Hi everyone!
I’ve moved my wine reviewing to my new blog, http://kimandtonic.com/, where you can read all the wine, beer and cocktail reviews I can write. Please come visit me over there!
Best,
Kim
We’ll consider this post as a two-fer on recommendations/requests – the Chateau Ste Michelle rec from Steph (do you have any favorite reds from them I should check out?), and the Riesling request from Dr. B (who might be happy to know that there are a few more Riesling reviews coming soon).
Also good to note is that I think I’m beginning a major love affair with Riesling. I hadn’t had too too many before I started this whole project under the mistaken impression that they were superduper sweet. Turns out that this isn’t the case. We’ll leave superduper sweet to the world of Muscato. Riesling has this lovely brightness to it that Muscato seems not to – Muscato seems to go more the way of near-dessert/ice wine sweetness.
Wine: Chateau Saint Michelle Riesling
Vintage: 2009
Region: Columbia Valley, WA
Grapes involved: Riesling
Color: fairly clear with light golden hints
Cost: $11.99
Food pairings: Seriously, I could see all kinds of things working here – Riesling seems like a really good wine for pairing. Specifically, I’d hit Thai, Indian, or some other spicy Asian food in a heartbeat, or any variety of soft cheese/bread/fruit, some kind of fruit dessert, chocolate, Nutella, anything you could dream of with chicken or tofu or whatever.
Sorry for the tinytiny pic, everyone! The label is pretty standard – name of the winery, name of the wine, pic of the estate. Functional.
Onwards to the wine itself then, shall we?
The nose on this is amazing – one of those “must have perfume of this” wines. My notes include pear, lemon, a possible hint of peach (which I then crossed out and changed to nectarine), orange blossom and a touch of sugarcane (not sweet so much as, well, it said sugarcane at me – like unprocessed form).
Flavor-wise, it’s pear, nectarine, melon, a touch of honey, some acidic, citrus-y brightness and peach. It has wonderfully bright acidity with a medium (I’m guessing) body and a shorter finish.
Notes from the label: The label mentions ripe peach, juicy pear, and racy acidity in the tasting notes. It also mentions that they use a long, cool fermentation to preserve the fruitiness and crispness of the wine.
Would I order again? Definitely yes, especially if Frisk Riesling isn’t available. Good stuff. I’m dying to pair it with some kind of Thai curry.
For that matter, this would be a good wine to enjoy even without food.
Wine: A to Z Oregon Pinot Noir
Vintage: 2008
Region: Oregon. Apparently all over Oregon, from what Wine Spectator said in a write up
Grapes involved: Pinot Noir
Color: clear deep ruby red with a very slight purple undertone
Cost: $17.99-$19.99 or so
Notes from the label: I forgot to write them down before getting rid of the bottle. I’ll check at work – if there’s anything major, I’ll edit this post to reflect.
Food pairings: Chocolate would be super awesome. Or pasta in a meat sauce – like a bolognese or a pork/rosemary sauce (there’s a recipe for one in one of Lidia’s cookbooks that is pretty much tear-inducing good). I think a whole bunch of things would be good as long as they didn’t go super-duper spicy (that’s what we have Rieslings for, yes?)
Also good to know: this wine got 90 points from Wine Spectator.
My notes: I had fun with this one because there were a millionbillion things going on that were all clamoring for attention – it was overwhelming at first. Once I got settled and let it wash over me a bit, here’s what I came up with.
The nose is largely red and purple berries, pink pepper and a touch of leather.* Flavor-wise, my notes are all over the place. I finally settled on berry, cherry, a hint of pepper, a little bit of leather, and a hint of orris no paperwhite no star jasmine.** So, earthy-spicy basenotes with central fruity notes of berry and cheery and a faint topnote of star jasmine.
This wine would make a kickass perfume.
This was a medium-bodied (maybe? still sorting through that) wine with a fairly light tannin level – the tannins were there and contributing to the earthy feel, but weren’t by any means going crazy. The finish was pleasant in that sort of way wherein “pleasant” is pretty much the perfect word to describe it. It wasn’t overpoweringly strong, nor did it last forever, but it was quite enjoyable while it visited. The tannins came across more strongly in the finish than they did in the initial sip, something that surprised me and may have been one of my favorite things about this wine.
Would I buy again? Oh, hell yes. Come to mama.
