Is it possible to know a vineyard after tasting its output only twice? Hardly, or at least not in every respect. But those sites of special interest are so partly because they impart a particular character, hopefully attractive, to the wines made from their fruit. A truism, perhaps, and something of an abstract religion to those who place importance in the idea of a
Lately, I’ve been thinking about wine styles and how some come to be defined as classics over time. In a way, it’s more complex than the literary canon, for example, in which a single, unchanging artifact is evaluated and re-evaluated over time. With wine, a particular combination of variety and region remains static but a whole set of variables — everything from particular vintage conditions to winemaking to long term climatic variations — ensures a constant evolution. So, how to pin down the essentials?
Looking over at the glass, I initially mistook it for Martinelli sparkling cider, the fake Champagne every child gets at the Thanksgiving dinner table. It’s an unusual color for a white wine, brittle and clear, fairly pale and somewhat off-putting (at least to me). The nose is something like salt-water taffy, sweet with a hint of pineapple, possibly like hot buttered popcorn (oily, salty, with a hint of sugar). Pretty strange stuff, but of course pinot blanc isn’t something I drink often, so I don’t know if this is typical or not.I’m none too thrilled by this wine; it seems flat, flabby, not very refreshing. There isn’t much flavor here that I can discern; it’s mostly just generically wine-y, with the vaguest of off flavors that I can’t pin down entirely. The acidity leaves a bit of a burn in my throat, and all in all this wine leaves me cold. There’s more flavor and complexity in a bowl of Corn Pops than in this bottle; this isn’t one I’ll be finishing.Kuentz-Bas
Price: $14
Closure: Diam
With respect to the apparent fashion towards wine labels that consist of cryptic collections of letters and, at times, numbers, I’m not a fan. To be honest, it reminds me too much of the sort of corporate-speak that surrounds me every day; when I come home, I’d rather sit down to something vaguely romantic and aspirational instead of a label that describes the result of a scientific trial.
I haven’t had a glass of this wine in a decade; it still has one of my favorite labels in the state (a fire-breathing bear), but I rarely shop at the places where you’d ordinarily see this (either Costco or dining-experience-style restaurants). Having a look at the bottle just now, it sure looks like the brand has gone walkabout over the last ten years: the address on the back is Woodbridge, which seems wrong; this was originally a R. H. Phillips wine, and the last time I remember researching them, they’d just completed an IPO and were (alongside Mondavi) one of the few California wineries that was publicly held.It looks like Constellation Brands now owns R. H. Phillips; strangely, Toasted Head seems to have been divorced from that brand entirely and is now a brand of its own. They own Mondavi now as well, and I’m guessing they’re now making this stuff in bulk out of the old Mondavi facilities in Woodbridge, hence the address change on the back of the bottle. So, finally, what we have here is a case of a small family winery having done well in the 90’s – and wound up as a virtual label with no real sense of place in the ’00s. Strange.So how is the wine? The nose is agreeably simple, smelling largely of cashew, white peach, and a little bit of banana. Fat and a little unwieldy in the mouth, it heads towards a bananas Foster finish with just a hint of oak propping it all up like a vinuous underwire bra. That being said, it isn’t really perceptibly sweet, which is good, and it does taste good enough to finish the bottle. I suppose what this is is your basic, standard-quality California chardonnay with buttery, oaky fruit and no distracting flavors (read: subtlety or nuance) to get in the way of your enjoyment. To be honest, this is strikes me as a cut-rate Kendall-Jackson Vintners Reserve chardonnay: if you like that, you’ll like this just as well – and not only is the bottle more beautiful, it’ll cost you a few dollars less. This really is exceptional value.Toasted Head
Price: $7
Closure: Cork
