Chateau Montelena kicks ass

If you've had the misfortune of catching me on a rant about what's wrong with California wines, you know that I think many of them, particularly many that are highly regarded by certain wine publications, have too much alcohol, too little aging potential, and are not good food wines. That's why I'm always excited when I taste American wines that aren't over-alcoholic, and that will actually work with food.

I tasted 05 and 06 Napa, and 02, 03, 04, and 05 Estate Cabernet, as well as 07 Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena the other day. All of the wines were excellent. No mystery how the Chardonnay won the Paris tasting in 1976. (If you're not familiar with the tasting, rent the movie Bottle Shock.)

The standouts among the reds were the 02 and 05 estate cabs, but the 03 and 04 were both excellent, and at a $40-ish retail, both vintages of the Napa were fantastic values. Alcohol content ranged from 13.7 to 14.3, and they all worked great with beef stew. They also all showed good aging potential, which is consistent with the last bottle of Montelena Cab I had, a bottle of '86 estate which I tasted recently. At nearly 23 years old, the wine still showed marvelous fruit, structure, and acidity, and still had potential to last several more years in the bottle.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Chateau Montelena kicks ass.

I'm thinking I might have to change my scoring system

So, the more I think about wine, the more I think I might need a bit more depth in my scoring system. I mean, the 4-point system seemed brilliant in it's simplicity when I first decided on it. After all, the Michelin Guide is the most respected restaurant guide in the world, and 3 stars is their highest rating. 3 Bicchieri is the highest rating from the Gambero Rosso. However, I keep running into situations where I've decided that a wine is a 3-Awesome wine, then I taste another one that I also think is a 3-Awesome wine, but then I have to think about whether one of them is better than the other. Plus, neither the Gambero Rosso nor the Michelin Guide ever actually give out zero stars/bicchieri. A restaurant that gets even one star from the Michelin Guide is expected to be excellent. I, on the other hand, plan on writing about wines at all different quality levels.

So, I'm thinking I need to add an Awesome. Zero Awesomes for wines that I reccomend avoiding. 1 Awesome for wines that are drinkable, but I've definitely had better. 2 Awesomes for wines that are good. Certainly there are better wines out there, but this is a wine that gets the job done. 3 Awesomes is a wine that I whole-heartedly reccomend. It's a great wine in it's category, shows good value and ageworthiness for it's price. 4 Awesomes for a wine that is absolutely classic. This is a wine that you will remember, a wine you will talk about late at night when you recount some of the greatest bottles you've had in your life. As my friend Dave would say, the kind of wine you'll tell your grandkids about.

Opinions? Comments?

Testing mobile blogging

I can blog from my phone now. Maybe now I'll do it more often.
Here's a picture of the Burgundy section of the cellar in my store.

2004 Burgundy

With 2005 having been such a talked-about vintage for Burgundy, as it was for many other places in the world, the 2004 and 2006 vintages have been more than a little bit overlooked. In our store we've discounted a ton of 04's because everybody's all about buying the 05's. But here's the thing, 05 is a great vintage, and as such it's going to take a long time for those wines to mature. The 04's are coming up on their 5th birthday now and I had a dinner last night with 9 different 04's, and they were all showing marvelously. They're delicate, elegant, they have great fruit and great acidity. Taking a look at my handy-dandy Robert Parker vintage guide, it seems that the Wine Advocate rated the 05 vintage for Burgundy in general between 96 and 98 points. Meanwhile, the 04 vintage was rated between 80 and 85 points. Now, not that I needed more reason to think that that particular publication has it's head firmly entrenched up it's own backside, nor did I need further evidence that the 100-point system for rating wines is woefully flawed, but if I did, my tasting last night would have been all the proof I could have asked for.

!Update!

So, during the tasting at Monnot, we were joined by a group of singers called Les Cadets de Bourgogne. They sing amazingly, I'll post some video. At this point in the evening, their songs have taken a turn for the decidedly bawdy. I'm not sure entirely what it was about, but I was just involved in a song that involved every man in the room walking in a circle and then alternately raising one leg, then the other, while grabbing one's crotch. I did not expect to be lying on the ground in a circle of grown men grabbing my groin on this trip.

Robert Kacher trip

It’s Monday 1/19. Friday in Paris I walked around the city, tried to walk all the way to the Eiffel Tower but didn’t make it. Stopped at the least touristy-looking place I could find, a little wine bar called l’Embouteillage.








This is the owner, Bobby. I had wine and cheese and stayed there about 3 hours speaking as well as I could with the owner and customers. When I arrived there were 5 men standing at the bar in the front, playing a game that involved rolling two little plastic pigs like dice, then determining your score based on how they landed. There didn’t seem to be a lot of rules, except that you had to accuse everybody else of cheating constantly. Afterwards, I was a bit too tired to go anywhere else. I walked through a small section of the Louvre then went back to the hotel.



That’s when the Jet-lag started to get me. I went to bed at 8 and woke up at midnight and couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.
I met up with the group and took the train to Colmar. We tasted Rene Mure and Ehrhart and had a traditional Alsatian stew with Lamb, Pork, Beef, potatoes and whatnot, followed by salad, then cheese, then apple tart and some gewürztraminer eau de vie. I’m planning a heart attack sometime next week from the amount of cheese I’ve been eating. Yesterday we drove to Beaune, walked around the city for a minute, and tried wines from Albert Morot and Pommier. This morning, after breakfast we had wines from Domaine Marc Morey, then with lunch, two Givrys from Joblot. Last night was also the first night I’ve slept more than 4 hours, and I’m still catching up on my sleep. After our 4 course lunch I could have really used a nap, but I had just enough time to check my email before heading back out to dinner and the wines of Xavier Monnot. Now I’m entirely exhausted and sitting in the lobby of the hotel tasting calvados. At least I can sleep in tomorrow. There will be tasting notes and photos with this post when I have time, I just wanted to put this up so everybody knows what I’m doing.

2005 K Vintners Guido and pizza!

I've been holding on to this bottle for a while now. We didn't get much of it at the store, and I only managed to get my hands on the one bottle for myself. The first thing I thought when I tasted it was "Holy crap, I wish I had a case of this!"

This wine completely changed my perception of the winemaker Charles Smith. His wines in general have gotten a lot of critical acclaim, and he's most well known for his syrahs, and most of the ones I've had are very big wines, yet this Guido was astonishingly delicate. It's 86% Sangiovese and 14% Syrah, and it showed more authentic Sangiovese varietal character than any Sangiovese I've ever had from Washington. My wine-drinking teammate and I actually had a bottle of 2005 Vino Nobile di Montepulciano a few weeks ago, and as we were drinking the Guido we both wished we had another bottle of the Vino Nobile just so we could compare the two.

The Guido smelled so perfectly like Sangiovese, full of cherries with just a little red licorice and dried flowers. The palate was delicious and elegant, again showing cherries and raspberries, amazing balance, and pairing extremely well with our Chicago Connection sausage pizza. My only regret is that we drank it so soon. It was so delicious, yet still seemed young, and I'm sure it would have continued to improve for a good long while. I've been keeping my eye on K Vintners' website and talking to my distributor, waiting for this wine's next release and I haven't seen anything so far. I REALLY hope Charles hasn't lost his vineyard source for this wine.

3 Awesomes.