Natural Wine Week

Did you know this week is Natural Wine Week in San Francisco? I didn't - though I wish I had.

"Natural" is a term used to describe wines that fall somewhere between organic and biodynamic practices. Organic will get you so far, while biodynamic incorporates a whole mess of almost religious practices that some growers chaff at. Both aim to encourage grape growing and wine making that allow the end product to truly reflect the spot it's from.

The nuts and bolts of both grape growing and wine making to achieve this process are detailed and controversial, but overall they try to limit outside influences or inputs such as chemicals like fertilizer, or non-native ingredients like lab-created yeasts. Whether these methods do work are fiercely debated. I happen to think they do produce more authentic wines, if you'll allow me to use that term, and are great for the environment.

Every day this week, one location in the city will host a tasting of natural wines. Tonight's event will be held at Biondivino, which will feature wines from Italy, Georgia, Spain and Austria. Importers will be there as well to probe with questions.

Check out Natural Wine Week's Web site for more info on this great idea.

Family Winemakers of California Tasting

Yesterday I had a chance to check out Family Winemakers tasting at Ft. Mason in San Francisco. It's one of those events where hundreds of wineries pour thousands of wines, except the key thing about this is that most are small, family-owned operations.

In the past I've attempted to take tasting notes, but I've found that it's too difficult, especially when you go from table to table quickly sipping and spitting dozens of wines across a variety of varietals. Some people I ran into tasted whites first, then circled back around to the same tables to taste reds, but I mainly stuck to reds and tasted the occasional odd white when it was an intriguing bottling.

I mostly enjoyed the wines I tried, with standouts being a Syrah from Quivira (biodynamic), a trio from Red Car Wine, including a Pinot Noir that just received a high 90s score from Wine Spectator, a Bosche from Freemark Abbey and a Howell Mountain grenache from Outpost .

The quality this year seemed better than last, and better than other events I've attended at this building. One thing that stood out to me at a variety of tables - I was getting a lot of earthy and dirt notes across the board. Not sure if it's just something I happened to notice this year and not last year, but I found myself making the same remark to several people pouring wines. It's a scent I like in wines, and to me, seems to indicate a closer connection to the place where the wines were made. It seemed like the bottles overall were in better balance on the aggregate and I'm excited to see if we're going to be drinking more restrained, complex wines from California in the future that don't all taste like juice made from raisins.

Siete 7

The wine shop's description of this wine really intrigued me. They started off by saying this bottle was killer two vintages ago, flying off the shelves, but the follow year wasn't as great, and no one wanted it. Now, however, the latest vintage (2008) restores the wine's good name. Drink up!

That really puts the buyer in a difficult spot. If, like me, you didn't have the previous two vintages, you don't have any reference point to judge their assessment. Sure, they get points for honesty, but what will next year's pull quote say if this year's doesn't sell well?

But I took a chance on it anyway, the bottle was only $13.50(or around that, I forget if it was a dollar cheaper) plus the label was killer. No bad wine could come out of a bottle with an awesome label, right?

Well turns out the investment was worth it. This blend of garnacha and tempranillo from grapes grown in clay and calcareous soil in northeast Spain's Navarra region was aged in stainless steel and presents a heavy dose of spice to the palate.

In appearance the wine was violet and had purple-tinged edges; the nose was very aromatic, smelling like incense, green bell peppers and other spices. In the mouth I got raspberries, a little burnt rubber, and an earthy finish punctured by cayenne spice that really bit my tongue. After a couple of days, the spiciness subsides some, and the black and blue fruits are more present.

Great value for an interesting wine.

The juice is a blend of Garnacha and

McDonald's Coffee

I never thought I would be writing about McDonald's coffee on this blog, but I have to hand it to the golden arches - they sure know what they're doing when it comes to iced coffee.

Let me begin by saying I grew up in Massachusetts, and as a small boy was thrilled whenever my parents would let me drink coffee milk - milk with coffee syrup flavoring - for breakfast. You can't find it anywhere else than New England, and even there it's not that well known. It was like heaven in a cup, especially when paired with a big stack of chocolate chip pancakes drizzled in real maple syrup. Yeah, I had lots of sugar-fueled meltdowns as a child.

