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May 2008
Time to make plans for Winefest
Just arrived in the mail is the brochure for the 2008 Colorado Mountain Winefest, set for Sept. 18-21 at Riverbend Park in Palisade. That means it’s “officially” time to look for seats at one of the very popular dinners with winemakers.
Seats are limited and this year might be fewer in number as some restaurants have cut back from two dinners to one. Although you’re not supposed to make reservations prior to the publication of the brochure (an attempt to make sure everyone has the same opportunity to secure a dinner) most of the restaurants already are close to being sold out.
Grab a brochure and call your favorite restaurant to check on seating, prices and which wines and winemakers will be present.
More than 40 Colorado wineries will be featured at this year’s Winefest and it’s a great opportunity to get to know some new-to-you wineries. Most Colorado wineries are quite small and their production is limited, which means you won’t see their wines in local stores. If you can’t make it around the state to visit wineries (that’s a great in-state vacation), you can let the wineries come to you at Winefest.
If you didn’t get a brochure in the mail, information and tickets for seminars and the festival are available at www.coloradowinefest.com. Tickets for this year’s Festival in the Park are $40 in advance, $50 at the gate. The First Class Pass, which includes close-in parking, a buffet, special seating near the Main Stage, concierge service and other goodies, is set at $175.
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Spoof or Consequences
Late last night, as I was heading home after a couple hours of tasting some wines that carried the deep flavors of local dirt and the devotion of an honest winemaker, I thought back on a tasting I had participated in just about a year ago this week.
I was with a small group of writers skirting through Napa and Sonoma, looking at some wineries a publicity agent had lined up for us, and on the second day we were at a fancy house just upstream from Oakville, smack in the middle of the Napa Valley where land might sell for $300,000 per acre, if anyone is selling.
The owner (not the winemaker, although he pretended he was) still commuted regularly to his big-money job in the Bay Area. He left most of the winemaking to someone else, although he impressed us with the fact he had the final say on what went into the bottle.
We tasted his wines, and they tasted like so many other over-blown California reds, blowsy and over-ripe and jammy with fruit that hung too long on the vine. Someone had added some designer tannins and bit of acid to balance the ripe fruit, an act that didn’t go unnoticed by another writer, who nodded and winked when I whispered, “Spoofed.”
We asked the winery owner, who seemed so sincere in his desire to “let the vineyards speak” in his bottlings why he tinkered with so much new oak and special yeasts and maybe even something to lock in the color, and he shrugged and said, “That’s what these wines need to be noticed.”
Later at dinner, a couple of bottles empty, he became more profusive and virtually admitted that “If we didn’t do these things, we’d never get high marks” and the wines would languish on the shelves.
And last night I finally figured out what that means: This guy was playing a vinous high-stakes version of the old game “Spoof or Consequences.” If he didn’t spoofilate his wines, the consequences are he’d never live in the fancy house with Italian marble floors and a century-old olive grove next to his bocce ball court.
I guess since I’ve never lived in a house with marble floors I don’t know what I’m missing. But I’d miss true, honest wine a lot more than I’d miss marble floors. I’d take the consequences of a wine that shows honest character and the convictions of the winemaker over one that is made to pay for a big house with marble floors.
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Honesty shows in the bottle
Earlier tonight I was sitting across from my pal Sal Sassano, sharing a bottle of his 2006 Cabernet Franc. You won’t find this wine in any store, since Sal is strictly small-time, a transplanted Sicilian with a love for the grape that must be DNA-connected.
It’s light-colored, as cab franc should be, with a delightful bit of acidity because Sal doesn’t over-ripen his grapes.
As typical in our get-togethers, we were chatting about wines and winemaking and the assorted truths and not-so-truths that accompany an endeavor of the heart and somehow (not surprising) we got into winemakers who “spoof” their wines, as described succinctly by my dear wine-blogging colleague Alice Feiring.
Feiring (as in come out ‘firing’) recently published her first book, “The Battle for Wine and Love, or How I saved the World from Parkerization.” This might prove to be THE book on identifying “spoofilated” wines. Winemakers who spoof their wines are trying so hard to get Parker points or to please someone else’s (anyone else’s!) palate they add such things as designer yeasts or need fancy machines (reverse osmosis or micro-oxygenation, anyone?) to achieve a result for which the grapes really weren’t suited.
In her book, Feiring write, “A winemaker needs tools. But I believe that technology, science and business had squelched the creativity, immediacy and urgency once inherent in winemaking.”
Instead of more scientists, Feiring says, winemaking needs more philosophers.
I mentioned this to Sal and he looked at me.
Then he nodded towards the vines growing a few feet outside his door and pointed at the bottle. “Honesty,” he said. And if he had said nothing else, I would have understood.
“That’s what you have here is honesty,” he continued. “I know what’s in this bottle and it’s no more than what that vineyard gave me. I don’t use fancy yeasts or those machines, I take the grapes and make the wine. That’s all I can do, that’s all I want to do.”
“My cousins (growing up in Sicily) couldn’t even write their names and they made great wine,”he said. “What does that say about winemaking? It’s here (he touched his chest) and out there in the vineyard. Honesty.”
That’s what a wine should be, a reflection of what the vineyard gave and the winemaker translated. Lucky for us who seek those wines, there still are winemakers who share our belief in the honesty of the grape.
