Now this WBW has a great theme: Petite Sirah. I love Petite Sirahs and they get fairly little attention in my experience. The Wannabe Wino is the perfect hostess for this WBW, in part because she may actually like Petite Sirah more than me.
I hope to participate by December 12th…should be fun!
The latest Clearwater Creek release is here, and it’s a 2004 Meritage. The previous Clearwater Creek release was the 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, and the Alexander Valley edition of said release was insanely good. I still have two bottles just waiting to blow someone’s mind in the near future.
This new release caught my eye a few weeks ago. I saw the release at the North Berkeley Imports (NBI) Web site, and then I got an e-mail from the Palm Desert location of the L.A. Wine Company talking about this new Clearwater Creek Meritage release. I needed to get something else from the L.A. Wine Co. anyway, so I thought I’d give this Meritage release a try.
The 2004 Clearwater Creek Napa Valley Meritage consists of 50% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Malbec, all of which is aged in “tank and barrel,” according to the official NBI talking points. At about 13.8% alcohol, it’s a fairly light red wine that is priced to move at $12.95. Apparently this time around NBI is extremely tight-lipped about where the fruit came from. They didn’t want to repeat the problems they had before when the public learned the true heritage of their 2004 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. I can’t blame them, either. For $12.95, this wine makes you think twice about buying any other California Meritage release.
A very deep, dark purple/black color in the glass, this wine looks fairly serious. I opened a room-temperature bottle soon after I received my shipment from the L.A. Wine Co. That’s US room tepmerature, just so you know. The wine opened up quickly and yielded more of its Malbec character over the first hour. Here are my notes:
Yep, it’s good. After about 2 hours it unwinds in the glass a bit too much, so drink up. While not quite as jaw-dropping as the Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, this Meritage is worth picking up, particularly at $12.95/bottle.
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.
After waiting a couple of extra months because of the warn weather in Oregon this summer, I finally received my Domaine Drouhin Direct club shipments. DDO was nice enough to combine my 3 bottles of 2005 Willamette Valley (aka Classique) Pinot Noir with my 3 bottles of 2004 Laurène Pinot Noir into one shipment. The 2005 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir was actually released months ago, but I only received my bottles yesterday.
Production levels for the 2005 vintage are up from 2004, although the production of Laurène has steadily increased over the past few years. Take a look at these comparative numbers for the various Pinot Noir releases:
The 2005 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir sounds like a seriously bad ass wine. A good quote from the mailer is as follows: “In contrast to the more delicate 2004, the 2005 is built on larger shoulders, with a strong backbone that will certainly reward with extended aging.” Nice. Veronique recommends 7-10 years of aging or more, which is quite a while for the Classique-level release. At $45/bottle, this wine should provide nice value over time; I know the 1999 and 2000 vintages are drinking really nicely right now.
If the 2004 Laurène is anything like the 2003, extended aging will be required here too. I think it’s still way too early to touch the 2003, so I’m definitely putting my 2004 bottles away for a while. Veronique recommends 8-12 years of aging for this wine, which seems right to me. I doubt I will be able to wait that long, but we’ll see. I love the fact that the 2004 Laurène is just being released to market after many other Oregon wineries have begun making their 2006 Pinot Noir releases available. Now that’s simply too young yet, if you ask me.
My next DDO Direct shipment will arrive in February 2008 when the 2006 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is released. My next general shipment of wine may be the 2006 Privé futures I ordered earlier this year. Now that ought to be interesting….
I thought WBW #38 was next week…I have the wine ready to go, but no time! So, perhaps I’ll review this wine soon anyway. It looks good.