A tasty sweet wine that’s hard to pronounce

One of our favorite recipes is best paired with a sweet wine, which often means either a sweet Riesling (Rieslings can be either sweet or dry) or a Gewürztraminer. A few nights ago we had our favorite tortellini and prosciutto in a parmesan cream sauce and paired it with a 2006 Maryhill Gewürztraminer with good success.

Gewürztraminer is a tasty wine varietal whose name probably prevents more people from trying it. Pronounced “ga-VERTZ-trah-mee-ner” -- or the shortened “ga-VERTZ” -- it is a white wine that is very easy to sip. Gewürztraminer grapes are actually light purple instead of green, and they grow best in colder climates (like its origins in Germany). Gewürztraminers typically smell very fruity and aromatic and taste lightly sweet. They go great with Asian and spicy foods.

The Maryhill Gewürztraminer was very nice. This prominent winery in Washington State along the Columbia River Gorge is known for making solid wines at affordable prices. We found it well-priced at $10 on sale from a local grocery store.

The 2006 Gewürzt’s smell and taste were well-matched, both screaming of apricot. The nose (smell) also had just a touch of a woody or oakiness, and the sweet fruity taste lingered with a nicely long finish. Not only was this a tasty wine with our dinner, it was also great for sipping after our tortellini was long gone. If it erred either direction, it might have been a tiny bit too sweet for our dinner.

One note: it was very important to keep this wine chilled. As it warmed up, it lost some of the crisp fruitiness. Your Two Wine Nuts are not terribly fancy people so we do not own an ice bucket for chilling our wines. However, we do have several very handy cooler sleeves that can be purchased at places like Bed Bath & Beyond or online at Amazon (search “wine chiller sleeve”).

We keep the sleeves in the freezer and pull them out whenever we have a bottle that needs to be kept cool. Simply slide the bottle in the sleeve and voilà. They typically cost less than $10 and are well-worth having on hand.

A Special Occasion Cab and Corkage Fees

Earlier this month, your Two Wine Nuts had a special occasion to celebrate so we pulled out a “special occasion” bottle of 1992 Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley and headed to a favorite restaurant.

Yes, you are allowed to bring your own wine to a restaurant! But doing so can often start a ritual with the wait staff that we have only learned through experience.

First, be aware that you will likely pay what is called a “Corkage Fee.” This is usually $10-$15 and it supposedly covers the service cost of the waiter opening and pouring your wine, the use of the wine glasses, and the fact that you aren’t buying any of the wine in the restaurant’s cellar. So suddenly your “free bottle” isn’t really free anymore. Unless you share.

Some wait staff is more subtle than others, but all that we have encountered when bringing our own bottle have made it clear that they would love to try a sip of our wine. The first time this happened, one of your Wine Nuts was rather offended. Eventually the waitress’s hints got embarrassing and we finally told her to get a glass just so that we could get back to enjoying our meal. We shared just a sip’s worth and tipped accordingly.

With some experience, though, we have come to expect that we will be sharing at least an ounce or so of our wine with our wait staff. The negotiation usually starts with us declining a wine list since we have brought our own bottle. This is followed by a discussion about what we have brought. At some point between this and when the wine is being poured, the waiter or waitress will start showing enthusiasm and curiosity about the wine, asking questions, making hypothetical comparisons to other known wines, etc. At this point we offer that if they would like to get a glass, we would be happy to let them sample it.

This is where you can decide whether or not you want to pay the corkage fee. A small pour (one ounce or so) and you will likely still see that extra $10-$15 added to your bill. A bigger pour – one that allows at least two full sips or perhaps a little sharing with others in the kitchen – could very well lead to the corkage fee being waived. Of course, this is entirely dependent on the wait staff, the restaurant, the “specialness” of the wine, and the camaraderie you have managed to establish with the wait staff over the course of the meal.

So with all that, how was our special occasion Cabernet? Pretty darn great!

Silver Oak is known for one thing and one thing only: Cabernet Sauvignon. They have two wineries in California – one in the Napa Valley and one a little farther north in Alexander Valley. The wine is known as big and well-crafted and is priced accordingly. Although we bought the 1992 Napa Valley Cab probably 10 years ago for about $50, it is now selling online for about $130ish. So yes, our corkage fee was waived.

And was it worth $130?? Probably not. But it was very, very good. Silver Oak builds its wines to age and this one seemed to have aged rather nicely. Honestly, though, we suspect we may have waited a year or two too long to open it and we didn’t give the wine nearly enough time to breathe when we finally did.

