Author Archives: Dwight Furrow

Wine Review: Umpqua Innovations

25 Tuesday Jul 2017

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Oregon’s Umpqua River Valley AVA, situated between the better-known Willamette Valley to the north and the Ashland-anchored Rogue Valley AVA to the south is rural, wild (as in surrounded by wilderness areas) and happily unconventional when it comes to winemaking.

Here are three unusual yet quite beautiful wines I came across on our recent visit.

 

paul obrien orsatonPaul O’Brien Winery Orsation Riesling   Umpqua Valley 2015

Straw with gold highlights, this is a skin-contact white wine in the Alsatian style, left on the skins for 14 hours, barrel fermented, lees stirred every week for 4 months, every trick in the book to bring out these toothsome textures.

Aromas of bold baked apple , pear and white flower highlights promise hedonistic vitality and the palate delivers. Intensely honeyed and viscous up front, it features a textured midpalate with layers of prickle on top of puckering, stony minerality with etched tannins providing subterranean heft. The finish is long, driven by clean fresh fruit and Riesling’s scintillating acidity. Off dry but not a dessert wine.

A very big wine, broad shouldered but full of sensuous charm like Karen Oh’s Maps

Score: 91

Price: $26

Alc: 12%

 

Reustle Prayer Rock Vineyards Grüner Veltliner Winemaker’s Reserve Umpqua Valley 2014

reustleA varietal seldom grown in the U.S. but introduced by Reustle, I’ve never tasted a domestic Grüner this good. Showing white pepper, fruit salad, and quince paste, the nose is tranquil, pretty but restrained.  It’s sumptuous yet weightless in the mouth, off-dry, with rich honeydew and orange peel set off by burgeoning minerality closing the midpalate.  The textural evolution is lovely transitioning from lush to a more bracing experience with a granular weave to a finish like pure spring water but with chalk and incisive acidity providing heft.

The overall impression is of fresh vitality but the slow evolution brings thoughts of the past, wistful and reflective like Diana Krall’s Departure Bay

Score: 92

Price: $29

Alc: 12.8%

 

Hillcrest Vineyards “Arpad” Bull’s Blood Reserva Umpqua Valley 2009

bulls bloodBull’s blood, (aka Egri Bikavér) is a legendary Hungarian wine, earning it’s name in a 16th Century war with Turkish invaders. The local wine was alleged to be fortified with bull’s blood giving the troops the courage to hold off the siege. Typically a Kékfrankos–based blend, the Hungarian versions I’ve tasted are bold and rustic. This version from Oregon’s Hillcrest Vineyards carries on that old world tradition in the new world.

New leather, damp leaves, with a dried fig foundation, floral notes from the pinot, hints of vanilla with aeration—there’s a lot going on here as there should be when you put Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and Tempranillo in the same bottle.

On the palate a rush of high acidity appears straight off, introducing a steely midpalate with coffee highlights  and then a tense, galvanic finish unfolding on finely knit tannins. Pretty with aromatic depth, but it’s not for the fainthearted. It has a tough, rustic charm with a distinctive personality and an odd relationship with oxygen. It is full and lush out of the bottle but 5-10 minutes in the glass finds the fruit power receding replaced by clerical severity.

What better music to pair with  Bull’s Blood than this traditional Hungarian folk song performed by an incredibly talented duo.

Score: 88

Price: $28

Alc: 13.5%

Getting Honest About Craft Beer

24 Monday Jul 2017

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craft brewerIndustry consolidation is not only a problem in the wine business. Craft beer also suffers from the monopoly practices of big beer companies buying out independent craft brewers. The National Beer Wholesalers Association reports that Anheuser-Busch InBev, MillerCoors, Constellation/Crown Imports, Heineken and Pabst  control 80 percent of the U.S. beer market.

Goose Island, Blue Point, Karbach, Golden Road, Devil’s Backbone, Elysian, Ten Barrel, Breckenridge, Four Peaks, Wicked Weed, Terrapin, Lagunitas, and Ballast Point are among the former craft breweries now owned by the conglomerates.

