Archives for May, 2006
This Riesling Hasn’t Changed My Mind (D)
I’ve always steered clear of Riesling wines, not knowing anything about them except that they can be sweet. Kind of how I once felt about pink wines. Feeling brave the other day I picked up a bottle of German Riesling at Whole Paycheck. Having no idea how to choose one I went by price. There were 5 or 6 choices ranging from $9-20 so I grabbed a $17 bottle: a 2005 St. Urbans-hof. I drank it with some spicy chicken. It has a nice flavor with elements of peach, pineapple and kiwi but it’s just too damn syrupy sweet. I know I’ve read some good things about Riesling lately so I did a quick search of a couple blogs I frequent to see what I could learn. If I had done that first I might have tried an Austrian wine:
One of the first things I learned was that I really prefer Austrian Rieslings to their German counterparts. Don’t get me wrong, the Germans make some good stuff, but on the whole, I’m not generally a fan of sweet wines, so I naturally gravitated towards the dry, sometimes even brittle acidity of the Austrian variety. (Of course, the Germans do make dry Rieslings, and some are quite stunning, but these are not as common).
That was Alder from Vinography.
Having missed that, I wish I had at least seen this:
German Riesling: Quality Wine w/Special Attributes
in which Beau explains the difference between Qualitatswein Bestimmter Anbaugebieten and Qualitatswein mit Pradikat. My pick was simply Qualitatswein which I assume means roughly “this is wine made from grapes”.
WBW Update
Clearly, Wine Blogging Wed/Fri was a bust for this fool. I intended to participate but it turned out not to be a great night/weekend for it. I did drink some wine and I did drink said wine with a meal and it was a favorite wine that I did drink but I didn’t put much thought into the meal pairing. It was a fine meal of steak and some kind of vegetable or something or other and it went very well with an Unti Barbera but I didn’t feel like taking notes, nor did I apparently feel like blogging about it because this is my first visit to the site 3 days later. Unti makes fine wines and you should try some: Unti Vineyards.
This Month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday is Friday, May 19, as in Tomorrow!
I was having so much fun at the beach that I almost forgot that Wine Blogging Wednesday is tomorrow night. It’s being held on a Friday because it’s been married to a food event. The theme is Fabulous Favorites Festival and you can read about the details here. Given the late warning I realize I may be going it alone this month but stay tuned for details. I’m on my way out the door and will send an update later tonight or tomorrow morning.
I’m Not Even Going to Try to Explain Why I Ate the Lizard Egg
I’m having one of those mornings where I’m not sure if I’m hung over or still drunk. We closed The Green Parrot last night — in fact, they closed us. Thankfully, I switched to club soda when we arrived at the bar sometime after 2:30 am or else I’d surely be puking on my keyboard.
Here’s a quick run down of our wines from dinner last night:
We started with a Prosecco before dinner. Let’s see what I can remember about it… it was from… Italy. Whatever.
Our first course of home made lump crab cakes with shrimp sauce was accompanied by a very nice Chablis. It was really wonderful but the bottles went missing by the time I took notes at the end of the evening so I can’t say anything more about what it was than that it was a classically crisp 2000 French chardonnay with no oak. Our gracious host also opened an oaked chardonnay for comparison (also French and quite nice). I now prefer oakless chardonnay, I think.
Next up was a 1995 Balgera Valtellina Superiore Riserva Del Fondatore which came in a 3 liter bottle. This was the featured wine of the evening and was lovely. Medium bodied with a silky texture, slightly copper in color, it was a little too light to stand up to the lamb it was served with. I remember the superfine velvety texture more than anything else but I think there were some nice flavors of earth, tobacco, mushrooms and sweet herbs.
The ooh’s and ah’s started when the cheese plate was served with a 2002 Marquis Philips ‘9′ McLaren Vale Shiraz. This was a big wine. The purple color was so dark it was almost an inky black. The nose was like a baked blueberry pie, a little burnt on the edges. The flavor was too-ripe black plum, grape jam (but in a good way) and sweet smoked meat. A huge wine you can sink your teeth into. The alcohol was a tad high but not enough to spoil the fun.
The big surprise of the night was a dessert wine from Atlantida, Uruguay, a non-vintage Vinedo de los Vientos Alcyone. There was a unanimous decree that this wine was Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia in a glass: very chewy chocolate, vanilla and cherry.
After meal time we lit up some big fat cigars and opened a Douro which I assume was fine but really, by that time we were close to shitfaced and would have been happy drinking bio-deisel. At the Parrot I proved to the world once again that I can’t throw darts worth a damn and I’m even worse at pool, drunk or not. Not that it mattered, I was mostly killing time in order to avoid going to sleep while bombed. Any night that ends with a drunken 4 am stroll home in Key West is a success. We’ll have to do it again next year.
