Saturday, April 30, 2016

Hazyblur South Australia Baroota Shiraz 2003

Hazyblur South Australia Baroota Shiraz 2003
This is a repeat follow on to my blogpost of the other night last week when I brought home our shipment of recently purchased wines from the auction warehouse and popped one open for casual sipping with midweek leftover pasta dinner.

From that same lot, following our tasting of the fourteen year old 2002 Hazyblur Baroota Shiraz, tonight we opened a 2003 vintage of the same label for a comparison tasting.

Like the 2002, this vintage is also in the last chapter of its drinking window, hence it provides good value when picked up at auction, most likely released from someone who needs to thin their cellar if they have more bottles than they'll consume in the near term, or by someone who prefers younger wines for consumption earlier in their drinking profile.

Tonight, we picked up carry-out barbecue ribs and hoped for a full throttle, big, forward Shiraz accompaniment. Whereas the 2002, tasted the other night, that despite its age, was delicious, showing little diminution from aging, less than the other last bottles of that label consumed back in 2015 from our cellar, this 2003 did not show as well. The 2003 lacked the backbone and the full bodied forward flavorful fruits of the '02.

Dark blackish garnet color, medium-full bodied, a bit flabby in structure with moderate black berry and black raspberry fruit flavors that give way to tones of smoke, leather, hints of cedar and licorice with a moderate tannin finish.

RM 87 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=33499

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Viader 'V' 2002 Proprietary Napa Red Blend

Viader 'V' 2002 Proprietary Napa Valley Red Blend for gala family dinner

With son Alec visiting home from NYC with g-friend Viviana to run the Naperville 1/2 Marathon on her birthday weekend, it seemed only fitting we pull out a bottle of 'V' for our gala family dinner celebration. This might be considered the flagship label of Viader. The 'V' has a double significance - it stands not only for Viader, but it also represents Petit Verdot, the core varietal in this Bordeaux blend. We featured this wine BYOB from a Magnum with our dinner at Angeli's Italian, our favorite neighborhood trattoria.

We discovered this limited release wine during our visit to the Viader Estate on lower Howell Mountain back in 2008

The “V” label is an exclusive Viader blend of Petit Verdot, to showcase the unique character of the the Petit Verdot varietal.  The fruit is sourced from a small three quarter acre vineyard plot in the northeast corner of the Viader Estate where the ground is particularly rocky resulting in especially small yields rendering highly concentrated fruit. Petit Verdot typically represents a miniscule percentage of a Bordeaux blend. It is included for its dark color and firm backbone to complement the other varietals, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and or Cabernet Franc. 
 


labelViader 'V' Napa Valley Red Blend 2002

The blend for the 2002 release was 72% Petit Verdot, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 3% Cabernet Franc, almost upside down from a 'normal' Bordeaux blend.


This was dark garnet colored, medium-full bodied, bursting with bright vibrant black raspberry, ripe plum and currant fruits, accented by a layer of mocha, hints of leather and earth on a tangy bright silky smooth but firm tannin lingering finish.

RM 93 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=70507

http://www.viader.com/ 




Thursday, April 21, 2016

Hazyblur South Australia Baroota Shiraz 2002

Hazyblur South Australia Baroota Shiraz 2002

I brought our shipment of recently purchased wines home from the auction warehouse and popped one open for casual sipping with midweek leftover pasta dinner. At fourteen years of age, this label is in the last chapter of its drinking window, hence it provides good value when picked up at auction, most likely released from someone who needs to thin their cellar if they have more bottles than they'll consume in the near term, or by someone who prefers younger wines for consumption earlier in their drinking profile.

Despite its age, this was delicious showing less diminution from aging than the other last bottles of this label consumed back in 2015 from our cellar. It tasted consistent with our previous, earlier tasting notes from back in 2009.

Full bodied, super ripe plum, blackberry and currants with mocha, vanilla, caramel and hint of cedar and licorice on the full firm lingering finish.

