Faux Ice Wine

We hesitated to include this wine on our blog since it apparently isn’t readily available anymore. Rumor has it, Argyle Winery in Dundee, OR is no longer making this fabulous dessert wine. But, it serves as a great example of a ‘fake’ ice wine and therefore we thought it was worth discussing.

A few nights ago, we opened a bottle of Argyle’s 2004 Minus Five. We bought several bottles of this delicious treat at the winery itself. Now it appears to only be available through various online wine retailers. It seems to be going for about $25, and that’s probably not far off what we paid for it. A bit steep, yes, especially considering it is one of those small half-bottles (375ml instead of the standard 750ml). But, crazy as it may sound, it was worth every drop and every penny.

In a word, this wine is all about candy. Minus Five looked like one of those translucent Brach’s fruit candies from years ago. Its color was a cross between a root beer candy and a peach candy. Its nose (its smell) was just like candied apple. The flavor was sweet without being sticky sweet. It felt thick and round at first but then turned into a Kool-Aid burst of fruit. It was a beautiful balance between thick syrup and light fresh fruit. This is typical of ice wines, which Minus Five sort of is.

Traditional ice wines are made from grapes that have been allowed to literally freeze while still on the vine. These frozen grapes are then gently pressed into a thicker, sweet, highly concentrated juice that eventually turns into a delicious dessert wine. Because the climate has to be just right (COLD!), true ice wines are special and priced accordingly.

The folks at Argyle (and they are not the only ones) decided to experiment to see if they could produce a similarly styled wine by forcing the freezing. In our opinion, their experiment was very successful.

At Argyle, they hand-picked a small quantity of very ripe Pinot Noir grapes and flash froze the clusters to -5ºC (hence the name). They then waited for a very cold day and took the frozen grapes out of the freezer and slowly pressed them to extract the juice. From there, the normal wine making process kicked into gear. Because Argyle used a freezer instead of Mother Nature to freeze their grapes, they can not legally call Minus Five an ice wine. But man, it sure tastes like one!

Click here for more info about ice wine.

A good reminder -- or a good example of corked

What’s up with the cork? Well, it’s all that is worth showing after we opened a bottle of a 1999 Zinfandel from Lodi, CA last week. It was a great bottle of wine when we bought it four or five years ago. And then we let it sit way too long. Or it was “corked.” Your two Wine Nuts disagree on what the eventual state of this once-lovely wine was, other than it was undrinkable and we had to pour it out. It serves as a great reminder not to wait too long for that special occasion to open a favorite bottle of wine. “It’s Tuesday night and I didn’t burn dinner!” can be a fine reason to celebrate with a special bottle.

So what does “corked” mean? It is a wine term that describes a wine that has gone bad after being bottled. Sometimes you just wait too long and the wine turns to icky vinegar stuff. That’s not corked. A wine is corked when a chemical called TCA gets into the wine. TCA isn’t harmful to you or me but it does nasty things to wine. TCA is usually found in tainted corks, and since all corks can’t be tested before they are smashed into wine bottles, it’s estimated about 5% of bottles using corks end up “corked.” This is why there is now a push to use synthetic corks or screwcaps. Wineries are horrified to think you got one of those 5% bottles and hate their wine, without knowing that it’s a bad cork and not a bad wine maker.

How do you know a wine is corked? A corked wine often takes on a musty, moldy, wet dog or wet newspaper smell. Our Zin had this. The flavor of the wine will vary but it will taste very different from what you’d expect from that varietal. For instance, we expected lots of spice and pepper in our Lodi Zinfandel. Instead, we got some raisin and castor oil and a heaviness that just said, “ICK!” One of the Wine Nuts thinks this is further evidence of a corked wine. The other Nut thinks waiting 8 years to drink a Zinfandel was bad cellar management. Either way, we agreed we needed to move onto a different bottle.

And that tradition of test-driving a sip of wine at a restaurant? The main thing folks are looking for is whether or not the wine is corked, not whether or not the wine will go with their entrée.

For more info on “corked” click here.

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.

A tasty California Zin!

We tried a new restaurant last night and were very excited to find one of our favorite Zinfandels on the wine list (and by that we mean red Zinfandel, not white). We first discovered Edmeades at an annual Zinfandel festival in San Francisco. It had been awhile since we had had this Mendocino-area Zin. And yum! It didn’t disappoint last night.

The first thing we noticed about the 2003 Edmeades Redwood Valley Zinfandel was its nose. It had a wonderfully lingering nose of dark berry fruit – in other words, it smelled great! Its flavor matched, with a hint of green and black pepper typical of Zinfandels, but also with a touch of black licorice and lots of bright fruit. The back of the bottle describes the wine as a “super-concentrated, thick, scrumptious Zinfandel packed with black cherries and spice.” Sure, we’ll go with that.

