huevos con vino

February has been a busy month for me.  First I purchased some Williams Selyem Pinot Noir, a few different types and levels of value in fact.  Then I purchased some Radio-Coteau Pinot Noir, plus their one and only Chardonnay.  I also set up orders with DuMOL and Privé Vineyard, both of which I will need to pay for in early March.  But in addition to these relatively well known wineries, there was another winery with a Pinot Noir focus that caught my eye last year.

Green Truck Cellars is, quite literally, a one-man operation.  For this reason, his highly entertaining Pinot Log has no entries yet for 2007.  I assume this lack of communication is due to getting the 2006 harvest into barrels, restoring his old farmhouse, and helping his wife care for their two-year-old kid.  Wow.  I’m tired just reading the “trucker” newsletter.

Kent Fortner is the man behind this tiny operation.  The Prince of Pinot wrote a terrific summary of Ken’s enterprise, along with some tasting notes for the 2001-2003 vintages of Green Truck Cellars Pinot Noir Napa Valley.  Another Prince of Pinot newsletter highlights the 2004 vintage of the GTCPNNV, as I like to call this particular wine.  Hopefully Kent won’t read this blog and take umbrage to such an ugly initialism.

The 2005 vintage is a little different animal from the first 4 vintages, according to Kent’s description included with his 2007 newsletter.  I noticed that the alcohol content and number of cases remains about the same as previous years: 13.9% alcohol is the same as in 2003 and 2004, while 600 cases marks a slight increase from 400 and 480 cases in 2003 and 2004, respectively.  The 2005 vintage leaves out the Suscol Ridge Pommard and 777 clones, though, as apparently the entire vineyard had some major botrytis problems that year.  So for this particular vintage, Kent located some 777 fruit from the same Stanly Ranch vineyard that sells him his 114 clone fruit.  Nice work, Kent!  More details about the vintages can be found here.

Part of the newsletter is the allocation and sales offer.  I received an allocation of 12 bottles; given my current financial situation, I purchased 6 bottles.  I did spring for the 2-day FedEx shipping, though, as I’d hate to let my 6 bottles take the slow road to Seattle.  I can’t wait to try this wine: Kent is an extremely gregarious, well-spoken guy and I’m excited to support his wine project, if I may call it that.  His past vintages have received great marks and I do love interesting Pinot Noir, particularly California Pinot Noir that can keep the alcohol below 14%.

Anyway, sometime in March I will have my grubby little hands on the Green Truck Pinot.  That’s GTCPNNV to you, though.

Valentine’s Day came and went this week, and with it came a couple of presents for me.  My wife got me a terrific present that is related to wine: The New Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia, 4th Edition by Tom Stevenson. 

This book is cool.  I have barely begun to scratch the surface of the content but I can’t wait to dig into it a bit more.  For Christmas, I got The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson, so I clearly have a lot of reading to do.  Both of these books are massive hardcover affairs with lots of photos and tips about how to pour wine, choose the right glass, pair a wine with food, and so on and so forth.  I’m in heaven.

Speaking of heaven, my friend pointed out this article to me in the New York Times.  I doubt that link will work for long, but it’s worth looking at the article if you can.  Park B. Smith is one of the world’s most incredible wine collectors; his cellars cover over 8,000 square feet at this point.  I wish I had the kind of money and time required to amass such a wonderful collection!  I think if I had that kind of collection, I’d store it in a bomb shelter somewhere deep underneath the high desert of New Mexico.

Smith is one of the founders of the restaurant Veritas in NYC.  Veritas largely began as an excuse for Smith and another wine connoisseur, Steve Verlin, to sell their wines to the public so they would be consumed within the appropriate period of time after their release.  Now there’s a problem I wish I had!  At least my wife is awesome.

Wine Blogging Wednesday (WBW) #31 has been announced, and it’s hot on the heels of WBW #30.  These WBW events seem to be picking up speed somehow.  Anyway, WBW #31 focuses on wines marketed and sold within non-traditional packaging.  In other words, no bottled wines allowed for this particular WBW challenge.

Hmm…an interesting concept, but I’m a little worried about finding a wine that I’d want to drink and that comes packaged in something other than a bottle.  On the one hand, it should be easy to store a boxed wine in the fridge once the box has been tapped, so to speak.  On the other hand, I can’t possibly use 1-6 liters of wine very easily or very quickly.  At least boxed wines are cheap!

Maybe I should take a quick trip to Prague and go back to the insane wine bar there that has multiple Hobbit-like levels and caverns, and that descends a few stories underground.  That particular wine bar (I don’t recall the name now) served white and red wine straight from wood casks perched on top of each of the many bars spread throughout the labyrinth of rooms, benches, and tables.  Drinking wine at that place was like being a spelunker and finding a bunch of cheap red wine deep underground.  I expected to see stalactites growing from the ceiling in this place.  I’d love to go back.  Then again, the wine tastes unbelievably bad, and it isn’t served in a box.

