Jorge Ordonez

The Quadrum three liter Spanish boxed wines have just had a twenty percent price reduction.  (Yes, you heard me right.)  It was almost a year ago when we blogged about them, encouraging everyone to try them because after all, it was picnic season and the three types were way better than grocery store fare.  AND they're Jorge Ordonez wines, so you really ought to try 'em!

Jorge Ordonez Selections is a family-owned importer of Spanish wines produced on twenty-seven winery estates.  The company was established in 1987 when Spain was not regarded as anything special in the wine world.  Jorge fixed that.  Spain is actually the planet's largest viticultural region with a 2,700 year history of wine making, the oldest in Europe.  

Jorge grew up in a wine wholesaling family and understood early on that Spain had something special to offer the wine world.  Yet in 1987 it was the large corporate-run, profit-driven cooperatives that were shipping to America and that wine was often tainted by poor transportation and storage.  There was a lot of room for improvement.  They weren't even trying to make fine wine.

Having been raised in the wine industry, Jorge looked around at all of the historic family-owned vineyards and wineries and wondered why this honorable and honest approach to the industry wasn't valued for what it is.  He reached out to many of these owners beseeching them to maintain the traditional ways AND update their operations with whatever needed to be done to improve their product.  Cleanliness in the winery, limits on harvests, and organics in viticulture and winemaking were stressed.  After these improvements Jorge would have his work cut out for him.  He would insist on refrigerated trucks and warehouses wherever his wines were sold.  Then he had to challenge the international palate to try wines made from the indigenous grapes of Spain, something decidedly outside of the American comfort zone.

Spanish vineyards are traditionally dry farmed, meaning tap roots have to find water deep in the earth.  Trace elements of different minerals and nutrients would then find their way through the plant and ultimately into the wine creating a complexity of flavors.  Through Jorge's uncompromising efforts these new and unfamiliar flavors have found a market share in America's wine culture.  

The Eternal Question

Not really eternal, of course, it's just that the question has been around for as long as we've been in the business.  And the question is - How long should I hold on to this bottle?   And for the sake of narrowing things down, let's say we're talking about California Cabernet Sauvignon.

Fifty years ago Hugh Johnson in his Encyclopedia of Wine would have said only three percent of French wines would improve with age.  That is all.  No others.  Now in the modern, more sophisticated wine culture of today, we have recently read that maybe one percent of the great wines of the world, regardless of national origins, will actually improve with age.

But what about that bottle of Cal Cab we just bought?  We want to hold it until we think it will show its best.  Well, it's complicated.  Most cabernets are intended to be consumed within five years.  That is, most California wines feature the popular forward-fruit style with soft tannins and low acidity and therein lies the rub. 

Tannins are astringent compounds that come from grapes skins, pips, twigs and contact with the oak barrels the wine is aged in.  These compounds soften with time and new flavors develop from them.  Citric acid is a natural preservative and a higher acid wine aids the aging process.  The California climate is warmer than Europe and most other fine wine regions so grapes ripen faster leaving lower levels of acids than elsewhere.  Aging isn't needed for most of these easy drinking wines.

So how long should I hold this wine I just bought?  The prevailing wisdom is no more than ten years.  If it's a great cab from an acclaimed producer and made in the old world style, up to twenty years.  And that's if the wine is laying down in a dark, temperature-controlled, humidity-regulated, vibration-free environment.

Januik

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the great figures in the contemporary wine business.  Throughout the 1990's Mike Januik was the winemaker at Chateau Ste. Michelle, the largest winery of Washington State.  That decade was the high point of that company's existence.  Was it a coincidence that Januik was there at their peak?  I don't think so.  If the truth be known, Mike Januik put CSM on the map.

So what exactly did he do?  Januik created the great single-vineyard reserve reds that probably put Washington State on the map for those of us who thought California invented enology.  Januik, a Washington native, had been in the wine business for the better part of a decade before CSM so he knew where to go for superior fruit.

And where is that?  From the same places where Januik sources from now; Horse Heaven Hills, Royal Slope and the greatest Washington AVA (American Viticultural Area), Red Mountain.  Januik also sources from Stillwater Creek Vineyard. a part of the Novelty Hill estate.  In 2000 upon leaving CSM, Januik entered into an agreement with Tom Alberg and Judi Beck to make the wines at their new Novelty Hill winery.  It's at that same location he would start making his own eponymous Januik labeled wines, a project he had started a year earlier.  

This year Januik celebrates his fortieth harvest.  When he started there were twenty-four wineries in Washington.  Now there are two hundred.  As of 2011 a third winemaking operation has been added to the Novelty Hill/Januik operation.  Mike's son Andrew now makes his Andrew Januik wines there also.

