Tag Archives: Grenache

Yelland & Papps Delight Grenache Rosé 2009

Posted on by
Reply

Sometimes, I wonder why I ever moved to Brisbane. Sure, it’s beautiful today, and I’m sure it will be perfect tomorrow, but I’m a Canberra boy at heart. I like cold, mercilessly windy Winters and hot, dry Summers, not least because they tend to be framed by idyllic Springs and Autumns. Brisbane, on the other hand, goes from warm to ridiculous, with days (like today) that feel hot well in excess of the measured temperature. Natives say it’s the humidity, and assure me I’ll get used to it, but like many acquired tastes I’m not sure whether it’s worth the effort.

In any case, I needed some refreshment this afternoon and reached for this Grenache-based rosé from Yelland & Papps, a small producer in the Barossa Valley. A lurid strawberry colour, not overly dense but certainly pretty in its neon way. A party colour. The nose is exuberant, with boiled lollies and a counterpoint of savoury, medicinal notes. Simple, fun and certainly generous. It might present too much confectionary for those who prefer a more savoury rosé style; it’s all about context I guess. 
The palate is quite full, with a round mouthfeel and surprisingly intense flavour. The entry is soft and a little underwhelming. The middle palate, by contrast, is full of bright flavours that echo the sweet/savoury profile of the aroma. Things get even more interesting through the after palate, where the acidity contributes a strong, sour thread that accentuates the savoury aspects of the flavour profile. There seems to be a bit of heat on the finish (13% abv). 
An honest, flavoursome wine that would suit casual Summer quaffing for those not averse to the sweeter (and more alcoholic) side of Grenache.

Yelland & Papps
Price: $A17
Closure: Stelvin

Ishtar Grenache Shiraz Mourvèdre 2006

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t envy wine show judges. Quite apart from the difficulty of appearing dignified with purple teeth, there’s the challenge of judging a wine based on a quick tasting, in a lineup of fourty, perhaps even fifty like wines, after what may have been several flights earlier in the day. Even if I had the tasting perspective, I’d no doubt make a hash of the process, simply because I feel terribly disappointed when I derive no enjoyment from wine, and therefore tend to give most wines a chance to show a positive side.

And that can take time, sometimes days. Or, in the case of this wine, about half an hour. Still, I was ready to write it off at first. My initial sip was as follows: bright red, aggressively confected aroma preceding a sweet, medium bodied palate of considerable simplicity. Next!
But oh, how it’s evolved in the glass. After a little time and air, the nose is quite transformed. While it remains within an easy drinking idiom, there’s plenty of interest to the aroma profile, with meaty Mourvèdre and spicy Shiraz framing fruit that, though confectionary in nature, is well balanced against the savoury elements, and has evolved both sour and sweet faces. 
Similarly, the palate is a long way from its initial presentation and shows surprising sophistication in terms of its movement through the mouth. It’s medium bodied at most, with subtle tannins and enough acidity to stay fresh. Well-judged for frictionless consumption, then; this extends to intensity and density of flavour, neither of which call too much attention to themselves. In fact, it threatens to become a bit weedy, but is saved somewhat by a nice surge of sweet fruit as the middle palate transitions to the after palate. A meaty savouriness leads into the finish, which shows cough-syrup flavours and goes on for a decent amount of time.
There’s cheeky intent behind this wine, or at least a reluctance to forego interest for drinkability. Smart quaffing.

Balthazar of the Barossa
Price: $A19.50
Closure: Stelvin

Sandstone Cellars V

Posted on by
28

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

Chain of Ponds Novello Nero 2005

Posted on by
Reply

A blend of Sangiovese, Barbera and Grenache from South Australia. 

