Monday, December 15, 2014

Naked Vine One Hitter – Faust, Five Years’ Future

In March 2009, I took my first spin through the Cincinnati International Wine Festival, doing my level best to spin and sip my way through most every booth in the place. The sheer number of tastings I did eventually overwhelmed me, my taste buds, and – as you can see – my tooth enamel. 



I find it fascinating to read my old reviews from a few years back to see how my palate has changed as time’s gone by. Before the decade’s turn, I was much more into big, extracted red wines like merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and zinfandel. (“Extracted” is WineSpeak for “Wine made in such a way as to concentrate the flavors, producing a bigger, generally fruitier, and more “in your face” wine.)

When I wrote up my experiences from that day, the wines I chose as my “Best in Show” was the 2006 “Faust” Cabernet Sauvignon from Huneeus Vintners in Napa Valley. The wine, to no surprise, is named for the protagonist in the famous work by the German poet Goethe. Here’s what I wrote back then:
“Maybe it was the name that piqued by devilish curiosity. Maybe it was the powerful black cherry, fresh tobacco, and blackberry flavors that cut through everything else that I'd tasted up to that point. Maybe it was the tannins, strong but without taking away from the fruit and the finish that seemed to go on for days. Whatever deal was struck by these winemakers, they put together an absolutely delicious cabernet -- likely in my personal Top 10 of that varietal all time. Probably will set you back around $55, but considering that "high end" Napa cabernet sauvignons are selling for literally hundreds of dollars a bottle, run with this as a splurge and hold on to your soul.”
A bit of youthful hyperbole? Sure thing – but it *was* a really good wine which had enough power to blast its way through the thick coating of tannin that was undoubtedly wrapped around my tongue by the time I tried it on that March day. While I hadn’t run into an occasion to pick up a bottle over the years, I always remembered it, and I was excited for the notion of having my way with an entire bottle of the stuff!

Fast forward to late 2014. Your favorite companion in the wine review world got an email from Toby at Fineman PR, asking me if I’d like to sample the 2011 vintage of Faust. With memories of my previous brief dance with this devil in my mind, I quickly agreed.

Much like it’s namesake’s winding journey to salvation in that German poem, this bottle took some time to get to me. A bit of a shipping mishap and some ridiculous state import laws kept the bottle from me for a time, but Toby eventually succeeded in getting me a bottle of the just-released 2012 vintage. I did some decanting, grilled up some veal loin chops, rousted the Sweet Partner in Crime from her end-of-semester grading and set to tasting.

OK, first off – “extracted” still qualifies as an apt descriptor here. This is a Napa cab, through and through. Most of what I wrote for the 2006 holds true today. There are still big, bold red and black fruits on the nose and on the palate, which is rich and packed with tannin that definitely needs some air to unwind. The finish is long and chewy. It smooths out a bit as the evening winds on.

Since this is the just-dropped vintage, I thought it’s still drinking pretty young. Six more months in bottle would do the integration of this wine a world of good. The SPinC was more succinct, “It’s just too much for me,” she quipped, “I remember loving wines like this, but my palate just isn’t set up for this one anymore.” I understood where she was coming from. I still liked it more than she did.

With the veal chops, I was pleased with the pairing, but I wasn’t blown away by it. It was a good red wine pairing, but I didn’t think it was quite $55 good. Now, next to a piece of dark chocolate towards the end of the evening, I would have at least entertained an offer for a small piece of my aforementioned soul. Really super there.

For fans of premium California cabernet, I think you’re going to be pleased with this wine. If you’re looking for a holiday gift for a special someone, it’s a pretty solid option. I could certainly see the potential – especially if one were to lay a few bottles of this down for awhile. It’s certainly got the “bones” that could potentially mature into something really special.

The price for Faust remains the same -- $55. I also see that Huneeus is producing a couple of single-vineyard reserve wines inspired by Faust’s story called “The Lure” and “The Pact” which retail for $75 apiece.

Saturday, December 06, 2014

Naked Vine One-Hitter -- No Need to Rue-da Day: Naiades Rueda

My jaunts down the Spanish aisle in the usually results in an impulse buy or two , largely because I know that I can’t go too far afield. Spain’s wines, especially their whites, are remarkably consistent, flavorwise. More importantly, I’ve found inexpensive Spanish wines handle age better than their similarly-priced counterparts from almost anywhere else in the world, so if there's a discounted bottle from last year's vintage, I can snag it without worry that I'm picking up a bottle that's over the hill.

[Protip: The “end of year clearance” sales are in full-force at your local wine stores as we speak, so if you’re choosing between 2010 whites from Spain and…say…California in the under $10 price range, pick the Spanish one every time.]

