Category Archives: USA

Ridge Buchignani Ranch Carignane 2006

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Splashing into the glass, this is purple beyond belief. It’s as if Harold of purple crayon fame (or any toddler) imagined a glass of wine and drew it with the brightest crayon in the box.

It smells like a caricature of “fine wine” as well, having much more in common with Bohemian college dreams of sneaking into an Tuscan hayloft with the farmer’s daughter (or the strapping young man who drives the tractor, your tastes depending). It’s a lush, ripe sort of thing; you think of flowers heavy with nectar delivered days earlier, drooping on your sideboard. And yet it’s also fresh, vibrant, filled with the smell of a verdant California spring.

The fullness took me aback, followed by a full city roast coffee finish with extremely subdued tannins. The flavors are fairly straightforward, sure, but a lot of delicious foods are beautiful in their simplicity. To drink this wine is to throw your mind back to the harvest, when the earth’s fullness and abundance gave itself up just as leaves began falling dead to the ground; it’s a quick, jolting reminder to enjoy what you have before the frost.

Drink this with your mistress, preferably with black Moroccan olives and just-baked bread.

Ridge
Price: about $30
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: November 2008

Sagelands Pepperbridge Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2002

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Frankly, the nose on this puppy is generic. It smells like, well, a standard issue Washington state red wine – that is, tending towards mentholated cassis, fairly bright, fairly rich, and inviting. It’s almost as if the ghost of the now-pulled Welch’s grape juice vineyards are hiding on the periphery; it’s unchallenging but delicious.

In the mouth, it’s more interesting than you’d expect. Typically Washingtonian high and tight acidity predominates at first, falling away to reveal a rich, plummy core of bright black olives and blackcurrant fruitiness. The supporting oak is tastefully done, giving a solid, unexceptional tannic base that sets the wine off nicely; it’s all somehow reminiscent of a McVitie’s dark chocolate covered digestive biscuit. As Borat would say: I LIKE!!!

Serve this wine with something huge and meaty – venison stew would work wonders. It’s also probably fantastic with Stilton or pecan pie.

Sagelands
Price: I’m guessing about US$20 (I can’t remember)
Closure: Synthetic cork
Date tasted: November 2008

Bonny Doon Splendido Segaro 2001

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It’s been over a year since I moved to San Diego, and the pile of wine bottles in the bedroom doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller, even though I’ve done my best to drink, drain, or distribute it. Ah well. This bottle was set aside long ago for a charity event called Have a Cigare that never materialized: a vertical tasting of Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant and related wines for the Microsoft employee charity auction; sadly, no one bid on the opportunity to taste a dozen Cigares, so it wound up gathering dust under my bed for a year. Anyhow!

Still fairly youthful in the glass – visually, it looks like a medium-weight Zinfandel – this has a decidedly aged nose, the tell-tale stink of time overriding much of anything else. To be honest, it smells an awful lot like a greasy hamburger (and I don’t mean that pejoratively): very meaty, a little bit smoky, and kind of fatty. It’s kind of like a cherry cough drop that fell into the bacon fat jar next to your grandmother’s stove, actually.

Once you drink some, there’s an immediate hit of cherry followed by fairly thick, dusty tannins with high, nearly Italianate acidity. The complexity is surprising, tending towards bright red fruits with a supporting hint of porty chocolate; all in all, it strikes me as weirdly Italian (I know, I know).

God only knows what’s in this or how much it cost; I suppose I’d have to go find the packing slip from the wine club shipment to find out, but right now all I want to do is finish this bottle and order a pizza.

Bonny Doon
Price: $?
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

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

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

Bonny Doon Ca' del Solo Albariño 2007

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Several decades in to the ongoing, evolving project that is Bonny Doon Vineyard, it looks they may finally be arriving at the most interesting place yet – and ironically, it’s an arrival that sort of predates the winery’s founding. By that I mean that they’re now trying to produce wine the way you would have done it a hundred years ago in France, except presumably with a few newfangled tricks such as refrigeration and proper hygiene.This wine is one of the first Demeter-certified biodynamic wines they’ve grown, and the complexity of it suggests (to me, at least) that they might well be onto something. This is a far cry from the weirdly plush, microbubbled oddities they’ve been crapping out for a while now; instead, what you get here is a beautifully light-colored wine with a floral nose that’s oddly like what I imagine Portuguese laundry detergent might smell like: rose petals and generic “clean” with an edge of cucumber.In the mouth, this is fatter than you’d expect, with a finish that tapers off quickly to reveal a note of crushed seashells and faded lemon rind. Before it goes, it’s a sort of dilute orange blossom honey note you’ve got along with, well, a sort of drying minerality. It’s fairly distinctly itself, whatever that is, and as such it gets two big thumbs up from this drinker. I only wish I had a plate of fresh oysters to accompany it.

