The Grape Crusader

"Qupe - A modern stone age winery" - Gotta love the slogan

Winery: Qupe Wine Cellars

Bottling: 2006 Ibarra-Young Vineyard Viognier

Region: California

Sub-Region: Santa Ynez Valley

Estimated Retail Price: $30

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: I found this at a price well below the retail price at our local wine store.  So low I don’t want to say where or how much.  Just want to protect the retailer as well as the wineries image.  Had this with dinner at Irifune Restaurant in Honolulu, HI.

Tasting Notes: This wine was an absolute steal so we were chomping at the bit to taste it soon, so we could buy more if we liked it.  Just so happens we had some friends in town that we were happy to share it with at some BYOB restaurant.  I know this wine is serious enough to warrant being the showcase of a meal, but we had a hefty red to drink for the evening and guests that really like the heavier red stuff, so this wine was the starter by default.

On the nose the wine had a lot of mineral and stony aromas.  I also got some hints of white flowers and white peach.  I didn’t catch any other fruits on the nose.  The stone and mineral aromas were also apparent as flavors in the mouth as well as the white peach and green apple flavors.

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Winery: Barnett Vineyards

Bottling: 2005 Spring Mountain Merlot

Region: California

Sub-Region: Spring Mountain, Napa Valley

Estimated Retail Price: $45

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: Purchased at a local wine shop at an un-believable price.  I thought it was the regular Napa Valley bottling the winery has had in the past, but at closer inspection saw that it was their premium Spring Mountain version.  I’d rather not say what the price was or where I bought it from because I’d like to protect the integrity of the winery’s reputation and pricing as well as the retailer and wholesaler.  It’s tough times for the wine business and I know that in the end, product has to be moved.  I’m just glad I’m the one who got to reap the rewards.

Tasting Notes: There’s a particular aroma premium Napa Valley red wines give off that brings on poignant feelings of nostalgia for me.  I think of the period of when Susan and I first discovered wine and knew that we were in for the long haul.  This wine had that distinctive, appealing aroma on the first whiff and I was excited to dive right in.

The Barnett was a big chewy mouthful of mineral, charcoal, dark plum, black cherries, blackberries and a little cassis.  Adding to the wine’s complexity were hints of chocolate and even a little rosemary on the finish.  This was a complex, multi-layered  wine.  I forgot to mention the muscular tannins that held the wine together.  This is a serious merlot that in the words of the winery is a “cabernet drinker’s merlot.”  This has some serious cellar potential and is the kind of wine you can’t wait to drink again if you have several bottles in hibernation.

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Nope, your eyes are not fooling you. That's 15.5% of well-hidden ethanol.

Winery: Kenneth-Crawford Wines

Bottling: 2005 Larner Vineyard Grenache (86% grenache & 14% syrah)

Region: California

Sub-Region: Santa Ynez Valley

Estimated Retail Price: $32

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: Bought for ourselves through our store when it was still alive.

Tasting Notes: I’m just going to start out by saying that I loved this wine.  We had this vintage about a year and a half ago and while it was not bad, it wasn’t that great either.  You could sense that it was a good wine, but just wasn’t ready to drink yet.  I remember the wine as being disjointed and discombobulated if that makes any sense.  This evening’s experience was a complete 180 degree turnaround.

Sweet wild berries, cherries and spice dominate the nose.  In the mouth were tons of lip smacking, dark cherry liqueur flavor.  The wine was hyper-dense, super-intense and ultra smooth.  Very seamless from beginning to end with a lasting finish.  The wine carried a monstrous 15.5% alcohol level, but hid it so well I was impressed.  An interesting thing about the flavor of the wine is it tasted of fruits with high notes, but without the tartness.  Cool stuff.

Great purity of fruit.  Good job on the farming and the winemaking.  One last thing, the wine sees no new oak.

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Winery: Ca’ Rome di Marengo

Bottling: 1996 Dapruve (80% Nebbiolo & 20% Barbera)

Importer: Empson & Co.

Region: Italy

Sub-Region: Piedmont

Estimated Retail Price: About $30 on release

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: Bought this from someone’s personal collection for eight bucks

Tasting Notes: I often read that Nebbiolo is a grape that’s difficult and unappealing in many aspects such as farming, winemaking and consumer appreciation.  It’s a grape that needs time to soften and come together in order to be more drinkable.  A well-informed industry person once told me that one of the challenging things about nebbiolo are the many different drinking windows and peaks the wine has during its life.

