WINE - Red, White, or Other - Discussed Here!

[SonicMan46]

Of the wine that I've tasted in the past I've always liked dry red wines the most. Anything in that area under, say, $20?

Corey - I would certainly second Bruce's suggestion of Australian Shiraz - these wines are often excellent value, but can vary from lighter types to much more 'hearty' wines that might need a few years of aging (check my post a page or so back on an aged 'Shingleback' from down under!); California Zinfandel is another good value choice but these can be rather alcoholic (14-15% in some) - 'Seghesio' makes a good one each year; Pinot Noir, esp. from Oregon, is a fav of mine; also consider some of the South American reds from Chile (Cabernet & Merlot & Argentina (Malbec) - these latter are outstanding value; and, finally that 'Columbia Crest' Merlot is not a bad choice for the price, esp. if you're just getting into drinking red wine - might not want one that is too extracted w/ a lot of tannins that need to mellow.

I would suggest visiting a 'good' local wine shop - see what's available, get some advice, and pick up a couple of bottles - good luck & congrats! 

[Sergeant Rock]

I don't really like background music.

Consider Telemann...that was his reason for being 

Sarge

[sound67]

Four days, four different reds:


KILIKANOON Killerman's Run Shiraz 2003 (AU, South Australia) (photo shows 2002 vintage), € 14
CHAPEL HILL "The Vicar" 2001 (AU), € 22
REES MILLER Thousand Hills Late Harvest Shiraz 2003 (AU) (only the vinyard's label is available), € 14
TERRAMATER Reserva 2004 Shiraz (Chile) (photo shows 2000 vintage), € 15

Very different reds, it turns out. The KILIKANOON is a superb bang for the buck: fully loaded all blackberry taste, beautifully concentrated, long finish (92 Parker Points!). CHAPEL HILL's "The Vicar" is a multiple-grapes blend (48% of it Cabernet), and the only one for which decanting is mandatory (which I found out the hard way by not decanting it - with the effect that the white pepper notes were almost pervasive). I fell asleep, and after three hours it was perfect - blackberry, black currant flavors, still a good dose of white pepper, very complex wine - excellent! I ordered a further two bottles the next day, to do this beautiful wine more justice the next time around.

The REES MILLER needs no decanting, but it also a very complex and multi-leveled Shiraz (100%). Less obviousky blackerry-dominated than the KILIKANOON, again with black currant present, too, and some liquorice. The latter is even more pronounced in what is perhaps the "heaviest" of the bunch, Chile's TERRAMATER Reserva Shiraz. This is a wine that tells you to go to sleep after drinking a bottle of it.

Thomas

[sound67]

RUSTENBERG WINES Brampton Shiraz 2005 (RS; Stellenbosch), € 7 (!)
John Platter, 4 Stars (South African Wine Guide)

Actually, a blend of Shiraz (90%), Mouvédre, Grenache and Viognier. On the softer side, with a little pepper and liquorice, but overall a very smooth wine that betrays its low price. The much-advertised "complexity" though, isn't really there.

Thomas

[sound67]

Mount Nelson Sauvignon Blanc 2006 (NZ, Marlborough) again, excellent wine!

Thomas

[Lilas Pastia]

A very inexpensive Dao from Portugal, Meia Encosta 2005. Very fruity (a portuguese given), with solid yet elegant tannins. Super deal for an everyday red.

[SonicMan46]

Hello Thomas & Andre - just returned from a 5-day trip to Philadelphia (medical meeting) - had some superb seafood lunches & dinners (will report in the 'food thread') - drank all whites w/ most meals, nothing special (wine by the glass but plenty of selections) - did mainly Sauvignon Blancs (California, Chile, & New Zealand) & Pinot Grigios (from various sources) - all just fine & excellent value; also had some Scharffenberger sparkling wine w/ a wonderful crab salad @ the Four Seasons hotel for lunch one day - just superb (had to have a second glass!) - 

[Lilas Pastia]

Piont grigio is a wonderful cépage. We happily downed a bottle of an italian PG recently, over chicken breats in a parmesan cheese crust. Classy and plain delicioso !

