World Wine Weblog

Woodinville Warehouse Wineries 3rd Thursday Wine Walk

I've been hoping to attend one of the monthly Woodinville Warehouse Wineries District 3rd Thursday Wine Walk events since they started several months (years?) ago. The stars appear to be aligning, and I'm planning to go tomorrow. [update: I went today ... details below]

Although the event runs from 4-8pm, and there are only about 20 wineries, I probably won't get to all the participating wineries. Also, the $20 admission ticket includes only [1-ounce] 15 pours, further promoting a more focused exploration. So I assembled a list, searched for their web sites, and found most of their addresses and a list of the wines they produce. In case this information is useful to others, I figured I'd post the info here, along with specific wines I'm hoping to taste (in italics). If I do make it to the event, I'll update this post with some of the highlights. [Update - highlights now added.]

Having attended the event, I'll update the items below with specific impressions of some of the wines and wineries, but first I'll share a few general observations.

• I estimate the ratio of women to men to have been approximately 3:1.
• There were lots of dogs there (this month's theme was "Bottles and Dogs").
• Unlike some of the large-scale wine tasting events I've written about previously (e.g., the 2009 Zinfandel Festival and 2008 Zinfandel Festival at Fort Mason in San Francisco), I didn't find any new outstanding wines for low prices, i.e., having a high quality-price ratio (QPR). There were a few very good wines, but they were not inexpensive. Note that subtlety is often lost on me - in all dimensions of life - and so "good" to me, in the context of wine, typically means big, bold, viscous ("chewy") reds.
• Most of the participating wineries offer only a small selection of their wines - for a ticket - during the event, similar to Passport to Woodinville (a much larger-scale, and frankly, overwhelming, event I haven't attended in many years).
• My favorite winery / tasting room - in fact, the only one I'll probably go back to - was Bunnell Family Cellar. I include a more thorough review below.
• Unfortunately, although I'd listed it as a "definitely go here", I did not make it to Vortex Cellars, so will plan to visit that during a separate visit (perhaps before/after my anticipated return visit to Bunnell Family Cellar in the near future).
• The most exciting discovery of the evening was not a winery, but a distillery: Project V Distillery and Sausage Company. I didn't find their regular Single Silo Vodka (80 proof, $38), served at the front bar, anything to write home - or in this blog - about, but heading into the backroom, I found their Distiller's Cut (100 proof, $51) to be outstanding, and the Double Silo (160 proof, $83) was an amazing full-body experience: powerful aroma, fully coating my tongue with a strong alcoholic taste, and yet not burning by the time it reached my throat. I have to admit to being a bit self-conscious about my preference for higher alcohol wines, beers and spirits; it's not that I'm looking for quicker or higher levels of intoxication, but given my unawareness and unresponsiveness to subtlety [in flavors], I find the stronger flavor of higher alcohol drinks generally much preferable. In any case, I bought a bottle of the 100 proof and 160 proof vodkas (these were my only purchases of the night). They also have a Chai Infusion, which is interesting, but I'm not much of a Chai aficionado ... I imagine this might be appealing to anyone who is.

Now I'll update a few of my earlier entries for individual Woodinville Warehouse District Wineries below.

Red Sky Winery
19495 144th Ave NE, Suite B210
Bordeaux & Rhone red & white blends & varietals
Serendipity (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc blend)
Impressions: 2 tickets are required for Serendipity of the Cabernet Franc; I did not try either of these. I tried the Syrah, which was pretty good, but at $30/bottle, didn't seem to have a high QPR.

Alta Cellars
19501 144th Ave NE, Suite A-500
Bordeaux red blends
Escape (51% Cabernet Sauvignon,  43% Merlot, 6% Petit Verdot)
Good, relatively inexpensive ($20), but only medium-bodied.

Davenport Cellars
19501 144th Ave NE, Suite B600
Bordeaux red & white blends & varietals
RHD (53% Merlot, 27% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Cabernet Franc, 7% Malbec and 2% Petit Verdot)
Continuity (54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Franc, 9% Malbec and 2% Petit Verdot)
Good, but both are medium-bodied.

Eye of the Needle Winery (Seattle PI review)
no web site, no address found
Bordeaux & Italian blends
Little Itally (Sangiovese/Barbera-dominated blend)
Eye (Bordeaux blend)
Eye of the Needle acts as a négociant: they produce wines by blending wines leftover from other wineries' bottlings. I was told they shipped 5000 cases of wine last month, they've been in business for over 4 years, the tasting room has only been open for 4 months, and their web site will be coming online soon. All their wines are $11/bottle, and have a pretty good QPR ... but are medium-bodied.

Piccola Winery
19501 144th Ave. NE, Suite D-700
kegs only; Bordeaux & Rhone red & white blends & varietals
Bordeaux Blend (Cabernet Sauvignon 36%, Merlot 24%, Petite Verdot 16%, Malbec 12%, Cabernet Franc 12%)
Syrah/Mourvedre (Syrah 56%, Mourvedre 44%)
There was too large a crowd of people and dogs around when I stopped by, so I didn't sample their wares.

Amelia Bleu Winery
no address found
Red blend, Barbera & Riesling
Riverenza (no description found)
The Riverenza is a Barbera-based blend, but rather medium-bodied.

Vortex Cellars
19501 144th Avenue NE, D500-A
Rhone red & white blends *** definitely going here
CM² (Cinsault 75% and Mourvedra 25%)
Tempranillo
Syrah (with 5% Viognier)
How did I miss this place?! They were on my "definite" list, and I didn't see their sign. Next time ... or perhaps a separate trip (they are open Saturdays 12-5).

Dirty Bucket Brewery
19151 144th Ave NE, Suite 101
Beers
They only serve pints, no growlers, on Thursdays ... and never serve their Imperial beers (the only ones I like) in growlers :(

Project V Distillery
19495 144th Ave. NE, #A-130
Vodkas
Highly recommended; see notes above.

