Piedmont Barbera

I was at dinner the other night for work (board of directors), at a restaurant with a great selection of Washington wines (I’d scoped it out online ahead of time and had some favorites picked out, including the DeLille D2, on offer for just $78 – not bad for a restaurant).

Unfortunately, I took my eye off the ball when a couple of people conspired to select a wine, and they chose a Piedmont barbera. It was yet another reminder that I’m not crazy about Italian varietals. It was earthy and leathery.

It’s too bad. In Rome a couple of years ago, my wife and I came across a neighborhood wine shop that sold an excellent nebbiolo that was by far the best wine we had during the whole trip. Mostly, we were drinking house wines in restaurants, and they were watery, food wines. The nebbiolo, by contrast, was a deep purple and nicely tannic.

We remembered the bottle (“Aleisa” was stamped in the side) and always went looking for it in wine shops. Occasionally, we bought what we thought was the same wine, only to be disappointed when it turned out slightly differently.

The barbera, sadly, came in the same bottle; but unlike its distant cousin, it was nothing to get excited about. And so I find myself wondering if I will ever find an Italian varietal I can get excited about. They’re certainly gaining popularity among local winemakers. I’m seeing more barbera’s these days, and it can only be a matter of time before someone starts growing nebbiolo, in part just because it’s hard to grow well.

After we finished the barbera, I was able to sneak in an order for a bottle of 2003 Abeja Cabernet Sauvignon. It was everything the barbera wasn’t – dark, refined, balanced. Washington wine simply cannot be beat – if you know what to look for!

Taste of Walla Walla Coming Up!

We just signed up for the Taste of Walla Walla, an event taking place on the top floor of the Columbia Tower. I can’t wait! It seems like literally every winery in Walla Walla will be there. I’m not quite sure how to approach it, just because of the sheer number of things to try. New post coming up soon…

Tasting Notes: Sineann 2004 Old Vine Zinfandel

This used to be my best kept wine secret. I don’t remember how I first stumbled across this wine. It might have been a single bottle on a shelf at Larry’s Market (a store that doesn’t even exist anymore). Or it might have been in a tasting room down in Willamette Valley. It was a revelation.

Back then, it tasted so rich, it was almost like syrup. I had a hard time putting down a couple of glasses in a row. Either my tastes have matured, or the wine has mellowed, because I find it a lot more approachable these days. That’s a good thing, and a little bit of a disappointment. I liked it when the intense fruit flavors (raspberry then, cherry now) just blew me away.

I’m sure part of the reason why it appealed was the nature of the vineyard the fruit came from – the Pines Vineyard, located on the Oregon side of the Columbia Gorge area and producing grapes since the 19th century. I’ll have to tour it sometime. It’s rare to find a vineyard that old in any part of the US, much less in Oregon. It’s rare to find a vineyard in Oregon growing zinfandel. The vines that produce the fruit for this wine are supposedly 100 years old.

Zinfandel itself has an interesting history as a grape. Originally thought to have been derived from the Italian varietal, primitivo, it was only a couple of years ago that a team of UC Davis and Croatian researchers demonstrated that the European parent of zinfandel came from an island off the Dalmatian Coast. The geography of its origins only adds to its mystique – the Dalmatian Coast is a beautiful, dreamy, sun-baked landscape.

 So take all that incredible history and all that incredible geography, put it in the hands of a meticulous winery like Sineann and what you wind up with is indescribably good. The latest edition boasts incredible fruit on the front of the tongue and finishes with flavors of tobacco. Sineann’s own website touts the balanced nature of the fruit from the Pines, and I would agree. There’s very little acidic flavor to the wine.

If you’re ever lucky enough to get a bottle, savor it!

Don’t Call it an “Appellation”

One of my pet peeves is the use of the term “appellation” in reference to American viticultural areas (AVA’s).