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Passion about wine in literary form
This week’s open bottles include a Domus d’Uby Colombard/Ugni Blanc from the Cotes de Gascogne, a clean and refreshing white that my friends at the Boulder Wine Merchant describe as “pure, clean, lively and exhilarating … (A) stellar example of the difference modern winemaking technology has made in a formerly vinous backwater of France.”
Clean and bright, full of fresh tropical fruits, melon and peaches, it’s been perfect for these quite-suddenly hot spring nights. And at $9 a bottle, it’s a great price, too.
There also is a bottle of Nancy Janes’ (Whitewater Hill Vineyards) 2006 Cabernet Franc, ($15) which I tried last month and enjoyed so much I picked up another bottle today, and a 2006 Nebbiolo made and bottled by my friend Sal Sassano of Stonyhill Vineyards.
The last week or so I’ve been diving into Alice Feiring’s book, “The Battle for Wine and Love,” with its tantalizing subtitle “or How I Saved the World from Parkerization” (Harcourt, Inc., $23, hardbound, 270 pp.).
It matters little how you perceive of wine critic Robert Parker or if you agree or disagree with his well-known method of rating wines. With his assumed (or actual) sway in the world of wine, it’s become sort of a winous sport either to revile him or revere him.
Either way, Feiring’s book, which challenges Parker’s ratings and his palate and takes to task the wines of the world that apparently are made to please his palate and receive the high marks that mean high dollars, is a delightful and dare we say educational look at how wines are made today.
Not all wines, which makes good on Feiring’s premise that there still are some winemakers out there refusing to bow to what the critics want and remain true to their grape. (I wonder how she would respond to the assertion above about the benefits of “modern winemaking technology”? Not entirely in the positive, I’m afraid.)
Her arguments are strong, her passions equally so, her writing wry and sensitive and entertaining. The book has elicited a great deal of response both online and in print. We’ll leave the diatribes to others. From here, only praise.
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Tackling the wines still open
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Wish I could say I’ve been away, say to Friuli or slipping along the Grand Canal in Venice but instead it’s only been time passing by. Don’t pay the ransom, I’ve escaped.
What do I have open at home? Let’s see, as I rummage through the fridge. A 2007 Grand Valley Riesling ($12) from Nancy Janes at Whitewater Hill Vineyards, crisp, clean, a beautiful white tasting of honey and flowers just right for afternoon sipping while wondering where I’m going to plant the herbs I picked up last weekend from Cheri’s Herbal Greenhouse on Orchard Mesa.
There also is a 2007 Pinot Gris ($20) from J Vineyards in Healdsburg, Cal. This tantalizing wine bursting with honeysuckle and peach is one of the first vintages brought forth for J by noted winemaker George Bursick, and it carries his signature of crisp acidity and open, mouth-filling fruit without being overbearing.
There’s an unlabeled bottle of 2005 Cabernet/Sangiovese (or is it Cabernet/Merlot? or maybe Cabernet/Nebbiolo) made by home winemaker Sal Sassano of Rocky Hill Vineyards in way, way north Grand Junction. No price but priceless nonetheless.
The wine has been laid down for the year or so since Sassano gave it me and it’s thrown enough sediment to plant those herbs. Heavy, dense, full of earth and terroir and the loving attention indicative of a one-man operation. A beautiful wine that most of my friends won’t like.
And finally, there’s a 2007 Chardonnay from the inimitable Parker Carlson. Remember last time when I said there were two wines that really stood out during the first weekend of the Spring Barrel Tasting?
There was the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon from Jenne Baldwin-Eaton at Plum Creek Cellars (yet to be released) and there was Carlson’s new chardonnay. Here are my initial tasting notes on that blustery Saturday morning under the awning at Carlson’s winery:
“Wow. Crisp, lots of green apple with a hint of tropical fruits and even a bit of minerality. A real chardonnay, just like those from Friuli. Buy this one right now.”
I get paid to be nosy, so I quizzed Carlson about this new wine, and his answer was just what I wanted to hear.
“This is the kind of wine I’ve been trying to make for 10 years,” said Carlson, one of the great people of Colorado wine country. “I’ve been trying to get these flavors and finally think I’ve found out when to pick the fruit.”
For this wine, which went about 22.8 brix of sugar when picked on September 7 from Lola Brennan’s vineyard at 33 and C Road, Carlson actually picked the grapes a week or so early, trying to capture the fruit flavors without being overwhelmed by the sugars and acidity. The final wine is very lovely 12.5 percent alcohol. By comparison, the 2006 chardonnay from the same vineyard was picked at 24.2 brix and fermented out at 14.5 percent alcohol.
There’s absolutely no oak, which doesn’t surprise anyone familiar with Carlson’s predilection for purity in his wines (well, most of his wines, anyway. There’s always Sweet Baby Red for those who want a sugar rush along with the alcohol).
Avoiding oak, whether by barrel or chips, lets the wine reveal itself and the skill of the winemaker.
“I’m really proud of this wine, I think it might be the best I’ve done,” said Carlson, with evident self-satisfaction. The wine is priced at $12.49. I mean, the wine will be priced at $12.49. Carlson said it won’t be released until later this summer. Don’t ask how I got a bottle. That would be nosy.
