A Brander Christmas Eve

For Christmas Eve my partner and I were fortunate enough to have dinner with two friends Efrain and Sarah at Martinis Above Fourth. While we did have some lovely cocktails I brought along a couple of bottles from my private stash of wines. Interestingly enough both were from Brander, my favorite for Sauvignon Blanc in the Central coast as well a fine purveyor of Bordeaux reds. I brought two very special wines of theirs for the four of us to try with our dinners:

First up was the popular 2007 Au Naturel Sauvignon Blanc (which was recently rated a 91 by Wine Enthusiast magazine... ya Brander!). This is their flagship unoaked offering and provided a lovely lemony, limey, green appley nose, a citrusy taste with excellent acidity and a long finish that made it a delightful opener.

For a red I brought along their 2006 Bouchet. "Bouchet" is another name for a Cab Franc but from the good folks at Brander this wine is a blend of the traditional Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon but to keep it from being a traditional "Bordeaux style" blend they add just a touch of Syrah. Their use of new French oak adds a touch of spiciness to this wine, this full-bodied, fruit-forward wine was excellent! Loads of black cherry and cassis with just a hint of cocoa that was perfect with our entrees.

Wines reviewed in 2009: 223

Revisiting Baily 2004 Cabernet Franc

Well, our flying trip through Temecula didn't allow for time to taste at Baily Winery so tonight, after working out and having dinner with the hubby we settled down with a glass of a fine product of our nearby AVA. Baily's 2004 Cabernet Franc is a lovely wine in the glass, an almost translucent cherry color that just invites you to sip. After a couple of swirls the nose that greats you is just as enticing, offering up lovely spicy dark fruit that makes the mouth water before a drop enters it. The wine is lean, very good acidity and solid tannins supporting dark cherries and hints of cassis that slowly fade to a slightly peppery finish. Very nice! Wish I had more than one bottle left, I'd share it with you. ;-)

Number of wines reviewed in 2009: 200

Folie a Deux Menage a Trois Red 2006

Being home alone tonight I decided to look through my wine collection. I had been watching Bottle Shock (lovely follow up to the morning's Cabernet Sauvignon tasting) and much to my surprise I am terribly Rhone heavy with respect to reds. My home collection is not huge (coming in at a little over 100 bottles) but a good 65% are Rhone varietals (Syrahs and said blends, etc). However, I was still in the mood for a Bordeaux red (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cab Franc, etc) when I found a bottle of Folie a Deux Menage a Trois. This is an interesting little wine, a blend of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. In many ways it is to me the typical California "drinking" wine (not meant in any way disparaging)... lots and lots of blended jammy red and black fruits, little hints of spice, low tannins and moderate acid, a combo that someone just wanting a red wine to drink would have fun with. This is not in any way, shape, or form an "intellectual" wine, but it is a fun wine and I'm glad I found it. If you're wanting something that says "fun" that almost anyone will enjoy I recommend it (the modest price makes it a great buy).

Wines Reviewed In 2009: 104

Quick Trip To Temecula

Since I chose the "Pick Up" option for my shipments from Leonesse Cellars I now have an excuse for going up at least quarterly. Saturday was one of those time and it was supposed to be a "double date", Cory, Elbert, my beau and me, but my sweetie has worked for about 28 hours straight and needed to sleep so the three of us took off to the wilds of San Diego's wine country. I've written several times about Temecula and how it seems to be improving with each trip in its offerings so I won't do a lot of redundant tasting notes on this posting, just the highlights.

Since we arrived before Leonesse was open we decided to go to a place I had not been, Keyways Winery just down the road from Leonesse. The grounds were quite pretty and the tasting room was very nice though we all detected one thing missing... their beautiful bar doesn't have a foot rest. Throughout the tasting we were all trying to rest one foot or another while standing there. One interesting wine they offered was a 2005 Frolich, made from 100% Lemberger grapes, a little known Austrian varietal. Nice hint of cloves and cherries. My favorite (which followed me home) was their 2005 Cabernet Franc which greets the noise with notes of berries, spice, and vanilla and delivers nice fruit and soft tannins ending with a medium finish.

Once Leonesse was open we hit the tasting area in the barrel room. I love Leonesse and nothing disappointed (though they were out of their lovely Cab Franc/Merlot blend). After the normal tasting we were treated to a couple of barrel pulls including their soon to be released new blend of Cab Franc/Merlot, a little more balanced in the grapes and quite lovely, but the real "Wow!" was their not yet released 2006 Syrah which was, simply, awesome! Watch for it in the spring of 2009.

Lunch time took us to Ponte Family Estate and the Smokehouse Restaurant where we had a nice lunch served by the cute and capable Keith. Instead of a separate tasting, for about the same price we each got a flight of wines to go with our lunch. The wines were alright, but for some reason they didn't make me want to buy a bottle... nice, but nothing to write home about (or blog about) this time. I'll be back, they do some decent Italian wines but my palate just didn't jump for joy.

We tried to go to Alex's Red Barn Winery but they were closed until January! Disappointed we went to the much larger Falkner Winery but again nothing spoke to any of us. The most interesting was something they called "Hot Lips" which is their 2006 Luscious Lips (a semi-sweet red wine) mulled with a special blend of spices. Quite good, very "Christmasy".

It was starting to get a little late so we decided one more stop. Cory is a fan of Baily's Winery so we stopped there. I have to admit, I had been there once before and just wasn't that impressed but thought what they heck... and I am glad we did. Something seemed to have caused them to step up in this taster's opinion, so much so that I joined their win club. Their 2003 Meritage was quite nice but the star of the show for me was their 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon. Outstanding! Excellent dark fruits, hints of vanilla, well balanced acid and tannins that all combine to a nice, lengthy finish. A wonderful find for the end of the trip.