[Heather Harrison]

I have neglected to pay attention lately to which vintages are best.  Recently, I found out that 2003 was a top year in the northern Rhone region, and I bought two bottles of Cote-Rotie (one of my favorite red wines).  Naturally, I couldn't wait so I drank one of them almost immediately.  Guigal's 2003 Cote-Rotie Brune et Blonde is the best I have had so far of this wine, which I have bought regularly in recent years.  It is powerful and complex, and it should last for many years if stored properly.  This is their basic offering of Cote-Rotie; they also have more expensive bottlings.  The other Cote-Rotie that I bought was Guigal's 2003 "Chateau d'Ampuis".  I have never tried this premium version, but it usually gets very good reviews, and 2003 was supposed to be a great year for it.  I'm going to try to hold onto this one and age it for a while, but I might get tempted and drink it.  The problem with Cote-Rotie is that it drinks well young, so it can be hard to resist the temptation.  So far, I've never been able to hold onto a bottle for more than a few weeks.

I should probably buy more of these before they disappear from the store.

Heather

[SonicMan46]

I have neglected to pay attention lately to which vintages are best.  Recently, I found out that 2003 was a top year in the northern Rhone region, and I bought two bottles of Cote-Rotie (one of my favorite red wines).  Naturally, I couldn't wait so I drank one of them almost immediately.  Guigal's 2003 Cote-Rotie Brune et Blonde is the best I have had so far of this wine, which I have bought regularly in recent years.  It is powerful and complex, and it should last for many years if stored properly.  This is their basic offering of Cote-Rotie; they also have more expensive bottlings.  The other Cote-Rotie that I bought was Guigal's 2003 "Chateau d'Ampuis".  I have never tried this premium version, but it usually gets very good reviews, and 2003 was supposed to be a great year for it.  I'm going to try to hold onto this one and age it for a while, but I might get tempted and drink it.  The problem with Cote-Rotie is that it drinks well young, so it can be hard to resist the temptation.  So far, I've never been able to hold onto a bottle for more than a few weeks.

Heather - thanks for the reviews of some recent (and likely 'expensive') Northern Rhones from Cote-Rotie - although I absolutely love the Syrah grape, I stopped buying these wines a while back - not that because the ratings are ofter superlative, but the prices just seem outrageous for a bottle of the best rated ones - have been looking for Syrahs from 'elsewhere', e.g. Australia (Shiraz - much variety & price variation), California & Washington State, and now even coming out of South America - not that I can't afford a few bottles of these Northern Rhones, but rather buy 3 or 4 bottles of highly rated Syrahs from other countries for the price of these French offerings - hardly buy any French wine @ the moment, but used to be quite a purchaser of the grape from this country - think they are in trouble! Cheers, as usual - Dave 

[The new erato]

I have neglected to pay attention lately to which vintages are best.  Recently, I found out that 2003 was a top year in the northern Rhone region, and I bought two bottles of Cote-Rotie (one of my favorite red wines).  Naturally, I couldn't wait so I drank one of them almost immediately.  Guigal's 2003 Cote-Rotie Brune et Blonde is the best I have had so far of this wine, which I have bought regularly in recent years.  It is powerful and complex, and it should last for many years if stored properly.  This is their basic offering of Cote-Rotie; they also have more expensive bottlings.  The other Cote-Rotie that I bought was Guigal's 2003 "Chateau d'Ampuis".  I have never tried this premium version, but it usually gets very good reviews, and 2003 was supposed to be a great year for it.  I'm going to try to hold onto this one and age it for a while, but I might get tempted and drink it.  The problem with Cote-Rotie is that it drinks well young, so it can be hard to resist the temptation.  So far, I've never been able to hold onto a bottle for more than a few weeks.

I should probably buy more of these before they disappear from the store.

Heather

Have had the Ch d'Ampuis 99 - a top rated vintage - twice. Both bottles were corked!

Yesterday: A really superb Cornas Granite 60 2004 frem Vincent Paris. All the usual Syrah trappings, blood, camphor, meat, aniseed, smoke were in place on top of superb, firm tannins with an outstanding length. First bottle (though I've tried it before) from a 6-pack.

[The new erato]

Some Côte-Rôties for Heather and SargeantRock:

Guigal Brune et Blonde 2000
Nice notes of camphor and blood. Hints of tree bark (not cork!), quite firm with nice bite, quite accessible. Easygoing and not the greatest of vintages. Nice.

Guigal Brune et Blonde 1999
Obviously greater and slightly closed. Deeper, more meaty and more red berries on the fruit. Acidic and longer length. Young and primary.

Bernard Burgaud 2005
Reticent nose, this is young. Lots of stuffing with quite warm fruit and liquorice. Promising.

Bernard Burgaud 2000
Red berries, camphor and vanilla on the nose. Quite round mouthfeel, good concentration. Soft in the mouth. Fruity length with fine acidic finish, slightly rustic.