Other thoughts: I’ve been on a pretty big Zinfandel (please note: NOT WHITE ZIN – the red stuff) kick lately, so I kept mentally comparing the Pinot Noir to the Zins I’ve had. The Zins are a decidedly more “red” feeling, whereas the PN came across as slightly more “purple.” The Zins are also very “jammy,” by which I mean that there’s something about them that reminds me forcibly of a jelly to be smeared all over a biscuit. Pinot Noirs, at least based on the ones I’ve had, don’t seem to have that sort of upfront WOAH FRUIT SPREAD feeling. I have no idea if that’s what other people mean when they say “jammy” in regards to wine, but it makes sense to me so I’m going with it.
Random thing I learned while reading Wine Spectator at work during my lunch break: Apparently the 2008 vintage of Oregon Pinot Noir is like the bestest of all best Oregon Pinot Noir vintages EVER GROWN EVAR so far. Given Oregon Pinot Noirs are supposed to be some of the bestest of all best Pinot Noirs, I’m throwing out there that it’s probably worth checking out a bottle or two soon. The 2008s are pretty much the fillers of the store wine racks right now, so finding a bottle shouldn’t be difficult.
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*Leather is one of those notes that I had a “ZOMG TOAST” reaction with. I know the smell of leather really well – the sort of comforting, dry, earthy-paper scent of an old leather jacket is wonderful. I’ve found it translated into perfume really well, but had never really figured out what to look for in wine. I assumed it would be something wonky or different or, well, something. Not leather-jacket leather.
However, it turns out that it is *exactly* the same sort of dry earthy-paper sort of worn brown jacket-style leather. It’s there, and when it clicked, I sat straight up and stared at the glass for a solid ten seconds. (I did get made fun of.)
Reader, I squealed.
**Seriously, specifically star jasmine. I’m sticking with star jasmine because there was something in the flavor of the wine that was strongly mimicking the scent of the perfume I had been wearing the day before, and star jasmine is a major component in that perfume. I maybe squealed a bit when I finally figured out why I recognized the scent.
Wine: Kunde Chardonnay
Vintage: 2008
Region: Sonoma Valley, California
Grapes involved: Chardonnay
Color: a sort of nice, slightly buttery golden yellow
Cost: $12.99-$17.99 or so
Notes from the label: tastes of ripe pears, crisp apples and toasty oak; pairs with fresh green salads, seafood*, or roast chicken and veggies.
Food pairings: as suggested above, really – this is definitely a “chicken” wine to me.
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My notes: The Kunde Chardonnay has a nose of oak, toast,** pear, and apple. Here’s the thing with this list, though – I don’t know for sure that this is what I would have come up with without the label notes. With the label notes, I could smell the wine and think “okay, that all makes sense.” I feel like I was sort of biased ahead of time, like I was playing hide and seek with the flavors rather than making my own judgments, and I don’t really like that. I think what I’m going to do is only allow myself to look at label notes once I’ve finished with my own reviewing notes, so that I can overlay what I think onto what the amorphous “they” thinks and see how my guesses stand up to expert opinions. Long story short: the label notes work for me here. I agree.
Flavor-wise, there’s an initial hit of what I suppose is “toasty oak,” now that I know that’s what they call it, along with pear and/or apple (I have the hardest time distinguishing those sometimes – this is some sort of apple-pear mélange, maybe). And maybe there’s a touch of something slightly peachy. It’s dry, with a medium, smooth mouthfeel. Not a ton of acidity. Very long finish.
I had this with the chicken stew that was made with the Nathanson Creek Chard, among other things. The stew was fantastic with the Kunde Chard, so I’m thinking I’ll post the recipe. After all, it wouldn’t be a wine blog without foodiebits, would it?
Would I order it again? Absolutely, if I were making something similar to chicken stew for dinner, because it was a really good pairing. I’m not sure I’m all that big on Chardonnays, however – I got to taste my first Sauvignon Blanc in roughly four months today at work and was forcibly reminded that Sauvignon Blanc has this happy citrus-y zing!*** that I adore beyond all reason, a zing! which Chardonnay lacks and which I find myself missing. However, I can also say that the Kunde is one of the best Chards I’ve ever had (not that it has a ton of competition), so this is definitely something I would go for were a Chard what I was going for.
Fun Tidbit: this wine won a Best Buy tag and 90 Points from Wine & Spirits, along with some other awards. The winery has gotten all kinds of recognition for being environmentally friendly and using sustainable growing practices. Yay!
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*This is the point where I got sick of transcribing the “insert adjective before noun” part of the marketing copy. Putting an adjective before *every* noun is flat-out bad writing.
**It had for seriously never occurred to me before this that when a label tells me something smells/tastes like “toasty oak” or “toast” anything, they really do mean toast. Like, toast-for-breakfast toast. Real toast. Bread toast. I’m used to finding toasty notes in beer, but that’s always made sense to me because beer vaguely resembles bread in my mind. Toast was never anything I expected to find in wine. I don’t know what I thought I was looking for, but toast-like-actually-toast wasn’t it.