The result is a lot more bad beer on the market. LIke most big wine companies, big beer companies are focused on profit and minimizing costs rather than quality. Large companies don’t have the personal stake in quality that drives independent winemakers and brewers to seek constant improvement and to avoid shortcuts. And they lack incentive to preserve the individuality of products that may be less profitable. Furthermore, they have the market power to force smaller producers off the shelves. Industry consolidation threatens to send us back to the bad old days when beer was a homogenized product with a few producers making identical brews that differed only in their marketing.

The problem is you often can’t tell the craft brews from the corporate swill by looking at the bottle. This new initiative by the independent brewers trade group seeks to change that:

More than 800 breweries — including Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium — will soon begin printing seals on their beers that identify them as “Certified Independent Craft.” The initiative, which was spearheaded by the trade group for independent craft brewers, is intended to differentiate “true” craft beers from those made by the likes of MillerCoors, Anheuser-Busch and Heineken.

To qualify to use the seal, breweries cannot be more than 25 percent owned or controlled by any alcohol company that’s not itself a craft brewer. Its annual production also can’t exceed six million barrels.

This is certainly a step in the right direction. The problem is that Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium are not exactly small, and they have some of the same negative incentives that compromise quality among the conglomerates. The 6-million barrel limit seems arbitrary given that most craft brewers produce a fraction of that amount. That figure seems tailored to getting Sam Adams et al under the limit perhaps in order to give their trade group more financial and political clout.

Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, and New Belgium may be independent but they are not “craft” or “artisan” in any meaningful sense. If including the big independents makes the category “craft” beer meaningless little will have been achieved.

Can Hot Soup Beat the Heat?

20 Thursday Jul 2017

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samgyetang11We’re tasting wine in Southwestern Idaho where daytime temperatures are often well over 100 degrees and the heat of the day may be at 6:00 P.M.

So I’m getting desperate for ways to beat the heat. Here’s some advice from across the Pacific:

There are less daunting methods to beat the summer heat than by wolfing down still-boiling chicken soup for lunch. But followers of a Korean tradition say that few are as effective.

Their mantra is “yi yeol chi yeol,” or “fight fire with fire,” and their weapon of choice is samgyetang, a whole young chicken or Cornish hen stuffed with glutinous rice, ginseng root, red dates and garlic, served piping hot in its own broth.

The idea is that the hot soup helps your internal body temperature match the temperature of the external environment thus making you feel cool. (Doesn’t this suggest the ideal environmental temperature is 98.6 degrees?)

It sounds counter-intuitive but there is some science backing it up.

Skeptics might ask for scientific evidence — and be surprised that some exists. A 2012 study at the University of Ottawa found that drinking warm liquids on hot days can lower body temperature more than drinking cold liquids can because it activates the body’s natural cooling system: perspiration. When sweat evaporates, some of our body heat leaves with it, making us feel cooler.

Perhaps this is why cultures near the equator like hot peppers.

At any rate, this might be worth trying, except I would have to heat the kitchen up to make the soup.

Misleading Headline: Case #445

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

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misleading headlineMoneyish, a website owned by Dow Jones has an article with the following headline “Why you never have to spend more than $10 on wine again.”

Has the article uncovered the holy grail of cheap wine questing, the secret all of us have been seeking since getting into the wine racket? No such luck.

A $6 bottle of red wine sold exclusively at Coles supermarkets in Melbourne is getting rave reviews from oenophiles who gave it a unanimous gold rating during a blind taste test.

The Aussie wine, St. Andrews Cabernet Sauvignon 2016, earned the coveted “double gold” medal from a panel of sommeliers, retail buyers, distributors and exporters at the Melbourne International Wine Competition last week, beating out 1,100 wine submissions from more than 10 countries around the world.

The article continues in this vein reporting one other instance of an inexpensive wine winning a competition against more expensive rivals. Quoting a retail spirits expert we are told

“You don’t have to spend $50 on a bottle to get good wine. People are making good wine all over the world, and not all of it is expensive.”