Pondera Cellars
19501 144th Ave NE, B400
Bordeaux blends & varietals
Pasion (48% Cabernet Sauvignon, 48% Syrah, 4% Merlot) was my favorite wine of the night. However, at $38 / bottle, it's a bit above my comfort threshold.

Patterson Cellars
19501 144th Avenue NE, D-600
Bordeaux & Rhone red & white blends
The Syrah Sirah blend was pretty good, but at $25, didn't quite pass my threshold.

Michael Fiorentino Cellars
19501 144th Ave NE, Suite C1200
Bordeaux, Rhone, Italian & Spanish red & white blends & varietals *** definitely going here
Monastrell a.k.a. Mourvedre
Counoise
Fusione (Merlot and Sangiovese "super-Tuscan")
Tempranillo
Port
They didn't offer any of the wines I was intereste in tasting; however, the Miscoloto (Granache, Tempranillo & Syrah), at $21/bottle, offers a pretty good QPR.

Bunnell Family Cellar
19501 144th Avenue NE, Building C
Rhone red & white blends & varietals *** definitely going here
Primitivo
Syrah
Petit Sirah
Petit Verdot
Mourvedre
Grenache
As I anticipated, given my love of Rhone reds, this was my favorite tasting room in the complex. Their Lia - a Mourvedre-dominant southern Rhone blend - was my second favorite wine of the night, and is on sale this month for $24 (regularly $34), making it [currently] the best bang for the buck among the wines I tried. Rochelle (the pourer on duty when I arrived) also offered me a taste of the SoRhoMoJo (another southern Rhone, only available on tap), which was, although a bit softer, was my third favorite wine of the evening. The tasting room offers most of their wines in 3 oz, 6 oz and [of course] by the bottle, making this [probably] the most appealing to Amy (who prefers larger glasses of fewer wines rather than many small sips). They have a few wines that are currently only available in kegs (like the SoRhoMoJo), but they anticipate offering [wine] growlers in the near future. The Woodinville tasting room is not listed on the web site, but I'll update this when I find out what hours they are open. We will surely visit this again ... probably this month.

Page Cellars
19495 144th Ave NE, B205
Bordeaux & Rhone red blends & varietals

Kaella Winery
18800 142nd Ave NE, 5B
Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Sangiovese

Convergence Zone Cellars
18800 142nd Ave NE, 5B
Bordeaux red & white blends

Tenor Wines
19495 144th Ave NE A-120
Bordeaux red & white varietals

Gard Vintners
19495 144th Ave. NE, Suite B240
Bordeaux, Rhone, German & Italian red & white blends & varietals

Smasne Cellars
19495 144th Avenue NE, Suite B240
Bordeaux & Rhone red & white blends & varietals
The Smasne Zinfandel was my fourth favorite wine of the night. It was encouraging to find another Washington Zinfandel I like (the Thurston Wolfe "Howling Wolfe" is the only other one I can think of), but at $34/bottle, it doesn't pass my QPR threshold.

Barrage Cellars
19501 144th Avenue NE
[web site seems to be parked]
Barrage Cellars impressed me with the most creative wine labels I saw all night. Their Rose has a wine label with an ampersand in the middle of the label, enabling the buyer to fill in something on both sides prior to giving the wine to someone (or, perhaps a couple) as a gift. An ingenious wedding / anniversary gift. Their Riesling has a blank label with an exclamation point in the lower right, also offering intriguing opportunities for personalizing a bottle of wine as a gift.

Elevation Cellars
19495 144th Ave. NE, A-115
Bordeaux red blend & varietals, Riesling

Pairing seafood with big reds: Sesame seed encrusted Ahi Tuna and Mourvedre

I love seafood, but I don't particulalry like white wines, which are typically recommended for pairing with seafood dishes. Several years ago, I discovered that grilled salmon pairs well with Pinot Noir, and that my penchant for big reds makes bigger Pinot Noirs, such as Irony, nicely complement grilled salmon with a spice rub. I've discovered what may be my favorite pairing yet between a seafood dish and a big red wine: sesame seed encrusted seared Ahi Tuna and Mourvedre. The peppery, spicy flavor of a 2008 Chateau Ste. Michele Mourvedre turned out to be the perfect complement to the peppery, spicy flavor of the meal. Here is what the tasting notes from CSM winemaker Bob Bertheau say about the wine:

“Mourvèdre is traditionally blended with Rhone-origin varietals, but it’s the shining star of this wine with just a touch of Syrah for additional layers. This is a round and elegant wine that exhibits flavors and aromas of Herbes de Provence with white pepper spice. There is an underlying meat and earthiness that is beautifully complex all on its own, with an interesting juxtaposition of very soft tannins.”

For Christmas Eve dinner each year, we've taken to experimenting with non-traditional meals. This year, we found some good looking Ahi tuna steaks at Costco for $12.99 / pound, and decided to grill these up using a tasty recipe for sesame seed encrusted Ahi Tuna that I found at GrillingAddiction.com. Following the directions thre, I rubbed the tuna steaks with olive oil, toasted up some sesame seeds and rubbed them in, along with some coarsely ground black peppercorns. I gently laid them on the rack of our Weber Genesis Silver gas grill and because they were about 1.5" thick, I seared them on high heat for 3 minutes per side vs. the recommended 2 minutes per side for 1" thick steaks. I forgot to add a dash of sesame oil, but they turned out fine (the photo above is from Grilling Addiction, as I also forgot to take a photo of the tuna steaks before we ate them).

To accompany the tuna, I turned to another online recipe - Seared Ahi Tuna with Baby Boc Choy and Seasoned Rice - found at cbsop.com (cbsop = Cooking By the Seat of Our Pants). The sauce for the baby boc choy called for soy sauce and oyster flavored sauce, but I substituted a variant of the "3-2-1" sauce from Grilling Addiction: 3 parts soy sauce (I used tamari), 2 parts hoisin sauce and 1 part hot Thai sauce (the recipe called for Sriracha Thai Hot Sauce but I substituted Thai Kitchen Roasted Red Chili Paste). Unfortunately, I didn't notice the "baby" part of the ingredients while at the store, so I picked up a regular bok choy, and cut it down to size. Evan stir fried it in vegetable oil for a few minutes to soften it up and we drizzled in some of the 3-2-1 sauce near the end. The recipe called for seasoning with Nori Komi Furikake (a rice seasoning blend containing contains sesame seeds, seaweed flakes, salt and sugar), but we we just sprinkled on some of the leftover toasted sesame seeds. We found mixing some rice, bok choy and the tuna in each forkful was most flavorful way of eating it. [The photo above is from cbsop.com].