A funny story: The first time I went to this particular wine bar in Prague, I had already consumed 2 liters of the house beer at a marvelous beerhall called U Fleku.  My friends and I led me to the wine bar where I proceeded to drink a liter of their house red wine, which arrives from the bar in plastic pitchers.  My chief memory of that night is related to entering the women’s bathroom by accident and having a very amused Czech woman hold the door open for me.  Friendly folks, those Czechs.

A quick glance around the Internet tells me that Black Box might be appropriate for this challenge.  We’ll see.  I’m thinking of pouring a Pinot Noir into an amphora and reviewing that.  But that’s cheating.

Sea Saw is a restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona, with very good food and an annoying Web site. 

On the last night of my trip to Phoenix (last night, in fact), I went to Sea Saw and tried a whole mess of different foods.  The place has an interesting concept: Japanese “tapas.”  Some call it “Tapanese.”  I call it “expensive as hell for what you get.”  But it is a really fun place.

Or it would be, if they could iron out a few of the details, such as providing timely and knowledgeable wine service, or including more than 2 tables in the entire restaurant (much of which is taken up by the grill and kitchen area), or recognizing how long it should take to eat all the little courses and then balancing that time requirement with the patrons’ need for a coveted table.  Anyway, it is hard to complain when the food makes it all worthwhile, so I will simply say that Sea Saw has pretty good food for the most part.

Sea Saw is one of a few restaurants in a little cluster right in downtown Scottsdale.  Each restaurant features a different cuisine and theme; the theme at Sea Saw is one of minimalist elegance, stainless steel, soft lights, and a gigantic open kitchen that dominates the space.  All of the restaurants in this quadrangle share the same immense wine cellar, which contains at least 2,900 bottles of wine.  But apparently it was 2,899 bottles of wine last night….

We ordered the following food and shared it all; refer to their menu for all the little tiny bits of flair they included with each dish (there were a lot; too many in some cases to make a cohesive tasting experience):

• Edamame soup (good soup, thick tapioca-like consistency turned off some people)
• Hamachi with about 8 other things on top and below it (this tasted way too confused to me)
• Soft shell shrimp fry (delicious!)
• Mushroom melange (also delicious)
• Seared tuna tataki in pureed beet (highlight of the evening for me)
• Steamed sea bass in broth (not all that great, way too watery and bland)
• Seared miso-marinated foie gras (my favorite but a little rich to serve at the end of the meal)
• I think I forgot a course in here, but overall the food was good…some hit or miss dishes, though

The real fun began when I had a question about the wine list.  The waiter at Sea Saw was quite good, but he was not a sommelier.  So I was handed this tome through which I flipped hungrily for several minutes.  Once I knew we were going to spend $40-$50 for a bottle of wine, I honed in on that section of the wine list since the wines are arranged by price.  First, I asked if they had anything like a Hirsch Pinot Noir but cheaper.  That drew a blank stare.  So I asked about a specific wine, which elicited this reply: “Uhh, I don’t know, I don’t get to try all of the wines.”

Now, at this point, I totally understood that the waiter was just that: a waiter.  Why did the establishment put him in this position?  Why didn’t he go and get the sommelier for all of the restaurants?  I don’t know, I probably wasn’t going to spend enough money to justify a sommelier’s time anyway.  But when I let the waiter ask the chef for a wine recommendation, he came back with a 2005 California Pinot Noir, a Melville from the Santa Rita Hills.  Seemed too young to me since we didn’t have time to decant the wine, but I went for it.

Only the waiter didn’t come back with that wine.  They were out.  Now that’s a funny situation: The restaurant recommends a specific wine only to tell you, no, we don’t actually have it.  But we recommend it.  I thought it was funny, anyway.

Instead, the waiter did something admirable: He returned with a taste of an Oyster Bay Pinot Noir (because I was asking for something outside of the US) and a bottle of 2003 Clos LaChance Santa Cruz Hills Pinot Noir.  I went with the Clos LaChance as the Oyster Bay tasted like confectioner’s sugar and kirsch, so it was a little too sweet.  At this point, we were already into our 3rd or 4th course out of 9 or so.  That’s entirely too long to wait for a bottle of wine, particularly when the restaurant wants to sell wine to its customers!

