Either I’m getting arthritic before my time or else Mumm Napa are using some amazingly tight corks, but as per usual I had a hell of a time getting the cork out of this bad boy.

I was surprised to see that this wine is a fairly dark red; it looks an awful lot like Honest Ade pomegranate blueberry drink (for you Aussies, this is an organic soft drink that’s something like a premixed cordial). Heck, it could just be pomegranate juice if we’re going by loks here. On top of the wine, there are some bubbles – lots of them – which somehow don’t look particularly elegant. They’re kind of like tiny color inverted cod roe, but I digress.

It smells of strawberries and unaired broom closets. It tastes like medium quality Moldovan pinot noir, which is to say fairly good in a musty direction. It comes across as fairly dry with a short finish that hits a fruit leather, somewhat tannic note and holds there; I like it, but it seems abrupt, inelegant.Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of this. It pales by comparison to good Aussie sparkling shiraz, and Moldovan sparkling reds (eg Cricova) are far more entertaining. On the other hand, it doesn’t taste like any other Californian sparkler I’ve had, which is I suppose a good thing, and yes, I would be happy to drink this at any time (I love sparkling red wine). But is it good value?

Mumm Napa
Price: $30 (wine club members: $21)
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: September 2008

Tir na N'og "Old Vines" Grenache 2006

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Is it possible to be entirely prejudiced against a wine merely from smelling it quickly, walking up the stairs to the computer?

Simply put, this smelled like some kind of fruity New World red, with some kind of yeast with a flashy brand name – FermentXtreme™ or what have you. It smelled like UC Davis checked into the Motel Quickie in Roseworthy, SA and snogged its way to a Parker 90+. It smelled like something the wine waiter sells to folks who don’t like wine but who want to look sophisticated when they’re dining at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Toorak. I dunno. It just smelled kind of lame.

That was twenty minutes ago, and it’s finally shaping up a bit with some air. Now it smells of lovely oak, Rainier cherry and allspice. Kind of a cocoa, bay leaf, eucalyptus mint, white pepper sort of thing. It’s lovely but it still seems to be missing some sense of place.

The way it actually tastes, though, is the surprise here. It smells overlarge, Partonesque, but surprises you; it’s lithe, sleek. It doesn’t taste at all like it smells; it’s more of a blackcurrant flavor I’m getting here, and the tannins seem to be out for lunch. Coming back to it again, it is decidedly New World, but there’s this twinge of cassia there that’s unusual and attractive; it finishes quietly, wandering off to the back of the spice rack where the things your Czech grandmother brought to Christmas dinner back in the late nineties still moulder behind labels you can’t understand. Basically, the trick here is that you’ve got a wine that meets the high-octane, Parker fruit bomb mold – judging by the way it looks and smells – but it tastes far more interesting than most of those. I’m pleasantly surprised by this and would gladly drink it again.

Tir na N’ogP
rice: US $25
Closure: Diam
Date tasted: September 2008

Ramblings: Wedding wine

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First off, please allow me to apologize to Julian for being conspicuously absent from these pages for what feels like two months: I sent out my wedding invitations just over two months ago, I began a job at a new company four weeks ago, and I’ve been busier than I ever have been for months as a result.

Thankfully, the firestorm is now over. I’m slowly returning to my usual routine of drinking wine thoughtfully and writing about the experience of it (as opposed to just hunkering down with a glass of something a couple of nights a week and not bothering to write about it). Julian, thank you for keeping things running smoothly here at Full Pour. Oh, and apologies in advance: the honeymoon is in three weeks, so I’ll be disappearing again for a while shortly… 🙂

When I decided to get married, I decided to do everything at my home here in San Diego. After all, our weather is predictably beautiful and I’m fortunate to have a small back yard with a fairly beautiful garden. Of course, once the invitations were printed, the next thing up was “how the heck am I going to feed and water one hundred guests?” To keep costs down (wait – I mean “to give it a more personal touch”) I thought it’d be good to source everything from within my ZIP code (that would be 92104 – North Park, San Diego), which meant trips to Eclipse Chocolat and Schatzi’s Catering to set up food and wedding favors. My buddy Henry offered to bake the grooms’ cake and my friend Chris delivered Sprinkles cupcakes from Beverly Hills (what would a wedding in Southern California be without the obligatory trendy dessert du jour, you ask?). All that was left to me was the beverage service.

