huevos con vino

Day 2 of Operation Relaxation: Southern California began well.  We woke up late, had a terrific lunch, took a walk through a citrus orchard where the lemons and oranges are massive and ripe, and then headed back to the spa for a 90-minute massage in a pagoda overlooking the orchard and the hills beyond. 

And then we drove to Palm Desert so I could check out LA Wine Company again.

The LA Wine Company is a fabulous wine store, full of seemingly random bottles that actually fit into one specific organizational scheme: the employees only stock what they enjoy drinking.  At least, that’s my take on the place.  As soon as I walked into the store, Patrick recognized me from 6 months earlier.  Now that’s high-quality service!  He led me around and talked about everything that was different since my last visit, while my very patient wife patiently waited in the car.  She’s very patient.

I ended up buying two bottles of wine: a 2002 Pascual Toso “Magdalena,” which is an Argentinian blockbuster Malbec made in partnership with Paul Hobbs, and a 2005 Tandem Silver Pines Pinot Noir, made by Greg LaFollette.  Patrick insisted that I try the Tandem, and his choices have been excellent before, so I agreed.  The Pascual Toso wine comes in a metallic suitcase package that is unique and quite exciting to open.  The wine is apparently pretty good too.  So I gave that one a try; I remembered seeing it 6 months earlier, actually.

The Pascual Toso winery in the Mendoza region of Argentina produces some interesting wines.  The Web site does not list the Magdalena release, which is a bit strange.  They do list lots of other releases, including reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec releases.  I guess the Magdalena is quite special; I don’t even see a photo of the incredibly elaborate packaging.  Trust me when I say this wine sells itself well in the case.

The Magdalena features a 95% Malbec, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon blend, which is quite interesting since the Cabernet Sauvignon essentially acts as a very minor player in the bottle.  How does it all work together then?  Here are my notes:

• Aroma: Dark chocolate, mint, some mild boysenberry and blackberry as well.  Evolved into a very reserved fruity bouquet without the chocolate and mint, but started out with an incredibly strong chocolate mint aroma (almost like chocolate mint tea).
• Flavor: Seriously dark chocolate with some fruit undercurrents; ultimately this wine opened up into a slightly fruity/jammy blackberry and blueberry palate with some mild tannic and acidic activity.
• General impression: Not quite worth the price of admission, but clearly a wine that will improve over time.  Even with a 2002, this wine needs another several years in the cellar.

Here are some other tasting notes on the 2002 Pascual Toso Magdalena.  Overall, for $85 this wine was too expensive to drink today.  Perhaps in a few years, the cost will be justified, but I didn’t taste the lengthy finish that you would expect such a wine to possess.  I am glad I tried this wine, though, as I do like other Paul Hobbs wines, such as El Felice.

I’m back in Southern California again, on what I might call my second honeymoon in about 6 months.  The first honeymoon was wonderful, but it sort of ended abruptly the moment (literally) we got home again for other reasons.  So although the last 6 months have been fun, they have also been extremely tiring for my wife and I.

Therefore, we decided to head back down to California and go to one of our favorite places, which shall remain nameless.  All I can say is this place has a natural hot spring, gorgeous grounds with loads of citrus trees bearing gigantic ripe lemons and grapefruits, and a spa where we’ll be going later today for a 90-minute massage.  This place is tranquil and wonderfully relaxing.  Clearly this is the kind of place where you want to drink an entire bottle of wine with dinner.

And that’s just what I did last night!  We ate at the restaurant on site, a terrific place in terms of the quality of the food and the atmosphere.  The service is charming, which is to say the service is neither exceptional nor terrible, but somewhere in between (closer to exceptional).  I brought in a bottle of 2004 Robert Biale Grande Vineyard Zinfandel, which I had decanted but the waitress had never used a decanter before.  She was quite nervous and she poured a small amount of wine on the table, which I found hilarious.  She was quite embarrassed and she ended up waiving the corkage fee, a terrific compromise between using the restaurant’s decanter and watching some of the wine land on the tablecloth.

