In Defense of Old World Wines
I’ll admit, when I first began working in wine I was a California Cab Girl all the way – the oakier, fruiter, more alcoholic the better. I think a lot of that had to do with my comfort level. It is intimidating to sit down at a nice dinner, scan an extensive wine list and have no idea where to begin. It’s easier to seek out familiarity, and in my case, treating myself to a night out at the time meant I wanted to drink something I knew for a fact that I loved. I didn’t want to have to get used to an earthy Burgundy or a austerely tannic Borolo. I didn’t want to have to think about it too much.
But as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt.
The more I tasted wine though, the more I realized how limiting domestic wines can be. Big labels tend to aim for crowd pleasing consistency year to year in order to dazzle in their tasting rooms and at events. Because of that, they are more difficult to pair with the wide varieties of foods I like to eat. Highly stylized, fruit forward wines don’t have as much of a place next to the delicate, umami flavors of sushi, or the thousand and one spices in chana masala. If I’m having pizza I rarely go for a domestic wine or varietal.
To be honest, the depth of character in Italian and French wines for me became a lot more interesting and taught me more about wine than going tasting every weekend in Sonoma ever could have.
However, I do realize that I’m spoiled. I got into wine when I was an undergrad at Cal Poly. I could literally ride my bike to different wineries and try things I normally wouldn’t have been able to afford on my student budget, thanks to $5 tasting fees. Living in the bay area means we’re only an hour away (depending on traffic) from world renowned appellations. I can understand living here, falling in love with wine here, and wanting a similar experience at home.
It’s important to support local industry, and in California wine is a very large part of that. But if you really love wine, expanding your horizons is just as important. Only being serious about drinking California wine really does limit one’s palate and experience.
Yes, the prices of Burgundy, Brunello and Champagne can be stroke inducing. Especially if you aren’t completely sure what you’re in for. But there’s no reason to be so ambitious. Start low and aim high. If you’re a bargain hunter (like me) you’re better off drinking old world wines. I hate to say it but in the $10-$20 range I have much more success finding something delicious from Spain, Italy, or France than California. This will also help expand your palate and figure out what you really like in imported wine so that when you go to higher end tasting events or restaurants with specialized, old world wine lists, you’ll get a better idea of what you’re looking for.
On that note: the “Only Red Drinkers” have a special place in my heart. I was totally like that too. I assumed that serious wines had to be red. No exceptions. Drinking white meant you either couldn’t handle your booze, or didn’t appreciate anything remotely delicious.
But then I got into champagne and white burgundy and all that changed. To my Red Only people: what to you drink with subtler seafood and poultry dishes? What, for the love of all that is holy do you drink with Dungeness crab and Hog Island Oysters?
I hope I’m not offending anyone here, and I hope I’m not coming across as a snob. I believe variety, and steeping out of your comfort zone is the best thing you can do for your palate. The famous California producers we all know and love deserve all the accolades and success that come to them. I’m just asking you; as a wine consumer to expand your horizons. Don’t walk into a restaurant and immediately flip to the Domestic section. Don’t go to a wine store and ask the staff to only find you a California wine. Go to a tasting event with a varietal or region you’re not familiar with. You just may find yourself falling in love all over again.
Passing through Paso
Our wine director, John Rittmaster has been known to take an excursion or two to wine country. Over the New Years holiday, he drove down to Paso Robles, a region that has become synonymous with rolling hills, modern takes on California cuisine, and an up and coming wine scene. Here is his take on the trip. Enjoy!
I’ve heard it said that Paso is Somoma County 30 years ago, but a stroll through the bustling square on New Year’s Eve day indicates that the gap may be a lot smaller. The boutiques are boutique-y, the restaurants offering great locavore cuisine are filled, there’s a tasting room on every corner and there’s plenty of real estate on offer. Looks startlingly familiar.