I had originally planned to pair the tuna with Grenache, which has become my most recent favorite wine pairing with rubbed salmon, but Chateau Ste. Michelle was sold out of their most recent release of the wine, and I couldn't find any other wineries or stores in Woodinville that had Grenache. I also bought a bottle of the CSM 2008 Austral - a blend of Mourvedre, Grenache and Syrah - at the winery, which we opened to taste side-by-side with the Mourvedre to accompany the tuna. The Austral was another worthy candidate, but I think the single varietal Mourvedre was the better of the two. Next time we grill up some salmon, I may try a similar side-by-side tasting, although it would be nice to find some Grenache as well ... and I find myself wondering about Carignan (though that can be even more challenging to find than Grenache).

Describing vs. Imbibing: Thinking Too Much About Wine

I haven't been writing much about wine lately, but I have been reading about wine (and, of course, drinking wine). One of the things I've recently read helps me rationalize my reluctantance to describe wines in much detail: thinking too much about wine and writing down a description may affect one's perceptions and enjoyment of wine.

I have been writing a lot about Jonah Lehrer, ever since seeing him give a fabulous convocation speech at Willamette University last month: Jonah Lehrer's Metacognitive Guide to College. I started reading his book, How We Decide, and following his Twitter feed (@JonahLehrer) shortly thereafter, leading me to write another post on my main blog about his - and Stanford Philosophy Professor John Perry's - views on creativity, distractability, productivity and structured and unstructured procrastination. Last night, I read a passage in Lehrer's book about a study showing the how writing about different strawberry jams affects our perceptions of those jams, and it helped me feel a little less inadequate about my wine blog, where I rarely offer much in the way of original descriptions of the wines I enjoy (I typically copy and paste descriptions others have written).

In the strawberry jam study, psychologists Timothy Wilson and Jonathan Schooler set out to see if undergraduates' taste preferences for strawberry jam would correlate those with experts recruited by Consumer Reports. In a blind taste test, they asked undergraduates to rank the 1^st, 11^th, 24^th, 32^nd, and 44^th best tasting jams from the CR article, and found a pretty good correlation (0.55) to the rankings of the experts. Then they repeated the experiment with a second set of undergraduates, but asked these subjects to fill out questionnaires describing why they liked or disliked the different jams. Under this condition, the correlation between students' ratings and expert rankings plummetted to 0.11. Lehrer writes:

What happened? Wilson and Schooler argue that “thinking too much” about strawberry jam causes us to focus on all sorts of variables that don’t actually matter. Instead of just listening to our instinctive preferences, we start searching for reasons to prefer one jam over another.  For example, we might notice that the Acme brand is particularly easy to spread, and so we’ll give it a high ranking, even if we don’t actually care about the spreadability of jam. Or we might notice that Knott’s Berry Farm has a chunky texture, which seems like a bad thing, even if we’ve never really thought about the texture of jam before. But having a chunky texture sounds like a plausible reason to dislike a jam, and so we revise our preferences to reflect this convoluted logic.

Lehrer reports that these results have been replicated in rankings of posters, jelly beans, cars, IKEA couches and apartments. I started wondering about whether and how these results might apply to the domain of wine tasting, and sure enough, Schooler was involved in another study investigating this area of preferences:

When participants generate a detailed, memory-based description of complex nonverbal stimuli (e.g., faces) their recognition performance can be worse than nondescribing controls. This effect, termed verbal overshadowing, has been hypothesized to occur in situations in which domain-specific perceptual expertise exceeds verbal expertise. The present study explored this hypothesis by examining the impact of verbalization on the wine recognition of individuals of three categories of wine tasting expertise: Non-wine drinkers, untrained wine drinkers, and trained wine experts. Participants tasted a red wine, engaged in either verbalization or an unrelated verbal activity, and then attempted to identify the target wine from among three foils. As predicted, only the untrained wine drinkers showed impaired wine recognition following verbalization. The results are explained in terms of the differential development of perceptual and verbal skills in the course of becoming an expert.

[The Misremembrance of Wines Past: Verbal and Perceptual Expertise Differentially Mediate Verbal Overshadowing of Taste Memory, by Joseph M. Melcher and Jonathan W. Schooler, Journal of Memory and Language, Volume 35, Issue 2, April 1996, Pages 231-245]

So, this study suggests that experts' ability to recognize wine is not impaired by verbally describing it, whereas non-experts' recognition is impaired by the process. This may be consistent with the earlier study, which only studied students, most of whom are presumably non-experts in the realm of strawberry jam tasting. However, given the high variability in ratings and reviews by wine experts that I wrote about in my last post, I'm not sure how much faith to place in experts' descriptions. And as Lehrer convincingly argues, many ratings and descriptions are simply arguments aimed more at persuasion and rationalization than finding or describing the truth.

I do not have a copy of the full study by Melcher and Schooler, so I don't know how verbal overshadowing impacts the enjoyment of wine (vs. its recognition). I suspect that verbal overshadowing did impair the enjoyment of jams by some of the students in the second strawberry jam study. If a jam they would have ranked higher based solely on nonverbalized perceptions is ranked lower when those perceptions are verbalized, I would expect that they were enjoying the hard-to-describe jams less as a result ... and they may not have enjoyed the verbalization process, either.

