Drinking with SHIRAZ on Saturday – Pinot Noir Feb 7 2009

For many Pinot Noir is the wine from the movie Sideways. To others it is the grape of red Burgundy and it even finds its way into Champagne. As a grape variety Pinot Noir is apparently quite old and also prone to mutate, hence there are numerous clones of Pinot Noir. If you are a maker of Pinot Noir wines, especially in the New World, then one difficulty you face is selecting the clones or clones of Pinot Noir that best suit your location and wine making practices. If you are a true aficionado of Pinot Noir then your focus is on Burgundy, whose wines serve as a benchmark when you taste, should you so condescend, Pinot Noir from the rest of the world.

If you are me you don’t really worry greatly about the snob appeal or otherwise of an individual Pinot Noir wine, you just hope it tastes of the grape itself. In other words for me a Pinot Noir wine has to have varietal character. What is the varietal character of Pinot Noir? The wine must be light in color, much lighter than a Shiraz for example. The aromas should be of cherry and strawberry, and perhaps the forest floor and/or truffles. There may be violets, but there should not be stewed plum or any other flavor associated with overripe grapes. Why? Because a Pinot Noir wine should express a degree of delicacy; it is after all a delicate grape. The mouthfeel of the wine should be medium weight with vibrant acidity and fine tannins. Silky, velvety are descriptors that are often used for the fineness of the tannins. Pinot Noir is a very sensitive wine and its not uncommon to uncork a young wine and find that the edge has begun to turn orange/brown; I don’t trust such a wine to live for very long. Alternatively you can pull the cork on a 10-20 year old Pinot and it will look (and taste) almost as though it were bottled last week. Did I say its a pernickety grape!

The tasting of Pinot Noir at Vintage Wines of Feb 7th could have been of wines from anywhere except Burgundy (that tasting was on Feb 21). As it turned out all the wines were from the US.

First Wine
Cherry red with a pink edge. Sweetly flavored with notes of strawberry, cherry and bubblegum. There is even a Cola note lurking with some smoke. Medium bodied with adequate flavor carry and fine tannins that become more compact on the finish. It has a pleasant and uncomplicated, if not charismatic, appeal.
Score: 2, 2, 3.4, 9.3=16.7/20, 84/100
Drink: Now to 2012
Wine: 2006 Saintsbury Vineyard, Carneros, California, USA; Clones: Pommard, Swan, 115, 667 and 777; 20% Lee Vineyards, 16% Toyon Farm, 6% Saintsbury Home, 15% Stanly Ranch, 7% RMS, 8% Brown Ranch, 5% Cerise, 6% Rodgers Creek. 17% misc.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 13.5%
Price: $23.99USD

Second Wine
Cherry red in color with an attractive pink edge. More earthy with brambly fruit and a hint of musk and strawberry. Medium weight with acidity that catches the focus of the palate. Fine, ripe tannins carry an excellent finish, but again a rather simple, uncomplicated wine.
Score: 2, 2, 3.9, 9.5=17.4/20, 87/100
Drink: Drink now to 2015
Wine: 2007 Fritz Winery, Russian River Valley, California, USA;
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 13.9%
Price: $17.99USD

Third Wine
Cherry red with pink edge. A little closed with musk over a citrus note, some cherry and forest floor. A well balanced wine of medium weight with excellent flavor carry. Opens with some air to reveal more Pinot Noir character on its lengthy finish. A well made wine.
Score: 2, 2, 3.8, 10.1=17.9/20. 89/100
Drink: Now to 2017
Wine: 2006 Soter Winery, North Valley, Oregon, USA; North end of Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 13.9%
Price: $31.99

Fourth Wine
Cherry red with pink edge. More Pinot Noir in character than the previous wines with forest floor and cherry over a toasted oak note and perhaps a touch of sulphur. Its fresh and lively in the mouth with nice flavors but the a slight sweetness detracts from the appeal. The tannins are soft, the acidity adequate and the finish has good length but its another uncomplicated wine.
Score: 2, 2, 3.9, 9.6=17.5/20, 87/100
Drink: Now to 2015
Wine: 2006 De Ponte “Clay Hill”, Dundee Hills, Oregon, USA;
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 14.2%
Price: $33.99USD