There’s a stunning conclusion—some cheap wines are good. Who knew? That’s a far cry from showing that all your wine cravings can be satisfied for under $10 a pop. Try it. I guarantee you will be drinking mostly bad wine.

Wine prices are controlled by supply and demand not intrinsic merit. In good vintages there is always good surplus juice around that can be bottled and sold cheaply. And there are a few producers of bargain wines such as Bogle or McManis who care enough about quality to be consistently good. But they are the exception. Furthermore, those consistent bottles of Bogle Merlot are good but not extraordinary, unique or luscious. If you’re satisfied by “good” and you don’t mind drinking the same thing all the time you can find your bargain wine sweet spot and exist there.

But anyone who really likes wine will seldom find nirvana for under $10.

Wine Review: The Southern Oregon Tempranillo Face-Off

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

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2012UpquaRiberaTempranilloTempranillo is the grape most wine-focused Southern Oregonians are excited about. It is well- suited to the short, hot growing season here and no other American wine region has claimed it as their own. Given the interest in this grape,  I decided to do a blind tasting comparing three top Tempranillos from Umpqua Valley with the most impressive from the Rogue Valley.

As a comparison of these regions this is obviously a very limited test given the small sample size. The fact that one of the entries is blended with about 20% Cabernet and has an additional year of bottle age means we lack a grapes-to-grapes comparison. But the results are nevertheless interesting. All wines were initially tasted single blind to get initial tasting notes and a provisional ranking. Then each wine was tasted non-blind over several hours to gain greater insight.

The winner? A very close call between the top two.

1.  Hillcrest Vineyards Tempranillo “Umpqua Ribera” Umpqua Valley 2012

Winemaker Dyson Demara made this wine to be a “spittin’” image of Ribera Del Duero’s Vega Sicilia Unico. Since Vega Sicilia happens to be one of my favorite wines it’s not surprising that I picked this out in the blind tasting as the standout. Good aromatic intensity but what sets it apart is depth, a wine that promises mystery with its flavor. Aromas of dark fruit, fig and mocha are set against a background of gentle vanilla and mint emerging with aeration, and indefinable complexity that seems to hover just below the threshold of detection. The palate reveals a long, seamless evolution from dusty earth with coriander notes through waves of cola to a broad-shouldered chewy finish with top notes paradoxically suggesting cool, mountain spring water. Serious, stately but with fortitude and intimations of the mystical. Blended with 20% Cabernet Sauvignon 93 pts.

2.  Paul O’Brien  Tempranillo Cask 11 Umpqua Valley 2014

A very close second, this has bright, fresh cherry aromas, standing out against a duo of leather and damp leaves and  developing coffee with aeration. Great clarity and focus. The palate is juicy, broad and lush but gathers intensity at midpalate with a rush of crisp acidity. The tannins unfurl gently persisting as a low level prickle, supporting a long peppery finish with electric minerality closing the proceedings. I love the finish on this wine. It achieves power without relying on excessive tannin. An extrovert but dignified and graceful. This wine was fermented and aged in a large 900L French cask, very old school.   92 pts.

3. Abacela Tempranillo Barrel Select Umpqua Valley 2013

Dark plum on the nose with enticing leather and wisps of smoke. A note hovering between herbal and floral adds complexity but the aromas are more muted than the competitors.  This wine has a darker aspect, earthy, and brooding with lots of medium grain tannin, which gives it some rusticity. The finish is juicy but shows too much wood. It needs time to soften. Abacela was the first to plant Tempranillo in this region in 1995. 89pts.

4. Kriselle Tempranillo Rogue Valley 2013

What an odd experience with this wine. In the tasting room it was very impressive showing great intensity and originality. During the blind tasting it leaped from the glass with more aromatic intensity than all the others in the line up. But as I continued to sample the wine I became less enamored and the wine started to cloy. Explosive, new leather, smoked meats and caramel on the nose promise complexity. And in the mouth, the first impression is round and full with refreshing acidity complementing black cherry. But a harsh tobacco flavor pushes to the fore midpalate that throws the wine out of balance, giving way to a finish of fine grained tannins but with some exposed wood and bitter wood tannins that become more prominent with aeration. Bombastic and then turning fierce, with 30 months in French, Hungarian, and American oak, 35% new, it just seems overdone.  Points for originality. 88 Pts.