I’m kind of a dumbass sometimes.
***Long-time readers of my beer blog will know something of my irritation with what I refer to as Extraneous Exclamation Point Syndrome. I recognize that by adding the extraneous exclamation point to my zing, I am in fact adding to the problem. However, Sauvignon Blanc doesn’t just zing, it zings WITH JAZZ HANDS. The extraneous exclamation point is therefore necessary. Deal.
Wine: Nathanson Creek Chardonnay
Grapes involved: Chardonnay
Color: is actually well-represented in the pic, for once!
Cost: $7.99
Region: California (no more specific than that, though)
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So. I generally think of myself as not a particularly big fan of Chardonnay. Most of the time, I’d rather have a Sauvignon Blanc. I’m doing an experiment today – I’m trying this right now, having just dumped half a bottle into some chicken stew I’m making – and I’ll be trying the 2008 Kunde Sonoma Valley Chardonnay tonight with dinner. The goal is to start getting a better sense of Chards in general.
So let’s start here. The nose is a combination of something sort of slightly woodsy vanilla (I’m taking it this is an oaked Chardonnay, then – the label doesn’t say, and so I’m assuming oak because oak is the appropriate default assumption to make with California Chards, yes?) and some grapes and alcohol. It’s all pretty faint – I keep huffing the wine like I’m trying to get high on it and I’m not smelling much of anything.
In the realm of taste, this has a bit of bright acidity, some flavors of vanilla and wood, and some sort of bright fruit* like a very tart pear. Maybe a hint of green apple. It’s a very smooth wine, maybe (I’m totally guessing here) medium- to full-bodied?
The aftertaste is a lot of alcohol with hints of caramel, wood, and really tart apple.
Would I get this again? It’s not that bad, really. It’s not great, however, and I’d at the moment be much more likely to grab something I know I like better (like a Sauv Blanc). For the price, however, it could be *much* worse. Like this winery’s Merlot.
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*Here’s the thing: I don’t eat tons of fruit. So I kind of suck at differentiating between which fruits it is that I’m tasting. I’m getting better at it with red wines – like I’m starting to get the differences between “plum” v “cherry” v “black cherry” v “cranberry” v “currant” etc. White wines, however, not so much. I think it’s because it is (as evident by the background of the picture I took of this wine) the dead of winter, meaning I’m generally in a red wine mood moreso than a white. We’ll see. Maybe this whole experiment will end in me eating much more fruit in an attempt to describe wine flavors with a greater degree of accuracy.
Wood, however, I’m all over being able to describe. My beer and perfume learnings have prepared me quite well for that.
Wine: Nathanson Creek Merlot*
Grapes involved: Merlot
Color: deep red with a hint of a brownish tone
Cost: $7.99
Region: vinted and bottled in California, but no clue where the grapes are grown
Label-provided tasting notes: It’s all marketing wharblegarble. I’ll spare you unless the Chard also sucks.
So. Here’s the wine:
Like, it looks like wine (albeit not in a pretty glass)(but I kinda like wine in tumblers).
Let’s see. Initially, it smelled like stale mansweat. Then it added a layer of smoke. Then a layer of berry, which quickly devolved into berry-flavored candy. It’s a complex, layered scent, people. Stale berry-flavor smoky mansweat.
YUMM-O, as Rachel Ray would say.**
Flavor wise, it starts with a definite hit of black pepper, then berry cherry plum, then tannins, then something that I can pretty much only describe as sweat. The aftertaste is roughly the same, plus burny alcohol. And it hangs out FOREVER.
To sum up:
Food pairing guesses: Don’t. Like, don’t pair food with this, because you shouldn’t drink this wine. Seriously. It’s not even the Merlot’s fault, because I’ve had good Merlot. Like the Hunter Ashby release right now. That was good.
This is horrifying. Stay far, far away.
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*notice the lack of vintage? Yeah, that didn’t strike me as a good sign either.
**I am not a Rachel Ray fan.
And as a final, parting note: if I think a wine sucks, it doesn’t mean the wine sucks. It just means I don’t like it. Well, usually, anyway. I’m pretty sure this just objectively sucks.
