huevos con vino

The year was 1967. Venerable winemaker Andre Tchelistcheff became a consultant to the American Wine Growers company, helping them launch a new, premium red wine label. The label was called “Ste. Michelle Vintners,” quite catchy if you ask me.

To give you a sense of how important this move was in Washington State, one of the biggest changes that Tchelistcheff helped bring about was to work with Howard Somers, the AWG winemaker at the time, and use vitis vinifera grapes to make their wine. This happened only 40 years ago. Think about that for a minute: AWG made some of the first vintage-dated, vinifera-based wines in Washington State…40 years ago! Only Associated Vintners (now known as Columbia Winery) seems to have been making similar wines way back then; other famous Washington wineries, such as Quilceda Creek (1978 - first vintage), came later.

Flash forward to 2007. I’m at Ray’s Boathouse with my wife and one of her friends from college. I’m looking over the wine list and chatting with the new sommelier at Ray’s. Out of the blue, she says, “Hey, you want to try something interesting? I’ve been looking for a reason to open this one wine and I won’t charge you for it if it doesn’t taste good.” Hey, I’m always up for something exciting!

So she comes back with a bottle of 1971 Chateau Ste. Michelle Cabernet Sauvignon. Except, this wine is too old to be a Chateau Ste. Michelle wine. It’s actually a Ste. Michelle Vineyards release from Ste. Michelle Vintners, Seattle, Washington.

Whoa. Check out the bottle!

Crazy, huh?  Looks like Bon-Vin, Inc. of Houston, Texas is the place to get more of this wine.  If I lived in 1972.  At the bottom the label says this wine has 12% alcohol and was “Produced from Cabernet Sauvignon Grapes grown in the Yakima Valley.”  The back of the bottle is equally interesting (and better photographed on my part):

I like the part about being aged in “small white oak barrels and in glass.”  Nice.  I also like the “Vintage-dated Varietal wine” statement up near the top.  Again, in 1971 Washington State wineries were mainly known nationally for their fortified jug wines.  Yuck.  At first I was almost surprised not to see a Web site address printed at the bottom.  Oh yeah, there was no Internet in 1971, not even in Al Gore’s house.

This wine was intriguing.  The fill level and, as it turned out, the cork were quite good on this bottle.  The wine smelled pretty good but didn’t quite stand the test of time: It never got off the ground and was mostly acidic and cranberry-tasting on the palate.  The bouquet was actually nice at first, though, which surprised us all.  In the end, we let the sommelier take the bottle away for her staff and bring us a 2004 Kestrel Syrah instead.  Still, it was an amazing experience just to see this bottle.  I was shocked that a single varietal Washington wine existed back in 1971.  I wonder if any of these bottles that still exist are good to drink…this one was close, but not quite there anymore.

Clearwater Creek is fictitious.  There is no Clearwater Creek winery.

Having said that, Clearwater Creek as a concept is very real.  North Berkeley Imports (NBI) is a small storefront wine shop in Berkeley, California.  NBI has its own label, “Clearwater Creek,” under which they bottle wines culled from the barrels of well-known American wineries.  I think.  It’s a bit hard to tell when you look at their Web site because the focus is on their importation of French and Italian wines.

Anyway, the concept of Clearwater Creek is terrific: If you are a famous Napa or Sonoma winemaker and you cannot bottle and sell all of your grapes yourself, you can sell those extra grapes to NBI who turns them into the next Clearwater Creek release.  Simple!  And very cost-effective for the consumer.  I like it.  I also assume that’s how it works.  I don’t know for sure.

Flashback time: In April 2007 I was at the LA Wine Co. store in Palm Desert, California.  The good people there told me about a really nice Cabernet Sauvignon for $12.95 per bottle from an unknown label.  They also hinted at the provenance of the wine inside the bottle with the unknown label.  I am sworn to secrecy, but if you search CellarTracker for this wine you can quickly see where the juice itself came from.  The NBI Web site mentions an Alexander Valley source, which of course matches the user comments at CellarTracker.  I purchased 6 bottles from LA Wine Co. and at this point I wish I had purchased 6 cases.

You see, this wine is good.  Damn good.  Really damn good.  You drink it and you think, “Wow, this wine is really damn good!”  And then you remember you paid $12.95 for it instead of, say, $60.  It is at this point that you really begin to like the Clearwater Creek label as a concept.