Whenever I’ve traveled in Europe, I’ve always been impressed by the way the connection between place and culture has been preserved; and the appellation system is the most formal expression of this conservatism. Take Italy as an example. You can get pesto in northern Italy, but in Rome, it’s as if it never existed. It’s simply not on the menu. You also won’t find anything but Italian restaurants. Even in as large and cosmopolitan of a city as Rome, you will struggle to find a hamburger or Chinese food (not that I’m saying I looked – in fact, the main thing I looked for was a pizza place called “Il Brillo Parlante”). The cuisine is a direct expression of the people who live there, and it’s not negotiable – not even so much as to include the only very slightly different dishes of a region a stone’s throw from your own.

The appellation system is the same way. It’s an emphatic statement that wine from a specific region is a certain thing and is made a certain way, period. If it’s not up to the standard of that region, it isn’t given the name associated with that region. The French are so adamant about this that if you don’t know the place names, you’re completely stumped as to what you’re drinking.

Nothing could be more at odds with the way we approach winemaking in the US. Here, we encourage innovation. People are constantly trying out new varietals and new blends. The same winery that produced only merlot and cabernet sauvignon last season might turn around and start producing mourvedre and grenache or a late harvest riesling the next season. A winery like Hedges that fancies itself to be so much like a French winery that it’s now housed in a faux chateau sits across the road from a winery like Blackwood Canyon, which goes crazy on experiments with vinegar and botrytis and can’t seem to be bothered to produce the same wine two years in a row. A high-end winery like JM Cellars can be just up the road from a mass-market powerhouse like Chateau Ste. Michelle. Where the wine is from says almost nothing about what’s in the bottle.

Really, this is the same attitude we have about everything in the US – cuisine, architecture, shopping, you name it. We’ll eat anything. Heck, we don’t like eating the same thing twice in the same week. It’s why we eat everything from steak and potatoes to pizza to Indian food to phad thai to tacos. When it comes to houses, we tear stuff down, we move around, we don’t like any centralized planning (there’s a good article in the Seattle P-I about this: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/304253_teardown19.html). Drive outside of most major US cities and you get a cookie-cutter set of options for shopping and dining: Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, etc. As a result of all this, where you grew up says almost nothing about who you are or what you might do on any given day. Our culture is up for grabs, all the time.

I’m not saying one system is better than the other. Strictly in relation to wine, the American approach is more accessible. It’s easier to try new things. But the two systems are totally different, and recognizing that is important not only to understanding wine, but to understanding the cultures that produce them.

Take It or Leave It

Before I write about a day spent tasting in Yakima Valley, I have to offer a disclaimer. With very few exceptions, all of the wineries in Yakima Valley are really good. If you haven’t done much tasting or you just want to enjoy a bottle of wine in wine country on a sunny day, the stretch of highway from Yakima to the Tri-Cities has a lot to offer and you should get out there. Just be sure to do it soon–like every wine region, Yakima Valley is getting to the point where you no longer get to meet the winemakers or the winery owners and you have to pay tasting fees. If I sound a little harsh in some of my comments below, it’s because I have really high standards and because I’ve been tasting wines in Yakima Valley for years already, not because the wineries are bad. Also, they’re selling their wines at ultra-premium prices, so I’m holding them to an ultra-premium standard.

If you’re looking for someplace to enjoy a bottle of wine surrounded by beautiful scenery, our first stop, Steppe Cellars, is perfect. The winery is down a long, winding dirt road next to some sort of private lakes estate or farm. It’s surrounded by orchards and has a great view of the valley. Sort of like Silver Lake in Zillah or Maryhill outside of Hood River, this would be a great place to hang out on a sunny day.

The wine was intriguing. Steppe’s a brand new winery, just now in their second season. Their winemaker is a German woman whose family has been in the business of making wine for 400 years. They were pouring a pinot noir made from grapes grown in Yakima Valley. That’s a rarity and will continue to be even rarer. 2005 was the only year the winemaker felt produced fruit good enough to make a pinot noir. Yakima Valley is simply too hot for this grape in any normal year. They were also pouring a syrah that was just about to go into the bottle. It showed great promise, and as with any new winery, the price was very reasonable. I’m planning on buying a bottle and will have more detailed tasting notes later.

