I usually avoid writing the kind of blog post that just lists a bunch of wines.
I like to tell stories.
And I think story telling is my strength.
But sometimes it is necessary to just resort to a few keys words to convey a story about wine when you’re trying to talk about many wines.
In this case, many bottles of wine–but they’re all Petite Sirah.
I am trying to remember if I’ve ever been to a tasting of one varietal like this other than Dark & Delicious which is also Petite Sirah and I’m scratching my head. I’ve been to New Zealand new release tastings where there was mostly sauvignon blanc and Pinot noir…but that wasn’t the point of the tasting.
I went away from Tuesday’s PS I Love You Petite Sirah symposium and tasting flabbergasted at how different these wines can be based on terroir and wine maker style and vintage and more. To suss out terroir a bit more, instead of organizing the tasting alphabetically, I’d love to attend a Petite Sirah tasting organized by AVA!
So here are the links to many of the participating Petite Sirah wineries, most of whom belong to PS I Love You, the Petite Sirah industry advocacy group organized by Jo Diaz, with a few of my notes from the wineries alphabetically from A-C. Continue reading →
“Please join us online, all day, from any time zone on Friday, June 24, 2011 to raise a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. By searching for conversations online mentioning #SauvBlanc you can see what the conversation is all about. By adding #SauvBlanc in your own online posts, you are PART of the conversation. Be a part of the wine tasting too – open a bottle (or several) of Sauvignon Blanc and let everyone know what you think, what food you enjoy along side the wine, what occasions are ideal for the wine, your favorite memories of the wine…it’s all relevant, it’s all fun!”
For Sauvignon Blanc Day, we enjoyed a 2009 Brancott Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand. Lots of lovely acidity and citrus, grapefruit, lime, lemon, a hit of white peach and nectarine, a screw top, and reasonable 12.5% alcohol.Widely available at a grocery store or restaurant near you for under $15; I found it on clearance for $7. I opened it on Wednesday and it was still in great shape by Friday.
I’m especially fond of this wine with arugala pesto so in honor of Sauvignon Blanc Day, my husband stuffed then grilled organic chicken breasts with oyster mushrooms, asparagus and my homemade arugala, rosemary and basil pesto with pine nuts and organic olive oil. On the side, I prepared a salad of organic arugala, basil, and cherokee tomatoes, all fresh from the farmers market, with fresh mozzarella and pine nuts. They all played well together!
June 25 will be quite a day for Santa Barbarians! Saturday is the HUGE Solstice Parade. Wildly decorated people will take over State Street and dance their way from one end to the other, concluding at a park where people can see the floats, dance to live music, and check out vendors. It goes on until 4pm but wine enthusiasts will bug out at 2pm and drive up the hill to the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum because YOU’RE INVITED SATURDAY June 25:
Saturday, June 25, 2011 2:00–5:00 PM Tickets are still available day of/at the door $95.
“SWIRL, SIP, & SAVOR…wines from more than 70 Central Coast premier wineries complemented with savory and sweet delectable delights at the Santa Barbara Wine Festival™. Escape for an afternoon and enjoy the refreshing ambiance of being in nature as you take pleasure in tantalizing tastings of food and wine. This is a must-do summertime favorite and the wine festival you cannot miss. Proceeds benefit the Museum’s exhibits and science education programs for school children.”
The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is a wonderful venue and a chance to mix it up with the beautiful people of Santa Barbara for a good cause–my son and another mom and her two boys were just up there a month ago to see the butterflies, the exhibits, the creek, and the raptors in rehab. The 70 Central Coast premier wineries and restaurants presenting savory and sweet delectable delights are all top notch. This is one classy event!
Since the Alaskan Copper River Salmon we found for Father’s Day was out of our budget at $33 pound, we made do with some fresh King salmon, simply prepared and lightly grilled with lemon, olive oil, pepper, and kosher salt.
And it was lovely, served with asparagus and basmati rice, for my husband, son and 90 year old father-in-law. The wine I chose was a 2006 Michel-Schlumberger pinot noir “Le Fou” and for dessert, I made a fresh strawberry and blueberry gallette with vanilla quark and vanilla ice cream which we enjoyed with a Penfold’s port. Yummy!