Fifth Wine
Deeper cherry red with a pink/red edge; deepest colored wine of the flight. A richer, riper style with plum, ripe cherry, a hint of Cola, varnish and dusty oak. Fuller on the palate the flavors carry extremely well and are supported by firm tannins and juicy, mouthwatering acidity. There is definite appeal here but its difficult to see any Pinot Noir character.
Score: 2, 2, 3.6, 9.6=17.2/20, 86/100
Drink: 2010 to who knows? The acidity and tannins could hold it for some time but its not likely to look like Pinot Noir.
Wine: 2005 Ampelos Cellars, “Lambda”, Santa Rita Hills, California, USA; the clonal composition is 61% clone 115, 5% 667 and 777, 3% 828 and 31% pommard.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 14.5%
Price: $24.99USD

Sixth Wine
Cherry red tinged with orange brown and a orange brown edge; either older or oxidized. Another shy wine. There is richness lurking there but with a bottom note of ketchup mixed with spices and a touch of caramel (Oxidation?). In the mouth this is an extremely appealing wine with softness and suppleness lacking in the other wines. What flavors there are carry beautifully across the palate to a lengthy finish. A very nice wine.
Score: 2, 2, 3.9, 10.3=18.3/20, 92/100
Drink: Its hard to tell how long this wine will live if it has premature oxidation. I’d like to taste it again to see if there is any bottle variation. If sound it could live a good ten years or more.
Wine: 2006 Alcina Cellars, Raimondo Vineyard, Sonoma Coast, California, USA;
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 14.7%
Price: $27.99USD

The one thing I was hoping to see with these wines was one or two of the rich over-ripe Pinot Noir that populate wine shop shelves in the USA. Some of them can be quite extraordinary because of the palette of flavors they present even though they sacrifice varietal character. The 2005 Ampelos Cellars “Lambda” fits into the mold. I’m not a big fan of the style but there is no doubt that it has its advocates. What I would have liked to have seen in this tasting was a Mount Eden Pinot Noir. Even though the current vintages are made in a different style to those of past decades the Mount Eden, to me, represents excellent value for money in American Pinot Noir and those past vintages have aged wonderfully. From the wines tasted the Soter has to take the gong as the wine with the most potential to age and its consistently good as a previous tasting shows.

2006 Soter Pinot Noir, North Valley, Oregon, USA. $31.99USDCherry red with pink edge. Aromas in the bramble/earthy spectrum over a mélange of strawberry and cherry. Its attractive, and even has varietal character. Light-medium in weight with expressive and yet delicate flavors on the palate and an excellent, supple mouthfeel. A nice little wine, still young, might grow into something you would want to spend some time with. Score: 2, 2, 3.9, 10.2=18.1/20, 90/100. Tasted Jan 17, 2009

Image © iStockphoto.com/ norme

The Great Decanting Experiment – Wine #10

For our tenth wine we return to the Napa Valley and the other variety that has made this region famous, Cabernet Sauvignon. Paradigm Winery has been reputed to make one of the top 50 Cabernet based wines in Napa Valley. In the past it has been one wine that I have rated highly in blind tastings. This wine also has the distinction of having Heidi Peterson Barrett as its winemaker. Barrett has been the winemaker for Screaming Eagle, the pinnacle of cult Napa Cabernets. An impressive pedigree indeed!

Wine #10 2002 Paradigm Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville, Napa valley, California: ($24.99USD, 375ml), 14.8% alcohol.
One bottle was splash decanted and the other left unopen; both in the cellar at 56 degree F. After 2 and a half hours the second bottle was opened and the two wines poured randomly into three marked opaque glasses while I was out of the room.

Glass A: Dusty earth, charred, tarry notes over evident alcohol and black olives. Very soft entry with unexpected finesse on the palate, fine tannins but lacking a persistent finish.

Glass B: More richly flavored with stewed, charred flavors over coffee and black fruits. Softer tannins but otherwise as for glass A. More flavor carry than glass C.

