Vina Perez Cruz

Have you ever tasted a wine that was so good you couldn't shake it from your memory?  I know some of you have because you bring in your often old and tattered notes from some bygone time and place where the stuff was so great you simply must have it again.  This is where some sober figure is supposed to step in and remind you that that was then and this is now...so just grow up!

Well, I'm with you on this one because when I tasted the 2012 Vina Perez Cruz Cabernet Sauvignon Reserva from Chile I didn't just write it down, I kept the bottle behind the counter here to make sure I eventually got the wine.  That was over a year ago when the vendor convinced me that, as good as it was, Perez Cruz wouldn't sell and I'd be better off with the well known brand.  And I let him!

Now a year and a half later I'm in the Perez Cruz business, albeit with the current 2013 vintage.  So because this is an unknown brand with an exceedingly plain white label, I did some much needed homework and here are the selling points:

     1.  Perez Cruz is a Paul Hobbs import which means a lot to many of us.
     2.  It is a family-owned, single vineyard, estate bottled effort, which means quality control.
     3.  The grapes are hand harvested from low yielding vines, again, quality control.
     4.  The property exhibits the diurnal effect of contrasting temperatures (Mediterranean Climate) meaning ripe fruit.
     5.  The vineyards are sustainably farmed in stony soils poor in nutrients, just what you want.
     6.  The vineyards are situated in the Andean foothills of Maipo Alta at 1,400-1,700 feet altitude.
     7.  The estate's thoroughly modern, gravity-fed winery is an architectural masterpiece which may not have a bearing on the wine quality but impressive none the less!
     8.  German Lyon is the French winemaker who probably knows what he's doing.

Now here are the adjectives culled from several reviews: fresh, soft (tannins), well-balanced, bright acidity, smoky oak, red fruits, black cherry, cassis, herbs, and mint.

Instead of doing the same with food affinities, let's just say burgers and any other red meat off the grill.

Now, buy it here for under twenty dollars!    

Franciscan Vineyards Magnificat

This coming Thursday, the 23rd of March, we will be tasting the 2012 vintage of Magnificat, one of the original Meritage wines from the creation of that category in 1985.  This vintage is 73% Cabernet Sauvignon, 19% Merlot, 3% Petit Verdot, and 3% Malbec.  The grapes are sourced from Franciscan's best Napa Valley vineyards and aged for twenty months in 70% new oak barrels.  This vintage received 91 points from the Wine Enthusiast magazine.

Magnificat is named after the Bach masterpiece so you would expect complexity and more.  If the reviews on the internet are to mean anything then they reflect that complexity to a fault; that is, every review sites different flavors and aromas, which, to put a good slant on it, means the wine oozes complexity and defies easy description.  I guess maybe it could have been reviewed at different times too to account for the divergent observations.  The great New York retailer Sherry-Lehman may have stated it best with "multi-layered, remarkably complex, impressive array of aromas and flavors." The most common color description noted is "garnet".

In 1985 the great twentieth century wine giant, Agustin Huneeus (blogposts 1/31/13, 4/7/15), bought a floundering and thoroughly mediocre Franciscan Vineyards and instantly turned around their fortunes.  In the 1985 inaugural year for Meritage wines Magnificat was one of two dozen offered in the category.  A Meritage red by definition is the best wine a California estate can make using all or any of the Bordeaux blending grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petite Verdot.

In 1999 Huneeus sold Franciscan Vineyards to Constellation Brands, the second largest wine company in the world (after Gallo).  It is now operated as part of a separate division of the company dedicated to prestigious northern California Estates and has been re-christened Franciscan Estates.

The Wine Series by Cosentino

I met a Cosentino winery representative a few years ago after making a sizable purchase of their proprietary Napa wines. Considering all of the consolidation going on in the industry, I had to ask this individual whether Cosentino was still privately held.  Sheepishly he said they had recently made the decision to partner with some other small wineries in order to compete with the mass marketers.

I have since learned that the historic Cosentino Winery failed in 2010, a casualty of the recession, and it was bought in bankruptcy by Vintage Wine Estates in 2011.  So it was already a mass marketer in its own right when I had my conversation with the rep.  Vintage Wine Estates markets twenty-five or so wineries including Swanson, Girard, Clos Pegas, B R Cohn, Buried Cane, Viansa, Delectus, and even Gougenheim from Argentina.

