huevos con vino

After I purchased 6 bottles of the 2004 Radio-Coteau La Neblina Pinot Noir on the strength of the 1 that I tried a few months ago, I decided that perhaps I would sell some or all of those 6 bottles.  Well, I decided to open the bottle that had been resting in my wine cellar for several months to see whether it would be wise to sell the other bottles.

It would be quite wise, I have decided, to keep every single bottle of this wine that I have.

The wine is currently decanting so I can only say, initially, that the aroma is a slightly sweet-smelling array of cherry, raspberry, and even strawberry.  The flavor, initially, is already quite balanced surprisingly: as promised, there is cherry throughout and with a slight dose of acidity to counteract the sweet notes on the nose.  Very good so far!

After 2.5 hours of decanting, and with some marinated roast lamb and baked yams, here are my thoughts on this wine:

• Aroma: Ripe red cherry and possibly some loganberry rather than raspberry; a hint of oak.
• Flavor: Very luscious, mouth-filling red fruit with nicely balanced mouthfeel.  Not too acidic or tannic; quite poised.  Well worth decanting for 2-3 hours in the end.
• General impression: Just a terrific Pinot Noir that goes well with lamb, yams, olive bread, and lots of other hearty autumn foods.

Overall, once again, I am reminded why I like Radio-Coteau so much.  I will definitely hang onto the rest of my bottles, although I might give 1 or 2 away as gifts…assuming the recipients promise to decant their gift.

I’m going to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my mom and stepfather in Oregon, and I’m trying to decide which wineries we should check out that Friday.  Personally, I think the day after Thanksgiving should be the day when everyone in the US spends 24 hours straight using the bathroom.  Just save it all up for the entire year, enhancing worker productivity in the process, and then take that holiday as your chance to let it all go at once.  Think about it.

Anyway, where should we go?  Here’s a short list, with preference given to those wineries that are usually closed to the public but are open for the holiday:

• Beaux Frères - Probably my only chance to get a bottle of their 2005 Upper Terrace Pinot Noir, which has already sold out!
• Lachini - Another small, newer winery that seems to have sold out of most of their wines.  Hopefully they’ll have something left to taste and/or purchase after Thanksgiving.
• Shea Wine Cellars - Highly reputable house of Pinot Noir.  Everything is sold out.  Wow…I don’t even know if they’ll be open after Thanksgiving.
• Lange - After reading about this winery, I really want to go check it out even though they’re open most of the year.
• Dusky Goose - Intriguing, if a little hard to tell whether they’ll be open to the public.
• Black Cap - The Web site is incomplete, to say the least, so I can’t tell if we can visit this winery either.
• Amalie Robert - A very new winery with a lot of promise.  Again, can we visit?  I don’t know.
• Westrey Wine Company - “Texture & Terroir amidst post-industrial splendor.”  Sounds fun.
• Apolloni Vineyards - Quite a mix of Pinot wines, but with a couple different Pinot Noirs available.  Looks interesting, and they’re open for sure.
• Lemelson Vineyards - They make a solid selection of low-volume Pinot Noir, and they have received some recent press notice.  Could be good!
• Hamacher - Another solid-looking Pinot-focused winery.
• Scott Paul Wines - A few Pinot Noirs on offer, one of which (Audrey) looks to be quite limited and delicious.  And, they’re open on Thanksgiving!

So, the final list appears to be (based on confirmation of open status on Friday after Thanksgiving):

• Beaux Frères (15155 NE North Valley Road, Newberg, OR)
• Lachini (18225 Calkins Lane, Newberg, OR)
• Apolloni Vineyards (14135 NW Timmerman Road, Forest Grove, OR)
• Scott Paul Wines (128 S. Pine St., Carlton, OR)

Other wineries will be visted on an as-needed basis.

I know I have written about the wine selection at Whole Foods on numerous occasions.  What can I say?  I go there for the turkey and the juice.

Tonight, I was back at Whole Foods in Bellevue, a city that vainly tries to charge for off-street parking and that has a California Pizza Kitchen (which means the city has arrived).  It’s only natural that Whole Foods would thread one of its all-natural vegan tendrils into this community, I guess.

Anyway, I noticed a few really interesting bottles of wine for sale tonight, all at extremely high prices:

• 2004 Hirsch Pinot Noir - sacré bleu!  What is this fabulous wine doing at $60/bottle at Whole Foods?  I wanted to shoplift all of their bottles.
• 2004 Alexandria Nicole Lemberger - once again, this rare wine (55 cases) make an astoundingly out of place appearance for $30/bottle.  Only one was present, though.
• Cristal Rosé, only $350/bottle. 
• Assorted Broadley and Flowers Pinot Noirs - interesting stuff.

