Tag Archives: aging wines

Top Ten Best Wines Tasted in 2015

28 Monday Dec 2015

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vegas siciliaI’ve been waiting to put together this list hoping that some great wine might appear as the year comes to a close. Alas, I can wait no longer as the end of the year is nearly upon us and I doubt more beauties will find their way to me until the new year. This list reflects the five weeks devoted to tasting through Willamette Valley’s finest so it’s a bit Pinot Noir centered. Unfortunately I had to leave off many great wines I tasted there, some of them with big scores. But the ones on this list were memorable, the wines that brought me up short and really captured my attention. It also reflects my preference for aged wines. For quality wines, nothing does more to bring out nuances than time in the bottle. Thanks to The Sommelier Company for making some of these tastings possible.

1. Vega Sicilia Unico Gran Reserva Ribero Del Duero 1998

An iconic wine often mentioned in the same breath as the famous Bordeaux Premier Cru, this may be the best wine I have ever tasted. Concentrated and energetic  with a complex evolution on the palate that changes with every sip, after many years in the bottle the oak is fully integrated creating a wine of power and refinement. Sturdy but delicate it is a perfect illustration of how a wine embodies contradiction. It is mostly Tempranillo with a healthy percentage (20%) of Cabernet Sauvignon.

2. Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2012

There is indeed nothing like a first kiss. The second one doesn’t quite measure up . So perhaps, since this is my second opportunity to taste this cult wine, I found the experience slightly less magical than my first although we are talking about very fine gradations of quality here. But nevertheless this is a gorgeous wine concentrated and deep but fresh with an ethereal, light texture and silky tannins that leave me speechless.

3. Romano Dal Forno Amarone Della Valpolicella 2008

Amarone is not my favorite style of wine. It’s often prune-like  and a little sweet and is always high in alcohol. But this one overcomes all those limitations. Intensely aromatic and complex, massive but lively on the palate with fierce but fine-grained tannins. Put this on your bucket list—it’s really one of a kind.

4. Domaine Marcel Deiss Alsace Grand Cru Schoenenbourg White Blend 2010

The most unique and exotic wine I’ve had this year. It’s a field blend from a Grand Cru vineyard planted with 20+ varietals in mixed plots that including Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Muscat, and many members of the Pinot family. No one really knows what goes into this wine. It’s juicy, dense, off-dry and bristling with acidity and bursting with so many flavors and aromas it makes your head spin. Winemaker Marcel Deiss claims these multiple varieties ripen at the same time perhaps because the vines communicate with each other. A bit of woo but you can’t argue with results.

5. Dönnhoff Niederhäuser Hermannshöhle Riesling Großes Gewächs 2013

Clear, precise, and complex, a stunning, beautiful wine. Dry but extremely well balanced. Gross Gewachs (meaning great growth) refers to the labeling of VDP wines. VDP is a membership organization that includes most of Germany’s top wine estates. Its members must adhere to more stringent standards than those set down in the German wine law. It is the most reliable indicator of quality for German wines.

6. Antica Terra Antikythera Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2012

Voluptuous because of a very warm year but exquisitely balanced, this has the texture of soft satin but a lengthy structured finish with pure fruit and nicely handled, subtle oak. Antica Terra is a small-production winery featuring winemaker Maggie Harrison, the former assistant at Sine Qua Non. I highly recommend their private seated tastings in which they taste inspirational wines from around the wine world in addition to their own bottlings.

7.  Epoch Syrah Block B Paderewski Vineyard Paso Robles 2008

A big, blustery wine when young, with time in the bottle it is developing lovely and unusual flavor notes acquiring finesse and charm to balance the aggression. Epoch is  a relatively new winery and is gaining a reputation for quality—a great example of Paso’s potential as a wine region.

8. Anderson Family Chardonnay Dundee Hills Willamette Valley 2009

The Anderson family has been growing grapes for top Willamette Valley wineries for over two decades on this gorgeous hillside in Dundee. They started making their small production, hand-crafted wines in 2002. This Chardonnay is stunning. It’s ripe and creamy with a lovely texture and developing intriguing earth notes on the nose due to bottle age.