A little more about the wine: at the end of the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference, I went with a group to Michel-Schlumberger for a vineyard walk and wine tasting. M-S is located in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma, a region most famous for its zinfandels, but M-S specializes in Bordeaux blends as well as a rhone blend and a small amount of pinot noir–a grape that very few people grow in Dry Creek, hence the name of the wine “Le Fou” or “The Fool.” Very generously, M-S gave us a 50% discount on any wine we chose to purchase that day. I invested in a case, most of which is gone, save a bottle or two of The Fool –since I bought 6 that day! (I think it retails around $30 so we got it for $15).
“Le Fou” grows on a steep slope in the most western portion of Dry Creek Valley, on an eastern facing slope, a spot where the coastal fog creeps in and cools the vines making it possible to grow this “prickly” grape. The alcohol levels are still a bit high for a pinot (14.6% it says on the bottle) but the wine is nicely balanced–it doesn’t come across as too hot.
Be sure to serve this red wine (like all reds) at cellar temp, not room temp. (That means in the low 60s not the 80s!)
What I like most is how complex it is: this pinot noir is not one of those simple one note strawberry pinots; it has a lot of bramble berries–raspberry, certainly, and blackberry, even a hit of blueberry (ok, not a bramble but a bush…) and some solid fresh cherry. There’s a bit of earth but it’s not very “truffley” –it’s actually more minerally. The finish is long and rich. It has nice body but it’s still a pinot, not a pinot passing as a full bodied wine.
What I also like about the Michel-Schlumberger is the care they take of the land: they have sheep, a pond, nesting birds, a “kitchen” garden, bees, and more. While they are not certified anything, they are sustainable by practice and by heart. I am looking forward to visiting the vineyard again this July with my 7 year old son!
I last tasted the 2006 M-S pinot noir in December during the pinot noir tweet up. I brought a bottle to a fundrasier for WEV (Women’s Economic Ventures), a holiday fair where I helped pour wine. This wine was clearly a favorite and I actually had to set the bottle aside to make sure I got some! I also brought this wine to a tasting at Burning Man; there were some amazing wines there and this one held its own. People were pleasantly surprised to discover it was a pinot noir from Dry Creek!
Not surprisingly, the color isn’t as pretty as it was years ago–it’s going a bit coral around the edges–but it is still pretty in pink.
Read on for our 2009 Father’s Day salmon dinner and wine!
In the Pink Drink for Pre-Dad’s Day Celebration: Here’s MY SuperHero, sneaking in a nap between chapters of Melvin Beederman, Super Hero, one of their favorite chapter books to read and reread. And reread again. We couldn’t recommend Melvin more. The Dad comes highly recommended too. For the Big Monkey, aka Dad to the Small Boy, catching some extra shut-eye is a favorite weekend pastime. So is putting some sockeye salmon on the grill! Thank goodne … Read More
Last month’s #PlanetBordeaux Twitter TasteLive tasting was fun but a bit of a fiasco: the wine went to the wrong address! Wine Blogger David Rodriguez waited there until FedEx redelivered then drove back to my house to join the group of wine enthusiasts I had gathered who, while waiting, were tasting wine from Planet Bordeaux, Enoforum, and two Crushpad projects.
By the time the Planet Bordeaux wines arrived that we were supposed to be talking about, everyone on twitter had already tasted through the line-up! We joined in at the last minute with the last rose…
Fortunately, this month’s #CrushUp wines arrived the same day as the Planet Bordeaux wines–plenty of time in advance of the Taste Live on Twitter event Thursday, June 9 from 4-6pm (Pacific time). The Crusher wines are from Don Sebastiani & Sons and originate in Clarksburg, California, an AVA in the Central Valley formed in 1984.
How can you participate? Don Sebastiani & Sons will be hosting tweet ups in Sacramento, Seattle, Chicago, and Trenton, NJ at the same time–one big national party live and online. In Sacramento, winemaker Greg Kitchens will lead the discussion and field questions.
