Why? Because there’s nothing “wrong” with it.

I am here today to tell you that Pinotage is not bad; it is simply different. And if you don’t like this oft-maligned but more-oft-misunderstood South African cross between Pinot noir and Cinsaut, that’s your prerogative. Just stop drinking it and shut about it, already, then. I mean, Pinotage has some high-profile wine critics who are haters right now – for Pete’s sake, Lettie Teague expresses disdain for it on her friggin’ homepage.

Yes, the worst of them (Pinotages, I mean, not wine critics) smell too much like overly-aged smoked meat wrapped in bananas and dipped into a vat of acetone that’s being bioled over a tire fire. I fully acknowledge that, okay?

But riddle me this, Wine Man: what bargain-basement version of any variety doesn’t have its fair share of sh*tty-tasting bottlings? Ever had really bad Cab? Terrible Pinot? Of course you have. Pinotage is no different than any other fine wine grape (yes, I meant to put the “fine” part in there), in that bad fruit in incapable winemaking hands results in a terrible wine, overemphasizing the worst qualities of any grape. It just so happens that Pinotage has more ammunition with which to work than most in the off-odors department.

That doesn’t mean that Pinotage cannot be beguiling when the right fruit gets into the right winemaking hands. It just means that there’s a little more of a deft balancing act to be attained when dealing with Pinotage.

But I know it can be done, and done well, because I’ve tasted some first-hand…

I suppose that I should expect a great deal of challenging push-back on this, since many seem to be strong with the Dark Side of the Pinotage Hate Force these days. So why the crotchety words on Pinotage-hate? Because I’m sick of wine variety bigotry, in which one style or grape gets maligned unfairly simply for being… itself..

The bottom line is that a lot of people dig the red fruit, leather, bacon, tropical fruit kitchen-sink mix of aromas that Pinotage has to offer – and they’re not wrong. You can shift your perspective to see their Pinotage-loving point of view, by the way – you just need to approach it with an open mind.

Am I saying that you should happily gulp-down any old Pinotage that reeks of acetone? NO – pour that shiz down the drain where it belongs. But I am saying that Pinotage that is complex, interesting, even compelling and doesn’t reek of acetone is, in fact, totally worth seeking out because it may end up being one of the most eye-opening, unique wine experiences that you’ll ever have along your personal journey towards vinous enlightenment.

For example, this bottle that I pulled from the growing ocean of samples in my cellar…

2008 Kanonkop Pinotage (Stellenbosch)
Price: $27
Rating: B+

The 2008 Kanonkop deftly captures the entire BBQ picnic in a single bottle; toast, smoked meats, red fruits, bananas, leather purses & all. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a great introduction to high-end Pinotage and actually delivers quality and complexity levels a bit above its price point.

The interesting thing about this wine, for me, is that it’s also a bit of a crowd-pleaser. I’ve served it to people without telling them what it is, and most happily drink it up and actually perform a bit of a head-fake when I later tell them it’s Pinotage. Now, it definitely tastes like Pinotage, it’s just that it’s fruity enough that the smoked meat and tropics are part of a balanced whole, so they don’t dominate. If I have a cavil about this juice, it’s that it’s a bit oaky – but even that demonstrates a fairly unique quality that Pinotage possesses, which is an ability to absorb amounts of toasty oak that would cripple other varieties and yet still offer a balanced and pleasing drinking experience.

So is this a commercial for Pinotage, harkening it as my new fave fine wine variety? No.

But it is a minor plea against the undeserved hate.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Stop Hating On Pinotage, Already from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

In the world of winemakers, Heidi Peterson Barrett is a household name, and not just because she shares a last name with her husband, who founded the only winery that can rightfully claim to be a full-fledged movie star.

That Heidi Barrett is a household name, a winemaker’s winemaker, can be attributed to two words: Screaming Eagle – Napa’s Cult Cab among Cult Cabs, manifest in concentrated style, produced in small quantities and regularly fetching over $1000 per bottle.

Those slugging back bottles of SE in the comfort of the temperature-controlled cellars inside their custom yachts probably don’t know that Heidi Barrett landed her first head winemaking job back in 1983, when at the young age of 25 (now that I’m nearly forty, I can call 25-year-olds “young”) she was hired by St Helena’s Buehler Vineyards (for more on Buehler, check out my interview with owner John Buehler’s daughter Helen, who now looks after their Social Media and Sales).

So when I was invited to talk shop over lunch by long-time wine biz veteran (and very nice guy) Bob Trimble, I was intrigued by the selection he picked to help us wash down our meal – Buehler’s Napa Cabernet Sauvignon from 1985 – since it was not only a glimpse into Napa Cab’s past, and into Buehler’s past, but also an opportunity to turn back the clock on Barrett’s (now storied, but then just promising) career…

Given the opportunity to taste that wine (which most of you know by now is not one I’d be likely to turn down), I hope you’ll forgive the hastily-taken and relatively low-res image of the bottle from lunch!

