Summer = Vacations...

Wow, so blogging in the summertime is a tricky affair. As a government employee, I'm blessed with a low wage but copious amounts of vacation and comp time. My wife and I have been putting that to good use this summer, and the results are showing in my meager blog postings. Our latest trip was out to Portland, Oregon and through the Willamette Valley wine country - I'll cover that in my next post. This post, I want to do a couple mini-reviews on a few of the more interesting wines we've had this summer...


I arranged the bottles in no particular order, so I may as well start left-to-right...


2006 Strauss Samling 88 (Scheurebe)
I think the important things to remember from that name are "Strauss" (the winery) and "Scheurebe" (the grape). Weingut Strauss ("Weingut" is the German way of saying "winery" or "vineyard") is an Austrian vineyard that makes a variety of interesting wines, one of which is from the Scheurebe grape.

The Scheurebe is a cross between Riesling and Sylvaner, and my immediate thought upon first tasting it was if Germans were to make Viogniers, this is what it would taste like. It has a flowery, peachy sweet nose that really jumps out of the glass at you, and some of that peach comes through to the tongue, with a stony mineraliness and a nice lemon acidity to it. It's sweet yet dry, which I find refreshing in German/Austrian wines as so many of them seem to contain a hint (if not more) of residual sugar. The Scheurebe also had an appealing golden yellow color in the glass, which added to its allure. Purchased for $12 at Finewine.Com in Gaithersburg, MD, I'd say this wine had Good Quality-to-Price Ratio (QPR). And if you bought it somewhere that wasn't Maryland, you'd pay several bucks less for it which would make it a great "alternative summer wine"!


2005 Pisano Cisplatino Tannat Merlot
Always bravely going where few have gone before (vinologically speaking), I picked up a wine from Uruguay a while back. I bet most Americans would have trouble naming the appropriate continent that Uruguay is located on (South America), much less point to it on a map. But regardless of where it's located (in between Argentina and Brazil along the Atlantic Coast), the important thing here is that they make some pretty good wine!

So the real reason I picked this up is because I saw that it was made with 60% Tannat (and 40% Merlot). I have encountered Tannat a couple of times in the past: it is a major player in wines from the Cahors region of Southwestern France; it is also grown at a handful of vineyards in Virginia, particularly at Hillsborough where they blend it into their Ruby wine (all of their wines are named after gemstones). But the interesting thing about Tannat (undoubtedly named due to its high tannin levels) is that, much like Malbec in Argentina or Carmenere in Chile, it has found a perfect home in South America - specifically in Uruguay, where it is considered the national grape.

Getting on to the wine - it had a very pleasant nose, spicy, some tobacco perhaps. The wine was lighter in color than I was expecting, given the whole tannat=tannin thing. It most closely resembled a grenache, actually. On the tongue was the spice, with black pepper and bright berries. I think this wine was around $12 at Total Wine in McLean, VA, and for that price I'd give it a Good QPR - mainly because it's "different", and I always like trying new wines.


2004 Mas de Guiot Cabernet-Syrah
I'm not sure what made me pick up this bottle in the store, but it sure as heck wasn't the label - I don't believe they could make this wine appear any less interesting if they made a deliberate attempt to do so. The French seem particularly afflicted with "lame label syndrome" - one of the many traditions that I think they need to change if they want to become more competitive in a global wine market... Anyway, I'm glad I grabbed a bottle despite the label, because it ended up being really good!

The wine was made from 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Syrah, and came from the heart of Southern Rhône near Nîmes. It had a big nose of black pepper and ripe cherries. On the tongue there was the ripe cherries in front giving way to deeper blackberry and tobacco, with a black pepper / spice finish. It had great tannin structure, and excellent overall balance. Kind of gave me the impression of a superb Argentinian Cab for some reason. For $16 at Total Wine, I'd give this a Very Good QPR.


2004 Hillsborough Opal
Hillsborough is one of our favorite Virginia wineries; they produce all blends, and as I just mentioned above each is named after a gemstone. The Opal is a blend of Viognier and Chardonnay, making for a crisp, medium-bodied white wine. It had a "timid nose" (to use wine snob speak), but quite a bit of flavor: lemon citrus, red apple, pineapple, and perhaps some peach notes. It was a bit sweeter than I was expecting, but it the cornucopia of fruit pulled it off somehow.

I didn't write down a price, but being a small boutique Virginia winery I'm guessing this was in the low $20s. Given that, I'd give this wine an "OK" QPR - you could probably find something similar for less, but probably not from Virginia. I think Virginia is starting to craft really distinctive wines with certain varietals, and Viognier is definitely a grape that is starting to thrive here. So the Opal should probably get some extra QPR points simply for being an interesting Virginia wine.


