Category: Experiences

It happens so often.  You’re on vacation in Wine Country and you taste a wine that’s just so good.  You must buy some to have as a souvenir of your wonderful trip.  The bottle gets carefully packed in your checked luggage and stored in that special place you have for your best wines.  It’s being saved for a special occasion.  But when that day comes, you open the bottle and…meh.  “What was I thinking?” you ask yourself while you finish the bottle in disappointment.

You hear people say, “This wine just doesn’t travel”.  Malarkey!  That may be true for a well-aged Bordeaux that has accumulated a lot of sediment, but not for a new release that you try at most wineries.

What happened, and what can you do about it?

• Everything is better on vacation. When you go wine tasting, you become enthralled with the beauty of the vineyards, the friendliness of the server, the elegance of the tasting room, the beautiful weather, some of the above, all of the above.  Your dining room table is very nice, but it can’t compare to the emotional pull of a long-remembered vacation.  The best advice is not to try to remember what the wine was like back then and to enjoy if for what it is now.  But if you must, try to recreate the memory of that special time.  Talk about it, especially with your Significant Other who shared that experience with you.  The memory won’t make the wine taste better but it might make you feel better about it.

Vinho verde.  Photo courtesy of visitportoandnorth.travel

• It’s not the same wine anymore. When you tasted that wine, it was young.  If you’ve stored it for a couple of years, it has changed.  Some wines improve with age, but there are many that don’t.  Most Portuguese vinho verde shouldn’t see its second birthday.  A lot of Zinfandels are meant to be drunk when released.  If your save-for-a-special-occasion wine is like one of those, you might want to have that occasion shortly after you arrive back home.
• You waited too long. Sometimes a bottle just seems to find a spot in the rack that you don’t notice.  Years go by, other purchases are made and then one day you find that special bottle, almost forgotten.  Did it bake in the summers gone by?  Has it reached and passed its peak?  It’s not a bad idea to let some wines age, but it’s a very good idea to remember that you have something special and not let it pass its time.
• It may be even better than you remember. As noted above, with time it’s not the same as the wine you tasted. If you bought well and stored the wine well, time can often smooth out some roughness and give deep-seated flavors a chance to emerge and reach their peak.  When that happens, revel in the experience and remember the day you bought it.  It’s days like those that make wine tasting so special.

Like everyone else, we’re staying home. Yes, we go out for walks around the neighborhood and in the park across the street.  But there are still too many people about and not enough of them are wearing masks.  So mostly we’re indoors.  Here are some wine-related activities we’re engaging in (different than usual in some respects) that you might be doing as well.  And please send your ideas for other blues-chasers to lgsjr@powertasting.com or leave a comment here.

• Zoom happy hours Since we can’t get together with friends, we do it virtually. We held a Passover-commencing event, with red wine in hand.  A few days later, it was an Easter family gathering (in French) with a Champagne toast.   We all wondered why we didn’t do that more often.  We’re setting up two-on-two happy hours now with friends far and wide.  Yes, we know all about the potential security problems with Zoom, but we haven’t experienced them.  If Beijing wants to listen in to our friendly conversations, we can live with that.
• Raiding the stash We suppose that most Power Tasting readers always have some wine at home and they’ve put aside a few bottles that they consider “special occasion” wine. With Passover and Easter in the past month, there were a few occasions that were indeed special.  But then there were evenings that were, well, just Tuesdays or Thursdays.  We’d make a little nicer meal and open one of those stashed-away bottles.  It’s hard to feel celebratory these days, but a great wine does dull the pain.

Photo courtesy of The Spruce Eats

• Pizza night We sorely miss going to restaurants, and we bet you do, too. A lot of our favorites said they’d be open for pickup and delivery. That doesn’t seem to be working out too well for them, so they’ve stopped.  But pizzerias have always had a delivery business, so some but not all are still going.  We’ve been ordering on Friday evenings.  Some of the pizza places in our neighborhood have wine as well, so we order from them, if only to help their revenue a bit more.  One had a pretty good Nero d’Avola, so we bought a few extra bottles before they stopped delivering.  Another had a pretty poor Primitivo; we’ll stick with our own wine the next time.
• Having an occasional digestif Cognac and Armagnac are wines, so to speak, if you push the boundaries of drinks made from grapes rather far. Whiskey and Rum would be wine if grapes grew where they make these liquors.
• Ordering more The California wineries depend heavily on tasting room traffic for their profitability. Without us wine tasters stopping by, they’re not doing as well.  We’re getting a lot of sales phone calls from our wine clubs, and even from some wineries we have visited but are not members.  We’re doing our bit by joining another club and buying a bit more than usual.

When we were young(er) and just beginning to enjoy wine, we thought there were only two sorts of wine: Bordeaux and other.  Now, we still love a good Bordeaux and the best of them are among the world’s finest.  We knew about the Classified Growths from the 1855 survey but they became more and more expensive, so we drank less of them.  And we also recognize that there is a lot of wonderful wine from other countries and regions in France.

Then we discovered the Crus Bourgeois.  These are red wines from the Médoc region, which means that St. Emilion and Pomerol, as well as other Right Bank regions are not included.  As far back as the 15^th century, these wines were produced on properties of the middle classes, meaning the merchant class, from the cities (or bourgs).  The nobility had their grand vineyards and could charge premier prices; the bourgeois were happy just to make and sell good wine.