In Spain, the most popular white wine comes from a region called Rueda, which is northwest of Madrid. Rueda wines are primarily composed of the Verdejo grape, although some winemakers also include Sauvignon Blanc, Viura, and Palomino grapes in the blend. The wines tend to be crisp and acidic, generally featuring flavors of peaches and tropical fruits. Rueda’s also relatively inexpensive, so it certainly makes its way onto my radar.

Tatiana from Colangelo reached out to me, offering a sample of a Rueda called “Naia” to review. Before she could ship it to me, they ran out of samples. Fortunately, they had a bottle of Bodegas Naia’s first-label wine, the Naiades 2010 Rueda Blanco, for me to try instead. Most Rueda I see are under $15, and the Naia retailed for $13. Naiades' “first label” status has it retailing for $26. How was it?

The Naiades started me with honeysuckle and orange cream on the nose, followed with a little bit of a honey taste up front. There's considerable amounts of mineral and lemon on the palate. The finish is smooth and fruity, especially as the wine warms a bit, and there’s a slight oakiness at the back end. The mineral and lemon remind me a little bit of a Chablis, but the overall feel has a little more richness. I thought it made a nice accompaniment to a recipe I tried where I marinated chicken breasts in mango sorbet. The chicken is then grilled, sliced and served over a bed of shredded red and green cabbage, tossed with chopped scallions, cilantro, and a dressing of more melted sorbet, soy sauce, fish sauce, and some other yummies.


It’s definitely a good wine. Is it $26 good? I’d say that’s a few dollars high, all in all, but if you see it discounted, snag it for sure. Also, I would imagine that there’s little way that the Naia would be “half as good” at $13. If its big brother is any indication, it’ll be a very good value at that price. 

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Bye Bye, Black Box

By this point in our online relationship, none of you should be surprised that I keep box wine around the house. As I've said before, I don’t keep it because it’s necessarily great wine. I keep it because I don’t always want to open up great wine. There are plenty of decent ones out there for when you just feel like being an unthinking sipper.

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye.
With a sense of regret, however, I must report that I'm swearing off the Naked Vine's unofficial-but-most-often-in-the-fridge "house wine," Black Box Sauvignon Blanc.

I'm not saying farewell because the wine's bad. Honestly, it's as good a box white as I've come across in my various samplings and sloshings. No...the problem, honestly, is a mechanical one.

Almost all box wines come with some sort of spigot at the bottom -- all the better to actually pour the wine. A few months back, I got a box of the Blanc just as I'd done on numerous occasions, chilled it, opened it up, poured a glass, and popped the box back in the fridge, thinking nothing of it.

I came back about an hour later to a big ol' mess.

The spigot didn't seal properly, and wine had leaked all over the top shelf of the fridge. Cursing a bit, I cleaned up the mess, laid the box on its back, and figured it was a one-off problem.

Until I got the next box. And the next box. That's three in a row. All leaky. All messy. All making the Sweet Partner in Crime and I very unhappy.

I went away from Black Box for awhile. Tried a couple of other boxes. Figured there might just have been a bad batch floating around. Since the Black Box Sauvignon is a fairly popular wine around these parts, I figured that the law of averages was in my favor. So, right before the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to shoot the dice and pick up another box. The box got opened at some point during our Big Feed prep. Again, the box sat innocuously on the top shelf, and I didn't think anything of it...

...until the day after our family meal. Yes, another leaky box, and this one had some gumption. I'd estimate that probably a third of the box -- yes, that's a full liter of wine -- leaked into the fridge. Cleanup, as you might guess, was unpleasant with a fridge full of leftovers, stray vegetables, bottles of things, and various other sundries.

If Black Box decides to redesign their spigot or find a new spout manufacturer, I could be enticed to return to the fold. For now, though -- I'm on the hunt for another good box of sluggable white. Any of you out there in Vine-land have suggestions?



Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The Evolution of Apple Cider -- Calvados



I got a Twitter follow the other day from @ilovecalvados – which immediately made me first think, “Cool, another follower” followed quickly by “What in tarnation is Calvados?” A quick blast of my ten-finger Google-Fu technique yielded an alcohol-related answer, so I returned the follow and asked @ilovecalvados if they could share some wisdom about it. (My handle is the ultra-creative @thenakedvine, so please feel free to follow…)

As it turns out, that particular account is actually managed by my friends Maggie and Lia at Colangelo, who were nice enough to step outside the world of wine with me for a minute and shoot me a sample of the stuff to try.

So, after all this, what is Calvados? Calvados (pronounced KAL-vuh-dose) is a distilled spirit. Instead of coming from the fields like scotch and bourbon (made from grains) or from the vine like Cognac and Armagnac (made from wine) Calvados comes from the trees. Specifically, apple trees.

The name “Calvados” comes from the area of Normandy in northern France where this spirit is produced. In the late 1800’s, when the phylloxera outbreak was wiping out most of the vineyards in Europe, the French turned to Calvados for an alcoholic alternative. Much of the distilling equipment was requisitioned for use in World War II. When the distilleries and cider houses were rebuilt, many of them were in the Pays d’Auge area of Calvados – which has become the best known area for the spirit.


