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 Great “Go To” Zin

Yesterday was a wonderful preview of Spring 2007. We celebrated the sunny, warm air with BBQ’d hot dogs, cheese, crackers, tapanade, and an old stand-by Sonoma Zinfandel. We and our neighbors toasted the arrival of daffodils and riding mowers with a 2004 Murphy-Goode Liar’s Dice Zinfandel. Yum.

We first discovered Liar’s Dice at a Zinfandel festival in San Francisco back in the late 1990s. We then visited the Murphy-Goode winery in Sonoma and bought several bottles of the then hard-to-find Liar’s Dice. These days, you can find this reliable, proud-to-serve (red) Zinfandel at Costco for $14.99.

Murphy-Goode produces some very solid, representative wines. If you want to know what a Zinfandel or a Fumé Blanc (also called Sauvignon Blanc) or a California-style Chardonnay (heavy oak and butter) is supposed to taste like, Murphy-Goode is a great place to start.

In terms of their Zinfandel, Liar’s Dice has a deep, seductive berry nose with a dark cherry, currant, and peppery taste. It is a pleasantly rich Zinfandel that will go nicely with any BBQ’d meal, as well as pizza, pasta dishes, or just a nice kick-back evening on the patio. It feels a tiny bit special to open on a Wednesday night and is great to open with friends when you want a nice bottle without breaking the bank. We’ve been drinking Murphy-Goode’s Liar’s Dice for over ten years and have never been disappointed.

A favorite dessert wine!

We consider this dessert wine one of our best finds of all-time. We first discovered it in 2004 while we were on vacation and went to a restaurant well-known for its chocolate soufflé. We dutifully ordered the soufflé but what we walked away raving about was the amazing Muscat we blindly ordered to go with it. Campbells Rutherglen Muscat from Australia is one of our favorite go-to dessert wines. We keep it in stock and are always excited by an opportunity to share it with someone for the first time.

Most Muscat grapes produce a sweet white dessert wine. Campbells is unusual because its rich amber color makes it look a lot like a tawny port. This wine gets its color from the creatively named Brown Muscat grape, which is apparently grown in the southern part of Australia (Victoria, northeast of Melbourne).

We got to bring out a bottle of Campbells last weekend when some friends invited us over for dinner. In addition to a restaurant-quality meal, they served an out-of-this-world orange crème brûlée for dessert. The wine and dessert together were fabulous. Campbells smells like oranges and it has a light caramel-brown sugar flavor. Our friends declared it a dangerous little candy wine. We declared them converts.

We’ve seen Campbells Rutherglen Muscat in various wine shops, but we made quite a scene the first time we saw it in Costco. Yep, you can get this wonderful treat at Costco for a mere $13.69 per bottle. Serve it with heavier desserts of chocolate or caramel, or just drink as dessert itself. Or just skip the meal altogether.