The nose is relatively dumb at first, with sour cherries and raw meat seeming to sit in the glass even when violently encouraged to take flight (my wrist is sore – from swirling). There’s a coarse vegetal edge to the aroma that seems whole bunch-like. A bit of powdery vanilla oak rounds things off. It’s quite sniffable and mercifully free from industrial confectionary. It’s also blunt and rather unrefined.
On entry, a refreshingly rustic mouthfeel that immediately recalls the sort of cheap Chianti that I secretly adore for its rough authenticity. Also like cheap Chianti, there’s never any danger of this scaling the heights of fruit intensity. Rather, this provides “just enough” of a great many things: flavour, length, complexity, interest. But wine is about how the whole hangs together and, in this case, there’s a reasonable impression of coherence. More sour cherry pips, almonds, oak and a moderately unattractive caramel note wash over the tongue, straining to escape the impression of being watered down. Bright acid keeps things fresh and clean, washing away the last stains of flavour and encouraging food.
I wasn’t feeling all that positive about this wine when I sat down to compose this note, and I remain equivocal in some respects. On the other hand, it’s fresh and light in a manner that evades many local red styles, and for that at least should be noted.

Chain of Ponds
Price: $A14.25
Closure: Stelvin

Vina Ginesa Reservas Granrojo Rojo Garnacha 2006

Posted on by
Reply
I went from a Great Western Shiraz to this in the space of a few sips and, if nothing else, the exercise served to reinforce how instructive comparative tasting can be. I thought this wine quite horrid at first; Eurotrash to the Great Western’s laconic charm. Improved through the evening, though.

I should note the comically short cork keeping the wine inside, as I don’t believe I’ve seen one so small before. A robust aroma consisting of dried flowers, bright spices and aggressively sour-edged red fruit. There are also funkier smells that remind me of cured pork sausages. In the mouth, bright and brash with coarsely textured acid and brisk, raspy tannins. There are flashes of intensely sweet, confected fruit in amongst all the butchers’ shop smells. Pepper, spice and rusticity add interest. The whole is light to medium bodied and sufficiently cleansing, though I could never describe a wine like this as easy drinking (in the “brain off” sense) because it’s just so angular. 

I kept wanting chewy bread and tangy cheese while drinking this wine, and suspect it would go down a treat at a picnic or other casual dining circumstance. 

Vina Ginesa Reservas
Price: $A18.95
Closure: Cork

Campo Viejo Crianza 2006

Posted on by
3

Much to my surprise, I found myself accepting free samples of wine from a certain publicly traded French drinks behemoth. Why? Simple: I figured what the heck; if the wine sucked, I’d have fun complaining in a really boring, Adbusters-esque way about corporate wine blah blah blah. But if it was good… then what? In a world filled with small, struggling producers that produce original, interesting wines in this price range, do we really need one more review saying anything good about wines that are presumably produced in unspeakable quantities and then drunk in cruise ships and indifferent hotel restaurants the world over?The short answer is yes. Not everyone has the access to a wide range of indie wine shops that we have here in California; not everyone lives in a state that allows direct shipping. In many places in North America, you either get it from the liquor board shop or you don’t get it at all. And in places that really don’t drink “fine wine” (leaving aside the discussion of what exactly that is for now), then all you’re going to get is “industrial wine” – so why shouldn’t you be aware of the good stuff?First off: a disclaimer. Full Pour’s review policy is simple: you can send us free wine, but we don’t promise we’ll review it. And if we do review it, we don’t promise we’ll publish the review. And if we do publish our review, we don’t promise it’s going to be a good one.OK, that’s out of the way. How is this $9 wine courtesy of Behemoth French Industrial Producer?The nose offers up super friendly, inviting, warm red berry aromas. It smells better than any strawberry rhubarb pie I’ve ever baked, at any rate. There’s also a kind of woodsy perfume there as well, just a hint of something like candied oak. Not too bad.Sadly, however, once you get some of this in your mouth, it all falls apart. Dang it, I was hoping to like this wine so that I could say yes, sometimes the big guys get it right… just not this time. Everything here seems loose, unstructured, out of focus: it’s a bit flabby, perhaps even just a tiny bit sweet, with an unpleasant raw acidity sneaking in to bust up the party the second it wobbles to a start. The overall effect is frankly unpleasant: it tastes cheap, unfinished. The one good thing I will say, though, is that the tannic structure of the wine is just fine, keeping some kind of firm hold on the whole endeavor.So what to do with this wine? The tannins suggest it needs meat; the rest of it suggests it needs to be obscured by something else; I’m thinking heavy barbecue smoke would do the job just fine. If you’re somewhere where you can get funky, indie bottles of unknown French reds, then go for it. If, however, your choice is between this and [yellow tail], then I’d say go with the Campo Viejo – it’s in the same price range but has a little bit more interest. Otherwise, though, can you remember the last time you drank a Coors? No? Well, it might be time to start over again…Campo Viejo
Price: $9
Closure: Cork

