Club Wines for Thanksgiving

Posted on November 11, 2018 by thewineraconteur

I received the email a day earlier that I could pick up the club wines from Fine Wine Source in Livonia.  I was in the middle of a project, just like I always am these days.  So, the next day I had the joy of going out on the traditional first day of snow in the fall, where the leaves still cover more of the lawn compared to the snowflakes.  I like to keep the monthly club selections a mystery until I get there, so I never read past the title of the email from them to come and pick up the wine.  I look at the email after I have picked up the wine, and there is a nice write up about each wine, but I am like a kid and I want to be surprised.  I did know that the wines were geared towards a Thanksgiving dinner.

The first wine that I received was Podere Ciona “Ciona Rosé” Toscana IGT 2016.  Franca and Franco Gatteschi were looking for a place in the countryside to retire to and found this one-hundred-acre estate with a house from the 18’th Century that had been abandoned for about forty years.  They purchased the property in 1990 and spent three years working on the main house.  They also started planning a winery and in 1997 they had their first official vintage.  They are located in the commune of Gaiole in Chianti Classico country.  They had been making a Rosé for a couple of years using Sangiovese, the grape of Chianti and Cabernet Franc, unfortunately one year the local wild boars decimated the Cabernet Franc vines, so this particular vintage is made from pure Sangiovese, and was aged for three months in Stainless Steel.  The entire production of this wine was a hundred cases of wine, and Fine Wine Source has an en exclusive for this wine for the United States, and the son Lorenzo, who is the winemaker will even be conducting tastings at the shop from November 28 to December 1.  I will have to make a point of attending the tasting.  The tasting notes furnished mentioned the Dark Salmon Pink color, with a nose of fruit and herbs, with tastes of strawberry, watermelon and red licorice.  It is being touted as a perfect wine for Turkey.

The second club selection for the month is Primary Wines Pinot Noir 2016 with a California AVA and made by Massanois.  According to the sheet supplied the majority of the fruit is from the Russian River Valley in Sonoma County, but it is also blended with Pinot Noir from other areas as well.  There were no technical notes for this wine, and I can find nothing about Massanois.  Fine Wine Source gives notes that the nose offers strawberry and baking spices, and the wine is listed as being rich and opulent with a long-lasting finish.  The shop wrote that they have made a big purchase of this wine for the holidays.  I think that I will try both of these wines soon, to see if I need to purchase more in a timely manner.

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Ms. Yoga is Nostalgic

Posted on November 9, 2018 by thewineraconteur

One of my cast of characters Ms. Yoga will be paying another visit shortly and the Casa Raconteur will be ready with open arms.  The luggage rack will be at the foot of the bed, and we will try to clear some closet space, but that is a very dear commodity, almost akin to proper wine storage facilities.  Ms. Yoga and my Bride have been making their plans, and eventually I am either part of the plans or I will hear about it later.  All I know is that we are in the midst of preparations and whether the media will be consulted also will be announced on a need to know basis.

Ms. Yoga was out for business and during dinner she had ordered a bottle of wine, and sometimes she photographs the bottle to remind me that she is still around, and that she thinks she needs more ink as I scribe along.   I have to admit that she even got me a bit nostalgic on this photo of a wine from Duckhorn Wine Company.  Years ago, as we all went to Duckhorn for a tasting, as I had an entry through one of my customers who was a silent investor in the winery.  Don Duckhorn was the new kid on the block and when we arrived at the winery, which was during harvest, we had a private tour conducted by one of the sons, and it was very educational and totally exciting, as this was the first time to ever see this type of activity.  While we were there, also on the trip was her son and their au pair and he was given a Duckhorn duck horn, which she says is still at her house, and I think that is very cool.  While most of Napa Valley was into Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, Duckhorn was resolute that Merlot was the grape, especially for his properties and he was so right.  Of course, on that trip Duckhorn Wine Company was all family owned and operated and all the brands were also from the valley, as well as their single estate wines.

