This Zinfandel-driven blend is called 1924 because it’s suppose to remind us of prohibition when wines were field blends and most were sweet. They were also swill made under the pretense of being sacramental. So marketing guy. Which association do you prefer I latch onto?
Inky in the glass, the nose is a bit smoky, with a hint of raw wood wrapped around bold, berry aromas.
In the mouth it’s thick, round and sweet with cinnamon notes complementing the berry fruit. It’s not dessert sweet but if you’re used to dry wines you’ll find it cloying. The medium length finish has a core of sweet fruit which covers up a bitter woody note.
This is not my style. After 1/2 a glass I crave a shot of tequila blanco to erase all vestiges or 5 or 6 to erase all memory.
But wines like this are flying off the shelf. If you enjoy sweeter wines, this one has lots of big flavors and will excel at washing down a burger.
Castle Rock’s negociant, business model produces value-priced wines with some personality. And this one is no exception.
They claim it’s fashioned after the “great wines of Bordeaux”. But Bordeaux has nowhere near the sun and temperatures of the Columbia Valley. This is no Bordeaux but it’s not jammy or alcoholic either, and it’s made from Cabernet and Merlot so there’s that.
Black cherry, charred wood and smoked meat aromas make you think barbecue.
On the palate it’s simple but structured, dry with sneaky, medium-grain tannins and bright medium-plus acidity. The charred wood carries through on the palate, but chocolaty, midpalate richness blooms before turning nervy and taut on the finish.
Very nice with steak, this one grows on you, a wine for grown ups.
Edgy and defiant. “I’m learning to survive on earthworms and houseflies”
The land best known for its Port makes red wine as rugged as the slopes on which their vineyards sit. They typically deliver big flavors and firm structure at a modest price but they aren’t for the “soft and smooth” crowd. Most are blends dominated by the robustly tannic Touriga Nacional. But this wine is a bit different being a blend of 40% Touriga Franca, 40% Tinta Roriz (known as Tempranillo in Spain) and only 20% Touriga Nacional. It’s still well structured but the tannins have softened, especially now that it’s 6 years from its vintage date and it doesn’t quite have the midpalate heft and concentration of many Portuguese reds.
It is nevertheless a good value as it delivers a seriously strange evolution.
The nose of roasted meat, earth, and saddle leather surrounding a core of dark berry is stunning. But in the mouth the full, structured fruit flattens out midpalate acquiring a metallic tone and a bit of severity, with powdery tannins lingering as the textured, prickly finish slowly fades in a cloud of dust. This is an odd trajectory starting round and full but hollowing out and then becoming exceedingly long and granular.
It’s good, cheap and weird. Points for originality.
25% of the wine saw used French oak for 9 months.
Works well with some dirty synth layered over a repetitive pulsing beat.
I’ve found the organic wine section of the supermarket to be a reasonably good place to buy budget wines. There is no evidence organic wine tastes better than wine made from conventionally-grown grapes but I’ve found these organic producers (here, here, and here) to be on the whole reliable. This wine, however, is an exception.
The nose shows bright red fruit but it has the raw, yeasty aroma of cheap wine. The palate hints at being juicy but is diluted with a bitter finish and almost no tannin. Oddly it seems low in acidity as well. It’s light enough to play well with a variety of foods. It won’t ruin dinner but it is exceedingly ordinary. The name “Cote Zero” is a play on Cote du Rhone and zero sulfites.
It’s vegan too so there’s that.
Score: 81
Price: $10
Alc: 12.5%
You really can make a wine taste better by finding a piece of music that matches its mood. This lovely, light hearted track from Angelique Kidjo keeps your attention on the juice and not the bitter.
The Finger Lakes are known for their scintillating Rieslings. But the reds? With the exception of the occasional Pinot Noir and a few experiments with lesser-known varietals such as Saparavi, their red wines in general leave much to be desired. But this one attracted my attention because it is unusual, taking Cabernet Franc in a different direction that sets it apart from the other Bordeaux-style wines I tasted on my recent visit.
This is by far the most generous of the Cabernet Franc-based wines we tasted, an odd but intriguing wine that features explosive aromas, a juicy almost opulent midpalate, and then a finish that manages to be soft and smooth in texture but with lifted, bright, tart flavors as well. The nose opens with intense, exotic, spiced blackberry with new leather and surprising orange zest top notes that are given strength by low levels of volatile acidity (which smells like nail polish remover if the levels are too high). All wines have some volatile acidity but some people think any detectable amount is a flaw. I do not if it remains in the background and doesn’t cover up other aromas. In this case, that hint of VA seems to be pushing the flavors out of the glass giving them intensity and flair.
