Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon is the most popular red wine on the planet.  We're not going to pretend we can do it justice here in one post, so what follows will be a condensed and contextualized summary of our recent Saturday afternoon Cabernet class.  

The Cabernet Sauvignon grape is one of the younger vinifera wine grapes.  It emerged from a vineyard mutation in 1700's western France, perhaps in Bordeaux.  That mutation was caused by an accidental crossing of a Sauvignon Blanc vine with a Cabernet Franc vine.

As it turns out, that crossing may have been the best thing to happen in the wine industry in centuries.  Not only is Cabernet wine as popular as it is but viticulturalists love the ease with which it grows.  Sauvignon is French for "savage" meaning "wildness," and the term refers to the vine's adaptability to different environs.  Nutritionally poor soil is not a problem for Cabernet vines.  And while most grapes are locked into one climate or another, Cabernet does okay in a spectrum of climates, although the warmer the climate, the more pyrazines (bell pepper flavors) become apparent.  Well draining soils are still optimal for Cabernet viticulture but you get the idea - growers love this grape.

The finest Cabernet Sauvignon comes from Bordeaux.  Napa is second best.  Maipo, Chile is third and Tuscany is fourth.  At least that is the opinion of one expert we consulted.  As we've said here many times - Good wine is where you find it and since this grape does so well in so many places, there are probably new great venues yet to be discovered.

California Cabernet is, of course, the toast of the town in this country.  Common characteristics include a high acidity, leathery tannins and flavors of black cherry, pepper and, courtesy of oak barrel ageing, vanilla.  Oak also tends to lighten tannins and accentuate the more complementary flavors in wine.  When blended, and most Cabernet-labeled wines are actually blends, expect more dark berry flavors.

And finally, Cabernet Sauvignon is quintessential red meat wine; be it steak, hamburgers or really, anything else on the grill.  Knowing what we know about how well this grape does everywhere, if you're in the neighborhood wine shop looking for something to have with dinner, hedge your bets and pick up a cab!

Maddalena Cabernet Sauvignon

Maddalena is both a wine brand name and that brand's namesake.  Born in Piedmont, Italy, Maddalena would marry into the Riboli wine-making family of Los Angeles and then became instrumental in their San Antonio Winery.  The winery had been established in 1917 concurrently with the family's ongoing wholesale food business.  If you follow their timeline, things at San Antonio really started taking off when Maddalena became involved in the 1940's.

Today the Riboli family has vineyard holdings in Monterey, Paso Robles and Napa and markets wines under thirteen labels.  The Maddalena label was started in 1983 and today uses fruit from their estate in the El Pomar American Viticultural Area (AVA) within the larger Paso Robles AVA.

Back on April 15th we blogged about the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA and the strong winds from the Monterey Bay that cooled the area sufficiently enough to grow some pretty good Pinot Noir.  El Pomar gets those same breezes further south through the Templeton Gap.  Central to the whole of Paso Robles, the AVA is a higher elevation than most of Paso and has soils that reflect its marine past with alluvial fans and dry river and creek beds.  Drainage is no problem with these kinds of soils so root systems can flourish.

The winds mentioned earlier serve to modulate the temperatures often providing a twenty to thirty-five degree shift daily, essential for creating lush ripe flavorful fruit.  The 2021 Maddalena Cabernet Sauvignon in the store right now is bold and structured with a rich round body, silky texture and soft tannins.  Flavors may include ripe dark plum, spicy cherry, vanilla, carmel and oak.  It is the best we have under twenty dollars.

Montepulciano and Montepulciano

Leave it to Italy to legislate two different wines with the same name.  If you like muddy water, Italy can muddy the waters like no one else in this business.

So the greater of the two Montepulcianos is the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano which comes from the area around the village of Montepulciano in Tuscany.  Like Chianti, Vino Nobile can be 100% Sangiovese but most versions are blends.  By law that blend must be at least 70% Sangiovese but the remainder may include a number of local varieties or international types like Cabernet Sauvignon.  This is a larger trend throughout Tuscany but what sets Vino Nobile apart is the care with which clones of Sangiovese are selected.  Tuscany is full of the lesser clones that serve a purpose in quantifying production but Vino Nobile seems to have selected wisely and a lot of Chianti makers are now following their lead.

Over in Abuzzo on the other side of the penninsula the Montepulciano grape variety holds court.  Always a value-driven wine from a less auspicious part of the country, Montepulciano d'Abuzzo too is upgrading its game.  Hillside vineyards throughout the appellation are now producing better wines with ground zero for the upgrade being the town of Teramo where in 2003 its hillside vineyards were awarded a DOCG quality grade for their Montepulciano d'Abuzzo Colline Teramane.

Why this post now?  Because Montepulciano d'Abruzzo was the subject Lettie Teague chose for a recent WSJ wine article.  Teague is our favorite wine writer and her recommmendation of the Tiberio Montepulciano d'Abruzzo prompted us to add it to our inventory.  Of the wine, she said, "...structured with dark fruit, spice and a firm mineral core."  

We wrote about the Vino Nobile as an admission of our own confusion about Montepulcianos.

Zinfandel

Lets suspend reality for a minute and imagine 1850's California and the gold rush that was beckoning immigrants from around the world.  They all wanted to get rich and they believed in their abilities to earn a slice of what in today's money would be a twenty-six billion dollar fortune.  For the Italians among them, many tucked something special from the homeland into their backpacks, a grapevine packed in Italian soil.  Primitivo, Italian Zinfandel, would have been the preferred type in most of those packs.

We know now that most of the gold rush bootie ended up in the coffers of the already affluent and the corporations they owned while most of the free agent miners probably got little for their efforts.  But they did start an industry with their vines.  For the next one 150 years Zinfandel would be crowned king in California, the most widely planted wine grape in the state.  As recently as twenty years ago Zinfandel still held that status.  Today it is ranked third behind, Cabernet and Chardonnay.