Calvados is produced from certain varieties of apples which are first pressed and fermented into a dry hard cider. The resulting hard cider (about 5-6% alcohol) is distilled into a brandy. There are around 300 different varieties of apples which can be used in Calvados – some of which are so bitter as to be inedible, so making them into booze seems like a logical use! Much like a blend wine draws its flavor and characteristics from the array of grape varietals, the blend of apple varieties and amounts in each Calvados creates a different flavor profile. Some regions add pears to the blend, but apples always comprise at least 70% of the blend.

[Side note: the term “brandy” comes from the Dutch “brandewijn” which translates as burnt wine, for reasons which will become clear in a moment.]

If you’re not familiar with the distilling process, the short version is this: the cider is put into a still and heated. Water, as you know from science class, boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Ethyl alcohol – the stuff we drink – boils at a lower temperature, 172 degrees. The cider is heated to a particular point between those two temperatures.

The stills that produce Calvados Boulard
When the cider reaches the appropriate temperature, the alcohol will begin to vaporize and will rise from the liquid. Those vapors are collected and cooled in a condenser, and...voila!...you’ve got a distilled liquid of around 28-30% alcohol known as petit eau (“little water”). This petit eau also contains some water and other trace elements, so distillers will run that liquid back through the distiller a second (or third or sixth) time to both increase the alcohol content and purity, creating the high-alcohol beverage known as eau de vie, which literally translates as “water of life.” This spirit can be as high in alcohol as 70% at this stage in the process.

The resulting brandy is then placed in well-seasoned oak casks and cut with water to the desired alcohol content, usually around 40%. The time in barrel allows the spirit to pick up colors and flavors from the wood. Most Calvados is aged in lightly toasted casks, so as not to impart too many smoke flavors or colors to the finished product. After a period of aging, the Calvados is then bottled. 

The length of the aging is the main determinant of the quality classification. “Fine” Calvados are aged for at least two years; “Vieux” or “Reserve” at least three; “VO” or “VSOP” at least four; and “XO” at least six years – but are commonly much older. Calvados can be made of spirits of varying years, but the youngest component of the blend determines the classification.

I was sent a sample of the Calvados Boulard VSOP Pays d’Auge to sample. I’ve had applejack and domestic apple brandies before, so that’s what I had in mind – spirits that tasted strongly of apples, with a fair amount of residual sweetness. My first sip quickly disabused me of the notion that Calvados is anything like my previous libationary experiences.

Calvados needs to be approached more like the brandy that it is – in a sipwise fashion. The aroma, which also had a bit of alcohol heat, reminded me of cinnamon covered dried apples. For an 80-proof liquor, it’s very smooth. I barely noticed a burn at all as it warmed from my throat to my belly with a light, slightly fruity feeling. The next exhale brought a breath of apples and vanilla. I thought it was very tasty, and it seems ideal for a cool (or cold!) evening.

It also really shines as a mixer. In reading about Calvados, I read that it can basically be substituted for any sort of brown liquor in a cocktail. I would imagine it would be smashing in a hot toddy, with Calvados’ built-in apple flavors, but where I enjoyed it most was in a Calvados Old Fashioned. To make one:


  • In a mixing glass, mix together 1 tbsp. honey with 1 tbsp hot water, so the honey becomes a thin syrup. 
  • Add ice, 2 oz. Calvados, and 4 dashes of bitters. Stir until well-mixed. 
  • Strain into a martini glass and give it twists of lemon and orange peel. Garnish with a slice of sweet apple. 
  • Sip and thank me.

Calvados is a nice winter alternative to some standard winter beverages, especially if you enjoy whiskey cocktails. And if you’re a cider drinker – it’s worth trying just to see what happens when your favorite beverage gets distilled. 

The Calvados Boulard VSOP Pays d’Auge I tried retails for $40 for a fifth. Definitely worth a try.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Rigged for Success – Fairborn’s Flat Rock Distillery rides Ingenuity to Gold in National Distilling Competition

“Our major problem was that we weren’t making enough whiskey!”
– Shawn Measel, Flat Rock Distillery

“It’s so funny. We walk by the still every day, shake our heads, and say, ‘The damned thing actually works!’”

Shawn Measel, one of the three proprietors of Fairborn’s Flat Rock Distillery, was breaking down the origin of various pieces and parts of Flat Rock’s homebuilt distiller.

“These parts were duct work from a machine built in Stuttgart, Germany. Those were water pipes from a factory. Those were steam pipes.”

Brad Measel, Shawn’s older brother, chimed in, “Our still’s not one of the big, beautiful copper stills like the one they’re putting in at Party Source [aka NewRiff Distillery in Bellevue, KY]. Those are like $500,000. Ours comes from leftover pieces and parts from our old job sites.”

