huevos con vino

A couple of friends and I ate at a Phoenix, Arizona restaurant called Christopher’s Fermier Brasserie tonight.  I found this place by checking out gayot.com, which is easily one of my favorite restaurant review Web sites because they are ruthless, brutally honest, and their scores actually mean something.  Christopher’s received 15/20, which puts it in some elite company as a score of 12/20 is really damn good at gayot.com.

The restaurant itself is terrific, although it is located in an upscale Phoenix shopping mall.  Weird, but manageable.  For dinner, I had the following courses:

• Escargot with a puff pastry and diced tomato topping
• Beef shortribs braised in red wine with mashed potatoes and miniature squash
• Grand Marnier souffle with fresh raspberries and cream

The wine list is fairly extensive, and they have whites such as DuMOL and reds such as Patz & Hall.  So they have good stuff, to be sure.  They also offer half-liter amounts of wine, which was what we got as our first wine of the evening.  I wound up drinking a lot more than my friends, but it all worked out fine in the end.

The first wine we tried was the 2003 Palacios Remondo “La Montesa” from the Rioja region of Spain.  La Montesa is an organic, Crianza red wine made from 45% Tempranillo, 40% Garnacha, 15% Mazuelo (Carignane), and 15% Graciano grapes, according to the fact sheet linked in this sentence.  Those percentages add up to 115% so clearly it’s a wine that is bursting with flavor.  Here are my thoughts (tasted before and with the escargot):

• Aroma: Gamy meat and bell pepper at first, evolved into a very smoky, spicy nose after 30-60 minutes. 
• Flavor: Black pepper, black fruit, thick tannic structure.  A tasty wine; you can sense an earthiness reminiscent of Mourvedre after about 60 minutes of decanting.
• General impression: A big, bold, spicy wine with some interesting things going on in terms of palate and bouquet.  Worth the money.

The next wine I tried was the 2005 El Felino Malbec from the Mendoza region of Argentina.  This Malbec is about $15/bottle online but it tastes like a $30 wine for sure.  My thoughts (tasted before and mostly consumed with the beef entree):

• Aroma: Floral, fruity, rich.  A well-rounded bouquet.
• Flavor: A delicious balance of semi-sweet fruit integrated with nice spicy acid and tannic structure.
• General impression: The find of the month for me!  I loved this wine and I could see drinking a lot more of it.

 Finally, I had a glass of the 2004 Marcarini Moscato d’Asti from the Piedmont region of Italy.  My thoughts (consumed with the souffle):

• Aroma: Sweet.  Honey and slight citrus and honeydew melon bouquet.
• Flavor: Again, plenty of honey and syrupy sweetness.  Tasty but a little one-dimensional.
• General impression: A good match for the souffle, but nothing too exciting overall.

Overall, it was a great evening, and I’d say the El Felino was the big discovery for me.  This wine goes straight into the realm of “delicious wines under $20,” along with Ramian Page One Grenache and Tikal Patriota, if you can find that one for $19.99. 

It seems as though winter is high time for Pinot Noir releases.  In the past week I have received offers from Prive Vineyard, Radio-Coteau, Loring, and Williams Selyem, all of which want to sell me their Pinot Noir wines for the most part.  And those are just the wineries from which I intend to purchase wine.  I’m excluding about 8 other wineries, all with interesting-looking releases that I can’t afford.  Merus and Littorai, anyone?

This flurry excludes the automatic shipment I receive every 3 months from Domaine Drouhin as a member of their DDO Direct wine club.  As I try (in vain) to stay within my budget, I notice that I cannot help but go way over my budget in the first couple months of the year before I return to normalcy during much of the rest of the year.  Maybe.  I guess what I’m saying is I have had to have a lot of discussions with my wife lately.

Anyway, I am splitting my allocations with a good friend and that takes some of the financial sting away.  Plus, that way we can probably be able to drink some of the single bottles we buy together but cannot otherwise split.

