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November 13 2007
I’m not a member of the Rhone Rangers (a consumer “sidekick” in their parlance), at least not yet. I am, however, loosening up my wallet to find more and more American Rhone varietal wines.
In my mind, the hottest action in the California wine market is the Central Coast area and Paso Robles in particular. This is no revelation, many people share this sentiment. One of the interesting things you can find is quality at a range of price points, which isn’t necessarily true of Napa, Sonoma and elsewhere where neighbors hold the line on price (that is in the event that they’re not trying to one-up them).
Over this past weekend, I did a back-to-back tasting of two Central Coast blends comprised of Rhone varietals and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of both, exhibiting a ‘sense of place’ while also being fruit-forward with backbone and above all, delicious.
The ’02 Tablas Creek Cotes de Tablas at about $22 dollars is a remarkable value, relative to a Chateauneuf du Pape at $40 or above. The non-vintage Rabbit Ridge Allure de Robles exhibits less refinement and more of a California style, but that’s hardly a drawback when the wine can be picked up for $11 bucks or less and around $6 if you’re near a California Trader Joe’s.
Both are excellent wines, balanced, with nice acidity and certainly give one a reason to pause long enough to re-consider the prevailing notion that California is sliding down into an abyss of sameness with high-alcohol wines that are not food friendly.
My reviews are below.
‘02 Tablas Creek Cotes de Tablas
NV Rabbit Ridge Allure de Robles
November 9 2007
It has been almost nine years since the story began that led to the best bottle of wine I’ve ever tasted.
When I was just a year or two out of school, still reticent that I hadn’t taken a European jaunt after graduating from college, too damned over eager to conquer the cubicle beast who lives for 40 years, I took a 10 day trip to Baja California on a hippie adventure travel bus called the Green Tortoise.
Legend in San Francisco, the Green Tortoise is a free-wheeling exercise in communal vacation—30 – 40 of your closet new friends on a tricked out old bus that, yes, sleeps almost 40 people—your packed in like sardines head to tail, but everybody has a spot. Food stowed in gigantic coolers packed for the whole of the trip, everybody pitches in and cooks, memories are made and friendships are built that last a lifetime.
I went solo. A backpack, over packed with khaki shorts and a Nike hat that screamed a level of commercialism that immediately marked me as the wide-eyed kid that hadn’t seen a whole lot, which was true. It would be another year before I made my first business trip to New York City and stayed at a rundown Best Western by Madison Square Garden, the only room left in the city in December, a homeless man sitting Indian style on the sidewalk vomiting into his lap, warmly greeting me to the city and the last of my wide-eyed idealism.
The Green Tortoise isn’t luxury travel, no. It is guys and gals from the Reagan era that wanted to live in the Nixon era, lots of young Europeans, some people from parts unknown looking for something different, or getting away from something normal, and, well, a couple of categories of people that defy description—description obviously meaning something for which I had a frame of reference.
Take, for example, a guy named Matt, allegedly an art dealer in San Francisco, a fact plausibly borne out by the Picasso and original Cezanne on the wall at his walk-up, a sexual switch hitter who homered from both sides of the plate while on the trip, independently wealthy, and a member of the Israeli army who was involved in some surveillance activity that he couldn’t reveal, but afford him both a girlfriend and a live-in boyfriend, neither of whom made the Baja trip though his male live-in paramour cooked a mean rack of lamb for the post trip dinner complete with mint jelly, a taste my childhood Easter table never saw, leaving wide berth for the ham and green bean casserole.
Or take the couple, Marcy and Tim, that at the end of the trip, whilst at Matt’s San Francisco home, revealed to a sub-set of the group on the trip that Tim, who had more arm and chest hair then I have on my body, used to be a Tina. They confide this, they said, when they are amongst friends, the kind of bonds that form over 10 days of constant contact in intimate environs. The young Australian girls, looking decidedly better with lipstick and not nearly as haggard as was practical after a week of no showers and self-administered vegemite breakfasts, giggling through a haze of sweet smoke; the Austrian girl, who loved wine spritzers, looking like a rubenesque Natalie Portman, pulling me outside so she could smoke a cigarette and say, “You f-ing Americans are crazy.”
