Wine Purchasing 101

We bought a couple cases of wine recently.  One was The Paring Red Blend which was included in a slew of samples our vendor poured for us.  Frankly, it was the best of the lot.  

Later that same day another vendor brought in his samples that we proceeded to taste through.  After purchasing some from that bunch, he verbally offered the Angels & Cowboys Red Blend from Sonoma.  He made it sound so good, we went ahead and bought a case.

The obvious difference between the two purchases was the ability to taste the wine in the first case and just getting the salesman's pitch in the second.  The backstory?  We've known the first vendor for just a couple months.  The other fellow we've known for decades.  That makes a difference.

The Paring is a Cabernet-driven Bordeaux blend from the Screaming Eagle people; Screaming Eagle, being the most expensive wine of California.  It has no prestigious appellation of origin other than California in general, but we tasted it and it was good.  

A field blend utilizes grapes like Zinfandel, Syrah, Petite Sirah, Grenache, Sangiovese, Carignan, and/or other blue collar types, in various combos that somehow comes out tasting pretty good.  Angels & Cowboys is that kind of wine.  Right up my blue collar alley.

So The Paring has provenance; it has the Screaming Eagle connection and it's Cabernet, the most reliably fine red grape in the marketplace.  Angels & Cowboys, by contrast, has Sonoma-legs but little else to recommend it.  And I bought it without even tasting it!  

Yet I will recommend both to you all.  If you like the Screaming Eagle Cabernet provenance, get The Parings.  If you have a history with me here then lets talk.  Angels & Cowboys isn't for everyone.  But it might be perfect for your needs.

Gascogne Blanc

The Gascogne region south of Bordeaux is overwhelmingly agricultural with both an oceanic influence and hot dry summers that are perfect for growing wine grapes.  In the past when we've posted about Gascogne we got intrigued by the neat geology of the region and went off on that tangent.  Since wine industries everywhere cling to river valleys, that's where we'll start this one.  Gascogne is segmented by several rivers and since our highly successful Domaine Pajot white blend and the similarly hoped-for success of the soon to arrive Domaine de Ballade Blanc are what prompted this post, the river we're talking about now is the Gers.

The Gers River flows north from the Pyranees Mountains through the Armagnac region ultimately emptying into the Garonne River and then into Bordeaux.  The region around the local Armagnac capitol city of Eauze is called the commune of Gers.  It is there that both whites mentioned above have their vineyards.

The native grape of the region is Colombard with the secondary grape being Ugni Blanc.  Historically both grapes have had an acidic character with more or less neutral flavors which make them great for distilling into brandy.

Wait a minute.  Acidic wine with neutral flavors?  So why are the white wines of the region so pleasant?

Although we haven't seen it written anywhere, we suspect technological improvements in winemaking make these grapes desirable now.  Whatever else can be coaxed out of Colombard and Ugni Blanc, they bring structure and acidity to a blend.

The third historic white grape of the region is Gros-Manseng, another lesser type.  The fourth white grape of the region is an import, the fine Sauvignon Blanc of Bordeaux to the north.  Now with Sauvignon Blanc as its calling card, the white blend becomes clear.  Sauvignon Blanc offers both elegance and prestige to the blend.  Colombard gives the blend citric and tropical fruit flavors.  Ugni Blanc is floral and Gros Manseng brings a soft round body with quince and apricot flavors.  And this is key - Leaving the wine on the lees for months as these winemakers do, brings out the latent flavors of the lesser grapes.

The finished product is a light-bodied white suitable for seafood, salads and summer afternoons.

Bastide Miraflors

We've had this one on our shelves for the better part of a year.  Doesn't sell worth a hoot.  What's the problem?  It must be the packaging because it sure isn't what's in the bottle.  