As for my own perceptions and verbalizations of wine, I often have strong opinions about wines, but those opinions are typically at the level of how much I like the wine rather than what I specifically like or dislike about a wine. While I admire the ability of Robert Parker and other wine experts to describe a mind-boggling array of flavor and aroma components they discern in a wine ("pencil shavings" and "saddle leather" come to mind), I've never been able - or, perhaps, willing - to delve into such fine levels of detail. The best I can usually do is something along the lines of "big, bold, fruit-forward, full-bodied and chewy" (as I described my favorite wines in my report from the 2009 Zinfandel Festival).

I'm still not sure whether training myself to become more expert in verbalizing my impressions of wines would enhance or detract from my enjoyment of them ... but these studies give me more to think about (but hopefully, not too much).

Variability in wine ratings and reviews

An article in this weekend's Wall Street Journal on A Hint of Hype, A Taste of Illusion confirmed some of my suspicions about published / professional wine reviews and ratings I've read over the years. Anyone who regularly reads wine reviews has witnessed the considerable inter-rater variability across different reviewers of the same wine. What is interesting about today's article is that it reveals considerable intra-rater variability in the ratings a single reviewer will accord to the same wine.

The article, written by Leonard Mlodinow - who teaches randomness at Caltech and is author of "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives" - was prompted, in part, by two recent articles in the Journal of Wine Economics, by Robert Hodgson, a retired professor who taught statistics at Humboldt State University and has been proprietor of Fieldbrook Winery since 1976. Hodgson noticed that the same wine would receive widely different ratings in different competitions, ranging from "undrinkable" to double gold medals, and decided to investigate. He took a course on wine judging and joined the advisory board of the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition, and was eventually given permission to conduct controlled experiments to rate the raters.

In his first study [An Examination of Judge Reliability at a Major U.S. Wine Competition (Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 3, No. 2, 105-113)] each year, for four years, Mr. Hodgson served actual panels of California State Fair Wine Competition judges—some 70 judges each year—about 100 wines over a two-day period. He employed the same blind tasting process as the actual competition. In Mr. Hodgson's study, however, every wine was presented to each judge three different times, each time drawn from the same bottle.

The results astonished Mr. Hodgson. The judges' wine ratings typically varied by ±4 points on a standard ratings scale running from 80 to 100. A wine rated 91 on one tasting would often be rated an 87 or 95 on the next. Some of the judges did much worse, and only about one in 10 regularly rated the same wine within a range of ±2 points.

...

This September, Mr. Hodgson dropped his other bombshell [An Analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions (Journal of Wine Economics, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1-9)]. This time, from a private newsletter called The California Grapevine, he obtained the complete records of wine competitions, listing not only which wines won medals, but which did not. Mr. Hodgson told me that when he started playing with the data he "noticed that the probability that a wine which won a gold medal in one competition would win nothing in others was high." The medals seemed to be spread around at random, with each wine having about a 9% chance of winning a gold medal in any given competition.

To test that idea, Mr. Hodgson restricted his attention to wines entering a certain number of competitions, say five. Then he made a bar graph of the number of wines winning 0, 1, 2, etc. gold medals in those competitions. The graph was nearly identical to the one you'd get if you simply made five flips of a coin weighted to land on heads with a probability of 9%. The distribution of medals, he wrote, "mirrors what might be expected should a gold medal be awarded by chance alone."

Mlodinow references other interesting articles and studies in the article noting one that reportedly showed that "even flavor-trained professionals cannot reliably identify more than three or four components in a mixture, although wine critics regularly report tasting six or more" [Influence of training and experience on the perception of multicomponent odor mixtures, by Andrew Livermore and David G. Laing, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Vol 22(2), Apr 1996, 267-277], another that reportedly showed that simply manipulating the color of a wine influences experts' perception of sweetness [The Influence of Color on Discrimination of Sweetness in Dry Table-Wine, by Rose M. Pangborn, Harold W. Berg and Brenda Hansen, The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Sep., 1963), pp. 492-495], and a third that reportedly showed that the style of bottle from which the wine is poured also has a significant effect on experts' perception of the wine [La  dégustation: Etude des représentations des objets chimiques dans le champ de la conscience, by Frédéric Brochet, Academie Amorin, Coup de Cœur 2001]. The third study, and another variation of the second one (also conducted by Brochet), was also reported by Jonah Lehrer in a blog post on The Subjectivity of Wine, in which many of the commentators raise questions about the methods and results of those studies, although I don't think any of them would question the inherent subjectivity of judging wine.

One of my favorite parts of the article is a comparison between two descriptions of the same wine - a Silverado Limited Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 - offered by two different prominent sources of wine ratings. The Wine News describes it as "Dusty, chalky scents followed by mint, plum, tobacco and leather. Tasty cherry with smoky oak accents…" whereas The Wine Advocate describes it as having "promising aromas of lavender, roasted herbs, blueberries, and black currants." Mlodinow notes that there is no intersection between the 8 flavors and scents listed in the first description and the 4 flavors and scents in the second description.

Mlodinow emailed Robert Parker to invite him to participate in a controlled blind tasting. Unfortunately, Parker declined, but did point him to a recent Executive Wine Seminars tasting of 15 of Parker's top-rated 2005 Bordeaux wines - all in the 95-100 point range - in which Parker's second ratings of 12 of the 15 wines were reportedly within 2-3 points of his initial rating (though all were in a rather narrow range to begin with). This is somewhat disappointing, as I have found Parker to be the most reliable judge of wines after years of exploring different sources (including Steven Tanzer, the Wine Spectator, and a variety of different online and offline wine stores, though I have found Richard Gagnon of the Brattleboro Food Co-op and Nabil and Karen at Seattle Wine Company to be pretty reliable sources, too).

However, there was no mention in Mlodinow's article (or the EWS web site) of the intra-subject consistency of flavor and scent descriptions in the blind tasting, and over the years, I have tended to focus more on the descriptors than the numerical ratings. I have seen many cases of the diversity of descriptions for the same wine from different sources, and so for me, the trick has been to find a source whose descriptions most consistently align with my own perceptions. In fact, one of the appealing aspects of personal wine recommendations I've received from Richard, Nabil and Karen is their conversational nature: we talk about the various wines, and focus more on the descriptors than any numerical ratings, allowing us to converge on the wines that I typically find most enjoyable).

