Tag Archives: California

Bonny Doon Vineyard Old Telegram 2001

Posted on by
1

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
2

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

Posted on by
2

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

Bonny Doon DEWN Barbera/Freisa Amarone 2007

Posted on by
5

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Ridge Monte Bello 2005 + Quixote Petite Sirah 2004

Posted on by
1

You’ll have to excuse me, but last night was the last night my parents were in town – they live in London and were visiting San Diego, so I had to whip out some of the awesome ‘cuz my Dad likes a good bottle of wine every bit as much as Julian and I do. Given that I was concentrating more on the company than the wine, I decided not to write about these two wines right away: as a result, what you’re getting isn’t a proper tasting note, but rather further musing on the difference between these two wines.

We began the evening by opening the Monte Bello. This is arguably one of the finest wines produced in California; every once in a while, usually when I’m feeling flush with cash and slightly inebriated, I’ll cave to Ridge’s offer of Monte Bello futures (sadly, they aren’t really doing that any longer; instead, you have to sign up for a subscription program). $400 or so gets you a six pack, or 12 half bottles; then, you have to wait a couple of years until they deliver the bottles to your door. At this point, I’ve got some of the 2000 and 2001… and the 2005 was delivered to my office last week.

Within a few minutes of opening the Monte Bello, I flew off onto one of my usual spiels about how truly excellent wines can almost be diagrammed on staff paper – there should be different things going on in different registers. Perhaps there’s some floral perfume in the treble, and some deep, heavy bass in the sense of wood or roasted coffee; at the very least, there should be a common thread in the midrange that holds the entire wine together.

The 2005 Monte Bello was… very difficult to accurately describe. There was definitely a vanilla perfume above the entire construction, with some classic cabernet sauvignon fruit, with an underpinning of dirty violet perfume (presumably the petit verdot). No matter how many times we smelled that wine, all of its components drifted in and out of focus, perfectly balanced, perfectly harmonious. You had the rich, mulberry (and very, very young!) notes some times; other times, you mostly smelled vanilla, sandalwood, and eventually camphor. It was incredible.

My Dad and I decided it would be interesting to set our glasses aside for a while – we wanted to see what would happen with an hour or two of air – so we did, and went for the other bottle I’d grabbed from the cellar: a Quixote petite sirah. Both of these wines are roughly in the same price range: $33 for a tenth of the Monte Bello, and $60 for the Quixote. Both of these wines are hugely enjoyable. Both of these wines will probably send shivers down your spine with sheer physical delight. And yet, only one of these wines is a great wine.

The Quixote was huge. Heck, my Dad’s teeth went dark purple in a few minutes. It’s a massive, hulking wine: very rich, obviously very expensive, and with an overwhelming sense of espresso towards the finish. It screams California: this isn’t a Rutherglen durif, not even close. It’s ripe – not hyperripe in the Barossa sense – and it’s obviously been raised in the best French barrels money can buy. The tannins are fine, sweet, and delicious.

What’s missing is of course a sense of place. Just as a wine like the Mollydooker Carnival of Points (er, Love) can be huge, intense, delicious, and all of those good things, the Quixote petite sirah is huge, intense, delicious, and a visceral thrill. I kept thinking of Robert Musil, though: this is a wine without qualities. That is, it doesn’t appear to come from anywhere: this is what happens when you take a plant, apply the most awesome growing technology (canopy management, microirrigation, whatever) imaginable, stick it in the most expensive barrels you can find, and then bottle it in bottles with exquisite labels. By the time we finished the bottle, we had gotten over the initial thrill of it, and began to wonder… is that all there is?

We then went back to the Monte Bello. Two hours’ time had caused the wine to soften appreciably; my Dad described it as “sensuous,” and I wouldn’t disagree. Unusually for so-called New World wines, the Ridge seemed carefully designed and constructed to express beauty, not power: more importantly, it tastes like itself and not like any other wine out there. The 2000 and 2001 both had the same, impossible to describe feeling to them… a feeling that what you’re drinking couldn’t possibly be duplicated anywhere else on Earth. Just as with a Hunter semillon or a good Burgundy, you just knew that you were drinking an incredible wine from a place like no other on Earth.

This is the difference between the excellent and the great: complexity, harmony, balance, and fidelity to place.

Ridge + Quixote
Price: US $33 (375 mL; futures price) + US $60
Closure: Cork + Stelvin
Date tasted: March 2008

Silverado Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon 2003

Posted on by
1

My partner saw me dragging this bottle into the kitchen and said “whoa, what is that, forty bucks?” I don’t know how much it cost – I’ll have to look at that up at the end of the review – but yes, the bottle does look fairly impressive in a conservative Napa Cab kind of way, right down to its twenty-fifth anniversary capsule.In the glass, my first thought was nah, maybe thirty bucks? It smells like good, clean, lovely Napa cabernet. More specifically, it smells heavy, dense, mostly fruity, with a fair bit of French oak coming through as well. The color is, however, not as dense as I’ve come to expect, which bodes well. On the palate, it’s brighter than I would have expected, with good supporting acidity and a lovely, fresh taste of ripe fruit (not overripe!), cassis, blackcurrant, and butterscotch, with minimal tannins on the finish… no, wait, there they are; they just take a minute or so to assert themselves. It’s all very California by way of Bordeaux and frankly pretty damned good.Silverado Vineyards

Price: US $35
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: January 2008

Bears' Lair California Merlot 2005

Posted on by
2

Sure, the packaging isn’t gonna win any awards – the label looks like it was done in Microsoft Word 97 complete with early dot com era clip art, the capsule is cheap and flimsy, and the cork looks like someone scrounged it from a county fair, but the first whiff ain’t half bad – at first, generic industrial red wine, but then, suddenly, fresh red raspberries appear. There’s also a bit of dusty oak there – I’m assuming chips, shavings, something cheap – but it works just fine. There’s also a hint of sourness as well as something that’s either Mint or Murphy’s oil soap. All in all, surprisingly complex.Color-wise, it’s medium ruby red in the glass, bright and sparkling, pretty enough to look at it. The big surprise is when you take a taste of it: it’s full, round, not half bad. It seems kinda bit flabby – a bit too much residual sugar without supporting acidity, and it’s kind of dumb on the finish; it sticks around longer than you’d probably want it to, which I suppose makes it perfect for holiday gatherings (Kidding! Hi Dad!). It may be nothing special, but it’s better than most wines at this price point.Bears’ Lair (but really Bronco Wine Company)Price: US $3.99Closure: CorkDate tasted: December 2007

Beringer Chardonnay, Napa Valley 2004

Posted on by
Reply

Opening the bottle is about the same as opening that giant can of Libby’s fruit cocktail they’d serve when you were back in elementary school: it smells like pears and cheap corn syrup… not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you. There’s also a whiff of something like sulfur dioxide, and some sort of generic oak note (barrel fermentation?), but not a particularly strong one: it smells clean and nonoffensive, like it should be served in a Tokyo pâtisserie.Medium-weight in the mouth, there’s a not particularly appealing woodiness about it (low level TCA taint?), a slight sweetness, and very little interest. The finish is short and perfunctory.Overall, this wine is probably best bought for the tasteful label – just not for the wine itself.BeringerPrice: US $11.99Closure: CorkDate tasted: December 2007