huevos con vino

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 was shopping today in the urban hellzone known as Whole Foods, where the other patrons seemed bent on reliving the creepy “skeletons falling on top of Karen Allen” scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, by which I mean I felt like Karen Allen as I tried to wade past the ossifying shoppers squeezed like me into cramped antechamber-sized spaces.  I think I actually touched one of them, those “others” who always look through or past me as they wallow after their ill-mannered children, jostling me as I try to do my best Walter Payton impersonation through each aisle.  Happily, my beard makes the smaller children cry, which is always a nice point of distraction as I grab the final bag of dried organic morel mushrooms. Clearly, I love Whole Foods.

But today, as I looked in vain for fresh corn, I noticed something interesting.  They had many bunches of organic, California-grown Carignane grapes and a scant few bunches of Colombard grapes.

Usually when I find “wine” grapes around here, they are either Muscat grapes (good, but major stomachaches ensue) or “champagne” grapes (which means they’re tiny grapes, that’s about all).  But these grapes today were formidable, especially the Carignane.  I selected a good, firm bunch that looked ready to be pressed into a vat over at Jessie’s Grove Winery.  I tasted a grape after I left the store…very juicy, sweet, firmly ripe…wow!  Amazing.  I want several more.

The good people at Appellation America have cool descriptions of the Carignane and Colombard grapes in their illustrated varietal chart.  That’s a lot of links in one sentence.  Sorry about that.  But each link is worth it, trust me.

Anyway, if you have a Whole Foods near you, I feel bad for you if you don’t have dedicated parking for your SUV.  But if you can walk to your local Whole Foods, I encourage you to look for organic Carignane grapes.  They’re quite tasty!  No word on which vineyard sold their fruit to Whole Foods, but I assume there are plenty of grapes to go around….

It’s been a while since I purchased one each of the Le Cadeau Pinot Noir releases from the 2004 vintage. Here’s a quick refresher for you:

• Rocheux - Harry Peterson-Nedry and Mike Eyres made this wine for Le Cadeau; you can read my review here.
• Diversité - Cheryl Francis and Sam Tannahill made this release; you can my review of this wine here.
• Cote Est - Produced using fruit from a cooler part of the vineyard, this wine had been sitting in my wine fridge since January 2007; Josh Bergstrom had the honor of making this wine.

I also drank the 2003 Le Cadeau release a while back, which was the second vintage from this winery. All of these wines have been superlative, and so far I think the Rocheux is my favorite of the Le Cadeau wines I have tried.

The 2004 Cote Est is over 14% alcohol, but under 15%, so it’s in a good range in my opinion. The 2005 vintage added some Dijon 114 and 115 berries into the mix, so I will be curious to taste the 2005 and compare it to this 2004. I brought my 2004 Cote Est to Ray’s Boathouse in Seattle, the restaurant that is quickly becoming my preferred destination for a good Pinot Noir. I had the wood-fired sturgeon, which was insanely good with this wine.

So, what did I think of the Cote Est? Here are my notes; we did not decant this wine, but rather tasted some first, saw that it was ready to drink, and left the bottle open as we consumed the wine over 90 minutes.

• Aroma: Ripe and rich at first, with a pleasing barnyard note; opened up into a deeply rewarding cherry blossom, plum, and chocolate bouquet.
• Flavor: Complex notes of black cherry, black plum, black currant, coffee, baking spice, black pepper, and secondary notes of raspberry and dark chocolate. Extremely sensual flavor profile, very smooth with integrated tannins and acid. Very complex and deep wine.
• General impression: Delicious wine, comparable to many of the best 2004 Pinot Noirs from Oregon; well worth seeking out!

As these notes suggest, the Cote Est is probably my favorite of the three 2004 Le Cadeau Pinot Noir offerings. I like the other wines quite a lot as well, of course, but there is something more rich and complex (to my palate, anyway) and even more appealing about the Cote Est. My wife really enjoyed this wine too, saying that it complemented her king salmon nicely and that it was best at the end of the evening after 90 minutes of exposure to air.

So, another great release from the Mortimers at Le Cadeau. I look forward to the 2005, which I still need to buy!

Portugese table wines!  Nice.  I’m looking forward to another new varietal.  The host this time is Catavino.

I like this month’s WBW challenge, if I may call it that, because there are a few nuances worth noting:

• No Port
• No Madeira
• Try to taste something outside of Duoro
• Try to taste something other than Vinho Verde

Bonus points, such as they are, will be awarded if I manage to compare wines from multiple regions while tasting Portugese food.  My wife probably cannot eat Portugese food, but I’m happy to make her some grilled chicken while I indulge in a little stewed chicken instead.

Now, I could go back to The Spanish Table to find a Portugese wine.  They have a selection there that I will probably end up poring over, no pun intended.  But luckily, I noticed that one of my favorite Internet wine merchants, Wine eXchange, has Portugese wines galore.  Problem is, most of those wines are actually port, so I may need to keep looking.  Wine Library has a good deal on some interesting Portugese red wines (”tinto”), but they’re from the Douro and I want something even more exotic than that.

So!  I must keep looking…that’s half the fun, right?