2004 Bridlewood Syrah Port

We bought this wine on our annual pilgrimage to the Santa Barbara wine country. We went into the beautiful winery with high expectations, but this single bottle was our only purchase.

Since Kristin was over, it was a double dessert wine night; we Drank this wine to follow the Van Halen Concert (after the Mole dinner of the previous post.)

The presentation is poor. It comes in a Rhône style split bottle. The label gives only the legal minimum and the meaningless words "Winner's Circle Selection". Given that the winery has an equestrian theme, the "Winner's Circle" is the name of their wine club. (Note that the grammatically incorrect use of apostrophes is that of the winery and not this author's). The Tasting notes are OK, but both the notes and the label itself show that the wine marketer did not pay attention in class. This is an estate wine - yet the label does not show that. It is also incorrectly labeled a "Port" - which it cannot be because it is made from an inappropriate grape for a "Port". In reality it is Fortified Dessert wine made from Syrah grapes.

It had a real cork with no penetration, and it left only a wet tattoo.

It did have a thick red port colour with the aroma of Blackberries and chocolate. The legs were slow to form.

It was a thick, full wine that left a burning alcohol taste on the pallate.

The Verdict:

Pass

Style:	Dessert
Varietals:	Syrah
Appellation/Terrior:	Santa Ynez Valley, California
Vintage:	2004
Vintner:	Bridlewood
Alcohol:	18.1% by Volume
Price:	Don't remember

2003 Barón Balché Dulché

We bought this wine on our annual pilgrimage to the Valle de Guadeloupe. Balché is one of the few wineries in this region that you do not have to make an appointment to taste. We had great hopes when our host led us 10Mts underground to thiner cask aging cellar where we tasted their purveyance. We selected several wines, and were led back upstairs where our hopes were dashed when the bottles we wished to purchaced were pulled out of a tin shed on the desert floor where it was currently 100ºf.

We Drank this wine to follow the Mole dinner of the previous post.

The presentation is OK. It comes in a clear split bottle. The label is printed on clear plastic and is all in Spanish. The real cork was penetrated about ¼ inch, left the faintest tattoo and smelled of vinegar. Really shows the poor storage of the vintner.

It was a pale blush brandy colour, with lots of sugar on the nose and the faintest scent of Botrytis. I would expect a desert wine to be as leggy as Marilyn Monroe, but it took 2 swirls to get 4 faint legs to show. All of that swirling rewarded us with sweet raisins on the nose.

Drinking it was like drinking liquid sultanas. Brilliant. Our friend Kris who is very partial to Ports got a hint of walnut.

The Verdict:

I loved it, but do to the poor storage techniques of the vintner, I would be careful to inspect closely any bottles I purchased in the future.

Style:	Dessert
Varietals:	Syrah, Ruby Red
Appellation/Terrior:	Valle De Guapeloupe, Baja California
Vintage:	2003
Vintner:	Balché
Alcohol:	13.5% by Volume
Price:	Pricey for a Mexican wine

2006 Shooting Star Blue Franc

This wine came in my Steelehead wine club shipment. Shooting Star is Jed Steele's "Bargain" label.

SaraGrace really wanted a wine with dinner, but she had prepared chicken mole; makes it hard to pull a red out of the cellar to accompany it, so I was looking for something unusual. The Lemberger (Known as Blaufränkisch in it's native Austria) that Steele sent us was right up that alley.

The presentation is OK. It comes in a Bordeaux bottle. 2005's rear label had all sorts of great information, but that was lacking on the 2006. The Tasting notes on Steele's website are less informative about this instance of Lemberger but interesting on Lemberger as a whole. I love the cinc franc note for a label.

It had a capped agglomerated cork. There was no penetration to the cork, and no tattoo. It's colour was like a dark tea, and had no nose to speak of.
After the swirl we did get some berry aromas, and no legs.

This wine was a smooth, easy drinker with a Pinot like body. Given that it is a rather young vintage, we ran it through the Vinturi - which gave it a fresh berry aroma and believe it or not improved the colour as well.

The Verdict:

Smooth Easy Drinker. Serviced the Mole sauce.

Style:	Germanic
Varietals:	Lemberger
Appellation/Terrior:	Washington State
Vintage:	2006
Vintner:	Steele
Alcohol:	13.5% by Volume
Price:	Came in a wine shipment with 3 other bottles

2004 Mayo Alexander Valley Stone Ranch Carignane

This wine was bought on Easter Sunday 2007 at one of the few open tasting rooms in Glenn Ellen.

I opened it after returning from a Rosenblum tasting; I had my mind set on a Rhône for dinner. SGK had cooked up some Shrimp; a Syrah just would not do, but a much lighter Carignane just might. It took some searching through the cellar, but I turned up just the bottle I was looking for.

The presentation is OK. It comes in a Zin bottle (Why???) But the rear label gives lots of info on this not so common varietal. By not so common, I mean as a single varietal; Carignane is a common wine in Rhône style blends as well as a minor (less than 15%) in Napa Zins; but you don't find it too often bottled on it's own. It had an Amalgamated cork capped by true cork.