So, what am I blowing all my money on these days?  Here’s a quick list of recent purchases, some of which are nothing more than futures in barrels at this point:

• Prive Vineyard:

• 6 bottles of 2006 “Le Nord” Pinot Noir

• 2 bottles of La Neblina Pinot Noir
• 1 bottle of Savoy Pinot Noir
• 1 bottle of Alberigi Pinot Noir
• 1 bottle of Savoy Chardonnay
• Note: I am going to skip the Syrahs they have on offer this tim

• 1 bottle of Central Coast Pinot Noir
• 1 bottle of Sonoma County Pinot Noir
• 3 bottles of Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir
• 6 bottles of Russian River Pinot Noir
• 1 bottle of Westside Road Neighbors Pinot Noir

• 3 bottles of 2004 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir (their “Classique” release)

That’s a lot of amazing wine!  I’m spacing out the payments a little bit, at least, so that helps.  But I didn’t quite expect to have such a glut of allocated wine offered to me in the same week of February.  Ahh well, I’m glad I have a job.

Overall, I am pleased with my allocations, although I wish Radio-Coteau had shown me a tiny bit more love this year since I did order several wines from them last year.  But there is always next year!

In the world of wine, “Heitz” is a name that carries a lot of weight.  Joe Heitz worked for one of the biggest names in California wine, Andre Tchelistcheff, for several years until he opened Heitz Cellars in 1961.  His son David made his first Heitz wine in 1974, the Martha’s Vineyard release.  That particular wine is known as “the wine of the decade” among all other Napa Cabernet Sauvignon wines, according to reputable sources.  The 1970 bottling of the Martha’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon was one of the California wines included in the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, in which 10 French judges (and Steve Spurrier) ranked American Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon ahead of comparable French wines in a blind tasting.  When the Wine Spectator reran the taste test in 1986 with the same wines, the 1970 Heitz came in first.

Clearly, the lineage of Heitz wines is unquestionably solid.  But I don’t think I had ever tried a Heitz wine until last night.  Sure, I might have had a sip or two as I was growing up.  I do seem to recall a Heitz bottle in my father’s wine collection, but that was a long time ago and I certainly would not have appreciated the wine back then.

Now, however, I do appreciate it.  So when my friend and I pulled out a bottle of 2001 Heitz Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from his cellar, I was excited.

Interestingly, the bottle says “Heitz Cellar,” but the winery is named “Heitz Cellars.”  Strange.  Anyway, the 2001 is regarded as a good vintage for the Napa Valley.  This particular wine rates well at CellarTracker, which is a great source for the average person’s wine review on just about any major-label wine you can imagine. 

Speaking of reviews, here are my notes on this wine:

• Aroma: Lots of acidity and tannins on the nose at first, but that went away swiftly.  Sour red cherry at first with a dusty essence, eventually a sort of cedar/smoky bouquet, ultimately a cocoa/coffee and red fruit with bramble combination plus some oak and vanilla.  Interestingly, the bouquet changed depending on the shape of the glass used; my wife and my friend’s wife both smelled coconut, but only within their glass.  I smelled the wine in their glass and there was indeed a hint of fresh coconut milk.  Amazing!
• Flavor: Red currant, blackberry, and a smoky palate combine with medium tannic activity and mild acid that declined as the wine opened up.  A very nice wine that contains everything I like in a Cabernet Sauvignon.
• General impression: A well-balanced Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, if a little on the safe side.  Delicious, elegant, conservative.  Very good stuff!

Overall, I am very impressed with this wine.  But as my friend said, the wine seemed to grow less complex as it decanted over an hour or two.  I tend to agree: I see this wine as a good, safe choice for a nice red meat kind of meal.  I really want to try the other vineyard releases now!  Unfortunately, they cost a fair bit more than the standard Cabernet release.  The Trailside is about $70 online compared to the standard Cab at $35 or so, while the Bella Oaks is $50-$60 and the venerable Martha’s Vineyard is $108 if you’re lucky.

So, how was my first experience with a Heitz Cabernet Sauvignon?  Delicious, I’d say, and I look forward to trying other releases and vintages of their wines in the future.  My comment about this wine tasting “a little on the safe side” is certainly not a reflection of quality, but rather of my own palate perhaps.  I think it’s possible the Trailside, Bella Oaks, and Martha’s Vineyard releases showcase a bit more individuality and character; I believe the standard Napa Valley release is designed to appeal to everyone.  And that is definitely where this wine stands out: as a crowd-pleaser.

A couple of nights ago my wife and I went to the Cellar Bistro, a local haunt of ours.  We go there quite often and at this point, the waiter simply tells me that he’s going to bring out a few wines from which I can choose one to drink with dinner.  We also spent about 10 minutes discussing my former motorcycles and his new Suzuki SV, but that’s not really about wine…

This time around, the waiter brought three wines:

• A bottle of Red Knot, which I had tried before and which I didn’t find terribly exciting as a match with Italian food.
• A bottle of Di Majo Norante Sangiovese, which I had also tried before.  I had a terrible experience with that bottle so I sort of avoid this wine now, unfortunately.
• A bottle of something called “Kris” Merlot. 