2004 Santiago Ruiz Rias Braixas (C+)
Made from Albarino, Lureiro and a small amount of Treixadura, I first drank it with a dinner of grilled yellowtail snapper and scallops and would have described it as a harsh, lip-puckering, overly tart, lemon-ice. This afternoon, I’m drinking it out of the bottle by the pool and it’s much nicer. Drinking from the bottle wasn’t a plan but we forgot to bring glasses. While the wine didn’t impress with dinner it’s much more pleasant this afternoon. It’s a little warmer and I think sipping straight from the bottle neck results in more aeration. Whatever the cause, it’s a more well rounded wine today with more fruit flavors (sour apple, pineapple, mango) and some small amount of earthy minerality. I paid $23 for it at Faustos so you can probably get it on the mainland for under $20. This is an OK wine for the tropics but I’m still looking for something more suitable for the high heat and humidity.
Here’s an interesting article about Rias Braixas.
Might as Well Put it in a Sauce Pan and Cook it
Wine in Key West is a challenge. There are two shops that we buy from. The Waterfront Market has the smaller selection but their markup is only a buck or two higher than what we pay in Atlanta. Faustos has a bigger selection but you pay $3-4 more per bottle. That’s all to be expected, though, and both stores have some very decent wines. The bigger challenge is storage given the tropical climate.
We poured out an interesting Italian red last night, something called Fragolino Rosso. That’s out as in from the glass to the drain. Some friends brought it back from Italy but it’s been sitting on top of their refrigerator for two years - in Key West. What was supposed to be a medium bodied, sparkling, strawberry flavored quaffer tasted like cheap sherry. Any half-serious wine drinker living in Key West clearly needs to invest in a wine cooler.
By the way, we’re here visiting some friends, one of whom has a web site you should look at: johnmartini.com.
2001 Edmunds St. John Los Robles Viejos (B+)
Steve Edmund makes his wines in a warehouse in Berkeley. I’m just now tasting my fourth of his wines and it’s my favorite so far. I wrote about the blonk! previously and I didn’t take any notes when I drank the 2004 Shell and Bone White or the 2003 Rocks and Gravel red. These are clearly old world style wines — sophisticated, complex and rich, with the fruit flavors, while noticeably present, getting along nicely with earthy herbal and mineral flavors. Tonight’s choice, the 2001 Los Robles Viejos, is the last of the four different wines I bought so that I could get an idea of what this winemaker is up to.
I’m always looking for small wineries to fall in love with, not because I have anything against large wineries (although I might) but I want to be able to feel like I can have a relationship with the wine I’m drinking — to have a personal connection with the vineyards or the winemaker. The first big crush was Topolos, a winery whose time has passed. We visited Topolos in Forestville (Russian River Valley) several times and were seduced by some friendly guys who took the time to bring us ‘backstage’ for a hands-on tour of the winemaking process. They let us stick our heads in the large fermenting tanks and they siphoned some future releases straight from the barrel for our tasting pleasure. They made great zinfandels but I’ll always be most grateful to them for turning me on to alicante bouschet (info here and here) — my first introduction to a blending grape bottled as a varietal for it’s own unique qualities.
Another winery we adopted is Unti in Dry Creek Valley. We knew nothing of them except that they made Italian and Rhone varietals but we were driving by their tasting room and even though they advertised tastings by appointment only we stopped and went in. The tasting room was simply a small wine-stained counter set on the concrete floor in the front of a warehouse. George Unti himself poured for us as he told stories of his family, travels in Italy and a recent excursion into San Francisco for a haircut. It was at Topolos and Unti that we first started buying wine by the case. The wines were great but something about the personal connections we had made with the people who crafted them magnified our appreciation.
I have not been to the Edmund St. John tasting room partly because I haven’t been to Berkeley since I discovered them but mostly because they don’t have one. They have no public facility and I only know them through their web site. More correctly, I should say ‘him’ for Edmund St. John seems to be the passion of Steve Edmunds, whom I haven’t met or spoken to. I read a passing reference to his wines somewhere and made a note to try them sometime so when I came upon a local source I bought one of each of the aforementioned bottles. Now, after tasting the fourth one, and reading his notes about them on his site, which reads like a blog, I’m starting to feel like I know a little bit about who he is and what he’s trying to do, albeit superficially. Still, the crush has begun.
2001 Los Robles Viejos is a Rhone style blend of Grenache, Mourv�dre, Syrah and Counoise. As far as I can tell, the term ‘los viejos’ or “the old ones” refers to a mexican folk dance and also may be the title of a Diego Rivera painting (the only reference I found to the painting was in Spanish, which I don’t speak). The wine is a dark ruby red, silky in texture and the taste lasts long on the tongue. Mildy tannic and sweetly herbaceous with a peppery edge. This is an elegant wine that stands well on it’s own — I’m drinking it sans appetizer before dinner. I was planning on making a thai peanut sauced chicken but I may have to change the recipe to accomodate the wine - maybe I’ll do a simpler sweet red pepper sauce. It retails for $25.