So many other vivid characters—Frank the supposed Frenchman who, I guess, was really an ex-pat Russian, but didn’t reveal that because of some regionalism that only guys with 40 stamps on their passport can understand. A couple of Germans that helped me understand that stereotypes are rooted in the truth and they, in fact, really don’t have a very acute sense of humor. Ed, fifteen or more years my senior, a California lifeguard, who lived in a van for six months of the year while working San Clemente and Salt Point, a free diver who catches abalone and lobster like I go to the store to buy a head of lettuce, no, like I go to the store to buy bagged salad, a world traveler, so amiably giving, so open, so Easy, that he wore the name ‘Easy’ as a nickname, earned years ago in Thailand, Bali, or some other place forbidding to outsiders with less understanding of human nature and more hubris. He’s also the only guy I would ever agree to do the ‘Amazing Race’ with, provided he would stoop to reality television, a guilty pleasure, like many things, he likely finds interesting and peculiar in my Midwestern stock. Ed is also something of a wine mentor, always drinking his wine from a coffee mug, free of any pretense.
The bus started at the greyhound station in San Fran., drove through the night to San Diego where we picked up other folks and traveled down through Ensenada, a blur of tequila shots with the aforementioned Matt and the Austrian girl, down through Playa Escondida into the bowels of Baja California to a stretch of beach that we would call home for 6 days of camping, Negro Modelo’s purchased on site from the camp house mom, herself a societal ex-pat with a bouffant haircut and the weathered look of 40-something woman who has seen 50 years worth of late nights and early mornings.
The trip was too much fun in fact, the last time I had a carefree moment, like an 11 year old catching fire flies, a blur of eating, relaxing, eating, relaxing, eating, guitar plucking, singing, a campfire and much drinking, including wine. ‘American Pie’ by Don Mclean, a song known the world over, followed closely by the theme from the Flintstones, sung with a range of accents.
‘Easy,’ who would later become a dear, close friend, courting Jen from Connecticut, likewise now a dear friend, an office worker at American Airlines, together on a beach in Baja California, fleeting circumstance sparking a relationship that led to marriage, which I attended at a small chapel in the rolling hills of Connecticut at falls color peak, reading a passage, their relationship later offering a daughter, Jade.
The best bottle of wine I ever had was an unmarked bottle of homebrew vino, brought by Ed, pre-9/11, on the plane, on a later visit to Indianapolis, drunk in my apartment before going to get some fruitti de mare at an Italian joint, before going to a local pub to reminisce and ill-advisedly follow wine with draft beer.
The best bottle of wine I ever had was of unknown origin from an unknown grape, in a second-hand bottle with an inexpensive cork brought by a guy who I never should have met, who is now one of my best friends, who married a woman he never would have met were it not for colliding circumstance on a bus in Mexico.
November 5 2007
Ah, as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”
I’m not sure if Lennon was a wine fan, but he clearly knows more than just “Give peace a chance.”
I’ve been feeling neglectful because my blogging activity has taken a precipitous swan dive as, well, I’ve had life happen when I’m busy making other plans …
The last couple of weeks haven’t been kind on time and I’ve been trying to fill the gap with some sporadic wine reviews—which I happen to enjoy doing and I like the format that I’m doing them in, but others may have different thoughts.
Take this note from a dear reader:
Dear Jeff,
I wanted to let you know that I enjoy your site (and the design is great, too). I’m not sure if you get much reader feedback, but I wanted to share with you how much I enjoy your posts. I’ve noticed that you haven’t written any posts recently like you normally do and I’m just wondering if you’re switching to a different kind of format where you do more wine reviews or wine reviews only?
The answer to that question is that there is no change in format here at Good Grape, it’s just that I labor over some posts and not every day gives of itself so generously with time, the only real currency any of us have.
That aside, I do have a couple of thoughts—thoughts in short form, not long form.
Is anybody besides me surprised that not one, but two books assailing Robert Parker are being published in France within weeks of each other? One book is written by a former colleague and the other is from Mondovino documentarian Jonathan Nossiter, who claims to be referencing no specific critic.
