Jumilla rosé hurray!

My annual hunt for a summer wine is getting very interesting! My latest find comes from the Spanish region Jumilla, an appellation I'm quite familiar with in terms of its red Tempranillo. These wines are often very inexpensive and very expressive, although they are frequently wound so tight you can leave a bottle open for hours before it will finally relax and connect you with a sumptuously complex red that is both easy drinking and food friendly.

Needless to say, when I saw the Bodegas Olivares 2011 rosé for just $8 a bottle at Whole Foods, I grabbed one, expecting it to be tightly wound and delicious.

I was correct on one count: The wine was delicious! Juicy with strawberry and subtle spices, yet remaining dry and fresh. It was not as tightly wound as I would expect from a wine from Jumilla, but then again, this wasn't made with Tempranillo. It is a blend of 70 percent Monastrell and 30 percent Syrah. Like all great rosé, this wine is both great for just drinking and food-friendly. This is a wine I will be definitely going back for more!

I rate this with a 9 using my scale at the left.

Adding to the closet

It seems I haven’t written anything here since my trip to Arizona, and there’s good reason for that. It’s not that I’ve been negligent in writing about the wines I’ve been drinking, it’s just that I haven’t been drinking all that much wine of late.

There were a couple wines, but in those few cases I was negligent because I didn’t jot down any notes. In one case I did jot down a few words. It was for a 2001 Rioja, the Aribau Cuvee Reserva, a Spanish Tempranillo about which I wrote: “Very light, almost like a Pinot. Delicious fruit.” I think I drank this wine at a tapas restaurant in Columbia, S.C., but I’m not certain. Apparently Parker rated this vintage with a 90.

I did find a Kim Crawford 2010 Sauvignon Blanc for just $11; it was an exceptional bargain as this wine usually retails for $17. It was excellent!

And there was a white from Portugal, the 2010 Casa de Vila Verde, the first white wine I’ve had from Portugal. I recall it being very fresh and delightful, but I jotted down nothing for notes.

But I haven’t been completely idle. I’ve added some exciting wines to my cellar – er, closet – and some of them I expect to be drinking this Thanksgiving with family.

One addition to the closet is a 2009 Lirac, which is in the Southern Rhône, the Chateau de Segries Cuvee Reservee by Henri de Lanzac. I drank this one twice so far – once at a restaurant in Conway, S.C. and the other during a dinner with my friend Curt – but I’m afraid I didn’t take any notes. Suffice it to say that I was very impressed with this wine, considering it was just $15. Ah, but I have two more bottles and I will definitely devote a post to this exceptional find. And if you can’t wait, just go out and buy some! It’s that good!

I’ve decided I’m going to attempt to create a vertical flight – or at least as close as I can come to creating one – for Châteauneuf-du-Pape. With the exception of 2008, I have bottles going back to 2005. Even accounting for the fact that my wine cellar is a closet, these wines are age-worthy, many of them for 15 to 20 years.

My most recent additions of these are the 2009 vintage from Domaine Jean Roger, about which I know absolutely nothing (Cellar Tracker suggests you hold until at least 2014), and the basic bottling from Domaine de Cristia. This latter wine comes from a very consistent producer and the 2009 vintage was rated with a 92 and is expected to cellar through 2023. Domaine de Cristia offers some higher end Châteauneufs that are also 90+ wines, but these will cost you; the basic bottling you can find for about $32.

I also recently added a 2009 Beaujolais, the Domaine Diochon Moulin-a-Vent, which we may drink this weekend.

Some new ones for drinking right away I picked up include the 2010 vintage of the Dry Creek Vineyard Wilson Ranch dry Chenin Blanc. The 2009 vintage was such an exceptional value with its fresh, crisp taste that I thought it worth the risk to try the 2010. We shall see.