We're writing about Cosentino because we just received five reds from The Wine Series by Cosentino, a line of Lodi sourced wines with names like The Cab, The Chard, and so on.  The wines are really quite good and retail in the sweet spot economically.  Even though I'm not a fan of either Lodi or Zinfandel, The Zin is the best in the line and recommended to all who are reading this.

Wine Business Monthly is a publication that issues an annual "Top 30 Wine Companies" list that is interesting in the same way going to a horse race is if you're a sharecropper with a mule.  You don't envy the participants so much as you stand in awe of the spectacle.  Here are the top eight:

    1. E&J Gallo Winery
    2. The Wine Group
    3. Constellation Brands
    4. Trinchero Family Estates
    5. Bronco Wine Company
    6. Treasury Wine Estates
    7. DFV
    8. Jackson Family Estates

I'm stopping at eight because you have to subscribe to WBM to get the whole list.  Wine Curmudgeon.com analyses the list and concludes that these top thirty wine companies make 90% of the wine consumed in America.  They represent .04% of the wine companies in the country.  The top three companies make more than half of all wine sold here which means the other 7,400 wine companies in America are competing for the remaining 40% or so.

I am sure Vintage Wine Estates is on the list somewhere.  As for the mass marketing of wine in general, I guess it is what it is.

Cantina La-Vis

Last Thursday at the weekly event we featured three new Italian reds along with a Russian River Chardonnay.  Dave Klepinger, our vendor, said his company really didn't need new Italians in a portfolio that was already rich in that category but succumbed to them after tasting them.  When he tasted me on them a week before the event, I too fell for them.  The selling point?  Easy...price!

Our best seller that evening was the La-Vis Pinot Nero (Noir), a wine that was more substantial than the standard "light, refreshing, fruity & perfumy" red that seems to be the standard.  This one had depth, earthiness, and texture", if not Burgundian in style, at least a step above similarly priced New World fare.  I think it would pair well with a variety of lighter grilled foods.

The La-Vis wines (Pinot Grigio is here too) are made at the winery in the village of the same name which was established by the Cembran family in 1850.  In 1948 it became a cooperative venture with eight hundred members (1300 growers) and eight hundred hectares in vineyards.  The winery lies in the Avisiane hills in the Trentino province of northeastern Italy where ninety percent of the production is classified DOC (denominazione di origine controllata).

Cantina La-Vis is part of the cooperative movement in Italy that advocates for "mutuality" in production benefits at a time when cooperation is imperative considering the competitive world market.  They also follow the 1980 Progetto Zonazione (Zoning Project) motto, "The right vine in the right place."  The cooperative evaluates its vineyard qualities in order to market multiple wine labels reflecting different quality levels to fit different price points.  The La-Vis pinots are a $12.99 retail here.

This Thursday at 5pm Ryan Woolfolk offers us a tasting of French Chinon, Spanish Red Rioja, Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, and Italian Pinot Grigio.  Please join us.

Meinklang and Demeter Certification

At yesterday's wine tasting here at the store the most interesting wine on the table was the 2015 Meinklang Burgenlandwhite, a Gruner Veltliner blend from Austria.  The wine is biodynamic and Demeter certified which is one way of saying it's about as wholesome and politically correct as it gets.

Meinklang is the name of the farm run by the Michlits family in Burgenland which is in eastern Austria south of Vienna.  The estate features unpruned or "graupert" vineyards along with fruit orchards, agricultural fields, and livestock in the form of Angus cattle.  The wine is matured in concrete egg-shaped containers on the property.

Demeter certification requires crop rotation, composting, and homeopathic sprays instead of all of the commercial fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides in use today.  All of the components of the estate listed above must work together to provide a self contained sustainability for the property.  An allowance for ten percent of the property to be set aside for biodiversity (flowers, trees, water features, and wildlife habitat) is another requirement.  When the Demeter Farm Standard is met, the property is certified and then inspected annually for compliance.

The healthier soil provided by the Demeter system create larger vine root systems resulting in wines displaying greater terroir.  Natural wines made in this manner exemplify the finest expression of what an environment can produced without additives.

