Sandhi Central Coast Chardonnay

Our last post was almost three month ago, making that interval the longest dry spell we've had since we started this thing 543 posts ago.  We've tried to post in that interval, by the way.  Just last month we thought we had a good one about Bonny Doone wines but when we sat down to do it, it just wouldn't come.  What could the problem be?  It's just a silly blog.

So, we're going to overcome this writer's block thing slowly, with baby steps.

If you go to sandhiwines.com or to their marketer, skurnik.com, you will be greeted by an exceptional and classy professional presence.  Contrast this approach with the mass marketers who try to mask what they are doing with their transparently fictious, romanticized winery backstories.  Those stories can leave you cringing from their patent obfuscation.  They obviously don't want you to know anything about their product.  Sandhi (and Skurnik) want you to know what makes what they are doing better than others.  Their winemaking intentions in particular are absolutely noble compared to those who merely intend to turn out a commodity.  They also believe in passing along the kind of critical product information so lacking at other sites.

The Sandhi wine we have in the store currently is the Central Coast Chardonnay.  While the Sandhi/Skurnik websites assert their fine wine bonafides, this particular wine is not mentioned.  The Central Coast Chard is an entry level effort that gets eclipsed at the website by their estate wines.  So how do we know it's good?  We have it on good faith from an Atlanta sommeliere.  A real sommeliere.  That alone should tell us this one is food friendly.

Violets & Tar

"Violets and tar" has to be one of my favorite wine descriptors.  I can't remember when I first heard it but it fits a Rhone-style (Grenache/Syrah) red blend like a glove.  Soft purple berries and spice.  What could be better?

By the way, honorable mention for wine descriptors goes to cardboard, new garden hose and wet dog; all of which strike me as being, shall we say, less than complimentary.  Cardboard?  Really?  Guess that creative writing class paid off for somebody.

So about a month ago a fella was in the store who quickly revealed himself to be a wine industry insider.  His eyes would scan the shelves and when they settled on something, he quickly grabbed it and put it on the counter.  No fooling around.  He knew what he was after.  So I called him on it and sure enough, he was retired from the business in another state.  And I think to myself - opportunity!  Here's a resource brain for me to pick.  Someone who knows wine and isn't a commissioned Atlanta wine salesman.

The first bottle he picked up was Folded Hills Syrah from Santa Ynez Valley, California.  He couldn't believe we had it here.  While he didn't give me his verbal violets and tar appraisal, his excitement said it all.  His other two purchases were similar Euro-red blends from France and Spain.  So he was a violets and tar guy after all, even if he didn't say it.

So before he left I hit him up for some recommendations which included Andrew Murray and Tablas Creek Central Coast, California Rhone-style blends.  Oh yeah, he's violets and tar all the way.

The best thing about Rhone-style red blends has always been value.  Ten dollars can get you a decent red dinner wine.  Tablas Creek is exceptional at fifty.

Domus Aurea

We intended this post to be about the Big Red Monster Paso Robles wines but as often happens with California wines, information about the stuff is lacking.  In our research we learned one corporate entity contracted with another to secure the juice for someone else to make the wine before it then gets put into the bottle with the ever so cute label.  That, apparently, is all they want you to know.  Buzzkill.  Then, if you want a real mega-buzzkill, check their ever so cute posts on facebook.  It's as if they think we're stupid.

If you like good California Cab and Zin, you should pick up the Monsters.  We have been assured by our usually very reliable vendor, they are indeed quite good.  Even if they aren't forthcoming with product information.

Clos Quebrada de Macul is a family-owned, hillside vineyard overlooking Macul, Chile's oldest wine region.  It was planted in 1970 before grapes were valued for quality and not merely as tonnage.  Hillside vineyards are more labor intensive with lower yields so unless you have a hopeful vision for the future of the wine business, this move wouldn't make sense.  This time they guessed right.

The owners sold their grapes for twenty years before American investment money facilitated the building of a physical winery in the early 1990's.  The first Domus Aurea Cabernet Sauvignon was released in 1996.  The wine always uses estate grown fruit made with a non-interventionist winemaking ethic.  Their website offers tasting notes for the last fifteen vintages so these are indeed cellar selections.

