No Wine Over $20-Reviews and the LA Wine Scene

A cool and dreary start to the summer. LA is known for June Gloom (AM coastal fog that works great for early morning tee times) but this is something else. Overcast and slight drizzle for the unofficial start of summer. [ed. that was 7 weeks ago, now in the 90s plus daily] tBoW hosts three couples who are ready and willing to try anything we put in front of them. What more can one ask from a guest?

The tasting choices were like a juke box on Adderal. Bottles flew out of the cellar as fast as we could purge. We covered California pinots, white Bordeaux, a Paso white, and Baroli that must get consumed. As they say in film noir, the usual suspects showed up...and I do mean people and wines.

1996 Cantina Vignaioli Elvio Pertinace Barbaresco Vigneto Marcarini: Tobacco nose and flavors. Cherry puckering fruit, too many tannins for 12 years. Not enough fruit left. Anutha bummah from this selection. I think. 13.5%

1995 Sottimano Curra Vigna Masue Barbaresco: I am fighting with the 1996 vintage in Barolo. When I tasted the vintage in the Clerico cellar with Domenico himself it was magic. The wines were forward, rich and elegant. So many now are tough. The chance to taste this 1995, a "harder" vintage, more than ten years later was welcomed. One of the premium vineyards for this label. Tannic, puckering, needs decanting. Opens up after several hours. Still not very impressive wine. 13%

2000 Castello di Volpaia Chianti Classico: Costco purchase? Parker 90. Was opened last so it did not get much attention that evening. Next evening it was nice enough. You have to like Sangiovese, of which I am not a big fan. Too sweet and rakish. Balanced, sweetish, light to medium weight. Holding up nicely for 8 years old. 13%

2005 Wiliams Selyem Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir: If this were basketball this would be a "make-up call". The Chianti brought by "igottatellya" is all but forgotten whenever he opens his WS stash. Of course, wrestling a glass from him of the nation's finest domestic pinot noir is another matter. This is the first bottle opened from the 2005 and 2006 vintage resting comfortably in the tBoW cellar. So there are many more to come. [ed. cue wicked Dr. Evil laugh] We (the ubiquitous Dotoré) selected carefully, being sure to crack the wine most likely to be ready. This eliminates all the vineyard designated wines. Going through the sealed case and reading every label is a lesson in the marriage of a label with mega-cachet and lesser known Russian River-Sonoma growers. Seeing your vineyard on a Williams-Selyem label brings prestige. We hardly recognized the names. This wine had all the seductive flavors and qualities we associate with WS wines, especially the ones for "early" opening. Vanilla, creamy, forward fruit, some understated smoke. Soft but not flabby. It went quickly. Summer's challenge? Not to plunder the entire two cases. 14.2%

2004 Paul Lato Gold Coast Vineyard Pinot Noir: With the Italian debacle behind us and a strong pinot wind in our sails we headed for the Santa Rita Hills. Paul Lato is one of the finest examples of wines from this region. tBoW put it in a bag and poured on the heels of the Williams Selyem. More tannic but that is no surprise. Restrained at first. More structured than the WS but then this is the flagship. Showing smoke and dark dense pinot fruit. Not an SRH fruit bomb. Excellent. So different than WS and outstanding on its own. It is not Rochioli with all the complications and complexity. It is fine wine. Paul made 70 cases. 14.5% [ed. special credit to Grape-Nutz where I lifted the photo of Paul; an outstanding wine blog for all wines regional; highly recommended reading].

2006 Chateau Martinon Entre-Deux-Mers $10: Recommended by Hi Time Wine Cellar as a go-to summer white. Like white loafers. Reminds me of Jim Moore's l'Uvaggio di Giacomo Vermentino. All the bright acid, lush fruit. Almost oily in weight. Somewhat reminiscent of the Argentine Torrontes wines. Wonderfully good. Here is a nice review on the Entre-Deux-Mer region. Love that alcohol level. 12.5%

2006 Tablas Creek Vermentino: Another excellent white wine from TC. Strong, spiney, good acid. Sharp, lime flavors. Serious, even. But for current drinking. Anytime with anything. Before dinner. 14.5%

2005 Calot Morgon Vieilles Vignes Cuvée Unique: North Berkeley Wine purchase. Pinot pedigree (Morgon borders Burgundy) with Gamay fruit. Unusual. Read the NBW notes on the winemaker. Excellent, fruity but not overtly forward wine. Tannic balance. Will last a year in the cellar. Jump on it.