The Measel brothers, along with their former office manager, James Bagford, turned a floorful of repurposed rigging equipment into Flat Rock’s incubator for StillWrights, their now-available line of distilled spirits. The StillWrights lineup includes a straight bourbon, flavored and unflavored moonshines, and – soon – silver, spiced, and bourbon barrel-aged rums.

Four of StillWrights’ moonshines recently took awards in the 2014 American Distilling Institute  competition for independently produced spirits. Their key lime pie moonshine took gold and was named “Best in Class.”

Less than a decade ago, however, rather than winning medals, the three were hauling metal.

From Millwright to Stillwright

“Shawn and I are both millwrights,” said Brad. “My father was a millwright. My grandfather was a millwright.”

“Millwrights are industrial machinery movers,” explained Shawn, patiently, after I demonstrated my lack of knowledge about what a millwright was. “The origin is back in windmills, grist mills, sawmills. If you wanted one built, a millwright got everything in place and assembled the machinery. [Millwrights] evolved into what they are today during the Industrial Revolution. Today, say you’re putting together a tool and die shop – we’re the ones who will set up your punch press. We make sure factory lines run the way they should so the workers can do their thing.”

Shawn and Brad’s father, Don Measel, opened Pyramid Riggers in the early 1980’s. Shawn, Brad, and their other two brothers worked there. It’s a tense business, they said. Millwrights’ busy seasons are during factory shutdowns – 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas breaks, and the like – and they are required to hit very strict deadlines. Pyramid generally kept a core staff of 20-25 people on payroll, but that number would swell to 75 at peak times. 

“When the [heavy industry] started leaving Dayton…we had a lot of work for a few years – ‘05, ‘06, ‘07 – as plants were moving out of town. But we could see our niche going away, so we knew we had to come up with something else. We started to do some research on what works well in an economic downturn and alcohol production just kept coming up.”

“Landscaping also came up as recession resistant,” added Shawn, “but that was just too much work! So we started studying the microdistillery business. We wanted something we were passionate about that we could do with a minimum of employees and with less stress.”

As the plan emerged for the distillery, named for the family farm near Medway, they brought in their cousin, James Bagford, who worked at Pyramid as the office manager and compliance expert. “James was really good with regulations, and when you start distilling, there are all sorts of issues with the state and federal government. We needed James, because he’s good at that!”

James added, “It’s really different from homebrewing and home winemaking. With those, you go to the store, pick up a kit, and you’re good to go. You can have decades of practice before you open up a larger winemaking operation, but with distilling, you can’t do that. Legally, you can’t even practice, so you have to make sure you have everything in line before you start.”

Setting up the line
  
“As we were closing down the rigging business…we just kept our eyes open as we were going through our projects,” said Brad. “If there were ever any stainless steel or copper pipework or anything we thought might work, we just kept it! We laid out a whole building floor of stuff over a year.”

Brad Measel shows off the top
of Flat Rock's homemade still.
Shawn added, “We sketched it all out on paper and did a couple of designs. We’d start in and go, ‘Hey! We’ve got a new piece of pipe. Could we use this?’ and we’d make a few changes.” They first built an “experimental” 27 gallon still, which led to the construction of their 300 gallon main still, based on a design adapted from one they saw Louisville’s Vendome Copper & Brass Works.

On most distillery tours, guides spend a great deal of time talking about how the design and shape of a still yields a unique flavor. When I asked how that applied to the unconventional design of the Flat Rock still, Shawn laughed, noting that physics is much more important than aesthetics. “That whole mystique, the shape and all that -- it’s a lot of P.T. Barnum, “’Hey! Watch this hand!’ while my other hand is doing something else” stuff. I mean, if you dropped half a million on a still, you gotta say, ‘Our stuff is better because our still is shaped like an onion.’”

As they gathered the pieces for their operation and gradually converted their buildings from manufacturing to distilling, the Flat Rock team became students of the technical process from grain to barrel. “We’re largely self-taught,” said Brad, “I tell you, on the Internet, man, you can get on there and learn just about anything you want.”

In addition to powerful Google-Fu skills, they relied on their millwright experience to create an efficient system for production in quantity. “Shawn and I had been in so many industrial plants – auto plants, the Lima army tank plant, big bakeries – we’ve seen a lot of production, so we could say, ‘The flow should go like this, and we need racks for this, and these things should go here.’ We wanted to make it as easy on ourselves as we could.”

They also believe the attention to detail required in their millwright work translated neatly to distilling. With the batch size they produce, they’re able to keep tabs on everything from how “happy” the fermenting yeast is to precisely maintaining the proper temperatures during the mashing and distilling processes, since problems at any stage can create impurities in the final product.