Anyway, the Robert Biale Vineyards & Winery is a fascinating place, with a tremendous focus on its heritage as a grape farm rather than a winery.  The Biale family moved to Napa during the Great Depression, a challenging time to decide to sell Zinfandel wine grapes I would imagine.  But they persevered and in 1991 they began making their own wine from their grapes.  At the present, they make a whole host of other red wine varieties, but their Zinfandels continue to garner the most acclaim, at least from what I can tell by searching for Biale wines on the Internet.  In my correspondence with the people at Biale, I have been quite impressed with their responsiveness and positive attitude.  So for quite some time, I have wanted to try a Biale Zinfandel.

I found this Biale Zin at Jensen’s Foods, a relatively local supermarket with a wonderful wine selection.  I also managed to pick up a bottle of 2004 Green Truck Pinot Noir while I was there, so I know what I’ll be drinking tonight!  Anyway, I picked up this Biale release (which is already a year old; the 2005 is the current release) for $47.  You can find this wine for less on the Internet; $34 seems to be the best price, but realistically the cost is over $40/bottle. 

The Grande Vineyard, from which these grapes are sourced, was planted by a man named Theodosio Grande.  I can’t think of a better name for an Italian grape farmer.  The 2004 Biale Grande Zin is a big, bold wine for sure.  It clocks in at 16.4% alcohol and there were only about 350 cases made from the 84-year-old vines (they were planted in 1920, so now they’re 87 years old).  The amazing thing is, this wine is so well-balanced that you don’t taste the alcohol whatsoever.  But you do taste plenty of other stuff; here are my notes:

• Aroma: Lots of blackberry syrup/jam, cassis, and clove spice, with some secondary notes of cinnamon bark and oak.  A very “Gothic” bouquet, so to speak, as all of the sumptuous aromas seem to come from black fruit or dark wood.  Extremely potent and room-filling right from the start.
• Flavor: Delicious blend of the promised blackberry, but with some interesting hints of black cherry and baking spice lurking underneath.  After some time in the decanter, the black cherry comes to the front in harmony with the juicy blackberry and spice flavors.  Very mild acid and tannic content, just enough to keep the fruit in check.
• General impression: A potent, delicious wine that tastes terrific with gazpacho (spicy!!), filet mignon (blackberry), tapenade (cherry), and even with salmon!

Overall, I was quite happy with this wine.  My wife liked it a lot with her tapenade and salmon dishes, which made me happy because my wife has lately convinced herself that she only likes Pinot Noir.  I have steadily been trying to convince her otherwise, and thanks to this Biale Grande Zinfandel I am on my way.

Due to some recent increases in spam, I implemented two new Wordpress blog plug-ins that should make this blog a bit better.

First, I turned on an anti-spam comment filtering system.  Hopefully no real comments will be deleted, although I have manual control over all comments so it should be fine.  I have already blocked over 100 spam comments in 2 days with this new plug-in, so I’m happy.

I also added a plug-in that allows users to track comments posted to the blog.  We’ll see how that works!  I want to make people sign up for user accounts before posting comments because I want to see who is reading this blog and which blogs my readers are running so I can add new links.  I know the value of this policy is a matter of opinion, but I think this solution is a good one overall.

Finally, I’m heading back to southern California on Wednesday for a brief vacation.  We’re going back to the place where my wife and I had our honeymoon last September.  I look forward to drinking a whole bunch of good wine while I’m down there!

Last night we headed over to my friend’s house, the one with half of my wine collection in the basement cellar.  We wound up spending nearly an hour talking about wine and staring at the bottles.  That’s sort of an ideal Saturday night for me, but I doubt my wife would find it that much fun.  She was upstairs.

Anyway, we pulled out a bottle of 2003 Pepper Bridge Cabernet Sauvignon.  Pepper Bridge is a product of the Pepper Bridge Winery in the Walla Walla Valley of Eastern Washington State.  Although their Web site seems a bit confused as to whether the winery is Walla Walla Winery or Pepper Bridge Winery, you’ll find this wine for $50 under the Pepper Bridge name.

Pepper Bridge makes Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, with a couple of Cabernet Sauvignon single-vineyard releases to boot.  I had never tried this particular winery’s products before, but I have seen them around town for a while.  My friend and I were both eager to give this wine a try, even if it is still quite young.  Then again, I had a 2002 Hestan Cabernet Sauvignon in May 2005 and it was incredible, so it’s always possible to enjoy a wine while it’s still young!

