Vineyard update

It’s been quite a while since the winemaker of your Two Wine Nuts gave an update about what is currently happening on the fermenting front.

Our 2006 wines are Riesling and Pinot Noir. The Riesling grapes we normally buy from a Willamette Valley vineyard tend to produce a very acidic wine – think something closer to orange juice than apple juice. Well, in ’06, the grapes finally got ripe enough to be more gentle. It’s still not a really sweet wine, but it’s more likely to be sipped in the afternoon than with bacon-n-eggs in the morning.

The Pinot Noir is an interesting story. In May of ’06, the Two Wine Nuts went wine tasting. We found a gentleman pouring wine with a picture of his vineyard behind him. The poor vines were growing out of what looked like softball-sized rocks with the occasional patch of dirt thrown in – very similar to the soil where we have planted our 54 Riesling vines.

After some serious talk, we convinced the man to sell us some grapes. His vineyard actually has very rocky soil in one area and more standard soil in another, so we took grapes from both. The wine from the less rocky soil ended up fruity and lively, but with very little backbone. The more rocky soil wine is still waking up – it’s rather dark and brooding at the moment. Good, but hidden. Ah, but blend them together 50-50, and you have a real winning wine, even now. I can’t wait to see what happens with more aging.

In 2007, we’ve got 3 wines working. First is another Riesling, this time from a different vineyard that tends to give more standard flavors like melon, peach, and pear. Second is a Syrah which is very dark at this point and really just needs some time to figure out what it’s going to be when it grows up. And third is my first “dessert wine.” It is a faux-ice wine made from fractionally thawed Riesling juice. Yum!

Our vineyard is sure taking its sweet time growing. After the 2007 growing season, only about 6 or 8 vines grew to a height where I can let them branch off. This means they will produce grapes during 2009. The rest of the vines still need a year to grow their trunks. There were also about 5 that I had to replace from scratch. Those won’t even have a chance to produce grapes until ’10, and are more likely to have to wait until ’11. Sigh…

At $10, this Cabernet is over-priced

In two previous posts, we have reviewed some new offerings from Cost Plus World Market. Presumably in an attempt to introduce people to some traditional California wines at great prices, World Market has recently introduced Chard-on-yeah! (see November 8, 2007 post), Zin-fat-u-ation (see December 17, 2007 post), and Cab-u-lous. Having now sampled all three we can definitively say we are unimpressed at best, disappointed at worst.

Cab-u-lous is billed as “…the way one feels when experiencing a perfect Cab.” Cute enough. And we would agree that a perfect Cabernet Sauvignon is indeed a fabulous experience. Sadly, this wine won’t get you even close.

The 2005 Cab-u-lous had a heavy plum nose that mostly overcame the big whiffs of alcohol. A perfect Cab will smell of blackberries and jam and likely some woodiness. It will smell deep and rich. This one, well, we would sum it up as a mediocre house wine with a thin, burnt oak flavor. Honestly, it tasted like a cheap Cabernet which made us conclude it is over-priced at the usually consumer-friendly price of $9.99. At $5 or $6 we would have felt our money had been better spent.

Perhaps our biggest disappointment with these three varietals offered by World Market is that folks new to wine will sample them with the assumption that they are representative of Chardonnay, Zinfandel, and Cabernet Sauvignon. In our opinion, the Chardonnay comes closest to tasting like its namesake but the other two sadly miss the mark.

Great, cheap drip catcher

There are any number of wine gadgets available these days, solving all sorts of real or imagined wine woes. If you are like us, you have yet to master the quick wrist twist at the end of your pour to catch wine drips before they dribble down the neck of the bottle and onto your linens. There are several ways to solve this problem:

• Learn the wrist twist. Try to give the bottle a quick twist as you lift upward after pouring. This is effective if you can do it; dangerous for both the glass and your tablecloth if you can’t. We can’t.



• Keep a napkin handy to wipe the neck after each pour. Effective but not necessarily elegant.



• Tie a napkin or towel around the neck. Again, effective but not attractive.



• Buy a drip catcher.
  
  

There are several varieties of drip catchers. For years, we used one that was simply a silver plastic collar with thick felt inside. Just slip the collar over the neck of the bottle and the felt catches the drips. It looks nice enough and it works great – as long as the collar fits over the neck. Bottle necks vary so much, however, about one-third of the time we found our collar was too small and rendered useless.

Solving this problem, we recently spotted a collar that came in two magnetized pieces. Simply pull the two halves apart and place around any sized bottle neck. The magnets hold the collar in place. While nice in theory, we elected not to buy one of these for a few reasons. First, it was expensive, along the lines of $30. Second, it was heavy. While making it feel substantial and perhaps worth $30, we wondered what impact a pound of metal on the neck of a wine bottle would have on our ability to pour. Undoubtedly, the bottle would feel top heavy and likely awkward.

You Two Wine Nuts have a much cheaper, lighter method. We use tiny hair scrunchies to catch our wine drips. We wish we could take credit for the ingenuity of this solution. Instead, it was passed along to us by a very creative relative. For just $1.50 at Wal-Mart, you can buy a 42-pack of elastic fabric bands in a variety of colors. They slip right over neck of any sized wine bottle and sit quietly on the neck absorbing drips. They are easily rinsed or tossed out guilt-free after repeated use. NOTE: Be sure you do not get the sparkly versions. The extra glitter makes the bands less absorbent.