In any case, all of the various sources of ratings and reviews are secondary sources; the best way to judge which wines I enjoy is to taste them myself, ideally at a wine store or at a larger scale tasting event such as the Zinfandel Festival. Although, like the experts, I am also subject to the influences and biases listed in these reports (e.g., the color of the wine as it is poured into a glass, the descriptors mentioned by the winemaker or wine shop proprietor, the bottles from which the wines are poured and probably a host of other factors), I'd generally rather be at the whim of direct influences on my first-hand experience than at the whim of indirect influences of second-hand reports by experts.

A Zinfanatical time at the 2009 ZAP Zinfandel Festival

The tag line for this year's ZAP Zinfandel Festival was "unmask your passion"; I don't think my passion for zin has ever been masked, but it is rarely engaged as fully - one might even say, zinfanatically - as it is during this annual event at Fort Mason in San Francisco. I revealed my particular passions for specific wines and wineries I'd enjoyed in an earlier post about the 2008 ZAP Zinfandel Festival. This year, I discovered some new wineries and wines that I really like, but was disappointed that some of the wines I'd enjoyed last year were not as good this year ... and even more disappointed that some of those wines were gone by the time I got to their booths.

One of the surprising discoveries this year was a number of really good wines around the $20 price point (+/- $5). Generally, it has seemed to me that most Zinfandels have either been around $15 or around $30 (or more). The Cline Sonoma Zinfandel was the first wine I encountered in this price range a few years ago - I thought it was well worth the extra $5 or so it cost compared with the Ancient Vines, and probably a better value, overall, then some of their more expensive offerings. I'm glad to see more high quality wines emerge in this category.

Last year, I came away with a pretty good sense of my top 5 favorites - in rank order - as well as a list of honorable mentions. This year, I wasn't able to come up with a linear ordering, and so will instead offer an unordered set of my favorite wines, but will at least subcategorize them according to price ranges. As with last year, I won't include any specific notes about particular flavor or aroma characteristics of any wine, this is just intended as a personal list of favorites (which may or may not be useful to anyone else). As with all the wines I write about - and I'm chagrined to suddenly discover that I have only posted one entry in my wine blog since the entry for the 2008 ZAP Zinfandel Festival (!) - most, if not all, of the wines listed below can be characterized as big, bold, fruit-forward, full-bodied and chewy.

Great Zinfandels in the $15-25 price range

Macchia was one of my favorite wineries last year, and they impressed me again this year. I liked all five of the wines they were pouring, but the standouts for me were the 2007 Mischievous, Lodi Old Vine ($18), the 2007 Victorious ($30) - aka "Boobylicious" (mantra: "save the tata's"), and which I'll include in this price category because $5 of each bottle purchased is donated to support cancer research - and the 2006 Dangerous, a port of sorts ($25). As with post-festival period last year, I plan to order [at least] a mixed case that includes some of the other wines they make (but were not pouring).

Jessie's Grove 2006 Vintner's Choice ($22): Jessie's Grove is the winery that produces the wonderfully named and widely distributed Earth, Zin and Fire ($16) which I also like (as I did the more expensive Westwind at $32), but the Vintner's Choice - which, unfortunately, does not appear on the winery web site - seemed like the best overall quality price ratio (QPR) offering in their lineup.

St. Amant was one of my exciting new discoveries this year. Both of their wines were outstanding ... and within the magical $15-25 price range: the 2007 Mohr-Fry Ranch, Old Vine, Lodi ($18) and the Marian's Vineyard, Old Vine, Lodi ($24). David Sanchez, a ZAP volunteer from Eno Wines that I met last year when he kindly gave me a glass to use after witnessing a woman steal mine at 4:30 (with only 30 minutes to spare), was the one who recommended this winery when I saw him outside the pavilion.

Another new find - in this category - was J. Rickards 2006 Ancestors ($22).

Opolo was one of my favorites last year. This year, I was not quite as impressed across the board, but did find a great value that I don't remember from last year:the 2006 Summit Creek ($18).

I was also less impressed this year than I was last year with Pezzi King; the 2005 Old Vine that I'd liked so well last year seemed too soft to me this year. I did, however, like their bargain zinfandel, the 2007 Riley's Red ($16) ... though perhaps not as much as the guy in front of me, who bought 10 cases of the wine on the spot.

Great Zinfandels in the $25+ price range

As was the case last year, all of Robert Biale's wines were very good; this year, I particularly liked the 2007 Old Crane Ranch ($42) and the 2007 Varozza Vineyard ($42), both from St. Helena.

There were three exciting new discoveries in this price category. One was Mantra 2006 Old Vines Reserve ($30). A side-by-side comparison between the 2005 and 2006 vintages confirmed my impression from last year that 2006 was a stronger vintage ... although I was not able to make a similar judgment between the 2006 and 2007 vintages this year.

I've been a fan of Rockpile wines for a few years now, and was delighted to discover that the Mauritson booth (also recommended by David Sanchez) was pouring two Rockpile wines (and their web site lists nine (!)). Although they had not been on my radar last year, they certainly will be in future years. I enjoyed all three of their wines: the 2006 Dry Creek Valley ($27), 2006 Rockpile Cemetary Vineyard ($39) and 2007 Rockpile Ridge Vineyard ($35).

The search for the perfect Rockpile also took me to another new discovery: Valdez Family Winery. All three of their wines were also fantastic: 2006 Rockpile Road ($38), 2006 Lancel Creek, Russian River Valley ($36) and 2006 Simoncini, Dry Creek Valley ($35). Looks like I'll have to join their mailing list if I want to order any.

Howell Mountain was a pleasant re-discovery. I'd tried a Howell Mountain Zinfandel at a restaurant in San Jose back in 2003, and I don't remember the details, but remember thinking it was a highly unusual, and not altogether enjoyable, variation on the Zinfandel theme. This year, I tried them again, and still think they have a rather unique flavor, but I found "the hallmark exotic character, with white pepper and Asian spices" in the 2006 Black Sears ($38) to be much more enjoyable than my first encounter with their wines 6 years ago.

