Maker's Table

Zing

Twisted Oak
Grenache Blanc "Calaveras County"
2010
13.2% ABV | Price: about $24*

This wine is 94% grenache blanc and 6% viognier. Only a few dozen cases were made. It's a very pale, clear yellow, just this side of colorless. In the glass it yields subtle aromas of green apple, stone fruit, tangerine, fresh straw, and sweetgrass. But its predominant characteristic is its zingyness, its bracing acidity. This is a very juicy wine. I would call it "citrusy," but that's more its effect than its flavor.

Sharp and cleansing and sunshiny, and probably perfect with oysters—which are this evening, alas, in short supply.

 

*I received this wine in an exchange with the winery; I sent Jeff Stai a bottle of Bonny Doon Vineyard's Grenache Blanc; he sent me this bottle of Twisted Oak's.

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Who Knew?

Jordan Vineyard and Winery
Chardonnay "Russian River Valley"
2008
13.5% ABV | Price: about $29*

Pale soft yellow, with a beautiful, fresh green apple nose. There is melon, too, and below all this a layer of beeswax or lanolin. It is a soft and unctuous aroma, like an overripe pear, like a box of wool, like butter. It is savory and grounding. The wine spent two months sur lie, subjected to regular bâtonnage, so perhaps what I'm getting here is simply the scent of umami. 

It tastes like spring flowers—Lily of the Valley, mostly, and daffodil—with great acidity above and measureless depths below. It is juicy and a little flinty, too, with brilliant grip and a lingering, minerally finish. It brightens me like sunlight, and wets me down like rain showers.  

I love this wine.

 

*I received this wine as a press sample.

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j.brix

j.brix
Rosé of Grenache "Uncontainable"
2010
13.0% ABV | Price: priceless

Our friends Emily and Jody Towe made this wine in their garage. This is only slightly more exotic than it sounds. Total production: 25 cases.

It's 100% grenache. The fruit comes from the Mesa section of the Santa Barbara Highlands Vineyard, elevation 3,200 feet. The juice spent about five hours on the skins after destemming and before pressing, and then was barrel fermented in neutral French oak with native yeast. Primary fermentation lasted 21 days, and the wine also went through partial malolactic. Two weeks before bottling, in February 2011, it was racked, with sulfur added.

I've been jealously guarding my bottle, which the couple left on my desk during their recent pilgrimage to Bonny Doon Vineyard. I was regrettably not present to greet them that day, although Randall was, and I suspect he was the main point of their exercise anyway. I claimed my prize on my next trip out to California, then swaddled it in bunting (okay, laundry) for its trip back home on the plane. It has reposed on my rack for three weeks while New England decided whether it would ever turn its attentions toward spring. But today there was sun, and so at last I chilled this bottle down and pulled the cork.

It is bright salmon pink—not quite as vocal as the photo shows, but close—with a rosy catch and sungold highlights. Unfiltered and unfined, it throws a sediment of crystals and lees. The nose is faintly appley but is truly all grenache, with clean and very pure grenache fruit aromas. On the palate the wine is bone dry but with a slightly sweet finish, and the net affect is a little floral, like rose petals. But the wine also has great astringency and body, and there's a savoryness to it, although our chers garagistes did not confess to engaging in any bâtonnage.

If it were not so precious, I would call it "quaffable." But I'm savoring it instead, and looking forward to next year.

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Caliberico

Urbanite Cellars
Verdelho "Caliberico"
2009
12.2% ABV | Price: about $15*

The wine is a very pale gold and brilliantly clear with a faint green cast. It offers slightly briny aromas of pineapple, yuzu, and stone fruit, especially apricot. The flavors deliver what the nose promises, with more tropical fruits and stone fruit, plus a citrusy finish that's very clean feeling. It's lush and expansive yet also manages to be bracing, bone dry, and mercifully low alcohol for all this fruit.

More New World than Old, as if the grape's genetics, its native expression, has been somehow amplified by the sheer Californianess of Lodi. I'm finding it quite lovely in this particular bottle, in this particular glass.

 

*I received this wine as a press sample. That's my cat Rhubarb in the distance. She's not much of a wine aficionado. She prefers tuna juice.

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Distinctly Liminal

St. Supéry
Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
2005
13.9% ABV | Price: about $30*

This Cab's a deep inky red—on the purple side despite its six years of age. A blend of 97% cabernet sauvignon, 2% merlot, and 1% petit verdot, it offers delicate aromas of coffee, black cherry, blueberry, anise, and mint. It shows good balance on the palate, with juicy blackberry, black cherry, and plum, plus great grip—a kind of blooming tannin that expands at the very end.