The wine definitely changed over the hour and a half or so that we ate dinner. It got fruiter and more full. But unlike a younger Cabernet Sauvignon, this 16 year old Cab was extraordinarily smooth from the very first sip, lacking the tannins that make your mouth pucker. It was less fruity and more subtle than a typical California-style Cabernet, making it taste and feel more like a French version. Overall, it was a great wine for the price we originally paid for it. And our next “special occasion” wine will probably be decanted.

A great Rioja Crianza

A local wine store often hosts wine tasting nights. This is common and a great way to try new and oddball stuff without a big cash outlay. And it’s smart business for the wine shop because if you find something you like, chances are good you will buy at least one bottle to enjoy at home. And this is how we ended up with a tasty bottle of 2003 Rioja Vega Crianza.

We knew just a little about Riojas when we first sampled this wine. We knew Rioja wine was from Spain and we thought it only came in red. We were right about Spain and wrong about the red part.

Rioja – like most European wine – is named for a region, not a grape. Rioja is a region in the northern part of Spain near the French border. Rioja wines can be red (tinto), white (blanco) or rosé (rosado), although most Rioja wines are red. Also like many European wines, a Rioja is comprised of more than one grape. The red version is usually a blend of 3 or 4 grapes with the Tempranillo grape being the most prominent. Tempranillo grapes are very dark, almost black. They tend to produce wines that are somewhat light with a red fruit flavor – like strawberry and cherry.

OK, so we now know what Rioja is. What does Crianza mean? Crianza is one of four categories that tell you something about how the red Rioja was made. Crianza is the second category. The first category is Rioja. This means the wine spent less than one year in an oak barrel. Crianza indicates the wine was aged for at least two years total and at least one of those years was in an oak barrel. The third category is Rioja Reserva. It is the same as Crianza but instead of a minimum of two years of aging, it has a three year minimum. The final category is Rioja Gran Reserva. These are wines that were aged at least two years in oak and three years in the bottle before being released for sale.

Enough of that! What about this wine?

As would be expected from being 50% Tempranillo grapes, this Crianza was a dark, rich, purple color. It smelled like a really good Zinfandel. There were some whiffs of dark cherry as well as blackberry and a woodiness that no doubt came from being aged in an oak barrel for at least one year. Taste-wise, our notes say “bright fruit, puckery, easy to sip.” We deemed it as lighter than a Zinfandel but heavier than a Chianti. And it went great with our Canadian bacon pizza.

We bought the Rioja Vega (that’s the name of the winery) at our local wine shop for $12. Although we had it with pizza, it could easily stand up to heartier and fancier meals. We liked this wine a lot and will be going back for more once we work through our stash.

A Cabernet Sauvignon from Idaho

One of our early and tightly held philosophies about wine is that a good wine is any wine that you like. It is very easy – especially if you are new to wine -- to get swept up by professionals and scores and flowery adjectives and wait for someone else to tell you whether or not you should like a particular wine. But the fact is, it doesn’t really matter if you like the cheap stuff or the sweet stuff or the bottle-capped stuff or the boutique stuff or the status stuff. It doesn’t really matter if you like to dump a packet of sugar in your wine or pour it over ice cubes. If you like it, own it. They are your taste buds; make ‘em happy.

Having said all that, your Two Wine Nuts feel there is definite value in reading reviews and getting recommendations. When you find someone who likes stuff you like, they can be a great resource for new wine discoveries and adventures. Hopefully, if you have found yourself agreeing with our reviews here you have come back for more. And if you have disagreed, we understand if you moved on to others’ opinions.

This all came to mind as we recently sipped a wine highly recommended by a friend. It turns out we like different stuff. And that’s just fine.

We have had some very tasty Idaho wines in the past. Sadly, it was long before we were taking notes. Nevertheless, when a friend recommended a 2003 Sawtooth Cabernet Sauvignon from Idaho, we were eager to give it a try.

This Cabernet had something of an artificial fruit smell, along the lines of a grape Popsicle. Taste-wise, it was a good, basic Cabernet Sauvignon. But it was a little tangy and a little bitter and had an abrupt finish. The taste just sort of disappeared as soon as the wine did. To its credit, the wine got fruitier and fuller as we ate it with our steak dinner. But for $12.99 (at Fred Meyer), we felt we could do better. At $6-$8 we would be more enthusiastic. So if we find Sawtooth on sale, we’ll happily buy some and share it with our friend.

A Pizza Wine Zinfandel

In a previous post, we recommended a Cabernet Sauvignon by Black Mountain Vineyard. We found online reviews supporting their Zinfandel so we decided to give it a try. Verdict: So far you can’t go wrong with Black Mountain!