Bernard Burgaud 1999
Perhaps he best vintage of this wine ever? Very well focused with good balance in the finish, lots of dry extract. Whiffs of tobacco and cool forest. Long and very good.

Bernard Burgaud 1996
Meat and leather, intense red fruits. Light style in the mouth, but well balanced. Slightly dry in the finish, don't hold. A good effort in a non-prime vintage.

Bonnefond Cote Rozier 2001
Cool nose, but slightly sweet fruit in the mouth. Noticeable camphor/aniseed with distinct notes of recently boiled raspberry jam. Acidic and burgundian style, but this wine is quite particular and I'm not convinced.

Gangloff La Barbarine 2001
More meaty/bloody this, cool fruit, sour cherries and quite accessible. Fruity, fine tannins, drinks well, Wonderful on the nose, somewhat meagre in the mouth, good  but I would have preferred more intensity.

Villard La Brocarde 2001
Dark fruits with black olives, medicinal, very fine fruit and balance. Fine acids, very good wine.

Ogier Les Embruns 2001
Raw meats, somewhat tarry. Good structure, slightly muted nose. Needs time.

Jamet 2001
Quite oaky. I am sceptical about the increasing oakyness of Jamets wines, in fact, this is the first wine of the tasting I find overoaked and I don't remember previous vintages being as oaky young. Closed and lots of stuffing, this obviously needs lots of time, time will tell what happens to the oak which makes this wine hard to evaluate. I have lots and keep my fingers crossed.

Gerin Champin le Seigneur 2000
Slightly lacking in midpalate, typical 2000 lightness, but nice and floral and typical camphory and meaty nose. Drink now I guess.

Jamet 1997
Mature.Camphor and medicinal (bank-aids). The slight note of coffee this wine has had is vanished, well integrated oak I guess. Cool style with wonderful and firm length, very good wine.

Jamet 1998
Substantially more primary with blackberries and cool fruit, wonderfull, fruity (red berries) finish. Great.

Delas Seigneur de Maugiron 1998
Very "painted" style with hints of butterscotch. Dry, probably overoaked. Noticeably raisiny on the finish.

J M Stephan 2004
Incredibly reductive out of the bottle. With air very concentrated and pure, cool fruit in a traditional style. Long.

J M Stephan VV 2004
Not as reductive initially. Minerally and complex, lots of red fruits, very linear and pure. Outstanding.

Chapoutier La Mordoree 1989
Beautiful balance. Some smoked meats, exotic woods and spices. Lots of aniseed on the taste, some vanilla. Creamy, burgundian style, velvety.

Chapoutier La Mordoree 1991 mag
Quite similar to the 89. But younger and with lots of sweet cherries on the fruit, simply outstanding. Very fresh.

Jasmin 88 and Guigal Ch d'Ampuis 99 were corked. The last one for the second time out of two! A Chave Hermitage 85 was also noticeably tainted ed by a suspicious cork

[Heather Harrison]

Thanks for all of the notes; I'll remember this if I happen to run across any of them.  Cote-Rotie is getting rather expensive, but I find the style to be unique and when I get a craving for it, nothing else will do, so I have to pay the price.  Unfortunately, the weak U.S. dollar doesn't help matters.  The 2003 Brune et Blonde was about $80.  A few years ago, this wine went for about $50.  I have always bought it from the state-owned wine stores in Salt Lake City.  Prices could be different elsewhere.  Of course, the 2003 was an especially good vintage, so that probably contributed to the higher price.  Still, I'm tempted to get more so that I can have some to sit on for a few years.

Have had the Ch d'Ampuis 99 - a top rated vintage - twice. Both bottles were corked!

That's a shame.  I've never tried the Chateau d'Ampuis, but I have always heard good things about it.  Hopefully I'll be able to wait a few years before drinking the 2003 that I just bought, and hopefully it won't be corked.  Given that the quality of corks has been going down, I suppose that is a risk.  I'm glad winemakers are investigating alternatives to the venerable old cork; newer technologies (synthetic stoppers; screw caps) may turn out to be more reliable.  I'm not attached to the tradition of the cork if something better can be found.

Heather

[sound67]

Earlier today: Trentham's biggest-bang-for-the-buck 2005 Premium Range Viognier again (and agan, and again).

And not too shabby a German Riesling now:


Jakob Jung, Erbacher Steinmorgen Kabinett 2006 (Germany, Rheingau), € 10-11

Very fruity, with peach notes dominating. Moderate minerality, a smooth and silky Riesling. I don't like the mean-and-lean ones anyway. 

My first one with a glass cork.

