this heaven gives me migraine

Magnificent Wine Company "House Wine" (Lot 2)

Region: Washington, US

Composition: 52% Merlot, 46% Syrah, 2% Cabernet Sauvignon

Background: We all know that I love Charles Smith of K Vintners. I was very sad that he was not at the tasting the other week (he had to go to the Masters of Wine down in Monterey that day), but his distributor Ted was there and we got to taste a handful of wines, some of which I hadn't had before, so it was well worth the trip. Including this one, which I had had before, but it was still nice to revisit.

The Magnificent Wine Company is Smith's second label, and this is the second release (referred to as the second lot, since it is technically nonvintage) of "House Wine" (MWC also makes "Pinot", "Merlot", and "Syrah"). The actual composition varies depending on what grapes Smith gets and his mood at the time, but both lots have been pretty good. And the label is great, reminiscent of K Vintners' labels but funnier. You can't miss this bottle in a lineup.

Notes: Dark opaque reddish purple in the glass, this has a nose dominated by what I always think of as "hot fruit": really ripe fruit out on the vine on a hot summer day. It's got a big nose, lots of raspberry and blackberry with hints of toast and resin. I call this a wine that smacks you around a little... Smith likes fruit here, but he also likes structure, and in the mouth it has more of that huge fruit but that isn't the only thing... it's tempered by toasted wood and earth and a lot of soft, fine tannin. It's a bruiser of a wine for only ten bucks, and very drinkable. I enjoy it a lot and even bought a case of it to keep around, because it is fun and guilt-free. It's not as complex as Smith's Syrahs, but it's still (as he describes it on his site) "a steal" and "you must call the cops".

Cost: $10

Overall: B+

2002 Chateau Grande Cassagne G.S. "Le Triage"

Region: Costieres de Nimes, Languedoc, France

Composition: About half Grenache, half Syrah (I couldn't find any numbers, but the 2000 was 44 percent Grenache, 56 percent Syrah)

Background: The Languedoc is one of those regions you always hear about as being up-and-coming, and it is a great area to investigate if you are looking for interesting wines that are not very expensive. It is also the largest winegrowing region in the world, with almost 740,000 acres of vines (compare Bordeaux, which has about 280,000 acres) and used to be largely planted with table-quality grapes which produced not very good table wines. But in the last few years/decades, the area has been replanted with better vines, and a lot of the growers are trying to make fine wine. Chateau Grande Cassagne is one such example. In the 1980's Benoît and Laurent Dardé took over their family estate, ripped out and replanted the vineyards, and now bottle all of their wine at the domaine. They've even installed a temperature-controlled winery and cellar, and seem to be very serious about their winemaking.

The estate itself is located a little bit south of Nimes, in the very south of France (somewhat to the west of Marseille), in the Eastern Languedoc. This region is south of the Rhone and the producers often grow Rhone varietals, focusing on light red wines and rosés. The vineyards from which the grapes used in this particular wine come are actually in a sub-region of the Languedoc referred to as Costieres de Nimes, and this area was granted appellation status in the 1980's (after a lot of estate owners lobbied hard to get it granted), changing its name from Costieres du Gard to Costieres de Nimes. It's funny, if you look around, sometimes vendors claim this wine is from the Rhone, an obvious attempt to impress people who don't try to decipher the intricacies of French wine labeling.

Notes: Ruby purple in the glass. Violet and blueberry on the nose, some earth and iodine. Once it's in the mouth it is all about earth, with some black fruit, and it's got a lot of tannin. It has a slightly harsh, chalky, bitter-chocolate finish that softened up a little with some air (and dinner), but never truly impressed me since the finish was pretty curtailed and tarry. Overall, this is a little too rustic for my tastes and not very complex. It might be better in two years... at least a little softer.

Cost: $9

Overall: C

WBW7: Obscure reds

Get ready to get crazy with Wine Blogging Wednesday 7, this month hosted over at Spittoon. Don't think about Tempranillo, let alone Cabernet Franc. Or anything white or pink, for that matter. You have to find a red, and you have to find an unusual varietal. Andy's got a list of the banned grapes and also has some ideas for folks who are at a loss. So find yourself a bottle of something strange and get drinking, because the date to write it up is March 9!

Bathtub wine in India

Everyone over here in the U.S. (well, "everyone" meaning "people who actually keep up with wine news") is wrapped up in the interstate shipping court case the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing (old Prohibition laws still prevent wineries from shipping wine to about half the U.S states, and wineries are trying to get those laws overturned).

