The 2009 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen wrapped up this past Sunday, but I figured I'd blog about one or two highlights from it anyway. One of them, not to blow my own horn, was the slightly crazy blind-burger-pairing-old-world-vs.-new-world-wine-smackdown that I ran as one of my seminars on Friday. 

What I did was pick three pairs of wines, one from Europe and one from the U.S. in each case, and pair them with a series of mini-burgers prepared by Ryan Hardy, the immensely talented young chef at Montagna at the Little Nell. The audience—more than 120 people; the room was jammed—tasted each pair of wines with the appropriate burger, then voted on which wine worked best. It was a hoot, unsurprisingly, helped along substantially by the insanely good burgers.

The winners? With a crabcake slider served with a tarragon aioli, the fave wine was from Italy: the 2007 Nino Negri Ca'Brione ($35), a lightly honeyed, spicy, richly citrusy blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Incrocia Manzoni (a hybrid of Pinot Blanc and Riesling), and, even weirder, a small proportion of Nebbiolo fermented without its skins so the juice remains white. White Nebbiolo, you bet. Regardless, it was a lovely wine, and if you happen to be serving crabcakes with a tarragon aioli, go for it.

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As I seem now to do every year, I stopped last week in Boulder before heading up to the F&W Classic in Aspen for the annual pre-Aspen wine dinner that Travel & Leisure's contributing wine editor Bruce Schoenfeld throws. As usual, it was a crazy grab-bag of wines (and people), many of them extraordinary (both the wines and the people).

Among the standouts? First, a 1982 Associated Vintners Dionysus Vineyard Riesling, notable partly because it was the first single-vinyard Riesling bottled in Washington State—or so I was told—and partly because it was actually still quite alive, with appealing lemon and stone notes. Later, a 2000 Contino Graciano had aromas of earth, leather and ripe black raspberries and was lush and inviting; an interesting development from a wine that's always quite tart, tannic and palate-zapping on release. I loved the 1982 Giacosa Barolo Falletto that came my way—hazy red in color, smelling of licorice, roses and caramel, with flavors that recalled dried spices like cardamom and cinnamon—though for some reason not everybody did. (Go figure. Lunatics, the lot of 'em.) And a 1999 Yarra Yering Dry Red #1—from a winery that made news lately by getting sold—had aromas of tea leaves and kirsch, then luscious berry fruit poised on the edge of age but not quite there. A very pretty wine.

The wine of the night, though, by general acclaim, was a 1991 Ridge Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon, which was just fantastic. Aromas of forest floor, spiced currants and graphite led into layers of soft cherry-currant fruit, silky tannins, and more lingering graphite notes. It had aged gorgeously and was in perfect condition, and isn't even Ridge's top Cabernet (Monte Bello is). The current vintage will set you back $40. Not bad. And I like the fact that Paul Draper, on the back label of the wine, suggested that it would age only five to ten years. As it turns out, a very modest prediction.

I’ll admit it. I didn’t expect much from the 2005 Bonny Doon Vineyard Ca’ del Solo Nebbiolo ($30, buy this wine)—most domestic wines made with Italian grape varieties that I've had have tasted generic at best. But when I stuck my nose in the glass, I couldn’t believe what I smelled: Italy. The wine had those telltale notes of rose petals classic to Nebbiolo, and while it wasn’t as beguiling as a great Barolo or Barbaresco, I still fooled my in-house wine snob. He guessed the wine I poured was a Chianti (not a bad guess, as there were also a lot of licoricey notes, too, common in Chianti). The fruit was ripe but tart and the tannins gripping rather than soft and plush—two qualities that are common in Nebbiolo but that often seem to scare California winemakers. The finish was shorter than I would have liked (I suspect the vines are young), but I’m thrilled to see that even in the U.S., Italian grapes can taste like themselves. —Kristin Donnelly

© Ray Isle
Ziggy, the Wine Wonder Dog!

If you've read through our just-released June issue you may know that I spent some time a little while back engaged in a cork-taint sniff-off with a Labrador named Ziggy. A fun story to write—but I didn't get to run a picture of Ziggy along with it, so I'm rectifying that now. Cute, isn't she? And don't ever try to get a TCA-tainted barrel stave past her.

The other thing I didn't have room to write about in the story were the wines of Sojourn Cellars, a partnership between Craig Haserot, Ziggy's owner, and winemaker Erich Bradley. That's a shame, because they're well worth writing about. Sojourn makes a number of Pinot Noirs and Cabernets from various Sonoma vineyards, and is open for salon-style tastings (by appointment) in the small white house off the main square in Sonoma where I had my showdown with Ziggy.

