this heaven gives me migraine

WBW14 Announced: New New World Pinot Noir

I am medicated with lots of exciting pills right now (antibiotics) and starting to return to the land of the living. How do I know?

1- I am starting to have urges to clean the house again
2- I've realized I am in need, desperately, of a haircut (and have no appointment, so have to grit my teeth and bear it)
3- I am really, really, missing drinking wine
4- I realized today that there is probably an announcement for a Wine Blogging Wednesday out there for October, and I don't know what it is.

Well, I do now.... Jens of Cincinnati Wine Garage is making us all try a New New World Pinot Noir. Well, sorta. France and the West Coast here in the US are out. He says Spain is okay, although I think of Spain as Old World. In any case, Spain is okay. Australia, Chile, Argentina, all okay. Even Italy (I see Jens is saying Pinot Noir is new to those countries so that is all okay by him). It's all about the new and exciting.

And if you want to be a really good guy on October 5, take your bottle to or get your bottle at a restaurant participating in Dine For America and help give some money to the Red Cross.

David Darlington's Zin

Even though I can't smell much right now and haven't been drinking, I recently finished reading David Darlington's book Zin: The History and Mystery of Zinfandel, and, even though it is a little dated at this time (it was originally published in 1991 under the even sillier title Angels' Visits: An Inquiry into the Mystery of Zinfandel), it was a pretty fascinating read. And, dated or not, as I read it I noticed that items kept coming up in the news that reflected/involved things I had just read in the book, so these people and topics are are all still relevant.

The book starts out with Joel Peterson, Ravenswood and the 1984 vintage. Darlington has a fondness for Peterson that is evident throughout the book, Peterson escaping Darlington's sometimes critical commentary more than others. Darlington discusses a little about winemaking and the state of Zinfandel in California before turning his attention to early winegrowing in the state and the various theories as to how Zinfandel came to exist here. This section is sometimes dry, but has interesting tidbits about CA agriculture in general and details such things as the introduction of Helix aspersa to the state (the common garden snail that all gardeners in CA hate, and the same snail used for escargot) by a Frenchman who brought them here with his vine cuttings.

Darlington spends most of the book profiling wineries and people, interspersing those sections and tying them all up with a running commentary on his work at the time of writing the book (he was making wine, interviewing people, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together, if you will). Ridge, Ravenswood, Joseph Swan, Storybook Mountain, Nalle, and Sutter Home are profiled, as are people such as Darrell Corti, Paul Draper, Dave Bennion, Fritz Maytag, Joseph Swan, and Joel Peterson. I thought the history of Ridge was particularly interesting, and the book actually made me interested enough to see the Monte Bello site that I finally (after years and years of intending to) drove down to see the original Ridge tasting room, which is quite different in character from their Lytton Springs site. All in all, the book contains not only an interesting history of early California winemaking, but also a history of winemaking in California in the latter part of the 20th century. Some of the biographies are particularly fascinating, too (I was blown away by Paul Draper's background).

And as I was reading, I realized news items kept coming up that tied into the book. One night, on the train home, I was reading a section about Ridge where a guy named Leo McCloskey was working with Paul Draper on the chemistry of wine and winemaking. That night I read the article in the New York Times (written by Darlington) about Leo McCloskey and his present-day company, Enologix. A few nights later, I hit a section on Scott Harvey and the Grandpere Vineyard, and realized it was the same guy I had just read about in an article profiling him, his now ex-wife, the vineyard, and the legal issues swirling around them all, and that thirteen years later, things were very different for him. (I notice that the article has been updated with a ton of caveats since it was first published... that's how crazy the whole situation is).

Overall, it was a very interesting book and it filled in a lot of wine history for me. I came to appreciate Zinfandel more and even grudgingly thank the popularity of White Zinfandel for saving a lot of old Zinfandel vineyards from certain replanting. The book proved to me that even wine history repeats itself... in the early 1970's, late-harvest, high-alcohol, super extracted Zinfandels were all the rage for a short time before falling out of favor. And amusingly (unfortunately, if you don't like the style), tastes have been heading that way again, with the rise of winemakers like Helen Turley.

Right now I am reading a non-wine book, but next up is my belated (as opposed to everyone else who got a copy and read it already, or tried to) read of A Very Good Year: The Journey of a California Wine from Vine to Table by Mike Weiss.

Which begs the question.... why do all books about wine need subtitles? If you look at the non-textbook books on wine, a lot of them have them. They are not just called something like "Wine Book", they are called something like "Wine Book: A Book About Wine in Many Words". I guess wine writers are verbose.

"satisfied the examiners"

I have been laid up with some horrible death-cold given to me by a pregnant friend who, it seems, was carrying germs for two, and I haven't been drinking much that I have been noting (although I did have a few interesting bottles with friends pre-illness) and not really drinking much at all, but today I got the results back from the WSET exam I took back in July.

I passed. With merit, which isn't as good a ranking as I'd hoped for (I was hoping for the one superior to it: "with distinction", since I am a dork and that is about as well as you can do), but it works well enough for me. I did fine on the written part of the exam but bombed the tasting a little bit, which is part of what did me in. I guess this is where I kick myself for not shelling out a squillion dollars and going to the class proper... I guess the WSET is a lot pickier about their tasting notes than I thought, and I would have known this had I gone to a class.