The 2005 Black Mountain Vineyard Cramer Ridge Zinfandel was a fun, everyday wine. It had a dark ruby red color and lots of cherry flavor. We picked up some black pepper taste somewhere in the middle, and the finish had a slight sour cherry flavor. It wasn’t a particularly complicated or bold wine. It was young and tangy and easy to drink.

Like its Cabernet brother, the Black Mountain Zinfandel would be a great pizza wine. It would also be a great wine for those folks who want to drink one glass of red wine a day for health without breaking the bank. For just $6 at Trader Joe’s, the Cramer Ridge Zin is a great buy.

New to us: White Merlot

Some of our best wine finds have been as a result of eavesdropping. Our first was when we overheard some people in a restaurant raving about a Cabernet Sauvignon called Silver Oak. Being very new to wine, we did not realize as we scribbled a note on a napkin that Silver Oak is a rather upper-end trophy wine that is not for beginners. Tasty indeed but very much a special-occasion wine for people who have been around the stuff for awhile.

So with a good track record and a sense of adventure, we waltzed over to Wal-Mart after overhearing a nearby diner rave about the White Merlot to be found there. We had heard of White Zinfandel but not White Merlot so we were very curious.

A word about these white wines made from red grapes. Yes, Zinfandel comes in red, too! Actually, Zinfandel is traditionally a red wine but it was made commercially famous in the white (or, more technically, pink) version. How does a red grape make a white wine? It’s all in the skins.

Grape skins give wine its color (among other things). After grapes are picked and the juice is squeezed out of them, the winemaker decides whether to toss away the skins that are left behind or let the skins hang out in the juice for a while. When making white wines, the green skins are tossed away almost immediately. When making red wines, the red skins may linger with the juice for several weeks. So what about these pink wines like White Zinfandel or Rosé or White Merlot? The red grapes are pressed and the skins hang out with the juice for less than a day. Just enough time to give some flavor and a hint of reddish color, resulting in that pretty rosy pink.

As promised, Wal-Mart offered a 2006 Beringer White Merlot. How did we like it? We didn’t. But, we need to say we are not big fans of White Zinfandel either. If you like White Zins, you might like White Merlot.

The White Merlot’s color was its best feature; we should have taken a photo before we opened the bottle. It was a pretty, light red color similar to a cough drop. The nose (smell) was sweet and a bit alcohol-y. It reminded us of a drugstore perfume. As for the taste, it was very thin and did not have much of a finish; the taste did not linger at all. The flavor was sweet like a flat wine cooler. And in fact, that might be how we would most enjoy this White Merlot – mixed with 7-Up as a wine cooler or sangria for a patio party. At $5.49 at Wal-Mart it was a fun experiment but we won’t be going back for more.

A nice red blend for under $10

Thanks to a recent wine class, your Two Wine Nuts discovered a new everyday red that will go with a variety of meals.

CMS by Hedges in Columbia Valley (Washington) is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah – hence the C-M-S name. According to the back label, this 2006 red is 52% Cabernet Sauvignon, 44% Merlot, and just 4% Syrah. This is pretty typical for blends, in that one or two varietals are dominant and the rest are marginal additions to help add color or flavor or body.

The back label also has an unusual explanation. It says: “This wine may occasionally show a deposit of natural tartaric acid crystals, a result of Hedges’ winemaking philosophy of less intervention, and less filtration of naturally occurring grape components. They are totally harmless.”

As hobby winemakers, we can tell you we had these crystals form in our early vino efforts and had to offer similar explanations. The crystals look like little floaty things and they will somewhat disappear if you shake the bottle a bit before opening. But that is purely for aesthetics. The crystals won’t hurt you nor will they impact the flavor of the wine. However, your Two Wine Nuts view the presence of these crystals as more of a sign of cheap (on a commercial scale) wine making and less an indication of organic, green methods. There is an easy way to prevent the crystals from forming. The wine simply needs to be cooled considerably (close to freezing) for a week or two during the winemaking process. This causes the crystals to collect at the bottom of the container/vat allowing the wine to be siphoned into a new container leaving the crystals behind. Homemade efforts may not allow the space or resources to stabilize the wine to this level. However, we feel commercial wines should.

That being said, we like this wine! At $9.99 at Trader Joe’s, CMS is an accessible wine for sipping or a casual dinner with friends. It smells primarily like a Cabernet Sauvignon – berries, some cherry, some plum. Taste-wise, it is not as heavy and full-bodied as a Cab but it is easy to sip for folks who consider themselves wine drinkers. However, this wine might be too astringent for the occasional wine drinker or for those who much prefer whites over reds.