So, I went with the Merlot.

I actually like Merlot quite a bit, the movie Sideways notwithstanding.  Italian Merlot is a little more interesting to me right now, particularly when I’m eating spaghetti and meatballs.  This specific Merlot is fairly interesting in that it offers good value with fairly high production values as well.  As a producer, Kris is located in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy, which is one of the northernmost regions of that country.  The Kris winery produces a Pinot Grigio and this Merlot.  The Pinot Grigio is extremely popular, especially as a restaurant “by-the-glass” type of wine.  The Merlot is apparently a little less common.

In terms of those production values I mentioned, take a look here for more information on this wine.  While this Merlot is filtered, fined, and pumped over, it didn’t taste too industrial to me.  The aging process includes stainless steel, an interesting but intelligent choice for a mass-market Merlot that is not intended to age for years before consumption.

Here are my abbreviated tasting notes:

• Aroma: Hay, oak, and red cherry.  Not complicated, but nice.
• Flavor: Red plum and black cherry.  Smooth, with a nice acidic bite at the end.
• General impression: A darn good Italian Merlot for a very good price.

I was quite pleased with this wine and it went exactly as well with tomato sauce as you’d expect.  If you run across Kris in a restaurant, I’d recommend it up to $7/glass or so.  Any more and you can just buy a bottle on the Internet.

I have been trying to write a new entry every day, but lately I have been too busy to do so.  I feel a little guilty but not too much since, well, I have a day job and that’s how I pay my bills.  But still, I have plenty to talk about and I want to keep this site fresh!  So here we go.

On Monday I received a letter from Privé Vineyard.  I had been eagerly awaiting this letter, but I wasn’t entirely prepared for what I received.

Privé Vineyard is an ultra-exclusive winery in Newberg, Oregon.  They make three Pinot Noir releases: Le Nord, Le Sud, and Joie de Vivre, the latter of which is sort of a “best barrels” type of wine.  Total case production is about 250 for Le Nord and Le Sud, and I doubt there are many cases of Joie de Vivre sitting around.  Overall, then, this winery has a tiny production level.  Only three restaurants are even able to carry their wine, and two of them are within a short drive of the winery itself (the third is the Herbfarm in Woodinville, WA).

This limited production engenders a certain cult quality, I believe.  Privé Vineyard has some devout customers since their wines are extremely good based on the reviews I have seen, at least.  One such review comes from the Prince of Pinot, who stops just short of telling his readers not to contact the winery because they get so overwhelmed with requests for their wine!  Other reviews discuss the 2001 vintage, the awards those wines won, and the amazing fact that 2001 was the first vintage for Privé.  Now that’s a good start.

The names of the wines derive from the physical locations of the grapes in the vineyard plots.  Le Nord features grapes from, appropriately enough, the northern block of grapes, which are located higher up the hill near the winery building.  Le Sud features grapes closer to the winery that also ripen earlier.  The Le Sud release also gets 100% new French oak compared to 25% new French oak with Le Nord.  I can’t wait to taste these wines someday.

So, the letter I got from Privé was notable because they were offering their 2006 Pinot Noir futures for sale now.  That’s “now” as in February 2007.  Now that’s early!  I decided to place an order quickly since their last offering sold out in less than two weeks, apparently.  I requested 6 bottles of Le Nord at $45/bottle, and I will be splitting that half-case with a good friend who knows his wine.  The Joie de Vivre and Le Sud are both highly tempting, but you have to order wine in quantities of 6 or 12 only.  Also, those two releases take longer to mature in the bottle so they aren’t necessarily as drinkable as quickly as Le Nord.  I want to start with Le Nord and then progress toward the other releases if I have the money and the patience.

I guess sometime in 2008 I will get some bottles of Privé Vineyard wine.  Happily, there are private tastings and barrel samplings offered at different times throughout the year, and I do expect to visit Oregon again this May for a few such events at places like Privé and Le Cadeau (hopefully!).  So perhaps I can be privy to the Privé in private.  Yes, this whole post has been proceeding toward that one horribly contrived sentence.  Clearly I need a drink.