Because I hate the way you get a grade from the WSET but never know what you got wrong or did wrong, I poked around online and found a guy talking about the exam over at the Ebob boards. He teaches the class somewhere else in the US and said that the exam isn't as easy as it was pre-2003, and that up to 1/4 of his students fail it on their first try. He said that a lot of his in class students did fine on the tasting notes, but that some home study students have had problems with the tasting notes because (like me) they didn't know to memorize all the sub-categories of tasting and mention each one in the tasting note and comment on it. I commented on the applicable ones, but not each one, and that loses you points, so that is where I went wrong. Live and learn, I guess. If I do anything more with the crazy old WSET I will remember that.

Anyway, I just wanted to be a little happy that I now own another silly wine certificate and passed with merit. Hopefully soon I will be ready to drink and write more, and live on the edge by not writing up wines using the Official WSET-Approved Style of tasting notes, which, while they are thorough and good and scholarly, are deathly boring.

And for now I can be amused (because I am twelve) by the fact that my certificate says that I "satisfied the examiners" and am hereby awarded said certificate. Oh, the WSET, so cheeky.

Quinta do Noval "Raven" Special Reserve

Region: Douro, Portugal

Composition: Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Touriga Francesa

Background: Even though I often like them, I don't drink a lot of dessert wines. Sometimes, when I am out, I will order a glass, but mostly, I don't buy them. I never have occasion to drink enough of the stuff to warrant opening a bottle or even a half-bottle at home. And even though I enjoyed this Port, I also learned that Port is killer (just like frog is killer) and will give you an evil headache a few hours after you drink it.

I had to learn a lot about Port when I took the WSET exam two months ago. There are many different varieties: white, tawny, ruby, reserve ruby, late bottled vintage, vintage, single-quinta, colheita. Like most wines, the main differences are grape quality and aging. Oh, yeah, and price. Port producers, like Champagne producers, only declare vintages in the best years, so vintage Port and single-quinta Ports (vintage Port from a single estate) are expensive indeed. Port is often handpicked (it often has to be since the slopes on which the grapes are grown are so steep) and trodden in stone lagares, since the foot crushes the grapes more gently than any machine. Many Port houses have attempted to move away from the stone lagares, but with limited success. Fermentation is arrested through the addition of a neutral grape spirit (think brandy) when the wine has about ten percent residual sugar, and the result is a sweet but fairly alcoholic fortified wine. The wines are thten usually shipped to Vila Nova de Gaia (across the river from Oporto at the mouth of the Douro River, and away from the hot Douro Valley) where they are aged, since aging in the valley results in baked wines.

This port, the Quinta do Noval "Raven" is a humble ruby Port, albeit a "special reserve" ruby of higher quality than the usual stuff. It was also aged a in oak four years, about twice as long as is the norm for ruby Ports. This doesn't make it on par with the vintage Port that Quinta do Noval (who have, by many accounts, made the single greatest vintage port of the 20th century, the 1931) makes, but it is still fairly tasty, and a lot cheaper.

Since this whole thing was for Wine Blogging Wednesday 13, and, since the whole concept this time around was pairing wine and chocolate cake, I hauled the Port and the chocolate cake (in this case, a chocolate merlot cake) to a Labor Day get together, since sharing cake is way more fun than just eating it yourself. Same goes with a bottle of Port. It may not be the most creative pairing in the world, but it seemed right at the time. I debated a lot of Zinfandels before settling on Port, but couldn't find one that seemed like it would work (although I was wishing for a good late harvest Zinfandel at one point).

I have been curious about this particular cake recipe for a long time, and I made the cake as the recipe indicates since it was the first time I made the recipe. The Merlot I used was a 2003 McManis Merlot (cheap and fruity but okay, just what I wanted). I made a raspberry/blackberry coulis for the inbetween layers and tossed some fresh raspberries on top. The recipe suggests having the cake with the Merlot used in the recipe, but I really thought that would be pushing it, since I subscribe to the "dessert wine should be sweeter than dessert" concept and figured both the wine and the cake would taste like crap if I tried Merlot with it, even if it is a good way to get rid of the whole bottle.

Notes: This was tasty enough that my pregnant friend had a tiny nip of it and then gleefully announced "the baby likes it!" since the baby started moving around. So babies, they are on the Port train. This has a plummy, raisiny nose, with mostly fruit in evidence. In the mouth it is sweet, velvety, and alcoholic. Fruit dominates at first-- cherry, strawberry, and plums. Then spice cake flavors, caramel, with a little dark maple syrup show up on the tongue. It's simple but enjoyable, and went pretty well with the cake, I think.

The cake was not overly sweet, and although I think it was a little drier than it could have been (I probably left it in the oven about three or four minutes too long), it was tasty. It was definitely a better pairing than the cake with the Prosecco we also had out with dessert, since the Prosecco was not sweet enough to carry the cake. And while the cake has some sweetness, it isn't sickeningly sweet overall. I was also pleased with the recipe since while you can taste the Merlot in the cake, it isn't overwhelming. I hate alcohol-fueled cakes that taste like sponges soaked in rum or brandy.

In the end, other than the headache I got later in the evening (and the Zinfandel I had been drinking all afternoon probably had as much to do with that as the Port), I have no regrets about this pairing. We finished the bottle that night, and that means I got a couple of beer drinkers to switch over to Port for a while. Victory! I also just now tried a bit of leftover cake with the Merlot I used to make it to see how that goes, and I have to say, I don't love it, but it isn't so bad, and I can see the merits. The cake is sweeter than the wine, but brings out the mocha and chocolate flavors in it. With some tweaking, I could see it working out.

Cost: $15

Overall: B/B+