As we said above, Mike Januik is a giant in the Washington wine business.  We now have two of his cabernets in the store, the Novelty Hill and the Januik label.  If you like great cabernet, try these!

Torbreck & Barossa Valley

The quality of Torbreck Vintners wines has never been in question.  Robert Parker calls them a "Top 100" winery.  If the travesty that is Yellowtail hadn't driven down the Australian wine business, Torbreck may have become a household name by now.  Maybe even like Beaucastel, their model in the southern Rhone Valley of France.  Torbreck really is that good.

Torbreck was established in 1994 but you could say it started more than a hundred fifty years earlier when many of its cornerstone Rhone varietals were first planted in the Barossa Valley.  With the oldest vineyards in Australia, Barossa is known for rich powerful structured reds with lengthy flavors.  Wines of this quality age gracefully.  The wines' velvety tannins are courtesy of Barossa's Mediterranean climate of a hot dry growing season stressing the vines before the diurnal temperature shift to coolness at night compensates for the heat.  This temperature shift is ideal for maintaining acidity in the grapes to prevent flabbiness in wine flavors.   

Torbreck markets two dozen different wines.  Most are reds; all are Rhone varietals.  The reds include Shiraz (of course), Grenache, Mataro, Counoise and Carignan.  The whites include Viognier, Marsanne, Roussanne and Semillon.  Like in the Rhone Valley, most Torbreck wines are blends.

Torbreck boasts of "estate winemaking" which is not the same as estate bottling, meaning everything is done on the property.  With long term management arrangements at high quality vineyards, what they call custodial care, they can secure the fruit that they need for their many premium wines.  In other words, they know what they're doing.

Runrig is Torbreck's flagship wine.  It's a Shiraz/Viognier blend likened to their northern Rhone model and yes, it commands a lofty price.  The two in the store right now are more grounded price-wise.  The Cuvee Juveniles is a Grenache, Mataro, Carignan, Counoise, Shiraz blend.  The Woodcutter's Semillon is an oak aged robust Madeira clone Semillon first planted in Barossa 160 years ago.  

If Rhone red blends or the white Semillon grape are new to you, here's your opportunity.  They're well worth a try.

Orange Wine

Orange wine is a very popular term for white wine that is made in the fashion of a red wine.  In the Asian Caucasus region where they've been doing this for 5,000 years they call it amber wine.  Other terms include skin-contact or skin-fermented wine or using larger terminology, non-interventionist winemaking, which gets more to the point - This is the furthest thing from the common filtered-clear white wines on store shelves.  Possibly as a reaction to that norm, David Harvey coined the term orange wine in 2004.

With skins and seeds included in the grape maceration and fermentation (sometimes up to a year!), the wine acquires pigment, phenols and tannins; giving it a robust, perhaps honeyed nose and a complex, lacquered nutty flavor.  This kind of a big white wine would show well with curried Asian cuisine or cabbage or any meats/fishes with a similarly high phenolic character.

Orange wines are made everywhere today.  In Friuli-Venezie-Guilia, Italy and Slovenia they have been doing it for hundreds of years applying the name Ramato to their Pinot Grigio version.  

Aside from our interest in the essential wine character and food affinities, health consciousness may be driving the orange wine fever.  Much like red wine, the skins and seeds in the production of orange wine are believed to slow mental decline and the risk of heart disease.  During maceration, anti-oxident chemical compounds like kaempferol, quercetin, catechin and resveratrol leach into the wine and neutralize unstable molecules (free radicals) that cause cellular damage.

Now here's some good news for all of us.  While there have been no specific studies of health benefits from orange wine consumption, it is believed any wine consumption in moderation improves longevity.  Wine drinkers have a lower risk of metabolic syndrome, the group of conditions that raise the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancers of the bowel, colon and prostate.

Frey

Frey Vineyards was established in 1980, about the same time as we got into this business.  They claim to be the first organic and biodynamic California winery.  Girard has been organic since the 1950's so they must be referring to the biodynamic part.    Between their wine label and website, they cite ten claims that serve to validate their bonafides.

#1.  USDA Organic Certification.  This is the biggie.  It involves stringent advance planning, implementation and regular inspections.  It's serious stuff.

#2.  California Certified Organic Farmers.  CCOF certification preceded USDA (1973) and today works within the USDA to certify farmers.  The CCOF foundation educates the public about organic values.

#3.  Demeter Certification.  This is also huge.  Demeter is biodynamics and also involves regular inspections.  With Demeter, the property is an ecosystem where nothing is added from the outside. 