The 2019 vintage is 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 4% Petit Verdot.  The color is ruby red with purple hues.  The nose is herbal, balsamic, black currant, black cherry and fig.  In the mouth the wine shows dense power and structure with evident oak and fine tannins.  The finish shows more berries and minerality.

The descriptors above are from their website.  We tasted the wine a month ago.  It would compare favorably with California Cabs at considerably higher prices.  As a formidable steak wine, it should be decanted for at least an hour before serving.

Domus Aurea is one of a family of Chilean wines we tasted before purchasing this week.  Our pricing reflects fine value for each type.

Dao

Big, bold, tannic and dry.  V-e-r-y dry.  That's what we remember about Portuguese Dao from about fifty years ago.  But things change in the world's commercial wine industry and success and investment money breed imitation.  Much from Old Europe is now a little less dry and a little less tannic, reflecting the new New World palate.  

Fifty years ago wine was weird for most of us.  Beer and liquor were our mainstream beverages.  Wine was weird.  At that time, Mateus Rose was a popular Portuguese product marketed by Sogrape, the largest producer of Dao wines.  It was a game changer for many of us and in hindsight, it was a good introduction to the world of wine.

Today wine is a part of our culture.  So we were stunned when we tasted the 2018 Casa da Passarella Porguguese Dao.  It was as if we flashed back fifty years to that simpler time when wines more accurately reflected their European roots and not the modern Americanized version.  In all honesty, this Dao is the most European wine in the store.

The Douro Valley is the most famous wine region of Portugal.  Along with Vinho Verde to the west, Douro occupies the northernmost part of that country.  Douro is known for Port wine and the great grape there is Touriga Nacional which has its origins just to the south in Dao.  

Remember the Phoenicians from a couple posts ago?  They were the world's first wine traders and in all likelihood, they were responsible for making Dao one of the oldest viticultural sites in the region.  Dao is a plateau (500-1500 ft elev.) surrounded on three sides by mountains with the Dao River running through it.  The climate is temperate, moderated by the conditions just described, with long hot summers and rainy winters.  The soils are granite and schist and the diurnal temperature shifts there beneficially enhance the grape acidity to balance its fruit.

In our research for this post we consulted three websites.  All were informative but portugal.com went further.  They call Dao "Portuguese Burgundy."  High praise, since Burgundy is the finest wine region in the world.  They say Dao exhibits "complexity, elegance, balance and maturity."  We also found a review for this wine that said, "powerful, concentrated, not weighty but intense with blackfruits giving it richness."

Food affinities should include any red meat dish that is noticably spiced, preferably with a sauce or gravy.  Stew would be nice.  Decant.

Preface by Skipstone

Short of tasting a wine and knowing its quality, a wines label is as good of a selling point as any.  If that wine has a good reputation, then your expectations reflect the promise the label represents.  Vineyard terroir and viticulture along with hands-on quality control at the winery are what ensures that quality reputation.

Second label wines were started in the 1800's in Bordeaux, France to utilize juice from younger vines in prominant vineyards, vines that weren't quite ready for prime time; so a second label was created to get that juice out to market.  It made sense for both the winery and for wine lovers of that product.  Wineries could profitably market this extra juice and their customers could claim a certain brush with fame, even if it was just the second best wine from an illustrious property.

Flash forward: Wineries in California and elsewhere see this phenomenon and decide to cash in.  New World second labels, while often very good quality wines in themselves, weren't necessarily from the same vineyards as their namesakes.  (If the truth be known, some of the namesakes marketed as the primary labels weren't exactly what they were advertised as either...but that's a different subject.)  Then, in time, as the second label gains repute and market share, it is usually spun off; that is, it's sold, usually to an industry giant and whatever juice had previously gone into the bottle would be completely different henceforth.

Preface by Skipstone is different.  It is an authentic second label.  As a matter of fact, as its name implies, Preface may more accurately be called an introductory wine to Skipstone's better wines.  But that declaration may even understate things.  According to one reviewer, Preface is already of similar quality to Skipstone's more pricey offerings.  In other words, Preface is a fine red wine appreciably ranked with its peers in the Skipstone stable.

Preface is a Bordeaux blend of 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Merlot, 9% Malbec and 6% Cabernet Franc.  The cool 2018 vintage meant a longer hangtime for the grapes resulting in "full flavored ripenesss and enhanced aromatics."  Skipstone's organic estate fruit is harvested at night to retain freshness.