Anyway… what does this bottled blast from a cult winemaker’s past have to tell us?

Quite a bit, actually.

The first thing you should know about this wine is that it was Bretty (by which I mean, it had the funky, Band-Aid whiff characteristic of some Brettanomyces, and while I didn’t send it to the lab for chemical analysis, I’m confident enough in ID-ing that smell to say that if it’s not actually Bretty, I’ll eat my senakers). Which makes it the umpteenth Napa Cab I’ve had from the 80s that was at least a little bit Bretty – enough of a volume that I’m now borderline frightened by Napa Cab bottles vintage-dated from the decade that brought us rolled-up jeans pant legs, the skinny tie, and oddly cubist-style haircuts; because it also brought us the Napa-Brett-that-blooms-late-in-bottle.

The second thing that you should know about this wine – and the most important thing, at that – is that it was a far, far cry from being undrinkable; it possessed an impressive amount of tangy red fruit, and after an hour and half or so opened up with secondary aromas of earth and cloves. It struck me as a wine that, while showing its age in the wrinkles near the corner of its eyes, was still full of vigor and a zest for life – or, more accurately, a zest for food.

At less than 14% alcohol, that tangy fruit stood up to fairly spicy beef chili (try that one with a 15.5% abv fruit bomb…). And that opened bottle of Buehler juice went a few hours worth of laps with food and air at the lunch table, and seemed to hardly break a sweat in the process – as time passed, it got more interesting and compelling, and showed only small touches of oxidation. In other words, it was looking pretty hot for a wine that by most measures would be considered as entering retirement age.

For those keeping score at home, that’s damn-near thirty years on, still fruity, still friendly, now also compelling, and all while probably being handicapped by a bit too much Brett. I’d call that a success story – and a finely crafted one at that. A cult wine it’s not, but after tasting it, the fact that it’s winemaker eventually went on to make coveted cult juice doesn’t seem at all far-fetched.

But then, I suppose that I can’t really tell you that for sure, since I’ve yet to try Screaming Eagle – a fact for which my daughter’s college fund has already thanked me a few times over…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Blast From A Cult Winemaker’s Past: Buehler Vineyards 1985 Cabernet Sauvignon from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Well, technically not YOU exactly, unless you’re Martin Dredmond. Martin was one of two winners of the 1WD ZAP 2012 Zinfandel Festival tickets giveaway, in which the ticket winners also determined which Zinfandels I would be reviewing next.

And if you are Martin Dredmond, I owe you a bit of an apology, because I was unable to get my hands on your exact Zin review choice, husband and wife winemaking team Michael and Anne Dashe’s Les Enfants Terribles McFadden Farm Zin. But I did manage to get my hands on samples of four of Dashe’s other (low-production) wines, two of them being (very, very good) Zins – which I am gonna consider close-enough-for-government-work and declare my review debt paid in full (and which I think is more than fair, since Martin picked a Zin made in quantities under 200 cases a year!).

Anyway, Dashe Cellars itself is an interesting case regardless of ZAP ticket connections: Michael Dashe cut his wine teeth at CA’s Ridge, Bordeaux’s Lafite-Rothschild and New Zeland’s Cloudy Bay (I wonder what his frequent flier miles totals look like…), and Brittany-native Anne studied oenology at the University of Bordeaux, going on to work at Chateau La Dominique and Chappellet. There’s something like forty years of wine-related experience between the two of them, which doesn’t explain why they settled to place a winery just off of Jack London Square in Oakland, but does help explain why their wines are so damn… tasty…

Interestingly, the Dashe’s favor native yeasts, low SO2 treatment and smaller amounts of oak, which doesn’t necessarily make them “Natural Wine” makers but puts them closer in proximity to that camp than farther away from it. I’m not prepared to credit that approach as being the prime mover driving the tastiness of their wines, but it sure as sh*t isn’t hurting the situation.

I should start with the two “honorable mention” wines from my tasting, because both are worth seeking out. First up, their 2010 McFadden Farm Dry Riesling ($20), sourced from high-ish elevation Potter Valley fruit on 30-year-old vines. According to the press material, the Dashes were shooting for Alsace with this wine, but what they hit is a thoroughly West Coast take on Riesling, and a thoroughly good one: peach, lemon drop, pears, apples and a pioneering spirit that’s a dead-ringer for the better Rieslings coming out of Washington state.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the 2009 Dashe Cellars Zinfandel Florence Vineyard from Dry Creek Valley($32). Younger vines, and tiny berries yielded this dark, jammy, chocolaty and spicy monster. As dense as it is with dark, black cherry fruit, it saw no new oak – and thanks to its enjoyably chunky-monkey tannins, you won’t miss that new oak one bit.