I was hoping that we’d catch this particular 1996 vintage Dapruve on a good night.  The color was typical nebbiolo red brick with orange and rust on the edges.  It had a little darker ruby/purple color, probably due to the barbera in the blend.  In the mouth was a plush, velvety and even silky feel.  There were still a lot of life left in the tannins and the wine still seemed very fresh.  Red plum, earth, red berries and lots of orange peel were the dominant flavors.  Roses and minerals were also present.

I can see why people would have a hard time taking a liking to a wine that puts you through so much work just trying to figure out when to drink it.  I’ve had several older ones that just didn’t do it for me, while others were outright fabulous.  This one was definitely on the side of the scale that leaned towards fabulous.

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The restaurant's spring rolls were great tasting as well

Winery: Hedges Family Estate

Bottling: 2006 CMS White

Region: Washington

Sub-Region: Columbia Valley

Estimated Retail Price: $13

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: Purchased from Fujioka’s Wine Times retail store and consumed at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Bac Nam

Tasting Notes: As is always the case with wines from the Evergreen State, we rarely ever purchase them.  There’s no particular reason except our habitual nature to reach for Californian, French or Italian wines.  The Hedges Family Estate CMS White caught my attention because of the unfamiliar and somewhat medieval looking label.  Even more compelling was the blend of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and rousanne from Washington state.  The price tag of twelve bucks was the final hook for me.

The wine had a nice golden looking color in the glass, no doubt brought about by the chardonnay.  The nose was very floral and aromatic.  In the mouth is where it got interesting.  Initially there was a lot of things going on at the same time.  There was quite an impact as far as weight and attack on the palate was concerned.  There was a lot of complexity very early in the process.  Usually for whites, I’d expect a big, fresh, fruit blast up front and mellower flavors as the wine opens up.  With this wine though, there were other things going on besides fruit.  You could taste the layers early on.  We were digging it.

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For those of you who have been visiting my blog on a regular basis (thank you by the way), you’ve probably noticed that I don’t have a blogroll of links to other wine-related blogs and websites.  Maybe you’ve asked yourself “why doesn’t he have this integral component to a blog?”  It is usually standard practice to have them on a blog.  After all, one of the pillars of the the blogging universe is the sense of community and the sense of interconnection between blogs.

Maybe you haven’t noticed or just don’t care, and that’s ok too, but I thought I’d just quickly address the issue.  This is a new blog and I wanted to make sure that everything was running properly and that I knew what the heck I was doing before putting myself out in the blogosphere.  I guess the past couple of months have been a soft opening of sorts.  Although my blog is still a work in progress, I feel a lot more confident than I did on day one and now have the confidence to join the blogosphere party.

Rather than overwhelm you by adding a complete list of links that might quickly be dismissed or forgotten, I’ll debut the links to new blogs or wine related websites through my posts.  This way I can offer some sort of background information on them.  The ones I’ve discovered are great sites, each with their own unique take on the industry and calling attention to each of them is I feel the best way to give them credit for their hard work.  If you follow wine blogs on a daily basis, chances are you may already be familiar with them, so I apologize in advance for the un-original info.

WINE BLOGS:

Vinography – To kick things off, here’s the wine blogosphere’s original wine blog.  Vinography is written by Alder Yarrow and is a great source of subjective and objective information on the wine industry.  It covers everything from wine reviews, book reviews, event coverage and Alder’s own “Ramblings and Rants” on just about anything else in the wine business.

Wannabe wino – Wannabe Wino, like my blog, is a wine tasting journal authored by Sonadora.  She does a great job of consistently posting wine reviews on a daily basis.  Her reviews are thoughtful and concise and I always discover new wines on her blog.

FOOD BLOGS:

The Daily Feed – A photo food blog, complete with witty banter.  The blog authors seem to lack a kitchen at home and do all of their eating at some of the San Francisco Bay area’s tiniest hole in the walls as well as the city’s best dining rooms.  They also cover the endless amounts of culinary events that happen in the bay area.

Winery: Peter Lehmann Wines

Bottling: 2002 Barossa Valley Shiraz, 3.0 L Double Magnum

Importer: The Hess Collection Winery

Region: Australia

Sub-Region: Barossa Valley

Estimated Retail Price: Friend said he paid around $60 for it at Costco.

Purchase Details and Tasting Source: A friend brought this to a party.

Tasting Notes: I was totally stoked when my friend walked in cradling like a baby, this impressive double magnum of Peter Lehmann Barossa Valley Shiraz.  If my memory serves me right, I don’t believe I’ve ever sampled anything from a double magnum before so I was excited based on that alone.  Larger format bottles are supposed to be better for a wine in terms of aging and storage.  The larger the bottle, the smaller the ratio between the volume of liquid and the space of air in the neck of the bottle.  The result?  Slower aging and more resistance to wine’s number one enemy – oxygen.