#4.  No Sulfites Added.  Again, huge.  No pesticides, herbicides, fungicides or chemical additives.

#5.  Vegan.  Fining is the filtering process wines undergo before bottling.  It typically involves the use of eggs or casein protein from fish.  This kind of fining is not done at Frey.   

#6.  Non-GMO.  This concerns yeasts that may be genetically modified. There are no laws concerning GMOs but since Frey is Demeter-certified all yeasts are local.

#7.  Gluten-free.  This goes to the current popularity of flavor additives in wine which may have a small percentage of gluten.  Frey wines are unadulterated. 

#8.  1% for the Planet.  This international certification goes to business owners who pledge a percent of their profits to environmental causes.

#9.  Regenerative.  This catchword applies to agricultural land management.  There are no legal standards for the use of this term.

#10  FSC Certification.  This applies to the wine label paper which must come from managed forests where de-forestation will not be accepted. 

Frey sells organics.  That's their schtick.  The most important attribute listed above is their Demeter Certification.  If you have that, much of the rest is not necessary. 

Bolgheri

This post is a long overdue exercise in remedial education for those of us who thought we were so smart.  With just a little research we learned just how wrong we were about the wine appellation Bolgheri and it's place in greater Tuscany.  It's not just a cut above standard issue Tuscan Sangiovese.  Bolgheri is home to Sassacaia, which on at least three occasions in the last fifty years has shown better than the best Bordeaux has to offer.  The Bolgheri wine appellation, replete with its Bordeaux varietal vineyards, is, in fact, Italy's answer to Bordeaux.

Bolgheri is an Italian DOC (denominazione di controllata) in Maremma along the northern Tuscan coast just south of Livorno.  Like everywhere else in Italy, viticulture and wine making there has an exceedingly long history.  The traditional ways were adjusted two to three hundred years ago when the Bordeaux varietals (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot) were first introduced.  Still, today the popular sentiment and Italian Wine Law dictate that wine is to be made in the traditional fashion.  Viticulture and oenological procedures are to be appropriate and consistent with longstanding local customs.

The Bolgheri DOC allows for two quality levels, Bolgheri and Bolgheri Superiore and the autonomous stand alone Sassacaia appellation.  Basic Bolgheri appellation red wine may contain up to 50% Sangiovese or Syrah or it may be 100% Cabernet, Merlot or Cabernet Franc or any combination of those grapes not to exceed the Sangiovese/Syrah limits.  Any Bolgheri wine must conform in color, bouquet and taste to traditional standards.  It should be red-garnet in color with a heady bouquet and dry and balanced on the palate.  The Superiore version must be aged two years and must impress with elegance and structure.

Sassacaia is the product of Tenuta San Guido in western Bolgheri.  They are the wine appellation.  They make three wines: Sassacaia (85%,Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Cabernet Franc) and Guidalberto and Le Difese, two Bordeaux Blends that include Sangiovese in the blends.  

South Africa

It hasn't all been smooth sailing but South Africa seems to have finally arrived.  The turning point in their journey was in the early 1990's when apartheid ended and the government got out of the wine industry.  Up to that point the government-sponsored KWV cooperative had run things and they did a good job.  They actually built the South African wine industry, albeit with brandy as the base product.  Ten years after the big change, the sales percentages would be reversed with dinner wines becoming the order of the day.

The South African Wine law was enacted in 1973 but revised in the early nineties to allow for an expanding wine industry.  At the same time the newer technologies that were dominating the industry elsewhere were brought to South Africa along with some of the world's best winemakers as the country prepared for a boon.  But it didn't happen right away.  South Africa has always been isolated from the well known wine markets and each of those markets had the homecooking of its own wine industry to compete with.

There is an unfortunate sacrifice inherent in trying to satisfy an international market.  You have to make what people from other cultures want.  The most popular South African red and white wine grapes of the twentieth century were Cinsault and Chenin Blanc.  They grew well so they were popular with industry insiders but more importantly, the critics acclaimed their quality.  Cinsault, a Cotes du Rhone blender, largely went into brandy so it had to be sacrificed.  Chenin Blanc, while still the most widely planted grape in the country, is but a fraction of the juggernaut it once was.

Also sacrificed was Pinotage, the signature red wine grape of the country.  It proved to be too hard of a sell to the western world.  The Pinotage that has survived in more recent shipments here is a superior pinot-ish red dinner wine that is much more to our tastes than earlier efforts.  