It is going to be a very good summer.

As they say in the blippin teen franchise Bring It On movies...it's already been brung...al fresco dinner party hosted by Dr. and Mrs. Dotoré. Four couples with open minds and palates giving the tBoW team a clear shot at tasting wines we like to drink OR anything we care to pull from the cellar. The guests are in training and bring what they can find in a decent wine shop that might keep up in the wineocracy.

2006 Mas Amiel Le Plaisir Rosé $15: NBW selection, sweet, lipstick and strawberries. Grenache Noir, Carignane and Syrah. 13%

2006 Tablas Creek Bergeron $20: Screw top, 100% Rousanne, not too ripe, melons, smoke, flinty, even Dotoré gives an excellent Paso wine its due. Here are notes from the Tablas Creek blog that describes why this version [ed. 250 cs only available to wine club members] is differs from the Estate Rousanne. "Each year, we make a little early-picked, cool-microclimate Roussanne in the style in which it's made in the Savoie region in France (where the Roussanne grape is known as "Bergeron"). This citrusy, higher-acid version of Roussanne is great with fresh seafood, oysters on the half-shell, and fresh cheeses". 13.5%

2004 Don Luis Cetto Viognier $15: Big hit with Guadalupe Valley wine fans, sauvignon blanc-like in its absence of ripe fruit. In fact, not a lot of fruit at all. Feline. Riesling-like petroleum nose. Delicious, palate-filling, hint of citrus, opens up in 20 minutes, lime comes through. A bit earthy and dusty to me. A large house Guadalupe wine with a fine rep. When you are there get the olive oil. 14%

2006 Barraud Mâcon-Chaintré "Les Pierres Polies" $20: NBW again. Tastes like chardonnay without the tropical fruit or banana notes. Middle weight. Oak, rich. Fruit for a young Burg. Re-buy. 13.5%

2006 ZD California Chardonnay $25: Mainstream Napa chardonnay. Much of Napa chardonnay is being pulled up. This is rich wine in light oak. Ripe fruit, restrained. No tropical fruit flavors. Too restrained. They left out the excitement here. 13.5%

2003 Drew Julia's Vineyard $: NOT Santa Rita Hills pinot noir. Santa Maria Valley PN. Powerful spices in the nose. Thyme, sage. Spicy flavors too. Dotoré says Drew wines are often idiosyncratic. Try it with turkey chili. Would be great with Thanksgiving dinner! Could handle the cranberry. [ed. found the Gatekeepers label which is also very nice and more widely available wine] 80 cases. 14.5%

2006 Ca' D'Gal Lunine Moscato d'Asti $18: Think of these wines like the Bring It On movies. Summer fun. Lightweight. Zingy and refreshing [ed. that crosses the line]. A little fizz and some difference in the fruit profile. I am linking to the NBW site where they say nice smart things about this wine. I feel like a total cheer slut. Arguably one could match the wines to the cheer-characters. This one tastes like apples and has a good acid zing. The Morandini still stands at the top and Bartenura at the lower end of the scale. However, like the movie kids say in IM-ese...BIO! 5%

Back to the cheer-ocracy...[ed. you do mean the Wine Spectator? IMO nyuk nyuk]

It is axiomatic to oenophiles that you have to sit on some wines for awhile so the wine can develop in the bottle. I am coming to the conclusion that this is just one more corollary to the magic chef and the hallowed ground marketing themes that have created the Parker/Rolland two headed monster. Wine does age in the bottle. But does it get better? Recent pourings/tasting have concluded otherwise. The 1996 Burgundies flopped like Vlade Divac taking a charge. And here we have some pinot noir bottlings from the fabled Santa Rita Hills that also fell well below high expectations when purchased on release.

To be fair, tBoW must own being swept up willingly in the SRH hype and falling for the bombastic fruit forward styles that came from the region. How times and palates change.

This was a somewhat free-form tasting that began with white wines of curious interest and closed with five "heavy hitters". Be sure to check out very good friend David McMillan's delirious and delicious political content at the end of this post.