From there I progressed to my early coffee drinks - I fell in love with Dunkin Donuts Coolattas as a teen. These milky, iced coffee-flavored beverages tasted amazing even if they had like 1,000 calories. I think I had one every day as a 17-year old driving to my lifeguard job at a waterpark on Cape Cod.

I still didn't get the appeal of hot coffee - it tasted awful to me, and couldn't believe people drank it black. Eventually I ventured into iced coffee with loads of cream and sugar, more like coffee-flavored milk with a quarter of the cup filled with undissolved sugar grains. In college I became aware of how horrible having this everyday was for you, and gradually changed my coffee pollution to skim milk and splenda.

Nowadays even on the hottest days I'm making frenched press coffee at work in the morning, since it's AC-ed to the point of being downright chilly. But I still have a strong association of hot summer days and large gallon-like cups of iced coffee, so the other day when we were headed off to see The Fray in concert, we stopped at McDonalds for a quick bite. I was tired and decided to try their iced coffee.

Now, McDonalds has made a huge push the past year or so with their McCafe - espresso-based drinks to order, and have been successful with the product line. The iced coffee I got came with milk and sugar added, without my asking.

I usually don't like more than a few drops of milk or cream in iced coffee, but this was definitely on the light side. Taste-wise, they really nailed what most people are probably looking for from an iced coffee. It tasted sweet, creamy, nutty and coffee-like - more along the lines of coffee milk - than overroasted beans I expected from McDonalds. It really seemed well-balanced altogether between the three flavors. I consider this a dessert drink, but nonetheless it was delicious and I had to restrain myself from downing the entire thing, less I be awake the entire night with caffeine jitters.

It's a boy!

My second child was born last week, a boy named Rowan. Everyone is healthy, if not totally exhausted.

While at the hospital for a few days, I found a local wine shop, Vintage Berkeley, that does daily tastings from 4pm to 7pm, and made a visit (to the utter dismay of Rhonda, who was still recovering. I told her I was going out to buy her something special to eat from whole foods, which I did...after the tasting. Am I a bad person?)

Anyway, the wine shop has a cool concept - small production wines all under $25. They have some more expensive ones in the back, but it's more of a side room. An employee, Matt, told me if it was up to him, he'd have a wall of reisling and a wall of cab franc, which sounded good to me, as I love both those varietals. Alas, business sense prevailed, and the long, narrow shop has a good variety of wines from different regions of the world, with no discernible bias(that I could see anyway from a quick walk through).

I'm going to be adding this store to my regular rotation of shops, as I become increasingly price conscious with the new addition to my family, and those diaper bills start to pile up.

2006 Vins de Pays Cotes de Brian Clos du Gravillas "Le Rendez-Vous du Soleil"

This wine came to my attention at K&L in San Francisco last weekend when a friend of mine asked a clerk for something earthy from France. He suggested this bottle, saying it had that dirty taste she was looking for.

Mix of 30 percent each cab, syrah and carignan, with 5 percent each of mourvedre and grenache. Aged 25 months (in what, I wonder? Bottle just says the length of time).

In appearance this wine is dark and murky, with cranberry-tinged edges. The nose has an old, musty earth smell as well as black fruit scents.

In the glass, I got dense currant flavors and blackberry preserve. I wanted to write down jammy because this felt so thick on my tongue, but it wasn't overly sweet, which I typically associate with the "jam" description.

This wine has a rich mouthfeel and was hard to interpret at first. I detected several strains of fruit on my palate, but separating them in my head was difficult because of the weight of the overall wine. Tangy, almost bitter tannins bring the wine to a finish.

This is certainly a beast of a wine, and is a good example of how something can be powerful but not overdone with oak, vanilla, and gooey sweetness. Not bad for $15.99. I have had dirtier wines, but if you're not sure if that's a flavor you're into, this could be a good entry bottle.

2000 Crociani Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG - Reserva

Picked up this 9-year old bottle of wine at the Wine Mine and really enjoyed it. Clocking in at 13.5 percent alcohol, this mixture of Prugnolo Gentile (75 percent), Canaiolo nero (15 percent) and Mammolo (10 percent) is aged for two and a half years in oak barrels and then six months in the bottle before being released.

