Wildhurst 2005 Chardonnay Reserve

I have been craving a rich, buttery Chardonnay recently but I haven't had much experience with the varietal, and I know a lot of critics have complained that many bottles are overwrought with heavy oak flavors.

I went to BevMo this weekend to take advantage of their 5 cent sale (buy one bottle full price, get a second one for 5 cents), and after stocking up on some highly rated Aussie Shiraz wines (Henry's Drive Dead Letter Shiraz was my main target -- the Wall Street Journal's wine columnists said it was the best of their tasting of Australian Shiraz priced $20-$50) I decided to take a gander down the Chardonnay isle.

Big mistake. I got lost in a sea of bottles. The problem with a large wine shop such as BevMo is also what makes it appealing -- the sheer size of their offerings. Being a large company allows them to offer amazing deals on some bottles, but if you don't go in with a plan, you can drive yourself mad trying to choose what to get.

After passing through the Chard isle several times, I picked out the Wildhurst 2005 Chardonnay Reserve. I paid $12.99, but got a second bottle for 5 cents, so basically I paid half that per bottle.

I actually visited Wildhurst's tasting room last summer in Kelseyville, Lake County, and ended up buying a Zinfandel that I really enjoyed, so I thought I'd stick with the winery that I knew rather than getting something random.

On the nose I found pears, and gamy scents. On the attack, I got pears, peaches, wet stone and lemon. Some clover spice on the finish and a little petrol.

I was a little disappointed with this wine. It's not a bad wine, it's just not what I was looking for. Didn't have the stature I was seeking.

Sean Thackrey's Pleiades XVI

I first read about Sean Thackrey in a glossy magazine years and years ago and was so intrigued by the man, his methods and the description of his wines that I started to seek them out whenever I went into a wine shop. Unfortunately, I was living in NYC at the time, and almost always the response by wine shop owners was "who?"

In California, however, he is much better known by the smaller shops. You ask if they have any of his wines, and their faces light up while they wistfully describe how it tastes. Two different wine shop clerks who have had the Pleiades XVI both described how unique its nose was, how they just wanted to spend hours sniffing it. They also said it went down way, way too fast.

Thackrey claims to own the largest collection of ancient texts on winemaking, and he tries to incorporate some of these methods into his practice. For instance, he lets the grapes "rest" after picking them for 24 hours, something that he claims dates back to ancient Greek poet Hesiod. He also lets his juice ferment in open-top vats under the stars and eucalyptus trees, something that fell out of favor hundreds of years ago, according to a wonderful profile in the San Francisco Chronicle (link).

It doesn't hurt demand that Robert Parker awarded Thackrey's 2001 Sirius Mendocino County Eaglepoint Ranch Petite Sirah 96 points.

Pleiades is Thackrey's cheapest wine, a field blend of a variety of grapes possibly including Syrah, Barbera, Petite Sirah, Carignane, Sangiovese, Zinfandel, and Merlot (I don't think the exact mix is known). I bought a bottle for $19 from Wine.com's Berkeley shop in August, and was going to drink it relatively soon when I got an e-mail from Thackrey (sent to those on his wine list) that said e is not planning another bottling of the wine "any time soon." So, in the "save" drawer the wine went.

The wine quickly sold out, as it usually does, and I couldn't get another bottle until last week when I bought the last bottle at Farmstead Cheese & Wine in Alameda for about $25. I decided to open this bottle for a small gathering of friends Friday. To get it ready, I kept it in the fridge for a few hours, then took it out and decanted it for at least an hour before the guests arrived.

On the nose I got sweet tar, cherries and some fresh herbs. In the glass, the wine had a nice cool-eucalyptus flavor throughout. Red fruit berries lie beneath. Overall, everyone loved this wine, and I wish I could have had more time to savor it, ferret out every strand of scent and flavor, but this wine wasn't especially made for that. We drank it with plates of cheese, bread, hummus, grapes and salami. A perfect party wine, and how it should be enjoyed. On the label it says: "The object of Pleiades Old Vines is to be delicious, delight the jaded, and go well with anything red wine goes well with."

