I guess being retired and attending some wine tastings, like I do at the Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan is not a bad job. Representatives from the Vintage Wine Company were pouring and discussing wines that they represent from Maisons Marques & Domaines an international wine management company that was originally formed as the sales and marketing arm of Champagne Louis Roederer USA, Inc.
Louis Roederer is a Champagne house located in Reims one of the two main cities of Champagne. The house was founded in 1776, and while it has always been family owned in 1833, Louis Roederer took over the business from his uncle and renamed the company after himself. One of the most unique business concepts at the time was when in 1845 he began acquiring some Grand Cru vineyards and got into the cultivation as well as the winemaking, because at that time, the houses just bought the grapes from the vineyards. The house now owns two-hundred-forty hectares of their own vineyards. They are also integrating the concept of biodynamic farming into their vineyards.
The first of the Champagnes that I tasted was Champagne Louis Roederer Brut Premier NV, Brut Premier is their designation for non-vintage, because otherwise the wine would read Brut and the Year. This wine is a blend of forty percent Pinot Noir, forty percent Chardonnay and twenty percent Pinot Meunier and the juice comes from forty different plots. There are no shortcuts in making Champagne, as they use assorted casks and the juice used in the Premier has a minimum aging period of three years on the lees, and then the wine is rested for six months after the disgorgement to perfect and maintain the maturity. The wine offers the classic taste of brioche and vanilla. The second wine that I had was Champagne Louis Roederer Rosé 2012 and 2012 was a very difficult year to call, because production was down due to the weather conditions. This wine is a blend of sixty-three percent Pinot Noir and thirty-seven percent Chardonnay and is entirely from estate grown vines from one of their earliest cru vineyards. This wine is made using the saignée process, as the house calls their “infusion” technique, a small amount of Chardonnay juice is added to the Pinot Noir maceration which then ferment together with no malolactic fermentation, the wine is bottle aged for four years and then another six months after the disgorging. This was a very refreshing glass of Champagne with offerings of currants, oranges and vanilla with limestone terroir and finishing off with hazelnuts and very vibrant and fresh despite its age. Yes, I was a happy taster.
I had the recent good fortune to attend a wine tasting at The Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan where I belong to their monthly wine club. The tasting was being sponsored by the Vintage Wine Company and was featuring wines from Maisons Marques & Domains. Maisons Marques & Domaines USA Inc. was founded in 1987 as the United States sales and marketing arm for Champagne Roederer Estate. They now represent forty-three brands including Dominus Estate and Chateau Petrus.
The history of Scharffenberger Cellars began in 1981 in the heart of Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, California. They are located only miles from the coastal influences of the Pacific Ocean. Originally founded by John Scharffenberger, the company has gone through changes including a name change from 1998 to 2004 when it was known as Pacific Echo. One of the first changes introduced by management team of Maisons Marques & Domaines was the restoration of the name Scharffenberger Cellars. Since 1989, the one constant was the winemaker “Tex” Sawyer who enjoys the cooler and longer growing period that the Anderson Valley offers and he has since developed strong relationships with other Mendocino County winegrowers for additional fruit.
I had the good fortune to try the two sparkling wines being offered. The first wine was Scharffenberger Cellars Brut Excellence Mendocino County NV and it is a blend of fruits from the one-hundred-twenty acres of the estate and from select vineyards from the county. The wine is a blend of sixty percent Chardonnay and forty percent Pinot Noir and they employ the Methode Traditionelle process after a period of two years on the lees. They produce about twenty-thousand cases annually. The wine offered the classic yeasty bread flavor with some vanilla and caramel in the finish. The other wine that I tried was the Scharffenberger Cellars Brut Rosé Excellence Mendocino County NV. This wine is a blend of fifty-six percent Chardonnay and forty-four percent Pinot Noir and was allowed to age on the lees for two years. The color is achieved by adding four to five percent more Pinot Noir before the second fermentation and the Methode Traditionelle process. There was just under three-thousand cases produced of this wine annually. I really enjoyed this sparkling wine as it offered not only the yeasty bread that I look for, but also the nose and taste of some red fruits (strawberries and raspberries) for a delicious layered finish. A delightful way to begin a tasting.