A good California-light Chardonnay

As mentioned in previous posts, your Two Wine Nuts are not big fans of typical California Chardonnays. For many years, we thought that all Chardonnays were thick, heavy, oaky, and buttery; indeed, that's how most California-style Chardonnays turn out. But there are actually some Chards out there that are...fruity! Most of the time, they are French wines, but more and more producers are discovering there is a growing American market for a lighter-touch Chardonnay. Having had some very positive experiences with other offerings from Oyster Bay Wines, we picked up a bottle of 2005 Oyster Bay Chardonnay recently and gave it a try a few nights ago with friends.

Oyster Bay Wines come from the Marlborough area of New Zealand's south island. Our favorite Sauvignon Blancs come from New Zealand, so we were eager to see what they would do with a Chardonnay.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Oyster Bay Chardonnay was not as fruity as we were hoping. It actually smelled very much like a typical Chardonnay -- lots of oak and butter and a hint of vanilla bean. Taste-wise, it is best described as a much tamer version of a California Chardonnay. There was butter, there was oak, and it had a creamy mouthfeel. But it was not nearly as heavy and in-your-face as typical California versions. This was a very good thing. While it didn't have the fruitiness we were hoping for, a friend who was tasting with us said, "I don't really care for Chardonnays and I could drink quite a bit of this!" So if you like California-style Chardonnays in concept but are turned off by how heavy they are, give this New Zealand one a try.

We bought the Oyster Bay Chardonnay at BevMo for $12.99, which is pretty reasonable but we'd be more excited to find it on sale for closer to $10. We will likely buy a couple more bottles the next time we see it, but we are still on the lookout for a fruitier, less oaky Chardonnay.

We hoped for more from this Rhône blend

Several months ago, some friends served us a tasty, interesting French wine. Your Two Wine Nuts were very enthusiastic about it and quickly jotted down the label information. We were thrilled to find the wine available at Cost Plus World Market, so we snatched up a couple bottles at the very happy price of $7.99. Weirdest thing -- it hasn't been nearly as good the second or third times.

The 2004 Corbieres Les Deux Rives is a blend of four red Rhône varietals: Grenache (40%), Syrah (30%), Mourvedre (20%), and Carignan (10%). We remember it as being wonderfully earthy with lots of berry fruit. What we have tasted in both bottles we brought home has been lighter and less complex. Surprisingly, the nose is mostly alcohol and unripe blackberries. Sort of a bitter fruity smell. We feared our first bottle was corked (see February 17 post), so we waited until we had the second bottle before taking notes. Either both bottles were corked, or this is just how this wine smells.

As for the taste, we did get some of the expected earthiness as well as some smoke and cigar. But its lightness and somewhat short finish surprised us. Perhaps if we had not had the first bottle at the friends' house, we would be more excited about this wine. And perhaps the lively conversation, good food, and happy times spent with those friends added flavor to the wine that night (a very real possibility since wine is such a sensory experience).

So our recommendation is, if you are looking to try a Rhône blend without breaking the bank, give this one a shot for $7.99. It's not bad; it's just not what we remember it being.

A tasty Syrah at a good price

There are a few wines we like to stock up on when we hit a BevMo during road trips to California. Rock Rabbit Syrah is one of them. We recently opened a 2003 Rock Rabbit Syrah from the Central Coast of California and happily enjoyed it with some calzones.

Rock Rabbit produces just two varietals: a Syrah and a Sauvignon Blanc. Starting with their 2004 release, they started calling their Syrah a Shiraz. This is the same wine and the same grape. Syrah is the French name and Shiraz is the name used mostly in Australia. Sort of like Pinot Gris (the French name) and Pinot Grigio (the Italian name) - same grape, slightly different name just to confuse people.

The Rock Rabbit Syrah was deep rich purple in color and smelled a tiny bit like a Zinfandel. It smelled heavy, of ripe raspberries and dark plum. Interestingly, it smelled heavier and deeper than it tasted. It was medium-bodied (meaning it wasn't wimpy) and had some tannins, giving it a youngish feel. The most prominent flavor was blackberry jam. It was very sippable and held up against our tomatoey calzones.

At $11.99 at BevMo, we think this is a great wine to keep handy as well as a good one to serve for casual meals with friends. In addition to BevMo, also try local wine shops. We have not seen Rock Rabbit at Cost Plus World Market or grocery stores.

For more info about Rock Rabbit, check out their website.

UPDATE (1/31/08):
We just found the 2004 Rock Rabbit Shiraz at Trader Joe's for $9.99!

A bad introduction to Zins

As previously posted, Cost Plus World Market has a new wine gimmick of creatively named varietals at $9.99 each. We reviewed their Chard-on-yeah! on November 8. We recently opened up their Zin-fat-u-a-tion. So far, we’re most impressed by their marketing.

The 2005 Zin-fat-u-a-tion comes from Amador County in California. We have had some great Zins from this area nestled up against the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the northern part of the state. So we were optimistic that Cost Plus had done its homework and found something to adequately represent their label description of “…an intense and irrational passion for Zinfandel.” Unfortunately, we were sadly disappointed.

There wasn’t much to note about the color or smell of Zin-fat-u-a-tion other than we picked up hints of raspberry and alcohol as we swirled the wine before sipping. Similarly, our notes about the taste are all about how little there was to note: “No flavor.” “Very thin.” “Nothing there.” “Very easy to drink since it’s largely watery.” At best, this was a forgettable, bland, boring wine. At worst, we hate to think that folks new to Zinfandel are using this one as an introduction. There was nothing Zinfandel-y about this. No spice, no bell pepper, no rich berry fruit. None of the excitement and fun that should burst from a glass filled with Zinfandel.

We’re a little wary about trying Cost Plus's final entry: a Cabernet Sauvignon. Stay tuned.