I was a bit disappointed when I got to the booths of two of my favorite wineries from last year. Edmeades had run out of everything but their Perli Zinfandel ($30), which was good but not nearly as good as their outstanding Chase Vineyard wine last year, and Hartford was out of everything at 4:00 ... and they've increased their prices 10% from last year :-(.

At the 2008 Zinfandel Festival, I shared my passion for Zinfandel with my wife, Amy, and our good friend, Carol, both of whom enjoy Zinfandel, but not quite at the same level of fanaticism as I tend to exhibit. This year, I was delighted to share my passion for Zinfandel with another good friend, Dan Oestreich, who was better able to keep up with my zinful "lust" for most of the day ... though we did get separated for a while during the last hour, when I kicked into high gear, frantically trying to taste as many of the remaining wines as I could (especially after the disappointments I'd experienced with my aforementioned earlier favorites).

In addition to being a fellow Zinfandel appreciator, Dan is also a fellow blogger, sharing inspiring insights and experiences on the theme of unfolding leadership. [He is also the photographer who snapped the photo shown to the right.] Dan noticed my irritation toward the end of the festival - the shadow side of my zinfanaticism, perhaps. It started with booths running out of wine early, but was greatly exacerbated by people breaking glasses inside and outside the two Fort Mason pavilions (!). He invited me to write an entire blog post on the topic, sensing that maybe there was something deeper in this shadow that I may want (or at least be willing) to delve into - and few people I know delve as deeply into their lights and shadows as Dan does regularly on his blog. I agree this could be an interesting and enlightening topic, but I will leave it for another post - and perhaps another blog (my main blog, Gumption). For now, I'll simply note that I consider this late-breaking pandemic of breaking glasses toward the end of these Zinfandel festivals to be childish, irresponsible and dangerous, and I hope that the festival isn't required to find a new site due to the inconsideration of a relatively few of its attendees.

However, while I'm on the topic of zinfanatical peeves, I'll note one more. The Zinfandel Festival program lists a number of wine tasting tips on page 48. One of these appears to be aligned with - and about as widely followed - as "keep right except to pass" guidelines on multi-lane highways, or instructions by flight attendants to step out of the aisle as early as possible to allow others to pass when settling into an airplane seat. At the Zin fest, this expression of what should be simple, common courtesy and conscientiousness was expressed as follows:

Please step back from the tasting table to do your personal evaluation. Others can then step forward to receive a sample of wine. Step to the side to talk with the winemaker or winery representative.

Alert winemakers and winery representatives sometimes did identify bottlenecks and gently guide the tasters who were creating them - i.e., who were not following these procedures - so that others could make more efficient use of the relatively short time allocated for tasting. However, it was often frustrating to try to reach the tables of some of the more popular wineries. I've fantasized, at times, about having a full-sized "keep right except to pass" sign I could flash up to cars as I passed them on the right ... maybe I can make up a "keep right except to fill your glass" sign to bring with me to future festivals.

I'll end off with two more "tips" of my own. If you're in a group, and several people in the group are interested in sampling wines at a crowded booth, send in a small number of wine tasting representatives - scouts - with multiple glasses to fill and then taste from a distance when they return with their bounty. Dan and I adopted this practice toward the end of the festival, when I would bring his glass and mine in to the tables for wine pours as I was increasingly focusing on efficiency as the clock was running out.

The other tip has to do with extending the time on the clock: I joined ZAP (Zinfandel Appreciators & Producers) this year for $40, which enabled me to purchase two tickets for a discounted price ($49 rather than $59) and earlier admission (1:00pm rather than 2:00pm). This was a very worthwhile investment - $20 (net) for 25% more time - and one I will make again for next year's festival ... assuming I can find any friends who are [still] willing to share my Zinfanaticism.

Taurino 1997 Notarpanaro Salento Rosso

On the eve of departing for Italy, I decided to open up a bottle of an Italian red I stocked up on awhile back from the magnificent 1997 vintage. I first had this wine at Pallino Restaurant, when they had one in Woodinville, where it was selling for $18. At the liquor store, it was $12. Unfortunately, this is is (was) my last bottle.

Here's what the back label had to say:

Notarpanaro is the name of one of our estates. It is also the name of our single vineyard, estate bottled red wine. Notarpanaro is made from a blend of two indigenous grapes, Negro Amoro and Malvasia nera. Tasting Notarpanaro will reveal an intense ruby red color, full rich flavors, and elegant feel on the palate, a sensation echoed by the smells which evolve in the glass. Notarpanaro is best served a cool 55 degrees F, as an accompaniment to flavorful, rich dishes, particularly meats and aged cheeses, or on its own as a wine for meditation.

We paired it with my standard spaghetti sauce, which is flavorful, but meatless, and includes lots of aged Parmesan and Romano cheese, which it complemented quite well. We did not attempt a meditation / wine pairing.

It reminded me a bit of a "baby Amarone" - rather full bodied, but somewhat less tannic and complex than a "real" Amarone (especially a 1997).

Here's what Robert Parker had to say:

"...exhibits a distinctive earthy nose of creosote, scorched earth, pepper, spice, black cherries and licorice...with abundant glycerin, power and richness..."

Here's what the Wine Lovers Page had to say:

Inky dark ruby color, almost opaque. An exotic mix of dark fruit and spice - plums, anise, hints of tarragon and brown spices - in a warm and approachable aroma. Full and ripe, black-fruit and anise flavors follow the nose; lemony acidity and smooth, barely apparent tannins segue into subtle licorice in a long finish.

Hopefully, during my upcoming travels, I'll discover a newfound (or newly expanded) appreciation for Italian wines - while Amarone is my favorite wine in the world, very few other Italian wines have made it into my favorites list. The Notarpanaro comes close ... but it's gone now.