She sent me a photo of the Migration Chardonnay 2015, and when we were there Migration was Napa, and now this wine is from the Russian River Valley in Sonoma County, but then Duckhorn is no longer a family operated winery either.  The Russian River Valley is in the heart of Sonoma County and it is known for its long cool ripening season that is perfect for growing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  This wine is pure Chardonnay and it is aged for ten months.  The aging is done in two ways, ninety percent is aged in French Oak, of which three percent is new and ten percent is aged in Stainless Steel, and then blended together.  She did not send me any tasting notes, but I am sure it was a delightful wine.  Who knows, she might even think of sending me a photo of the Duckhorn duck horn, and as a side note, I probably may have the largest cache of Duckhorn Vermouth, which they were making back then, and my customer was not fond of, so he would give me all of his Vermouth that he would receive, and he was also very generous and gave me a bottle of the Three Palm as well.   If Ms. Yoga can get nostalgic, well I guess than so can I.

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I Try to Have Fun

Posted on November 7, 2018 by thewineraconteur

As I reflect on my past career, I had fun.  Through out the years I have encountered some people on both sides of the counter that if I could I would have avoided, but I guess that is true for most people.  My vocation is what fueled one of my avocations and they worked side by side.  While I was educating my customers about clothing, they were educating me about the world beyond Sixth Avenue.  While I may have started my learning of wine; talking to others that could “walk the walk and talk the talk,” led me down many avenues and by ways that I may have missed, like fine dining and resort areas.  I was a clothier, because my heart and soul enjoyed the business.

So here I was helping out at a Seventy-fifth Anniversary party and a Trunk Show.  A Trunk Show is an event where a vendor comes and helps educate the clients about the nuances of the product, some times with knowledge that the salesman and especially a clerk may not know.  The vendors all looked like clothiers, because they had an inner panache that defies the salesman who looks like he is going to work.  The salesmen were allowing the clothiers their moment in the sun and it was the customers that gained from the moment.  There was plenty of tumult going on, and one of the gimmicks that was planned and it would have been interesting, fell through and it probably was just as good, because the store was packed as it was.  Can you tell that my energy level was up several notches for the evening, especially between the discussions, noshing, selling and wine tasting?

We started the evening off with some Syrah, and the last bottle of wine that I tasted also had some Syrah.  All the wines that I enjoyed with the customers were from Spain and so was this one.  The Cellar Capcanes Mas Donis Barrica Old Vines 2013 was a fine wine to end the evening with.  The Cellar Capcanes is a wine cooperative that began in 1933 and originally grew the fruit in bulk and sold it to other winemakers.  They eventually shifted gears and began winemaking and they are even in the manufacturing of Kosher wines, which is a good niche market, and they even produce box wines.  The cooperative when they are producing special wines like Mas Donis Barrica are pleased to state that the fruit comes from Montsant DO in Catalonia, and the name Montsant is from the Montsant Massif which means “Holy Mountain” and the designation was approved in 2001.  This was a very interesting blend of Garnacha, Merlot and Syrah.  The juice was aged for nine months in a mix of French and American Oak, then the juice was blended and aged for another six months in a tank before being bottled.  I do hope that potentially in the future, some salesmen will acquire the knowledge and savior-faire to be a clothier and will be able to discuss with a customer more than a “slider.”

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Two Marquises

Posted on November 5, 2018 by thewineraconteur

In the United States, peerage ranking is not really taught, so suffice it to say that a Marquis is a nobleman below a Duke, but above an Earl or a Count.  The most famous Marquis known in the United States is probably the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, whose name is applied to the famous code of boxing or pugilism.  Now that I have that out of the way, I will continue talking about the event where I was helping a store celebrate their Seventy-fifth Anniversary, which is quite an achievement, and when you realize that the store sells Men’s Clothing, that is monumental.  The majority of the work force, even among the white-collar occupations now dress as if they are blue collar, and I sometimes think that there must be contests among the divisions within a corporation of who can dress the slovenliest and still collect a paycheck.  As a retired clothier, I belong to another era, and I think I even revel in the concept that I still enjoying dressing for dinner with my Bride.