Although somewhat restrained, it is not quite Bordeaux-like; it lacks the gritty austerity we associate with French cabernet/merlot blends. But it's not a California bomb, either. Somewhere in between, and quite nice.

 

*I received this wine as a press sample.

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Solo Grenache

Bonny Doon Vineyard
Ca' del Solo Grenache Blanc
2009
13.4% ABV | Price: about $25*

Pale gold with an iridescent pink cast that reminds me of tourmeline. One hundred percent grenache blanc, it has the scent of new-mown hay, plus pineapple, citrus, and musk melon. As it warms in the glass, the wine opens into more lavish tropical fruits—guava and passionfruit—but retains its fresh herbaceousness. Lush on the palate, with a velvety texture and flavors of green almond, honey, citrus, peach, and pineapple.

It's balanced, though, with good acidity and a savory minerality that rescues it from fauvism. Luscious, but not without restraint.

 

*Disclosure: Bonny Doon Vineyard is my employer. As an employee, I paid $12.50 for this wine.

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Clean

Jordan Vineyard and Winery
Cabernet Sauvignon "Alexander Valley"
2006
13.5% ABV | Price: about $52*

Brilliant ruby red, this wine smells like rare meat, blueberries, cassis, and sweet tobacco. On the palate it offers the same spicy bright fruits—predominantly blueberry and black bramble—with good acidity and supple tannins. It's a blend of 75% cabernet sauvignon, 19.5% merlot, 4.5% petit verdot, and 1% malbec, aged twelve months in 67% French and 33% American oak, of which 33% was new.

What's most curious about this wine is the evenness of its presentation. It tastes the way it smells, and it finishes the way it tastes. It didn't evolve much in the glass, or over the course of our terroir-driven meal of roast beef, potatoes, and vegetables from our friends' farm. I kept looking for something to latch onto, some single attribute that would define for me this wine's essence, its personality. The word that kept coming was, simply, "clean."

 

*I received this wine as a sample.

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Red Earth

Domaine de la Terre Rouge
Syrah "Les Côtes de L'Ouest"
2006
14.5% ABV | Price: about $21.50

Despite having been harvested four years ago, this California Syrah reads like a young wine. It's brilliant purple and a little foamy in the glass. It has some nice funk on the nose, very earthy and spicy (and consequently very promising), and it's full and a bit smoky on the palate—plummy with nice acidity. But it loses steam in the middle and finishes hot.

I wonder what this wine might have been like had it been picked at a slightly lower sugar level, so that the alcohol was held back a bit, and that funky, soulful, maybe soilful site expression could take center stage. I'm also wondering whether the 2010 vintage—for some California winemakers the most challenging in a long while—might yield a slightly more restrained, complex wine from this Lodi sub-appellation.

I'd say Cheers to that.

 

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Pagani

Ridge Vineyards
Pagani Ranch California Zinfandel
2008
15.0% ABV | Price: about $35

This wine is 85% zinfandel, 10% alicante bouschet, 3% petite sirah, and 2% carignane. It's a spectacularly well-crafted wine. Yes, it's a hot California (mostly) Zinfandel, one we might easily dismiss. But there's an attention to detail here that is quite evident, the difference between craftsmanship and commodity.

The nose is a little herbaceous, with anise and mint. It's a bit smoky, too, with aromas of deep, black fruit, warm from the sun. On the palate there's a little grip of tannin balancing the ripe fruits: black cherry, blackberry, plum. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think I can taste the petite sirah adding a bass note. It's the tiniest bit savory. The finish is lingering, dark, and warm.

This wine is sweet and lyrical, with detail and filigree. This wine is firm and well-formed: grounded, muscular, and wildly alcoholic. It is shifting and mercurial, now one thing, now the other; a little enchantment for Hallowe'en.

 

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Remember The

Bonny Doon Vineyard
Alamo Creek Syrah
2007
13.3% ABV | Price: about $35*

A meaty, gamey Syrah with a bewitching nose of voilets and leather and earth. It's a brilliant red-purple, still young and very fresh. Tight at first, we gave it a gentle decanting to let it unfold awhile and warm from cellar temperature. It opened easily, spreading into smooth-textured black bramble fruits and peppery spice around an earthy, savory core. Deeply reminiscent of Northern Rhône Hermitage or Côte-Rôtie (without the latter's enlivenment of Viognier); this wine could age a very long time.

 

*Disclosure: Bonny Doon Vineyard is my employer. I paid about $28 for this bottle, which I purchased as a wine club member before I started working for the company.

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