You can also pick up The Crusher and tweet and taste along with us–or follow the tweet stream on twitter checking out the hashtag #crushit. These are the ones we’ll be tasting (and in this order):
The Crusher 2009 Chardonnay
The Crusher 2010 Rose
The Crusher 2009 Pinot Noir
The Crusher 2009 Petite Sirah
The Crusher 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon
Easter celebrations come big and small. My husband’s family is preparing lamb, ham, ribs, and tri-tip–and at least a dozen sides and desserts. It’s hard to know what wines to bring!
Here are some wine ideas for your Easter celebrations, whether they be small ones with just you and a friend or big ones with lots of people–like the one I’m going to with all the clergy and most of the congregation of the local Greek Orthodox church!
Just as Easter is celebrated around the world, the wines I talk about below come from near and far. They include a California Sparkler with salmon, two french wines (a gamay and a Bordeaux rose) with ham, and a Spanish Rioja with lamb.
Something pink? Something sparkly? Something as delightful and surprising as your Valentine?
How about a light “pink” sparkling wine with ahi tuna, seared to keep it a pretty pink inside? Served on a bed of field greens with a white stilton with cranberries? And paired with a Domaine Carneros by Taittinger Brut Rose Cuvee de la Pompadour? Made in the traditional methods? And retailing at $35?
Take it from me, this meal of seared ahi and sparkling rose is a winner!
We’re fortunate here in Ventura to have a tuna boat come to our harbor about once a month from December through April or so. When it shows up, we go in with friends on a whole tuna and come home with bags of sushi grade meat that can’t really be any fresher. Continue reading →
This month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, hosted by The Passionate Foodie, asks us to sniff out some “dog strangler” wine aka mourvedre. So, for the 69th editionWine Blogging Wednesday that’s what I did.
Actually I began my search for wines with mourvedre nearly two years ago when I first tasted a 2001 rbj theologicum which blends 50% of the mourvedre sinner with 50% of the saintly grenache.
I thought I’d died and gone to heaven and hell all at once.
Instead, I was on a search to find a wine I could barely pronounce, and which I could barely find. Fortuantely for me, the grateful Palate Warehouse used to be located only a few miles away and they would periodically open their doors and let us in.
And that’s how I discovered a straight mourvedre–a rbj 2002 Mataro which I opened on a camping trip in the heart of the Sierras.
So when I discovered this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday featured possibly my favorite varietal, and certainly one that makes my favorite blends shine, I howled with delight.
And then howled some more–what wine to choose? Or more precisely, whose?
An obvious choice would be Twisted Oak. Their mourvedre with the macabre red skull emblazened across the bottle is stunningly good. And they do my favorite blend mourvedre, grenache and syrah aka “Potty Mouth” that I love–especially the 2003 which is still available in their library.
Another obvious choice is Randall Grahm’s Bonny Doon. It seems he recovered rhone varietals like grenache and mourvedre from obscurity in California. And his Cigar Volant is always noteworthy.
So after much agonizing and howling at the crescent moon, I went for a winery I discovered in December and which maybe I can help you discover too (although they have thousands of facebook fans so obviously some people know them already!)
The wine with more than 50% mourvedre that I chose for this edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday comes from Core Winery, run by Dave and Becky Corey, with financial backing and support from many family members.
And it’s Hard Core. Seriously Hard Core. A 2005 Hard Core made up of 60% mourvedre, 25% grenache, and 15% cabernet sauvignon.
Only 665 cases of this wine was produced, and it’s all gone except for what might be in people’s cellars–and a handful of splits which I found at the winery when we went by the other day.
We went to the Core winery as part of a wedding anniversary extravaganza (ok we went to Sycamore Hot Springs, Go Westy, Los Olivos for lunch and tasting at Carhartts and Carina) that started with dinner on our anniversary where I brought in a bottle of the 2006 Hard Core. While I prefer my syrah with mourvedre and grenache, my husband definitely prefers his syrah with a backbone of cab to it. Continue reading →
I usually avoid writing the kind of blog post that just lists a bunch of wines.
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 