A Zinfantastic Time at the ZAP Zinfandel Festival

Amy, Carol and I had a zinfantastic (or perhaps "zinfandelic") time at the 17th Annual ZAP Zinfandel Festival in San Francisco. I'd wanted to go to this festival for as long as I can remember (well, at least, as long as I've loved Zinfandel ... which is almost as long as I can remember). The Friday before the festival was my last day at my old job (in Palo Alto), so Amy flew down from Seattle for the weekend, and Carol drove out from Sacramento.

I'm not sure how many wineries were there - probably 200-300 - certainly far more than I could get to during the all-too-brief 3-hour tasting. I probably tasted over 50 wines - and seemed to be one of the relatively few people who were carrying red plastic cups (as spittoons). It was pretty crowded, but we were able to navigate pretty well (though during the last hour, I left Amy and Carol behind as I fully engaged in what my friend, Les, called "wine lust" (when we were together during the Rhone Rangers festival a few years ago) - darting among the tables, using my mouth solely for tasting wines, vs. communicating with other humans). Note for next year: join ZAP (Zinfandel Advocates & Producers) ... the extra cost would be well worth the extra hour (with a smaller crowd) for tasting.

As usual, I am not very good at recalling nuances of smells or taste components, all I remember is what I really liked - and didn't like, so I'm going to list my top choices among the wines I tasted (and the tasting notes provided by the wineries).

1. Edmeades: 2005 2006 Chase Vineyard ($29): Think cherries … loads of ’em. Chocolate-covered cherries, dried Bing cherries, candied cherries, perfumed cherries. Mendocino Zin may be known for cherry and berry flavors, but this bottling is over the top, with cherry bursting out in all directions, topped with a rich toasty oak bouquet with a touch of butterscotch. Bold … and big, with excellent cellaring potential for five to ten years.
   [Interestingly, Robert Parker only rated this wine at 89 points: "The 2005 Zinfandel Chase Vineyard has an intense black cherry and raspberry nose, a dark ruby/purple-tinged color, surprisingly full body and depth, and is quite a complete wine, even in such a difficult vintage." The photo to the right is of the Edmeades tasting booth. (Update: I initially mislabeled the vintage we tasted of the Edmeades and the Hartford at the event; in both cases, it was the 2006. This may explain the highly unusual discrepancy between RP's rating and my subjective impression of a wine. I believe all the other vintages are correctly labeled.)]
2. Hartford: 2005 2006 Fanucchi-Wood Road Vineyard, Russian River Valley ($50): The 2005 Fanucchi-Wood Road Vineyard Zinfandel displays ripe blackberry and black raspberry aromas and flavors along with silky chocolate notes on the finish. Carrying on the tradition of this venerable vineyard, the 2005 Fanucchi-Wood Road Zinfandel has a tremendously dense texture complemented by big fruit and great power.
3. Opolo: 2005 Reserve, Paso Robles ($38)
4. Pezzi King: 2005 Old Vine, Dry Creek Valley ($22)
5. Roshambo: 2005 The Reverend, Dry Creek Valley ($25): Picture-perfect Dry Creek Valley Zin. So lush, so delicious, you just can't get enough. Power-packed with cherry, raspberry, cassis, chocolate, licorice, tobacco, oak and spice flavors, this wine's structure is beautiful, with elegant tannins and brisk acids (Wine Enthusiast, 92 points, Editors' Choice).

Other honorable mentions include:

• Robert Biale: 2006 Old Crane Ranch (N/A), 2006 Old Kraft Vineyard (N/A
• Bogle: 2006 Old Vine ($11); I didn't try this myself, but Amy and Carol said it was very good (especially for the price) ... I did not like the 2005, but for $11, I'll give it a try.
• J. Dusi: 2004 Haute Haute Haute Zin Port, Dante Dusi Vineyard, Paso Robles (listed as a "Late Harvest Zinfandel" on their web site)
• Edmeades: 2005 Perli Vineyard, Mendocino Ridge ($29), 2006 Shamrock Vineyard (N/A), 2006 Mendocino ($18)
• Hartford: 2005 Russian River Valley ($30), 2006 Highwire Vineyard, Russian River Valley ($50)
• Opolo: 2006 Mountain, Paso Robles ($26)
• Paradise Ridge: 2005 The Convict, Rocky Ridge Vineyard, Rockpile ($34)
  
• Pezzi King: 2005 Estate, Dry Creek Valley ($40), 2005 Estate Reserve, Dry Creek Valley ($50)
• Macchia: 2006 Adventurous, Linsteadt Vineyard, Amador County ($26), 2006 Mischievous, Lodi ($18), 2005 Dangerous, Port ($25)
• Portalupi: 2006 Zinfandel, Sonoma Valley ($28)
• Rancho Zabaco: 2004 Stefani Vineyard, Dry Creek Valley ($25)
• Carol Shelton: 2005 Karma Zin, Rue Vineyard, Russian River Valley ($33), 2005 Maple Vineyard, Dry Creek Valley ($33), 2005 Manga Zin, Lopez Vineyard, Cucamonga Valley ($21), 2005 Rocky Reserve, Rockpile Ridge Vineyard, Dry Creek Valley (N/A)
• Sobon Estate: 2006 ReZerve, Amador County ($24); 2006 Old Vines, Amador County ($12)
• Steele: 2004 DuPratt, Mendocino Ridge ($24)
• Trentadue: 2004 La Storia, Geyserville Ranch, Alexander Valley Estate ($28)

Due to time constraints, I explicitly avoided some wineries - Ravenswood, Renwood and Rosenblum, because I've been to their tasting rooms within the past few years, and Turley - because I'm on their mailing list.