Wine: 2009 Punto Final Malbec – this wine has a kickass black label. My camera isn’t dealing well with dark dark colors yet, so there’s no pic
Grapes involved: Malbec, which is apparently a super-close cousin to Merlot, and (so far as I can tell, anyway) almost the only grape they grow in Argentina
Color: deep red, not quite into purple territory
Cost: $15.99
Region: Argentina (Mendoza, maybe)
Label-provided tasting notes: Nothing about taste, but it did tell me that this is unfiltered wine from 50+ year old, low-yield vines. Again, apparently low yield is what you want – torturing grapes makes for good wine. I still think this whole concept seems super emo, but if it means my wine tastes yummy, well, I’ll leave it to the experts.
Food pairing guesses: not sure. Tapas, maybe? It could definitely stand up to red meat, but would overwhelm any fish I can come up with except for cedar-planked salmon (which I am convinced needs a red, but maybe more a Pinot)
First of all, this wine needs to be popped and decanted/poured at least a solid half hour before you’re planning on drinking it. It took 30 minutes from pour to having *any* discernible, worthwhile nose. So plan ahead with this one: this is a wine to pop before you start making dinner, not right when you’re ready to serve.
When it did finally develop a smell, it was a tannic, mineral-y, herbal, woodsy, plummy type smell. I’m not sure this sounds great, but it’s actually nice. The plum smell develops more over time – by the 45 minute point, it’s heavier on the plum and wood and has developed a bit of a peppery bite as well.
Flavor-wise, this has a very tart cranberry note, a plum note, something that tastes woodsy but which doesn’t necessarily mean that I think they aged this in oak (I haven’t the foggiest idea if Malbecs are generally oak-aged), along with lots of pepper and spice and a touch of some sort of purple floral*. And maybe a touch of cherry. The tannins are medium-to-sorta high, the level where they leave a bit of a film on your teeth and make the roof of your mouth non-slippery for a few seconds after swallowing.
The aftertaste is really long, all woodsy plum/cranberry/cherry with a nice warming feeling from the alcohol .
Would I get this again?: Definitely. This is actually my second go-round with the Punto Final Malbec. I had a glass of it at 715 in Lawrence a week or so before I came up with the idea to do this blog, so I knew I liked it but I hadn’t taken the notes down to try to figure out why. When I decided to start blogging wine, I was sort of doing it as an excuse to get a bottle and figure out why I liked it. So anyway, I like it because I like the complexity but don’t feel super overwhelmed by it, either.
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*I’m really big into synethesia as a method of describing things, synethesia being the idea that smells and tastes can be described in terms of colors and so on and so forth. Floral flavors are especially prone to get color treatment from me. I’m blaming this on perfume. Every now and then I will smell something and think “that smells yellow” – with wine, apparently I’m prone to tasting and thinking “purple flower” or “white flower” or whatever. Hopefully there’s at least one other perfume-obsessed wine dork out there who will read this and know what I mean. I hope.
Wine: 2009 Yvon Mau Bergerac
Grapes involved: Forgot to look, because I suck. I know it’s got Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in it at least.
Color: deep, dark, almost-purple red. I’d post a picture but I have none pretty enough to bother. Anyway, it’d be an awesome nail polish color.
Cost: $13.99
Region: As you will see from my long-winded babble, the Bergerac AOC in France. An AOC is a designated area of origination in France. France has hyper-specific designated growing/making/creating/whatever places for everything from wine to cheese to Calvados (a Norman apple brandy I would dearly love to try and will review if/when I am able to). Anyway, if you’ve ever heard that a bubbly wine is only a real champagne if it comes from the Champagne AOC, etc., this is why. Otherwise, it’s just bubbly (or Prosecco from Italy or Cava from Spain etc).
Label-provided tasting notes: Erm. I forgot to write them down before I recycled the bottle, so I’ll update if I get a chance to write them down while I’m at work. I’m pretty sure it said something more than “Bergerac is the region whence came Cyrano,” but.
The label did actually say something about the Bergerac/Cyrano correlation. This bugs me because I assume anyone who knows the story “Cyrano de Bergerac” is going to guess that there’s some kind of connection. Conversely, anyone who doesn’t know the story isn’t likely to care.
That said, I did two seconds of research and discovered that Bergerac is in Southwest France. The red wines are blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Malbec (aka Côt, if wikipedia is to be trusted). Whites are blends of other grapes – I’ll worry about that if I ever get a white from the region.
My guesses on food pairings: hard cheeses like cheddar, red meat dishes, or really gamey meats. Maybe. This isn’t gospel by any means. It’s just what made sense when I was drinking it.
This is the wine that taught me the aeration lesson I babbled on about last week. The first time I tried it – well, you know that reaction people have when they try something they don’t like and sort of cough-gag? Yeah. I did that. I decided at that point not to review the wine for the blog – at least not as the first wine I talked about – because I didn’t want to start off an a “lol this wine sucked how awesome am I for criticizing it” type note because I didn’t want to be a douchebag.