9. Eyrie Vineyards Barrel Reserve Pinot Noir 1986

This wine spent two years in the barrel before bottling and that care shows. Full flavored with plenty of cherry left, apple, leather, and earth notes, and lovely fine tannins—still going strong after almost 30 years. Their wines are spare and austere when young but they age beautifully. An historic winery and one of the earliest producers in the Willamette Valley, they always have a library wine to taste in their tasting room. Several years ago, Eyrie began the process of opening, evaluating and resealing their library wines discarding bottles that were not aging well. The result is an extraordinary record of past vintages.

10. Seufert Winery Pinot Noir Zenith Vineyard Eola-Amity Hills AVA 2009

A small-production, off-the-radar producer occupying a storefront in Dayton, Oregon, this winery produces extraordinary wines that are unique in Willamette Valley in the pungent mushroom and coffee aromas they exude. This 2009 from Zenith Vineyard was pure silk on the palate. It is everything Pinot Noir should be.

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In Defense of the Cork

02 Wednesday Dec 2015

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wine corkThe debate about whether wine is better enclosed by cork or screw cap has dragged on for several years without resolution. Countless studies have been performed, winemakers have chosen sides, consumers have voted with their cash, marketers, critics, and connoisseurs have weighed in. Have we learned anything from all this controversy?

Compared to screw caps, cork is more expensive, susceptible to cork taint, is of inconsistent quality, and highly variable in how much oxygen it allows into the bottle. In short, screw caps do a better job of preserving the fresh fruit flavors of wine than does cork. Yet, despite these advantages, most wine bottles are stoppered with cork.

Why?

Esther Mobley, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, has one explanation:

The question then becomes whether you want your wines to last longer. When Rob Davis, winemaker at cork-exclusive Jordan Winery, did screw-cap trials, “we saw no elevation at all in the wine’s bouquet over a two-year period.” Davis concedes that “screw cap would be the way to go, if your marketing strategy was to not release wines until they’re 10 years old.” But the reality is that most wines are consumed when very young, and corks — through oxidation — allow a fast-track to maturity.

Wines age more rapidly under cork and we (or at least some of us) like the results.

Mobley poses the right question:

Do you prefer your Pinot Noir to taste like cherries or like the forest floor?

Hands down the answer for me is forest floor. If it’s cork that gives me forest floor, barnyard, cigar box, mushroom, and old books inside of 10 years, then its cork I want in the bottle.

Mobley disagrees. She writes:

I’m all for variation — among vineyards, vintages, producers — but not for unbridled variability among bottles of the same wine. We’ll never master nature, nor should we try. But we can, and should, use the tools that we have to manage oxidation.

To each her own but I’m unimpressed with this argument. If I want fresh fruit I can go to any wine shop, buy a recent vintage and enjoy fresh fruit. If I want forest floor (and I do) there is only one way to get it—lay a cork-sealed bottle down for 6-8 years.

As Mobley points out, screw caps do allow some oxygen into the wine and screw caps are becoming more sophisticated allowing winemakers to regulate the amount of oxidation. In the long run even screw-capped wine will show the glorious effects of slow aging. But the problem is in the long run we’re dead (as John Maynard Keynes once remarked). I’ll happily lay a wine down for 8-10 years, 15-20 though is a more difficult proposition.

That of course means that some wines will age prematurely leaving me with an expensive bottle of vinegar. But that is part of the fun. The individual character of each wine as it ages due in part to the variability of cork is at the heart of what is attractive about wine. Mobley’s praise of standardization just leaves me cold.

No doubt for wines intended to be consumed when purchased, which constitutes about 95% of the wine purchased in the U.S., screw caps are cheaper and more efficient. But premium wine should be stoppered with cork not because its traditional or romantic but because its good.

The Cost of Deliciousness

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

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aged wineIn comparison to wines of the 20th Century, the contemporary style of winemaking, especially for high-end wines, tends toward riper fruit, lower acidity, higher alcohol and riper tannins. Why this change in style? In part, it was forced by the emergence of warm climate, new world wine regions influencing the expectations of wine lovers. But the deeper reason is that these big, bold, fruit forward wines are more accessible, especially to novice wine drinkers. They are flamboyant, more powerful, sweeter, showing their charms without reserve and are ready to drink upon release unlike the older style that required years of cellaring. In short, these wines have what might be called “deliciousness”. It should not go unmentioned that the most influential wine critics, such as Robert Parker, love this style and give these wines high scores thus encouraging the wine drinking public to jump on the bandwagon.