We met The Caller and his wife at The Earle in Ann Arbor. The Caller was given his name, by one of the other Wine Bloggers and the name has stuck, and it is because there are often times when we are not together that he tweaks my nose by mentioning dinners, wines, restaurants and vacation getaways that he and his wife are enjoying without us. He is a real character and he certainly has a place among my circulating cast. We always try to meet somewhere half and half, though Ann Arbor is closer for us, then for them, it is basically a quick shot, until you are actually driving in the city, and I sometimes think that perhaps the rules of the road do not apply to the world of academia, or maybe, because driving is not a practiced necessity in a university community, of course the same can be said about driving in Detroit. You may notice that we often go to The Earle, because it has a wine carte of over twelve-hundred selections of wine and has received the Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence for twenty-one consecutive years, which is quite an accomplishment for an independent restaurant that is located in the basement of a building off the main drag.
We got to the restaurant ahead of them, and even forgetting something, we made such great time that evening, that once we found that they were near, we ordered a couple of plates of Steamed Mussels in garlic and white wine and it arrived at the table at the same time that they did, because it usually takes us for ever to order food as there is so much to catch up on. I was going to order a carnivore dish, but the rest of the table was going light and I even had to go a catch our waitress to change my order. She was so thrilled with the dish that I had the last time that she had to order it again and talked The Caller’s wife into it, as well. The Coquilles St. Jacques al crème de Xeres, or sea scallops sautéed with mushrooms and garlic, pan-sauced with Sherry and cream with rice, and since I wasn’t having red meat, ordered the same dish also. The Caller ordered Breaded Chicken Breasts sautéed with Prosciutto, pan-sauced with white wine, lemon and sage and served with orzo, and not a bad dish (my Bride had hinted that I should have ordered that dish as well, but I guess I missed the hint). Afterwards we had a dessert with four spoons, a community affair.
With such a great wine list, I needed some extra time to make the initial selection, as I always feel that all eyes are on me, including my own Chancellor of the Exchequer, to find a wine that is interesting, delicious and affordable, and it is the last requirement that sometimes gets me into trouble. Please do not ask me how, but there I was looking at a long list of French White Wines and my eye was attracted to a wine that I had not heard of, but that I had seen it mentioned by two other Wine Bloggers, so I thought that was the wine to start with. I ordered a bottle of Maison Chanzy Bouzeron Clos de la Fortune Monopole 2015, and the Sommelier arrived with the bottle, because she was very curious to see who had ordered this wine, and I have to admit that I had to look up Bouzeron after the second time that I saw it, in retrospect, I should have looked it up immediately, but sometimes I am lazy, even if it is about wine. Maison Chanzy used to be known as Domaine Chanzy and they own eight hectares spread across three Burgundy Cotes, with the majority of the plantings in the Cote Chalonnaise and with an historical presence in Bouzeron, and it is Bouzeron that they are most proud of, and willing to tell the world about it. Bouzeron is a small village that now has its own appellation since 1998, but only for white wines made from the Aligoté grape, and for years it was listed under a sub-division title of Bourgogne-Aligoté. Bouzeron is in the northern Saone-et-Loire region of the Cote Chalonnaise, in the valley and the Dheune River separates it from Santenay and it is very close to Rully and Chassagne-Montrachet. Eighty percent of the juice is done on the lees in Stainless Steel and the balance in oak and it is bottled in the summer, to maintain the fruit and youthfulness of the Aligoté grape. As you may have noticed Maison Chanzy owns the entire Clos de la Fortune and they are very proud of it, as part of their domain. The wine offered nice herbal notes, and some great terroir (flinty from all of the limestone soil of the area) with a nice refreshing finish. I was going to order a titled Chablis for our second bottle of wine for the dinner, but I was roundly outvoted, as everyone was more than pleased with this wine. After dinner, we did enjoy something that to me was more interesting and fulfilling than a dessert, as we shared a split of Chateau Les Mingets Sauternes 2011. It is part of Vignobles LVDH and provides quality wines in the United States and Europe, since 1997. The wine is pure Semillon and was aged in oak for eighteen months and like every Sauternes I have had, it is drinkable from day one, but really enjoys aging when it gets a chance. It offered classic notes of honey and melon with some terroir thrown in for good measure. Hopefully, now that three of the four of us are retired, we can make arrangements for dinners more often.