The industry expansion that was begun in the 1990's includes new wine appellations to the east of the historic center in the Western Cape.  Those newer vineyards have a long way to go before they can compete in quality with the Cape.  The learning curve can be lengthy.  In the meantime Western Cape reds and whites are finally selling like they should.  Our Klein Constantia (est.1685!) Sauvignon Blanc and red blend sell quite well here and by the way, South African Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc are acclaimed by many of us to be second only to France in quality.

Matthews - In Pursuit of Pure Washington Wine

While that mission statement sounds a little grandiose, when you consider the quality displayed across everything they make, the claim seems reasonable.  For instance, they have what many of us think is the best Sauvignon Blanc on the continent and a red Bordeaux blend that rivals any from Napa.  Maybe they aren't just in pursuit of purity; maybe they've arrived.

Matthews was established in 1993 but re-born when the Otis family took over in 2004. They make one white wine, the Sauvignon Blanc, and just a few reds using Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.  Matthews' Columbia Valley vineyards are located in the Royal Slope, Red Mountain and Horse Heaven Hills AVA's at the same latitude as Bordeaux and Burgundy in France.  That latitude offers the long sunny days and cool nights that ripen wine grapes ever so optimally.

In 2021 Matthews was re-born again with a new winemaking crew.  From the winery website blog, the three gentlemen now in charge "completely overhauled the existing winemaking techniques and processes."  They sourced grapes from new places and planted new clones "for complexity and dimension at blending."  To concentrate and intensify their product they reduced yields by 30%; harvested later for riper fruit and dramatically extended grape maceration for richness and depth. 

Maybe they're now in pursuit of perfection.

Sancerre

If it's light dry white wine and it sells in January, it must be good and Sancerre has its own punched ticket as the best there is in Sauvignon Blanc.  With its light bone dry, clean fruit flavors and distinct minerality, Sancerre's historic reputation is secure.  Nowhere else in the world comes close to what Sancerre does...unless you look next door at Pouilly Fume.

So what makes the stuff so good?  It's got to be the soils.  As we've reported in the past, this part of northern France was under water for most of the life of the planet resulting in Kimmeridgian marlstone soils for the most part.  This is a limestone/clay soil type that influences the full bodied perfumed roundedness of Sancerre fruit.  Silex (flint) is a secondary soil of the region that provides the Sauvignon Blanc grapes with their steely minerality.  

As we said above, nowhere else does Sauvignon Blanc approach the quality of Sancerre.  Everywhere else the grape shows an herbaceous grassiness to one degree or another and that is fine in itself.  We don't believe the spectrum of flavors a wine can exhibit should be segmented judgmentally into positive and negative categories.  Without sounding too contradictory, however, we do believe in the historic model for each and that's where Sancerre wins out.   

What was to become the Sancerre wine appellation was first planted by the Romans in the first century.  It became a legally defined Sauvignon Blanc wine appellation in the inaugural class in 1936 and has been expanded four times since then.  We mentioned the Pouilly Fume AOC earlier.  Sancerre is sandwiched between Menatou-Salon on the left and Pouilly Fume on the right and for most of us, examples from each appellation would be indistinguishable.  They're all great!

Rosenblum Cellars Chenin Blanc/Viognier

In theory each bottle in a wine tasting lineup should be better than the one before.  In theory.  So when our vendor went through the lineup starting with three somewhat similar white blends followed by three reds, we were struck by how good that very first wine was.  By the way, in most wine tastings the price of the wines usually ascends so if that first inexpensive bottle is memorable, to our way of thinking, it is a find indeed.

Rosenblum Cellars was established in 1978 in Alameda, California maybe five miles from where we were living at the time.  Had we known we would be writing this now we could've been doing our spade work back then but it took us a few years to find our career path.  When we did land in the wine industry permanently, Rosenblum was still there.

Actually Kent Rosenblum hit the ground running when he started his operation.  Zinfandel was his thing back then and finding superior fruit in vineyards untapped by the larger industry players was his forte.  Rasmussen befriended these growers, struck a deal with each and then bottled single vineyard Zinfandels with the individual vineyard owner's name on each label.  At the time Rasmussen was crowned "The King of Zins."

Charlie Tsegeletos is the current Rosenblum winemaker and he was nice enough to educate me on the Chenin/Viognier.  The blend is 85% Chenin and 15% Viognier and the fruit is sourced from two estate vineyards in the greater Lodi region.  The wine shows bright citrus, pineapple and honey flavors with the Chenin being responsible for most of the light crispness and fresh fruit flavors.  The Viognier lends body and apricot flavor to the blend.  The wine is cold fermented in stainless steel and sees no oak or malolactic fermentation.