But one central element of a wine score, at least among the major critics who move the market, is the critic’s assessment of how the wines will age. Although this modern style does not require cellaring, connoisseurs adore the characteristics of aged wines and thus fine wine must be capable of improving with age, and for investors who hold wines to be sold when they are at their peak (and the supply has dwindled thus raising their price), the capacity of a wine to age is crucial. “Deliciousness” is all well and good but not at the expense of velvet textures and aromas of old books.So this recent article by Jane Anson in the wine magazine Decanter is causing some heartburn. There is evidence that the premature oxidation that afflicted some white wines from Burgundy in the 1990 vintages will also affect red wines made in this modern style:

‘I believe there is a similar scandal with red wine, and that in 10 years’ time it will be just as explosive as the one affecting white Burgundy has been. And it’s not limited to one region; all red wines that are expected to be aged for long periods of time – so Barolo, Napa, Bordeaux, the Rhône, Burgundy and others – are in danger of ignoring this threat.’

The evidence cited includes recent tastings of the 2003 vintage in Bordeaux which appear to age prematurely:

Even among the biggest names there were bottles that were showing tired fruit, flabby structure and were generally past their prime; all signs of oxidative destruction that is not expected at such an early stage in the life cycle of fine red wine.

The theory explaining why modern wines might oxidize prematurely seems sound. Excessively ripe fruit lowers the acidity of the grapes and may lack some of the compounds that protect the fruit from oxidation. And all those soft tannins that make wines drinkable when young are achieved through infusing the wine with small quantities of oxygen that does in the winery what used to take years in the bottle. It makes intuitive sense that introducing excessive oxygen in the winery will cause wines to prematurely oxidize.

Of course our intuitions about such matters are often wrong, but if the hypothesis is true, the consequences are profound. All those fantastic vintages in Bordeaux and Napa from the past decade may turn out to be worthless plonk in 10 years. Modern winemaking practices will be called into question and some very important critics will have enough egg on their faces to feed omelets to the homeless for decades.

Skeptics point to the fact that 2003 in Bordeaux was an unusual year with excessive heat spikes and thus not a proper test of how the better vintages will age.  And the article quotes many winemakers who argue that the problem of premature oxidation can be handled by careful winemaking. Only time will tell as the best vintages mature and people begin to drink them.

Why should you care about this? Although in our time-compressed world, the beauties of aging are often overlooked, there really is nothing that quite compares to a well-aged wine. Although some foods and beverages improve over the short run, there really is no other substance that develops such nuance and complexity over decades. It would be a shame that we trade this uniquely transcendent experience for more flamboyance and accessibility. Don’t we have enough of that already?

Amuse Bouche

07 Friday Sep 2012

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brioche french toast

Brioche French Toast with Bananas, Crème Patissiere and Salted Caramel

News from the world of food and wine that you might have missed this week.

Here is a great photo essay chronicling the path of a cheese from a small farm in Spain to a shop in New York.

This is rich. A Scottish bar wants protected status for their deep-fried Mars bars. Mars Inc. objects because it would make their candy unhealthy. Apparently, in the “reality” of Mars’ corporate culture, sugar is a health food.

Ahh, the wonders of science. Evidence that the shape of a beer glass influences how fast the beer is drunk. Flutes go down the hatch more quickly than straight sides, probably because its harder to monitor volume in a flute.

Some people have no principles. McDonalds goes vegetarian in India.

A new study questions the claim that organic food is more nutritious than conventionally-produced food. As usual, the conclusion is oversold and not warranted by the data. Here are some reasons to be skeptical. I would have thought that reducing pesticide levels is part of good nutrition. Silly me.

Surströmming is a foul smelling product made of fermented fish. It is also a Swedish culinary classic that the EU has tried to ban and some Swedes want to elevate to protected status. Really? It needs protection?Is someone outside Sweden threatening to sell this as their own?

Knowing whether a wine is ageworthy or not is difficult. Here is some excellent advice on how to tell if a wine will improve in the bottle.

Champagne sales are declining because of competition from other regions that make quality, but less expensive, sparkling wine. Here is some free advice to Champagne houses. Lower your damn prices.