I digress, as I often do, but I was actually discussing a clothing store, one of those bastions of a former society.  When I was a kid, most neighborhoods had a clothing store, and one didn’t even have to go downtown.  The store that I was assisting has survived the perils of today’s attire, and where there were actually three men’s stores on the same block in this city, they are the only one left.  They were doing the party up, extremely well.  They had representatives from some of their vendors in attendance and a full assemblage of employees, except for one, who was on his honeymoon, and I think that is cause for dispensation.  There was plenty of food proffered by different restaurants in the city as well.  Yours truly, even noshed between assisting of customers during the evening, just like the old days of retailing.  From appetizers and hors-devours to plates of Sirloin-tips to even “Sushi,” and I did not sample the wares, one day I may actually try Sushi, but it will be in an honest to goodness Japanese restaurant and nothing less.

I must say that the beer and liquor choices were pouring quite generously and the customers were having a grand time.  I was watching the wine pour and giving little asides about the wines to any customer that wanted a bit more information.  The third wine that was opened for the customers was Marques de Caceres Crianza Rioja 2014, and just so that you know Marques is the Spanish spelling of Marquis, and yes, I do get crafty at times.  Rioja and Sherry are probably the two most famous wines of Spain and Rioja was the first region to receive DO status in 1933 and in 1991 the first to receive DOCa rating.  According to historians’ wine has been recorded in this are since about 200 BC, but slowed down immensely during the Moorish Occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, and it has slowly and gradually return and it is now a major industry in Spain.  Marques de Caceres was founded in 1970 by a family that had been in the wine industry for most of the century and the winery is still owned and operated by family members.  The wine begins with manual harvesting of the fruit and is aged for twelve months in sixty percent French Oak and the balance in American Oak; and the barrels are split equally between new and 2, 3 and 4-year-old (the maximum) barrels.  Since this wine is a Crianza it is required to have an additional one year in the bottle before it can be released for sale.  This wine is a blend of Tempranillo, Garnache Tinta and Graciano.  After this delightful wine was finished, lo and behold I see one of my favorite wines being opened and of course I had a generous pour.  The wine not only had to be uncorked, but the famed “chicken-wire” wrapping that was designed to halt counterfeiting also had to surmounted.  They were opening the legendary Herederos del Marques de Riscal Rioja Reserva 2012, probably the one Rioja that I have had more of, than any other wine from Spain and it was even accessible back in the early ages when I first discovered wine.  This wine was founded in 1858 by a Spanish diplomat that had lived in Bordeaux and he brought back some concepts that were probably a bit heretical in the day.  The wine became so popular that the wire mesh was the way to insure the quality of the wine, and in fact part of the label was glued to the mesh, now the mesh is just a quaint tradition that is maintained, and I might add that this winery has a fantastic library of their wines going back to the very early days and the wines are still reported as glorious when opened.  The Marques de Riscal is the majority shareholder and winemaker of the company to this day.  This wine is a blend of Tempranillo, Graciano and Mazuelo.  The wine is aged for twelve months in barrels and then is aged an additional three years in the bottle, before it is released, because it is a Reserva.  The wines added to the festivities of the evening and made a lot of customers very happy.

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Start With Syrah

Posted on November 3, 2018 by thewineraconteur

One of the most popular questions that I receive is “what do you do?”  I respond that I am a retired clothier of some forty plus year at least, and in today’s lifestyle that word requires an explanation.  It was a time-honored profession, we had a President once that was a Haberdasher, but not a Clothier.  I have even heard the word bandied as a profession by those that have a whopping couple of years’ experiences; and all I can say is, if someone doesn’t know what the word is, they will believe you.  I now offer my assistance, experience and expertise if it is wanted, nowadays with egos running rampant, it is best to just help.  I am assisting a store and they were celebrating seventy-five years of business, which is quite an accomplishment.  I came in for a couple of days to make the store look perfect, I may not do store merchandising anymore, but I do know how to make merchandise sing.  I guess the best that I can say is that as a manager throughout the years, I led by example of working.  My philosophy was that people didn’t pay me enough to wear our mirrors or chairs.

