Season’s bleatings
Oh Christmas tree …
Oh Christmas tree …
Under the threshold
Reader John Glas commented on a recent post that he wanted sometime soon to find and try a Charles Smith Royal City Syrah.
As well he should, even though it’s quite spendy. I recently saw one in Nashville going ““ or not going ““ for $158.
It got me to thinking about how we set our self-imposed limits for spending on a single bottle of wine. I had a chance last spring to buy some of the Royal City for $125 and passed. Around that time, I paid almost that much for half a bottle of Shafer Hillside 
Select 2007 Cab. Both decisions spoke to my ever-evolving threshold.
The Shafer was wrapped in a wonderful memory. After spending a wondrous hour with patriarch John Shafer (left), my buddy Joe and I were escorted down to the winery, where Elias Fernandez was overseeing the bottling of the 2007 Hillside Select, which is about as good as California cabernet gets (and a fab vintage to boot).
Elias poured a full glass for each of us, and while Shafer media savant Andy Demsky said it was customary for all visitors during bottling time to get such an offering, it was hard not to feel seriously special. And the wine was beyond sublime, hardly needing the 15 months in bottle it was about to get. But what the heck do I know?
So once the small allotment hit the Twin Towns, we pounced. But I am loath to spend that much on any other wine. I have toyed with nabbing one of the spectacular Continuum blends at $150 but just “¦ couldn’t. And besides the Royal City, I’ve balked at paying $125 for Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape at $125. Or any Burgundies around that price.
Beaucastel actually provided my first “threshold,” as the 1989, the first wine that I could call “transcendent,” was $30 during the Hennepin Lake sale. Any larger expenditure seemed silly in that context.
I stayed near there for a few years and started inching up, primarily because Beaucastel ““ which I had come to regard as the most consistently swell high-end wine “” started rising quickly thanks to a certain Mr. Parker.
By the turn of the century I was looking at around $50, and a few years later, I started spending a bit more on mailing-list favorites. I blessedly had never caught Bordeaux fever, partly because truly great wines from Piedmont and Priorat and the Rhone and California (and, yes, Australia) could be had for $50 to$75.
So I’ve kinda been sitting on $75 or so for some time now. When my favorite wines shoot past that, I back off. A couple of years ago, Aubert’s best chardonnays rose to $85 “” with a 
shipping fee of almost $10 per bottle. When I emailed them about the latter, I got a snotty response about the bottles being “treated like fine art.
That was enough to prompt me to look elsewhere, even before Joe ended up with a corked bottle and the Aubert folks demanded that he send the offending cork even though he had been a longtime customer. (Guess who else no longer buys Aubert?) I don’t want to overpay for somebody’s new-oak addiction or fancy-bottle predilection or “fine art” ridiculousness
But I would have stopped buying Aubert anyway because I can find plenty enough great chardonnay in my financial wheelhouse. Mount Eden and Williams-Selyem and Ramey, for starters. Oh, and the ever-delicious Shafer Red Shoulder Ranch.
Wines of the Week: Nov. 26-Dec. 2
Everyday: It’s almost criminal how few people are buying wines from Alsace in recent 
years. But the victims of these “crimes” are most assuredly the perpetrators themselves. The Wolfberger Alsace Pinot Blanc 2010 ($14) is a great introduction, racy and zesty, with crisp pear flavors and a sexy finish. The vibrant acidity both typifies a region that has been part of both Germany and France and makes it a seriously swell food wine. Trout or salmon, roast pork, rich cheese and anything with cabbage will mosey right up to this beauty.
Occasion: I have sampled less than a handful of syrahs from Italy, and all have been 
stellar, none more so than the Isole & Olena Collezione Collezione de Marchi Toscana Syrah ($50). This is as stately and elegant as syrah gets, beyond smooth, strikingly harmonious but still redolent of black and red fruit and black pepper. That full-bodied thing becomes evident soon enough, and silky tannins help make for a subtly glorious finish. We loved it with an array of pizzas, and can’t wait to try it with herb-laden roasted lamb.
Living large, and lifelong learning
Syrah Night is about revelry, not reflection. But like most wine experiences, it can provide something to think about, at least once the next morning’s inevitable large noggin subsides.
The most recent rendition of the semi-annual event ““ gathering a group of hale-fellows-well-met and more bottles than we could possibly (or sanely) finish ““ was a blast, as any mix of fabulous food, friends and fermented juice tends to be. In between a vibrant Chablis and a Port brought by birthday boy Mike (and bottled in his birth year), we enjoyed flight after flight of delicious, sometimes transcendent syrahs or syrah-laden blends.
There was but one disappointment: a 100-point (Parker) Usseglio Cuvee de Mon Aieul 2007 that was swell but seemed to be in one of these “resting places” to which Chateauneuf-du-Papes are particularly susceptible. Blessedly, that flight’s 1998 Beaucastel was profoundly enjoyable, and the two other French offerings (’03 and ’09 Chave Saint-Josephs) were exemplary.