For Thanksgiving, Curt was kind enough to donate his Italian Merlot, the2009 Falesco from Umbria. This is a reasonably-price wine from a consistent producer who has offered solid wines for the past decade; this should be a decent match with turkey. We’ll also have the Gruet Blanc de Noir sparkler from New Mexico, which Wine Spectator rated as a Smart Buy recently and gave it a score of 90. Not bad for $13.

So while I may have been silent recently, there will be plenty to write about very soon!

A deliciously complex Albariño

I’m a relatively new convert to Albariño, a deliciously crisp and vibrant white varietal from northwest Spain, and this has been a great year to try this wonderful wine.

Recently I shared a bottle of the Burgáns 2010 Albariño with my friend Curt at Glenn’s Diner here in Chicago. This was a deliciously beguiling wine! Yes, it was fresh and vibrant, but it had a very blossomy nose like a fruit orchard. I suggested to Curt it was orange blossom. The wine tasted juicy like baked apple without the sweetness, but definitely with a spiced back end. That was the beguiling part – what was that spice? It was so familiar, but I just couldn’t name it. The best I could come up with was cardamom with a hint of snake fruit – a delicious and somewhat spicy fruit I had once in Bali. And there was blood orange.

Whatever the tastes were, the wine was delicious! We split a Cobb salad as an opener and the wine was great with it. And it was well suited with both our entrees, although I didn’t think the sauce with my seared sea scallops was the right style. Despite that, it was a great wine and meal.

This is a wine I have no qualms with scoring a 9 using my scale at the left.

A wine bar weekend

On Saturday a new friend of mine and I went to a wine bar in Lincoln Park and sampled two of their flights, one white and the other red. My friend, Andrew, wanted to learn more about wine and the wine bar was a perfect solution.

D.O.C. Wine Bar has many locations throughout Chicagoland, and like many wine bars, offers you the opportunity to sample flights of similar wines so you can get an idea of what a region offers or what a varietal offers. It’s a great way for neophytes to learn about varietals and regions, as well as learn the techniques to discern flavor differences and test your pallet. For more experienced wine drinkers, these wine bars can present opportunities with their various flights to sample new wines you may be unaware of, as well as give you opportunities to sample varietals that you might normally not purchase.

The abbreviation D.O.C. in Italian is for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, and is the equivalent to France’s Appelation D’Origine Contrôlee. It reflects a wine region’s denomination designation, and for the DOC, this is defined by the geographic area of production and specifies the varietals that may be used for wine making in order to earn that designation. This board also controls the minimum alcohol content in the wine, the maximum allowable yield with the grapes, and specifications for aging.

For our tastings, Andrew and I started off with three wines in the “Euro trash” flight, a curiously named trio of varietals that I am aware of, but haven’t much experience drinking. I tapped my notes into my iPhone as we drank, and below is what I chronicled.

Strele 2009 Soave, Vento, Italy: Light nose, orchard fruit, apple, peach, a very light flavor, not too sweet, very fresh and crisp, juicy.

Reventos 2009 Muscat/Macabeo, Penedes, Spain: Nose more rustic, longer finish, more herbal, fruit gradually exposed, a curious, almost medicinal flavor, not unpleasant.

Chateau Moncontour 2009, Chenin Blanc, Vouvray, Loire Valley, France: Light, fresh nose, juicy, spicy apple, light finish, best of the three.

Andrew and I both agreed we thought it interesting how the three wines were ordered. The Soave presented juicy and delicious orchard fruit followed next by the Muscat, which was decidedly more herbal and even a bit suppressed. Andrew didn’t care much for it, but I thought it good, though very different from the first. And then the Chablis placed itself right in the middle, having both the light juiciness of the orchard fruit, but still presenting complexity and mineral qualities.

We thought, then, that the ordering was deliberate, so when we ordered a Pinot Noir flight next, we anticipated a similar progression. Before tasting, I explained to Andrew why Pinot Noir can be so beguiling, how difficult it is to grow and how delicate it is to craft into good wine. Nebbiolo is also like this, which is why red Burgundy and Barolos can be such huge disappointments at times: both tend to be expensive, and both varietals are very similar in character. So when Burgundy or Barolo is made well, these wines are extraordinary. But when made poorly, they can be enormous duds.