2006 Treana Central Coast Mer Soleil Monterey $10: Purchased online at wines.com. 55% Viognier 45% Marsanne. Dotoré asks "what are they aiming for with this wine"? Too much oak, alcohol, everything. More like a California chardonnay than a white Rhone blend. Awful. Whatever they were aiming for it could not have been this wine. 14.5%

2005 Andre Perret St Joseph $40: A Robert Chadderton selection and the first I have found unimpressive. Highly regarded producer. Would like to taste his reds. Foxy flavors make the Marsanne Rousanne blend taste more like a Viognier. Worth $15 but not what tBoW paid. At least the alcohol is a decent level. 13%

1999 Jean Luc Colombo Le Rouet Blanc Hermitage: Online press on this winemaker is appealing; terroir driven, opinionated, non-traditional. However, this wine did not show well. Acidic and lean out of the bottle. Out of balance. "Nun piss" says an irreverent taster who will never be on Chris Matthews. Somewhat madeirized. Parker says "mature". Soiled flavor as in earth. Not a very good wine. [ed. had to go with red label]

2006 Curran Grenache Blanc $26: tBoW is a Curran fan. This 2006 has been reviewed on two other occasions prior. It may be heading over the hill. Fruit presence more pronounced than old world wines squeezing life from our tongues. Marked contrast to the Rhone efforts. But the wine is out of whack. Enough time has passed to come around as these wines seem to need 12 months. We are struck by how generally mediocre are the white wines, despite expectations.

2005 Lamargue Costieries de Nimes $10: At the insistence of our honored guest we opened this delightful bottle from Languedoc. 50% Grenache Blanc, 50% Rousanne in the blend, reasonably balanced, gentle enough to sip gently, low enough alcohol to sip again and again, and easily the best of class on this day. Great value. 13.5%

disappointed and unimpressed with the white Rhones we moved on to the featured showing...Santa Rita Hills pinot noir.

These wines came right out of the tBoW cellars of yours truly and Dotoré where they have been since release.

2002 Ojai Clos Pepe $40: What could be better than pairing the original Santa Barbara/Central Coast winemaker Adam Tolmach with one of the premium new era growers (and winemaker) Wes Hagen of Clos Pepe. The wine is awkward and even a bit vegetal. Truly Adam Tolmach is somewhat of a tortured soul. Take a moment to read his own notes on this wine. I prefer his Syrah wines.

2002 Sea Smoke Southing $50: Rich, dense pinot fruit. Very smoky even though that has nothing to do with the label name. Let's pretend it does. Entry level for the most collectable SRH label. But not the best wine from the region!! 14.3%

2004 Kenneth Crawford Clos Pepe Pinot Noir $40: Thin, acidic, more like a vin ordinaire Syrah from southwest France. Something happened here between the vintage, harvest and vinification. Further evidence that Syrah is the wine to seek from SRH? I'm convinced. [ed. I never noticed how similar are the Sea Smoke and K-C labels.]

2002 Melville Carrie's VIneyard Pinot Noir $60: That is correct sir. We ponied up three Jacksons for this monster wine. It is rich. It is ripe. It is eating the little dog. This wine, alcohol and all, was preferred to the K-C, Sea Smoke and Ojai efforts. Nobody would ever confuse this with an old world pinot noir. But they might confuse it with a zinfandel port from Sonoma. 15.1%

2004 Paul Lato Goldcoast Pinot Noir $30: Elegant, balanced, delicate, smooth, silky, some smoke. Paul gets it right every time. In the vintages tBoW owns he made 75 cases. Why didn't we buy more? That's right, we had a limit. Dumbkopf!! 14.5%

So here is the real question. Given the recent tastings of SRH and Burgundy (avoiding impulse to write French Burgundy), from which region is tBoW likely to pick his next pinot noir wine? Domestic, and in the following order....Williams Selyem and Paul Lato in a dead heat; then select Oregon bottlings, then select SRH bottlings. If we go "old world" we will be looking for recent vintages from less fashionable regions....from Becky Wasserman and North Berkeley Wines.

Still have a taste for satire and a contemporary POV? Try David McMillan's News In Color on youtube. 75 entires and climbing. Here is one of my currents faves. WARNING: this material can be political.

I am done with (red) Burgundy. Just like Barolo. It was bound to happen. No more fussing, hoping, expecting great but getting yecch.

The Mouse-man tasting was held at Palate in Glendale. Great food and service. Too bad the two 1996 Burgundies could not come close to measuring up. Let's get to it.

2006 Schafer-Frohlich Riesling Spatlese Nahe $26: Halb-trocken from the Nahe. What is a halb-trocken? "Invented by the Germans when they realized the world did not like their wine style". It means drier than one would have expected from traditional wine making. And this bottle is perfectly balanced, crispy like an ice-ee with caramel notes. Simply delicious. The job was to waken the palates of the tasters and that was accomplished.

2007 Bandol Blanc La Bastide Blanche $20: Last minute fill-in for a white Rhone that did not show well. Composed of Clairette, Bourboulenc and Ugni Blanc. Smoky, uncomplicated, good pick to go with lightly sauteed squid as we waited for fois gras and the next wine.

1983 Chateau d'Yquem Sauternes ~$500 online: The king of wines for the guest of honor. Petrol on the nose. Smell the alcohol which is listed as 11% to 14%. First time I noticed that. Dried apricots keep emerging stronger and stronger as the wine opens over the entire tasting. A monster wine. A finish so long we had to drink copious red wines to wash it out. Having it as the third wine may have been a sequencing error. Just too big. King says it is "leaking out my mouth". Thick, viscous with a core I could only describe as atomic. "A baby" said sommelier Steve Goldun. "This s why I have to be an attorney so I can buy cases of this wine" says son of tBoW. Wine of the evening by a long shot.

1996 Geantet-Pansiot Charmes Chambertin Grand Cru ~$150: Pee Yooo!! Now that is the goux de merde also known as barnyard. As tBoW has noted before French pinots can be stank-eee! The fruit is there but having trouble finding its way out of the lavatory. "Ripe diaper" says one taster. Brick red color, beets when it starts to lose the poo and show itself. Intense, dark. It never comes around. I saw a note online that says it needs 3 hours to open. Where was that guy? A doctor's office? In line at DMV? This and the next wine close the book on red burgundy for me.

1996 Fourrier Gevrey Chambertin Premier Cru Clos St Jacques ~$150: The unofficial Gran Cru of Gevrey. "The perfect facing SE slope" says SG as he launches into an expert topographical delineation of the hill and its vineyards including the ideally situated Clos St Jacques. [ed. read more about Clos St Jacques here] Shoe polish on the nose. Could use some shoe polish to scrape the shit right off my shoes. Another poopster deluxe. Tight. Fruit is there but having trouble making it over the vineyard wall surrounding this precious acreage. Is it on the decline? 13.5%

These two burgs did not show well. They were open at least three hours and never came around. Various tasters online noted 3 to 5 hours required to reveal their magic. Call me impatient. I am done with aging red burgundy. Of course this position was roundly pooh-poohed (appropriately I suppose); tBoW was subjected to torrents of abuse when he declared Williams Selyem produced more consistent wines. I asked the sommelier to name the best domestic pinot producer and he immediately replied...that's right, W-S. Tidbits from the table included 1996 is a tough and tight vintage; in the 90s favorite vintages are 1993 and 1999; and a preference noted for Nuits St George over Chambertin wines.

2001 Tardieu-Laurent Cornas Coteaux $40: Shut yo mouf tasty. Yummy. BBQ and bricquets backed with plenty of fruit. More new world than old but still enough old world not to be confused for a Paso Robles effort. 13%

1998 Rostaing La Landonne ~$200: A great wine in an off vintage proving the point about quality winemakers being robust to less than ideal weather conditions. White pepper on the nose. Knitted together nicely (i.e., balanced wine). Winemaker is known for low acid wines. Pleasing in every way. Tanzer writes "deceptively accessible". Showing so much better than the burgs. Probably best of the rest after d'Yquem. Reviewed on this bog in December 2007.

2001 Arnaldo Caprai Sagrantino de Montefalco $50: Umbrian powerhouse made from grapes only grown in the region...except for a few grown in Washington state!! Mouse tout and a good one as per usual. tBoW detects brownies in the flavor profile. Baked, doughy, dark chocolate, cranberries. Only a wine with this kind of size and power could cap a tasting with this lineup. 14%

Retrospectively...Rhone wines never looked better than going head to head with Burgundy. Dotoré thought there were too many wines and too much variety. Perhaps. While these were not U20 wines they helped make the point once again that price and quality do not necessarily go hand in hand [ed. talkin' tBoW mainfesto here]. Baroli and (red) Burgs go to the sidelines. Beaujolais and Rhones step forward.

Consensus held the 1983 d'Yquem stole the show to the surprise of absolutely nobody. After that opinions varied as to the next best wine from the La Landonne to the Cornas to the Nahe Riesling. Steve G opened the 2005 White Dog Syrah from Santa Ynez Larner vineyard which produces some of the highest quality grapes in that region. Too bad the tBoW tasting team was dog meat by this time and thirsting for water and needing to wait a bissel before embarking on the ride home. Which we did.