This annual Christmas party has been going on, long before I ever arrived on the scene, but not as long as the Detroit Thanksgiving Parade or the traditional Lion’s Thanksgiving game. It is a tradition and it is a mix of business associates and family members, though some have accused her of weighting it more towards her family, but she does as she sees fit. It is always a good crowd and it is always the first Friday after the Thanksgiving weekend. The entrants all bring a wrapped gift for an exchange and before they select a gift, they undergo a type of third degree, where my Bride reads their last year’s goal, the person must admit if they achieved their goals and they must state their new goals. My Bride keeps her notes from each party and has scrapbooks filled with photos and memories. It is fun, and if the participants didn’t enjoy it, I am sure that it would have disappeared from the horizon by now.
Besides the entrant cost of a gift for the exchange, the ladies all bring a dish for a “pot luck” dinner, a curious tradition that seems to endure across all age and socio-economic groups. Consequently, there is an abundance of food. There were plenty of salads, mixed, creamed, Jello and Tabbouleh; finger appetizers like jumbo shrimp cocktails (there must have been two different women that brought the same type of dish), as well as hummus and pita, and cheese and crackers. There were roast chickens and fried chicken, rolled sandwiches and some casseroles. Also, plenty of desserts and I guess all of the women were happy. I had a prior commitment, so I wasn’t there from the beginning and by rights, I should not have been, but I did attack all the food that was laid out on the island in the kitchen after saying hello to everyone.
There were many different beverages being consumed with such a large group. I saw a couple of bottles of Clos du Bois Pinot Grigio California 2018 finished off. Clos du Bois was founded in 1974 by Frank Woods in Sonoma County and originally produced Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Woods eventually sold the winery to the beverage giant Constellation Brands, Inc. in 1988. This was a very easy drinking wine that was aged in Stainless Steel to maintain the fruit and a floral nose. I think that I may have been the hero, because I stopped and got a bottle of liqueur that I was touted about, that I had not heard about. The ladies all loved the Baileys Chocolate Cherry. Irish Cream was introduced in 1974, and Baileys accounts for half of all spirits exported from Ireland. The recipe includes Irish Whiskey, sugar, cocoa extract, cherries and cream. The whiskey is sourced from several distilleries around Ireland and they use two-hundred-twenty million liters of fresh milk each year. In case you are curious, the cream and whiskey are combined, then homogenized with the aid of an emulsifier containing refined vegetable oils, so that the liquids do not separate when stored. The alcohol preserves the cream allowing the liqueur to have a shelf life of two years. The unanimous decision was that this drink had to be consumed over ice, as I was serving it, or with hot coffee. I think that there is enough left for my Bride and I to have some in coffee, in the near future.
This was the first time that we did not have the entire family together for quite a while, but we did the best that we could do. Thanksgiving has always been likened to the center of a hurricane, because there is just so much activity and pressure. There is the extra and deep cleaning that occurs, before all the holidays and parties arrive. With my entire career in retail the month of December had a tremendous increase in the amount of hours I would work, so there was the desire to get all of the shopping done, so that if I did have some free time, it wasn’t spent shopping, a busman’s holiday is not something to look forward to. My Bride is to be commended, as I try to stay out of her way. The day before Thanksgiving, she goes to the Post Office to mail the Christmas and Chanukah cards with newsletters inserted, the parcels for all the out of town gifts are also posted at that time. All of the gifts for families, friends, coworkers have been all wrapped and bundled into groups; which means that by the time the big day arrives, all of the bills have been paid as well, she is very organized.
She also has selected the menu for the Thanksgiving dinner as well and has shopped for it. My job is to schlep the items that we only use occasionally in the kitchen, like the roaster, and that is set up in the library, just to keep the electric circuits from having too much strain. Some of the side dishes she prepares ahead of time and the house smells even more delightful for several days in advance. As soon as we get up on Thanksgiving Day, she begins making the turkey, which is always around twenty to twenty-four pounds (which seems to be the maximum size that we can fit in the roaster). She stuffs the bird, and sews up the cavities, she puts butter under the skin, props the wings and the legs with onions and gets the bird into a cooking bag and then into the roaster. Then it is time for coffee and the morning paper, and I must say that even though the daily paper is out and out liberal, they do become staunch capitalists on Thanksgiving Day when the price of a paper goes from $2.00 to $5.00 a copy and there is even less journalism than usual apparent. I did keep all of the rotogravure section of the paper together, because I knew that after dinner, the shoppers would decide on their battle plans for Black Friday. Now back to the menu, the stove was slowly being filled up with different dishes, some in the oven and some on the ranges. She also made a very large roasted pork tenderloin, along with Armenian Pilaf, sweet potatoes, Brussel Sprouts sautéed in bacon and drizzled with aged Balsamic, a whole big pot of her stuffing that wouldn’t fit in the turkey, and gravy made from the drippings. There were also dishes brought in by the family. And let us not forget all of the assorted cakes, pies and cookies, of course there was a Birthday cake for the November celebrants. My Bride and I always have discussions about when the food should be done, we tell everyone to come at two, so that dinner can be at three, I had the turkey and the pork carved (my big job of the day), by the time the first guests arrived. Then all of the appetizers had to be set out. Of course, I was already quite full, because you know that the carver has to check on the meats from different cuts, to make sure that everything is OK, and I am quite zealous about that.