There was no penetration to the cork, but it left a good tattoo. It had a light, almost Pinot colour. There was a sweet nose, and faint late legs.
After the swirl it had an almost Balsamic aroma, and a faint light chocolate taste.

After an hour, more earth was added to the flavour, but the wine was still slightly too acidic. It would be a good summer wine.

The Verdict:

It does not look like Mayo is still bottling this grape; but it might make a good summer wine if you can find it.

Style:	Rhône
Varietals:	Carignane
Appellation/Terrior:	Stone Ranch Vineyard, Alexander Valley AVA, California
Vintage:	2004
Vintner:	Mayo
Alcohol:	14.8% by Volume
Price:	I don't remember

2003 Windsor California Merlot

This bottle of wine was given to us last year by our realtor, Deborah Lopez as a thank you for her business. It's a vanity label from Windsor Vineyards.

I opened this bottle at 7:00am to add to a beef stew as a cooking wine, and then saved the last glass to accompany it.

The presentation was OK. It came in a traditional Bordeaux style bottle. The label has the minimum required information.

It had an amalgamated cork tipped with real cork. There was penetration only through the real cork, and it left no tattoo.

The wine was deeper that I would expect from a Merlot; more like a Cab.

It had a very light nose, but alot of the aroma could have dissipated since I didn't get around to evaluating it until it had been open almost 12 hours.

I had to over-swirl it to get any legs at all, and the post-swirl nose was still lame.

It has a slight wet sponge to the taste, but not enough to make me pour it down the drain.

Stew is about the only meal that I prefer a Bordeaux to accompany, and this Merlot worked fine with it.

The Verdict:

On a par with a Charles Shaw or Gato Negro. (this is not a bad thing)

Style:	Bordeaux
Varietals:	Merlot
Appellation/Terrior:	California
Vintage:	2003
Vintner:	Windsor Vineyards
Alcohol:	15.3% by Volume
Price:	Gift

Volunteering at Lost Canyon

I have a couple of friends who have volunteered to help out at wineries, and I always thought it would be a good way to learn something. When I was last at Lost Canyon, they asked if I would be interested in volunteering, so I said yes. They have since emailed me twice, asking for help. The first time was to help pour in the tasting room. That did not strike me as a learning experience, so I declined. The second time was to help rack the wine.
When you rack a fermenting beverage, you are simply taking the must/wine/wort/beer/cider from one container and putting it in another. You do this for a variety of reasons, the most common one being to remove it from the lees (sludge). This is a fancy way of saying that you don't want all of the dead yeast and other solids that are rotting at the bottom of your container to flavour your end product.
Other reasons could be that you want to blend the beverage, or introduce oxygen to help a stalled fermentation.
The reason that Lost Canyon was racking was for none of the above. This was the 2006 harvest, and the Pinot Noir was not the best quality in fruit that year, and the wine maker felt that the Pinot would benefit from some additional colour. The way that he decided to add colour was to swap casks with the much darker Syrah. This caused a pre-mature blending of the Syrah, but he was ok with that.
My job was to help siphon the casks into the stainless steel tanks, and then back again into the opposite casks. SG got the glamorous job of washing the casks.
There were 46 casks in total that we were working with that day, and the winemaker wanted to make sure that there were no "bad" casks getting blended with the rest, so he handed me a turkey baster and a wine glass and told me to taste them all. Good work if you can get it :-)
I was amazed that the same wine could taste so different out of different casks. Not only the toasting, but the age of the cask and the type of wood all made a difference. It's one thing to read about it, but quite another to taste two wines that are identical but for one of these variables, and have it stand out so sharply.
All in all I learned a lot. I had some fun too. It would have been nice for the Lost Canyon folks to offer a bottle to take home in appreciation for 16 hours of work (8 by me and 8 by SG) but they didn't.

The Verdict:

I would volunteer there again only if the task was different, as it would give me a chance to learn some more.

Changing habits

It's been a whole week since my last post. This is because there's been some changes in our wine habits at home.
My wife is on a diet, and I am very proud of her for sticking with it. The side effect of her diet is that we are drinking less wine. Sure, I'm not on a diet; but I don't drink alone (generally) so this translates into "Since SG is on a diet; Michael isn't drinking unless there are guests over" which translates into less wine to review here.
Our cellar is full. Now that we have moved to Alameda, we no longer have the 1000 sq foot passive cellar that we had in San Francisco that could hold a virtually unlimited amount of wine. Summer is coming. This means that we need to drink our current holdings down to the point where they will fit in our new Viking wine cellar before we make any new purchases. This means that when I do have guests over (see earlier point) and therefore get to drink some wine, that is always something we already hold, and therefore likely to be something I already talked about here, and as much as I loved the 2005 Rosenblum Heritage clones Pettite Sirah from the San Francisco Bay AVA, I do not see the need to write about it 3 times in as many months.
So this dear reader is my apologies for the week long drought of wine stuff. I'll fix that as yesterday I volunteered at Lost Canyon and helped them rack some wine and learned quite a bit in the process. I'll talk about that tomorow.