Of all the wineries we visited (Kestrel, Alexandria Nicole, Desert Wind, Steppe, Teftt, and Yakima Cellars), Kestrel poured the best wine of the day – a 2003 Old Vine Merlot. “Old vine” in this context means 30 years old. I didn’t take the best of notes, but trust me–it’s really good. However, it’s also $50, which struck me as too expensive for this wine.

How to feel about Alexandria Nicole comes down to a single question: do you like barnyard? If you do, this is a great winery. We tasted a wide variety of wines here, including a grenache, lemberger, a couple of blends and a cab sauv. It’s the single Bourdeaux and Rhone varietals that have the strongest barnyard flavor. When we stopped here last summer, we experienced the same thing at C.R. Sandidge, Alexandria Nicole and Kestrel – both the syrah and the cab sauv tended to have a really strong barnyard flavor. My wife loved it. I’m not a fan. The other wines at Alexandria Nicole were inoffensive. The lemberger was exactly what you’d expect – very light, very fruity, somewhat peppery, extremely easy to drink. I was less impressed with their reserve Bordeaux blends, which were non-descript, especially in comparison to the 2002 Terra Blanca Onyx from the night before.

Desert Wind is a remarkable facility–a brand new (actually, still under construction), 30,000+ square foot wine and culinary complex. I hope they can keep it booked, because the fixed costs have to be astronomical. The wine here wasn’t bad, though, and it was certainly worth the price ($12-15 a bottle). I’m going to consider picking up a few bottles locally as everyday wine, but I don’t think they mean for their wines to be anything but part of the draw for the larger facility.

Teftt was a stop we probably shouldn’t have made. It is an old school Yakima winery. It’s run out of what looks and feels and in all probability is the winemakers’ house. The wines are so-so and all over the place–a zinfandel, a merlot, a blend and a vinsanto (vinsanto?) all shared the same counter. It was crowded, with two tour buses showing up while we were there. We had a hard time getting a pour, so we did one taste and headed out.

Yakima Cellars (not to be confused with Yakima River Winery) also proved to be a disappointment. They’re under new ownership, and even though the winemaker is supposedly the same as before, the wine was not nearly as good as I remembered it being before. They’re specializing in sangiovese, and I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that the varietal doesn’t stand on its own, neither in Tuscany nor in Washington State. I know a lot of people would disagree with me (including my own wife).

All in all, it was a bit of a disappointing day. We only bought one bottle of wine – the Steppe pinot noir (and that mostly for the novelty factor). All the prices seemed high. All the wine seemed merely OK or good. Maybe it was because it was “Wine and Chocolate” weekend out here and they figured big groups would be willing to part with their money.

Or maybe it was just because that’s how things are in Yakima Valley. I’ve remarked elsewhere on the paradox of Yakima Valley – the best grapes in the state are grown here, but the best wines are produced in Walla Walla and Woodinville. Call it the curse of the w’s. I can name several wineries in Walla Walla I would visit in a heartbeat (Abeja, Buty, Isenhower, Three Rivers and L’Ecole all spring to mind; and even Cougar Crest and Tamarack, both of which I wasn’t initially impressed with a couple of years ago, are producing really excellent wine). I can do the same for Woodinvile (JM, DeLille, Januik, Kennedy Shah). For Yakima Valley, there’s not necessarily any single winery I would automatically go back to (with the possible exception of Cote Bonneville, but they’re by appointment only). At the same time, I can easily name a handful of vineyards from Yakima Valley that I immediately relate to great wine: DuBrul (which produces fruit for the best wine I’ve ever had), Ciel du Cheval, Klipsun, Champoux and Tapteil.

Maybe it’s the proximity to Seattle and the Tri-Cities: maybe Yakima doesn’t have to try that hard to move bottles. Maybe it’s the proliferation of vineyard-wineries: maybe you can’t grow great fruit and make great wine at the same time. I don’t know, but I wish there were more I could get excited about after this trip. In the meantime, prices are going up, as are tasting fees. It’s definitely not the undiscovered paradise of wine it was prior to 2000.