Bonny Doon Cigare Alternative A 2001

Posted on by
Reply

The marketing materials suggested that this wine would greet 2010 “in fine fashion,” so how is it doing in 2009? I never did try it when originally shipped to wine club members many years ago, but here it is now, after two interstate moves; I’m tired of schlepping it around and now it’s time to slug it back.Immediately after opening the bottle, the smell of this stuff managed to overwhelm the homemade tamales I bought from a door-to-door vendor and has for dinner earlier tonight: this stuff is pungent. Boys and girls, the word of the day is Sauerkirschen: this smells like sour cherries, Moravian I suppose, or whatever those large, cheap glass jars contained back when the USSR still existed and you could buy them cheaply at any American grocery store. Whoa. Really strong, bright, dark, sour cherries. There’s also a hint of something that reminds me of freshly polished shoes: a light leathery note with the sharp tang of shoeshine polish. Pretty cool.What this wine taste like? Again, strong, sour cherries with only the faintest hints of darker flavors. There’s also a rather strange, herbal note here that is something like off-brand spearmint mouthwash; that sounds worse than it is, I know, but it’s very distinctive and not something I’ve encountered before. All of this is tightly grasped by still present, still somewhat hoary tannin, which at first was so unpleasant I considered throwing it out – but over time, it does loosen up enough to get past. Overall, the mouthfeel is pretty strange; it’s like a tug-of-war between not-yet-resolved tannins taking place in the shallow end of a pool. The color of this wine is dark and foreboding, yet it all seems fairly medium-bodied in the mouth, which is I suppose normal for a mature wine like this.All in all, I really don’t know what to make of this wine. Is it too old? Probably not. Was it better young? Who knows? Is the overall disorienting mouthfeel a relic of Bonny Doon’s then-obsessions with spinning cones, microbullage, and other weird winemaker tricks? I’m thinking yes; there’s something just not right about this wine, something getting in the way of the direct transmission from Mother Earth. I get the feeling that if Randall Grahm had made this ten years later it would be OK – but as it is, I imagine that he’d be recherching an awful lot of temps perdu if he were to open this puppy now.To paraphrase Stephen Malkmus: A for effort, B for delivery.Bonny Doon Vineyard
Price: $30
Closure: Cork

