Cremant d'Alsace

The shelf with our the best values in sparkling wines was looking a little threadbare so we brought in a case of Pierre Sparr Alsatian Cremant.  Cremant is the term for Champagne quality sparkling wines made outside of the Champagne district.  In our store we stock these directly under the Champagnes.  We're not deliberately trying to trade people down pricewise from Champagne because that wouldn't make sense economically; we just like the contrast. 

On that shelf we regularly stock Cremants from Limoux, Burgundy, Loire and Alsace along with premium wines from outside of France that we feel warrant consumer attention.  A case could be made for the quality of each wine on the shelf but for us, Alsace is personal.  We love Alsatian white wines and all Alsatian Cremants are made from white grapes except the roses which are 100% Pinot Noir.

The white grapes of Alsatian Cremant include Pinot Blanc, Auxerrois, Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Gris.  Pinot Blanc is the prolific workhorse grape of Alsace so it's not surprising that it is widely used in Cremant.  Auxerrois is Pinot Blanc's counterpart in Cremant and elsewhere in Alsatian white blends and on occasion can be used interchangeably with Pinot Blanc.  Both types are citrussy in flavors but Auxerrois is richer with a musky aroma.  Chardonnay adds structure to the blend and Riesling and Pinot Gris add minerality floral aromas.

It's summertime now so if any of this sounds good to you, stop in and create an occasion for some bubbly.  Pick up a bottle of still white Alsatian wine while you're here too.  We've got a lot of summer yet ahead of us.

Evergreen Family Wines

We recently tasted five from Evergreen Family Wines and all were quite good for their modest prices.  Their various labels were confusing to me though until I went to their website.  There I learned Evergreen is Washington's largest family-owned winery sitting on a 3,000 acre estate with vineyards in the Wahluka Slope and Ancient Lakes AVAs.

Previously known as Ryan Patrick Wines, Evergreen soon acquired Milbrandt Family Wines, Luke, Alki, Simply..., Rhodes, Evergreen, Caliche Estate and 1889.  Not necessarily in that order.  But you get the point - This is a sizable operation.  

At our tasting the best wine on the table by acclamation was the Caliche Albarino.  We thought the best red wine was the 1889 Red Blend and here's a tip for you - Red blends from Washington are usually exceptional for their grape composition, especially when one of the featured grapes is Washington's Syrah.

On a budget?  Try the Simply...Red Blend here in the store at this time.  

Washington State

We've featured Washington wines in our last two tastings so maybe it's time we dig into what makes them so special.  The Columbia Valley wine appellation is, essentially, the wine industry of Washington.  It covers 11+ million acres which translates into 99% of the state's total vineyard acreage.  Yeah, that's pretty much the whole deal.  It covers 1/4 of Washington's total acreage and even extends down into Oregon.  

The appellation lies between the 46th and 47th parallels making it the same latitude as Burgundy and Bordeaux in France, the finest wine appellations in the world.  Significantly, Washington gets two more hours of sunlight than California and at the higher latitude, the diurnal temperature shift (day to night) is more pronounced giving you riper fruit with better structure and acidity.  That temperature shift in Washington is typically 30-50 degrees.

Only 6-8 inches of rain fall annually in Washington's wine country which means drip irrigation is needed but that's better than getting too much rain.  The soils are derived from volcanic activity long ago leaving basalt, gravel and loess to grow your vines in.  Again, when vines struggle in these seemingly less favorable soils, the tap root has to dig deeper, usually bringing about a more complex wine.

There are 18 smaller wine appellations within the Columbia Valley appellation.  Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, Chardonnay and Riesling are the main varieties there but there are so many other proven winners there.  Merlot and Syrah in particular excel in Washington and the wine appellation to get the best reds is Red Mountain.  

Pinotage

This isn't exactly new territory for us, having written about Pinotage here several times, but we just got in a case of Ken Forrester Petit Pinotage so we might as well plug it.  

One of our favorite wine comments of all time has to be - Cheap Pinot Noir ought to be illegal.  No beating around the bush there.  If you want Pinot Noir, the most magical of wine grapes, you're gonna have to pay for it.  Ain't no two ways about it.  So what's a pinot guy on a budget supposed to do?

Well, you find alternatives.  Like other lighter reds that have enough finesse to reach the quality threshold you need.  Italy is a good place to start.  Or southern France.  Or maybe, just maybe, South African Pinotage.  

Why would we hesitate with Pinotage?  Because, like Zinfandel, the versatile Pinotage grape can be made into a variety of styles most of which are big and rich.  We've always felt the lighter styled Forrester Petit Pinotage was acceptably Pinot Noir-like.

Pinotage is a hybrid grape created in South Africa by crossing Pinot Noir with that industry's workhorse grape, Cinsault.  Cinsault, itself, is a lighter variety that makes a charming light red on its own.  With earthy red berry and plum flavors it wouldn't be mistaken for pinot but the Forrester Pinotage just might.