This is the first of a few days we’re spending here as a Get-out-of-Dodge year-end stress relief strategy. So far, so good. In just three hours we’ve left the Bay Area for a seemingly simpler part of California. Lunch was at Bistro Laurent which, of course, we found, is called Le Petite Marcel at lunch. Why this is, no one cared to share with us. Our server looked at us like ‘duh, of course this restaurant has a different name at lunch.’ No matter. My smoked albacore salad was fine and I didn’t hear any complaints about the French Onion Soup or Blue Crab Salad either. I drank Jean-Marc Brocard’s slate-driven Chablis with lunch while Jim had a local Calcareous Cellars Rhone blend. Anne and Barbara had Kir Royales, after all, they were teachers on vacation, and all was good!
When we hit town, our first stop was Denner Vineyards up on Vineyard Road on the West Side. This seems to one of the hot spots for Paso Robles Rhone-varietal activity as the famed James Berry and Booker are in the same neck of the woods. They sell the vast majority of their fruit to other winemakers and, judging by the North-Of-Fitty price tags on all of their wines, everything seems to be much in demand. The property is beautiful and the business plan clearly geared towards its mailing list which are given access to a beautifully chic, overstaffed tasting room and on this gorgeous New Year’s Eve day, the million dollar view. We tasted through four wines, the last four they apparently have available…a thickish, perfumed Viognier, a likable but ambitiously priced white Rhone blend, a dark, pungent but overwrought Syrah and a delicious, if not terribly varietal Mourvedre. Now perhaps, given my predilection towards old world, higher acid wines, I am not the best judge of these wines. They seem to me overly sleek and textural and while certainly savory and delicious, I just think the sales, marketing and concept of the wines is too far ahead of the empirical product. At least 30 years ago in Sonoma, a young vine Mourvedre wouldn’t have cost $50. So I kept my mouth shut and let my friends judge for themselves. Jim is a Sonoma veteran who even has the opportunity to drop a thou with Rochioli every year so he’s not scared off by $50 a bottle experiments. His comments, though, echoed mine. Maybe we just don’t get these wines yet…..
Anyway, this was much debated over the aforementioned lunch, a walk around the square and a rest in the venerable Paso Robles Inn, a real slice of Paso’s past that adding a few hot tubs and a spa can’t necessarily update. Still, it’s a wonderful spot just off the square and loaded with character.
We had an early NYE dinner at Artisan, by all accounts the best food in town, and we were not disappointed. This was first class cooking! It was funny how we spent over 20 minutes debating the large ala carte menu and how we wanted to dine and then giving in and opting for what proved to be a thoroughly delicious three-course tasting menu with several options for each. The wine list was interesting too…we drank Jacob Toft’s white Rhone blend that, for $48 on their list, proved to be very good. They did have the obligatory triple digit heavy hitters from L’Aventure, Justin and such, but I know there is some fun stuff that costs a lot less and I am determined to find it.
We ushered in 2012 the way a bunch of old farts typically do…we had found DiRaimondo’s Italian grocery in the square earlier in the day and loaded up on La Tur (sex in a cupcake wrapper), a nice Taleggio and a tangy Blue recommended by the super knowledgable and funny woman behind the counter and spread them all out on the tiny table in my room to go with a 2005 Giuseppe Mascarello Monprivato consumed from the oversized Champagne flutes we had stashed in the car to avoid New Year’s toasts from Dixie cups. Yes, if you are going to spend a C-note on a bottle of wine, it had better taste like this! While admittedly still way too young, it had character to spare and drank great even in those horrible glasses. We made it bleary-eyed through to midnight (damn, why do they keep doing that to poor Dick Clark- let him die already!) and a bottle of J Vintage Brut that Jim had brought along but we were done not,long afterwards.
2012 dawned on Paso Robles probably like a lot of other winter days there. The square was ice cold and enveloped in a London-esque fog. The Paso Robles Inn’s famous coffee shop provided ample sustenance to do battle with the kinetosis-inducing drive out through the mist along Adelaida Road to what has been become the benchmark winery of Paso – Tablas Creek. It was with some ambivalence that I visited the property as I have been a vocal critic of the place over the years, accusing it of having its marketing concept in place way before its wines. But you can’t argue with the pedigree: the Perrin family of Chateau de Beaucastel of Chateauneuf du Pape and the Haas boys of their longtime importer, Vineyard Brands transplanting the nobility and ethos of the Southern Rhone in Paso’s west side. And now, I am pleased to say, twenty years later, the performance of Tablas Creek has reached its promise.