“The big distilleries can’t do that in a million-gallon run,” mused Shawn. “Everything goes into their barrels – guts, feathers, and all. That’s why a lot of them age their whiskey for so long – they’ve got to mellow out those defects – aldehydes and acetones and other nasty stuff. We don’t have that problem.

“And our still kinda talks to us. In the still there’s a copper dome. As the vapor hits the dome and condenses, boils, and recondenses, it jiggles. And when we hear that thing rattling away like a jazz drummer going to town on a high hat, it’s letting us know that we need to really keep an eye on the temperature,” Shawn added, throwing in sound effects and air drums for good measure.

Throwing the switch

Flat Rock fired up the still for the first time in 2010. They sunk the savings from building the still into the purchase of barrels to age their final product. They originally planned to call their spirits “Flat Rock,” but a trademark dispute with a Canadian winery led to the coining of “StillWrights.”

“Our first plan was to make our bourbon, because we knew that had to age,” explained Brad. “Then we wanted to make our ‘Chateau Cash Flow,’ something we could get on the shelves and make money with. We thought that would be rum, but we struggled to come up with a rum that we liked…We decided to look for something else, and we tried making moonshine. We were on the second batch and we were like, ‘Wow. We should have done this earlier!’”

Moonshine, the spirit they describe as “American as Revolution, Apple Pie, and Badassery,” does not have a precise legal definition. It’s classified by the federal government, according to James, as a “distilled spirit specialty,” meaning there are no particular criteria for production and aging, which is different than rum, bourbon, and other distillates, which have very specific guidelines. StillWrights unflavored moonshine clocks in at 104.7 proof, while their flavored versions are 70 proof.

Putting the barrels down. (photo courtesy Dayton City Paper)
The bourbon caused some real trepidation for the team. “We’re six months in, and I start worrying,” Brad recalled, “What if this stuff isn’t any good? There’s our family business down the tubes. So we called in a consultant who worked with some big distilleries and he said that we might make a couple of minor tweaks to the process, but we were spot on.” Shawn excitedly interjected, “He told us that our major problem was that we weren’t making enough whiskey!”

The first batch of StillWrights 90 proof bourbon is aged in 15 gallon casks for two years. When that bourbon is all out of barrel, they’ll empty their 25 gallon barrels, which will have been aged for three. Eventually, they’ll move on to their four-year 53 gallon barrels, which will be their standard moving forward. Some of the used barrels are being used to age their rums, which should be released in July and August.

StillWrights’ unique bottle design, which neatly complements their “Coiled S” logo, has an international flavor. A French company has a design competition every year for college seniors and they mass produce the winning bottle. Flat Rock’s design company happened upon the bottle just as it was released, immediately saw the connection, and snapped it up.

The Goods

After giving me a tour of the facility, the Flat Rock team took me to their recently-completed tasting room for a sampling. Brad served as bartender, deftly pouring half-ounce tastes, his right forearm wrapped in a tattoo of tally marks – 31 of them, one for each year he’s been married. (“He initially did Roman numerals,” cracked Shawn, “He didn’t think it through.”)

The unflavored moonshine is dangerously easy to drink. It has a very even corn flavor with very little afterburn. The flavored moonshines were unique to my palate. I’m used to flavored liquors having one-note tastes, but these, produced in conjunction with Mother Murphy’s flavoring company, had multiple layers of flavor. The “Best in Show” key lime had complex flavors of graham cracker and meringue alongside the tart lime. The “peach cobbler” had savory notes of toasted oat to go along with the peach. The apple pie tasted like…well…apple pie. They also feature a margarita and a cinnamon version.

The bourbon is quite enjoyable. It has an undertone of a scotch-like peat, and a little splash of water brings out considerable floral and vanilla notes to go along with a backbone of newly harvested grain. The flavors are all very distinct and, overall, it’s a very clean bourbon, with some maple syrup, corn, and cognac flavors at the end.

They say that their lineup will change as the market changes. “Moonshines are a hit right now,” Brad said, “but they might end up as a fad. We want to be agile enough to make whatever’s hot. But there will always be demand for rum and bourbon.” They indicated that they might eventually try branching into gin, which Shawn enjoys. “When I drink gin, my face hurts from smiling so much.”

“Our two brothers kind of think we’re crazy,” said Brad, pouring a little more bourbon for us as we watched a storm roll in. “Dad passed in ’07. I hope he’d be proud of us. Give us a couple of years. When we’re making some money, I know he’ll be proud of us. Until then, he’d be like “Get your ass movin’!”

StillWrights bourbon retails for $35 per bottle; the moonshines for $25. StillWrights can be purchased at the distillery’s tasting room -- as well as Arrow Wine South, Belmont Party Supply, Air City Wine, the Lebanon Kroger and Vandalia Carryout.