The big day came and it was quite exciting.  I arrive an hour before the event was scheduled and it was already getting busy, which is a good sign.  There were some Manufacturer’s Representatives attending and some even go back to my early days.  It was fun and made me remember some of the glory days.  It was also interesting watching how space was utilized to the max, as purveyors of food from some of the local restaurants set up tables and chafing dishes for the guests and the employees to munch on.  I presume it was for the employees as well, as I did try some of the dishes, and as quirky as I am, I did find a few dishes to try, in between helping out customers, as I do have to maintain this mature figure of mine.  Not only was there food brought in, there was adult beverages from another merchant.  There were some craft beers which are all the rage, the merchant was also showing some single barrel bourbons that he had bottled, since he bought the barrel and all the contents, and some wines.

Of course, you knew that there would be wine at this event, otherwise it would not have been mentioned.  There were five wines that caught my attention, and I figure that was a pretty good set of choices.  Two of the wines that I will discuss were Syrah wines, one pure and the other a Syrah based wine.  The first wine was from the Juan Gil Family Estates and their Cellars Can Blau “Can Blau” 2016 from DO Montsant in the Catalonia District of Spain.  Montsant means Holy Mountain and the area is revered, but has only recently been discovered for their wines.  In fact, the Cellars Can Blau was founded in 2003.  The wine was a blend of forty percent Syrah, forty percent Carignan and the balance was Grenache and it was aged for twelve months in French Oak.  I was not expecting much from the wines, but was I wrong, as this wine was delicious and really made me smile with the lushness that came from such a young wine.   The other wine that I enjoyed right off the bat and made the evening that much better was Domaine Eric et Joel Durand Syrah 2016.  This wine came from the area that originally was known as Vin de Pays des Collines Rhodaniennes, and is basically all the area north of the Rhone Valley.  With the Common Market and the homogenization of wine terms this area is now called IGP Collines Rhodaniennes and is widely planted with Syrah.  I really could not find much about this wine, but I thought it was a winner for the evening and I could tout it, very easily to the customers.

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A Birthday Brunch

Posted on November 1, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Of the birthday celebrations for my Bride, I only attended one bona-fide event.  So many of the events are scheduled with her, right after work, that maybe I should be getting a complex that nobody wants my company.  She had made one of the affairs so that we could enjoy a meal with the family that resides in Michigan, we wanted to pick up the tab, but our son insisted, but you know that she worries about contributing to any extra expenses.  She picked a place that she has gone to often, but for some odd reason, I had never been to one, even though there are two very close to us.

We were going to the Rusty Bucket Restaurant & Tavern, a Cameron Mitchell restaurant.  Cameron Mitchell is the Horatio Alger of a small relatively unknown community (at least in Michigan) of Columbus, Ohio.  He started off with Mitchell Seafood and Cameron for Steaks, both of which he has since sold and I have written about.  Since back in the day when he did own those two chains, he had run out of names and because of his great respect that he has, he named his experimental new restaurant M, but not in the classic Maize and Blue lettering that is known here, M became the prototype for his Ocean Prime restaurants and we have been to that one as well.  Rusty Bucket is his foray into casual dining with quality food and “Buckeye hospitality.”  I won’t go into all of the dishes that were ordered, since there was seven of us, but my Bride had the Blackened Salmon Salad with baby spinach, mixed greens with fresh strawberries, candied pecans, sliced red onion and she substituted cheddar for the blue cheese crumbles tossed in a cilantro Ranch dressing.  I felt like having an egg dish, since it was brunch time, so I had the Braised Short Rib Hash, with roasted red potatoes, caramelized onions, bell peppers, cheddar cheese topped with two sunny-side eggs and scallions, of course me being me, I had to substitute poached eggs, as first I do not like fried eggs and second a hash dish requires poached eggs.

 

I was the only one to imbibe for the meal, and somehow if they had Mimosas I must have missed them, but even before I knew what dish I was going to order, I knew that I was going to have eggs, so I wanted a Chardonnay, and they had a very good one by the glass.  I had the Trefethen Family Vineyards Oak Knoll District Chardonnay 2016.  The Trefethen family bought six farms in Napa Valley in 1968, including the Nineteenth Century Eschol Winery.  When they bought the acreage there were less than twenty wineries in Napa Valley.  The Oak Knoll District is a newer sub-district AVA in Napa Valley and this area is known for its cooler and a longer growing season within the valley.  The Trefethen family had their first commercial vintage in 1993 and they pride themselves on never having purchased a single outside grape and they are celebrating fifty years.  They actually grow thirteen different Chardonnay clones and the wine is aged in French Oak, of which nineteen percent is new, for nine months.  It was a nice meal and a great get-together with the family.  As a side note or disclaimer, I graduated from a private university, so I have just always enjoyed all the rivalries that the schools have, from a safe distance.