Well, it could be worse. In India, winemaking is expensive: to run a winery, an operator needs to pay yearly licensing fees of 75,000 rupees (about 1,800 dollars) winery installation and bottling, 2 rupees a liter for excise duty, and another small fee per liter if they want to export the wine. And after paying all those fees, the winemaker can't even sell the wine directly to consumers, he or she must go through some state-run beverage corporation that sells the wine to wholesalers. Individuals can be punished for making wine at home with a fine of 1,000 rupees. The whole thing makes my home state of Pennsylvania with its crazy blue laws and state stores look like a fun, wine-loving place.

In any case, the situation is so bad for wine lovers that desperate (well, rich) housewives have been making it illegally and selling it concealed as "liquid food" in stores.

What's in a name? Cheap grapes, maybe

Fred Franzia is at war with a couple hundred Napa vintners.

Franzia (yes, son of the man who brought us Franzia boxed wine, although he did not inherit that particular company) is a very shrewd businessman. I am not sure I mean that in a nice way, although it has done him well monetarily. He is the man behind Two Buck Chuck, and he is planning to bring something akin to Ten Buck Chuck to the market soon. In any case, he's made a hobby over the last few years of buying up wineries with useful regional connotations in their names (such as Napa Ridge and Rutherford Vineyards) and ditching the wineries and vineyards themselves, just to hold onto the names. And then hopefully sell cheap wine made from grapes grown in the Central Valley under those labels.

Somebody is bound to not like that, and in this case, it is about 300 Napa vintners, who are locked in a legal battle with Franzia over the issue.

Basically, it comes down to this:

In 2000, Napa vintners (I guess knowing what Franzia was up to and not liking it) lobbied legislators and got a law passed in which it was ruled that in order for a wine to lay claim to the Napa region on the label, 75 percent of the grapes used to make the wine have to come from Napa (or maybe 85 percent since Napa is an AVA... I am getting conflicting info). Federal law states the same, but grandfathers in any winery names that existed before 1986, when the law was passed (the grape origin must be described on the label somewhere, which means it can be in tiny lettering on the back). Franzia is trying to use this loophole to his advantage. The case has been tossed around and reversed by the California Supreme Court (who ruled that federal laws do not overrule state laws here) and now Franzia is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. He points out that vintners in other states are allowed to do exactly what he is doing, and has about 100 wineries and grape growers on his side.

Franzia, by the way, is no stranger to the court: In 1993 he was convicted of passing off cheap crushed grapes as Zinfandel worth ten times as much (even going so far as to sprinkle Zinfandel vine leaves on top of the grapes).

Franzia thinks he is fighting the prejudice and snobbery of the wine world and calls the Napa vintners a bunch of whiners, but I think he is up to something else. Something called making a buck at the expense of consumers. I hope the Napa vintners win, whiners or not.

Wine-lover or alcoholic?

A friend tipped me off to this article over at the New York Times, where the movie Sideways is debated (yes, it will never end) and the subject of Miles' possible alcoholism comes up.

The question being, simply: Is Miles an alcoholic in the movie?

The article pits recovery/alcoholism experts against the wine writers/professionals and has the obvious outcome: Recovery experts say yes, wine writers say no. And of course it isn't as clear-cut as all that.

I have been thinking about this kind of thing a lot lately since I am hoping to someday to leave my current job for one in the wine industry, and I come from a fairly long line of alcoholics. My mom is one in recovery, her parents both had problems, and my biological father was one (and, for a time, a bartender-- how convenient) and killed himself eventually. I worry that my entry into the wine world is me walking in my biological father's footsteps, albeit in the upper-middle-class way. I am trying to be very careful. I hear stories of so-called professional wine tasters falling off their chairs at tasting events and know there are some problems for people in the industry.

My personal opinion, tainted or not by my family's alcoholism, is that I think Miles has a problem. I don't know if he is a full-blown alcoholic, but he's well on his way if he doesn't change some things. He is drinking to ignore his problems, he is drinking to act out and be an asshole, he is drinking to try to forget. The counterargument is that a lot of people do those things and not all of them are alcoholics. True.

Maybe he is just an asshole drinking a lot on a trip, and otherwise he's not like this. We don't know. My gut feeling is that there are problems there, but, like with my mother, unraveling what caused what takes a while. And the book/movie doesn't give us enough to go on to know if this is his normal modus operandi or not. Is he drinking because of the divorce or is he divorced because he was drinking? We don't know. What came first, depression or drinking? We don't know. The book gave me the impression that he was more often like this than not (I will have to watch the movie again to see if I get that idea from the movie, too), but we still just don't know. I do know that the character is pretty unlikeable, but there are a lot of unlikeable people out there and they aren't all drunks.