The Louisville clan could not make the trip and then the wines get even more interesting, but with all of the work involved, I forgot to go pick some wines, but there are plenty of wines, where ever one looks basically in this house. I also took it upon myself to do some proselytizing for new wine drinkers from the crowd that really doesn’t drink wine. I was trying to teach them how to taste wine, and I had to keep stopping them from drinking the wine as if it was beer. As I finally got them to slow down and whistle some air over their tongue and chew the wine before drinking, they had a bit of wonder in their eyes, as they finally kind of discovered the complexities of wine that they had not noticed before, when in a drinking type of mode. Of course, the working hosts started the holiday off a bit early, with all of the pressure and strain of the day, we needed something like and easy and would work well, if and when our guests began arriving, with the appetizers. The Joseph Carr Josh Cellars Chardonnay 2018 is a wine that I never worry about, as it is always fresh, citrusy with a touch of oak/butter in the mix. Joseph Carr began in 2005 making his line of wines, representing the best of vineyards for a California version of the classic French wines. In 2007 he created the Josh Cellar line to represent California wines in a more relaxed, and affordable price range and named this collection after his father. The fruit for this wine comes from both Mendocino and Monterey counties, both respected for producing quality Chardonnay grapes. Joseph Carr is part of the much larger Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits, and as an interesting side note, Joseph Carr lives in Cape Cod when he is not making wine. I decided to try some of the wines that I had just wrote about, to see what we may need for December, as if we need to buy any wine, unless I take her to a tasting. The first of the club wines that I opened was a bottle of Tenuta Neirano Le Croci Barbera D’Asti Superiore DOCG 2016. The Sperone family has been making affordable wines for four generations, originally in Puglia and in 1983 they purchased seventy-five acres in the Piedmont. The fruit for this wine came from Le Croci (The Crosses) vineyard and the wine is entirely Barbera. The fruit is hand harvested and has three weeks of maceration and four weeks of fermentation in Stainless Steel. The juice is then aged for one year in small oak cask and then an additional six months in the bottle before it is released. This wine showed great tannins and a rich nose and taste of black cherry and dark fruit, which I would expect. A pleasurable and affordable wine that worked well with dinner. The second wine from my club that I opened was Rabble Wine Company Red Wine 2017 with its distinctive old-world wood cut label. Rabble Wine Company of Paso Robles was founded by Rob Murray and it was originally known as Rob Murray Vineyards and then it became Force of Nature, before settling into its current name. The wine is a blend of seventy-seven percent Merlot, fourteen percent Cabernet Sauvignon and nine percent Petite Sirah and barrel aged for ten months and a potential cellar aging of three to seven years. The fruit all came from their Mossfire Ranch Vineyard which is one of their flagship vineyards for red wine varietals. This wine was really a winner, especially for being affordable, there were dark cherries and dark fruits in the nose and in the finish, that I could even get the novices to notice. The tannins were soft and a nice medium finish of dark fruit and some spice that made one want to have another sip. Well Thanksgiving 2019 is one for the books, and for all of the food we sent off with the different families, we still had some leftovers, and then on the weekend the day came that I look forward to with dread, I had to bring up the thirty cartons of Christmas decorations up from the basement, so that she could get the house changed over from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and yes, I am still among the living.
