this heaven gives me migraine

2003 Cuvaison Carneros Pinot Noir

Notes: This wine was sent to me by Pete Danko of Paterno Wines, right before I got sick (thanks, Pete!). Because of that, I was remiss in my duties of promptly drinking it and writing about it, but I am playing catch up now, and had this a few days ago. (I have a Chardonnay to report on, too, but more on that, later.)

I didn't know much about Cuvaison but some investigation tells me it was started by some engineers (the computer sort) in 1969, and changed hands a couple of times between then and 1979, when a Swiss family bought the winery along with a bunch of vineyard. Right now the winemaker is Steven Rogstad, who was at Clos Pegase a while back, and found his way to wine through his literature major in college. He ferments these hand-picked grapes for about three weeksn and then the wine spends 9 months in 60 percent new French oak barrels.

This wine is a light burgundy-red in glass, not a blue red, but more of a brown-orange red, which is not surprising in a Pinot Noir. It has a slightly hot nose of cherry and strawberry, along with bark and nutmeg. On the tongue the fruit (more of that cherry/strawberry, and a lot of it) is immediate, and then gives way to a bitter orange astringency. A cardamom-cherry cough drop finish cleans up. I find that the astringency in the finish is too much for me, and the bitterness I am getting is somewhat jarring, but the finish is long and pleasant.

Cost: $28

Overall: B-. A nice effort, but not my style of Pinot Noir, really.

2003 Napa Creek Merlot

Notes: I had this at our occasional company-sponsored it's-friday-stand-around-and-drink-and-chat deal. It's a kind of running joke at these that the wine is terrible but we pretend it isn't. The beer served is also not great, but I think the wine might especially suffer, given the budget and knowledge of the people doing the purchasing. Anyway, it's one of those things and you don't really expect to get delicious drinks, nor should you.

Well, hooray to my company for bringing the Napa Creek last week, just because I have wanted to try it and I finally got a chance to without having to buy the stuff. I know I've talked about it before. I've been meaning to pick some up, but first didn't remember, and then when I did remember, couldn't remember if it was the right Napa-whatever wine when faced with it in the store, since I had a mental block on the actual winery name. This is Fred Franzia's wine that says "Dear Napa Vintners, bite me". Fred said he would make a good bottle of Napa wine for under ten dollars, partly because he wanted to prove that it could be done and partly to piss off the Napa vintners. I see that it is 4 bucks at Trader Joe's and up to 10 or so elsewhere, so prices vary, and you can also get it in the Chardonnay flavor.

This was tasted out of a big plastic Solo cup, which was at least one of the clear kind and not the red or blue kind, so I could tell that the wine is dark purplish-red, with ruby-red highlights. It has a pleasant nose full of bramble, black plum and blackberry, and toasty vanilla and oak. When tasted, it starts out with an initial velvety vanilla-plum flavor but then finishes with a harsh and astringent wooden note that is slightly acrid and rough. The lingering flavors are of wood and spice (clove, cardamom, pepper) and there is a slight bitterness. The wine has not much by way of tannins, substituting this rough spice. Overall, it isn't bad, but the finish makes me not enjoy it very much.

Cost: Free for me but I think my friend who bought it said it was $8 at Mollie Stone's (where we get all our Friday wine and beer). If you get yourself to Trader Joe's you can probably get some for half that.

Overall: C+. It didn't kill me or anything, but it wasn't particularly great, and for 8 bucks I think you could do better and find something more interesting and with a better finish.

Random Handful

This is mostly for my own brain since I don't want to forget them.... I drank these here and there a while back, and meant to post them pre-illness, but didn't. Most of them were eh or okay, but the Meric and the Palacios were both interesting and I would seek them out again. And the Le Grive, that was pretty tasty.

2002 Cold Heaven "Vogelzgang" Viognier
Santa Ynez Valley, CA, US
Deep straw, unusual color, very dark
Very perfumey nose honeysuckle and some mineral and lemon
Honey and vanilla and citrus green apple in mouth
Slightly bitter (dull bitter) finish but honey peachy bitter

2002 Erhart Pinot-Auxerrois "Val St. Gregorie"
Alsace, France
Pale straw, soft nose
Almost foxy soapy
Soapy vanilla in mouth
Kind of flabby, slight citrus apple at finish

2003 Brick House Chardonnay
Willamette Valley, Oregon, US
Pale yellow
Sweet soft floral nose creamy white flower
Green apple in mouth leading into creme brulee finish
lemony!