RM 90 points. 

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=25284


Sunday, April 17, 2016

Venge Scout's Honor Napa Red 2014

Venge Vineyards "Scout's Honor" Napa Valley Red Blend 2014

We've been fans of Nil's Venge and his wines since the eighties and now son Kirk has taken over center stage in Venge Vineyard wines. We first met Kirk up at the Rossini Ranch estate during the time that they were actually digging the caves there. This label is a tribute to Scout, their yellow Lab that used to romp through the vineyards accompanying Nils and the workers. I had the chance to meet Scout and witness this during one of visits to the Family vineyards down in central Napa Valley during one of our visits back in the nineties. I recall owning this label from as early as 1995 and have owned several of the rebranded styles of it since. 

I think Nil's was one of the first to take Zinfandel seriously as a core lead varietal in this sophisticated Blend, as if it were a Bordeaux varietal. This version is 71% Zinfandel with 16%  Petite Sirah, 7% Charbono and 6% Syrah. We hold a half dozen vintages of the label and tasted and acquired this year's at the release unveiling tasting at Vin Chicago in Naperville. I write often that every cellar needs a few bottles of Zin for hearty foods and this begs for grilled meats, hearty cheese or my favorite with big sweet Zins, barbecue!

Dark blackish purple colored, full bodied, concentrated, tongue coating thick black raspberry and more subtle blue berry fruits are accented by a layer of sweet mocha with tones of anise and spicy oak with hints of coffee and vanilla bean on a firm tannin finish.

RM 92 points.



https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=2304902

http://www.vengevineyards.com/


Coming next ..

Hartford Court "Four Hearts" Russian River Valley Chardonnay 2014

Friday, April 8, 2016

Fun with Small Bottles Chardonnay Tasting

Small is Better Offering Two Tastings in One - Fun with Small Bottles

Following the tasting of Rombauer Chardonnay at the Vin Chicago Rombauer Wine Dinner at Adelle's Restaurant the other night, I picked up a half bottle at Binny's to enjoy the following evening. I also picked up a half bottle of Ramey Russian River Valley Chardonnay 2013.

As I've written in these pages (screens) before, buying 375ml half bottles allows one to enjoy two wines with dinner rather than just one. Tonight, this provided the chance to do a comparison tasting of the just discovered/tasted Rombauer Chardonnay 2014, alongside another known brand and label, Ramey Russian River Valley Chardonnay 2013, also available in half bottle small format.

Or course, one could open two bottles of wine, but the half bottle provides an affordable, convenient comparison tasting.

Such comparison tastings provide not only a fun experience, but a more in-depth and revealing side-by-side comparison of one against the other. A selection of half bottles can be found at Binny's Beverage Depot, the wine mega-merchant super store (pictured below).

For a casual Friday night dinner and wine and cheese tasting, Linda prepared her delicious, decadent Baked Brie Cheese in Filo Dough with toasted almonds, whipped fresh berries, and honey.

Interesting, the tasting revealed our preference for the less expensive Rombauer over the Ramey. Both were awesome when paired with the berry fruit, nut cheese and honey plate.




Rombauer Carneros Chardonnay 2014  

We had this wine just last evening at the winemaker dinner, served with seared U12 scallop, vanilla bean butter sauce, and mango-pineapple salsa. The Chardonnay was one of the highlights of the dinner tasting flight of six wines across five courses. So it was, ideal to compare it against another similar Chardonnay.
 
From the 2014 vintage, another ideal growing season with warm, dry conditions that resulted in excellent fruit quality that resulted in wine with rich flavors and a creamy texture for great QPR - quality price ratio in a quality Napa Chardonnay.

Butter colored, medium bodied, pleasant aromas and rich bright flavors of citrus with tones of pear and creamy vanilla, with hints of mango, melon, spice and butter with nice acidity on the tangy finish. 