On the the palate the wine is lush and juicy at first, the velvety mid-palate playing counterpoint to a mineral seam, then progressing to an unusual crisp, citrus and cranberry-laden finish, very tart and lifted. The tannins are wonderfully integrated, drying but with no grip, allowing the prominent acidity to take center stage. This midstream change of character from lush to fiercely citric is surprising—and surprise when accomplished with quality is to be cherished.
70% Cabernet Franc and 30% Merlot, White horse is the English translation of Cheval Blanc the renowned right bank Bordeaux wine that is a blend of these same grapes. I doubt the wines are similar but the White Horse does recall a traditional form of winemaking using open top fermentation, stem inclusion, ageing in exclusively neutral oak barrels, and without filtering or fining. Winemaker Kim Engle is committed to making what has come to be known as “natural wines” using native yeasts, the lowest level of sulfur possible, and minimal intervention in the winery.
The result is a unique wine, that seeks its own niche utterly unlike the Cabernet Franc from Bordeaux, the Loire Valley, or the typical fare from the Finger Lakes.
Score: 90
Price: $26
Alc: 12.4
For a musical pairing, the lush, generous, energetic, sound of West African songstress Angelique Kidjo will resonate:
South American wine conglomerate Guarachi Wine Partners, producers of this red blend, have some imaginative people in their marketing department
The bottle advertises a wine that is exotic, decadent, and mysterious, so my expectations are through the roof. On their website they gush “Black Ink is an ode to fantasy through the arts, portraying elegance with an edge. In a celebration of decadence, juicy blackberry cobbler meets smoky licorice with a hint of spice. The capsule is marked with the allusive squid in a nod to the deep dark red hues within the bottle.”
Translation please. What exactly is an “allusive squid” and what does squid have to do with “red hues”? Is a squid elegant or decadent? I confess I never thought of squid ink as elegant or edgy so thanks to the poesy of these scribes I now have a new world view. Does this have anything to do with what’s in the glass?
The wine is ruby with a hint of purple and transparent, not inky at all. The nose has the juicy blackberry, smoky licorice thing going on so here’s to truth in advertising. It’s supplemented by obvious oak. The meager palate opens with a bit of sweetness and quickly turns sour on the finish. It’s about as decadent as a night at home watching reruns of Frazier. The oscillation between too sweet and too sour is mysterious only if “mysterious” means weird.
A blend of Syrah, Merlot, Malbec and Zinfandel if that matters.
This proprietary blend earns the label blockbuster. On the nose, deep, ripe blackberry and dried fig are kissed with lavender, licorice and baking spice all wrapped in a sheer cloak of vanilla. The palate is luscious and creamy with chocolate notes adding to the impression of opulence. But this is no flabby fruit bomb. Taut acidity keeps this luxury liner afloat ushering in a long, flavorful finish with finely-etched tannins. Broad and dimensional with great depth, exquisite balance, and great originality, there is no doubt it hails from Napa but this is a work of art beyond categorization.
This is one of those brooding wines that you can lose yourself in for an entire evening.
The winemaking is equally fascinating. A portion of the juice is handled in a modified ripasso style, with some juice drained off to increase skin contact and then given an additional high dose of fresh skins late in the fermentation process, before adding the main blending grape. The 100% new French oak for 22 months is necessary to handle all this structure imparted by the massive skin to juice ratio. The result is both intriguing and delicious satisfying the mind and the heart.
The mad genius behind Antithesis is winemaker Jason Moore, a Dallas Texas native who came to Napa in 2002 looking to break into the wine biz, told the theory-based profs at UC Davis to kiss-off, and developed his own “modus operandi” with the help of many mentors who recognized his emerging talent. This is a David and Goliath story—a small case production label built from scratch in the land of celebrity winemakers and wealthy investors looking for a tax write-off.
Antithesis is the capstone of a stunning lineup that includes several blends, a Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, and a Sauvignon Blanc that blew me away at a recent tasting.
The massive, incredibly beautiful San Jacinto, Peter Gabriel’s best, captures the mood of this wine.