It's color is a beautiful brick burnt red, most likely due to it's age. Even my non-drinking partner noticed how different in appearance it looked from other wines I've had recently (mostly younger, purplish hued wines).

On the nose I found burnt rubber, dung, and some floral accents, which blossomed into a larger part of the scent after being opened for a few days.

In the mouth, I got a tart but floral taste, favoring violets and ending with a lifesaver cherry component. Very light body. Overall I enjoyed the fruit in this wine, and described it on the whole to a cool breeze in August, compared to much heavier American reds I've been drinking.

Vino Nobile di Montepulciano wines are mostly made with Sangoviese, and shouldn't be confused with the grape varietal Montepulciano.

Tasting notes from the producer: "Ruby red colour with orange hints, delicate and intense bouquet with pronounced notes of violet. Dry, rounded, harmonious, full of fruit with a lovely mouth’filling finish."

K Vintners Syrah flight

I've been waiting for months to attend an event at the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant this week to meet Charles Smith of K Vintners, the rock star of Washington winemaking.

I've been able to acquire some of his lower priced wines (see reviews here), and wanted to try the upper echelon and see what all the commotion is about.

The day came for the big event, and I was all ramped up to try the flight of his single vineyard Syrahs and speak to the man himself. Hours before I was about to leave my office, however, I got pulled into a work event for the night. Oh well.

Disappointed that I couldn't meet Smith, I still hoped to try some of his wines, and the next day, I went over to the wine bar to see what was left.

"Do you still have the K Vintners' flight available?" I asked the bartender with all the eagerness of a child asking a Best Buy clerk if some hot video game was still in stock the day after the hordes of other kids waited in lines for hours to buy every copy.

"Hm, let me see," he said, gazing over the bottles that were in front of him. "Yeah, we can do a mini flight."

YES!!!!

The full flight would have consisted of five wines and cost $35. What I got was three generous pours, and probably half an ounce of another one, for $22. I think all of my pours finished off their bottles, so I wasn't expecting much in terms of quality, though with wines purported to be this big, I was thinking a day after opening might do them some good.

I started with the most expensive of the offerings, the 2006 Royal City Syrah, which was selling for $105 for a bottle at the shop (you can get it for $80 from K Vintners's website).

The first thing you notice about the bottle is its kick-ass label. All of Charles Smith's wines employ a striking black and white contrast on their label, with huge letters and a goth-like image. On Royal City, you see a jeweled crown with a skull chopping on two bones on the front of it.

If you look for information about this wine on the K Vintners site, all you get is a blurb review from Paul Gregutt: “100 Point Wine…Rich scents of purple fruit, smoked meat, cedar, lead pencil, moist earth and so on proclaim a wine with genuine gravitas…..the finest syrah I have ever tasted from Washington State, and in fact as good as any young syrah I have ever tasted..." (April 2009). WOW! Best Washington Syrah ever tasted! That's pretty awesome!

Well, what I got wasn't as great. In fact it seemed too huge, too sweet. The wine had a dark ruby red color, and a moderate nose of ripe fruit. It tasted like sugary sweet candy, red and black berries so ripe they're oozing juice. The finish starts to fade after a few seconds, and then BAM! a turbo boosts kicks it into another gear for more what seemed like minutes.

This velvety mouth-coater was definitely the big boy of the tasting, bringing wood and vanilla notes as well. I just don't see it lasting a while (my hopes of getting one of these bottles and socking it away for a couple of decades until my daughter hite 21 were dashed after this tasting).

The bartender agreed with me. "Point chasers," she said, and then professed her love of dirty Rhone Syrahs.

The other wines in the flight seemed smaller in stature to this one. The 2007 "The Deal" Syrah from Wahluke Slope, priced at $37, was almost cartoonishly sweet. On the nose I found red liquorish, charred wood and some green component I couldn't put my finger on; in the glass I described the wine as having Willy Wonka flavors. Just super candish, sweet berries, and some heat on the finish along with a bit of spice.

Since I only tasted about an ounce or two of the Phil Lane Syrah, I'm not going to give it a review here.