The 2003 Clos LaChance Pinot Noir was quite a good wine; here are my notes:

• Aroma: Earthy, faint essence of mushroom, strong cherry and raspberry bouquet at first.  A very fruit-forward nose with occasional hints of kirsch and red plums.
• Flavor: Big ripe cherry flavor, extremely succulent and mouth-smackingly tasty.  Slightly sweet, slightly jammy, very smooth.  A definite crowd-pleaser.
• General impression: A delicious wine, one that left me wanting another bottle immediately.  Lots of great Pinot Noir essence with some nice character to boot.  Worth seeking out!

I finished off my portion of the bottle and I wanted something more.  So I got a 6-ounce pour of the 2004 Turley Zinfandel.  The menu didn’t say which Turley Zin I ordered, so I assume it’s their most basic release.  Here are my notes on that wine:

• Aroma: Blackberry and bramble with peppery spice.  A good Zinfandel bouquet.
• Flavor: Lots of smooth blackberry and black fruit flavor with some blackberry vine undertones.  Nice balance of fruit and tannins.
• General impression: A very lucid, well-balanced wine.  Smooth, but spicy; tannic, but drinkable.  Quite good, but for the price I think I’d keep looking for another wine (such as that Peter Franus Brandlin Zin I just tried).

In short, the restaurant was good but a little mixed up.  The wine was good but a little expensive.  The atmosphere was good but a little snobby and uptight.  Everything was good, but it’s a qualified “good” I suppose.  Ahh well, I love business trips….

“So, what types of wines do you like?”

“Well, we spent a lot of time in Spain and France, so we like big, spicy red wines for the most part.”

“Yeah, I definitely like the Rioja wines and a lot of those big, bold French wines too.”

“We don’t know much about US or Australian wines, I’m afraid.”

“Really?  Hmm…HOLY HELL!  We have to try this wine!”

“Ahhhh…okay.”

I’m the one who yelled “holy hell!” because I had just spotted the distinctive “PF” on the label of a bottle of wine.  I was at the Postino Winecafe in Phoenix last night with a few colleagues, and I was looking through the different bottles of wine stored in the racks near the front of the restaurant.  The Postino has a great system: You can either get a glass of wine from the main list, or you can look through the bottles and find one to drink at the table.  The wines by the glass are fairly inexpensive and while they looked good, I started getting very excited when I looked at the wines in the rack.

The first wine I saw was a 2005 Brewer-Clifton Pinot Noir, the “Ashley” release from the Santa Rita Hills.  I also saw a couple other interesting Pinot Noirs: Patz & Hall, a 2004 Pisoni Pinot Noir, and a couple of other wines that were pushing $100/bottle.  But then my colleague and I had the verbal exchange described, very briefly, at the start of this post.  So we started looking at other varietals until I stumbled across the wine I wanted to try.

Peter Franus.  The guy is a winemaking legend.  The 2003 Peter Franus Brandlin Vineyard Zinfandel is a wine that I have wanted to try for over a year now, but I had yet to see it on sale at any store.  The 2004 release (the current release) is already sold out through the winery.  Amazing.  And yet they had the 2003 at Postino; a quick Internet check tells me this wine is indeed available online starting at about $30-$35/bottle.  Not too bad.

I absolutely insisted that we try the 2003 Peter Franus Brandlin Vineyard Zinfandel.  It went over extremely well; we had all kinds of delicious food, including:

• Three types of cheese - a d’Affnois triple-cream Brie, Chimay Grande Reserve, and a delectable goat cheese.
• Four types of bruschetta
• A Margherita pizza with fresh basil
• A Tuscan-style salad with prosciutto, salami, and freshly-shaved Parmesan

I was excited to try this wine with food, but I also knew it would probably hold up well before the food arrived.  I was right, as it turned out…read on for my tasting notes.

• Aroma: Blackberry and clove up front, with some mild smokiness and baking spice (such as nutmeg) in the bouquet as well.  This wine is known for its bramble and baking spice aromas, and I can see why!
• Flavor: Big jammy blackberry with black pepper and other spices plus a nice, rich black cherry mid-palate fruitiness.  A wine that lingers a while on your tongue.  A dry finish before the food arrived, but once we started eating the triple-cream Brie on toast, this wine began to soar.
• General impression: Wow!  As delicious as I hoped it would be.  A knockout Zinfandel that goes really well with food, particularly margherita pizza.

I am officially a fan of Peter Franus’ Brandlin Zin now.  It’s a darn good wine and it reminds me why I need to keep drinking all types of wine rather than all Pinot Noir, all the time.

Postino is also a terrific restaurant and wine bar!  On Monday nights, their wines are less expensive; they remove the typical corkage fee so the Peter Franus went from $49/bottle to $40/bottle, which is about what you’d pay to buy a bottle and get it shipped to you.  Very, very nice.  The service was terrific and the food was outstanding.  I can’t wait to go back someday!