Anyway, the night after I opened it, I decided I should at least have enough of a glass to be able to take notes (beyond BLEH STALE TANNINS). So (as I think I mentioned in the Aeration Lesson post) I poured myself a glass and proceeded to ignore it for quite a while. And the aeration did its job and the wine got quite yummy. Here’s what I got:
It smells like black currant and mulling spices and tannins with a hint of something that I kind of want to call “woodsy leather man-stink” and something that I’m pretty sure is Merlot, because there’s something in the tannins that made me think Merlot.
Taste-wise, there’s a definite currant hit, along with sour cherry, and some kind of allspice sort of hit. I think there’s some sort of violet-like floral hiding underneath. It’s very, very dry.
Mouthfeel-wise, this seems like a medium tannin level: the “makes the roof of the mouth momentarily not slippery but returns to normal at the swallow”-level of tannins. I’ve had some that were much less tannic and some that left the non-slippery feeling all over my teeth for a good 10 seconds after swallowing, so that’s where I’m coming up with the “medium” level idea.
I cannot for the life of me say whether I think this is light-, medium-, or full-bodied, because I haven’t gotten enough of a feel for reds to be able to translate that yet.
Would I have this again? Honestly, I don’t know. It was really interesting the second time through, enough so that I’d love to have something similar to play with. On the other hand, I’d love to have a label that would *warn* me when a bottle needs opening a solid hour before I plan on drinking it – I’d honestly reach for a bottle with a label that provided me with that warning before I’d reach for this again. So, well, maybe. I wouldn’t search it out, but I wouldn’t refuse a glass either.
The first thing I figured out today in starting to review this is that when writing about wine, one lists the year/vintage(?) first.* So I did. This implies to me that the vintage is more important to those who know what they’re looking at than the winery or even the grape used to make the wine – I guess the weather the grapes get to grow in really *is* that important.
Without further ado, let’s kick this journey off with the white wine I had with dinner last night. Per a suggestion from one of the wine geeks at work, I got a Viognier to go with some spicy stir fry that Tony made for dinner. My first reaction was something along the lines of “what’s a Viognier?” which, in my mind, was a good reason to try it.
Wine: 2009 Smoking Loon Viognier
Cost: $11.99
Label-provided tasting notes: none. The label did give me a vignette about why the company is called Smoking Loon, but that doesn’t help me have any idea of what the wine is about.
My guesses on food pairings: Spicy stuff – it was awesome with the spicy chicken/beef/tonsaveggie stir fry I had it with. If it goes with cheese, it would have to be a really light one.
Pretty, yes? It’s a very light straw color.
Thoughts: This wine has a very light bouquet that I would mostly describe as “white wine.” (Sorry, but, well, there it is.) I think there are some hints of pear running through it. Taste-wise, this is mostly pear with subtle hints of honey and citrus, and what I think might be oak. I’m not sure. I think this was a fairly low-acid wine, so what I’m reading as “maybe oak” might also be “low-acid not-oak.” When I think about whites, I largely think in terms of Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Grigios. This was closer to a Pinot Grigio – Sauvignon Blancs have a sort of acidic citrus-y brightness that the Viognier didn’t have. This was almost, like… oily? maybe? in comparison. Like I think it would make beautiful salad dressing. The Viognier was a bit sweeter, too, without being Riesling-sweet. Also interesting: this wine had 2000x more flavor when I started eating dinner – the food seemed to help bring out all the flavors in a way I didn’t notice them when I was drinking it pre-dinner.
Fun Research Bits: Viognier is a white grape that is grown alone the Rhone Valley in France. Wikipedia** tells me that Viogniers (the wine, not the grape) are known for heavily floral aromas. I didn’t really notice any floral notes, but this was only my first one. I should probably note to myself something along the lines of “look for flowers along with fruits and spices” or something to remind myself to pay attention for that sort of thing. Viogniers apparently also get turned into dessert wines from time to time.
Something else I’ve learned in the past two days: winemakers go insane happy nuts when grapes have miserably rough growing conditions, because apparently miserable grapes in low-yield, hellish-to-grow-in years makes for the best wine. Out of misery comes beauty, or something like that. Winemakers are apparently something of an emo bunch.
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*Actually, the first thing I figured out is that I’m nervous about writing this blog in a way I’ve never been nervous about the beer blog. I suppose it’s one thing to blare one’s knowledge all over Teh Intarwebz; it’s another thing to blare one’s ignorance/learning process.
** Y’all, I *desperately* need a better site for information on wine than what I can find on wikipedia. Any suggestions?
Kim Learns Wine 
