Two From Tallulah

Stress. Work, kitty with major health issues, moving... ugh! So last night hubby took me out to a place we first encountered on a pre-drink to our lovely New Year's Eve outing at Martinis Above Fourth (affectionately known as "Temple"). While we often passed it on the way to church (real church, not temple), we had never been in Jake's on Sixth until that time. We had so much fun we wanted to go back and last night was that time for a return visit. Jake's offers a nice little selection of cheese and fruit plates, salads, and yummy paninis (we both had the "Americano Panini" which was delicious) but since this is a wine blog I want to focus on the wines. Jake's tends to offer wines that might be termed "boutique" wines, wines that are not mass produced or as our bartender Greg said "Not the ones you can find at BevMo". Indeed, for as many wines as I have sampled over time there were few I recognized, a good sign for me to come back more often.

With dinner (pictured) I chose the 2006 La Femme D'Argent (or if your French is bad, "The Silver Lady") from Tallulah. A Sauvignon Blanc sourced from the Farina Vineyard on Sonoma Mountain. The wine is aged in neutral oak and the minerality and citrus shine through. The nose is loaded with orange blossoms, grapefruit, and honeysuckle. The wine is lean but not racy with good acidity making the mouth water. Quite a good offering. So good in fact I decided to try a second Tallulah offering after dinner, their 2006 Shake Ridge Ranch GSM. For those of you who don't know, GSM is a shorthand way of writing "Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre" which is another way of saying "Chateauneuf-sytle" (sorta, close enough for government work in my opinion). The blend is slightly over half Grenache making this a nice fruit-forward and approachable wine. The bouquet is loaded with red fruits and has just a hint of lavendar and smoked meat. The mouth experience was quite pleasant with good fruits, young but not strong tannins and enough acid support to bring it all to a warm medium-length finish. Apparently less than 100 cases of this were produced so if you want to try it I would suggest you hurry out now. To make things easy Jake's is open at 4pm seven days a week.

Number of wines reviewed in 2010: 3