And now… on to the stars of the show…

2010 Dashe Cellars Les Enfants Terribles Grenache (Dry Creek Valley)
Price: $24
Rating: B+

The “wild children” of its namesake apparently grew up into flirtatious, sexy – and even down-right dirty – women. The dirty part comes courtesy of a compelling earthiness (a trait that seemed to pervade, to some extent, all the Dashe wines I sampled) – a morel-mushrooms-type-of-thang intermingles with bright, lush, feminine strawberry fruit and a healthy heaping of peppery spiciness. C’mon, what did you think I meant by dirty?? This Grenache is youthful in its freshness, but that belies a sense of… seriousness, and experience. No, it’s not porn in a glass, but it’s certainly a bit of sexiness in a glass (and like a sexy lady, it won’t have any trouble winning over a dinner table – this red is surprisingly food-friendly, even standing up admirably to marinara sauce in my tasting). 247 cases, but worth the hunt.

2009 Dashe Cellars Todd Brothers Ranch Zinfandel Old Vines (Alexander Valley)
Price: $32
Rating: B+

Put simply, this wine is a bad-ass. This is contemplation-worthy Zin, folks, complex and even a shade demanding. There’s chocolate, herbs, that digging-in-the-garden earthiness, and a heap of black plums and black raspberries for good measure. If there’s a minor cavil, it’s that the pepperiness is a bit subdued, but the dark fruit and hint of meatiness make up for it. There are plenty of tasty Zins tailor-made for the barbeque; this is not one of those Zins. This is a Zin to sip when cranking Beethoven’s Late String Quartets and contemplating the eventual catastrophic implosion of the Universe. 774 cases, which is bordering on huge production for these guys.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at On Demand Reviews: Dashe Cellars Recent Releases from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Yes, really.

Such as in this case, when it comes to a 10 Year Tawny Port to which RMP Jr. dolled out 94 points, in sharp contrast to many other long-established critical voices who deigned to bestow it a high-80s score, probably because it retails for $33 (and usually less) for a 500 ml bottle.

And at over $25 a bottle, it’s a total bargain.

Yes, really.

This is a Tawny to which you need to devote some time, because it takes a good long while for it to totally unfurl (disrobe?) in your glass, after which it’s gorgeous to behold; gorgeous enough that it’s nearly as good as 30 Year Tawnies I’ve had which cost nearly three time as much.

So, yeah, I’d call that a bargain, even at a price tag over $25.

In another example of extreme positive wine pairing serendipity, I reached into the sample pool and grabbed the Churchills 10 Year Tawny Port on a whim over the holidays, in the hopes that it would match well with pecan pie.

This wine rocked the shizz out of that pecan pie. This wine owned the pecan pie. Hell, this wine is a pecan pie – toasted nuts, sweet dried fruits, spices, a slight sherried note and beautiful balance…

I know that technically speaking this wine could have received a 10 Year Tawny designation even though one could actually have aged this 40 years, or 5 years, so long as the IVDP in Portugal thinks that it tastes like a 10 Year Tawny, but I don’t give a rat’s ass if it was aged seventeen days in the back of someone’s pickup truck in the Douro, this is one hell of a 10 Year Tawny at any price.

So in my view RMP got it totally right, the other guys got it mostly wrong, and… well, there isn’t an “and…” in this case, just don’t get carried away and expect me to agree with all of RMP’s reviews from here on out, okay?

NV Churchills 10 Year Tawny Port (Porto)
Price: $33
Rating: A-

One of the highest-“scoring” wines from me for the price, my tasting note on this wine started with “Uhm… WOW. Nailing the definition of 10 year Tawny with Britannica-like precision.”  Actually, I think this wine slightly redefined for me how good I should expect 10 Year Tawnies to be, since it compares favorably to 20 and even some 30 Year Tawnies I’ve had. And while I’m not going to apply for a job at the IVDP anytime soon, I’ve had my fair share of Tawnies (hell, of Ports in general) over the last several months and over a few trips to Portugal so the opinion hopefully is at least a semi-educated one.

Bottom line is that this Tawny was good enough to make me want to share the experience with you. As for the pecan pie – it wasn’t homemade, alas, and while Wegmans makes a mean crust (and includes very tasty, sweet whole pecans layered on top), I agree with the cunty jew (that is the actual blog name, so no flaming me on that mention, please!) that you’d fare a whole lot better in my neck of the woods by taking the time to seek out an Amish-made pie instead (over $2 cheaper, and sooooo much tastier – not everything that tastes like pecans and costs a bit more is an actual bargain, it seems)…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at A Tawny Bargain And A Tawdry Pecan Pie from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

For all of my talk about not digging big-ass wines, I sure do seem to end up talking about a lot of “good” big-ass wines.

