huevos con vino

A friend and I went to European Vine Selections (EVS) today.  EVS is an old wine store up on Capitol Hill here in Seattle.  They have tastings every other Saturday; this week, the theme was “eclectic Loire wines.”  We tasted a few different 2004 releases from the Loire region (names are taken from the EVS newsletter, so they may be a bit off):

• Thierry Puzelat “la Tesnière” Pineau d’Aunis, Toraine - A very interesting wine with some spice, but I also noticed a lot of bread and grain qualities, almost like you would find in a nce Belgian ale, oddly enough.  A delicious way to start the tasting: very fruity, lively, and delicious.
• Clos Roche Blanche, Cot Touraine - This was a Malbec; decent but a bit young yet with lots and lots of tannic boldness to go with the fruit.  Will be better in a couple of years, I think.
• Domaine Raymond Quenard, Chignin - This was a Cabernet Franc; a nice wine, but not quite as expressive as the Cab Francs that I like from Australia.  Very subtle, with red fruit and plenty of acid (due to its youth, perhaps).
• Domaine Raymond Quenard, Chignin-Bergeron - This was a white blend, but I didn’t hear exactly what the combination of grapes was.  Very refreshing after the reds; I liked this wine quite a bit.  It had been aged in stainless steel, so no oak overtones at all.  Subtle, not too sweet, a bit of citrus and other fruits mingled.  Very nice.

Overall the tasting was quite fun.  The store itself is exceptional: It is geared more toward providing a smattering of nice wines at good prices, rather than having a complete stock of specific vineyards, regions, or varietals.  They have a decent Viognier for $6.50, for example, which is quite a bargain for that particular type of wine.  They also focus on selling wines made by very small family vineyards in disparate regions of France and Italy, rather than selling a boatload of inaccessibly expensive super Tuscans and whatnot.  It’s a smart choice; I can see why they’ve been around since 1972.

My friend wound up buying one of each of the bottles we tasted; he gave me the bottle of “la Tesnière” as a gift, which was wonderful as I liked that wine the best.  I took him over to the Seattle Wine Outlet, Esquin, and the south Seattle liquor store (Domaine Drouhin Laurène at $43/bottle!), but none of those places were quite as fun as EVS.  Esquin in particular was, as usual, crowded with dour, oblivious Seattleites milling around as if they were looking for headstones.  Very sad.  Their selection is large, as are their prices ($58 for the same Laurène that costs $43 two blocks away).

So, I recommend EVS.  I’ll definitely head back there when I need a good $12 German Riesling!

I became intrigued with Diamond Creek a couple of days ago after reading this blog review of their wines.  I noted their presence in a previous, recent post simply because I find their wines, their winemaking approach, and their long vineyard history fascinating.

So, Diamond Creek is a well established, top-tier Napa winery with quite a celebrity following.  In other words, I can’t afford the $150+ starting price per bottle that their wines command.  Ahh, but this is the 21st century!  And in the 21st century, we have the Internet at our disposal.  On the Internet, we have such wonderful Web sites as winecommune.com, where individuals can buy and sell bottles of wine with one another.  At such a site, one can buy a bottle of 2000 Paracombe Somerville Shiraz for $40 instead of $85.  I speak from experience here…sometimes it’s a winning proposition to sell your wines, and sometimes it’s a winning proposition to buy from those who are selling.

Case in point: On a lark, after reading the Wine Journal review of the 2001 Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, I decided to place a bid of $81 on a regular (750 ml) bottle.  Now, $81 is less than the average price of a half-bottle (375 ml) of this wine, so I assumed I’d never win it.

I was wrong.  Including shipping and insurance and packaging, I picked up a 2001 Volcanic Hill for $99.  The rock bottom Internet price for this wine, excluding shipping and handling, is $150/bottle.  That’s a tremendous discount for a wine rated 24/25 by Wine Journal, whose judgment is quite good in this area.  In fact, of the 13 different Diamond Creek bottlings that the Wine Journal author has tasted, this particular 2001 is his favorite.  That caught my attention to be sure.

So, as the title of this post suggests, I have scored a “diamond” for my “mine” of terrific wines.  This wine will be storable until about 15-20 years from now, I’d say…although some say until 2014 only.  Hmm…we’ll see in 2014, I suppose.