Theoretically, a magnum, double magnum, etc. of one bottle cellared alongside a smaller bottle of the same wine should age more gracefully and longer.  With this wine being a 2002 vintage, I was curious to see how fresh it tasted.

The stumbling block of the evening was the fact the so-called wine expert in the house, yours truly, broke the cork and ended up pushing the cork into the wine.  Luckily we had a cheese cloth to jerry rig the spout, to ensure no cork particles found their way into people’s glasses.  When that was done we were good to go.

Aromas of sweet blueberry, smoke and forest floor were what we got on the nose.  In the mouth, wow!  Loads of blackberry, blueberry black currants and a really nice finish of creme de cassis.  A very nice well-rounded feeling in the mouth and a finish that just kept going.  The flavor of the wine left an impression that was so memorable, I feel like I can still taste the wine in mouth as I write this.

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Winery: Edmeades Winery

Bottling: 2005 Ciapusci Vineyard Zinfandel

Region: California

Sub-Region: Mendocino

Estimated Retail Price: $30

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: Purchased by the glass at Vino Italian Tapas & Wine Bar

Tasting Notes: With Edmeades Zinfandels, texture and individual character are what always stands out when I’m tasting their wines and the 2005 Ciapusci was consistent with what the winery always puts out.

The aroma was that of wild berries, cherries and earth.  A very captivating nose indeed.  In the mouth was a voluptuous texture framed by soft, clean tannins.  Lots of wild berry flavors like raspberry and strawberries.  There were also some light baking spices as well as the earthy dustiness so common in this vineyard bottling and other Edmeades bottlings.  The amazing thing about this wine is that its alcohol comes in at a hefty, but light-footed 16.5%!  16%!  Let me say that again, 16%!  This is truly a testament to great wine making, because I didn’t notice any traces of missing tissue from inside the back of my throat

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The bottle from an ant's point of view

Winery: Anthill Farms Winery

Bottling: 2006 Windsor Oaks Syrah

Region: California

Sub-Region: Russian River Valley, Sonoma

Estimated Retail Price: $25

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: Bought directly from winery through mail.  Paid $25.

Tasting Notes: The first wine I had from Anthill Farms was a 2006 Anderson Valley Comptche Ridge Pinot Noir.  It was an intriguing wine indeed.  You could tell that it was still a young wine, but if you wanted to rob the cradle, it was still o.k. to do so because the tannins were so silky and fine-grained, you couldn’t help but feel that the wine was ready to go.

At the same time though, the fruit was shy, tight, hidden and barely perceptible, it made you wonder what the heck is going on.  Is this one of those “terroir” driven wines?  The Windsor Oaks Syrah was cut from the exact same cloth as the Comptche Ridge Pinot – Drinkable by way of mouth feel, but not yet ready from the flavor stand point.

At first smell, you got the tell tale signs of a Northern Rhone wine.  Violets, freshly cracked black pepper and blueberry were the dominant aromas.  The color was an inky, purplish hue.  In the mouth was a femininely textured wine that was very gentle on the palate.  Blueberry, smoke and spice were the flavors I tasted.  It was a syrah that was crafted by a set of pinot hands.

Despite the closed character of the wine, it was still very layered and complex.  It just wasn’t very expressive.

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Winery: Hayman & Hill

Bottling: 2006 Russian River Chardonnay

Region: California

Sub-Region: Russian River Valley, Sonoma

Estimated Retail Price: $12 – $14

Purchase Details & Tasting Source: Leftover inventory from our now-defunct retail wine shop project.  Had with Thai food.

Tasting Notes: The problem I occasionally see with chardonnays in this price range is that they are over-oaked.  I hear that this heavy oaking is done in order to “cover up” mediocre or below par fruit.  What you end up getting is chardonnay tasting liquid.  I guess it makes sense for what it is, but I’ve never worked in a winery, so I can’t say for sure.  I just hear these kinds of comments on the street.

The 2006 Hayman & Hill Chardonnay seemed to have enough quality fruit that it didn’t need the full oak treatment.  Don’t get me wrong, there was oak, but there was enough fruit and acid to balance the wine out.  On the nose were aromas of pear and tropical fruit.  On the palate were melon, pear, pineapple and star fruit.  Rounding the wine out were a tinge of butter and a hint of spice from the oak.

I think the wine was at it’s peak.  We’ve had the wine several times in the past and I remember there being more energy and viscosity in the wine early.  This last drink though, told me that this bottle’s run was over.  I didn’t get the sense that more complexity or evolution of the wine was going to happen.  Still a solid wine at the price.

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