Almost all of the California bottles hailed from the wide-ranging Central Coast, from Santa Cruz (Big Basin) down to San Luis Obispo (the sublime, and rare, Turley “Red Coat”). My favorite was the Carlisle James Berry 2007, and we vowed to have that alongside Saxum’s ’07 James Berry (another 100-pointer) at a future gathering.
But the best flight of the night, by acclimation, came from Washington, a pair of ’07s: Cayuse Cailloux Vineyard Walla Walla and Charles Smith “Royal City” Stoneridge Vineyard. Wow and wowser. The latter was also a 100-pointer, via the Wine Enthusiast’s Paul Gregutt, and as much as I trusted Paul’s palate before, I’ll now move heaven and earth to find any wine to which he awards a perfect score.
Later, someone (not sure who; Syrah Night can get a bit foggy) said that “they’re still figuring out where syrah does best in Washington. While this assessment of wine in the New World has almost become cliché, that’s because it’s true.
We know cabernet does extremely well in certain parts of Napa, and pinot in pockets of the Russian River Valley. But at other sites with particular soils at sundry elevations and varying exposures, what should be grown there (if anything) is being sorted out even in California’s older grape-growing regions. Hell, we only recently tumbled to the fact that syrah shows better there when grown in cooler climates, and merlot’s fittest locales are still being sorted out. And that’s just the reds, and only a handful of those.
Which, oddly enough, makes wine’s future in the rest of the country even more promising. Only very recently have growers and vintners started to, uh, unearth suitable matchups of grapes and terroir from Arizona to Vermont, from Florida to Idaho. Happily, nascent wine industries in these states have huge advantages over previous generations in vineyard management, winemaking techniques and communication.
In Minnesota this year, spring arrived very early. Too early, it turned out, as an April frost knocked out some of the grape crop. The most common response from wineries was: “The farmers who lost grapes were growing them in the wrong place. Where vines should be planted and which types of grapes fit particular spots is most decidedly a work in progress here, and we’re decades behind West Coast states that still haven’t figured all that out.
As every region gets wiser on this front, the resulting wines will get better and better. There’d have to be a serious acceleration of climate change for syrah to make it in Minnesota, but in a decade or two, our gang might just be having a Marquette Night (grapes at left).
The wines:
• Christian Moreau Chablis 2009
• Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape 1998
• Dom. Pierre Usseglio Cuvee de mon Aieul 2007
• Jean-Louis Chave Saint-Joseph 2003
• Jean-Louis Chave Saint-Joseph 2009
• Alban Edna Valley “Reva” Syrah 2004
• Big Basin “Mandala” Santa Cruz Mountain Syrah 2004
• Booker Fracture Syrah 2010
• Carlisle James Berry Vineyard Paso Robles Syrah 2007
• Cayuse Cailloux Vineyard Walla Walla Syrah 2007
• Lagier-Meredith Mount Veeder Syrah 2004
• Petroni Rosso di Sonoma 2007
• Charles Smith “Royal City” Stoneridge Vineyard 2007
• Tablas Creek Espirit de Beaucastel 2005
• Turley “The Red Coat” San Luis Obispo 2001
• Weingut J.L. Wolf Erben Wachenheimer Bischofsgarten Sieger-Ortega Trockenbeerenauslese 1989
• Kopke Porto “Colheita” 1974
Winemaker profile: David Polite
Sometimes, it’s best not to listen to the experts, no matter how much you respect them.
Or maybe to listen to them only a little bit.
When David Polite bought some east-facing slopes in the Willamette’s Eola-Amity Hills region in the early 1990s, “I was told by the godfather that I was an idiot. The iconic 
naysayer was none other than David Lett (left), a Willamette pioneer at Eyrie Vineyards. Polite was daunted but not discouraged. “It caused me to, shall we say, slow down. And it turned out to be the best thing I could have done.
A lawyer, Polite knew that a winery “is possibly the worst business model there is. The time inventory, you’re in three [vintages] deep before you can be selling,” he said. “And we’re in the most regulated business there is aside from heroin. You’re not protected by the Commerce Clause. I have to be in compliance with 5,000 different laws.
So he sat on his land, which had been home to cattle, prune trees and walnut groves, and waited. “Four years after buying it, I hooked up with a vineyard manager,” Polite said over lunch in Minneapolis. “I didn’t know from crap. He said, “˜yeah, it’s a B, B-plus site.’ In 1996 we planted three acres (of Dijon clone 777), and we ended up getting phenomenal wine.
Three years later, he planted three acres of clone 115. “It”˜s darker, more of a base. The 777 is more red, so we get high notes and low. Those two are meant to be blended.
It clearly didn’t take long before Polite did know from crap. He recognized that his vineyards, at 400 to 500 feet elevation, “couldn’t be in more of a sweet spot. He landed on a certain type of barrel, “woods that are more spice-oriented, [giving off] cinnamon and cedar. And five years ago, Steve Doerner at Cristom convinced him to go with whole-cluster fermentation.
Like so many Oregonians, Polite also paid special attention to the land. “We do a marriage of organic, some biodynamic, some chemicals to combat powdery mildew and some devoted animal habitat.