The idea of a nursery to nurture and sell vetted Beaucastel budwood in Paso and beyond has been abandoned; leaving behind close to a dozen large empty greenhouses. The project lasted long enough, however, to insure that Tablas Creek’s own vineyard land would be planted to the authentic clones of Mourvedre, Grenache, Roussanne, Marsanne and Syrah that made Beaucastel one of France’s most identifiable properties. Along with many of the other factors that help create Beaucastel’s unique terroir, vine age is crucial, especially when it comes to a few of these varieties. This is the one major piece of the terroir puzzle not immediately reproducible in Paso. It really does take a century to grow hundred year old vines!
But, at nearly two decades, the grapes at Tablas Creek are now producing wines of impressive quality and the Franco-American winemaking team is finally making wines truly worthy of showcasing in their brand new tasting room. Thanks to a vineyard management scheme where various neighbors have planted and grown Tablas’ budwood, production here has grown to the point where they can offer a Cotes du Rhone style wine actually priced like a Cotes du Rhone (albeit a California Cotes du Rhone which means $20 instead of $12) called Patelin (neighbors) de Tablas. Both the red and white are very good, the former based on Syrah and the latter redolent of peachy Viognier. These are both wines I will happily sell here at PRIMA. Less successful, I think, are the wines that Tablas originally sold as entry-level, the Cotes de Tablas. The Grenache-based red and Grenache Blanc-based white are still bland, heavy and lacking spark.
What is interesting, though not so much commercial I think, are Tablas Creek’s renditions of some of the single varietals they grow. Not only do they produce the usual suspects one might find in the Rhone Valley like Marsanne and Mourvedre, there is an interesting, austere Picpoul, a delightful Vermentino (Rolle) and, of all things, a Tannat! This dark, tannic Pyrenees native was included in Beaucastel’s plan for Tablas Creek because of its potential affinity for Paso’s limestone soils. It’s a gamy, smoky wine that is probably better off as a blender in the greater scheme of things but fun as a one-off.
Tablas Creek’s flagship wines are the Esprit white and red and those truly are the class of the joint. The white is modeled, at least in theory, on Beaucastel’s famous Vieilles Vignes Roussanne which, of course, is not possible in Paso without old vines with which to work. Nonetheless, it’s a stylish white with an astute use of barrel to add richness and presence. I don’t know if it can age like a fine Chateauneuf Blanc but it sure tastes good now. The red gets its punch from earthy Mourvedre, like its red cousin at Beaucastel, making it an earthy, pungent wine with an enticing sauvages nose and the kind of effortless palate weight I am sure they are jealous of at the mother ship in France! These are the gems that show the promise of this soon-to-be-great address.
It’s interesting to compare this Old World-oriented operation with the self-consciously artisanal Rhone-varietal producing projects dotting the West Side. I think that Tablas Creek’s (inevitable) success will ultimately be intrinsic to the success of these little guys and essential to the success of the region as a whole.
And guess what? Like a typical winter’s day in Paso, by the time we were done plowing through the entire lineup, the sun was out and the layers of the clothing we donned against this New Year’s Day morning chill were piled up in a heap at the door to the tasting room. It was lunch time. Should we eat outside?
The Syrah Experiment
I know a lot of people who got “into” wine thanks to a Syrah. It tends to give more bang for the buck than Cabernet. I’m not saying that there aren’t incredible $20 Cabs out there; but more often than not I find myself more impressed by Syrah in that price point than its Cabernet counterpart. And for some reason I always gravitate toward Syrah when I’m going to or hosting a party. Usually it’s a crowd pleaser with beautiful color, a ton of forward fruit, a peppery nose (more on that below), and its ability to pair well with easily-shared party food, such as Chinese take out and barbecue.
One day though I wondered why I like Syrah so much. What is it about that big, purple bottle that makes me reach for it anytime I know I’m eating dinner with a mixed crowd of wine fans and more casual drinkers?