RM 90 points.  
 

Ramey Russian River Valley Chardonnay 2013 
 
This 2013 Russian River Chardonnay is 36% from four different Dutton ranches (Perry, Mengle, Sebastopol & Mill Station); 16% from Martinelli’s Laughlin Road Vineyard; 13% from King Vineyard; 13% from four Rochioli vineyards (Allen, Mid-40, River, Hill); 10% from Forchini Vineyard; 5% from Westside Farms; 4% Frostwatch; and 3% from Hudson Vineyard.

Clear, pale straw color, medium bodied, this is a complex cacaphony of flavors - fruits, toasted nuts, spices - perhaps revealing the broad multitude of sources in the blend. This is a contrasting style to the Rombauer - firmer, tighter and more structured and more complex, probably more suited to more complex and bigger food accompaniment, but less suited to the mild baked brie with berry fruit and honey, which set up well with the pear, vanilla, citrus tones of the Rombauer. Hold this for grilled Salmon entree.

A compendium of notes from the popular well known reviewers refer to this wine's power and elegance, rounder, weightier and richer with with flavors as diverse as apricot pit, mint, butter and dried flowers blossom, baking spices and honeysuckle, finishing with a mineral bite for some contrapuntal complexity....

A fun and revealing comparison and tasting none-the-less.

RM 88






Thursday, April 7, 2016

Vin Chicago Rombauer Wine Dinner at Adelle's Wheaton

Vin Chicago Hosts Rombauer Vineyards Wine Dinner at Adelle's Restaurant, Wheaton

Vin Chicago hosted a wine dinner at Adelle's Restaurant in nearby Wheaton, featuring Napa Valley Rombauer Vineyards' California Wines.

Six Rombauer wines complemented the five dinner courses crafted and presented by Adelle's Chef John Anderson and owner Debbie Fitzgerald Williams. On hand to present Rombauer wines was Clyde Gilbert, Rombauer National Sales Manager and Mike Baker and Kathleen from Vin Chicago, Naperville. Besides being manager of the Naperville store, Mike is also a lead buyer for Vin Chicago and is also an Advanced Sommelier in the Court of Master Sommeliers.

We'll look forward to picking up our Rombauer order, and visiting Adelle's Restaurant again, especially on Corkage Fee free Tuesdays!

The dinner and wine paring flight:

Rombauer Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2015 

 Served with passed canapes, parmesan gougeres, chilled red bliss potatoes, creme fraiche, chives, accented by caviar, and honeydew melon ball skewer. See comments of the tasting course pairing with the Chardonnay below. I wonder if the pairing detracted from the tasting score.

This is the second release of a Rombauer Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc. Their 2014 inaugural release was their first new nationally-released white wine from Rombauer since they launched their Chardonnay in 1982, and the first new varietal introduced since their Zinfandel in 1990.

They spent five years seeking out top-quality Sauvignon Blanc vineyards across Napa Valley to source the fruit for this label and they kept production low in the 2014 release to ensure they would meet their quality standards. 

Based on the success and response to the initial release, they increased production in this, their second vintage, 2015, to expand into select markets. Still, this Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc remains a limited release wine. This expands the Rombauer portfolio diversity and breadth for more choices in pairing foods with wine. 

Straw colored with a slight greenish hue, light-medium bodied, aromas and flavors of tropical fruits with hints of grapefruit citrus, pear and white nectarine with a subtle tones of what the winemaker calls fresh-cut grass, with somewhat flat acidic layer on the lingering finish.

RM 87 points.  



Rombauer Carneros Chardonnay 2014  

Served as a complement to the seared U12 scallop, vanilla bean butter sauce, and mango-pineapple salsa. In retrospect, we felt the Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc would've best been switched, with the bigger fuller Chardonnay being served with the more obtuse forward caviar above, and the Sauvignon Blanc with the more moderate subtle scallop course. In any event, the Chardonnay was one of the highlights of the flight. 