Unbelievably, it’s taken me two years to realize that so-called sunny California isn’t always. Sure, there were those few 90 degree days in January, but then bupkus until last weekend, so that huge stash of Aussie riesling malingering in my cellar hasn’t dwindled at all. Thankfully, it’s warming up in the evenings – finally – and now it’s time to get a move on.Thanks, Julian, for this wine; this is the bottle that survived the flight back to Seattle after visiting you in Adelaide and Sydney a few years back. It’s survived well, having colormorphosed into a watery Benedictine of sorts, very much a color I’d associated with cheap, flabby California chardonnay. Of course this isn’t that: one sniff and holy cow, I don’t think you could possibly mistake this for a North American wine. It smells of children’s paste, strangely enough, but only faintly; it’s more of a curious mix that calls up bitter orange, neroli, lemon, bergamot, lavender: all of those things you’d associate with a traditional men’s cologne. There’s also the faintest trace of oxidation here, far from unpleasant, and not so much of the stereotypical diesel or kero you’d expect with something this old. The closest comparison I can think of is with Scottish heather honey that’s being produced near a peat-burning Scotch distillery; it’s sweet, floral, a little bit smoky.All over the place in the mouth, it’s hard to pin down the taste or sense of this wine. Moments after swalloing, I’m reminded of artificially flavored fruit gums, so let me back up a moment. It begins in a somewhat austere fashion, all minerals, straw, and wet stone; then, it reveals a fairly full mid-palate, not so much in body but in fruit, of which there’s still quite a bit a decade on. Acidity is very much kept in check – this won’t frighten Grandma – and there’s a lingering sense of sweetness that’s a lovely counterbalance to all of the aged bottle character this wine displays. That kero note does appear, but briefly, and it all finishes on a fairly smooth, fruity, and yet doggedly dry note that seems much less artificial after the first few sips. If anything, it reminds me of quince paste and jasmine flowers. Phenomenal stuff, in short, and far from dead yet. I wonder how long this thing is going to last? This is only bottle of the ’99, but there’s a near-case of the 2002 yet to be drunk…Petaluma
Price: $NA
Closure: Cork
I’ve been following Clonakilla’s Riesling for a number of years with considerable pleasure.
It’s Friday evening, and I already finished a bottle of their La severita di Bruto with friends, insisting that I wasn’t going to be blogging anything this evening – but one smell of this and yeah, well, I lied.This wine smells of tinned litchi fruit that someone is eating in the middle of a peat smoke fire on the beach. Seriously. I don’t know what to make of it; I’ve never had a wine that smelled like this before. It smells like someone is dredging rose petals through a smoky sludge of decaying leaves and tar. It smells like someone banging chalky erasers against each other in the middle of dusty warehouse of discarded library books. It smells like ground basalt stirred into a solution of sea water and orange flower water. In short, it smells kind of awesome.In the mouth, it gets even stranger. It tastes slightly oxidized, yet fresh, with all kinds of outré notes ranging from off-brand cling peaches to orange blossom honey from Provence to smoked horse meat to, I don’t know, bruised rambutan mixed with gravel. In short, it’s all over the map, delightfully so. The finish lasts for ages, it’s wonderfully rich and fat in the mouth, and opens up a weirdly panoramic vista of fresh air and sunlight.Yeah, it’s weird, but this wine is both sui generis and a real keeper. By the way, the La severita di Bruto? Also very good if not as much of a look-at-me-I’m-crazy showstopper of a wine. That being said, it’s probably the best sauvignon blanc I’ve had from California; yes, the finish is a bit hot, but it works well with the peppery aspects of the wine, and the aromatics are in a class of their own – kind of like high end Marlborough sauvignon minus the pneumatic passionfruit aromas + some of the mineral aspects of Sancerre in one big, goofy package. Recommended.The Scholium Project
Price: $30 (500 mL)
Closure: Cork
First, provenance. I ended up with this bottle of wine (amongst others) courtesy of the Sydney Royal Wine Show, as a “thank you” for stewarding. The thing is, I can’t find out anything about it other than the fact that it won a silver medal at the 2008 Show. Nothing on the Wolf Blass website. So if you’re after some of this wine — sorry, can’t help you. Unless some of our readers (or the producer) can enlighten us all, of course.