Nieto 2010 Pinot Noir, Mendoza, Argentina: Can’t peg the nose, the smell is familiar, but can’t name it. A very young wine, thin, watery, no finish. Color a beautiful transparent ruby.

Block Nine 2009, Pinot Noir, California: Light berry nose, bit of spice, tannin noticeable, longer finish, a hint of cinnamon. Tasty, but nothing special.

Vincent Sauvestre 2008, Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France: Nothing on the nose, literally sans smell, bright fruit, but again diluted.

With this flight, we experienced the ephemeral quality that is Pinot Noir. All three wines were generally disappointments in my book, although I must say it was curious to see a Pinot Noir from the Mendoza region of Argentina. If I hadn’t of done this, I wouldn’t have known about the fact there are growers dabbling with Pinot Noir in Argentina.

Repeat visits to wine bars like this are a good idea because the tasting flights do change periodically, so there will be something of interest. And the bottle selection can be relatively deep, although rather expensive, particularly for the higher end wines. For example, D.O.C. has a Chassagne-Montrachet that goes for $116 a bottle, and a Chateuneuf-du-Pape that goes for more than $300.

All in all a delightful experience and one that shall be repeated.

Are there similar wine bars in your area? Tell me about them and your experiences by leaving a comment. What new wine have you discovered through similar tasting flights?

Bodegas Montecillo Albariño

Another very tasty and inexpensive Albariño from the Rias Baixas region of Spain. While this 2008 from Bodegas Montecillo received only faint accolades from Wine Spectator, which rated it with a mere 81, I found this wine to be quite nice, especially for $10 a bottle. I did not detect a taste of bubble gum on the finish, which WS had.

It smelled fresh of green apple, just a hint of grapefruit with some delicate floral scents. The taste was opulent, fleshy, filled with the same green apple as well as pear and nectarine. There was a subtle spice to it as well. This was all built on a mineral back of river stones, round and smooth.

It was definitely an easy drinker, one I would not hesitate to buy again. I rate it with a 7.5 on my scale to the left.

Albarino - A new discovery

First, I want to apologize for the dearth of new posts. My personal laptop died on me, the motherboard fried because of a shorted connection with the external power cord. Silly me, I tripped over the cord one day, which broke the internal connection just enough to not completely sever it. As a result, the partial connection sparked over time and killed the motherboard.

Anyway, I have found an alternative setup to catch up on my posts while I continue shopping for a new laptop. So don’t be surprised if you see a flurry of new posts here over the next week. It’s not that I’ve drank all these wines in just a few sittings! Rather, I’m just catching up with the wines that I’ve enjoyed over the past month.

As you may recall, I’ve been on a search for the perfect summer white, with the idea of purchasing an entire case. However, my search has been so enjoyable that rather than purchase a case of a single wine, I instead bought a mixed case. It’s just way too much fun trying out all these different wines!

And one new discovery I made was in trying a Spanish white from the region Rias Baixas. It’s an Albarino, a varietal that I admittedly had never tried. The one I sample was a bit pricy at $17, but this Dom Bardo 2007 was really quite nice. Wine Spectator wasn’t very impressed with it, scoring it with a 79. But I thought it was a very nice introduction for me to this varietal.

The wine had a light straw color and a lively nose that was fresh and clean. It reminded a little of Chardonnay, but not those heavily oaked California excuses for wine, nor something too creamy and peachy. Rather, it tended more toward a classic Burgundy style of Chardonnay with just a snap of the liveliness you would expect from a Sauvignon Blanc. The finish was strong and refreshing. One thing I noticed with this wine is that you don’t want to serve it too cold. It really gains character as it warms up a bit.

Given the fact this wine was $17, I’ll rate it with a 6.5: I might buy it again if I see it on sale. But it certainly was a positive introduction for me to this Spanish white called Albarino.