The 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon features a blend that relies mainly on the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, which could be a mistake.  More on that later, though.  At 95.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, this wine only has room for a splash of Malbec and Merlot.  About 2/3 of the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes came from the Seven Hills Vineyard, while the rest came from the Pepper Bridge Vineyard; both vineyards are profiled here on the winery Web site.  The wine was released in the summer of 2006 so it has had some time to settle in the cellar.  With 2/3 new French oak, the flavors should really pop on the palate.

We decanted the wine in our glasses for over an hour and ended up finishing the bottle.  While I did like this wine, I don’t think I would pay $50 for it.  Here are my thoughts:

• Aroma: Buttered toast and black fruit with acid at first, opened up into a more complex bouquet of blackberries, black cherries, oak, toast, and an almost campfire-type aroma after a while.
• Flavor: Smooth cherry and blackberry after some decanting, not much tannic structure; fairly simple and not very alluring overall.
• General impression: This wine left me a bit flat; the flavor was nice but the body wasn’t there.  A little thin, lacking some of the structure and muscle you expect from a Cabernet Sauvignon.

I have tried several good Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon wines and I have yet to be as impressed as I get when I try a comparable California Cabernet.  I take this as a sign to try more Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon wines before I make any kind of sweeping generalization about them.  Still, it is disappointing to taste a wine that simply lacks the “stuffing,” or “brawn,” or “muscle,” or whatever you want to call that secondary flavor profile that was missing from this wine.  Without it, this wine tasted more like a watery Pinot Noir than a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Bordeaux-styled red. 

I know that sounds harsh, and I don’t mean to be overly critical as the wine was clearly well made, but it tasted incomplete to me.  Perhaps the blend would have benefitted from more Malbec, or a different balance of Cabernet Sauvignon grape sources.  Who knows?  I do know that I want to try the single-vineyard releases before I make up my mind about Pepper Bridge as a winery.

I received word on Wednesday (3/14) that Domaine Drouhin was about to make the 2004 Louise release available.  I think I made an audible yelping sound when I saw the announcement in my inbox: The week of April 9th marks the release of the 2004 Louise!

Domaine Drouhin, or DDO (that’s Domaine Drouhin Oregon), releases 3 different Pinot Noirs each year:

• The “Willamette Valley,” or “Classique” release is the “basic” release and constitutes about 75-80% of the total Pinot Noir production each year.
• The “Laurène” release is a step up in taste and flavor, in my opinion, and constitutes almost 20% of the total Pinot Noir production each year.
• The “Louise” release is for DDO Direct club members only and is typically unavailable even on the aftermarket; Louise constitutes about 1-2% of the total Pinot Noir production each year.

If you read my blog at all, you know that I love the wines of Domaine Drouhin.  I was ecstatic when I was invited to join their DDO Direct club a while back, in part because I really wanted to purchase some Louise Pinot Noir but I was never able to do so in the past.  The last time you could purchase any Louise on the aftermarket was at least 2 years ago, and even then it was $95+/bottle.  Before DDO really began to take off and find significant success as a winery, they sold Louise direct to the public.  That was then, this is now, and in the here and now you need to be in the club.

Think about that for a minute: Anyone can buy a bottle of the DDO Willamette Valley Pinot Noir for about $40-$45.  It tastes great for sure and I drink it whenever I can.  If you want to spend a bit more, you can get the Laurène.  This particular wine remains my wife’s all-time favorite wine, and she has tried some $100-$200 wines before.  Impressive.  But that Louise remains elusive; it would be easier (though more costly) to buy a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc on the aftermarket than to find a bottle of 2003 DDO Louise for sale.  Now that’s amazing to me.

Anyway, there was some concern that DDO Direct club members might not all receive an allotment of the 2004 Louise due to a decline in the harvest numbers.  Well, I am happy to report that I will indeed receive my 3 bottles of 2004 Louise, and I think all of the other DDO Direct club members will get their Louise as well.  That’s great news as I think this wine is the reason why so many people belong to the DDO Direct club.

There is also a special party to celebrate the release of Louise.  On May 19th, DDO Direct club members will have the chance to taste the 2004 Louise, which is pretty much the only time you can do something like that.  There are “other special treats” promised in the e-mail I received from DDO, so I’m going to try and attend this year.  I really want to see what other wines they pull from their incredible cellar; DDO keeps bottles of all their releases in storage.  I would love to see that storage room.