Glass C: As for glass A with dusty earth, charred and tarry notes over black olives. Softer than glass B, but otherwise more like glass A. Not a lot of flavor carry, almost dead in the mouth.

Note: Dusty note blows off in the glass and is not evidence of a corked wine.

My opinion: Glass B is from the bottle, glasses A and C are from the decanter.
Reality: Glass B is from the decanter, glasses A and C contain wine from the bottle.

Conclusion: Well it only took 10 wines to find one that shows improvement with decanting. OK, you could argue that its less because some of the wines tested might never benefit from decanting, but as I have said before there will be no discrimination against any wine. What was questionable about this decanting test was the lack of varietal definition in the Paradigm even with aeration. Compared to a bottle of 2003 Whitehall Lane Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (14.2% alcohol) drunk a few days later, the Paradigm showed little of the freshness and fruit flavor that you might expect from a wine still in its youth. Still it will be interesting to source a few more splits (375 ml) of Napa Cabernet to see if any more benefit from decanting. My opinion? A simple no should suffice.

Score: Wines tested 10, Decanters 1, Non-decanters 2.

The Great Decanting Experiment – Wine #7

Its not proving easy to find wines that benefit from a few hours in a decanter. OK, so only six wines have been tested so far and there would be serious debate as to whether some of them are true contenders for the title of “A wine that benefits from decanting”. So with the next wine let’s go BIG! The dogma is that young, big wines, with plenty of tannin, need some time in a decanter to calm down their belligerent tendencies; I don’t know why but that brought to mind an image of Paris Hilton after 45 days in jail!

Let’s go back to Napa, to the Robert Biale Vineyards, and taste their 2005 Napa Ranches Zinfandel. Biale is a highly regarded Zinfandel producer, and with hardly any time at all in the bottle, and almost 16% alcohol, the Napa Ranches is young and hot - a Paris Hilton wine? It should really be confined to a cold, dark place for years but let’s see if a little air might temper it.

Wine #7 2005 Robert Biale Vineyards Napa Ranches Zinfandel ($19.99USD, 375ml), 15.9% alcohol.
One bottle was splash decanted and the other left unopen; both in the cellar at 56 degree F. After 2 hours the second bottle was opened and the two wines poured randomly into three marked opaque glasses while I was out of the room.

Glass A: Very aromatic. Smoky oak, blackberry and an aroma approaching violets. Very attractive. Entry is very soft, almost silky with good balance and carry of flavors. Finish is carried by firm tannins. The alcohol is hidden extremely well

Glass B: Less open, with burnt, tarry notes. In the mouth the wine is very similar to glass A, but has a little more astringency.

Glass C: Aromas are as for glass A. In the mouth the wine is the same as glass B

My opinion: Glass B is from the decanter and glasses A and C from the bottle.
Reality: A and B are from the decanter, and C is from the bottle.

Conclusion: Can I change my hypothesis? No, we haven’t even gone through a dozen wines. I could turn this around. After all Paris won’t be spending 45 days in jail, so anything is possible. But decanting, at least for 2 hours, has had little effect on most of the wines tested so far, and the outlook is for more of the same. The next wine is another Aussie Shiraz and I’m tempted to double decant it and then leave it for 24 hours. Why? Well that’s what one wine retailer does with Aussie Shiraz, so why not? On second thought, no. We will stick with the current format for a few more wines.

Score: Wines tested 7, Decanters 0, Non-decanters 1.

The Great Decanting Experiment – Wine #5

The next wine is the 20th vintage of a wine that Talbott Vineyards call a benchmark for California Chardonnay. From vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA, the 33 year old vines yielded two and a half tons an acre at crush. Grapes were lightly pressed into French oak barrels (30% new, the balance being seasoned and neutral), barrel-fermented, and then barrel-aged 14 months sur lees, stirred twice a month, and bottle-aged 12 months prior to release in June of 2006.

This 2003 wine was described by Michael Apstein of Wine Review Online (August 2006) as “Now, with a 20-year track record, most everyone will agree that Talbott’s Sleepy Hollow Vineyard Chardonnay is surely one of California’s best examples of that varietal…it’s a glorious wine.” 95 points.