It’s quite a tasty wine, though difficult too. The nose seems mostly influenced by winemaking rather than fruit — savoury mealiness, sweet vanilla oak, a touch of caramel. All pretty delicious if you don’t mind fruit flavours that take a complementary role in the overall profile. The fruit itself is lovely — white peach mostly — but oh-so subservient. Interestingly, this isn’t a totally juggy wine, and there’s enough of a funky thread to the aroma to present as challenging too.
In the mouth, some surprises. It’s not flabby at all, nicely propped up by acid in fact, and I am finding the fruit more prominent here than on the nose, at least initially. The attack is alive and crisp thanks to the acid, creating an impression of vibrant, fresh fruit, but this momentum isn’t maintained because the intensity of the fruit dips quickly as the wine moves towards the middle palate. It’s like a little explosion that disappears from view before you’ve finished taking in the effect. Is the fruit receding, or is the wine perhaps going through a stage? Who knows. Just as disappointment threatens to settle in, things pick up again on the after palate, though flavours here are more oak-driven. Classy oak, to be sure, but a bit blunt too. The finish slides into caramel and oat meal, and feels a bit hot to me.
Overall it seems a bit awkward and gangly, and it may be that I’m drinking it at a disadvantageous point in its trajectory.
Wolf Blass
Price: $A40
Closure: Cork
Although I was fortunate enough to visit Neudorf last January, I completely neglected to write anything about my visit there. However, I did find a bottle of their wine (the only one in the entire shop!) upon returning to San Diego, and here it is:The nose is intensely tropically fruity and reminds me of pineapple more than anything else; it’s exuberant and nine-tenths of the way to a Mai Tai. However, the simplicity of the nose is deceiving: once you get some of this in your mouth, it goes in unexpected directions. First of all, the texture of this wine is unusual for sauvignon blanc (at least to me, New World kid that I am). It’s vaguely reminiscent of, I don’t know, Mexican fresas con crema, which is basically a light whipped cream dessert; this wine seems to me to have similar light-yet-creamy characteristics, a lovely balance between fruit and cream. Going back to the nose for a minute, the wine seems to have more in common with gewürztraminer than sauv blanc; it seems to be slighlty floral, tending towards roses, with some black pepper sneaking in at the side. Very, very curious.The mid-palate to finish of the wine return to relative normalcy; it does in fact wind up at the somewhat stereotypical gooseberry note you’d expect from a NZ sauv blanc. However, what’s exceptional is that it doesn’t dissolve into a shrill hoot of acidity; instead, it somehow maintains its composure and sneaks out on a soft ebb of sweet cream.This is really, really good stuff.As for visiting the winery itself, well, I don’t regret it, but I also was nonplussed by the experience. Obviously, Neudorf do great business; their parking lot was entirely full with Land Rovers and other Toorak tractor-esque metal, leaving little choice for many but to park on the grass. Once inside, the entire tasting room experience was one of those uncomfortable commerce-oriented experiences designed mostly to sell you product; although tasting room staff were friendly and knowledgeable, they turned decidedly cool when I declined to purchase anything opting instead to put $5 in the charity box they kept on hand for “gold coin donations” to their favorite charity for anyone who dared not buy wine on the premises. If there’s anything I truly despise at a tasting room, it’s being hounded to buy wine, no matter how good it is. Yes, Neudorf, your wine is amazing, but do you have to make us feel so little for not buying any on-site? It’s not always easy for international visitors to get wine home; some of us have to wait until we get home before hunting down some locally.That being said, I’m glad I did, and I’ll buy it again – I’m just bummed at the lingering bad taste your tasting room experience left behind.Oh, and would you please export your Pinot? It was amazing. kthxbye!Neudorf
Price: $16
Closure: Stelvin