Gehricke/Sebastiani and the Knight's Valley AVA

Gehricke is a very successful line of five varietal wines made by 3 Badge Beverage of Sonoma.  We have at least a five year history of selling them here at the store.  Sebastiani, established in 1904 and also Sonoma-based, was one of the most successful wine companies of the twentieth century.  Unfortunately they went under in the early 1990's.  We knew the two operations were related somehow but just how that happened always eluded us.  It's complicated.  Stop in the store if you want to know more.  Suffice it to say Gehricke is sort of a decendant of Sebastiani.

The current best seller from Gehricke is the Knight's Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.  It shows full bodied rich red fruit flavors, soft tannins, prominent oak with vanilla and clove spice.  While Knight's Valley is most definitely a part of Sonoma, in many respects it is more like Napa.  The Knight's Valley AVA (American Viticultural Area) abuts the Alexander Valley AVA with the Chalk Hill AVA lying just south of it.  It is the furthest east of Sonoma's wine country where it's southern end meets Napa's northwest corner.

The Knight's Valley AVA is one of the five original 1983 Sonoma AVAs.  It contains 37,000 acres where thirty growers maintain 2,000 vineyard acres.  Three of those thirty are huge.  Beringer and Kendall-Jackson both market their own Knight's Valley Cabernets while Bavarian Lion Vineyards (est. 1996) has five hundred acres in vines.  It is from the less well-known Bavarian Lion Vineyards that we assume Gehricke sources their fruit.

Alsatian Whites

We've made no secret about our tastes in white wines.  We like 'em light, dry and minerally.  If it's summertime and seafood or salads are in the offing, Sauvignon Blanc is our go-to.  If we just want to taste a generally great example of a white wine other than Sauv Banc, we go to Alsace where we have yet to taste one that fails to impress.

There are ten white grape types allowed in Alsace.  For our purposes here we'll concern ourselves with the five biggies: Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Pinot Gris, Muscat and Auxxerrois.  The first four are considered to be noble types by the locals.  The Muscat name in Alsace is a little different in that it encompasses four different Muscat types.  Auxxerois is genetically the same as Chardonnay and produces a white wine in that vein.  While Muscat and Pinot Gris don't conjure up notions of nobility for us we'll defer to the Alsatians and their classification.  We feel, however,  Alsatian Riesling and Gewurz are bonafide stars within any white wine lineup.

Ninety percent of the wines of Alsace are white with about 60% of those being AOC varietals made from the noble types listed above.  Another four percent are varietals sourced from recognized Grand Cru vineyards.  Another fifteen percent are Cremant sparkling wines.  The rest are either blends of the notable grapes and/or lesser grapes and since the AOC (noble) types are the only types rated, all of these others are considered to be mere table wine.  Since Alsace makes 100% varietal wines, some of the table wine blends consist of the great types while others are of the lesser five types.  In general a Gentil is usually a blend of superior grapes; Edelzwickers are usually lower quality blends.

Alsace has an identity problem, by the way.  For much or its history it has been German including four stints in the last hundred fifty years.  While most French wine labels identify by place names, Alsace, like Germany, labels with varietal names.  In fact, Riesling and Gewurztraminer are German grape types and therein lies the problem.  The public sees the wines as German and generalizes about style and quality based on what they have tasted in the past.  Sweeter mass marketed German plonk doesn't begin to represent the nobility of dry Alsatian Riesling and Gewurztraminer.  Germany has now learned this from Alsace and is currently making drier wines.    

Malbec

Okay, so we've tackled this subject several times in the past.  Hang with me.  We've found a new angle on this one.

Black Cabra is one of the real bargains in Argentine Malbec at a mere $12.99/btl.  We thought we would post about it here only to find importer Vino del Sol really has nothing in the way of relevant information about the product.  Moreover, depending on the vintage, the  "estate bottling" on the label may refer to different estates in Argentina.  So while Black Cabra isn't winery-specific, to our way of thinking, we're fine with it as long as Vino del Sol maintains the quality it has.

So we pivoted to a quick study of the Malbec grape and learned a few things.  While the experts believe Malbec originated in Burgundy, Cahor in southwestern France is the current home for Malbec today.  Now popularly called Cot, in the Cahor AOC the grape produces an inky tannic dark purple version that contrasts with the more popular style from Argentina.  

Why is that?  It has to do with Malbec's vineyard problems in France where diseases like coulure, downy mildew and rot from frost inordinately affect the vines.  It has become so problematic that Bordeaux has largely replaced Malbec plantings with Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

So once again, why is Argentine Malbec so different from the French version?  It's because the Malbec vines in Argentina which date back to 1868 are not the same as what is currently in France.  Over time that clone of Malbec was in all likelihood ravaged by disease into extinction.