This is a list of what was drunk over the course of the entire weekend, along with tasting notes (if I remember much of anything about the wines; I didn’t write anything down at the time) and other notes that I think may place things into context.

The basic ground rules of serving wine at a wedding – to me, at least – would be these:

  • If you’re serving Champagne, it had better be cold.
  • Don’t go by your own tastes – think about your guests.
  • Don’t forget children and teetotallers – not everyone drinks wine.
  • Visual presentation counts, so don’t grab odd lots from your cellar.
  • Spending a lot of money is of questionable taste and effectiveness; most people won’t remember the wine, and ostentation isn’t worth it.

In addition, I have now learned that you should have more water on hand that you ever imagined if you are holding a wedding under the Californian sun. Thankfully, I live two blocks from a supermarket, so a scouting party headed over to fetch another hundred bottles (it took five minutes total). Yes, I had amazing guests.

Anyhow! Back to the wedding. First of all, I married a fellow Californian, so Champagne was right out of the question. I had originally wanted to go with Costco rosé Champagne because it’s delicious and also vaguely cheeky (Costco, after all, isn’t exactly elegant – but their pink Champagne is very, very good). That was vetoed immediately, so I had a quick look at the major Californian labels: Mumm, Chandon, Gloria Ferrer. I’d just had Chandon Étoile rosé at a public wine tasting a few weeks back and it kind of sucked – too sweet, too bland – and Gloria Ferrer’s label isn’t the snazziest, so I went with Mumm. At $12 a bottle, two cases nicely covered our 110 guests (we had 2 bottles left over afterwards). I had some two days after the wedding: it was as good as any other $12 California sparkling wine, and the color was a beautiful pink. The guests generally liked it very much, although it was definitely a touch too dry for the standard American palate. Mumm Cuvée M would have been more widely acceptable, but I didn’t like the label (too blue) or the taste (too sweet). That being said, it’s probably an overall better choice for weddings.

Up next: I’ve often seen weddings where the couple actually getting married has a separate, fancy bottle that they use for their own toast. Being generally shameless, I figured that this was a great idea, so I joined the Mumm Napa wine club (there was no other way to get it) to get some Mumm Napa DVX rosé for the grooms. The DVX rosé was delicious, really – elegant mousse, kind of a strawberries on brioche thing – and (most importantly) the bottle was very beautiful.

We also needed two or three cases of wine on hand to serve with dinner – and I didn’t want to buy any more, so I raided my own cellar for anything that was moderately good and (more importantly) I had a lot of. This is what I decided on:

  • White: 2002 Mitchell Watervale riesling
  • Red #1: 2002 Jacob’s Creek Reserve shiraz
  • Red #2: 2002 Rosemount GSM

A couple of notes here: I guessed that folks would mostly want red wine, and that was true. Only 4 bottles of the white were served, but 18 bottles of the red went out the door. I didn’t taste any of these three, so I’ll only go by what guests had to say: the caterers (who were German) very much liked the riesling, most guests absolutely loved the Jacob’s Creek (which I suspected – it really is a good wine, and it’s good for most people because it’s less tannic than others), and the wino geeks present very much dug the Rosemount, although they also noted it was better with the food.

Oh! As we spent most of 2002 in Australia, it was also important to me to have Australian wines only with dinner, all of them from 2002.

Now, we can move on to the eclectica. The night before the wedding, we celebrated with a sort-of bachelors’ party: after sharing a couple of pizzas, we moved on to these wines:

  • Rockford Shiraz 2000, 2001 (half bottles)
  • Luigi Bosca Gala 1 and Gala 2 (malbec and cabernet blends)
  • Ridge Monte Bello 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004 (half bottles)
  • 2004 Hamilton Russell pinot noir
  • 2004 J. K. Carriere Anderson Family pinot noir
  • 2004 Ridge Geyserville (magnum)

It was a special night – what can I say – so we busted out the good stuff. My short take on all of this was that the J. K. Carriere outshone everything else by a mile. I pulled it out of the cellar by accident – I had originally meant to share that bottle with you, Julian – but I decided to just go for it and open it. That is one of the two best pinot noirs I have ever tasted (the other being a Bouchard Finlayson from South Africa): it had everything going on. People just fell in a hushed reverie when they tasted that. Amazing.

