Old World vs. New World. I've never paid all that much attention to Karen MacNeil's wine columns in Cooking Light. But in this story from the San Antonio Express-News she has an interesting take on the Cali vs. Euro question. It seems to capture the basic issue in a pithier-than-usual way. From the article:
     "If most of your experience is in California or New World wines, you're not going to come to immediate, correct judgments about European wines," MacNeil says.
     Generally speaking, California wines, as with many other New World wines, are about robust fruit flavors and full body.
     "If you go for looking for power and bigness in a European wine, you're going to set yourself up for disappointment," says MacNeil. "That's because in the European sensibility, wines that are about bigness and power, about obviousness, are regarded as something like a woman overly made up, wearing a fur coat.
     "In Europe, the idea is to listen carefully to the wine, to agonize over it, to pay great attention to what it is saying, to its delicacy."
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 3:09 PM
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1997 Ridge Kwzmlkctsi Prtzlenthi? The DNA test results are in. Zinfandel is Croatian, and its real name is Crljenak Kastelanski. Not Plavac Mali, as previously thought. Introduced to America, perhaps, by Mr. Mxyzptlk.
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 1:11 PM
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Merlot or merlot? A question for the copy desk: Should varietals be capitalized or not?
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 10:10 PM
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Trendy Dessert Alert! On Friday I checked out Theo in NYC because my friend Ellen heard that the pastry chef was "doing new things" with desserts. We weren't disappointed. The restaurant, which is in the far west section of Soho, has a menu of about a dozen desserts with names like "Lemon Lightning," "Coffee Bliss," and "Chocolate Kiss." Basically they are small parfaits of layered pastry and pudding that come in ramekins about the size of a espresso shot. For $4 apiece, we ordered four, and all were quite tasty - Ellen and I figured we'd have to come back with more people so we could order them all at once.
Also, is halibut the new seared tuna? I've noticed this fish on a lot of menus lately - the Iron Chef served it at Morimoto, then I saw it at Aureole in Vegas, Fork in Philadelphia and most recently at The Harrison in NYC. Everytime I've had it, it's been quite good - wondering if anyone else has picked up on this.
 :: posted by Chris Gray at 10:04 PM
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Wednesday's results. The theme for Aug. 28 grew out of some discussion in the blog about whether the much-derided white zinfandel had completely de-legitimized pink wines, and also out of a Dottie and John column in the Wall Street Journal about chilling lighter red wines. It could have been a bloodbath; previously, we'd sampled a single rosé and scored it as the proverbial East German judge might have. This tasting went a little better.
     1) "[Ted] Williams." 1998 Muga Reserva Rioja; 70% tempranillo, 20% garnacha (grenache), 10% mazuelo and graciano. $13. Average 15.5; range 12-17. This red has a creamy, almost buttery nose that also hints at new leather and new car, and it has a woodsy, piney taste. Simple fruit, pleasantly tannic, balanced but not overpowering.
     2) "Castles." NV Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut Rosé, California; 60% pinot noir, 40% chardonnay. $21. Average 13.8; range 11-15. Faintly pink sparkler with a yeasty nose, dry (and not easily identifiable) fruit. Not as much a flavor as a sensation, one person thought.
     3) "Vanilla." 2000 Hill of Content Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia. $13. Average 13.4; range 10-15. By chance, the fake name turned out to be perfect for this red. The heavy vanilla/oak nose is pleasant, if bordering on excessive. Dark fruit. Zesty and peppery. Reminded one skeptic -- your Webmaster forgot to write down who -- of "a slender woman, not too curvaceous, trying, and not succeeding, to be swellegant."
     4) "Comet." 2001 Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare Pink Wine, California; grenache, syrah, mourvedre and cinsaut (all red), and marsanne (white). $10. Average 12.2; range 7-14. This rosé has a pretty color and reminds one of fruits like watermelon, passionfruit, persimmon and especially strawberries. Smooth, spicy and a hair sweeter than the other rosés. Very well put together. Jeff thought that the wine "doesn't seem accidental," is "stripped of all clutter" and "doesn't go off in too many directions." As Kate observed, this would make it the Bauhaus furniture of pink wines.
     5) "Looks." 1994 Ramirez de la Piscina Rioja Gran Reserva Rioja; mostly tempranillo. $22. This odd red was the last wine of the evening. The initial whiff of asparagus is a little off-putting, but there are more pleasant hints of cocoa and charcoal. Someone noted that it gets more drinkable the drunker you get.
     6) "Bridge." 2001 Domaine Henri Bourgeois "Les Baronnes" Sancerre Rosé Loire Valley; 100% pinot noir. $13. Average 10.7; range 7-13. People who liked it thought it smelled perfumy, with a hint of cotton candy, and tasted clean and tart. Others found it unremarkable and reeking of artificial Bubblicious-style fruit.