2000 Forteto della Luja 'Le Grive' (Barbera/Pinot Noir)
Piemonte, Italy
Ruby red in glass
Soft astringent nose soft red fruit bacon fat
Gobs of red fruit in the palate, velvety
Some dust on finish
Very simple but enjoyable

2000 Chateau Bousquette Cuvée Tradition
St Chinian, France
Eric Perret, vigneron
Dusty blackberry nose
Light, almost thin spice in finish
Slight smoke
Some carignaney rigidity mid to back palate

2002 Alvaro Palacios "Les Terraces"
Priorat, Spain
Blue purple, vibrant
Nose of sweet black raspberry, cherry, sweet extracted dried blackberry or raisin
Elegant restrained leathery fruit, tannins sweep in but then finish is very very good, and lingers
Goregous finish, leathery but pretty

2001 Allegrini "La Grola" (IGT)
Verona, Italy
Nose like musty attic, funky
Burnt wood, char, bacon fat, meat
Some red/black fruit, bitters
Very chalky finish, big tannins at finish

NV Meric Catherine de Medicis Cuvee Prestige Grand Cru
Champagne, France
Golden yellow in glass fine bubbles
Sweet biscuit and peach funk crazy sweet funk
Sharp mousse (slightly) descends to slight lemon and toast
All about breads in the finish toasty muffiny

2001 Nigl Reseve Sauvignon Blanc

Notes: I had an earlier vintage of this wine years ago and spent years trying to find it again, which I finally did this last spring. Nigl is well known for Riesling and Gruner Veltliner, but their Sauvignon Blanc is either so unremarkable that it is not bothered with here in the states, or so good that it is all drunk up in Austria and nothing usually gets out this way. In any case, the one I had years ago was the first wine that I'd ever had serious snap on the tongue from CO2 and I remember being in love with it from the first sip. This incarnation of the wine is different from what I remember, but then it is a different vintage and also a bit longer in the tooth than the one I had many years ago (which was only a year or two old).

Clear gold in the glass, this is all about fruit, and smells like it could be the bastard child of Riesling and Gewurztraminer, not Sauvignon Blanc. It's not green at all, but round and rich and full of fruit and floral craziness (think white lilies). Peaches and apricots abound in the nose, along with some warm spices like nutmeg and ginger. There are a lot more very ripe peaches and apricots in the mouth, with a toasted cream finish laced with honey. It's funny that I drank this worried that it would be tired and the fruit would be gone, and there is really nothing but fruit going on in here. My only complaint is that it made me very congested! (That was either the sulfites or my endless sinus infection talking, since I had this one back in the throes of on-and-off sinus infections.)

Cost: $42

Overall: B+

Hell has frozen over in Pennsylvania

Pardon my French, but holy shit!

The new guard

SFGate is now on the Holus-Bolus tip, a bit about all the winemakers involved with that effort and what they do besides Holus-Bolus, in a larger article about Santa Barbara county winemakers. I noticed K&L now has some Piedrasassi, which I might try, although it is pricey for someone about to make big life changes like move away. Articles like this make me a little sad at the thought of leaving CA.

2001 K Vintners "Milbrandt" Syrah

I am not dead. After two months of sickness, sinus, and ear infections, three rounds of antibiotics, a few false thoughts of being better, a round of steroids, and a trip to Washington, DC, I am alive (although with a lingering eustachian tube problem, I suspect). Alive is good, because I have been missing wine. In between some of the antibiotics (what was that? late September? mid-October? It seems forever ago) I had an uninspiring bottle of Sangiovese, an eh glass of Cabernet, and a really-not-bad-but-it-was-my-birthday-and-I-didn't-take-notes bottle of Zinfandel, but nothing worth talking about, and really, I was mostly feeling too crappy to do anything but try to sleep and take a lot of pills. And I wasn't sure if my lack of excitement about the wine was my sickness or the fact that the wine really was not interesting, or both.

I also missed Wine Blogging Wednesday 14 AND Wine Blogging Wednesday #15, both which sounded fun and I am sad to have missed out.

Anyway, I tried to make up for everything once I got to DC and was free of antibiotics and weaning myself off steroids (since they bludgeon you with steroids and then slowly reduce the amount over a period of days). We started the week off with the K Vintners "Milbrandt", a wine I dragged out there with me. (Dear K Vintners, what's up with the October shipments? I am guessing they are late? Don't forget about me!)

This is Syrah from the Wahluke Slope sub-region of the Columbia Valley in Washington state (an area that is predicted to get its own AVA designation soon). It's one of the warmer grape-growing areas and I guess there is a lot of apple tree land being turned over to grapes up there (something also happening in Anderson Valley in California right now-- often that is not looked upon with excitement by the locals, as I learned when I was up in Anderson Valley in early September and heard a lot of bitter rumblings about the wineries).

Notes: This is an inky purple-red in the glass, and looks fairly young still (not that it is very old). It has a nose of violets, old chairs, smoke, tar, earth, and, even though I was told this was totally not correct and if I smelled them ever I would recant my description, raccoons. I think there was a tiny gamey element that made me think "raccoon" even though it was not overwhelmingly gamey. The smoke/tar/earth element was most prevalent. The tannins were pretty soft and the finish was pretty fatty and round, leaving a tarry element behind. I thought it was delicious, although not as good as the near-perfect "The Beautiful".

Cost: $28

Overall: B+. I would love to have a case or two around, but it is definitely a wine made for some big food (or cigars), because it is a bruiser.