McPherson Grenache-Mourvedre 2005

Posted on by
3

I’m currently on a business trip to San Angelo, Texas, which is a relatively small city of about 80,000 people pretty much in the middle of nowhere, about four hours’ drive due west of President Bush’s ranch.Although there’s an airport here with daily flights to Dallas, it was far less expensive to fly into Austin, the state capital, and drive. More importantly, the Texas Hill Country AVA is about an hour and a half west of Austin, so I thought it’d be a kick to see what’s going on in Texas wine country.I did stop at one winery, which I won’t name here: it opened relatively recently, with a very good looking tasting room with a tasteful selection or merchandise, plenty of parking, and a very friendly tasting room employee who informed me that Texas was now the #2 wine producing state in the nation. (Trust me, it’s not. Washington and Oregon dwarf Texas’s wine production by far.) Tellingly, their whites were generally made from California grapes (where, I have no idea; neither did their employee), but they did have a couple of Texas red wines. The best of the bunch was a thoroughly humdrum Bordeaux blend that approaches Rawson’s Retreat quality levels, but at the amazing price of $55.That’s right. Fifty-five bucks. I think I now know what Enron executives were doing with their money!Anyhow, enough about “the #2 Wine Destination in America” (according to the tourist brochure put out by the local vintners’ co-op marketing board).Tonight, I went out and found a lovely wine shop here called In Vino Veritas. The staff were very friendly, even if they couldn’t pronounce “mourvèdre”; the place looked like a great place to sit and enjoy a glass of wine with friends, even if the owner’s humongous dog was stinking up the place and eating off of a plate of tiny cheese cubes. I don’t mean to sound rude by pointing these things out; I’m just noting that it was, ahem, a bit different than your typical snooty West Coast wine shop. They went so far as to uncork my bottle for me (no corkscrew in my hotel room!) and recork it with a Turley cork (sexy!), and now I’m enjoying it out of Hampton Inn’s finest plastic stemware.On pouring the wine, it seemed to me that the color was a bit wan; to me, this is either indicative of a marginal climate (unlikely; this appears to be from Lubbock, which is up towards Oklahoma*) or a winemaker who’s trying hard to emulate the French classics and not produce a total hedonistic fruit bomb (e.g. a Turley).The aroma of the wine is decidedly pretty, smelling very soft and sweet with a deliciously floral perfume of warm red raspberries; I don’t really smell much of the typical mataro gaminess here. There’s also just a hint of what’s probably volatile acidity; it’s almost a nail polish remover note, but it’s so subtle that I really don’t think it’s a flaw in any way; it just adds to the charm of this stuff. In the mouth, this is indeed a little bit thin compared to the stuff I’m used to from California, but the flavors are very fine indeed, with a soft, smoky undercurrent to subdued brambly fruit. There seems to me to be a hint of tobacco sheds and spice box here; there is definitely just a bit of classic Shiraz pepperiness and it’s well integrated with the fruit.All in all, this wine is A-OK by me. I’m not sure there’s anything here that tastes different enough to make me think West Texas is the next Marlborough or Mendoza, but this is a very well crafted, well-judged wine that would be ideal to drink with a first rate Texas steak. Based on this wine alone, I’d love to try more of Kim McPherson’s wines.* Not actually true (I had to check the map); Lubbock is just south of the southern border of Oklahoma. My apologies.McPherson Cellars
Price: $15
Closure: Cork

Domaine de Durban Cru Beaumes de Venise Cuvée Prestige 2006

Posted on by
1

There’s no sense in beating about the bush here: this is one of the best wines I’ve drunk so far this year. I had to look this one up: Beaumes-de-Venise is an AOC in the southern Rhône that is primarily known for a VDN/fortified sweet white wine; until this bottle showed up at the house last week (as part of a special offer mixed dozen from Kermit Lynch in Berkeley), I had no idea that they made red wine there as well.This is in a sense your bog standard southern Rhône: it’s mostly grenache, there’s some syrah, and just a little bit of mataro there as well. The strange thing here is this: at first, this seemed to behave like a fairly typical New World fake Rhône: the nose was wonderfully rich, promising cherries and leather and rich, easy-drinking fruit. However, it also suggested caramelized sugars, still-drying tobacco, and medium-dark molasses as well; it was frankly fascinating.Things really kick into high gear once you get a taste of this wine, though, because it quickly morphs from New World fruit fiesta into a very, very traditional French wine, with thick, assertive tannins quickly demanding attention combined with that peculiarly French minerality that shows up in kind of a nearly-harsh, high-toned, almost-sour character that dominates the finish. It’s like sucking freshly pressed raspberries through finely crushed gravel in a Kentucky tobacco drying shed. All of it put together is utterly entrancing; I wish I’d ordered more than just the one bottle of this.Domaine de Durban
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Annie's Lane Copper Trail Shiraz Grenache Mourvèdre 2004

Posted on by
Reply

I was hoping for a robust, rustic Clare Valley red in the traditional mould, but what I’ve got in front of me is something quite different. There’s no shortage of flavour here. On the nose, a complex mix of eucalyptus, dark fruit, slightly sauvage vegetal notes and black pepper. It takes some teasing apart, and on first sniff I comprehensively failed to understand its nuances. I’m not sure whether I actually like the aroma profile, but there’s no denying its interest and complexity.