From the 2014 vintage, another ideal growing season with warm, dry conditions that resulted in excellent fruit quality that resulted in wine with rich flavors and a creamy texture for great QPR - quality price ratio in a quality Napa Chardonnay.

Butter colored, medium bodied, pleasant aromas and rich bright flavors of citrus with tones of pear and creamy vanilla, with hints of mango, melon, spice and butter with nice acidity on the tangy finish. 

RM 90 points. 



Rombauer Vineyards Carneros Merlot 2012

Served with seared pork tenderloin medallion, sweet potato mash, and cherry-herb demi-glace. The sweet potato was especially nice against the Merlot.

This Rombauer Vineyards Merlot has been produced since 1983. The Merlot fruit is sourced from Rombauer estate and select partner growers' vineyards in the Carneros region, at the top of San Francisco Bay where the Napa and Sonoma Valleys meet, at the bottom of the Mayacamas Range that separates and helps form the two. 

The Carneros Appellation has a cooler climate, moderated by the gentle breezes and fog that creep in off the bay. The area is more known for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay than Bordeaux varietals such as Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Blends of these wines indicate their profile and relative relative positioning as Merlot is used to soften the firmer tighter Cabernet Sauvignon, while Cabernet is used to provide a bit of backbone and structure to the softer Merlot. Petit Verdot is generally used to provide color and structure to both.

Dark ruby colored, medium bodied, complex, moderate soft tones of black raspberry, plum and cherry fruits with subdued tones of tobacco, floral, oak and spice turning to a smooth polished tannins on the finish. 

Blend of 92% Merlot, 6% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Petit Verdot, aged 16 months in French oak barrels.

RM 89 points. 




Rombauer Vineyards Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2013

Served with grilled hangar steak, red peppercorn-shallot maitre d’Hotel butter, oven roasted beets, and herb demi-glace. The peppercorns were a bit much for my preference as I feel they detract from the wine experience. Never-the-less a fine complement to the the flagship Rombauer labels, this Cabernet a consistent achiever with reasonable QPR - quality price ratio for Napa Cabernets.

Representing the ideal 2013 vintage where all boats rise with the tide - a near perfect growing season that should prove to be one of Napa's best in many years. 

Dark garnet colored, medium bodied, complex but nicely balanced, flavorful pleasant drinking black berry, black cherry fruit flavors highlighted by tones of cassis, mocha, vanilla and toasty oak on a smooth tannin finish. 

RM 90 points. 
89 rating from Wine Spectator
Blend of 87.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Petit Verdot, 3.5% Cabernet Franc, and 2% Merlot aged seventeen months in 70% new oak.


Rombauer "Diamond Selection" Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 

Served side by side the Cabernet with the grilled hangar steak, red peppercorn-shallot maitre d’Hotel butter, oven roasted beets, herb demi-glace.

This Diamond Selection is the Rombauer flagship signature reserve label featuring the select best representation of the finest lots from the harvest. This reserve bottling has been produced since the 1994 vintage, sourced from estate and top grower vineyards from the Stags Leap, Calistoga, Atlas Peak, St. Helena and Howell Mountain appellations (AVAs). 

This showcases the best from the near-perfect 2012 vintage with its long, warm growing season with consistent moderate temperatures that produced high-quality fruit that made for soft, rich wines with well-developed flavors. 

Dark purple garnet colored, medium bodied, elegantly balanced, smooth polished wine, aromas and flavors of black fruits - nicely integrated blackberry, black currant and black cherry fruits accented by subtle tones of mocha, tea, sweet oak and spice turning to smooth polished silky tannins on the lingering finish.
 
RM 91 points. This was the consensus favorite of our table.
 
Blend of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Merlot, and 6% Petit Verdot, aged 18 months in 100% new French oak.


