this heaven gives me migraine

Sokol Blosser "Meditrina" II

Notes: This was actually sent to me (hooray for free wine) and it was exciting because I like its white-grape sister, Evolution 9, which is fun to drink. So this is an interesting wine to check out, especially since I didn't know it existed. This is the second release of the blend (indeed, you can know that by the tiny "II" on the label), and this year it is 48% Pinot Noir (most from the Sokol Blosser vineyards in Oregon), 39% Syrah (from Lodi in California and Columbia Valley in Washington), and 13% Zinfandel (also from Lodi).

It's very bright ruby in the glass and it looks young and fun. Nose of chlorine swimming pool, blackberry, and black cherry. As it warms up, you get more of the Pinot Noir in the nose: an earthy black cherry smell. There is a snap of CO2 when it first hits the tongue, which chills out once it sits out for a while, and then Zinfandel dominates the mid-palate with a sweet spice and fruit, and the Syrah dominates the backend, with a tarry black lingering finish. Nice acid, lots of fruit, some pepperiness and astringency at the finish, not much tannin.

It's totally a fun and easy-drinking red... not challenging, not strange, not anything but spice and fruit and, well, okay, a little chlorine swimming pool (which isn't a fault in this instance, I don't think, even though it could be: it's just something I picked up, which seems to have turned into Pinot Noir funk and spice once a little air got to it). It's also got a cute label even though I kind of hate myself for even thinking that, let alone saying it here. The snappiness on the tongue is slight and even though I don't love that in a red wine (I like it in whites) it wasn't overbearing or horrible.

I should probably give this a B+, but, like everything else in my life right now, I find that I am vaguely dissatisfied about wine. I am not even sure what it is I am looking for, but everything seems to fall short. I guess right now my glass is half-empty. But this was at least a tasty half-glass of something.

Cost: $18

Overall: B/B+

2003 Ridge Lytton Estate Late Harvest Zinfandel

Notes: This is something odd for me, a bottle of Ridge and I have no idea from where it came. Either this was a semidrunken purchase at the winery at some point or one of my ATP shipments (which, upon further investigation, it is). I probably should have let it age another year or two before drinking it. Oh, hindsight. But it was a Friday night after a long week of walking specs and filing bugs and sometimes you want something ridiculous and fruity that doesn't go at all with the pizza you end up eating for dinner and well, it just happens. I am a little tired of opening funky/corked/somehow bad French regional wines and this was a promise of something clean and simple and drinkable.

Anyway, it was pleasant company while watching bad movies. Well, a bad movie (hello, Red Eye).

And, since it was an ATP wine, that means I have another one socked away in storage so I can wait a while and have that when it is a little more evolved and I can do it up properly with a cheese plate, the way it should be had.

Deep ruby in the glass, purple red. The nose jumps out at you; bramble, hot blackberry and strawberry, with some toasty wood mixed in there. Slightly hot, alcoholic nose which isn't a surprise considering it is late picked (some of the grapes were almost 32 brix when picked and the wine itself is 16.1% alcohol). Mouthwateringly fruity when it hits the palate, full of raspberry. Clear raspberry with a somewhat minty/eucalyptus finish. Slight tannins and dryness, but not much, and the finish is mostly dominated by a vanilla flavor (the wine was aged in 20 percent new American oak, which explains that). The wine has 2.6 grams/liter of residual sugar, so the finish is definitely on the sweeter side even though it isn't overly syrupy or desserty.

Cost: $26

Overall: B+

2002 Sean Thackrey "Sirius"

Notes: I drank a fair amount of wine over the holiday (2002 Cakebread Chardonnay, 2003 Robert Sinskey Los Carneros Pinot Noir, and a Sean Thackrey Pleiades) but took no notes on them because I was holidaying. They were very delicious, though, I can assure you of that. And on the last day of the year, well, let's go off on a big note and talk about something I have been remiss in posting until now. Here is a nice little love letter to a bottle of wine to end the year.

My love letter is to Sean Thackrey's Sirius, which is his Petite Sirah, and the grapes come from Eaglepoint Ranch in Mendocino. I love Thackrey's stuff but mostly hoard it, and drink the Pleiades (which is nothing to sneeze at) as much as I can. I finally decided it was time to break into a bottle of something fancier. Thackrey's wines are a little crazy, and it seems you either like the crazy or you don't (I fall on the "like" side) and this one was even more wacky and complex than the Pleiades. It was the first red wine I've ever had that had a distinctive mustard aroma, and even though that sounds crazy and wrong, it worked for this wine.

In the glass, the wine is a dark purple, almost black, with purplish red edges. When agitated, it has that yellow mustard smell in the nose, and when it sits around quietly that mustard morphs into gardenia and jasmine (I know! It makes no sense! But it is true!) with a lindenlike candy smell. Under all the mustard and flower there is a solid line of black fruit (berries, plums) with a little bit of nut/vanilla creaminess. The wine assaults your mouth with a wave of concentrated blackberry/blueberry flavor beginning right at the forefront of the tongue, and this rolls around smoothly to the finish, which has some peppery spice and drying tannins. The finish leaves you with an echo of the floral in the nose, and is very good. This is a monster of a wine that has a massive amount of fruit in it, but the acids are well-balanced and there is a lot going on to keep it from being a baked fruit bomb. I would have been interested to see how this fared after a day or so (I will make a resolution right now to spend 24 hours with a bottle of Thackrey wine in 2006 and watch it change) but I have to say it was so tasty we made quick work of it over the course of the evening. Maybe next time....