Every now and then I speak of an evening with food and wine with my dinner club. My club is now about one-hundred-thirty years or more old and counting. The founders of this group, if one knew history, especially the history of Detroit would recognize their names as there are streets, buildings and businesses of those men, not to mention the immediate family of presidents, governors and mayors. It is or was quite a lofty club in the early days, and by charter, there are only forty-four members allowed, and I think that was because of the size of the homes back then. Originally the members would meet for dinner at a member’s home and that included dinner and drinks, and today I really don’t know of too many people that have a home to accommodate that crowd, let alone a spouse that would agree to cook for that large of a group. The group survived the Great Depression by being dynamic for the times. The meetings were moved to a residential hotel, that had a large dining/assembly room and three men were assigned to be hosts for the evening, of course they then ate on someone else’s dime for the rest of the year. Eventually more and more of the members had moved out from the city into the suburbs and then the three man teams started selecting a restaurant that had a private dining room and that still worked out great, a method that we still use today, though there are fewer restaurants that still have private dining rooms. I joined this august group of men in 1989, and I was assigned with two other men, one of who had joined in 1928. Through all of the years, we have seen men who have had to leave from moving out of state, illnesses and death, but only once did we have a member who quit just prior to his turn to be host and the club had to pick up his third of the tab; and then he petitioned the club to be reinstated, was told that he would have to pay of his debt and he refused, and he is still not a member. The only other unique case was a member that quit the year before his cycle of membership years would have made him the president of the group again, and as you can surmise he was up in the years, so he quit for a year and then rejoined as a new member; he never saw the cycle of membership to make him president before he made the big trip.
As you can see, I have been host many times over the years and at different venues, for a very long run, I was part of the group that had the Christmas meeting at a private yacht club, that several of our members belonged to (not me) and for that dinner we actually went from three to four and finally to five members because of the differential of cost, and then we lost our members that belonged there. My group has tried several different locations and I think Rocky’s will be the way for us. We meet in the room in the back of the restaurants and we do stick out like a sore thumb these days, as we still require a coat and tie for dinner, and while one may see some gentlemen with sport coats on for dinner, there are few ties to be seen, outside of our group and I think it is still a nice touch. The group had their choice of a New York Strip Steak, Chicken Piccata and Broiled Salmon. There were also fresh baked dinner rolls, a nice tossed salad and a hot fudge sundae for dessert.
For the beverage selection of the meal, one of my other members and I get together and buy a bottle of wine to split, so that we can have a wine that is much more interesting than what is offered by the glass. The other member is a real Pinot Noir enthusiast and he went on the restaurant’s web site and saw a Pinot from Willamette that he thought was interesting and I could see that, but they were sold out of his suggestion. Then I saw a Red Blend that sounded good, and a third member asked if he could get into the wine selection, but when I told him that it was a Red Blend, he backed off, and may I say, it was his loss. The last time, I had him stretch with a Merlot, and now he was going to trust me with a Blend. We ordered a bottle of Celani Family Vineyards Robusto Proprietary Red Wine Napa Valley 2017. I have gone to a Celani Family Vineyards wine tasting and I have some wines resting in my cellar from that event. This was a new wine for me, but Tom Celani is lauded in the Detroit area for his largesse for charitable organizations that he helps in a grand manner. He and his father ended up creating one of the largest Miller distribution companies in the United States along with other beers and wines. Tom Celani fell in love with wines, first as a drinker and a collector and finally acquiring a Tuscan-style estate with seventeen acres of grapes and one-hundred-twenty olive trees in the foot hills of the Vaca Mountain range in Napa Valley. As the proprietor of the Celani Family Vineyards he has chosen to bottle wine without costs becoming a consideration, to him wine is about quality and not quantity. This is truly a Proprietary Red Blend, as there is no information even on the trade notes, but the winery grows Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc and they are partial to new French Oak. This wine has been made to be enjoyed young and it truly is, with a fruit forward taste, but not a jammy Napa Cab, and softer tannins. We were literally chewing this wine to get all the flavor and the finish was excellent, the perfect wine with our steaks. I know that I will be booking Rocky’s for next year.
There are some nights when no one wants to cook, and at the same time, no one wants a real heavy meal. There are even times when my Bride doesn’t want to be totally healthy and have a salad and I can appreciate that. She suggested a burger, and I could go for that, now and then as well. There used to be a bar that had the greatest burgers, the father was a customer of mine, and he would tell me, how he would go into the cellar of the bar and he had a formula for mixing so much ground sirloin, ground chuck, ground veal and either duck or goose fat (and each was different) for a truly wonderful ground round and a slice of cheese sometimes was overkill. The sad news is that the father has passed away and his son, uses premade burgers and people still flock there to have them, but the father was proud of his mixture. My Bride and I, alas, can no longer do “sliders” and they have been kind of resurrected. When I was a kid after a night out of drinking, one could get ten for like a buck and a half and I used to joke that they would spray “essence of meat” on the buns while they were on the grill, before they put cheese and onions on the buns.