So again, Temecula surprised me... it's slow going, but the potential is starting to become reality for the local boys and girls in the wine game.

The Judgment of Ocean Beach...

OK, perhaps that was a bit pretentious but the results were quite interesting and probably unexpected except by "true believers". What am I talking about? Saturday I invited my beau and a few of friends over for a semi-blind tasting of Cabernet Franc wines. What I didn't tell them was that one of those wines was from my home state of Missouri. So along with a couple of hearty cheeses, a baguette, and a little grilled beef off we went. In the line up (and in the order tasted) we had the following:

2005 Ironstone Vineyard Reserve Cabernet Franc
2007 Westphalia Vineyards Cabernet Franc
2005 Corsentino "Franc"
2005 Hahn Cabernet Franc

Everyone was given a write up about Cabernet Franc wines which included a tasting profile and a couple of reviews of wines (different from the ones in the line up) as examples. The instructions given were simple:

We’ll taste Cabernet Franc from four different wineries and roughly same vintage in a semi-blind tasting (since we know the varietal it can’t be a blind tasting). Unlike a tasting in a professional setting we will not be judging the wines on how close they come to a baseline Cabernet Franc wine but more on simple “drinkability”. Try to pick out some of the commonly-occurring aromas and tastes but focus more on things like balance (do the tannins overpower any fruit? too much alcohol? too little acid?) and just an overall impression (this I like, that not so much). After you have tasted all four wine use the accompanying index card to rank the wines from the one you like most to the one you like least. Include a brief comment on why you picked the “best” wine and why you assigned the “worst” wine the positions you did. Don’t confer with anyone else, I am just looking for your individual assignments of the wines.

And the winner was...



The way the wines were scored was very coarse... a wine picked at first by someone got 4 points, second got 3 points, third got 2 points and fourth got 1 point. No wine was rated first by everyone tasting though Westphalia did get a first ranking by half of the tasters and Hahn was not ranked first by any taster. No one wine was ranked last by all tasters. All of the wines were kept at 58 degrees Fahrenheit and decanted before tasting. After the cards were filled out and the final scores tallied the results were as follows:

First Place: Westphalia
Second Place: Consentino "Franc"
Third Place: Ironstone Reserve
Fourth Place: Hahn

One interesting note was we all said that the Ironstone was a bit different than the other three, more "quiet" than the others. Westphalia was described as "rich", "juicy", "big fruit", "a little too rich" for one taster. Most people felt that the Hahn held out a promise but in the end failed to deliver when compared to the others.

So... congratulations to Westphalia

Two Wineries In Three Hours

Today Mr. Beau and I used the excuse of picking up my wine club shipment to do a little wine tasting in Temecula. Since we got a little late start we went to Leoness Cellars and had lunch at the wonderful Block Five restaurant. I had their flat bread "pizza" (crispy flat bread with pesto, roasted chicken and feta cheese) while my beau had their salmon. For an accompanying wine I had their 2006 Pinot Grigio (stainless steel fermentation allows the green apple and melon notes to speak uninfluenced by oak with nice crispness and refreshing finish) and he their 2006 Riesling (an off-dry offering with tasty apricot on the palate). After having satisfied our hunger we went to do a tasting and pick up our wine club shipment. I didn't go to any whites this time (having just had the Pinot Grigio) my taste buds lead me to the following standouts:

2007 Lana~Lisa Rosé of Cabernet Sauvignon, named in honor of the wives of the owners of Leoness Cellars this rosé was made "saignee-style" made by running off or "bleeding" a certain amount of free run juice from the just crushed dark skinned grapes. A touch of sugar and nice raspberries on the tongue would make this a nice pairing for something spicy.

2005 Cabernet Franc-Merlot, a nice nod to St. Emilion (could this become Temecula's Chateau Cheval Blanc?) this blend is wonderful with spicy notes on top of strong black cherry and blackberry, well rounded tannins balanced with good acidity and medium-long finish made me wish for a medium-rare steak to go with it. As I write I have a glass of this wonderful blend beside me.

2005 Meritage, a tasty blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and just a touch of Petit Verdot carried aromas of tobacco and some hints of eucalyptus and brought black fruit and spice to the tongue. A fine blend.

There were others I could talk about (such as their yummy Zinfandel and Mr. Beau's ravings on their Muscat Canelli almost made me break my red binge) but you should be getting the idea I really, really like what Leoness Cellars produces.

Our other tasting today took us to the other end of the Temecula Valley wine trail to Alex's Red Barn where we enjoyed the peace and tranquility of the place while being served by non-other than Alex himself! I have enjoyed his wines since my first trip to Temecula several years ago and today did not disappoint. As testament to the overall skill of Alex Mr. Beau told me that he enjoyed everything on the tasting list: Riesling, Viognier (one of the best I have tasted), Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon (and Mr. Beau almost never likes Cabs), Syrah, and Cream Sherry (a rare treat)! Alex doesn't "massage" his wines, letting the grapes speak for themselves. Many of the grapes come from vines that were planted over 40 years ago and have yielded fantastic fruit. As Alex told us, "When you have good grapes you don't have to "massage" the wine". One of the first wine courses I took said that the character of a wine is combination of "the grape, the ground, and the guy". Alex's Red Barn is a fine example of what can be done when the quality of all three is high.