Flat Rock Distillery is located at 5380 Intrastate Drive, Fairborn. Tours, which include tastings of all their products, are $10 and can be arranged at http://flatrockspirits.com/product/distillery-tour/ -- by calling (937) 879-4447, or by emailing tours@flatrockspirits.com.

[This story appears in November 11,2014 issue of the Dayton City Paper.]

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Debonair and Soave…

If you came of age in the era when MTV actually played videos, when you hear the pronunciation of “Soave,” an Italian white wine, you immediately get a mental image of this guy:

Rico....


Instead of these guys:

 
...Soave!

As with most Italian wines, Soave (pronounced “So-AH-vey”) is named after the region in which it’s made. Soave is the subregion of the Veneto near the city of Verona in northeastern Italy. The primary grape varietal in the wine is the native Italian grape Garganega, pictured above. By law, Garganega must comprise at least 70% of the blend. If a Soave is less than 100% Garganega, the bulk of the rest of the blend comes from a grape called Trebbiano di Soave, which is otherwise known as
Verdicchio.

[Side note: If you’ve seen Italian wines made from “Trebbiano” – those wines are usually made from a different Trebbiano grape: the more common Trebbiano di Toscana. Trebbiano di Toscano is also known as Ugni Blanc. Confused yet?]

In any case, Soave is generally a dry, relatively light white. You might stumble across a sparkling Soave or a sweet, late harvest Soave from time to time – but for the most part, the fruity still white is what you’re going to see.

Like most Italian wines, there are a couple of classifications to know. There’s a “standard” Soave. Next is “Soave Classico,” which is wine that comes from the originally designated vineyards of the Soave region. There’s also a “Superiore” classification, which indicates that the wines follow particular rules for composition, harvest tonnage, and a few other rules. To further complicate matters – most, but not all, of the Superiore vineyards are in the Classico area.

Thankfully, you’re not going to need to worry much about those ins and outs. The price range on Soave isn’t a huge one. You can find a straight Soave for $10-12, and even the high end of the Soave Classico Superiore isn’t going to set you back much more than $25 or so. For most purposes, you shouldn’t need to spend more than $15, and there’s really no reason to, as you’ll see.

I received a pair of Soave from Nicole at R/West. One was a standard Soave, the other was Soave Superiore. The verdicts?

Corte Adami 2013 Soave – This one started me out with a light nose of orange blossoms and lemon. I expected it to be along the lines of a pinot grigio, but it turned out to be more weighty on the tongue than I thought. I thought it certainly had a little bit of a “glycerine” texture, which I didn’t mind, but some might consider the flavor a little “flabby.” The main flavors are round and peachy with little tartness towards the back. The finish hangs on and has a little bitter nip at the end. All in all, pretty decent for $12. While it’s not the most memorable wine in the world, it’s certainly a quality quaffer.

Bolla “Tufaie” 2012 Soave Superiore Classico – By way of comparison, here’s one of the “higher end” Soave. This one also has a blossomy nose, but it seems
more fragrant and more substantial. I found some slightly richer flavors like pear. With the fuller aroma, the weight of this wine seemed to fit the nose a little more effectively. There’s a little more acidity, which rounds out the glycerine considerably. There’s a bit of honeyed sweetness underneath the peachy, lemony flavors and the finish is fairly long and a mite acidic, like a good pinot grigio. There’s also a little bit of spiciness at the end, which I liked quite a bit. It’s quite a nice little white. I preferred the Tufaie (named for the particular volcanic stone of the region) over the Corte Adami. The price difference between the bottles is what surprised me. The Tufaie is only a dollar more at $13, which is a killer value, if you ask me. (And since you’re reading this, you kinda did.)


Soave is currently promoting its wines as a Thanksgiving alternative to common table whites like Pinot Grigio and Sauvignon Blanc. If you’re looking for a white that’s a little different than the standard, you might want to consider trying out some Soave. Seeing how close the “high end models” are in price to the standard ones, I’d suggest you splurge on the inexpensive end of the Superiore. I think it’ll serve you well, whatever you’re plating up.

And, you know, just 'cuz:



Monday, October 27, 2014

A Side-by-Side of Super Tuscan and a Return of the Heavy Hitter

Fall! Air cooling a bit, leaves turning, and the menus around Vine HQ shifting from the scrumptious salads, soups, and lighter fare which the Sweet Partner in Crime regularly cobbles together during the warmer months. Autumn and winter cooking is my culinary wheelhouse. Casseroles, stews, rich pastas and other stick-to-your-ribs offerings give me flashbacks to my bachelor days when I’d whip up a big batch of something to nosh on for the entire week. (Of course, it was mid-July when I was making those dishes back then, but I digress...)