Nowadays, when we think of a burger, we go to a steakhouse and have a burger in the bar area. One has to trust that a steakhouse will have some great cuts of meat, even down to the meat that they grind up. We went to Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar. We sat down and they brought us, a bowl of their house-made potato chips, and I am not a chip eater, but I enjoy theirs. We also nibbled on an order of their Crispy Castelvetrano Olives. We each went with an order of their Prime Burger, with Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese and Peppered Bacon, and instead of French Fries they substituted a couple of jumbo onion rings and it was more than enough to sate us.
Of course, man and woman do not live on bread alone. My Bride ordered a glass of Sea Sun California Chardonnay 2017. She enjoys a glass of Chardonnay and that is usually her first choice, as it is chilled and should be refreshing. I had never heard of this wine, but it is from the Wagner Family of Wines, and I would venture that most of the steakhouses across this country carry Caymus. Sea Sun a new wine and the fruit is harvested from Santa Barbara, Monterey and Solano Counties. It was a nice balanced white wine featuring some fruit, some acidity and some oak, an easy drinking wine. I went with a glass of High Heaven Vintners Roaming Elk Red Blend Columbia Valley 2017 that is from Palm Bay International, A Taub Family Company. All of the grapes are grown or controlled by the winery from family-owned vineyards and the winery was established in 1980. High Heavens Vintners is owned by the Zirkle Fruit Company and they have been farming apples, pears, cherries and wine grapes since the 1880’s. They are in the fifth generation of a family run business. The wine is sixty percent Syrah and forty percent Merlot and was aged for eighteen months in Stainless Steel. The wine had a soft floral nose and fruit forward with some nice tannins to compliment the finish. It was a nice wine for the burgers and many other meat dishes. One of the best parts of the evening was there was nothing to clean up afterwards.
One of the best things for me when I get the monthly wine club specials from the Fine Wine Source is the education that I get from these wines. In 1993 they opened up the doors in Livonia, Michigan and they are really the only wine store that I have been in that only sells wine, though it took me to be retired to discover the shop, because they are closed on Sundays and Mondays, which always coincided with the days that I had off in retailing.
The origins of the Vignerons du Pays d’Enserune date back to the beginning of organized winegrowing with the construction of the first cooperative winery in France in the village of Maraussan in 1901. Les Vignobles Foncalieu is a union of cooperatives in the heart of Languedoc. The regions encompass plenty of land and soils from the mountains to the ocean, with four-thousand hectares of vineyards and over 650 winegrowers. In 2017, the trade periodical Drinks International listed Foncalieu to be included in their list of the fifty most well-known brands of wine in the world. They have developed twelve different collections to take advantage of the assorted terroirs of their association of growers.
At the edge
of the Mediterranean Sea, the Oppidum Romain d’Enserune dominates the terroir of
the Enserune wines. It is the warmest
and driest climate of France. Created by
teamwork of the varied growers is how they can create singular grape varietal
wines as in the Les Vignobles Foncalieu Ensedune Petit Verdot Coteaux d’Enserune 2017 of the Languedoc. The Coteaux d’Enserune IGP was originally called
Vin de Pays des Coteaux d’Enserune, but
in 2009 the term Vin de Pays was phased out for the IGP designation to make the
wine regions of France coincide more with the Common Market, and to eliminate
the poor image that was associated with Vin de Pays. Petit Verdot is one of the grapes found in
the “Bordeaux Blend” and is a thick skin grape with
small berries that produces an inky dark juice high in tannins. The wine promises to have a nose of red
fruits and floral spices, with a taste evoking peppers and spices. It might be my first encounter with a wine
that is strictly Petit Verdot.
It is that time of the year when I get to pick up the monthly club wines from Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan. I can’t even tell you what the cost is each month, but it is just charged on a card and then we get a notice to come by and pick up the two bottles. One of the perks of joining is to get notice of special wine tastings either through a distributor or directly by the winery. I also like the perk, where for the club members there are two prices, one is retail and the other is a case discount price, even if you don’t purchase a case or a mixed case, though I am sure that they appreciate it when we do.