2005 Hacienda Araucano Carmenére
First off, I obviously need to apologize for the picture quality - it was late (and dark), I was trying not to flash out the cool watermarked image on the label, and I just snapped a single picture and hoped for the best. Clearly, the best is not what occurred. But you can see it well enough to identify it in a store sometime I bet...

So - another Chilean Carmenére: I told you before that I just love these wines! If you've never heard of Carmenere and what to learn a bit more about it, you can read my past post about Anakena, another Chilean Carmenére.

This Carmenére was also quite good. I misplaced my tasting notes, which were written on some scratch piece of paper while watching a movie, so I can't tell you exactly how it was good, but trust me that it was. :-)

This wine was purchased for $13 at Rodman's, and for that price I'd say the Araucano (like virtually every Chilean Carmenére that I've had) has Very Good QPR. It definitely gets a spot on my "buy again" list!

OK, mini catch-up post complete - more regularly scheduled wine commentary on the way!

1998 Rideau Syrah

Rideau Vineyards is one of my all-time favorite California wineries. Located in the heart of "Sideways" country (aka the Santa Ynez Valley) up the road from Kalyra, Rideau makes some absolutely spectacular Rhone-style wines. It was to the Rideau Vineyards cellar club that I bid the most tearful farewell when we moved from Santa Barbara to Maryland and thus fell under the jurisdiction of the Orwellian, asinine Montgomery County still profiting hand-over-fist from Prohibition-era liquor control laws.

But I digress.

Suffice it to say, their wine simply rocks. Most bottles are well outside my "everyday wines" price range, typically costing between $30-$50 a bottle. But if you're going to splurge, Rideau is the place to do it. Every single bottle of red I've ever tasted from them has been nothing short of stunning (a lot more stunning than my bottle photography skills - I clearly still have issues taking a decent pic at night!).

Since Rideau only sells their wines from the winery or via their website, my once hefty supply has been slowly dwindling since our California Exodus. With the consumption of this Syrah, I am down to but a single bottle - a 2000 Syrah/Mourvedre blend available only to Cellar Club members that the tasting room staff simply referred to as "liquid gold". It is *so* good in fact, they had a hard time holding my bottles for me at the winery for an extra month as I was unable to make it up there upon their release for pickup. Since the wine was completely sold out, they told me they were sorely tempted by my two bottles staring at them for a month, but they stoically resisted.

You're probably expecting tasting notes for this wine, but I didn't take any. I clearly love learning more about wine, trying new styles, finding new favorites, and telling people what I've discovered. But with wine this good, I just want to savor it. I want to turn off the analytical portion of my brain and just let the flavor sensations wash over me without applying any sensory filters. I don't want to think about it, I just want to experience it.

I think it is important to allow ourselves that luxury upon occasion, just like it is important to allow ourselves to enjoy beauty wherever we may find it during our regular routines. I just read an interesting article in the Washington Post about a musician playing his violin at a DC Metro station during rush hour. Metro stations have not traditionally allowed musicians to play in them, and hidden cameras were installed to record the reactions of commuters to the new addition. The thing is, this was no ordinary musician - this was Joshua Bell, a virtuoso violinist playing a 300-year old Stradivarius violin valued at over $3.5 million. The experiment was set up by the Washington Post to test public perception and priorities - "In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?"

The reaction? Of the 1,097 people who passed by during his 43-minute "performance", only 7 of them stopped for any length of time. Bell, used to playing sold-out concert halls where the "cheap seats" start off around $100, was almost completely ignored. I think this is a telling statement of American values. Obviously, context matters here - people were not expecting to hear beautiful music in a Metro station, so they weren't actively listening for it. But the fact that only 7 people even bothered to try really makes you question our cultural trajectory.

Most wine drinkers, I think, are hedonists to some degree. We find pleasure in the boundless variety of scents and tastes wrapped up in each bottle, obviously, but we also find as much or more pleasure in sharing that bottle amongst good company. We realize that our quest for good wine is actually only a part of a much larger quest for "the good life". Wine seems to grant us permission to slow down, relax, and let that right half of our brain run the show for a little while. This is something that is becoming increasingly more difficult to do, as evidenced by the Washington Post musician experiment.

So I say grab your significant other and/or friends, pull out one of those bottles you've been "saving for a special occasion", pop it open, and enjoy. I bet you'll find it was the perfect occasion, after all.