Wine is a relative latecomer to the Demeter system which is philosophy that treats a certified estate as a living organism.  The system was in place for food production well before the advent of biodynamic wine into the system.  The term biodynamic is trademarked by Demeter and may only legally appear on a Demeter certified property label.

The 2015 Meinklang Burgenlandwhite  is a blend of 50% Gruner Veltliner, 40% Welschriesling, and 10% Muscat.  It is light and dry with a slight spritz probably due to its youth.  This wine would work fine with shellfish and green salads.

Chateau de Jarnioux Beaujolais

This is a particularly nice little bottle of Beaujolais that starts off with strawberry and candy on the nose.  It is refreshingly soft, smooth, and round in the mouth with juicy red and blackberry flavors replete with pepper and spice notes all of which seems more forward than one might expect from this kind of wine.  Even its finish seems forward while still moderately long, much like the flavors on the palate, a both/and meeting of new and old world styles.  The color of the wine is an intense ruby red.

Maison Albert Bichot is the producer of this little gem and they advertise a partnership of winemakers in their employ which one would think should include their vineyard workers.  They not only maintain a palissage canopy season long but also hand harvest the grapes prior to vinification beaujolais, the carbonic maceration which precedes the regular alcoholic fermentation.  In this "beaujolais process" the grapes (still in bunches) are dropped into fermentation tanks without yeast or pressing allowing the weight of the grapes to crush those on the bottom releasing CO2 from the natural yeasts on the grape skins.  This "intracellular soak" creates more fruity flavors before the ten day traditional alcoholic fermentation which gives the wine its color, structure, and alcohol.  All of the above attributes are then enhanced by months of aging in both steel and oak barrels; the steel reinforcing the fresh fruitiness, the oak adding to the structure and spicy complexity.

The wine label's cover art depicts a castle which is the Church of St-Martin in the Village of Jarnioux in the middle of the Beaujolais region.  The village actually lies within the smaller Beaujolais Villages district but since this wine is just designated as Beaujolais, some fruit is sourced from outside of the esteemed area.  The church is a good story though.  It was first built in 889AD but has been restored and added on to in the 12th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 18th centuries.  It is a spectacular yellow-ish edifice, complete with fortifications, grand staircase and dungeons, constructed using local limestone that is tinted with iron oxide.

On Thursday November 17th we will be featuring the first new vintage of the year, the 2016 Nouveau Beaujolais.  This is a light fruity red that serves as an indicator for the overall quality of the Burgundy vintage.  If the Nouveau is good then get ready to open your pocketbook when the great Burgundies are released.

Chianti, Part 2 -The Fork in the Road

The previous post discussed the gradual evolution of Chianti from being a light, dry red for mass market consumption to being a more modern and sophisticated dinner wine.  Knowing what they were capable of producing, the winemakers of Tuscany drove industry improvements for the past thirty years to the point where the new and improved Chianti could properly reflect its Tuscan calling.

Yet in Lettie Teague's February 17th WSJ article, "Chianti's Struggle To Shed Its Dusty, Banal Image", the claim is made that there is now trouble in paradise.  Part of the problem may be seen as generational as we alluded to in the previous post.  But part of the problem may be due to the dilution of quality by over-expanding the Chianti appellation with accompanying lackluster quality standards for this seriously mass-marketed product.  If the truth be known, the Chianti situation may be emblematic of the contemporary wine industry as a whole.

So the fork in the road would seem to be whether to further define Chianti as one of the finer wines of Tuscany or whether to revert to its historical past as a blue collar food wine.  Actually the situation is and always has been a both/and reality.  Chianti has always included the pedigreed sub-regions.  Today they are named Classico, Colli Aretini, Colli Fiorentini, Colline Pisane, Montalbano, Colli Senesi, Rufina, and Montespertoli.  In fact, Classico is the original Chianti, the single oldest recognized wine region in the world.  But Chianti has also included as much surrounding vineyard land as needed to provide for everyone's dinner needs.  Today, Chianti can basically be sourced from anywhere in Tuscany.

According to Teague, those invested in the Classico region want to subdivide that prime area into generally acknowledged sub-districts differentiated by soils and terroirs and she has no problem with that.  The consumer of higher quality Chianti would then know what style of wine they would be getting.  As for the mass marketers of the rest of Chianti, there is but one solution - advertise!  After all, we're talking about the best all-purpose red dinner wine there is!  Sell it!