Wine #5 2003 Talbott Chardonnay, Sleepy Hollow Vineyard, Monterey County, USA ($14.99USD, 375ml), 14.7% alcohol.
One bottle was splash decanted and the other left unopen. After 2 hours and a half hours the second bottle was opened and the two wines poured randomly into three marked opaque glasses while I was out of the room.

Glass A: Richly flavored with notes of nectarine, toasted oak and minerality (petrichor). Underneath is a honeyed, almost marmalade aroma. A mouthfilling wine, with a soft and supple entry and fatness across the palate and an added flavor of apricot. Excellent length with persistence of flavors.

Glass B: Aromas as for glass A, with perhaps more pronounced nectarine. On the palate there is a little more minerality and crisp acidity than glass A.

Glass C: Aromas as for glasses A and B, with perhaps more pronounced nectarine. Very similar on the palate to the other glasses with a touch more crisp acidity.

My opinion: B and C are from the bottle and A is decanted
Reality: B is decanted and A and C are from the bottle.

Conclusion: Again I was pulling at straws in trying to detect any differences in the wine in the three glasses. Very much an exercise in futility that is obvious from my attempt to use crisp acidity as a differential feature of the wine. With barrel-fermentation, and barrel-aging on its lees in 70% seasoned and neutral oak, it has almost certainly undergone malo-lactic fermentation.

Score: Wines tested 5, Decanters 0, Non-decanters 1.

The Great Decanting Experiment – Wine #4

This next wine is a five year young Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that should be coming into its own. The 2002 Peter Franus Cabernet Sauvignon is a mix of fruit from Rancho Chimiles (south east of Napa Valley) and Hyde Vineyard (Carneros). Aged for 18 months in 100% French Oak (75% new). Even though it should be just be entering its drinking window I’m expecting it to be still tightly focused with firm tannins and obvious oak. This is the type of wine that advocates of aeration suggest will benefit from a few hours in a decanter.

Wine #4 2002 Peter Franus Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa, USA ($19.99USD, 375ml), 14.5% alcohol.
One bottle was splash decanted and the other left unopen. After 2 hours the second bottle was opened and the two wines poured randomly into three marked opaque glasses while I was out of the room.

Glass A: Rich and ripe with blueberry, blackberry, banana skin, toasted oak and cedar. Full bodied with firm, drying tannins, nice acidity and good length to the finish. More carry of flavors onto the palate than glass B.

Glass B: Subdued with anise and smoky notes. Not as open as glasses A and C. Full bodied with considerable astringency but lacking depth on the mid-palate. Notes of smoke and oak evident on the palate.

Glass C: Blueberry, smoky oak, banana skin, anise and cedar. On the palate big, drying tannins with nice juicy acidity. Not overly complex. Similar flavor carry onto the palate as glass A.

My opinion: Decanted wine is glass B. Non-decanted wine is glasses A and C.
Reality: A and B are decanted. C is from the freshly open bottle.

Conclusion: Although the notes above may not show it, I really struggled to identify differences between the wine in the three glasses. My notes are really amplifications of what I was smelling and tasting and do not truly represent the fact that the wine was essentially identical in all three glasses. Decanting for 2 hours really did not affect the perception of astringency at all. Some may argue that this is not a classic Napa Cabernet and that other wines would perform differently. And that a longer decant will show differences. Well call me a halfwit, I guess its time to source some other Cabs!

Score: Wines tested 4, Decanters 0, Non-decanters 1.

The Great Decanting Experiment – Wine #3

The third wine in The Great Decanting Experiment is one that I have not tasted before. It’s a Pinot Noir from Carneros. Produced by the Robert Stemmler Winery, the wine is a blend of grapes from six different sites separately fermented in small open-top tanks, hand plunged and aged in 40% new French oak.

Wine #3 2003 Robert Stemmler Carneros Pinot Noir, Estate Grown, Napa, USA ($11.99USD, 375ml), 14.5% alcohol.
One bottle was splash decanted and the other left unopen. After 2 hours the second bottle was opened and the two wines poured randomly into three marked opaque glasses while I was out of the room.