The 2007 Sojourn Cellars Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir ($36) is a blend from four different vineyards, pale ruby in hue, with appealing sweet strawberry and cherry cola notes and a hint of rhubarb. It has an impressively silky mouthfeel, which jibes with Haserot's comment as I was tasting: "From a philosophical standpoint, we are hyper-focused on mouthfeel. It has to feel good before it tastes good. So we focus a lot on tannin management."

The 2007 Sojourn Cellars Windsor Oaks Vineyard Pinot Noir ($48) offered cooler fennel-herbal notes with dense, sweet berry fruit, a touch of candied raspberry, and smoky tannins on the end; lots of saturated flavor here.

My favorite of the Pinots, the 2007 Sojourn Cellars Sangiacomo Vineyard Pinot Noir ($48) has impressively sustained flavors of ripe wild raspberries and spice, a note of grapefruit peel in its acidity, and, overall, just exceptional balance and poise. The section of Sangiacomo that Haserot sources grapes from is, he says, "a nice cool spot right at the base of Sonoma Mountain, with a lot of marine influence; essentially the northern end of the Petaluma Gap."

Of the Cabernets, I thought the 2006 Home Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon ($39) was a steal for the quality it offers. The vineyard's called Home Ranch because it's essentially Haserot's backyard; the wine itself is luscious and rich, with mocha and black currant flavors and a touch of minty eucalyptus—a big, robust, embraceable Cabernet. Thinking about it makes me want to go out and grill a bunch of steaks right now.

On a different note, the 2005 Sojourn Cellars Mountain Terraces Cabernet Sauvignon ($75) is powerful and dark—much more a classic mountain-fruit Cabernet—with blackberry and black-currant fruit that's wrapped up in gripping but ripe tannins. The wine comes from the best seven barrels off Sojourn's Mountain Terraces vineyard; it's drinking very well now, and it should be drinking even better after four or five years in the cellar.

Sojourn's wines are available in some shops and at restaurants, but the production is fairly small, so they're easiest to find by getting in touch with the winery directly.

This past weekend I had the good fortune to attend Taste Washington, an extravaganza of Washington State wines put on in a few places around the country every year. I was at the mothership incarnation of the thing, in Seattle, a mighty cool town (like you need me to tell you). For me, festivities started off with a seminar I led, in which three of our former F&W Best New Chefs—Johnathan Sundstrom of Lark, Jason Wilson of Crush, and Ethan Stowell of Union (and Tavolàta, How to Cook a Wolf, and the new Anchovies & Olives)—chose some of their favorite Washington wines to pair with recipes made with some of their favorite Washington foodstuffs. 

I left it to the chefs to do most of the talking, meanwhile enjoying the heck out of the pairings they'd come up with. First up, Ethan Stowell produced a local mussels-fennel-citrus salad—details forthcoming, as I was too busy moderating to take notes—to go with the 2007 Mark Ryan Klipsun Vineyard Viognier ($29) from Red Mountain. Along with the other Viogniers I tasted throughout the weekend, it made a strong case for Washington as an impressive source for New World Viogniers that can balance the grape's natural lushness against a good spine of acidity.

Wilson, next up, brought an intensely luscious stinging nettle vichyssoise with grilled shigoku oysters—I'm going to see if he'd be game to run the recipe for this here, because it was pretty insanely delicious—to go along with a 2007 O’Shea Scarborough Klipsun Vignoble Semillon ($20), also from the Klipsun Vineyard on Red Mountain. It was a sort of oddball but appealing wine whose floral-herbal notes went strangely well with the chlorophyll-herby taste of the nettles.

Finally, Sundstrom paired his pork rillettes with fleur de sel butter—no sadness there—with a dry Riesling from the Lake Chelan region (headed toward an AVA designation later this year, apparently). The wine, the 2006 Vin du Lac Lehm Dry Riesling ($45), was flinty and focused, its crisp acidity and green apple fruit an ideal foil to the rillettes' porky richness. The ultra-local butter, by the way, came from a two-cow dairy on Vashon Island, whose young proprietor cooks a couple of days a week at Lark. 

I'll mention a few other highlights from the event in my next blog, along with the red wines that we poured at the seminar just for the fun of it, but this was a mighty nice way to start the weekend. 

Domestic Viognier—actually, make that Viognier in general—is often a disappointing grape variety, partly because when it's good, it's so seductive. Good Viognier has a floral silkiness, a kind of summertime peach ripeness and not-quite-oily texture, controlled by just the right touch of acidity, that makes it pretty irresistible (albeit in a slightly decadent way). Bad Viognier, on the other hand, is like Pamela Anderson turned into wine.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of bad Viognier out there. If Pinot Noir is the heartbreak grape, Viognier is the bad-date grape: You take one sip, think in that sinking, bad-date way, "oy—another loser!" and then sit there, stuck for the next hour or two with the rest of the bottle. But all is not lost.