Cost: $45

Overall: Could it be anything but an A? Nope. Please send five cases immediately.

2001 Uvaggio di Giacomo "Il Gufo"

Notes: Jim Moore makes wines under this label and, as Italian sounding as the label is, it just means "the blends of James" in Italian, and he uses Italian grapes, but he is in Napa Valley in California (he previously worked at Mondavi and Bonny Doon). I picked this wine up because I had his Il Gufo rosato at RAP last summer and liked it a lot. ("Il Gufo" is Italian for "owl", and, as you can see, there is an owl on the label.) 758 cases of this were made, and, as is fairly common with Barbera, it is a blend of only 90 percent Barbera with 10 percent Nebbiolo tossed in, something I think you can tell mostly in the finish.

Ruby red in the glass, pretty youthful-looking with a slightly pink rim. The nose is very woody and smells of tobacco, spice, and loads of black fruit, along with hot summer bramble and a little raspberry. It's slightly hot on the nose. In the mouth it's very fruit-forward, with lots of jammy blackberry and black plum, followed by a slightly woody finish that has a trace element of blunted bitterness. It leaves your gums tingling and your mouth watering (gotta love those acids!), and sticks around for a nice long time. It's not an overly complex or fancy wine, but is fun. This would be great if you were having pasta or pizza or even hanging out and grilling burgers.

Cost: about ten bucks

Overall: B. It's not complex, but tasty and fun, and I would keep a case of something like this around for guilt-free drinking.

2004 Bonny Doon Grignolino d'Asti

Oh, what to say. I haven't been drinking much. Why? For once, I am not sick.

We are presently buying a house. A first house. A house 3,000 miles away. A house in need of a lot of work. Needless to say, this has been taking up a lot of my free time and meager mental powers, and when I am not thinking about all that, any drinking I have been doing has been of the stress-release and drink-to-forget variety and I haven't necessarily been doing anything other than going "yum" and drinking. I have been going through periods of sleeping 4-5 hours a night, waking up at 5 AM, and have been even losing weight because of the immense worry that has, even though I have been eating normally, done something to me (I imagine that being actually awake for about 19/20 hours a day has something to do with that). Right now I'm interested in cork mostly in plank form, to put down on the kitchen floor. And I am worrying/investigating things like "how to move a wine collection across the country (safely) without going broke in the process". You know, fun things like that.

Anyway, wine of the immediate and drinking sort. I have some things to write about later, but right now, at the last minute, I am attempting to at least participate in this lovely Wine Blogging Wednesday number 16, hosted by Derrick of An Obsession with Food. This month the challenge is to see whether the pretty outside means tasty inside, and find a wine with a good label.

Even though my first thought was Ridge, because they have fantastic labels (simple, text based, and dating back to the 1960's) I chose this wine because it has a Gary Taxali label, and I love me some Gary Taxali. This is a slightly more sedate label than some others he has done for Bonny Doon, but it is great nonetheless. Even if I am not sure what exactly it is. I am a sucker for a good label, even though I am under no illusions that it actually indicates good wine is inside. I have had some really bad wine in nicely labeled bottles, and some really good wine in dreadfully labeled bottles, so it goes both ways.

The wine itself is a Grignolino d'Asti, from Piemonte in Italy (this is one of Bonny Doon's wines made from European grapes), and the name of the grape variety is supposedly derived from the fact that the grape is one with many pips. It's a light but vibrant clear ruby in the glass, with a paler orangish edge. It was pretty funky directly out of the bottle, with a medicinal smell of old Band-Aids (not as bad as you might think), but as it sits it is getting softer, and now has an aroma of old chair leather, thyme, and violets. It's much bigger and more full-bodied than you would expect from the color-- robust with a good amount of drying tannins and nice acidity. There is a clear thread of cherry red fruit woven though the tannins and the expected leathery/iodine overtones, and overall it is very pleasant, although not overly complex. It's a funny combination of refreshing and tannic.

I have had some really bad Bonny Doon wines with great labels (like the Freisa), but happily, this one is nice and I will be glad to drink the whole thing later on. Later on, while I am learn more about cork flooring and homeowners insurance.

Cost: I think it was around $15 or $20

Overall: B

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.

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.