I decided to open a bottle despite the youth of this wine (it’s a 2004 after all, and this is still 2007); this was a good move on my part.  My wife and I had a friend over from The Netherlands who would normally join me in some wine, but she is pregnant so all of the wine consumption was up to me.  Here are my thoughts:

• Aroma: Initially potent blueberry and black fruit aromas with velvety backdrop; opened up after 30-45 minutes into a wonderfully complex bouquet of oak and cedar, vanilla, cherry, blackberry, leather, and smoke.  Exceptional aromatic balance for a young Cabernet.
• Flavor: Solid fresh blackberry and luscious raspberry straight away, with smoky, tannic mid-palate and lengthy, velvety aftertaste; fairly complex flavor profile that kept changing as the wine sat in my glass.
• General impression: Delicious, well-balanced (I would say “poised”) combination of rich fruit, smooth tannins, vigorous but controlled acidity…very nice indeed.

This wine was a dynamite bargain, a true steal in fact.  Except I didn’t steal it, I paid for it!  So I guess it isn’t a true steal.  More of a proverbial steal.  Never mind.  It’s awesome.  The only trick is there appears to be a Sonoma Cabernet and an Alexander Valley Cabernet from the 2004 Clearwater Creek stable.  Finding the Alexander Valley release seems almost impossible at this point; LA Wine Co. sold out of their small allotment as fast as they could tell people about the wine.  Perhaps the thing to do is keep an eye on NBI and Clearwater Creek for future developments.  If this wine is any indication, NBI is doing everything right.

Kent Fortner is a really approachable person. When I first corresponded with him, I was simply signing up for his mailing list. But I had read his blog entry on Burgundian cooperage, which I found fascinating, and he replied with a personal note of gratitude for finding his site and his winery! Nice start.

Kent’s Green Truck Cellars winery is quickly becoming well known. I have seen his wine for sale on at least one restaurant list so far, although more are sure to follow. Kent focuses on Pinot Noir, which I think is cool. I really like the idea of a winery focusing on a specific varietal, especially at the start of the winery’s career, so to speak. I ordered 6 bottles of the 2005 edition, which was the 5th vintage from Kent and Green Truck Cellars. He boldly predicts the 2005 will be “showing perfectly on Dec 25, 2007,” so today (October 1, 2007) seemed like a good time to open up a bottle of the 2005. Only 600 cases were made and Kent sold out briskly, so I’m happy to have this opportunity!

The 2005 was aged in an interesting combination of 80% French oak barrels and 20% Hungarian oak barrels, 30% of which were new. I assume, then, that 6% of the barrels used to make this wine were made of new oak. It’s a good thing I did the math before I began drinking; this wine clocks in at 13.9% alcohol, which isn’t terribly high but it’s no lightweight. Because of the wine’s relatively youthful status, I decided to decant this wine for about 1-2 hours first.  It’s a good thing, too: It took at least 90 minutes for this wine to relax and open up a little.  Even then, things were a little tight; perhaps now is a bad time to drink a 2005 Pinot Noir.  Bah, it’s never a bad time!

Here are my notes:

• Aroma: Straight from the bottle, this wine means business. Lots of dusty tannin and bright strawberry, red cherry, and black plum aroma plus some alcohol heat/acid that will clearly dissipate quickly; potent, rich, heady aromas dominate up front with some black pepper and smoked meat in there too. After nearly 2 hours, the aroma is characterized by A classic French-style Pinot Noir bouquet overall.
• Flavor: Decanting is definitely required for a wine this young and full-bodied. It takes a good 90 minutes for the real flavor of this wine to show through, and it’s worth the wait. Lush red and black berries, velvet mouthfeel, delayed tannic and acidic backbone…this wine is built right. Or should I say, built Ford tough? Probably not. But it’s good.
• General impression: A nice wine!  Clearly this Green Truck has a lot of miles ahead of it.

So, the big question: Will I buy more of this wine?  I think so, yeah.  I like the style of Pinot Noir that Kent expresses in this wine: restrained, with deeper sour cherry flavors rather than super-saturated black cherry.  But I also like the fact that this wine requires patience, time, and probably at least a few more years in the cellar…although I can see Kent’s point about 12/25/07 as a target drinking date.  Enjoy!