So I dragged John, Frank, and a customer with impeccable timing through a tasting with me, then, after work, brown bagged the following for my friends Nick and Bridget to taste blind.
2007 J. L. Chave Saint Joseph Offerus Northern Rhone – France
2007 Stolpman Syrah Santa Ynez Valley – California
2006 Henry’s Drive Shiraz Padthaway – Australia
But first – an aside about pepper. When I first mentioned I liked how “peppery” Syrah is, John Rittmaster rolled his eyes and told me pepper is an over-used, catchall, lazy descriptor for people who don’t know jack about wine. Actually he didn’t say that. I made that up. But he did say that the degree to which notes of pepper are detected in Syrah has to do with the ripeness of the fruit. When Syrah is still a bit green, there’s more of an acrid black pepper nose. When riper, Syrah takes on more white pepper qualities, and when the grape is super ripe, the pepper notes are replaced with chocolate or coffee. So to say Syrah generally is pepper-laden has a bit more to do with the situation of grapes at harvest than the tendencies of the grape itself.
Onward to the experiment. Bridget and Nick didn’t know anything about the wines, other than the tasting wasn’t one of those ego-crushing price point tricks where you laugh at the person who preferred the $10 wine to the $100 wine.
It was fun to hear what they all thought the different wines were and if I had tasted them blind, I would have had a hard time figuring out they were all the same varietal as well. Their favorite was the Stolpman. As Nick pointed out, it was the most accessible, and the qualities it possessed were the ones our palates were most used to. It had a soft, velvety structure with cooked fruit, white pepper, cinnamon bark, a touch of vanilla and damp earth on the finish. The Stolpman was the one they each correctly guessed as Syrah, while they had a lot of trouble corralling either of the others.
Next was the Saint Joseph Offerus, my personal favorite. It was meaty with an awesome graphite quality that took a good 20 minutes for me to figure out. There were also the traditional blackberry and currant notes, but also contained freshly cut pine on the nose. Bridget really liked how understated the wine was while Nick thought it could have been a “European cab or something,” and maybe that’s what I liked about it. It was like Cab Franc’s cooler, less dorky younger brother. There were a good amount of baking spices on the nose, but I got more cardamom and anise than cinnamon and pepper. Usually the smartest way to pair wines and food is to go by region, but because of those qualities, I thought this would have been great with a lamb curry or Moroccan tangine.
The last wine we tried was the Henry’s Drive Shiraz. This one was the most exaggerated of the three: a fruit bomb of blackberry jam, blueberry pie, and lots of vanilla extract. I thought I smelled a kind of artificial coconut scent — almost like suntan oil on the nose. I know it sounds like a bad thing, but it really wasn’t. To me, it made the wine a lot more interesting and fun. Ironically, we all found this to be a good contender for the Santa Maria tri-tip smothered in a tangy, slightly sweet barbeque sauce we all enjoyed during our time at Cal Poly (a better match, I think than the Stolpman from the Santa Ynez Valley). Shrimp on the barbie, however, probably wouldn’t fare as well as the Henry’s Drive would probably stomp them. But it did almost seem like something you could drink on a patio while enjoying a summer sunset than by a fireplace in the winter.
As with any varietal specific tasting, it was interesting to see just how differently Syrah was expressed in these wines. With practice I’m sure it will be easier to blindly pinpoint the characteristics as distinctly Syrah. I’m looking forward to the advanced class on Syrah when I can convince John to open one of those Chave Hermitages I keep seeing in our cellar. Each of these wines, while interesting on their own, begged to be shared with food and others. Maybe that’s the real reason I like Syrah. It’s a party in a bottle without being bourbon. Yes, I’m licensing that and no, you can’t use it!
Get To Know Us, We Like You Already
Welcome! This is the first post on Prima’s first blog. A Premier Post for Prima if you will. We’re very excited to write about the things we love: food, wine, cocktails and the occasions on which we enjoy them. I feel incredibly lucky to work here, and have learned so much already. I hope I can impart some of this newfound wisdom, and that you’ll get to hear from some of the best brains in the business directly. Be sure to stop by often, and if you have any ideas on what we should be writing about, let us know!
Cin cin,
Jen