Fall also means bigger wines, so as I amble down the Italian aisle, my eyes start to drift over to the section often simply labeled “Other Italian Reds.” Wine stores use this section to stash Italian bottles that don’t fit the traditional Italian designations. They can be blends of grapes from across a region, or even across the country. Many will be labeled “vino da tavola.” This translates as “table wine,” as you might guess – and they’re usually light, inoffensive, and forgettable. In contrast, the bottles I go for are have “IGT” on the label. An IGT designation indicates that a wine is of high quality, but does not adhere to the winemaking guidelines of the region.

The most well-known IGT wines began appearing in the 1970’s in Tuscany. These wines became known as “Super Tuscans.” To illustrate, wines made in the Tuscan region of Chianti must be made from 75% or more Sangiovese juice to be labeled “Chianti.” IGT winemakers used grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot to create bigger, fuller -- some traditionalists would argue “Americanized” – wines. Many of these Super Tuscan wines are made of a majority of grapes other than Sangiovese and command high prices. Prior to the creation of the IGT classification in 1992, any wine with less than 75% Sangiovese could only be labeled vino da tavola, regardless of quality or price range.

Super Tuscan reds were all the rage in the 90’s and 00’s, but I haven’t heard that term nearly as much in recent days. My guess is that the name “Super Tuscan” was seen as a bit faddish (much like “Meritage” was in California around that time), so wine companies eventually backed away from using that as a primary marketing term. I personally still use the name, since I like imagining Wile E. Coyote saying “Soooper Tuscan…” 

In any case, I received a pair of Super Tuscan wines recently from Colangelo (Thanks, Maggie!) with compositions that don’t resemble Chianti in the slightest. I thought the two demonstrated a very interesting contrast.

Luce Della Vite 2001 “Lucente” IGT – Lucente is the “second label” wine from Luce Della Vite. The “first label” wine, called “Luce,” is the first blend of Sangiovese and Merlot ever constructed in the commune of Montalcino. This wine, emerging from the partnership of well-known winemakers Robert Mondavi (now deceased) and Vittorio Frescobaldi, retails for close to $100. “Lucente” is the “little brother” wine, which goes for $20-25. For a little brother, Lucente shows some muscle. This blend of 75% Merlot and 25% Sangiovese comes on strong with big fruit, strong tannin, and high acid levels. That said, as powerful as it is, no sensation is really overwhelming. If you’ve got big foods, it’s got something for every occasion. You need some tannin for your eggplant parmesan? Done. Need some acid to go with that big tomato sauce? Check. Something dark and fruity for evening consumption? Gotcha. I had quite a bit of leftover tenderloin from the Barolo experiment, so we made steak sandwiches piled high with caramelized onions and sautéed mushrooms, which made for an absolutely delicious pairing. I think the Lucente is an exceptional value for the price range.

Tenuta Frescobaldi Castiglioni 2011 Toscana IGT – The Tenuta stands in contrast to the Lucente. The Lucente, as big and round as it was, still tasted like an Italian wine to me. On the other hand, if I’d been blindfolded, I easily could have thought the Tenuta might have been a California red blend with its big, dark, Cabernet-ish fruit. This makeup is 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, and 15% Cabernet Franc. Sangiovese comprises a mere 5% of this wine. Even after decanting, the fruit on this wine overwhelmed the acid and minerality found in many Tuscan wines. We had it both with minestrone and as a side-by-side with the Lucente and the aforementioned steak sandwiches and it was just OK. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a decent wine, but at $25 – if I wanted a fruity Italian wine, I could find a similar-in-quality Barbera for ten bucks less.

Along with the pair of Tuscan tasties, tucked away in the package was a bottle of Perticaia 2009 Sagrantino di Montefalco, which retails for around $50. I wrote about the Sagrantino varietal about a year ago. This powerful red wine, which I dubbed “The Italian Heavy Hitter,” has the highest concentration of polyphenols – the compounds that make red wine so good for you – of any grape in the world. It also stains teeth more than any other red wine I’ve come across. Of the bottles I tried back then, the Perticaia was my clear favorite of the three. The 2009 vintage is very much along the lines of the 2007 I reviewed previously. While big and tannic, it had enough balance to make it drinkable, and the finish of spices and berries was very pleasant. I’m happy to report that the 2009 is very similar to the 2007 – which means that it’s worth the price for a special occasion. We also discovered a fabulous food pairing for the Perticaia: the humble pot roast.

If you want a funky twist for your next fall or winter dinner party, dust off your best pot roast recipe. Get your mom to divulge her secret recipe, or get your grandfather to divulge that twist that he brought over from the Old Country. Maybe you love a recipe that you found in a $1.99 slow cooker cookbook when you were in college. Find a recipe you can embrace. Serve it over rice, over noodles, over artisanal gluten-free amaranth shavings – whatever floats your boat. Before you start the roast, decant this wine. It needs a lot of air. When your roast is ready, plate it up, pass the platter and this bottle around your table of thankful friends, and enjoy your comfort food-laden bliss. It’s eyes-roll-back-in-your-head good.