The wine writer says he doesn't think Miles is an alcoholic just because Miles hasn't ruined his life yet. That's a flawed philosophy (do you have to hit rock bottom/ruin your life before you can declare yourself an alcoholic? how do you define rock bottom?). Some would argue that Miles' life is pretty ruined (he is late all the time, drinks too much, can't let go of his ex-wife, has a job he hates, can't write, steals from his mom, embarrasses himself in public because of or due to alcohol) and some would say that his life is just sad and pathetic like the lives of most people. And that his plight is the plight of the common man.

Which is enough to make someone drink, I guess.

Riddle of the day

Where would you get a used riddling rack for your at-home riddling needs? Or how about a sea storage container (also used)? Peter Dunsmuir can help get you what you need. Wine barrels, used timber, riddling racks, he's got it all.

I share for amusement (although if you are tending your at home winery and on a budget, you might find it useful) and I am the kind of person who would buy a riddling rack, if only I could think of a good use for one around the house. And if I had space to spare....

Schlamiel, Schlamazel, Garretson Incorporated

What's it like working a winery bottling line? Earlier this month I took a day to find out, and worked a bottling line at Garretson Wine Company. Originally I had a whirlwind tour of the Central Coast planned... Matt and I would drive down to Paso Robles Thursday night, I would work the line Friday while he entertained himself, and then we would drive down to Solvang (which, until I was fifteen minutes north of Paso Robles, I thought was only another half hour south when in reality it is 90 minutes away) and spend Saturday and Sunday wine tasting and checking out the area. Well, unless I lost fingers in a horrible bottling accident or got buried under a ton of bottles a la I Love Lucy.

Then Matt got sick. He felt terrible and terrible about it, and we both knew it was better if he stayed home. I cancelled the second night's stay in Solvang, and decided to come home a day early since I was stranding him at home sick and with no car. I got my six pack of Diet Coke in bottles (because I get kind of frantic if I travel without it, having been stranded in a motel with only Diet Pepsi machines one too many times before) and I was ready to go.

Anyway, I got down to Paso Robles after being stuck in traffic on 101 for a million hours (really, it took me 3 1/2 hours when it should have been around 2 1/2). I got in fairly late, and spent a miserable night worrying about the next day and watching terrible movies on TV. What would I have to do? What if I messed everything up? I couldn't get to sleep and took some mostly-useless-to-me-but-I-was-desperate melatonin at 12.30 AM and then ended up waking up all night anyway. I gave up on sleep a little before 6 , figuring I had to be up by 6.30 anyway, to get to the winery by 7.30. Needless to say, I got there in plenty of time.

The winery is in a industrial complex off Route 46 to the east of Paso Robles, and, as would make sense, has a tasting room in the front. Behind that is the huge warehouse and office area of the winery. The bottling truck (who knew there was such a thing) was parked around the side. It looked kind of like a taco truck (I have included some crappy pictures from my cell phone so you can get the idea), except there was a conveyor belt that made an upside down U in it, if you were looking in from the back. Later I learned that bottles came in on the bottom right side of the U, were fed from the belt into a single line, and were then filled with argon, filled with wine, capped or corked at the back end where the bend in the U would be (we were using Stelvin screwcaps that day) and came around where they were put into boxes. The boxes were then slid down to be loaded on to the pallet, where they were then checked by Mat Garretson, sealed, rearranged slightly on the pallet, and packaged up with huge industrial saran wrap.

I felt out of place when I got there since everyone there seemed to know each other already, but I met a few folks (and dogs) and felt a little more at ease. It was a funny situation, since I never actually learned the names of some people I worked with all day. There were seven volunteers, two guys who worked the truck (they knew how to fix things on the line), and two people from the winery, plus Mat. Mat is awesome, and is not the kind of guy to stand around and direct people... I saw him do everything that day, from driving the forklift to packing boxes to climbing into a dumpster filled with cardboard to be recycled and jumping up and down like a gorilla to pack it down so we could put more in. Everyone milled around for a few minutes and chatted and set stuff up, and then it was time to get to work. I wasn't sure where to go, but got pointed at the head of the line, to get started bottling rose.

Three people worked the front of the line. One herded the bottles into the system via the conveyor (they often fell over or got stuck) and two handed bottles to that person by placing them on a stationary table at the head of the conveyor. Two people had to do that job since we were working with pallets of wine bottles (144 bottles a layer, six layers high) and one person had to get on a ladder for the upper layers and then crouch on the ground below the truck and hand them up when we got to the bottom layers. When one pallet was nearly empty, someone on a forklift would bring the next one over and then replace the old pallet with the new (all while people were grabbing bottles from the new pallet to keep the line going). I started out doing bottle-herding, and once I got the hang of sweeping bottles onto the conveyor, feeding them in and also making sure they didn't get snagged on the way into the line, things were fine. I only felt like Lucy once or twice.