Price: US $20
Closure: Stelvin
Date tasted: July 2008

Chehalem 3 Vineyard Pinot Noir 2006

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I just moved the final 11 cases of wine from a storage space in downtown San Diego to our garage. Ouch. Remind me to never, ever move again – it’s been one year since I moved here, and I still have no idea where half of my wine is. That bottle of Ch. Musar Dad gave me? I dunno, maybe under the guest bed?Anyhow, I tried and somewhat succeeded to jam it all in a cheesy DIY “500 bottle” stand-alone wine cooling unit: it didn’t quite work, so I decided to just pull all of the stuff in Stelvin out and keep it in the one cool spot in the garage. I figure I’ll try to drink it this summer or serve it to wedding guests in August, what the heck.This brings us to this lovely bottle of Chehalem pinot noir. Oddly enough, this is the first red wine I’ve ever drunk from Chehalem: I love their rieslings and their pinot gris is pretty darned good too. They are of course from Oregon, however, so I’m obviously way behind on the Pacific Northwest boosterism/logrolling schedule, so here we go.First off, there’s a soothing, transfixing cola nut and Rainier cherry note that springs up the moment you unscrew the cap. It’s the kind of smell that instantly puts you at ease: whew, I just blew twenty bucks on a bottle of pinot and is thankfully not crap. It’s just a little bit sappy, so it doesn’t really strike me as a truly high end pinot, but the quality to price ratio? I can work with that just fine. There could also be just a hint of spicy barrel in there as well, and there’s even something like fresh roasted chestnuts (without the roasting). Go figure!Color is lovely: a milky light red that’s miles away from the overdone dark of some New World pinot. The flavor comes as a bit of a (welcome) surprise: fairly acidic and bright, no obvious sweetness, good body, with a bit of wood (?) supporting full, vibrant cherry and other red fruits. This is a fine example of standard quality Oregon pinot noir, and it’s very good value for money.NB: there seems to a very slight spritziness here that dissipates quickly; you might want to decant this one.ChehalemPrice: US $32Closure: StelvinDate tasted: June 2008

Bonny Doon DEWN Barbera/Freisa Amarone 2007

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I’ve been on the Bonny Doon mailing list for coming up on a decade at this point, and I still feel my heart sink whenever I open up my every-two-months club shipment and see… something Italianate. Try as I might, I just can’t bring myself to wholeheartedly embrace Italian wines and winemaking styles, and that goes double when it’s an American or other winery who have just issued a press release saying that the second the American consumer market discovers Walla Walla sangiovese, they are absolutely sure that a massive new (and profitable!) wine market will appear out of nowhere.Yes, I’ve had ecstatic experiences with Italian wines before – Amarone is by far one of my favorite wines – but when I see something like this, I get all sad panda, very quickly. So, it was with some trepidation that I opened this bottle tonight.There’s an indefinable, high-tech-ness to the nose here; it smells massively fruity, and there’s an odd designer yeast-y (or something) note here was well. It’s kind of like aerosolized white pepper intruding into a basket of overripe raspberries set somewhere in a dilapadated garden of tea roses; there’s also a sour muskiness that smells of dry cleaning sent out after a long night at Studio 54 – all floral aldehydes, sweat, and “clean.” Finally, there’s a damascone peachiness sneaking in at the end. It’s all very confusing and kind of remarkable – this is wine? is it supposed to smell like this?Just a little bit sweet in the mouth, there’s a wonderful dark cherry note with tannins hiding in the background (but they don’t really seem to do much; was this microoxygenated?). Acidity is reasonable, it’s actually kind of delicious, and then there’s a very soft finish of damask rose with the tannin lingering around just a bit as well.So, yeah, this is a total Frankenwine, but hey. It’s delicious, it’s a welcome experiment, and it would (presumably) be a hell of a lot of fun to serve this to a connisseur of European wines and see if they can guess what it is. I know I couldn’t.Bonny Doon VineyardPrice: US $25Closure: StelvinDate tasted: June 2008

Beaulieu Vineyard Tapestry 1999

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Only a slight softness to the rich, crimson color suggests that this wine isn’t at all young; on the nose, what you get is mostly soft, sweet, rich earth with an gentle framing of soft spice. On the whole, it’s rather akin to Davidoff cigarettes: there’s something about this that screams “expensive,” as plush and rich as a Birkin bag, with a suggestion of the tobacco drying shed thrown in for good measure.In the mouth, it seems like it’s begun to fade slightly, with a certain drabness of fruit present. Even so, it is undeniably lovely and seems just the thing to have with a slice of Parma ham (thankfully, I do indeed have some handy thanks to fresh&easy’s discount pricing). There’s still a small bit of tannin on the finish – not very much – and it all ends with a sigh. Gentle, distinguished, elegant, and, I suppose, a reminder of what some Napa wines may have tasted like before Screaming Eagle, Colgin, and so on redefined the style in the 1990s.If you have some of this, now would be a good time to drink it. If you don’t, it’s not good value at the full retail price, but if you see it for $25, I’d seriously consider it.Beaulieu VineyardPrice: US $25 (K&L Wines pricing, normally $50).Closure: CorkDate tasted: June 2008