It seems interesting that these books aren’t simultaneously published in the states and even more peculiar that these books would come out at the same time.
Is it possible that with a seemingly long-term shift towards more food-friendly wines underway coinciding with a rise of blogging and alternative forms of wine journalism that the Emperor of Wine’ reign has reached its pinnacle?
Separate thought, unrelated topic: after reading story after story about wineries using carbon offsets and the like I’ve officially come to my personal conclusion on this subject.
I think carbon offsets are bunk.
I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school for twelve years (I know what you’re thinking, it explains a lot doesn’t it?) and I got used to going to confession—the notion that sins could be absolved by sitting behind a screen and confessing to Father that I had used the Lord’s name in vain and had impure thoughts. Father would impart a couple of words about being strong in the face of temptation and send me off to say a bunch of “Our Fathers” and “Hail Mary’s.” All was good, man. Clean slate. Free to sin again. Of course, I’ve come to find this kind of ridiculous—sins can be absolved if you just pray a little.
Well, carbon offsets are the same way to me. Living a life with a big environmentally damaging footprint is well and good, but that sin cannot be absolved by planting trees or doing something that offsets that sin, at least in my worldview.
The only way to true green salvation is by taking the righteous path and not sinning (doing things against the environment) in the first place. Hopefully I’m wrong on this.
Finally, if I had $400 bucks burning a hole in my pocket there is no question about what I would buy. It would be a complete Le Nez Du Vin set. it has long been a source of frustration to me that you can’t buy the full set of 54 wine related scents for less than $400. It’s an outrage that somebody hasn’t come up with a less expensive solution, aside from the junky $54.99 Wine Enthusiast kit that I sent back. Until somebody does, there is a fun alternative … a web site called “I hate Perfume” at www.cbihateperfume.com that sells single note scents with dozens of options including roast beef, French bread and old leather. Check it out. The site might not have the cassis or lychee scent, but it sure will get the appetite going.
November 1 2007
Have you ever had a glass of wine made from the rare Bukettraube grape? Me neither. Should you try it? Absolutely. Can you find it in the states? Yes.
Introducing the ’07 Seven Sisters Odelia Bukettraube imported by Heritage Link Brands. Bottlenotes is the online retailer.
Bukettraube is a delicious aperitif or digestif-style white wine with residual sugar; this is the kind of wine that delights the open-minded and converts the staunch wine lover who scowls at any wine that isn’t bone-dry.
This beauty has balanced acidity and a complexity that surprises and a flavor profile that is reminiscent of a Muscat on the nose and a Muscat and Chenin Blanc blend.
The grape itself is rarely seen outside of Germany and South Africa and with a limited drinking window, this one is a rare treat.
An even rarer treat? Quality and interest that won’t break the bank. The wine is just $12.99 at retail.
I’m offering a double-whammy of a full disclosure as Selena from Heritage Link Brands is a customer of mine at my place of employment and I have been working with Bottlenotes and Alyssa Rapp, an advertiser on the site here at Good Grape. That fact completely aside, I would heartily recommend this wine as an incredible value. And I’ll offer a Good Grape double-money back guarantee. If you buy this and don’t like the wine, send me an email and I’ll mail you a check for $25 bucks.
This vino would be good in the spring with a fresh fruit plate. It would be good in the summer with a salad. It would be good in the fall with cheese plate, post dinner. It would be good in the winter as an evening sipper as you wistfully recall summer memories gone by.
If the wine isn’t enough, then the story angle of Heritage Link Brands should be. Rumor has it the founder of this exclusive importer of the wines from the continent of Africa, Selena Cuffe, is going to be the cover subject of a major business magazine in the next month, in addition to her recent feature in Time magazine. Her model of importation and her civic engagement with indigenous producers is to be highly commended.
Commendable for her own merits is entrepreneur Alyssa Rapp from Bottlenotes. You can find the Bukettraube at Bottlenotes here.
Excellent wine, a great back-story, a varietal you’ve never had, two strong female leaders in the wine industry, and a double-money back guarantee from Good Grape. What else do you need?
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