Tempranillo has a lot of potential in Southern Oregon but getting the oak right is a challenge.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

13 Thursday Jul 2017

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mechanical harveserIt has been widely reported that due to the Trump-ordered crackdown on undocumented workers and the climate of fear it generates, wineries will have a tough time hiring enough workers during harvest to bring in the grape crop.  We all know what the real reason is for this crackdown but the stated reason is that it will protect American jobs.

Ain’t gonna happen.

I’ve talked to several winemakers recently about this issue, and the common response is that if they can’t get vineyard workers with the experience to do the job they will have to use more machines in the vineyard—mechanical pruning or pre-pruning, mechanical shoot thinning,  and mechanical harvesting. In the early days, vineyard mechanization was associated with low quality as the old harvesters beat up the fruit and the vines. Damaged fruit begins to oxidize immediately compromising wine quality even before the grapes make it to the winery.

But the technology has rapidly improved and today’s technology cuts a much more gentle path through the vineyard.  Most quality, artisan producers would prefer to use human labor because pruning and some harvesting methods require skill and judgment. But they will be forced to mechanize despite their preferences. Once that investment in equipment is made those jobs will be gone forever.

What seems manifestly unlikely is that hordes of skilled Anglo-Saxon pickers and pruners will leave the unemployment line and swarm into the vineyards just before the fall rains intensify.

Like Moths to a Flame

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Philosophy of Food and Wine, Wine Culture

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moths to a flame

We really should not allow journalists to write philosophy. In the Napa Valley Register their wine columnist Allen Balik pontificates on the nature of greatness in wine. After complaining that the word “great” is overused (no doubt) and much rumination on how greatness can’t be measured or quantified (indeed) he spins out this pearl of wisdom:

True greatness cannot be expressed by a high price tag or a critic’s score but rather must be based on our own experience and impression of what is exhibited in our glass. Personal taste ultimately determines our impression of whether a certain wine is “great” regardless of the opinion of others.

So greatness simply means “what I like”. Talk about overusing a word, if “greatness” means “what I like” we could just get rid of the word “great” and replace it with “yum”.

Among the many meanings of “great” suggested by Merriam Webster are “remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness”, “eminent or distinguished”, “principle or main”, “markedly superior in character or quality”, etc.

Nowhere in MW’s careful specification of uses for “great” does “what I like” appear.

I too would not want to define “greatness” in wine in terms of scores arrived at by a consensus of critics, if only because scores might indicate greatness but don’t tell us what it is about the wine that is great. But at least a wine highly rated by most critics has achieved something “remarkable in magnitude”, distinguished and “markedly superior in quality”.  Whether I or anyone else happens to like the wine is immaterial. There are many highly scored wines I find disappointing. But that doesn’t diminish their achievement. My subjective impressions are not the measure of all things.

I recently tried to define greatness in wine as a function of depth, mystery, and resonance, properties which I think are discernible in great wines. Whether that account succeeds or not is not for me to judge but surely we can do better than “what I like”.

Why are otherwise intelligent people attracted to subjectivism like moths to a flame?

Wine Review: Cowhorn Syrah 21 Applegate Valley 2013

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

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Cowhorn_2013-Syrah-21-1I’ve been tasting lots of biodynamic wines lately and I’m beginning to think they tend to share a common flavor profile—fresh bright fruit and a stony or chalky minerality that is especially apparent on the finish. Cowhorn is Southern Oregon’s only biodynamic winery to date and their wines have that distinctive mineral profile.

On the palate the minerality appears in phases of fluent transitions, a hint of it at inception as the juicy berry fruit dominates, then a dazzling surge at midpalate, and as the fruit fades on the finish it’s like licking a stone. Full bodied yet elegant, the refined tannins are supportive rather than commanding with the finish propelled by acidity and minerality.