2001 Chehalem Stoller Vineyard Pinot Noir

Region: Willamette Valley, Oregon, US

Composition: 100% Pinot Noir

Background: I remember that my friend Dan first touted Chehalem wines to me, years ago. He'd had a chance to taste some of them while working at Asia Nora, and tipped me off that they were worth investigation. Because of this, I always think of Dan when I drink Chehalem wines. I've had a smattering of their Pinot Noirs and also their Pinot Gris, and I have had some very long days at work lately, so when I got home tonight I decided to open this up while I made a fig/arugula/goat cheese pizza. I am glad I did. I am also glad I liked it, since (and I don't know if it was me or the wines or both, I suspect both) when I was at Family Winemakers on Sunday I had a streak of Pinots that screamed OAK to me, and not much else, and I couldnt deal with it. But more on that when I write up Family Winemakers.

Aside from the aforementioned oak issues, I have always liked Pinot Noir. It's the first red grape I fell in love with, which isn't surprising since for a few years I thought reds didn't agree with me (one night of a migraine made me superstitious) and only drank white wines. It's a friendly way for white wine drinkers to learn about reds, since it isn't normally monstrous or tannic.

The land on which this particular Pinot was grown is possibly the only connection in the world (and here you werer never even looking for one, were you?) between Pinot Noir and turkeys (live ones, not Thanksgiving turkeys), since it used to be a turkey farm. The folks who own it, the Stollers, are co-owners of Chehalem. The land has other vines planted on it, but the 90 acres of Pinot dominate. 820 cases of this wine were made.

Notes: Burgundy with a paler brownish pink rim. A prickly (if a smell can have a shape), earthy nose full of black and red fruit, with dark chewy earth and mushroom, bramble, and herb. In the mouth it is round and lush with soft tobacco spice, mocha, and cherry, and has more warm spice than tannin on the finish. The acid is very fine and the finish lingers in a pleasant way. Overall, I think it is a very nice example of an Oregon Pinot Noir... slightly dark and earthy, but friendly and delicious.

Cost: $30, but I paid about half that on sale

Overall: I have to say A-, because I wouldn't mind having a case or two of this around.

2002 York Creek Vineyards Tempranillo

Region: Sonoma County, California, US

Composition: 100% Tempranillo

Background: Today is, in essence, the first birthday of Wine Blogging Wednesday, and for this one year anniversary, Lenn challenged us to find (and drink) wine from the closest winery to our house. This took some consideration... did I want to go by closest winery office, vineyard, tasting room, winemaking facility or something completely different? I ended up, after some debate, going with winemaking facility since that seemed most honest to me. I had a feeling I knew where the closest place that actually made wine would be, but I did some Googling to make sure there wasn't anything sneaky that was closer, and then I was good to go.

Fritz Maytag is famous for a lot of things, but York Creek Vineyards is probably not at the top of that list unless you are a wine lover. His family is the family to bring you not only Maytag washing machines, but also Maytag Blue cheese (not that he has ever had much to do with those personally). He is the man behind Anchor Brewing Company (makers of fine beer, rye whiskey, and gin) and singlehandedly brought the microbrew to power in the United States. Or at least made "microbrew" a household word. He is also quietly making wine (and making olive oil even more quietly than that), something I heard about years ago, but never got around to investigating. Which is stupid since I live less than a mile from Anchor Brewing and York Creek Vineyards.

Maytag got involved in the booze business in the mid 1960's, when he was a grad student at Stanford. He was a fan of the local Anchor Steam beer, and when he heard in 1965 that the company was in trouble and about to go under, he bought half of it for a few thousand dollars. Three years later, he bought the other half, even though he knew nothing about brewing beer, and had to figure it out as he went along. The company limped along until 1971, when he launched a reformulated Anchor Steam beer, which became an immediate hit and was so popular Maytag couldn't keep up with demand by the mid 70s.

About the same time he bought Anchor Steam, Maytag (along with his ex-roommate and friend, Paul Draper of Ridge Vineyards) tried to set up an effort to improve Chilean wine and agriculture, but that failed (even though Chilean winemaking is in full force now and it seems that they were just ahead of their time). Maytag also bought 700 acres of land closer to home, near York Creek between Napa and Sonoma, and planted vineyards on about 100 of those acres. For years he sold the grapes grown on the land to other wineries (such as Ridge), but he always secretly harbored a desire to make his own wine.

So he started to do just that in the early 1990s (with the help of Cathy Corison of Corison Winery), first using equipment and space where he could get it, then building a little winery of his own in 2000. He started out making only three wines, and, while he makes more than those three different wines now, he makes only small lots and is very much about the process of winemaking, learning about the individual grapes, and experimentation. This Tempranillo is grown for the winery's Port project (something I would also like to get my hands on) and is one of the wines Maytag says he made "just to see".

(Randomly, the label reminds me of the Anchor Brewing Christmas label (also tree-themed) and the 24 trees represented are each varieties of tree found on the York Creek property.)

Notes: This is one intense wine. It's a thick burgundy-black in the glass with a slightly pink rim. The nose is filled with cocoa and tobacco leaves, along with spice and red berry. It's smooth, generous, and mouthfilling, with good acids, a lot of black fruit, and a spicy, smoky finish. There's more spice than tannin in the mouth on the finish. I like it a lot, but I do have a thing for Tempranillo. This is a nice example; inky but kind of friendly.

Cost: $21

Overall: A/A-