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A Couple for my Bride

Posted on October 30, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Through the course of a calendar year, every day is special, and once a year my Bride has her day.  Of course, she is so special to so many people that she has multiple celebrations with family gatherings, her cousin’s gatherings, her co-workers and people from her church (and I am sure that I still missed some).  Her celebrations go for as many days as are required to get everyone accommodated.  As I say, she is a very popular and well-liked young lady, though I am sure that there are some that question her sanity being with me, but that is another article that might entail a tome of research and writing.  One of her friends has already added to her new culinary collection of Mackenzie-Childs.  She also received a couple of bottles of wine.  Most people, I guess are intimidated with the thought of buying wine for me, but not for my Bride, as she is always known to enjoy a glass or two at get-togethers.

The first bottle of wine that she received is Gnarly Head 1924 Double Black Red Wine Blend 2017 from Lodi, California.  Gnarly Head is a brand from the Delicato Family Vineyards who own the Clay Station Vineyard and also contract from assorted growers from the Kramer Vineyard.   The Gnarly Head produces a couple of different “Red Wine Blend” offerings.  I realized that the Red Wine Blend is a proprietary blend, but they are very secretive.  The fruit is harvested at night to maintain the acidity and aged for a couple of months in a mix of French and American Oak.  While they give a few glimpses into production, there is no indication of any grapes used in this blend, but I will go out on a limb and deduce that Zinfandel has to be a key player, with the gnarly vines from old plantings that can be still found in Lodi.  The rest is up for discussion, especially when we open up the bottle.

The other bottle of wine that I will mention is Francis Coppola Diamond Collection Blue Label Merlot 2016 from the Francis Ford Coppola Winery of Sonoma, California.  While the winery is located in Sonoma, this wine has a California designation.  If you think that Francis Ford Coppola has had a terrific career in films, he has also had a brilliant career as a winemaker.  In 1975, he had the good fortune to reunite and purchase the entire Inglenook Estate, and years later we had a wonderful tour of the grounds, the facility, his film museum and a private tasting in one of the old Inglenook cellars, which was renamed Neibaum-Coppola.  The flagship of the winery then and today was Rubicon, which I could not wait to try when we were there.  In the 1990’s he created Francis Coppola Wines and a few more labels with the intent of having some good dependable every-day wines under the price of twenty dollars.  He was so successful with this endeavor that he bought a new winery in Sonoma for all of his wine collections and he also moved his film museum there, and left the old Inglenook Estate in Rutherford to be hallowed and revered, as it should be.  While the wine that my Bride received is affordable it still has craftsmen behind it.  The wine is seventy-eight percent Merlot and the balance is Petite Sirah, and the wine was aged for twelve months in French Oak.  I have always been partial to Merlot, so I shall look forward to trying this wine, of course with my Bride.

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A Last and a Last

Posted on October 28, 2018 by thewineraconteur

Of the seventeen wines that the Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan had ready for tasting, I only five and two that were not on the list.  I was trying to be good, since I was only picking up the monthly wine club selections.  I am guilty of always being ready to discuss wines, and if there is a wine to be tried, I am usually interested in trying some wines as well, after all, it is human nature.  The first wine that they poured that day was not on the list and I fell hook line and sinker, and the best thing is that since I was only trying seven wines, there was no reason not to savor each wine properly.  Of course, I have to admit that I very seldom have ever spit out wine, even though it is considered proper when doing multiple tastings, I guess I am from the old school and I hate to waste, unless the wine is not worth drinking, but that is rare and I do not write about the wine.