PS - The “Buy it Now” price for the same wine through a different retailer is $184.99 as opposed to the $81 I paid for the same exact wine!  I’m very happy.

Quite often I feel as though the world of wine, like many other “discourse communities” such as Jimi Hendrix enthusiasts or Volvo lovers, is a bullet train racing at 250 MPH into the future.  At some point, you “buy the ticket and take the ride,” so to speak.  You get on that speeding train.

Once you do, you slowly become aware of all the train track that you’ve missed because you just hopped aboard.  In other words, as a recent arrival on the wine train, I am slowly finding out about the vineyards, vintages, varietals, and wines that wine lovers have known about for years.  Those long-term passengers on the wine train already knew, for example, that Diamond Creek is a wonderful California vineyard, or that the Paso Robles AVA sells lots of its grapes to mass-market wine producers such as Gallo and Mondavi.  I did not know that!

With this train metaphor in mind, I hereby include for your edification a few “newly discovered” California wineries that wine authorities already knew about:

• Diamond Creek - Disciples of the Cabernet Sauvignon grape…they have at least four different plantings, each yielding a wildly different wine based on the specific terroir of the area under vine.  Their wines start at over $100, if you can find them for that price.
• Littorai - Highly rated Chardonnay and Pinot Noir producer; they currently list ten different Pinot Noirs, although one is sold out for 2006 due to its limited production.
• Copain - Pinot Noir and Syrah are the main wines from this vineyard, although they also have Viognier and Rousanne, as well as a Zinfandel.
• Kongsgaard - They make Chardonnay, an interesting Viognier/Rousanne, and Syrah.  Very exclusive stuff, though.
• Williams Seylem - Another Pinot Noir/Chardonnay house, but with some Zinfandel and late harvest wines too.  Again, you need to be on their mailing list to have a chance at these wines.

Of course, I’ll need a hell of a lot of money to even think about getting any of these wines on a regular basis.  Good thing I have a new job…but still, it will be about 5-10 years before I have the space and the money to really go after these wines.

Shortly after I arrived at work today, I received a wonderful UPS package containing the following:

It’s a bit hard to see, but that’s three 2003 Hestan Cabernet Sauvignon bottles on my dining table!  Awesome.  They’re safely in my wine fridge now, which is full once again…time to pay a visit to my friend’s house with a few bottles for his cellar!

The advertising jingle for Fred Meyer used to feature a woman singing, in a cloying sort of way, “What’s on your list today?  You’ll find it at Fred Meyer!”  Oddly enough, when it comes to wine that woman may have been right.

Ballard is the part of Seattle where Norweigan fisherman go to die.  It’s a part of town that is undergoing gentrification, and it’s possible that Fred Meyer’s wine selection is so good because of this influx of wealthy condo dwellers.  The Ballard location of Fred Meyer is a massive store.  You can buy motor oil, video games, oranges, condoms, a vacuum cleaner, chorizo, bedsheets, a dining room table, and a Carhartt jacket all at once, should you so choose.  I usually go there for the human drama, as well as the shampoo (on sale!).

Increasingly, however, I am noticing the oddly intelligent choice of wines at this store.  I went in last night and did some serious snooping through their wines…here are a few highlights:

• 2003 Clonakilla Shiraz - $23; I have wanted to try this wine for a while, particularly after watching the Canberra episode of Australian Wine Trail on INHD.
• 2004 Earthquake Petite Sirah - $29; the 2003 edition of this wine won top honors at the 2005 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, beating out thousands of other wines.
• 2002 Domaine Drouhin Pinot Noir Classique; it’s just nice to see this wine on the shelf!
• 2001 (?) Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon - $80; no joke, this wine is $80 off the shelf at this Fred Meyer (it can be had cheaper online in a few places, but still!).

I was impressed!  After all, I grew up thinking of Fred Meyer as the place where I could get Star Wars action figures for 45 cents in a cutout bin, or Matchbox cars at 3/$1.  It was that kind of store…certainly not a place where I’d expect to find Earthquake Petite Sirah from the Lodi Valley (on sale, too). 

My next goal is to find the person who makes the purchasing decisions for the wine department and congratulate him/her on these great selections.  Clonakilla at the local superstore?  I guess that’s a good thing.