I worked the front with two guys, Ed and another guy whose name I didn't get. They were both very cool and knew the ropes and even gave me tips on places to go down around Solvang (wineries and restaurants) when we were done for the day. I found it hard to talk since the machinery was really loud and they were often facing away from me, but we got to chat when something would break and we could stand in the sun and wait for it to get fixed. We also had music to listen to, which amused me to no end because we were listening to an eighties station. I had to suffer through Animotion and U2 but got to hear some Echo and the Bunnymen and even Public Image Limited's "This Is Not A Love Song" which I thought fantastically amusing at 9.30 in the morning, because I had had no sleep.

It was freezing all morning and things didn't get warm until maybe 2 in the afternoon. My feet were even cold, and they are usually too warm in the shoes I was wearing. Next time I am definitely bringing gloves.

I learned a few important things:

1. Wine bottles that have been out in 35 degree weather all night are really cold.
2. If you handle a couple hundred/thousand wine bottles, your hands turn black and shiny.
3. One tipped bottle will, in two seconds, equal three tipped bottles, which will, in two more seconds, tip about eight more bottles, if you let it happen, so be alert and move fast.
4. Time has not done that stupid Romeo Void song any favors.

Bottling is extremely boring but I was thrilled to not be sitting at a desk all day. You have long periods where you get into a rhythm and things flow smoothly and it is almost meditative, only to have one bottle tip and then it all goes south. We worked all morning on rose, and then in the afternoon did two bottlings of Syrah (one small, about 200 cases, and another larger, about 500 or 600 cases, I think). In the afternoon I moved all the way to the front of the line and worked on getting bottles off the pallet and to the person working the belt and found that balancing on a ladder trying to yank bottles off a pallet is pretty difficult. And your arms get tired! When we ran out of wine to bottle and they walked the line to get the last out, my arms were happy to be done. I ended up dead tired that night but the next day I felt fine (and after some Danish pancakes I had a lovely day of wine tasting, the highlighted with Beckmen and Sanford).

It was a good experience (and hard work) and I would definitely go back and do it again. The folks there also talked me into going to Hospice du Rhone after the bottling-- we lingered for a while afterwards and talked and tasted some wine and Mat's family showed up with Fireball (especially exciting because I love bulldogs) so I will be headed back down to the area in May. I mean, I figure after ZAP I should probably go to a tasting that isn't unpleasant, and everyone promised me that Hospice would be fine (tickets are limited too, which is a great thing).

Randomly, Mat Garretson makes the darkest rose I have ever seen. It smells like a rose (lots of cranberry), tastes like a rose, but it's darker than a lot of Pinot Noirs I've seen. It would be a great thing for stumping people at a blind tasting (not that blind tastings aren't baffling enough, really).

2002 De Toren Diversity Gamma

The Saga: My entry for Wine Blogging Wednesday 6, hosted by Jeanne over at Cook Sister, was hard come by... I originally set out to review the 2001 Rust En Vrede Estate Red (a Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz/Merlot blend) which came highly recommended to me at K&L last Saturday. I picked up a bottle post Champagne-tasting, and figured I would get my entry for a South African red started in advance by opening it that night. Hooray for planning ahead!

Then I opened the bottle.

Things weren't looking good, since the cork was soaked almost all the way through. I know that isn't always a bad sign, so I nervously poured some into a glass to sniff. Bad, bad bad. It smelled oxidized and had no good qualities. It was flat and gamey at best. To make sure (and because I am crazy like that), I took a sip. Worse! Nothing good on the palate, just acrid nastiness. The bottle was bad. I even checked some reviews online and determined that none of the qualities the reviewers mentioned were in that glass. Totally oxidized.

Sunday I took the bottle back to K&L and got a new one. I still had plenty of time. Then I opened that bottle and it was also bad. I started thinking this was not meant to be. I took this second bottle back Tuesday and Mike, who was there, opened another in the store. It was bad, too.

This left us both staring at the small South African selection available and making faces. I figured the Porcupine Ridge Syrah would be okay, but I had it not too long ago and was not really excited at having it again. It isn't bad, but it wasn't really exciting, and I wanted to try something new.

And so I ended up with a wild card. I didn't know anything about this when I got it (well, I remember looking at it in the K&L selection online when I was researching wines, and thinking "maybe that"), other than a silly Wine Spectator review we found in the K&L database that used the term "claret". I decided to take a chance and not hold a dumb review against a possibly good wine. And so I present (at almost 11.30 PM-- so much for planning ahead) the 2002 De Toren Diversity Gamma.