I wanted to look long and hard for an interesting wine made from a lesser-known varietal. A wine made from only one type of grape that, ideally, is hard to pronounce and comes from deep in the hills of Spain, or Greece, or maybe even Vermont. But then I scratched Vermont off my list because their wines seem to come from apples rather than grapes. So instead, I focused on Spain and went in search of a wine that was new to me and true to the spirit of Wine Blogging Wednesday #37: Go Native!

So I went native. Like, totally. Super native. Way out there. And I managed to pick a wine that, hopefully, nobody else chose too.

After consulting with Catherine at The Spanish Table, I picked a bottle of the 2005 Bodegas Viña Godeval Godello, made from 100% Godello grapes. You might wonder, “Godello?” Yes, Godello, pronounced “go-day-oh.” The Godello grape is a native of Galicia, the region of Spain where you find D.O. Rías Baixas, an appellation that is famous for its white wines. They speak Galego in Galicia and they drink Godello…confused? I was at first too. But then I found this decent overview of Galicia, including the wines of Galicia. It’s worth a read until you get to the part where they talk about “elaborating” white wines. And then I got confused again. Keep reading, it gets better.

The Romans enjoyed a good Godello wine, apparently; this green grape produces fragrant white wines that Catherine at TST described in terms of fir tree needles and honey. I like those two things well enough that I was sold on the Godello. Plus, it’s another check on my path to the Wine Century club! Sweet.

This particular Godello release comes from a winery built inside an historic monastery: San Miguel de Xagoaza. I love that name, it’s so evocative compared to, say, St. Francis. Nothing against St. Francis, of course. Bodegas Viña Godeval rebuilt this monastery, which sits in the Denominación de Origen (D.O.) of Valdeorras, a name that translates into “Valley of Gold” according to Wikipedia. Godello has been back in this area, grafted onto US rootstock this time, since the 1970s.

The Bodegas Viña Godeval Web site is fascinating. It’s worth reading each of the sections to see just how carefully they built this winery back up from the original monastery, apparently staying true to the original structures and retaining the original stones whenever possible. With 15-year-old Godello vines, this winery has over 40 acres of “filoxerico”-free vines now. Other winery products include a fascinating Anejo liqueur made from Godello grapes.

To the wine. Here are my thoughts on the 2005 Bodegas Viña Godeval Godello:

• Aroma: Woodsy and nutty, but also peachy and floral; a bit like a Viognier, but without as much perfume.
• Flavor: A little spicy, very woody on the palate with an almost pine tree flavor in the aftertaste, sort of like mild retsina.  Dry, somewhat acidic, not a whole lot going on here.
• General impression: Hmm…that’s one woody wine!

Overall, it’s…woody.  That’s about the best way I can put it.  But, on the upside, now I know what to drink when I want something with a lot of pine tree essence in it!

I really like Riesling.

As a kid growing up in Washington State with a German mother, I got to try Riesling once in a while, but I never cared for it too much.  It seemed too dry at the time, but that’s probably because I was too busy eating Tootsie Roll lollipops to consider any wine “sweet.”  So I didn’t give Riesling too much thought until a year or two ago.  And then I had a 1998 Riesling Spatlese in Helsinki that blew my mind. It was more like an Auslese, and it tasted insanely good with King flounder. That reminds me, I need to get back to that hotel again someday.

Anyway, I like Riesling now, so I am trying to learn a bit more about the varietal and its historic locations in Germany.  The place to start may well be the Mosel region, formerly known as the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region because of the Moselle River and its tributaries, the Saar and Ruwer. This region, as of August 1 2007, Auslese Riesling at European Vine Selections (EVS) recently. They had these smaller bottles on sale for $24, marked down from $40. Nice!  I wanted to give this sweet wine a try, and a half-bottle is a great way to do so.  Plus, at 40% off, why not?  I also knew that the 1998 vintage was great, but I didn’t know about the 1999 vintage when I was at EVS.  Later on, I found this vintage report, which attests to the interesting 1999 harvest and growing season.

Here are my notes on this wine:

• Aroma: Very faint bouquet of peach, honeycomb, and lemon; not much aroma to speak of, but the color of the wine is a promising golden yellow.
• Flavor: Strong minerality on the tip of the tongue, honey and apple as the minerals subside; sweet, smooth, I want more!
• General impression: Wow! Dynamite minerality, very smooth, delicious dessert-style Riesling. Extremely smooth and fairly sweet. Very nice.

Clearly this wine is good stuff.  I don’t have any more of it, which might be fortunate because it’s hard to stop drinking this wine once you open the half-bottle….