Pinotage is the second most widely planted grape in South Africa after Cinsault and like we said, it's usually made into a big rich, full-bodied red.  The tage part of Pinotage is an homage to Hermitage, an earlier South African name for Syrah which is what many think Pinotage tastes like.  So if the Forrester style really is pinot-like then it is definitely an outlier to the type.

When Good People Disagree

He is about thirty years younger than me, so a generation or so.  I came of age wine-wise close to fifty years ago.  Both of us are in the business so we both know our way around the wine tasting table but a week ago we disagreed profoundly on the wines we were tasting.  

This is a vendor I trust completely, by the way.  I let him write his own orders for me when he has a push on something he thinks would work here.  So I was very surprised by the conversation assessing the merits of the Chilean wines we were tasting.  I started by remarking that the wines were forward and aiming for the California palate.  He added commentary about their richness and compared them to the French model and here's where I think the chasm exists.

Most of the wines on American store shelves are different from those of a couple generations ago.  Not the great estate wines, but those from the worldwide mass marketers.  They know where their bread is buttered and they butter it well.

In the previous post (and probably several others before that) we talked about the many technological improvements in winemaking that have resulted in fresher, more quaffable wines.  Having gotten into wines when I did, I still remember the drier winier wines on the shelf that were consistent with historical European tastes.  I also remember the somewhat rough California field blend reds that had their own charm, albeit in their imperfection.  And then there were the extreme bad examples of the way things were fifty years ago including the somewhat oxidized or cork-tainted fare that was more common than we would like to admit.

So the paradigm shift that has happened in wine tastes means the younger taster only recognizes the cleaned-up model while the older guy remembers the way things used to be.  And that's alright.

Compared to What?

Les McCann and Eddie Harris were a couple of jazz musicians who struck gold in the early 1970s with a crossover hit called Compared to What.  It was an anthem on college campuses when yours truly found himself in that milieu.  The lyrics, like most pop music, don't make sense but what we heard as rebellious youth was confirmation that there was a disconnect between what we were told to believe politically and what we were actually witnessing in the country at that time.  What can I say, it was a different time.  

In a way, the wine world is divided today between historic old Europe with their longer, drier, winier flavors and and new world jammy forward fruit.  They appear to be quite opposite one another.  We here at V&C have taken the position that Old Europe makes dinner wines while California makes cocktail wines.  But that doesn't really cover it either.  If a meal has complex sauces, gravies, stews or soups those longer winier flavors do seem to work best.  If it's hamburgers, steaks or broiled fish then a simpler wine may be better. 

So why do winemakers around the world always compare what they do to the European models?  My Cab is very Bordeaux-like.  My Pinot is very Burgundian.  Implied here in such comments is an acknowledgement that the historic standards for such things are accurate.  The best examples of type are European.

But it gets complicated when you consider all of the technological improvements in winemaking resulting in fresher fruitier wines everywhere and that includes Europe where much of the new technology has been developed.  Today you can taste Euro wines that are indistinguishable from new world fare, so like I said, it gets complicated.

But when you consider personal tastes, which is really what this all comes down to, I'm wondering if the old world/new world scenario as described is even relevant anymore.  Winemakers everywhere are competing for the same worldwide market and they are winning, not by setting themselves off as better than others but by riding the wave of what works now, circa 2026.  

Wine quality today is better than ever so whether you need a dinner accompaniment or just a glass after work, enjoy yourself.  You deserve it.  Compare it to what?  If anything, contrast it to beer or other alternatives.  What the winemaker creates is art compared to those alternatives.

Beringer and Treasury Wine Estates

We've been selling Beringer Knights Valley Cabernet Sauvignon with great success here of late and that has prompted this post.  Beringer is one of California's most iconic brands with its own storied history beginning with family-ownship from 1876 until 1971, which would seem to be the traditional glory days for a winery to us traditionalists...but that was really just the beginning.  

In 1971 Nestle (yes, that Nestle) bought Beringer and held it for twenty years, fifteen years of which overlapped our first fifteen years in the business. But I digress.  In 1996 something called The Texas Pacific Group bought Beringer but sold it four years later to Foster's Group (yes, that would be Fosters Beer.)  They held the company for eleven years selling it to Treasury in 2011, but not completely.  Fosters and Treasury worked out a collaboration much like InBev got by purchasing Anheuser Busch, worldwide distribution.

In 2021 Treasury went on to jettison all of the non-Beringer lower tier labels, keeping the Beringer name, of course, and the winery in St. Helena which they now run.  

Treasury Wine Estates is one of the colossuses of the wine industry today.  Depending on how one calculates these things, it ranks third or fourth in worldwide sales behind Gallo, The Wine Group and perhaps an entity called Castel Freres.  They own 1.2% of worldwide wine sales valued at $434 billion dollars.  Currently their expansion plans include forays into the China market.