The results are, well, better than “B, B-plus. Polite (left) makes two wines, an Estate Pinot Noir ($42) and a Reserve Pinot ($56). I tasted three vintages of each (2007-09), and every wine was stellar, although the ’09 Estate was just starting to display its wares. (“My wines take 2 to 3 years before they start to show a pretty face,” Polite said).
The ’08s were, not surprisingly, spectacular, but the ’07s had the kind of structure and balance that mark them as age-worthy, food-friendly gems, and the ’09 Reserve showed laser focus and lovely play between just-ripe fruit and acidity.
While sipping the classic ’08 Estate, Polite noted that “Pinot has so many layers, and this is just starting to unpeel. And in discussing the last several vintages (skipping ’08’s nigh-onto-perfect conditions), he unpeeled layers of his approach in the vineyard and the winery, not to mention his work ethic:
2007: “We picked before the rain. When it first went into the bottle, it had no nose and tasted like dirt. I like the acidity and brightness you get from just-ripe fruit. Hang time can be overrated. I did 11 months in oak, 25 percent new, and 4 or 5 days cold soak; with the exception of that, I get out of the way.
2009: “The fruit was picked on two different days, Sept. 30 and Oct. 15. That was a hot year, and the sugars started to spike at the very end. If we had had a little more time on the vine “¦ but the vintage spoke, and that’s my goal.
2010: “In addition to a cold year, we were battling birds. I know people who lost 50 percent of their crop to those varmints. I was living in the vineyard. “¦ You have to be out there on the edge to see how vulnerable you are to Mother Nature.
2011: “Last year was unbelievable. Certain people didn’t get veraison until the second week of September. The days were getting shorter, and it was still cool. Then we had rain the first week and a half of September and then veraison stopped. We had clusters with a mahogany hue, and we looked at those and said “˜that’s never gonna ripen,’ so we went through and dropped all those clusters. We still had some [clusters] with green grapes, which others described as a “˜wide range of ripeness.’ I’m not a scientist, so I’m not sure if [ripening] actually stopped, but we ended up at 22 to 23 brix, and will have 12.5 to 13 percent alcohol. But I know some people were picking at 19. It was a sonuvabitch of a fruit set. I dropped 50 percent of my crop over a month, month and a half.
2012: “Summer began July 1 and literally lasted 100 days, and we got thisclose (fingers a centimeter apart) to being a vintage of the century. Nice clusters and the berries were small, which maximizes concentration.
Aside from some trademark work, Polite’s background has helped him a lot in one area of his second career. “As an attorney I always plan for contingencies. One thing he doesn’t need a judge to tell him: “David Lett, God rest his soul, was wrong. I have a special vineyard, and I like what this vineyard has to say.
Wines of the Week: Nov. 19-25
Everyday: When the sample arrived, my first thought was “That sounds like a college 
band name.” Turns out the Albino Armani 1607 Prosecco ($16) is a seriously tasty, and serious, wine. Laden with green apple and juicy acidity, this bottle full o’ bubbles from northern Italy has balance and surprising depth for a Prosecco, plus a long, tingly finish. It’s non-vintage, by the way; pretty sure I wouldn’t want to quaff a 1607. This wouldn’t be wasted on Mimosas or Bellinis (if you’re using high-quality fruit juice), but it also should pair well with the usual long litany of sparkling accompaniments, from popcorn to strawberry shortcake to sushi.
Occasion: One of Napa’s oldest wineries also makes one of its best merlots, year in and 
year out. A deep, dark beauty, the Charles Krug Napa Merlot ($24) could be used as a ringer in a cabernet sauvignon tasting, although the plummy flavors might “out” it. This slightly smoky, grippy red has enough structure to cellar, but the current release (2009) is ready to roll across your palate. Seared beef or game, roasted squash and dark chocolate will play well with this hearty wine.
Signs of the vinous times
Almost in spite of myself, I love Facebook. Part of the reason is that people post stuff like the “signs” below:
Wines of the Week: Nov. 12-18
Everyday: I loves me some chenin blanc, and am thrilled that more and more American vintners not only take it on but manage to find places suitable for growing it. The latest example to cross (and delight) my palate: the McKinley Springs Horse Heaven Hills Chenin Blanc, a steal at $14. Following a gorgeous stone fruit/honeysuckle nose, the wine delivers vibrant citrus and golden-apple flavors and surprising depth, finishing with long and clean minerally goodness. Try it with light cheeses, light pasta dishes and shellfish. Or al fresco, indoors or out.
Occasion: Those who want to splurge, but not excessively, on a holiday dinner wine could do little better than the Pierre Gaillard Saint-Joseph Les Pierres ($36). There’s a whole lotta dried-herb (maybe that garrique thing so often referenced by a certain Mr. Parker) and violet going on at the outset, then spice-laden red and black fruit and earthy acidity. This is a rich and rustic but ultimately elegant offering, very true to its north-central Rhone origins. FYI: In my experience, any vintage will do. Try it with roasted fowl, herb-laden side dishes, cranberry sau … well, you get the picture; braised meats and olive-y appetizers are also swell accompaniments.
Jumping jack flashy
I haven’t seen my friend Tom in far too long, but he must know that I could use some exercise, because he passed along this dandy reminder:
