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

The summer is drawing to a close. As we hang onto the last warm evenings now mingled with some cool-ness we rush to determine which have been the greatest Rosés of our Summer 2007 Festival of the Pank. Here are a few candidates recently compared.

2006 Cotes de Provence Chateau du Rouet Cuvee Reserve Tradition $12: Good wine to start the evening. Orange copper color. Dry with strawberries in mouth. Easy drinker without much finish. 60% Grenache 40% syrah. 12.5%.

2005 L’Uvaggio di Giacomo Lodi Il Gufo Babera Rosato $11: Jim Moore’s almost beefy rosé is almost like something else – syrup! It is not thick enough for waffles but it might make a great cosmo! A manly rosé for all manly men (and stout women I suppose). This deep red, near-purple wine goes with BBQ as easily as it goes with a fruit cup. 12.5% alcohol. Bravo Jim!

2006 Nicodemi Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Gerasuolo $13: Another bigger than usual rosé, bright deep red color (without blue tones above), rich dry flavors. My first Tuscan rosé was a hit. Both of these wines deliver a kick in the cajones to the pink wine naysayers who complain about rosé simplicity. From North Berkeley Wines. 12.5%.

Time out for an observation (bitch-pitch). “Serious” wine drinkers who complain that rosé cannot be taken “seriously” because it is too simple ("not serious") cannot be serious themselves can they? To them I say…what about the legions of over-oaked and over-ripe cabs and chardonnays considered serious? Are these wines not simple in their own stupidly complicated, out of whack (i.e., unbalanced) ways? Puhleeeze. Think Rubiks' Cube and "Rube Goldberg". The Rube Goldberg machine takes something simple and makes it ridiculously complicated. "Serious" wines? Rubik's Cube takes something simple (block of colors) and makes it quite complicated. That is serious simplicity. Simple and serious are rarely antonyms.

2005 Verget de Sud Rosé de Syrah $15: A second appearance this summer and if it is up to me this wine will make a 3rd and 4th. Here is what my wife said as she sipped in the spa. “What I like about this wine is that it is dry and still has the hint of strawberries but not sweet”. And I always agree with my wife. In the salmon pink color camp. North Berkeley Wines. Lovely. 12.5%.

Last minute travel to Lake Tahoe. No time to plan the wine program. Will have to rely upon the fetching wench to quench the thirst of masses (including tBoW). She turns in a stellar performance in the wine department and in the boggle pit and makes a very strong case why Navarro Vineyards and Winery of Mendocino belongs in the constellation of Under-the-Radar stars along with Tablas Creek of Paso Robles.

2007 Canayli Vermentino di Gallura $18: Torrontes-like given the oily texture, fruity flavors. Somewhat rich. Slight bitterness. Very good choice for the just-flew-in from-LA arrival wine. 13.5%

2007 Parteaguas La Borde Vieille $50 (?): Refreshing lime with all the acid backbone. A wine made by Hugo d'Costa from Guadaloupe Valley in Baja Mexico. Check out previous tBoW posts on the slowly advancing wine scene in Baja. This wine is made in Guadaloupe at d'Costa's Paralelo or Casa Piedra winery with juice from the winemaker's French vineyards. That's right. He ships the Old World juice to the New World. Not surprisingly, it tastes French. 13.5%

2008 Domaine de Fontsainte Gris de Gris $11: Epic pink Corbieres gumbo yaya blend of 60% Grenache Gris and Grenache Noir; 5% Syrah; 10% Mourvèdre; 15% Carignan; and 10% Cinsault. Red luminescence on a cool summer evening in the world class alpine resort Lake Tahoe. Beautiful color. Firm and masculine. Balanced. Very nice and easily the most heroic wine of this trip and super value. 13%

2005 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel $30: Best value at $69 on the wine list. Sure there are restaurants all over The City with better wine lists and better values. However, they may not have a better wine in terms of pure vine to vine comps. And it is tough to find a better setting than a table on the dock at Westshore Cafe with a sun setting in ultra slow motion over the lake. The label says honey and peaches. The blend is 70% Rousanne, 25% Grenache Blanc and 5% Picpoul. We taste the flinty, mineral and smoke Grenache Blanc. Peaches come around in a bit which is just fine since we may never leave this setting and just hang in the endless twilight for another couple hours. 14.5%

2007 Cascina Ca Rossa Nebbiolo di Roero Rosato $19: This is pink Piemonte 100% Nebbiolo wine, probably young vines, bottled quickly for equally fresh consumption. A bit flabby without much character or spine. It is plummy with some tannin so maybe plum skins. 13.5%

2007 Navarro Mendocino Pinot Noir $23: The winery's "entry level" bottle. Why do we not own more Navarro wines? Blackberry flavors. New world all the way with the plummy yummy while and not in the overripe style. It has to be the northern climate. You need a case of this wine. From their Summer Sampler. 13.8%

2007 Navarro Navarrouge $14: Now here is an interesting blend of "Mendocino natives": Valdiguié, Syrah, Zinfandel, Carignan, Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Petite Sirah, Grenache, and Cinsaut. This is meant to capture the best ready-to-drink qualities from Southwestern France. Think Languedoc, Montpelier, St. Chinian, Fagueres. Straightforward, no apologies Dago Red. Soft, nice but just enough acid to keep it bright and fruity. Navarro's companion to Tablas Creek's excellent Rhone style Cote de Tablas. Loved it. 13.9%

2007 Navarro Chardonnay $25: The piece de resistance, show stopper, surprise winner. Out of the pack, from nowhere. Having just trashed Chardonnay as pretty much a varietal holding little interest for tBoW along comes this wine we would never pick as California Chardonnay. No oak. No bananas or pineapple/mango/papaya. How about minerals and stone berries [ed. what are stone berries?], creaminess, starwberries, cheescake and, yes, some pineapple. North of Sonoma is a winery making awfully good wines THAT WE LIKE at very fair prices. 13.6%

The sun hangs high every day at the beach. Chairs face the lake so we can watch mountains which never go anywhere. Like us. Boggle skirmishes become battles as the lake laps on the sandy shore of our very tiny, very quiet inlet. The day is endless. The sun never goes down...until it finally fades to orange and pink. Warm breezes become cool relief. We watch the boats tied up on the blue, then blue black, then black lake. Dock lights make it all look like some long summer party.

Turn in and do it again tomorrow. We once spent three weeks in August up here and the third was absolutely timeless.