Thomas

[sound67]

FINCA SOPHENIA Malbec 2004 (ARG, Mendoza), € 13

Excellent: A smooth, silky, and powerful 100% Malbec, made in the Mendoza valley with assistance from France's wine expert Michel Rolland. A wine at once elegant and intense.

Thomas

[bwv 1080]

thought this review of studies on wine tasting was quite amusing:

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/11/the_subjectivity_of_wine.php

The rules of the wine tasting were simple. Twenty five of the best wines under twelve dollars were nominated by independent wine stores in the Boston area. The Globe then assembled a panel of wine professionals to select their top picks in the red and white category. All of the wines were tasted blind.

The result is a beguiling list of delicious plonk. But I was most interested in just how little overlap there was between the different critics. In fact, only one wine - the 2006 Willm Alsace Pinot Blanc from France - managed to make the list of every critic. Most of the wines were personal favorites, and appeared on only one of the lists.

So much for objectivity. But results like this shouldn't be surprising. I've blogged about this before, but it's such a cool experiment that it's worth repeating. In 2001, Frederic Brochet, of the University of Bordeaux, conducted two separate and very mischievous experiments. In the first test, Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert praised its "jamminess," while another enjoyed its "crushed red fruit." Not a single one noticed it was actually a white wine.

The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was "agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded," while the vin du table was "weak, short, light, flat and faulty". Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.

What these experiments neatly demonstrate is that the taste of a wine, like the taste of everything, is not merely the sum of our inputs, and cannot be solved in a bottom-up fashion. It cannot be deduced by beginning with our simplest sensations and extrapolating upwards. When we taste a wine, we aren't simply tasting the wine. This is because what we experience is not what we sense. Rather, experience is what happens when our senses are interpreted by our subjective brain, which brings to the moment its entire library of personal memories and idiosyncratic desires. As the philosopher Donald Davidson argued, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish between a subjective contribution to knowledge that comes from our selves (what he calls our "scheme") and an objective contribution that comes from the outside world ("the content"). Instead, in Davidson's influential epistemology, the "organizing system and something waiting to be organized" are hopelessly interdependent. Without our subjectivity we could never decipher our sensations, and without our sensations we would have nothing to be subjective about. In other words, we shouldn't be surprised that different people like different bottles of cheap wine.

[toledobass]

I've been enjoying a Syrah made by Qupe.  Soft and very delicious.

The wife brought home a bottle called seven deadly zins and we popped it open last night.  Deep and rich fruit no real tannins.  I loved it.


Allan

[sound67]

EXCELSIOR ESTATE Paddock Shiraz 2005 (RSA, Robertson) € 7-8,-

Great value! An inexpensive but powerful, concentrated, full-bodied 100% Shiraz from South Africa. Black cherry and chocolate aromas dominating on the palate. The best >10€ red I have ever tried!

Thomas

[Lilas Pastia]

I normally shy away from american, australian and south african wines. My experience with those I can afford is that they are extremely concentrated and lack fruit and subtlety. The better wines are out of my price range here in Quebec. Prices are set by a government agency that impose hefty taxes. This effectively puts good wines way out of reach of the regular customer. That's too bad because wine experts write glowingly of some of those products that are in the 30-60$ range, double the price I see south of the border. That's nuts!

For that kind of stuff I'll go for a Cahors, which are priced around 15-20$.

[SonicMan46]

Andre - yes, I feel the PAIN!  I subscribe to three wine publications - Wine Spectator, Conn. Guide to California Wine, & the California Grapevine, and over the years, wines (esp. the reds) that I use to routinely buy from California (and in the price ranges you mentioned) are now just outrageously priced, many over $100 per bottle!  For the red wines, I've migrated to the lesser varieties from the non-North Coast regions of California, Washington State for merlots, and Oregon for pinot noirs (although these are not cheap!); I'm also exploring South America, Chile (cabernets & merlots) and Argentina (malbec), much more - some excellent wines at outstanding prices. 

But a couple of 'inexpensive' wines tried the last few nights - Babich Sauvignon Blanc 2007 - just released & superb value; I've had several other '07 New Zealand SBs which are beginning to ship into my area - these wines are just 6 months old but wonderfully tart and bursting w/ tropical fruit flavors.  Another inexpensive wine, and from California, is the new J Lohr Seven Oaks Cabernet 2005 from the Central Coast (Paso Robles) - lot of good reds coming from that area of California and at good prices; I'll likely pick up some extra bottles of both of these; although, the cabernet is drinking fine now, a year or so in the cellar should soften the tannins! 

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