Rombauer California Zinfandel 2014

Served with el Cotijo Spanish Manchego, Don Juan Drunken Goat, Entrepinares Cured Iberico, house smoked thyme dusted walnuts, and dark fruit compote. A pleasant tasty finish course, but the sweetness of the Zinfandel screamed for dark mocha chocolate! 

As noted above, the ideal 2014 vintage growing season with warm, dry conditions resulted in excellent quality fruits.

Note its called a California Zinfandel, as opposed to Napa Valley or Sonoma or Amador County; that's because rather than being from one or more appellations within one region, this Zinfandel release is a blend from lots from select vineyards from several of the top growing regions known for Zinfandel: El Dorado (39%), Amador (35%), Lake (16%) and Napa (10%) counties. 

Dark purple ruby colored, medium full bodied, full forward complex concentrated black berry bramble fruits - sweet black berry and black raspberry with tones of mocha, anise, vanilla and spice with hints of pepper on the smooth chewy tannin lingering finish.

Right up there with the Chardonnay as one of the highlights of the evening,  it was actually too sweet for the rest of our group, but for me, this was delicious and cries for barbecue or dark chocolate.

I can't believe we've overlooked this label. This, or wine like it, should be a staple in every cellar for such pairing occasions! 

RM 91 points. 






 


Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1996

Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1996

Six liter Imperial
1990 Bonny's Vineyard
Silver Oak


After an intense workday, for our son Alec's birthday, we chose to celebrate with a grilled steak dinner and a favorite wine - Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon.

We hold several bottles of Silver Oak from Alec's birth year including two 6 liter bottles of the special Bonny's Vineyard select, that we're holding for a special occasion (shown right).

While we didn't open a bottle from his birth year, we did open a twenty year old from 1996, one of the fourteen vintages of this wine label that we hold in our cellar, as that was one vintage for which I do not have published tasting notes.  This does not count the many vintages of the Napa Valley and several vintages of the Bonny's Vineyard labels that we also hold.

Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1996

Dark blackish garnet colored, medium bodied, bright black cherry fruits predominate. At twenty years of age, this wine is starting to show its age a bit as the black cherry and black berry fruits, while predominant, are starting to give way to tones of tobacco leaf, hints of tea and dusty earth, yet, still accented by that legendary sweet oak flavor that is emblematic of the Silver Oak brand.

RM 89 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=2784




 

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Elan Napa Cabernet 1997

Elan Vineyards Atlas Peak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 1997

For mid-week dinner of Italian beef and roasted potatoes, I pulled from the cellar this mature Napa Cabernet from Elan Vineyards. It was a perfect accompaniment and tasted even better the following evening.

We first met Elan winemaker/producer Richard and lovely wife-partner Linda Elliott-Smith back in the mid-nineties when we tasted their earliest releases of this wine.

They gained notoriety when Wine Spectator acclaimed Elan Vineyards as one of the "Undiscovered dozen,  new names in Cabernet to try before they are too hot!". Several of those featured producers' remain the mainstay of our cellar today including Elan, Robert Craig, Del Dotto, and Clark Claudon.

I don't remember what I don't remember, but I seem to recall that we met at Monticello Cellars which they were using as their crush facility. We became fans of their Napa Cabs then and collected them whenever and wherever we could find them. We still hold more than a mixed case of their wine back to that era plus running up to vintages post milenium which we've been able to pick up at auctions.

We hold a vertical of this label dating back to their '92 vintage which I believe was their inaugural release, in addition to several from '94 through '97 and then 2001, and beyond. Hence, its gratifying to see this aging and holding well, with only the beginning slight signs of diminution from aging.

This was dark garnet colored, medium bodied, complex, firm tight structure of black berry and black cherry fruits, tones of what prettydeceextrap of Cellartracker succinctly refers to as dried meat and soy; I was leaning towards spice, mineral and hints of creosote and anise but the other references are apt, with a smooth moderate tannin finish.
RM 89 points

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=5873

http://www.elanvineyards.com/