Glass A: Very distinctive note of molasses, almost rancio. Underlying aromas of ripe plums and licorice. A big, ripe Pinot. No subtly here. Full bodied with nice carry of flavors onto the palate. Soft tannins and very bright acidity. Nice length but ends with a slight bitter note.

Glass B: Closed, almost nothing coming from the glass. Faintest Pinot Noir spice, forest floor and a trace of rich toffee. Full bodied, a little more astringent than glass A. Nice juicy acidity but little flavor carry.

Glass C: As for glass B, very closed. Perhaps a hint of forest floor. On the palate this is the same as glass B.

My Opinion: Glass A is the wine from the bottle and glasses B and C are from the decanter.
Reality: Glass A is the wine from the bottle. The other two are from the decanter.


Conclusion: Well I had to get one right eventually! The difference between glass A and the other two was quite obvious, the only question was is glass A decanted or undecanted? Remember my bias? I do not believe that decanting affects wine in a positive way. So the decision was easy, and in this case (at least) the hypothesis holds up.

One point about this wine is that the initial tasting showed it was not endowed with overt Pinot Noir character. But as I swirled and sniffed from the three glasses there was a tendency for some of the spiciness that I associate with Pinot Noir to rise up and assert itself. Perhaps this is a wine that might benefit from an extended decant? Well I did splash decant it. And during its two hours in the decanter I did swirl it several times. Still if I can source a few more bottles I will try a longer decant, perhaps four hours? This may not be a bet to put too much on because as I type I am drinking some of the remaining wine and after almost 24 hours it has developed the caramel character of an oxidized wine. Rancio was a good descriptor after all!

Score: Wines tested 3, Decanters 0, Non-decanters 1.

A Very Good Year
There is a scene in the fictional movie Sideways in which Maya, the female lead, defines her character through her thoughts on wine. She says “I like to think about the life of wine, how it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing……..what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes, and if its an old wine, how some of them must be dead by now……..”. It’s a moving personalization of one individual’s intimacy with the life of wine. It is also a rare display of appreciation because the majority of wine lovers drink wine for the sensory and hedonistic pleasures it provides. Very few think about what it took to get the wine into the bottle they are pouring and enjoying.

This is not true of Mike Weiss, or perhaps more correctly his wife Carole Rafferty who asked “Did you ever think about all that goes into a bottle of wine?” From that simple question came a multipart series in the San Francisco Chronicle and then a book by Weiss. Entitled “A Very Good Year” this rather extraordinary volume traces the life of a California wine from vine to table. The wine is the 2002 Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc and for those interested in a general overview of the aspects of vineyard care and winemaking that produced this wine there is sufficient detail scattered among the 280 or so pages to hold one’s interest. And it is useful knowledge for those wanting to lean about how a wine is made, but “A Very Good Year” is more than about making wine.

Fermenting along with the wine are a number of other stories. Unintended as they may be it is the contrasts that draw you into this book and keep you reading page after page. There is, of course, The Story. It can make or break a wine and the Caranos have their story. More than just a family with wealth from Reno gaming looking to own a bit of Sonoma, there is a passion to succeed, to produce quality wine. Flip the gaming token and you have their Mexican vineyard workers laboring with their own desire to succeed for their families a distant border away. Weiss’s depiction of the lives of the vineyard workers and their families is the most vivid story behind California wine. And even then he has probably only scratched the surface.

The making of the 2002 Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc is also about underlying personality clashes, a protective winery owner criticized for his favoritism, a wine maker with an almost paranoid approach to his craft that is not shared by the junior staff, and a marketing maven with a monster ego. There is even a Deep Cork to provide the odd anonymous insight or two. And, perhaps ironically, there is also human birth, disease and death during the span of vine budding to cork pulling. “A Very Good Year” is very compelling reading for those who want to read about the lives that make a bottle of wine.

The only thing missing in “A Very Good Year” are some of the photographs that must have been snapped by the photographers that Weiss mentions several times in the text.


A Very Good Year: The Journey of a California Wine from Vine to Table by Mike Weiss (Gotham Books, 2005, 288 pages, $26.00USD Hardcover).

Disclosure: A complimentary copy of the book was supplied to me by Gotham Books.