Here are a few Viogniers I've tasted recently that are actually pretty darn good. It's enough to restore your faith in the whole silly process.

2008 Yalumba Eden Valley Viognier ($18) The soft, silky texture of this wine holds a lot of savory spice notes as well as ripe white peach fruit (note: this will be released in six weeks or so). Yalumba was the first Australian winery to commercially plant Viognier, by the by, and Robert Hill Smith of Yalumba was by our office the other day, which was convenient timing for this blog entry. About Viognier he says, "It's a naturally opulent fruit style, so the challenge is constraining it a bit."

2007 Novelty Hill Viognier ($22) Washington winemaker Mike Januik splits his time between Novelty Hill and his own Januik label, producing impressive wines for both. The Novelty Hill wines mostly come from the winery's Stillwater Creek vineyard in Columbia Valley; this Viognier is fragrant with spice-gumdrop, beeswax and melon notes, and keeps its abundantly juicy, melon fruit bound up with appealing acidity.

2007 K Vintners Viognier ($27) From a single vineyard, made with native yeast fermentation and neutral barrels, this reminds me of good Condrieu as much as any New World Viognier I've had recently. It's fragrant and lightly honeyed and just a flat-out sexy wine. "Winner winner chicken dinner," as the K Vintners website rightly says.

2006 Kunin Wines Stolpman Vineyard Viognier ($28) Creamy and substantial, with lots of peach and lemon curd, this has a voluptuous character that walks close to being too much but pulls back just in time. I liked it despite my typical inclinations toward lean, mineral, sharp-tempered whites. It's sourced from the Stolpman Vineyard (which also makes a terrific Roussanne called L'Avion under its own label).

As always, one good way to track down these wines is wine-searcher.com.

Having just finished a column on unoaked Chardonnay (which will be out in our May issue), it's been refreshing to turn around and taste some very good California Chardonnays that do use oak. After all, oak is hardly a black-and-white question—like butter, or salt, it can be used to fantastic effect or to dismal effect, depending on the skill and the sensibility of the chef, or winemaker.

The 2007 Shafer Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay ($48, find this wine), for instance, is impeccably balanced—a full-bodied white with lemon and mandarin orange notes, zingy acidity, a hint of caramel (that'd be the wood) and a long, focused, refreshing finish. It gets no malolactic fermentation, and is made in 50% new oak barrels, 25% old oak, and 25% stainless steel barrels. Doug Shafer told me as we were tasting it that he'd pulled back on the oak in this wine starting in 2005, because he got tired of his Chardonnays falling apart after a few years. If this vintage is characteristic of his new style for Red Shoulder, I'm all for it. Note that this vintage was just released, so the link above goes to stores that stock the 2006; one would hope they'll end up bringing in the '07 as well.

I also recently tasted three new wines from a less well known but superb California Chardonnay producers, Varner. Bob and Jim Varner farm a chunk of vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains appellation, oddly enough not too far above the retirement community where my grandmother used to live (oddly for me, at least). I'm a fan of their Foxglove line of affordable wines, which I think offer some of the best wine deals in the market. Their higher end offerings under their own name are terrific, too. (Note that these are not going to be released for another six weeks or so; contact the winery if you're interested.) The 2007 Varner Amphitheater Chardonnay ($38, find this wine) comes from a two-acre block of own-rooted, 28-year-old vines and is aged in 30% new French oak on its lees until bottling. It shows aromatic notes of honeysuckle, oak spice and lemon, and flavors of lemon and pear with a graceful, minerally finish. The 2007 Varner Home Block Chardonnay ($40, find this wine), also own-rooted, is more tightly coiled right now, with kind of clockspring tension to its acidity and structure. The aroma leans more toward apple and a touch of apricot with similar oak spice, the flavors towards apple, pear, vanilla and spice. Finally, the 2007 Varner Bee Block Chardonnay ($40, find this wine) is the most luscious of the three of these, more open and expansive right now. From a three and a half acre block that Jim Varner says is always the last to ripen, and that always gives the ripest fruit, it's a lovely, creamy Chardonnay that has an almost Carneros-like lemon curd note, rich lemony fruit with notes of marzipan and honey, and a firm line of acidity that lifts it right up. At the moment it's my favorite of the three.