The only downsides to the tasting, other than it was too short, and several wineries packed it in before the end of the event, was that someone stole my tasting glass. I set it down on a table for a minute to make some notes as I was tasting my way through the Edmeades' booth, and someone stole it. It wasn't near any other glasses, so I don't think it was an "honest" mistake. Fortunately, it was close to where they were selling replacement glasses for $5, and although they had no more to sell, one of the volunteers there - David Sanchez, shown in the photo to the left - witnessed the theft (a woman with red hair - not my wife), and gave me one of the used glasses, which I washed thoroughly in the men's room, and then used to continue my final stretch of tasting. I also developed a case of severely stained thumb (shown in the photo to the right, taken at Capurro's Restaurant after the festival, in front of a bottle of Four Vines 2005 Old Vine Cuvee, one of the wines I did not taste during the festival), presumably due to wine dribbling down the stem of my glass over the course of the afternoon; fortunately, no wine dribbled onto my clothing.

All in all, I would have to say that this was the best wine tasting event I've ever attended - even better than the Rhone Rangers tasting at Fort Mason I went to three years ago (with Amy, Carol, Elizabeth, Les and Kathy). We had a nice dinner afterward (with Chris joining us) at nearby Capurro's, and spent the night at the nearby Coventry Motor Inn. Since returning home to the Seattle area, I've been able to find some of these wines in local wine shops, but I just may have to join a few more wine clubs.

Thanksgiving Food and Wine Pairing: Turkey and Chateauneuf-du-Pape

Two years ago, I'd shared the recommendation that in pairing food and wine on thanksgiving, drink what you like. I still believe in that philosophy, but in posting an entry on this year's Thanksgiving meal on my primary blog, in which I elaborated on our refinements in brining and grilling a turkey, I also noted a trend in pairing Chateauneuf-du-Papes with turkey over the years.

The photo on the left is of the Rhone wines we had with turkey last year - the 1998 Patrick Le Sec Chateauneuf du Pape "Aurore", the 1998 Domaine de Villeneuve "Ville Vignes" and the 1999 Chateau St. Cosme Gigondas - the photo on the right is of the two we had with turkey this year - the 1998 Domaine de Villeneuve Chateauneuf-du-Pape "Ville Vignes" (again) and the 2000 Domaine de la Janasse Chateauneuf-du-Pape "Chaupin". Of all of these, the Janasse is my favorite (in general, and with the turkey).

I believe most, if not all, of these are based predominantly on the Grenache grape, and so, as I noted in my main blog post, I may experiment with some single varietal Grenache next year, and perhaps a bit of Cinsault (Chateau Ste. Michelle offered their first single varietal bottlings of each grape this past year, and both sold out very quickly to Wine Club members).

I decided to repost this information here, as this is the forum in which I like to log my most interesting experiences with food and wine pairing ... and Chateauneuf-du-Pape may not be an obvious choice for most people looking for wines to pair with turkey.

Sharing My Passion for Amarone at Cafe Fino

We went to Cafe Fino last night to celebrate the contributions of Jukka Soikkeli, a senior member of Nokia Research Center, who is retiring. As I wrote in a post on my primary blog, passion was a pervasive theme (for me) throughout the evening. As I also briefly noted on my primary blog, one of the dimensions of my passion that was flowing freely was my love of Amarone.

Upon arriving at Cafe Fino, I saw that the red wine that was being offered was a Chianti Classico, which tends to be a bit light for my tastes (as I've noted before, subtlety is lost on me, and [so] I seek out bold flavors). I was starting to think about beer or other libations, when my colleague Ramin said something about my penchant for wine. I expressed my dilemma about whether to drink the Chianti, given my preference for big wines ... and got to talking about Amarone as the exemplar of all I love in wines (and proceeded to tell Ramin, Deborah and others far more than they probably ever wanted to know about the history of Amarone and the way it is produced). I asked whether the restaurant carried Amarone, and Vito (shown in the photo, and now my friend for life) brought out a bottle of the 2003 Cesari Amarone so that I could better share my passion for this wine.

I don't know how broadly my passion for Amarone was shared among the other Nokians at the party, but the Chianti (which was a 1997, and much better than I expected, though no match for an Amarone) was soon replaced by the Amarone as the selection of the night ... and so everyone there now at least has shared the experience of Amarone, if not the passion.

A Hard Core Wine Tasting Experience at Lavanda

I met my friend Jane for an after-work drink at Lavanda Restaurant and Wine Bar in downtown Palo Alto last week. Jane is one of my favorite people -- even though she still hasn't responded to my invitation to join the self-disclosure movement on her blog -- and it's always fun to get together with her. Both of us love wine, and neither of us had visited Lavanda yet, so it seemed like a natural choice.

We were delighted to discover that there was a special wine tasting / release party that evening, with winemaker Dave Corey (shown below left) of Core Wine Company offering a lineup of his most recently released wines:

• 2004 Red 163 (14% Mourvedre, 56% Grenache, 30% Syrah),
  
• 2004 Elevation Sensation (another GSM blend, but with grapes more predominantly from his own vineyard)
  
• 2004 Hard Core (Grenache, Syrah and Cabernet)
  
• 2004 Soft Core (Grenache Blanc, Rousanne and Marsanne) -- actually, I can't remember now if that really is the name of the wine, or the name he wanted to use.
  

All of these wines were great -- representing the deeper and fuller end of the Grenache [Blanc] spectrum (and thus, more appealing to me than the lighter variations of the varietal). The Hard Core was the standout for me, where the little bit of cab really added a significant amount of power to the blend. Jane liked the Elevation Sensation best (that was my second favorite). Dave also has a predominantly Mourvedre blend and a Tempranillo. I want to track down some of these at a wine shop (and soon, as I think they are selling out).

Jane had to leave, but I didn't have dinner yet, and a pasta dish with Sardines looked very appetizing (and the kind of thing I would never cook at home), so I stayed on, and enjoyed a glass of the Turchi Syrah -- which was not included in the initial 3-glass tasting flight -- to accompany that. The meal was also accompanied by very interesting and engaging discussion with Matt Kahn (shown above right), a Professor of Design in the Art School at Stanford, who offered his views on art and design, and described some of his wine-related travels. He also highly recommended the Klinker Brick Zinfandel, so I'll have to go back there sometime ... perhaps when Jane and Matt can both be there, so the three of us can enjoy some fine wine and conversation together.