Wine is fascinating in part because once it is in the bottle it takes on a life of its own. Given enough time, each bottle becomes a unique individual that develops along its own trajectory. Small differences between batches in the winery, variation in when wines from the same vintage were bottled, the amount of oxygen allowed into the bottle by the vagaries of cork, and differences in transportation and storage conditions all contribute to bottle variations that are magnified as the wine ages. The longer the wine is aged the more true the old adage– “There are no great wines, only great bottles.”
This wine certainly developed in an unexpected way.
Despite 10 years from vintage, it is still dark ruby in the glass with slight rim variation and no evidence of bricking. Black cherry, sandalwood, tobacco, and cocoa aromas are now cosseted in a bouquet of forest floor that develops charm and intensity as it aerates in the glass.
The palate is full bodied with an initial round, lush, juicy impression that gives way to lively acidity that seems to gather energy under a black licorice core before bursting into pronounced charred wood and dark roast coffee that lingers on the palate for well over a minute. The tannins have softened into a silky, languorous bed; the wine is not in the least grippy. But the enduring, intense charred wood note on the finish gives it a fiery aspect that is wholly unexpected.
The process of aging is often a battle between fruit and oak. Will the fruit remain dominant with integrated oak providing a muted halo of toast and nuts or will the woodsy notes of the oak joined by caramel and dill leap to the foreground? This wine still has ebullient fruit but the woodsy notes appear to be winning the battle at the moment. I have tasted several vintages of Col Solare upon release. While the oak was certainly a presence I would not have predicted this unusual evolution. It gets character points for originality and palate intensity.
Col Solare is a collaboration of Chateau Ste. Michelle and the Italian producer Antinori. A complex blend from several vineyards, this vintage was 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Merlot, with a small percentage of Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Syrah. The wine was aged in 75% French and 25% American oak, 100% new for 21 months.
It is drinking well now but has several years of life left. I highly recommend decanting to get the wine to calm down.
And for music accompaniment the lush introduction and fiery finish of Purple Rain is fitting
Famous Washington State winemaker Charles Shaw created this line of wines to bring big flavors to the everyday table at an affordable price. The bottle notes advertise “big, bold, jammy, and smooth”. And that is sort of what you get, although it’s too soft and comfortable to be called bold.
It shows rich blackberry jam wrapped in a light coat of loam with some wood notes and vanilla on the juicy palate. Simple but satisfying up front, the midpalate is lush, smooth and fat but the finish peters off without sufficient tannins or acidity to give it zip. This is not a classically well-structured wine but it has big, juicy flavors without too much overt sweetness and is surely easy to drink. As an everyday table wine to be served with robust dishes it does it’s job well.
People who buy wine because of the label or packaging are often the subject of derision among wine snobs. But since wine has become a commodity, a low cost, standardized product mostly made by large companies all striving for the same taste profile, sometimes packaging is the only thing to distinguish one wine from another on the supermarket shelf. So some wineries put a lot of effort into making their bottle appear unique or eye-catching. Voga wines, presenting a lineup of easy drinking crowd pleasers, does seem to be all about marketing with a bottle that looks like designer water, complete with a cap that screws on after the cork is pulled, and an ad campaign that mimics the world of fashion. The irony of an upscale, modern, “fashionista” image on a $10 bottle of wine doesn’t appear to be part of the appeal.
But the wine turns out to be quite good for the price. A blend of 65% Zinfandel (the Primativo clone) and 35% Cabernet from the warm Puglia region on the heel of Italy’s boot, the nose is of ripe blackberry as you would expect from a region where grapes ripen easily. But freshly-turned earth notes are even more prominent giving this wine a flavor profile that is to a degree out of the ordinary, despite some distracting green top notes. The full bodied palate is plush with chocolate-infused dark fruit and medium grain tannins that don’t bite but stay firm and thick supporting a medium length, dry finish. As expected with crowd-pleasers there is a bit of sweetness up front and the acidity is much lower than is typical of Italian wines but the earthiness and sturdy mouthfeel give this wine a unique aspect.
Plush but firm and earthy, pair with Mary Blige Real Love
This Zinfandel-driven blend is called 1924 because it’s suppose to remind us of prohibition when wines were field blends and most were sweet. They were also swill made under the pretense of being sacramental. So marketing guy. Which association do you prefer I latch onto?