The Hamilton Russell was okay but was probably just suffering by comparison. The Geyserville was predictably good. The Monte Bello was lovely, but really demands more time in bottle (for the 2001 especially). I loved the 2004 right now, though. The Rockfords found favor with my brother in law Tom, who’s a chef – I think he appreciated the distinction and originality of the wine. Finally, no one bothered to finish the Gala 2, although the Gala 1 disappeared almost immediately. I didn’t try either so I wouldn’t know what to say.

Saturday night after the wedding I sat down with a small group of friends: my neighbor, old friends I hadn’t seen in years, and three people whom I had never previously met. We stayed up for a couple of hours talking – it was lovely – and went through these bottles:

  • 2002 Grosset Polish Hill
  • 2002 Steingarten
  • 2002 mesh
  • 2000 Clonakilla shiraz viognier (magnum)

It was truly a beautiful way to end the evening. The Grosset riesling was harsh, demanding, and very very strange; everyone else was unfamiliar with the general style (dry Aussie riesling) and I think it’s safe to say that no one particularly liked it. The Steingarten by comparison was powdery soft, lemony, elegant… and then the mesh blew the other two out of the water. It was almost a synthesis of the other two: style and power, soft and mineral, hard nose, long, gentle finish. That was a truly beautiful bottle of wine and a wonderful experience to share with friends.

Finally, to close it all down, to say goodnight, I went for the bottle that I had long ago decided I would drink on my wedding day: the Clonakilla. We bought that bottle from Mr. Tim Kirk himself back in 2002 and hand-carried it all the way back to San José. I babysat it through our subsequent move to Washington state and then drove it down to San Diego last year; I put it in the front seat footwell to make sure it would stay cool until I could get it into a wine storage locker. It’s been there for six years and now it’s stained and empty.

How did it taste? Beautiful. It’s a melancholy wine, really; there’s still a hint of sourness and decay among the petals, but very, very little. Temperamentally it’s a lot like J. K. Carriere pinot noir: minimal winemaker intervention, elegant taste, moderate alcohol, everything in perfect balance. I don’t know why I don’t drink their wines more often: that is something I aim to work in the future. It’s been fun trying dozens of oddball wines, and I suspect I’ll always enjoy it, but when I know with moderate certainty that a J. K. Carriere, Ridge, or Clonakilla wine will truly move me, shouldn’t I be drinking more of those?

After a quick detour into beer territory on Sunday – we had a small after party at an elegant brasserie called The Hole (oh, who am I kidding – it’s a dive bar over near the airport) – I went back home and got ready for the final toast of the weekend.

At some point during the wedding – I was busy with guests and didn’t notice – someone snuck in to the party, filled up the sink in the laundry room with ice, and deposited two bottles of 2000 Cristal. I didn’t notice until I went to get the Clonakilla much later in the evening, only to discover it hiding underneath the Cristal. My first though: Cristal? WTF? I mean, in my house? I had briefly considered splurging and buying a bottle the week before – I mean, if your wedding isn’t the right time to blow $250 on a bottle of wine, when is? – but caught myself about to do something stupid, and stopped.

We chilled that bad boy down, put out five glasses, and shared it with three of our closest friends. It was a truly special moment, thankfully unsullied by gratuitous Showgirls references. As for the wine itself: yes, I can see why it would cost that much. The bead was spot on, the mousse beautiful, the packaging and color of the wine truly elegant. Taste-wise it had an awful lot of the breadiness that I love so much – and most intriguingly a sort of oyster-esque quality to it (iodine perhaps). It kept going and going on the after palate, and it got better as it warmed up a bit (note to self: ice bucket for only 10 minutes next time, not 15). It was fantastic.

We then moved on to pizza in the back yard. We next had a bottle of 2002 Giaconda shiraz which I found terribly disappointing – $80 for what I have no idea. It might have required more time, or decanting, or something. It wasn’t bad, just kind of… average. (I’ve had their chardonnay once and that was truly special, hence my disappointment here.)

We followed it up with a bottle of 2002 Ridge syrah (I think; I need to double-check some pictures; if it was, Julian, then that was the matching twin to the one we shared in Sydney way back when), which had a strange yeasty flavor to it. I didn’t finish my glass; most of it wound up down the sink. And then we were done: every good weekend has to come to an end, after all!