The first last wine that I will discuss is the last year for Atlas Wine Company’s Omen Zinfandel 2015.  This wine is from the Sierra Foothills, one of the largest AVA designations in the entire country as it is 2.6 million acres with many sub-districts and many varied terroirs, which can be expected from such a large area.  Zinfandel is one of the most grown varietals for the entire Sierra Foothills and this grape was planted there during the days of the Gold Rush and then most of the vineyards and wineries ended during Prohibition and it is only been recently discovered.  The peculiar truth is, that since the terrain is difficult for almost anything but wine that has to be stressed, some of the vineyards were never ripped out and were just left to grown wild, and hence some wineries now have some very old vines.  The Omen Zinfandel is a hand-crafted wine and I can only surmise that rather than just having another Zinfandel to sell, they will be using it to blend with some of their other wines like their Omen Red Blend.

The other last wine is actually a fortified wine that is normally the last beverage of the evening, and it was not on the tasting wine list.  The owner of the shop had actually read some of my articles and there was one at a restaurant, which was not his, but he saw that I had enjoyed a Pineau des Charentes Vieux.  He went a poured me a glass of Navarre Pineau des Charentes Vieux NV and he thought this was the finest example of this wine that he has encountered.  He asked me if I had ever had the wine before, and I had to laugh, in fact we both laughed when I told him, that he had sent two glasses to the table my Bride and I had, the first time we tried his restaurant Vertical in downtown Detroit, and it was the first time that I had met him.  This wine, which is a fortified wine that was introduced in 1945 for wines that were not considered Cognac. This wine is made from the Ugni Blanc grape and is blended with a six-year-old Grande Champagne Cognac from the same winery. The wine must be aged in Oak for at least eighteen months, and if it carries the wording of Vieux (old) then it must spend at least five years or more in oak. I found it to be a very smooth and elegant “Cognac” though it is technically not a Cognac, though it is made from the same grapes, same blending and the same region. This fortified wine was created to make use of the wines that were not considered to be classic Cognac, and it created a second market for the vintages that may have been excessively heavy or light. Perhaps my palette is not that sharp to discern such subtleties, but I find it very enjoyable and really easier to drink compared to some Cognacs that I have had in the past.  A perfect way to end this tasting trip.

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Two Napa Reds

Posted on October 26, 2018 by thewineraconteur

I was on a roll at Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan tasting some great wines and all because I was picking up my monthly club selection.  With the advent of the Coravin System, wine shops must be doing a bang-up business letting customers taste wines without the wines going bad.  I probably take longer than the average taster, because I am attempting to take a photo of each wine, and we all know what a rank amateur I am with a “smart-phone” in my hand.  The next two wines that I tried are what some would call “second tier” and I will let you decide, because most second labels that I have tried have not been losers at all.

It is understandable that the first wine from this winery I had never encountered, and that is because the entire winery only produces about two-thousand cases of estate wine, and that is in three categories, and one category is a very small run dessert wine that is basically only sold at the winery, in fact that can be said of their first wine, because it is sold first come, first serve by internet sales for the most part.  The wine that I tasted was the one they sell to the trades, because it is made from their young vines.  The Philip Togni Vineyards Tanbark Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 is from a small twenty-five-acre family run estate that is 2,000 feet about sea-level in the Spring Mountain District sub-appellation of Napa Valley.  The first vines were planted in 1981, and they are interested producing a Margaux-style Claret for long term cellaring as they only grow Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.  If the wine I tasted was from young vines the first label wines must be awesome.  This wine was big and vibrant, what one expects from a solid Cab from the Valley without being a cookie-cutter style.  At $70.00 this wine should deliver and it does.

The second “second tier” wine I had was Opus One Overture NV, which when I first encountered this impressive wine was at the winery, in fact, back then, it was the only venue that one could buy it, and we bought it on a scale of three to one.  The first time that I had Opus One was at a charity fund-raiser and they were serving Opus One 1983.  Opus One was a joint venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Robert Mondavi.  It was the first premier California wine and started the whole cult wine sensation that is still going strong.  It was conceived in the 1970’s and the first vintage was 1979 and released to the public in 1984.  It is now partly owned by Constellation Brand.  Opus One is a one-trick-pony as they are an estate winery with one wine, all from their Oakville vineyards including part of the famed To Kalen Vineyard.  They only grow Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec.  In 1993 they began Overture for fruit that did not make the cut and they tend to even blend the wine with earlier vintages as well to try to maintain a full young Opus One for impatient drinkers who aren’t interested in cellaring wine.  After all of the great wines that I tried, this was the least impressive and I so wanted to try this wine.  I mean there was nothing wrong with the wine and if I had tried it first, I might have been more impressed, and I never would have expected that I would not be totally in love, but who knows, perhaps the next Non-vintage issue will blow my socks off, just like the first time that I had Overture.