Region: Stellenbosch, South Africa

Composition: 36% Cabernet Franc, 31% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Petit Verdot, 8% Malbec

Background: This wine is leftovers, and when I think about it like that, it's kind of funny, even though if you are a winery trying to make a profit, you have to do something with those extra grapes, and that means creating more wine (under a second label, or not) or selling it in bulk. De Toren (Dutch for "the tower") is a small winery about 25 miles east of Cape Town, right outside Stellenbosch, and they have had some relative fame in past years for the one and only wine they made, a Cab-based blend called Fusion, which they first produced in 1999.

One year later they looked at the wine left over after choosing the lots for Fusion and wondered how it would taste if they did something with it rather than sell it off in bulk. They declared the resulting wine to be awesome and named it the 2000 Diversity Alpha. Last year they released the 2001 Diversity Beta (sense a theme, here?) and this year brings us the 2002 Diversity Gamma. Diversity Gamma has the lowest percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon yet (the wine started out as 100 percent CS in 2000 and dropped to 78 percent in Beta, and is now 15 percent in Gamma) and the wine spent 12 months in 2 and 3 year old French and American oak barrels. The grapes are grown in what De Toren claims is the world's only 100% gravity fed vinification process, which means they don't use any mechanical pumps in the winery, but allow gravity to draw the wine in and out of fermenting tanks and barrels and blend and manipulate it. They use a hoisting tower to aid this (hence "De Toren") and claim that the lack of mechanical pumping traumatizes the grapes less.

Notes: Even though it is a pretty ruby in the glass, this has a really weedy green nose, lots of bell pepper, and a slight musty odor that isn't TCA but something like wet dog (some brett, possibly, although this doesn't smell like the brett I have encountered before). There's also some black cherry, but it is really muted. In the mouth it is a slightly different animal... some more very slight black fruit, starting out muted but then bursting into a liquid smoky finish laced with tobacco. There is some nice acid and soft tannins, but the lingering taste in the mouth is one of ashes, which, although interesting, isn't particularly enjoyable. I did not love this wine and am still thinking there is something wrong with the bottle (not enough to make it undrinkable, but enough to make it off), although Matt liked it.

I have to wonder what it is about the terroir and/or winemaking style in South Africa that involves liquid smoke? I know I haven't had a ton of wines from there, and I am making a horrible generalization by saying it, but a lot of the South African wines I've tried have a smoky smell/taste that reminds me of the juniper tar in Kiehl's Drawing Paste. Anyway, this is something I am going to investigate more (I meant to this week, for WBW, but just haven't had the time yet). I was hoping this wine would be different, but alas, no luck. I am not giving up on South African wines, although maybe I should avoid the leftovers in the future.

Cost: $18

Overall: C

2002 Qupé Central Coast Syrah

Region: Central Coast, California, US

Composition: 86% Syrah, 6% Grenache, 4% Counoise, 3% Mourvdre, 1% Cinsault

Background: Qupé is Bob Lindquist's "stone age winery" and his effort to bring people good wine at a price they can afford. The Central Coast Syrah is a blend of grapes sourced from eleven different vineyards (including Bien Nacido, Rancho Arroyo Grande, and other vineyards from which Qupé makes single-vineyard-designation wines) in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. The lots from each vineyard are fermented by themselves, and then blended together in stages as Lindquist makes the single-vineyard wine picks. The wine is aged for about a year in mostly neutral French barrels (and a tiny bit of new oak), before the 14,000-odd cases are bottled.

How can this wine be labeled "Syrah" with all that other stuff in there? Well, California law requires that only 75 percent of a wine need be labeled varietal in order to call the wine that. Since this wine has 86 percent Syrah in it, it can be called Syrah on the label. The same goes for anything with a county label (Santa Barbara County, Sonoma County, etc) on it: 75 percent of the grapes must be from that county, but up to 25 percent can come from somewhere else. Things get more strict if a wine claims it is from a specific American Viticultural Area (such as Dry Creek, Rockpile, etc): in that case, 85 percent of the grapes must be from that AVA. And if you claim a vineyard designation on the label; well, 95 percent of the grapes must be from that vineyard.

Notes: Really dark ruby in the glass. Slightly hot nose of spice (thyme, rosemary, something almost sprucey... cedar?) and blackberry/raspberry/licorice. A fair amount of that fruit and some earthy forest floor flavors are on the palate along with some very soft tannins and nice acids, all finished with a warm, pleasant, peppery finish. It's not the world's most complicated wine, but is enjoyable and very drinkable.

Cost: $15

Overall: B