Bastide Miraflors (BM?) is a blend of 75% Syrah with 25% Grenache sourced from fifty-five year old organically farmed vines in a region historically known for that fine blend.  That region, Cotes du Roussillon, is the southernmost part of France adjacent to the Spanish border with flatland vineyards closer to the Mediterranean Sea and higher altitude vineyards nearer to the Pyranees Mountains.  Bastide utilizes soils of granite, schist and alluvial gravel at altitudes ranging from 35 meters to 150 meters.

Bastide is made by the very modern winery of Domaine Lafage of Peripignan.  It is an Indication Geographique Protegee (IGP) level wine, not rising to appellation status (AOP) but not vin d'table either.  The IGP Cotes Catalanes, as it is called, is the same geographical region as used in the earlier term, Pyranese-Orientales.  That region is hot and dry with poor soils and garrigue covered hills that force vine taproots deep into the earth for sustenance.  The resultant wines are known for their concentrated flavors.  All of the governmental wine legalese, by the way, is courtesy of the European Union in 2009 when they replaced the previous legal mumbo-jumbo in place since 1968.

What makes this wine so good?  

Three things: 

The grapes are hand harvested.  That means quality control.  Harvesting machines don't descriminate.  Hands do.  

The grapes receive a total of six weeks in maceration before three quarters of the young wine sees a year in concrete.  The remainder is put in oak.  That's winemaking.

Remember the garrigue mentioned earlier?  We've written about it before.  It is low lying vegetation that exudes a heady complex herbaceousness.  Think - Herbs de Provence.  Lavendar and mint.  Winemakers in southern France believe that airborne herbaceousness becomes part of a wine's flavor profile.  Want more?  It is further believed that garrigue soils can transmit that same herbaceousness to vine roots for a furtherance of the same phenomena.  Hmmm.  

Bernardus

 ...to create wines that "flatter the palate and stimulate the imagination."  So says the mission statement of Bernardus Winery of Monterey County.  We like it.  What more could you ask for?

We've known Bernardus since the early 1980's.  Back then we were taken by their white wines.  Both the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc had a sweet spiciness that made them ideal as cocktail wines.  The wines weren't actually sweet, at least no more than most from California; they just had maybe a nutmeg-like flavor that your mind associates with sweeter holiday fare.  Maybe it's that quality that made you not want to mess these up by having them with a meal.

Whatever reds Bernardus marketed must not have impressed us back then or else those thoroughly enjoyable whites just overshadowed them.  In the last twenty years though, it's the Bernardus reds that have come to the fore with the critics.  We have sold them successfully for the past twenty years, including their luxury label, Marinus Estate Blend.

At their website Bernardus markets ten wines, four whites and six reds.  A rose is pictured there but is apparently unavailable.  During the holiday season we sold their Monterey Chardonnay, Griva Vineyard Monterey Sauvignon Blanc and Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir.  We wholeheartedly recommended them all; the whites based on our history with them and the red, because of the critical acclaim.  

The Marinus Vineyard is a thirty-six acre hillside expanse over the Carmel Valley.  It was established in 1990 at an elevation of 1,200 feet in soils of sand and clay.  Twenty-five acres are planted in Cabernet Sauvignon, nine in Merlot, and one each in Cabernet Franc and Malbec.  The goal here is obviously to make Bordeaux in California.  We will be stocking Marinus shortly.

So here's the Bernardus backstory: Bernardus Marinus Pons came to Carmel Valley from the Netherlands in the late 1970's.  After purchasing what he thought would be a second home there, he became quite taken with the area and foresaw a Bordeaux-like wine industry for the region.  His wealth came from his father who designed the Volkswagen Microbus and imported the first Beetles into this country.  Relatedly, Pons' hobbies at the time included racing Porsches and skeet shooting, which he excelled at enough to be competitive in the 1972 Olympics.

Pons now owns only half of his winemaking operation with other Dutch interests buying in for the other half. His twenty-five year old winemaking team is led by chief wine maker Dean Dekorth who hails from Burgundy, France.