Massif d'Uchaux 2005 "Arbousier"

Man I love this wine. I had to restrain myself every night from finishing the bottle. Several glasses would disappear before I had to forcibly remove the bottle from my sight so I wouldn't keep refilling my glass. This Cotes du Rhone Villages AOC wine is a blend of 70% Grenache, 20% Syrah and 10% Carignan and clocks in at 13% alcohol. I paid $11 for it, and it's a steal.

In appearance, the wine had shades of light purple on the edges. A quick sniff shortly after opening it gave way to scents to barnyard funk, including a new rubber component. This faded slightly over the next few days and while still present, the nose had a sweeter smell. I wrote down "maple syrup followed by sweet cherries" the third night I had this wine.

In the glass, the wine seemed a bit flat at first, but opened up nicely with some time, and presenting layers of sour cherries, violets and a bit of bark.

This is a great sipper, a wine that goes down easy and impresses you the whole time. It's not overweight with alcohol or oak, and I wonder how much time, if any, it spent in barrels. There's a website on the bottle, but it doesn't say much beyond what's on the label, so I can't tell for sure about how this wine was produced.

This wine would go great with many different plates, though something lighter in fare would match best. My best match up was a sautéed chicken with olives, capers and roasted lemons dish served on a bed of sauteed baby spinach. (Recipe from Food & Wine magazine).

2004 Razor's Edge McLaren Vale Shiraz

It's hard to resist a great label, and Razor's Edge certainly has that. It's not one of those cutesy critter labels that are derided so much by winos, it's a strikingly bold design of black and red and could have been a poster for the "Sweeney Todd" film.

Normally I try not to let labels influence me when I'm shopping for wine, but sometimes it's hard to ignore a standout. And to be honest, when you're staring at shelves and shelves of wine, some things just catch your eye. I still check out the details before buying, and if there isn't enough info about it or it's priced too high, I won't buy it, but in a sea of wines priced between $10-$20, marketing can triumph.

I have been eying this wine for a few weeks, maybe more, at the local Nob Hill supermarket in Alameda. When they reduced the price to $10.99 from $13.99, I decided to get a bottle (yes, $3 isn't a big deal, but I've been trying to keep my purchases around $10 per bottle for my day to day drinkers in order to save some money. You know, the whole next great depression happening and all).

The bottle I picked up from the shelf had a small tear on the label, and I was worried that indicated it had been banged around during shipping/stocking. I began to put it back for another one when I noticed the vintage -- 2004. All the other bottles were from 2006. I looked to the back of the shelf and couldn't find any others from 2004. Kinda weird. So I kept it, figuring I'd rather have a slightly aged Shiraz from Australia than a newer one, and also thought to myself I can come back next week and get the 2006 if I like the 2004.

Well, I certainly liked this wine, and bought another bottle, this time the 2006, a week later (I'll review that some time soon, hopefully). Its appearance is black as night with crimson edges. On the nose I got sweet tar and honey, and in the glass, I found lots of tannins, heavy black plum flavors, and a bit of heat, though not as much as other massive wines like this. Some tar and dirt flavors on the finish.

This is a big wine, and not one that matches so well with food, in my experience. It's so rich and filling that it showed up the meals I had with it. A light dish wouldn't stand a chance of imparting any flavor in your mouth with drinking this wine, and a heavy meal like braised lamb might just seem like two titans battling it out for space in your stomach. This morning I thought it would probably go well with a plate of stinky blue cheese and maybe some nuts. It would likely standout in a tasting for its mouth-coating abilities, and is certainly one you want to slowly sip and enjoy on a cool fall night or fridged winter evening.

In looking online for more information about the brand, I found out on its distributor's site, Joshua Tree Imports, that 2004 was the wine's first vintage. Apparently it was labeled a “Best Value Wine” by Wine Spectator and as one of the “Best Buys from Australia” by Robert Parker, according to the site. I would certainly endorse those laurels. Great, cheap, bold wine that's enjoyable and nice to have on a shelf at your house to whip out when you're up for something big.