Actually, I guess the overall quantity of surprising wine wasn’t very large.  Really I was surprised by the Hirsch.  I mean, damn, that wine outclasses everything else under $100/bottle and I’d pit it against many of the more expensive wines in the store.  It’s that good.  It’s also sold out at the winery and I’m sad I don’t have any more tucked away somewhere.

On a positive note, I did get the chance to trade e-mails with David Hirsch, who is an incredibly nice guy.  I’d love to meet him someday and hear more about his vineyards, his approach to wine-making, and so on.  I’d also like to find a few magnums of Hirsch wine in my cellar, but first I’d need a cellar, eh?

Well, it’s a long story and certainly a roundabout excuse as to how this will all take place, but all you need to know is that I’ll be in Amsterdam for a couple of days in November.  But only a couple of days.

With that in mind, dear worldly readers, I am curious as to whether there are any excellent wine shops in Amsterdam.  That’s “Amsterdam” as in “The Netherlands” and not Amsterdam, NY.  I’m sure there is much to recommend Amsterdam, NY, but I think I prefer the one in Europe.

So far, I have found a few promising spots:

• Wijn Antiquariat, 1e Weteringsdwarsstraat 2A, open Saturdays 12-5 PM
• Cave Rokin, Rokin 60 (good central location), unknown store hours
• Henri Bloem’s, Vijzelgracht 27, unknown hours
• Chabrol, Haarlemmerstraat 7, unknown hours
• Ton Overmars, Hoofddorpplein 11, 9AM-7PM Friday and 9AM-5PM Saturday; looks to have lots of scotch as well!

Of course, if I do choose to visit any of these places, those trips will be in addition to the old familiar Amsterdam haunts of mine:

• De Zotte, best Trappist cheese tart in the EU, and a decent wine selection to complement the fabulous beers and food
• Cafe Gollem, terrific beer selection and the ambience of a dank men’s room but without the smell (somehow, I love this place)
• ‘t Arendsnest, best bar/pub in Amsterdam for my money, with a selection of aged beers and essentially all of the 200+ Dutch beers being brewed today…and with a bartender who looks and acts like Steve McQueen from the late 1960s

Each of these three places has become part of my routine when I visit Amsterdam, sort of like going back to a house where you used to live when you return to your childhood town.  ‘t Arendsnest is, in particular, an incredible place.  I have brought a couple of friends there over the last few years and it always impresses.  The food at De Zotte makes that place an absolute requirement, despite the bizarre timing of their kitchen sometimes (a long story involving quiche need not be retold here).

My general concern with visiting a bunch of wine merchants is, as always, figuring out how to get the stuff back to the US.  Is it even worth it, really?  With the Internet, I can just ship stuff from my computer without doing the legwork.  Or perhaps I could bring some US wines and try to trade them for European wines.  Seems like that would be hard to do legally, although this IS Amsterdam.

Perhaps I should just look for good Amsterdam wine bars instead…let’s see what I can find:

• bubbles and wines, seems decent but trendy and with a fairly limited glass and bottle selection but incredibly close to Dam Square
• Envy, seems a bit like a Dutch gastropub, if such a thing exists
• Restaurant de Kas, looks a bit like the Dutch version of the Herbfarm…not a bar, but a great-looking restaurant

I think possibly the thing to do instead would be to contact the members of the Vitis Amsterdamensis Wine Club as they are having a tasting on my first evening in town.  Could be worth it, they seem nice!

Another article in a long string of recent articles about climate change, global warming, and the impact of elevated temperatures on grape growing.  This article is from The Guardian, one of the few newspapers that I enjoy reading.  I find that European newspapers tend to discus wine in more level-headed terms than many American newspapers (the East Coast newspapers, anyway). 

This particular article is actually pretty bad.  It doesn’t give many specifics, saying mostly that Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes might become untenable as cash crops in the coming years.  I was more interested to know whether Shiraz grapes would survive the impending climate change, though, as I think of France and the West Coast of the US as my favorite Pinot Noir growing areas. 

On a separate note, and speaking of favorite Pinot Noir, it appears that Hirsch has sold out all of their 2004 Pinot Noir.  I know that next year I will make a concerted effort to get a magnum of 2005 Hirsch Pinot Noir.  I’m really curious to open a magnum and see whether there is a major taste difference, or if the wine ages quite as well.  I only have one magnum on which to test this theory because, well, of the two magnums of wine that I own only one is more than 3 years old.  My 1998 Domaine Drouhin Laurène magnum is going down this Thanksgiving!  I can taste it already.