     7) "[Nicole] Kidman." 2001 Vega Sindoa Rosé Navarra, Spain; 50% cabernet sauvignon, 50% garnacha (grenache). $5. Average 9.8; range 7-14. Pretty tart. Not much nose -- it's pale strawberry if it's anything at all. Too many sensations that didn't coalesce, one person thought. Works well with dessert, said another.
     8) "Mug." 2000 Louis Latour "Domaine de Valmoissine" Pinot Noir. Pays des Côteaux du Verdon, Burgundy; pinot noir with pinot beurot. $10. Average 9.7; range 4-12. This red had a slight prune taste and a trace of minty/menthol. One person thought it was a civil servant -- it's fine but unremarkable, and it takes no chances. Another person thought that the wine's deficiencies would be even more evident at room temperature.
     9) "[Christopher] Walken." 2000 Brouilly Chateau de la Chaize Beaujolais, Brouilly, Beaujolais, Burgundy; 100% gamay. $10. Average 6.5; range 3-11. Some people thought this bottle was corked or had been left out in the car or something but were persuaded to rate the wine by people who thought it was just made badly. Tastes like bark or a musty leather shoe. Yecch.
     All of these wines come from Martin Wine Cellar. The fake names all refer to things that are or can be icy.
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 12:20 AM
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January 8, 2002, results. Come to find out, John found his list of wines while unpacking from his recent move.
     Theme: Witches' brew -- blends
     Wine: Soon and John
     Host: Delia
     The point of tonight's tasting was to consider blends, and to see how grapes of different varietals get better -- or worse -- when intermingled. (Hence the fake names, all of which refer to things that are blends of other things.) The scores went like this:
     1) "Benji." 1999 Dynamite Merlot (Carmenet Winery), North Coast; 98% merlot, 2% cabernet sauvignon. $15. Average 15.6; range 12-19. The highest-scoring of three wines by California's Carmenet Winery. This isn't normally a merlot crowd, but people really seemed to like it. Sadly, nothing anyone said about it has been preserved for posterity. That night is like the inauguration of, say, President Franklin Pierce; we know it happened, but few written accounts of it survive.
     2) "Hot Rod." 1999 Moon Mountain Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (Carmenet Winery), Sonoma Valley; 76% cabernet sauvignon, 9% cabernet franc, 8% merlot, 7% petit verdot. $39. Average 15.4; range 11-19. Finished a close second, and probably would have pulled ahead over time. According to the winemaker, the optimum consumption date is between 2004 and 2010. "Interesting -- If I met him in at a party," Delia said, "I would get his phone number."
     "Witches' Brew." 1999 Wolf Blass Red Label Blend, South Australia; 80% shiraz, 20% cabernet sauvignon. $11. Average 13.8; range 11-16. "No nose at all is better than a bad nose," Steph said. Which sounds like faint praise, but apparently some people liked it more.
     "Creole." 1999 Dynamite Cabernet Sauvignon (Carmenet Winery), North Coast. $16. Average 12.9; range 12-14. I guess we weren't very taken with Carmenet's cabernet sauvignon. The higher the cab content in one of its wines, the lower we scored it. Still, this is a pretty respectable score.
     "Performance Art." 2000 Cakebread Cellars Deep Blue White Table Wine, Napa Valley; 90% sauvignon blanc, 10% chardonnay. Price not available. Average 12.4; range 10-17. Named in honor of seafood from the deep blue sea -- not, apparently, for the computer that checkmated Kasparov. Soon may have picked it up in California. (Your Webmaster couldn't find any evidence that it was ever sold in New Orleans.) "Assertive in a boring way," someone said. "You wouldn't want to meet this wine at a party."
     "Polyester." 2000 Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon, South Australia. $11. Average 12.1; range 6-15. Obviously, we prefer Wolf Blass's cab when it's heavily diluted with shiraz. Then again, the two Wolf Blasses came from different years. So many variables...
     "Gumbo." 2000 Cakebread Cellars Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley; 90% sauvignon blanc, 4% sauvignon musqué, 6% semillion. $19. A number of us have grooved on other Cakebread wines, but apparently this one didn't measure up. We may not have known at the time of the tasting that this was a mongrel, too -- and that it contains no higher a percentage of sauvignon blanc than "Performance Art."
     For what it's worth, we tasted these wines three side-by-side rounds: first the two Cakebread whites, then the two Wolf Blass reds, then the three Carmenet reds. The last round was billed as the "California Climax."
 :: posted by Dante Ramos at 6:23 PM
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