PT's Rwanda Bufcafe

From just a quick assessment of this coffee, I got nice hazelnut notes on the palate, balanced by semi-sweet chocolate. I've been nursing a cold for a few days, so I'm not trusting my taste buds too much right now, and I'll probably re-review this coffee when I'm not full of phlegm.

The roaster, PT's Coffee, says this about it:
"A sweet honeysuckle aroma combines perfectly with this coffee's pronounced acidity. Strong notes of passion fruit and green apple shift elegantly to an earthy herbacious finish with a creamy body that leaves a long, pleasing finish."

It was rated 91 by Ken David's CoffeeReview.com, with a blind description of "Lush tropical fruit mixes with citrus and flowers in the aroma. Bright acidity; smooth and silky mouthfeel. The fruit and floral aromatic characteristics continue elegantly into the cup, ending cleanly with a slight hint of chocolate in the long finish."

Like I said, can't really taste too much right now, but I wanted to write about it today for a different reason. I like PT's Coffee, they have some great offerings, especially their Ethiopian Beloya offerings.

But I wanted to talk a minute about how this coffee came to me. I used to belong to a coffee club run by Great Coffee. The company checks out CoffeeReview.com's monthly reviews, and sends members one of the coffees that Ken Davids' ranked high that month. I was a member for about a year, and in that time, was sent a lot of different coffees from a variety of roasters. But after a while, I noticed that the coffees often arrived at my door long after they were roasted.

As I became more of a coffee geek, I realized that coffees often taste the best within the first two or three weeks after they were roasted (some insist that beans are ideal for espressos within 3-5 days after roasting). So I decided to drop my membership because I figured I can get enough fresh roasted coffee from the numerous and high quality roasters in the SF bay area.

BUT I still get e-mails from GreatCoffee.com about deals they have. The most recent one offered two half-pound coffees, the PT's Rwanda Bufcafe, and Coffee Klatch's El Salvador 100% Bourbon, for a total of $10, shipped!!!! Shipping has been expensive this year, so the free shipping really got me to sign on for the deal. I placed my order on Oct. 31, and it arrived yesterday, Nov. 10. To my dismay upon opening the box, I saw that the Rwandan coffee was roasted on Oct. 15, basically a month ago, and the Coffee Klatch El Salvador has no roast date whatsoever on the package.

I know this post may sound incredibly bitchy to some people, but there's a real difference between coffees that are fresh roasted and roasted a month ago. My two Terroir coffees that I've been drinking for the past month were roasted on the same date, and I've seen their vibrancy slowly fade the past week or so. I'm disappointing to get these new coffees so late in their lifecycle, despite the price I paid.

Oh well.

2004 Sonnino Chianti Montespertoli

Purchased this bottle a few months ago on sale from Grail Wine Selections for $12 (normally $20 on their web site). Combination of 80% Sangiovese, 15% Canaiolo and 5% Trebbiano and Malvasia.

This wine had a light cranberry color, with a nose of cherries, bacon fat and blackberries. In the mouth I got juicy concord grapes and a heavy gamy component. Tannins don't appear until late, but they do kick in and provide a lasting impression.

Erin Martin at Grail Wine Selections sent me some background on the vineyard:
"Another cool thing about the Sonnino is the fact that is it from Montespertoli, which is a TINY little DOC zone in Chianti – their smallest, in fact – about 20km SW of Florence. Castello Sonnino owns about 30% of the land in Montespertoli, so it is incredibly rare to see a wine from there imported into the US. Very unique and special. Plus, the owner is a baron – very cool."

Bitch 2007 Geranche

(found the label image on google, so it's from a different vintage)
I usually don't buy wines with cute labels, and while this did get a chuckle, I passed it by for more serious fare. "Not so fast!" the wine clerk told me. "It's actually a good wine - Parker gave it 90 points!"

I figured I'd give it a shot for around $11. The bottle, produced by R Wines, was made with grapes from 20-80 year old vines in Eastwood, Australia. It clocks in at 15 percent alcohol and wasn't aged in oak.

The wine appears very light and clear, with a nose of cran-apple. Same flavors in the mouth, with the addition of cherries.