Why such popularity for such a humble vine?  Simple - its vines produce a lot of berries.  The nascent wine industry needed a workhorse to fill all those jugs that were the order of the day.  Secondly - malleability.  We think of big soft lucious red wine but Zinfandel can be light, full, sweet, dry, fortified, rose and lest we forget - white!  White Zinfandel still makes up ten percent of the sales today. 

Personally, we fondly remember the red field blends of fifty years ago that were probably mostly Zinfandel along with some combination of Petite Sirah, Syrah, Carignan, Grenache or really anything, such as field blends are.  As long as the grapes weren't sourced from the Central Valley of California the wines were fine.  Yeah, they were a little rough but they weren't aspiring to be Bordeaux.  And they were better than the most celebrated Zinfandel of the time, Gallo's Hearty Burgundy.

And why are we writing about Zinfandel now?  Because we just did a tasting of two types; one from the heel of the boot of Italy, the other from Napa Valley.  Cooler climate Zin shows more red fruit while warmer climate Zin shows more black fruit according to the experts.  So the Napa wine should've been raspberry and the Italian should've been blackberry, right?  Well, not exactly.  It turns out both venues are about the same latitude!  So we just judged the wines on their attributes.  They were both very good in their own way!

Quadrum

Quadrum is the brand name for a Spanish red and white imported by Jorge Ordonez, one of the best at what he does.  If the Ordonez name is on the label just go ahead and buy it.  It'll be good.  The Quadrum red is a blend of 80% Cencibel, a clone of Tempranillo, and 20% Garnacha (Grenache).  Both are more than servicable types.  The white is a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Verdejo.  The percentages of each aren't given for this one but while the Sauv Blanc is listed first and is better known, don't discount the Verdejo.  It's one of the best whites of Spain.

The winemaking backstory for both wines is remarkable similar.  They are sourced from the La Mancha D.O., the huge plateau in the middle of the country where the soil consists of a layer of red clay above sand and limestone.  The climate is continental with strong cold winds that work to deter pests so the vines can be organically farmed.

The grapes for these wines are hand harvested then cold soaked before maceration and fermentation.  The red gets a five to six day maceration; the white gets eight hours.  In keeping with the organic template, the fermentation yeast is non-GMO and after filtering, a fining is done with potato protein.  Bottling is done in quick order to preserve freshness.  The wine is labeled as suitable for a Vegan diet.

So this sounds like a pretty good product, eh?  Can I get a "Hell Yeah!"?  Here's the real selling point - Quadrum is a 3 Liter box of wine bringing your cost down to about half of what you would expect to pay for this kind of quality.  Oh, Hell Yeah!

Gundlach Bundshu

Gundlach Bundshu is one of the half dozen California wineries that claim to be the oldest.  This claim depends on the metrics you choose.  GunBun's claim in short: For 160 years and six generations the Bundshu family has continuously owned and operated their commercial winery making them the only such winery to do so.  A sticking point: They turned to cattle for forty years beginning with Prohibition before returning to winemaking full-time in 1970.

Jacob Gundlach and Charles Bundshuh were both German immigrants who formed their wine company in 1868. Gundlach had purchased 400 acres and planted his Rhinefarm Vineyards ten years earlier.  Bundschu was a businessman who married into the family and would go on to be instrumental in the company's rise into an international fortified wine powerhouse.  That stature would unfortunately be shortlived.  Aside from the vineyards, the business was entirely located in San Francisco and the 1906 earthquake destroyed them.  

Situated 35 miles north of San Francisco and just barely within the Sonoma Coast wine appellation, the 320 acre Gundlach Bundshu vineyards lie very close to Napa and Carneros. They include both valley floor plantings and Mayacamas foothill vineyards.  The mineral rich, marine sediment vineyards in the valley are planted in Pinot Noir, Gewurztraminer and Chardonnay.  The shallow rocky volanic foothills are planted in the Bordeaux varietals along with Zinfandel and Syrah.

And this is where this post ends because gunbun.com says it so much better than we can.  It is the best winery website we have ever seen.  Check it out for whatever else you might want to know about the operation.

Raclette

Raclette cheese has been a hot item here at the store ever since we got behind Gruyere as our favorite cheese.  We won't get into the many reasons for Gruyere being our best, but Raclette emerged in tandem with Gruyere because we thought of it as Gruyere-lite.  Make no mistake, Gruyere is our bestest but it's also expensive.  Raclette shares the similarly pleasant aeromatics of Gruyere at roughly half the price of the great one.  So hell yeah, we'll recommend it!

Like Gruyere, Raclette is made on both sides of the French-Swiss border.  But unlike the contentious Gruyere rivalry that ended in a turn of the century courtroom verdict, we haven't heard of anything like that with Raclette.  All is copacetic.  Both venues are set in Alpine meadows but stylistically there is a difference.  The French version is softer, smoother and creamier.  The Swiss is harder, nuttier and slightly more acidic.  While either would work just fine with our glass of dry red wine, if we had to choose, we'd opt for the Swiss.

The name Raclette is French and comes from racier meaning "to scrape" and therein lies the story.  For at least a thousand years Swiss cowherders have carried their cheese and bread lunch into the fields with their herds before ending the day with the same in a campfire meal.  They would place their cheese close to the fire to heat it and then scrape the melting cheese onto their bread.  This is the process that lives on today in the Swiss dish of the same name featuring the melted cheese over small potatos, cornichons, onions and perhaps, dried meats.  Some version of that peasant dish is served up everywhere today from family homes to urban street food vendors even in fine dining establishments where the cooking may take place right on the diner's table.