Ardent aromas of blackberry and red raspberry mingle with black pepper and a lovely duet of smoked meat and eucalyptus that marry nicely on the nose.

A beautiful wine, and when have you seen a U.S. Syrah at 13.3% alcohol?

The number 21 refers to the frost hours during the growing season, a convention they display on many of their wines indicating the degree of ripeness one might expect. 21 is a reasonably low number for this region.

Score: 91

Price: $45

Alc: 13.4%

Energetic, brassy when that minerality hits, even a little fierce, like Trombone Shorty’s Fire on the Bayou, especially when that “bone” sings:

Rogue Food: Farm to Table in Southern Oregon

10 Monday Jul 2017

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rogue-keltuceThe farm to table thing has metastasized from fetish to fad to flim-flam. What began as a foodie obsession with freshness and an anti-corporate ethos has become a marketing device for conventional restaurants whose idea of a farm is 500,000 chickens stacked in cages sitting on manure lagoon.

“Farmwashing” is now common with even fast food joints displaying photos of weather-beaten farmers toiling in their fields. Truth-be-told, most restaurants don’t have access to fresh ingredients throughout the year even if they’re intention is to source locally.

It’s hard to know when a restaurant’s claim to farm-to-table is genuine but it’s usually evident in the dish and in the frequency of their menu changes. If they have the same menu every week, they aren’t farm to table. My guess is that Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley is mostly on the level with their locally-sourced food—the area is packed with small farms, many restaurants have their own gardens supplying produce, continually-changing, seasonal menus are the norm among the restaurants who advertise FTT, and the fresh flavors were explosive in most of the restaurants we sampled. Another indicator of their commitment to locavorism—lots of local wines on the menu.

Any discussion of local, sustainable sourcing in the Rogue Valley starts with Ashland’s Standing Stone Brewery. They raise their own beef and chickens from which they get their eggs, and which are fed leftovers from the kitchen and brewery. Most of the grain and hops used to make their excellent beer is locally sourced as well as is most of their produce when in season. Nearly 100% of their paper is recycled, 99% of their to-go packaging is plant-based and 64% of their by-products are reused by local farms and bio-diesel. Their goal is to reach zero-net energy use. The burgers from their own grass-fed beef is excellent and their beer line up among the best—try their Jasmine rice-based lager. It’s outstanding.

I have already blogged about New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro—an extraordinary dining experience with produce and herbs sourced from their own garden.

Lorella’s in Ashland has a constantly changing menu of exquisitely prepared, creatively designed Contemporary American dishes depending on what’s fresh that day. The Grilled Celtuce with Braised Frisee, French Lentils, Sauce Gribiche and Grilled Bread (picture above) was one of the more interesting dishes I’ve had this year.

Of the many fine dining restaurants in Ashland, Alchemy seemed to have the most creative and enticing menu and it didn’t disappoint. Seared duck breast with prickly pear gastrique, corn puree, charred nopales, and pistachio brittle was a stand out, as was the crab and sea bean salad.rogue-alchemy

If you want to take a break from wine tasting in this up and coming wine region, the burgers at Jasper’s Café are unusual. You can get burgers made from Kangaroo, bison, elk, Kobe beef, pulled pork on wild boar—you get the picture.

Even small towns in the area have interesting food. Grant’s Pass features The Haul, a well-priced gastropub advertising local ingredients and featuring an eclectic menu of pizza, pasta, sandwiches, tacos, falafel, etc. all designed and prepared with flare and enough creativity to set them apart.

And in Medford do not miss the holy trinity all on the same corner—the outstanding Rogue Valley creamery for some stinky cheese, Lillie Belle Farms Artisan Chocolates for such delights as chocolate covered bacon and smoky blue cheese truffle spread, all washed down with Ledger David’s great wines.

As I discussed in an earlier post, Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley is soon to be on the wine map and they already have a thriving food scene to support it. If you’re into wine and food destinations put this on your itinerary.