Rabble Wine Company of Paso Robles was founded by Rob Murray and it was originally known as Rob Murray Vineyards and then it became Force of Nature, before settling into its current name. The Rabble Wine Company has four distinct brands under its umbrella: Rabble, Tooth & Nail, Amor Fati and Stasis. The Winemaker Jeremy Leffert is philosophical about his word and feels that he is a shepherd guiding the final product. He is partial to using wild yeast strains suitable for each vineyard and believes on using all types of vessels for aging the wines from a mix of oak barrels, foudres (very large wooden vats that are bigger than the average barrel and some actually will hold a thousand liters of wine), concrete tanks and what ever else he has decided on, to evoke the full flavor of the juice.
The Rabble
Wine Red Blend 2017 is immediately noteworthy just from the selection of the
wine label which is a rendition of an historical wood block print from the
Nuremberg Chronicle (late 1400’s) that is
textured and tactile depicting Nature’s wrath, illustrating the apocalyptic comet falling upon Florence with
the Unicorn and Phoenix. The wine is a blend of seventy-seven percent Merlot,
fourteen percent Cabernet Sauvignon and nine percent Petite Sirah and barrel
aged for ten months and a potential cellar aging of three to seven years. The fruit all came from their Mossfire Ranch
Vineyard which is one of their flagship vineyards for red wine varietals. The winemaker recommends decanting the wine
one or two hours early for maximum taste enjoyment. The tasting notes promise a nose of dark
cherries and blackberries with some coffee and chocolate. With a taste featuring silky tannins, a touch
of oak and a finish of dried dark berries.
As for food pairing, a good Merlot will pair with most dishes, including
oily and meaty fish. I am looking
forward to trying this wine.
We went out to see Ford v. Ferrari the first weekend it came out. It is hard anymore for us to agree on a film to go see as most of the films are directed to an audience that thinks a blue screen with computer generated action is the epitome of cinematography. Also, I do believe that my Bride and I are not in the proper demographics for a successful film, which according to some film critics must be from ages 5 to 19, and that would explain some of their poorly written reviews. We went to see a film, that I thought would have no commercial acceptance, except perhaps for the Detroit area, and according to some of the financial figures I have seen, I was wrong. Who would have thought that a film with dialogue and no superheroes would do well at the box office? Thankfully, we got to the cineplex early to get a decent seat, because the room filled up.
I was afraid that my Bride would be bored and fall asleep, like I have done, on some of her choices. She found the film captivating, and to use a racing term, she did not make a “pit stop” during the entire film. The research and the recreations of the different stretches and turns of what the Le Mans track was like back then was incredible, plus each car was choreographed to be in the proper sequence at all times. The film was filled with names like Shelby, Miles, McLaren, Ford, Ferrari and Iacocca. These were names that I heard most of my professional life, as I sold and managed a ten-thousand square foot clothing store in Dearborn, which is where Ford Motor Company is headquartered, back in the day, when men dressed for success in business. I also remember waiting on the men that actually worked for “Ford Racing” back in the day and they were not of the same bolt of cloth that most of FoMoCo was made of. It was the heady days and these men were Mavericks in the corporate world and they kind of got away with it. They were politically incorrect when that term hadn’t even been thought of, they were just men that liked cars and adrenaline rushes.
Lee Iacocca was one of the suits at headquarters, but he was a car-guy, a concept that I think is lost on a lot of auto-execs these days. He had a rather colorful career at Fords and then he went to Chrysler. This is all a segue to introduce Lee Iacocca into a wine article. When the restaurant industry started to make changes in staid Detroit, with the introduction of some national steak houses, one of the novelties that started making an appearance was private lock boxes that would contain special liquors or wine for the people who made arrangements to have a lock box. Lee Iacocca was a name that I saw several times around the city, in some of the finest places, back when a cigar was the perfect way to end a grand meal. Lee Iacocca also dabbled in wine making, in all likelihood he did some investing and got his name on the wine label and it was probably a great marketing tool as well. I have found two wines in my search for his wines that carried “vino da tavola sangiovese di S. Angelo in Colle” and the Villa Nicola name with the legend “imbotigliato per Lee Iacocca.” One of the wines was a Rosso di Montalcino and the other one that I encountered was “Da Uva Sangiovese” and they were both from Montalcino. Alas the bottle I had was brought to a party and it had been stored improperly and it was over the hill, which is a shame, because I have found Sangiovese wines to be quite long lived and the wine was from 1985 and the party was 2013. This is an example of how my brain works, seeing one subject and connecting it to another subject, and for me it works. We also give the film two thumbs up, if you are curious and we would have no problem seeing the film again.
The Wine Raconteur 