The producer's website says: "Ripe quince and lifted spice with a rich juicy concentration. Intense perfumed characters come from the sandy loam and dark berry characters from the heavier red-brown soils."

Overall, it's a silly label for a decent cheap wine that had me pouring more per night than I intended. Good for lighter meals, or just plain drinkin'.

California Wine Party's Cab Franc/Merlot (TJ's wine)

Trader Joe's cheap wine is always hit or miss. I've found a lot of hits from wines produced overseas, and a lot of misses from U.S. bottles. Unfortunately, my latest purchase was a dud - the 2006 California Wine Party's Cab Franc/Merlot from Paso Robles.

Jason's Wine Blog listed it as his #2 favorite Trader Joe's wine in August 2008 (see ranking here, longer review here).

I'm a big fan of Cab Franc, and just experienced some wonderful wines of that varietal from the Loire Valley produced by Catherine & Pierre Breton. While those wines were much more expensive, around $20, I was still hoping to taste some of that fragrant rose petal the grape is known for.

Instead, I got burnt wood, oak and vanilla on the nose, some red berries in the mouth but overall, seemed over made.

This isn't an unpleasant wine or a bad wine. I'm certainly going to drink it, but it's not much different from other cheap American wines I find at places like Trader Joe's. They all seem to be in this style that emphasizes oak and vanilla. Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV rails against this style, which he derides as the "Oak Monster" (and recently said during one of his postings after sniffing a bottle that he felt like he had a 2x4 shoved up his nose). My complaint with this style is that it's all the same no matter what kinds of grapes used. Very little fruit shines through, very little individuality makes it into the bottle.

Maybe it seems like I'm overreacting for this $5 bottle of wine, which I say isn't bad. I guess part of it is the fact that I wanted to really enjoy this for election night, and that I've read good reviews on it. But overall, it just deepens my impression that U.S. wine makers, looking to bottle cheap wine, have a preset idea of what they want their wines to taste like. I'm sure it's good business. I'm sure lots of people like this wine, and others like it. But if you're really looking for something unique and cheap, it's really worth checking out wines from other countries.

Clover@Starbucks3 - Kenya Kiamariga

In my past two trips to Starbucks for its Clover-made coffee, I've tried their Tanzania Blackburn Estate (review) and their Ethiopian Nardos (review). Today I went for the Kenya Kiamariga, a new offering that's not yet on its Clover website. The in-store write up on this coffee said it has "flavors of candied tangerine and star fruit (that) anchor this coffee, with a floral aroma."

I certainly got some nice juicy acidity, but this coffee is ruined by the roast. It starts off really nice, with the citrus-like acidity building and building...until it turns into a mess on your palate of burnt char flavor. Also has a tang similar to sweet tart candy. Unfortunately the dark roast sits above all of these nice flavors like a heavy blanket, eventually smothering any chance they had of expanding their breadth on your tongue.

At least it was free - Starbucks is giving away free coffee to everyone who voted today - even its Clover coffees.

Terroir Coffee's Kenyan Ndiara Estate, Kirinyaga

Terroir described this Kenyan coffee as "An exceptionally sweet powerhouse coffee exploding with blackberry and crisp distinct notes of ripe blueberry," and said it stood next to its Mamuto Kenyan offering. The Mamuto is an amazing coffee, receiving a 97 from Ken David's Coffee Review, the leading coffee review site.

How could I resist? I still had money left on a gift certificate my mom got me for my 30th birthday this summer, so I got this and the La Esperanza from Huila, Colombia (which I will review in a future post).

This coffee took some time to build on me. It didn't blow me away at first, but I have really come to admire it. It has great juicy acidity. In a pour over, I felt like I was biting into a piece of fruit with every sip. I described it in my notes as having "the acidity of cranberry juice, but more of a lime-tangerine flavor." This coffee has a nice body, rolling around in the mouth, with addition flavors of red apple and lime.

As an espresso, this coffee had high fruit notes in the nose, and seemed a bit high strung in the mouth. Hazelnut, green apple and cherry flavors.

Terroir has priced this at an introductory rate of $20.95 for 12 ounces(normally $22.95).