Philippe Melka is Skipstone's consulting winemaker.  His record for scoring 100 point critically acclaimed wines is second only to Thomas Rivers Brown in California.

The North Coast AVA

As often happens in the blogging business, you start out with one topic in mind only to be overtaken by something else that commands your attention.  This time we started with Dough Wines of St. Helena, California which have been a popular item here at the store.  The variety currently in stock is their North Coast Sauvignon Blanc which, if you go to doughwines.com, they advertise on the same page as their Napa Sauv Blanc at twice the price.  So the question looms - Is the Napa appellation wine really twice as good as the North Coast?

Before moving on from Dough, since we are so critical of winery websites, we should commend them for a wonderful site.  Without romanticizing or fictionalizing their story like so many sites, they just say what they are about and it seems to be as much about food as about wine.  The site is tastefully done if that doesn't sound too punny.  

The Dough winemaker says the juice for their North Coast Sauv Blanc comes from two vineyards; one a warmer locale, the other, distinctly cooler.  The fruit from the warmer is more tropical; the cooler one, crisper with an acidic structure.  Blending them together results in a "lively and refreshing, gooseberry/tropical" quaff.  

And that brings us more to the point - North Coast appellation wines are often blends from disparate places created by big business wineries requiring huge volumes to maintain their mass market shelf space.  Such wines are not vying for best-of-kind status.  They are making a commodity for the marketplace, wine that meets a respectable quality standard for the North Coast appellation.

The North Coast AVA (American Viticultural Area) is huge...as in three million acres huge!  It includes all of Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake Counties and parts of Solano and Marin Counties. It's shape is a diagonal rectangle measuring a hundred twenty miles north to south and fifty miles inland.  Any further into the interior and the climate is considerably hotter.  Its proximity to the ocean provides the cooling fog and breezes that define its existence.

More than half of all California wineries are located in the North Coast AVA.  Half of all functioning organic wineries are located there.  Fifty-four smaller AVAs are located within the North Coast AVA.  The Russian River Valley, Oakville, Alexander Valley are brand names in themselves but they could just identify themselves by the North Coast appellation.  But it is always an indicator of quality for a wine label to narrow down their location.  We know the three AVAs above are Napa/Sonoma locales.  Benmore Valley, Yorkville Highlands and Suisun Valley are three from elsewhere in North Coast.  Could they be comparable to Napa/Sonoma?

Gros Manseng

Gros Manseng is one of three grapes in the Manseng family.  Both Gros and Petit Manseng are white grapes; Manseng Noir is the red variety.  Petit Manseng is the most covetted of the three.  It obviously makes some fine white wine.  Manseng Noir has fallen out of favor and is consequently rarely planted nowadays. 

We're writing about Gros Manseng now because we got in a pretty good example of the type courtesy of Boutinot USA, one of the really neat importers providing us with good quality, everyday-priced wines.  UVA Non Grata means "unwanted grape" and it's the name attached to our Gros Manseng wine. It's a 100% varietal example, which is rare for this usual blending grape.  In case you are wondering, Gros Manseng is a Rodney Dangerfield type, it gets little respect in the business, hence, the Non Grata name.

Gros Manseng wine can be made into two styles depending on the harvest time.  If picked early is makes a crisp, floral, citrussy (lemony) light dry white.  If picked a couple weeks or more later, you can make a richer, more complex wine with a smorgasbord of tropical fruit flavors.  UVA leans more toward the latter.  It's a fruit bomb.

So if this is such an ordinary type, what's the point here?  UVA is for the customer who is curious about different wine types.  It's a good example of Gros Manseng AND it makes a $12.99 retail.  Case closed.  Think of it as a nice picnicky seafood/chicken salad accompaniment.  In a more macro sense, Gros means large and that applies to both the size of the berries AND the bunches, which means economically, this is a winner for the industry.  Not only that, it's an easy grower in the vineyard too!

Gros Manseng finds its French home in the southwestern (Basque) corner of the country where the geneticists think it originated.  It may be related to Spanish Albarino.  The Jurancon district is ground zero for Gros Manseng but most whites labeled IGP Cotes de Gascogne use it to flesh-out out the blend.

Think of it as late-summer porch sitting wine!