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Two from the Old World

Posted on October 24, 2018 by thewineraconteur

As I recall, I was going to pick up my wine club selections from the Fine Wine Source in Livonia and believe it or not, I got waylaid in a wine shop.  Some times I can make stops anywhere longer if I get into a conversation about wines, or some of the other hobbies that I enjoy.  After totally enjoying a glass of a Volnay Premier Cru Champans, I was kind of like putty in their hands or a fly in a web.   I guess a great glass of wine will do that to me, but this was going to be an interesting respite from my other mundane duties that I was trying to accomplish that day.

I was escorted to the back of the shop where the wine tastings usually occur and I was poured some Chateau Lillian Ladouys Saint-Estephe 2011.  I have not encountered many wines from the commune of Saint-Estephe in the Medoc, but every bottle that I have encountered, no matter the vintage was totally enjoyable and interesting and distinct from the two communes that I find much more often, that is Pauillac and Margaux.  This winery was listed as a Cru Bourgeois Supereiur in 1932 and again in 2003, before this classification was annulled in 2007.  Another one of those old Medoc estates that goes back to the middle of the 16’th Century and was originally known as LaDoys.  The winery and its fame suffered during the two world wars and had some changes in ownership, and the last two owners were interested in returning the estate back to its glory.   The winery is now owned by the same people that have Chateau Pedesclaux and Chateau D’Issan.  There are fifty hectares planted with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.  The wine is aged for fifteen months in French Oak, of which thirty-five percent is always new.  This wine had a great Medoc nose, a really chewy wine with terroir to spare and a very long aftertaste.  After I finished this wine, the owner had me taste the wine a second time, after they attached an aerator spout to the Coravin system that they were using and the wine was even more memorable after this “decanting.”  The one member of the staff that was doing the honors of pouring for me, was trying to sell me a Coravin and the owner of the shop was laughing and was joking with him, telling him that when I open a wine, it is not for tasting, but for drinking, so he negated the sales pitch for me.

Now after having two wonderful French wines under my belt, you can say they poured me an Italian wine.  Almost from day one, when I started my tutelage of wines Italy was always right there, it also helped that back then it was much more affordable compared to the Medoc and that was important to a young student.  The Poderi Aldo Conterno Langhe 2015 was a wonderful follow-up.  Aldo Conterno was considered by many as the greatest of all Barolo makers, and he founded his own winery in 1969 after leaving as the manager of his brother’s estate.  Since his relatively recent death, his three sons have taken over the reigns and they are the fifth generation of winemakers in the family.  The Langhe DOC is very large and encompasses some famous other famous designations like Barolo, Barbaresco and Asti.  The Langhe DOC was established in 1994 and allows for the experimentation by the winemakers to use different varietals, akin to what occurred in Tuscany and the “Super Tuscan” wines.   This wine is a blend of Fresia, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.  If you are like me, you may never have heard of Fresia, another reason that I may flunk the Century Club, but it is a long and respected, but seldom used, except for the most part in the Langhe.   There are two almost twin versions of this grape, depending on the size of the fruit, and it is known for its big tannins and residual sugar content.  It was more popular in the end of the 19’th Century and has bounced around a bit more, because it is naturally resistant to Phylloxera.  In a land with very strict rules governing Barolo, Aldo Conterno was considered a “modernist” and I guess that covers even this wine as all I could find out was that this wine came from some of the different vineyards of his in the Bussia, then the wine spends “a few months in Stainless Steel and a few months in oak casks.”  After a couple of wonderful French wines this Italian nose took me into another direction, and brought me another big chewy wine with plenty of terroir along with the tannin, and a very long count on the aftertaste.  I was just a very happy camper with all of these wines just making my day so much better.

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