The wine I liked the best was the 2007 Morrison Lane, from Walla Walla, priced at $41.

Tasting the "cleanest" of the wines, it had nice blackberries and blueberries, with a juicy center that seems to pop out on your palate. Hints of cranberries and raspberries as well. Medium, dry tannins were balanced against smooth acidity.

Didn't get much of a nose on this one.

Now, Charles Smith has said his K Vintners line up is meant to age, and his Charles Smith wines are for consuming now. Since they're much cheaper and more appealing, I'm probably going to stick with those for the time being, though I still want to try his K Vintner's Ovide, which Gary Vaynerchuk sounded estatic about on the Thunder Show in October.

Old Soul Company (Sacramento)

I was in Sacramento last week for work and while there set about to find some good coffee. Using ManSeekingCoffee as a guide, I ventured into Old Soul Co. located near 17th and L streets and found coffee delight.

The cafe looks like an old warehouse, as it's a huge open space with a Diedrich roasting machine in the corner, a scattering of seats, couches and tables, and the main operation in the middle. Fresh baked items tantalize from their racks behind the counter.

On my first visit, I had a shot of their "sauce" espresso blend, which had light brown crema, with no tiger stripping. Bright nose with grassy notes. In the cup, I found it to be thick an juicy, with tropical fruit notes, and a medium acidity, with no bitterness.

I also had a cup of their Ugandan Mt. Elgan Bugisu drip, but couldn't make out much after the espresso coated my tongue with its richy goodness. Old Soul describes it as "Beautiful subtle fruits with a candied sweetness. Thick and syrupy with a cream-coated softness throughout the cup."

I took a bag of the coffee home to evaluate, and so far, found it to give off a strong black cherry scent all the way through from the beans, in the grinds, and in the fresh brewed coffee. Bright, fresh cherries were persistent in the cup, to the point where I wrote down it was like liquid cherry pie. Initially creamy on the attack, the coffee's acidity picks up through the middle and lingers on the finish. I got an odd chalk dust flavor at the end, but I'm not sure if that was a one time deal or something I'll find again.

As an espresso, this coffee presents milkshake-thick crema, lively acidity and notes of caramel, cherries and layers of other exotic fruits I couldn't quite pick apart.

Old Soul is definitely one of those "third wave" coffee roasters bringing customers medium to light roasted single origin coffees. They seem to really care about what they do, and in my conversations with them, are trying to develop a barista scene and culture of coffee love in Sacramento. If you're up there, check them out.

2006 Poderi San Lazzaro

I've been drinking a Rosenblum Syrah (2006 Snow's Lake Vineyard, Lake County) and have been pondering similes to describe how the wine has opulent fruit flavors that seem obscured by a heavy, thick coat of smoked wood. You know that smell that penetrates your clothes if you sit near a camp fire for any amount of time? Imagine that in your mouth. It's the same after taste you'd get from drinking a single malt scotch aged in toasted barrels for a decade or more (I'm thinking primarily of Laphroaig, one of my favorite go-to single malts).

I say all this because in the midst of my mental exercises trying to figure out an interesting way to breaking down this wine into words, I had a glass of something far superior that threw my thoughts about it into clear relief.

The Rosenblum wine is very "American" - ripe fruit, too much wood. The glass of wine I had, a Montepulciano/Sangiovese from Marche, Italy - the 2006 Poderi San Lazzaro, Rosso Superiore - reminded me why I love good Italian wines.

We had dinner at Pizzaiolo in Oakland, and of the several by the glass offerings, I chose the Montepulciano from Marche because I've had wines from that region and that grape before and really enjoyed it.

Marche is a region in central Italy on the eastern coast.

I got a little rubbery dirt on the nose, and in the glass I tasted violets, black and red fruits and a spicy finish. At $10.75 a glass, it was the most expensive choice on the menu, but it was worth it.

The fruit tasted fresh and pure, without any heavy overlay of wood or vanilla that ruins so many good American wines. I've certainly have had bad Italian wines, but the more I venture out to other countries, the more I understand why many winos prefer cheap foreign wine (cheap meaning less than $20 a bottle) to a comparably priced American bottle.