Take this past Christmas, for example.

We host some of my wife’s family every third Christmas or so, as part of a rotation that has us visiting them in Florida and Washington on the other years. It’s a special time for me, because Mrs. Dudette has a great extended family, full of genuinely nice people who are kind enough to put up with me over the course of several days (primarily because they want to spend time with my daughter, I suspect… but I’m quite happy to settle for the delusion that they also enjoy my company). And when we host Christmas, Mrs. Dudette cooks a gourmet meat-and-potatoes feast in honor of her late grandmother, who succumbed to Alzheimer’s quite a few years ago but in her heyday apparently made a mean roast dinner.

The slow-roasted meat naturally gets me thinking about a big red, and for some reason, despite reservations, I find myself continually reaching for Mondavi Reserve wines for this holiday dinner thang. I mean, if Christmas dinner isn’t when you’re supposed to open up wines like these, then well the hell are you supposed to pop those corks?

I use the term “despite reservations” because, truth be told (don’t you hate that phrase, by the way? I mean, it’s not like I’ve been lying to you for years and am only now getting aroud to making statements with any veracity… ok, whatever…) I am always afraid that the Mondavi Reserve wines are going to burn me…

As I’ve written before in the context of pairing these wines with Christmas dinner, the problem is not that big-ass wines like the Robert Mondavi Winery Reserve Cabs are being made. The problem is that too many big-ass wines like the Mondavi Reserve Cabs are being made that probably shouldn’t be made.

But even so, the RMW Reserve has gotten a bit big even for its own over-sized britches in recent vintages, and in my view had hit dried-prune, high-octane levels that signaled the end of their being worth the relatively exorbitant, well-over-$100 price tag (the 2006 displayed particular largesse in its largeness). When the heat of those wines is really on, and when it’s enough to all-but-overshadow that killer To Kalon vineyard fruitiness… well, that’s not a recipe for success, folks.

But…

Generally, I was quite pleasantly surprised at the RMW wine samples that I decided to crack open for the meat-and-potatoes holiday meal, once again proving my anxiety to be a useless waste of (what many might consider a not-considerable amount of) mental energy…

2008 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve (Napa Valley)
Price: $135
Rating: A-

Just barely making the Cab label designation at 85% (rounded out by nearly equal parts Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot for the remainder). Winemaking director Genevieve Janssens and crew are back on track with the 2008 Reserve Cab. Bottom line is that they’re sitting on fruit (from To Kalon and elsewhere in the Oakville Bench) that’s as good as it gets in the Valley, so we should expect the wine to be very, very good. And it is.

This is fine wine luxury for the Starbucks enthusiast – the more you like your mocha, the more you will probably dig this Reserve. The dark berry fruits are as deeply black as the anti-soul of Christmas Consumerism, but the tannins are silky and supple – enough so that the 15.5% abv didn’t seem like a hindrance. For my money, I loved what the wine was trying to tell me long after it calmed down in the glass, which is that it also had olive, sage and tea leaf aromas to share (and to spare).

2007 Robert Mondavi Winery Chardonnay Reserve (Napa Valley)
Price: $40
Rating: B+

Certainly the most reserved of the RMW Reserves I’ve had in several years. And it feels so odd to type that, given this wine got the full-on malolactic, barrel-fermented, sur lie aging treatment. But then, this big Chardonnay is everything that’s good about big Chardonnay – supple, luxurious, trying to compete with crème brulee for your attention, but all the while maintaining a sense of Chardonnay’s humbler crisp apple flavors, acidic backbone, and lemony goodness. I liked it enough at the price point to consider trying to find a second bottle to see how it might develop given 4 or 5 more years. Chablis it’s not, but if you were buying a bottle of RMW Chard expecting it to be Chablis-like then you need your head examined.

2007 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville District (Oakville)
Price: $45
Rating: B+

This wine isn’t part of the RMW Reserve lineup, but gets the “honorable mention” nod from my Christmas day tasting (which included several other wines not paired with our holiday dinner). Lush, plush, silky, deep and velvety as your favorite pillow; several layers of splendid black fruits, along with real depth and hints of spices (courtesy of 4% Cab Franc, and over a year of barrel aging)… this really is how Oakville Cab ought to be, people: round in your mouth, warming to the soul, and unabashedly concentrated and fruity.  Please note that I did not say that all Cab should be unabashedly concentrated and fruity; we are talking about Valley floor Cab, here. Anyway, I set this bottle out for our guests, I blinked, and it was gone…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Holiday Reservations (Putting Mondavi Reserves Under The Christmas Dinner Grindstone) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!