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And some thoughts from the Bloody Pulpit:
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Montevina Ruby Cabernet: When Cary Gott started up Montevina Wnry in the
early '70's, he planted a number of varieties other than the traditional
Zinfandel. This included Nebbiolo, CabernetSauvignon, Ruby Cabernet, SauvBlanc,
Barbera, and a few others. The Montevina CabSauv was never a particularly
good wine. He resembled ShenandoahValley Zin more than anything w/ it's
briary/bramble character, but harder & leaner & w/o the lushness
of his Zin. I actively disliked his RubyCabernet as being rather herbal/
vegetal and pretty tannic & hard, atypical for Amador. So these shunned
btls were buried in the dark parts of my cellar, awaiting the proper time
to unload them. Since I was showing Darrell some of my relics from his
store, this seemed like the right time to unload them. Surprise, surprise....they
were in remarkably good condition and had blossomed into amazingly good
old/mature wines. The '78 showed much more Cabernet character than the
Montevina Cabs ever did, with a terrific tarry nose but a bit dried out
on the palate. The '77, which I expected to be the better of the two, was
more akin to an old Montevina Zin w/ much less Cabernet character. But
it was round & smooth and much more attractive a wine on the palate
than the '78. RubyCabernet was, of course, an Olmo cross betwixt Cabernet
and Carignan that was developed to produce "quality" Cabernet-like wines
from hot climes like the SanJoaquin Valley. So not surprising that it did
well like this in Amador. Probably the best of the Calif Ruby Cabs is Bill
Dickerson's ones made under his label. Darrell related that Dinny Webb's
widow has a complete set of RubyCabs that Justin Meyer made for him from
Dinny's backyard RubeCab vnyd, going back to the '50's. Darrell's hoping
to put together a complete tasting of these wines sometime down the road,
along w/ those of Bill Dickerson's.
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Corked: The Heitz Cabernet had a distinct musty/damp earth/Kansas root
cellar smell when it was first poured, leading to immediate pronouncements
that it was corked. Yet I thought the mustiness was a bit different from
the TCA-wet cardboard character I mostly find in corked wines. And it seemed
to disappate w/ time in the glass, unlike TCA-infected wines. Darrell pointed
out that in older times this was exactly the type of mustiness in corked
wines for which they started using chlorine bleach in the cork production
treatments to remove. The chlorine led to the onset of TCA-smells in corked
wine that we've, alas, become all too familar with. Thus, we were probably
smelling, Darrell speculated, old-time corkiness, rather than TCA-type
corkiness of this modern/ improved day.
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Shenandoah Vnyd dessert wines: Lee Sobon has always been very interested
in sweet dessert wines and has been making them regularly from the very
start. I have, of course, followed them from the very start. However, all
of these I'd not tasted since their release in the early '80's, so I didn't
quite know what to expect. Since they all three were sweet wines, I had
expected them, at 20+ yrs of age, to have turned into marvelous/complex/old
dessert wines. That expected complexity had not shown up. They wre just
sweet wines that were there and had not seem to have gone anywhere. Probably
I suspect it was their low acids that was the culprit. The BlackMuscat
was easily the most interesting of the three because of its delicate/floral
muscat character. Not bad wines...but wines that were just... there (unlike
Oakland).
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Quady Elysium: Same story here, a 20 yr old dessert wine..that just had
not gone anywhere. The Elysium and Essencia are made primarily like Angelica/ratafia
and have loads of intense grapey character in their youth. But there seem
little point in aging them as they don't seem to develop any complexity
you'd expect in old dessert wines.
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Corti RTW '74: This btl was the last one out of BlairSwartz's archives
he wanted to share with us. It was, in fact, the first Montevina CabernetSauvignon
produced and Darrell bought it in its entirity (undoubtedly for a song)
and sold it cheap (about $3.25). It was a pretty tasty/delecious wine in
its youth. It's youth has passed and now it's on its last legs.
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Darrell had been invited to NewMexico by Bruce&Sue Noel of LosLucerosWnry
there just North of Espanola. The hook was that Darrell would do a seminar/event
for the SantaFe Convivium of SlowFood on the glories of wild asparagus.
In the apple orchard in from of their winery, the wild asparagus runs rampant
and so this would be a great opportunity to have wild asparagus in several
guises and learn from Darrell. Has luck would have it, we'd had repeated
frosts in the morning for the last several weeks...so no/little asparagus.
Sue had brewed a wonderful asparagus soup using some of last yr's frozen
aspargus and some fresh she'd harvested. The SlowFood crowd foraged thru
the orchard and did manage to find some stalks. So these and a batch of
boughten (Chile?) aspargus were boiled until al dente and served w/ a lovely
olive oil and a home-made Aioli. The contrast in flavors betwixt the two
aspargi were striking, the boughten tasting much more bland (how can asparagus
be bland?) than the wild. As he has been known to do, Darrell gave a highly
educational talk of an hour's length. He could have gone much longer &
not lost his audience, but Darrell was ready to taste some wine. The talk
was much about the ancient history of asparagus and many of the special
ways it has been prepared over the yrs. Incredibly informative... as I
knew it would be. As noted an authority on almost any subject as Darrell
is, he's always in the learning mode himself, and that was one of his raison
d'etre's for coming to NewMexico, to learn has much as he could. And learning
about NewMexico wines was one of his goals on this trip. He was probably
the first to sell NM wines in Calif w/ the St.Clair wines from Deming.
He probably had the first Gruet for sale in Calif as well, and has sold
it from the very start. He had the chance to try their CuveeGilbert (still)
PinotNoir and was quite taken by it. He plans to lean on Laurent to get
some for his store in Sac. So Bruce organized a tasting of NM wines for
Darrell's benefit, soliciting two of each wineries best wines. So we all
(6 in number) sat down this afternoon and tasted thru 49 on NM's primo
wines. Alas, some were not so primo. I must say, however, that the amateurish/inept/flawed
winemaking you used to find in NM wines some 15-20 yrs ago have pretty
much been eradicated. In fact, my worst wine of the afternoon was one of
the ringers Bruce had put in... the Honig Napa Valley SauvignonBlanc. I
detested it for its diaper pail nose. Darrell, and most the others, really
liked the wine, however. There were a few surprises. The Syrahs of Herve
Lescombes (Deming) and Tularosa Wnry were actually quite good. I'll take
these to HdR this year I think. But probably the best wine of the bunch
was the St.Clair (sweet) Malvasia Bianco. Darrell was convinced that it
was a NM Gewurztraminer. In point of fact, he grows a fair amount of GWT
and I wouldn't be surprised if some were therein. But a lovely/delicious
wine it was.
TomHill
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