Saturday, October 04, 2014

Damilano Lecinquevigne -- A Modern Take on Barolo

A bottle of Barolo – the Italian “Wine of Kings” – recently made its way to Vine HQ for a visit.

Barolo doesn’t make many appearances around these parts. This wine from the same-named area of the Piedmont region commands respect on any wine list and an emptying of most wine drinkers’ wallets. Almost all Barolo are high-priced wines. Decent Barolo usually start at around $50 and go up from there. It’s not uncommon to see good vintages hung with pricetags upwards of $150.

When this particular bottle showed up, thanks to the good folks at Colangelo, I did a double-reason double-take. What was so different about the Damilano 2010 Barolo “Lecinquevigne”? First off, the vintage. 2010? Most Barolo, or so I understood, require around 7 years in bottle for its powerful tannins to chill out enough for the wine to become drinkable. Second – the retail on this wine was $35. Thirty-five clams for an actual Barolo? Inconthievable!

OK, so what gives here? Why is Barolo so expensive, and how’d this wine end up being so much less so? And why can I supposedly pop and pour this bottle, when I’d expect to wait until 2017 under normal circumstances?

Barolo is made from the Nebbiolo grape, a small, thin-skinned grape that’s notoriously hard to grow. The juice from Nebbiolo is super-high in both tannin and acidity. In the traditional method of making Barolo, the fermenting juice soaks with the skins of the grapes – a process called maceration -- for almost a month in some cases, extracting the maximum amount of tannin from the skins. The resulting juice is then aged in large containers called botti for at least two years and sometimes much longer. Once bottled, the wine had to sit for a long time, as I’ve already mentioned. The resulting Barolo’s tannic, powerful flavors can be challenging for many wine drinkers.

[Side note: Interestingly, “traditional” Barolo-making technique has only been around since the 1920’s, when the French, of all folks, brought these techniques to the region. Prior to that time, the Nebbiolo-based wines in that area were sweet, light in color, and slightly fizzy.]

In the 1980’s, the region went through what some writers termed the “Barolo Wars.” A group of winemakers, again influenced by their Burgundian counterparts, decided to employ more modern harvesting and winemaking techniques. These techniques included green harvesting (removing unripe grapes from ripening clusters to improve the remaining grapes), temperature-controlled fermentation, and the use of commercial yeast for more control over the product.

Additionally, these modernist winemakers used smaller barrels called barriques. Barriques typically hold around 60 gallons of wine, compared to botti, which can hold up to 4,000 gallons. Smaller barrels and shorter maceration times combine to create wine that is more approachable flavor-wise and can be drunk after a shorter period of time. These “modern” Barolo tend not to have the extended aging capacity as their more “traditional” brethren.

Which brings us to the Damilano. Damilano Winery was founded in the 1890’s, yet clearly falls on the “modern” end of the spectrum winemaking-wise. They make four “cru” Barolo (interesting that they’d use the French term) which are in the $70-80 range. The wine I received, the “Lecinquevigne,” is a blend of grapes from vineyards across these “cru.” Hence, it has a lower price – as seen with most second label wines. The name “Lecinquevigne” translates as “Five Vineyards” and has given my spellcheck a somewhat permanent case of the yips.

I wasn’t hip to the history of the “wine wars” before starting this column, and the Barolo I’d tried previously had been, as far as I know, from the “traditional” end of the spectrum. I didn’t know the history when I took my notes, and I was somewhat reassured when I tasted this – because I thought there was something a little different about the Lecinquevigne.

The nose flew at me rich and fragrant. I initially got strawberries, cotton candy, and some woodiness. The traditional “tar and roses” aroma that Barolo is known for emerged a bit as the wine got more air. But the flavors were soft and subtly dark. There’s plenty of mouth-coating tannin in the medium body, with notes of licorice, cherry, and leather. The finish is super-long, lots of strong tea flavor that lasts a couple of minutes if you let it. That said, I wouldn’t call it overly complex, compared to many other Barolo.

This isn’t meant to be a slam; it is a really good wine. The intent of the modernist winemaker clearly shows through. Traditional Barolo’s power and harsh tannin is Exhibit A of the male end of the “masculine vs. feminine” wine divide. It is the “Wine of Kings,” after all. Modern Barolo has a much softer, “feminine” flair. I enjoyed the Lecinquevigne quite a bit, but it might not sit as well with traditional Barolo enthusiasts. I don’t know if it would pass the Uncle Alan test. We had this bottle over the course of two nights – once with a beef tenderloin braised in three wines, and again with a late-summer-veggie minestrone. Both worked very nicely with this more mellow version of Barolo.

At $35, I’d certainly recommend it. I think it’s a pretty darned good wine – especially if you’re still learning about Barolo and deciding whether it’s for you.