The price on the wine list was $28. Typically, a restaurant charges about double the actual price of a bottle of wine (hence the $8-$10 average corkage fee if you bring your own bottle since the restaurant’s cheapest bottles yield them about $8-$10 profit.). So at $14 retail, this wine is a heck of a bargain in our opinion. We’ve seen Edmeades in a variety of wine shops, and a quick search on BevMo (Beverages and More) suggests the 2005 is going for $14.99. If you want a better-than-pizza-wine Zin full of flavor that minimally goes great with steak, brisket, and meatloaf, give this one a try.

We’d buy it if it were $15 or less

We had dinner at some friends’ house last night (fabulous, as always) and they brought out a bottle of 1999 Forest Glen Sangiovese. None of us could recall the winery so we really don't know when or how this wine came to be in their closet. Nevertheless, this mysterious Sonoma County wine was pretty tasty.

The Sangiovese grape is the basis for Chianti. So, this wine tasted a lot like a Chianti but a bit thicker and more pronounced. It had a nice fruity flavor and went down smoothly both as a sipping wine as well as with our Italian Chicken Soup. It didn’t go so well with the lemon cake, but then again, it wasn’t supposed to.

Web research has not been as fruitful as the wine, unfortunately. The winery’s website is currently under construction. An article by a wine writer in 1999 praises Forest Glen for its award winning wines and amazing value, as none of Forest Glen's wines at that time sold for more than $10. It does appear that the winery is now owned by a company in California’s Central Valley, and the winemaker is supposedly John Franzia. If he is the namesake of those ubiquitous boxed wines, our guess is this wine is still reasonably priced and not too hard to find. If you find it, drop us a note and tell us about it. We will do the same.

Our own wine!

So this probably won't be as well written, since it's written by the winemaker. Here's an update on our 2006 vintage aging away in the barn:

The cold snap this past week was a wonderful tool for the wine, as it went through "cold stabilization". Cold temperatures (in the 20s) take out excess acid from the wine and causes it to crystallize at the bottom of the container.

This year's Riesling is very nice. It was originally too acidic, but the cold stabilization worked wonders on it. Instead of being grapefruit-juice-sharp, it's now more apple/pear juice sharp. A lot more gentle to sip, though still not sweet (sorry to those sweet wine lovers - I'll make one of those here in a couple weeks). The wine's perfectly clear, and I'm almost tempted to bottle it now, but I expect another couple of months won't hurt it at all. Besides, it's more of a summer wine, anyway.

This year's Pinot Noir is actually two different wines. I bought grapes from a source who had two different soil types in his vineyard - very rocky like where we've planted our vines, and more typical soil. So this year's Pinot Noir is a comparison of what to expect from our plants vs. similar plants in more, um, plant-friendly soils. The two Pinots have completed Malolactic Fermentation (perhaps another post...) and cold stabilization, and at this point they're still a little young to make a firm comment as to where they'll end up. But the rockier wine is more dark, not so open with its flavors, and still obviously needs time. It's not heavy, just not ready to show itself. The less rocky wine shows a lot more light fruit already, although it shares some of the heaviness of its brother. It's only been aging 3 months at this point, so this isn't too surprising - check back over the summer.

More updates to come as the winemaking process goes along.

Snow Bound!

Thanks to 4” of snow and a lack of snow-drive-ability, we were stranded inside all day today. Not to worry, though, for we had plenty of wine! OK, so truth be told, we only opened one bottle and it was at dinner. It was a bottle one of us bought at a local Wine & Jazz Festival last summer. It cost a whopping 5 bucks and at the time, it was thought to be an amazing bargain. Tonight, we’d still say it was a pretty good deal, but we’re not about to go out and buy a case of Forest Ville Chardonnay, unless we have a big BBQ party in the works.

This wine from “California” (so unspecific about their grape heritage that the best they can do is name the state) is best described as industrial, inoffensive, and safe. It’s an un-oaky Chardonnay, which is why it made the cut in the first place. It still has a fair amount of butter, but there is also a hint of fruit lurking behind it. At first sip, it is interesting, but then it disappears into a forgettable wine. We wouldn’t keep this in stock, nor would we seek it out for a meal. However, the next time we have a large gathering and want to serve a non-homemade wine that is sippable and universally inoffensive, this will be our choice. Indicative of its caliber, Forest Ville is found in our state-run liquor stores (NEVER a good sign). It has also been spotted in most major grocery stores in our area. And $5-$9 is about right.