If you want no-holds-barred, embrace-you-and-smooch-you Chardonnay that actually manages to be balanced, too, though, head for the 2006 Newton Vineyard Unfiltered Chardonnay ($60, find this wine). This is a real guilty-pleasure white, with creamy peach and apricot aromas, a full-bodied, luscious texture, and juicy apricot, red apple, caramel and vanilla flavors. At the same time, it has great acidity and what felt like a light touch of tannin on the end, which keeps the whole package from being blob-like. The wine only sees 30% new oak—albeit with 16 months in barrel and weekly lees stirring—so the oak doesn't dominate, which is part of its appeal. I normally don't have much use for this style of wine, but this is the sort of Chardonnay that could make me eat those words... 

Maybe it's the odd juxtaposition of snow and the beginning of Spring, but somehow the idea of an off-dry (lightly sweet) white wine seems like the ideal thing today. Maybe it's the thought that if Spring were actually acting like Spring is supposed to, I might be able to sit on a porch and sip one with some prosciutto & melon, instead of staring out a window at snowflakes. Regardless, here are three that caught my attention lately:

2007 Grove Mill Riesling ($17, find this wine) As often seems to be the case with New Zealand Rieslings, a little sweetness seems only to intensify and focus the flavors of lime zest and pear in this wine; it's got a nice floral note on the nose, too. 

2008 Ca’ del Solo Muscat ($20, find this wine) Randall Grahm's Ca’ del Solo wines come from his estate vineyard in Monterey County, which is farmed biodynamically (and is mostly composed of Chualar and Danville Sandy Clay Loams, if you want to really geek out about it). This vintage of his Muscat is wildly aromatic, all spice-gumdrop, melon and tangerine, and manages to be full-bodied in texture without actually being particularly heavy or high in alcohol (it's 12.5%). Moreover, it's made from Moscato Giallo—an semi-obscure muscat clone from Italy's Alto Adige—with 12% Loureiro, an even more obscure Portuguese white variety typically used in Vinho Verde. Regardless, it's a mighty tasty wine that sure makes me wish it were summer...

2007 Abbazia di Novacella Gewürztraminer ($25, find this wine) I tasted this a few months back when I was zooming through the Alto Adige on my way to Slovenia for a story, and it's stuck in my mind ever since. Intensely spicy, with a kind of spiced bosc pear character and lots of flavor, this comes off slightly sweeter than it actually is. The winemaker told me that there's only three grams per liter of sugar here, and that the perceived sweetness is mostly glycerin; he also told me that it was grown on calcareous soil, though the importer's website says, contrarily, "gravely sand of moronic origin." What sand of moronic origin might be I don't know, but I sort of love it. 

A little France vs. California match-up for the weekend, for no good reason other than that the wines were in our tasting room, they were good, and writing about them seemed like the thing to do. So nice to have one's purpose in life be so clear, right?

From California, the 2006 Clos LaChance Estate Grenache ($30) has a striking scent of violets and wild berries—really intense aromatics that give way to juicy blackberry fruit and a little black pepper on the finish. 

Then, heading down the coast, there's the 2007 Jorian Hill BEEspoke ($45), an oddball name for a potent and stylishly made 50/50 blend of Grenache and Syrah from a newish winery in the Santa Ynez Valley. It suggested smoky purple berries with a hint of wild game in the nose, then ripe, dense, berry-driven fruit with what I wrote down as a "lasting boowangy end." I have no idea what the heck I meant, though it still seems like the right thing to have written.(NB, the wine is not shown on the website, but I imagine if you called up they'd tell you how to find it.)

From France, that other country, I came across two affordable and impressive southern French reds. The 2007 Domaine de Cascavel In Fine Rouge ($14), a blend of 90% Grenache and 10% Syrah from the Côtes du Ventoux, has the classic wild herb scent of garrigue, with blackberry and cocoa notes and a juicy but firm texture.

Then, also from the Côtes du Ventoux, I was impressed by the 2007 Mas du Fadan Rouge ($13), black-purple in hue, with dusty pepper and floral notes, and a fleshy, low-acid structure that somehow still held together all of its dark, plummy fruit. It comes from a small vineyard
naturally fertilized by goats, and the property's name, fadan, means someone who has been touched by the fairies or lost their mind. Happens to me all the time.

Not long ago I was in New Zealand, and got a chance to visit a number of winemakers in the Martinborough region. Martinborough has a simple problem—it sounds a lot like Marlborough, the much larger and more well-known region on the South Island that provides the template for New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Consequently people get them confused.

So, a quick Martinborough primer. It's on the North Island, though it's the southernmost wine region on that island. Various wines are produced there, but the region's strength is Pinot Noir; along with Central Otago, it's one of the best Pinot zones in the country. And it's tiny, less than three percent of New Zealand's total wine growing area.

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