But the designation became so widely used that there was no reason at one time to believe that a cru bourgeois was any more than plonk.  So several times in the 20^th century the growers tried to bring some order to the confusion.  In 2003, there was a classification with three levels: just plain Crus Bourgeois, then Supérieur and Exceptionnel.  That top tier had only nine châteaux, many of them considered the equivalent (or better) of some Classified Growths.  To say the least, the list was controversial and was dropped in 2007 in favor of just one level.

In 2016, they tried again.  They returned to the three levels and judged the wines over a five-year period, beginning in 2018.  Fairly rigorous standards were published (https://www.crus-bourgeois.com/app/uploads/2020/03/Press-kit-2020-Crus-Bourgeois-du-M%C3%A9doc-Classification.pdf ) and the list was announced this year.  Sadly, none of the Crus Bourgeois Exceptionnels from 2003 participated, so such favorites of ours as Chasse-Spleen, Haut-Marbuzet and Ormes de Pez aren’t there.

The selection criteria are rather interesting and are indicative of the direction of the marketplace.  Of course, the Cru Bourgeois wines have to meet criteria of taste and aroma.  An anonymous blind tasting panel makes the initial cut at what is and is not a Cru Bourgeois.  In order to qualify as a Cru Bourgeois Supérieur or Exceptionnel, there are additional considerations.  They have to do with the sustainability of the agriculture in the vineyards and winery.  They also deal with management’s actions “to optimize the character of the wine (vineyard, harvest, winery, bottling, quality assurance system)”.

A real eye-opener for those of us who might travel to Bordeaux for wine tasting, one of the criteria for the advanced designations is the “quality of reception of visitors”.  In other words, to be a Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel, these wineries must offer an exceptional experience for those who come to sample the wine in their tasting rooms.  Of course, we at Power Tasting are delighted with this development.  The “quality of reception” is an expression of a winery’s attitude towards their customers, not least the ones who care enough to come to visit.  The fact that the way they treat wine tasters can affect a wine’s recognition and sales, shows again that wine tasters can affect the market for wine.

 

This article is the first of what will be an irregular series on how the atmosphere at a winery and its tasting room influences the wine tasting experience, your appreciation of the wines, and the impressions you keep when you look back on your visit and the wines you tried.  We may overstate the case occasionally to make a point, but our thoughts on the subject are drawn from years of experience.

There are sectors of Wine Country where the reason to go seems more to party down than to gain an understanding of the products made there.  Some of these are in up-and-coming areas that attract a lot of young people.  In that regard, Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone and many Long Island wineries, both especially on the weekends, come to mind.  But we have come across this same atmosphere in older, more established regions, such as Napa Valley, as well.

Long Island’s Winery Dogs.  Photo courtesy of CrypticRock.

What are the hallmarks of a party winery?  The most prominent seems to be rock or rap music, played very loud.  On Long Island’s North Fork, there are quite a few wineries that feature live bands on the weekend.  And they’re not top tier either; more likely they’re the local bar band.

Another clue is pizza by the pool.  There are some wineries that have pizza ovens on premises and others that let a pizza truck pull up outside.  We have nothing against either pizza or swimming pools.  In fact, we like both very much. But not with a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, which may cost more than $100 a bottle, in our hands and with the noise around us.

And that’s the point: No company that’s serious about its product should cheapen its brand.  The wines appropriate for a party atmosphere are light, fruity and refreshing.  They are in the league of what you might expect to drink in a bar where the choice is only red or white.  We all drink them from time to time, but we wouldn’t make a special trip to try them.  For those who do, the objective is the party, not the wine.

It saddens us when we come across wineries that make high-quality wines (at top prices) that act more like hosts than winemakers.  As we understand it, they think it helps them to differentiate themselves in a crowded tourist market.  But as a representative of Long Island’s Pellegrini Vineyards told us, “No one stands out if they all do it.  We’d prefer to differentiate ourselves on our wine.”

If you are interested in discovering great wine and instead you discover that a party has broken out, there are several things you can do.  One would be to get back in the car and go elsewhere, but then you might miss some fine wines.  But are you really missing them if you can’t enjoy them as they deserve?  We submit that great wine just doesn’t taste the same when there is extraneous distraction all around.

Perhaps there are some quiet corners of a tasting room where you can sip your wine in peace.  That does work, but it is likely that service will be slower, because the personnel are taking care of the party crowd.

Another tactic is to avoid visiting on weekends, which isn’t a bad idea on its own merits.  Many of the wineries only get the party going then, so peace and quiet prevail the rest of the week.  In some cases, even on weekdays the music is loud and the pizza is available, but the partiers aren’t there so it’s not as bad.

We assure you that if you do visit one of these party palaces, it will be the party you remember years from now, not the wine.

 

 

 

In Wine Country, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, September is a glorious month, the time when all of a year’s work comes to fruition.  It is a beautiful month; the hot summer days are gone and comfortable weather is there to enjoy long walks and outings.

In Napa Valley and Sonoma County, which we refer to as Napa/Noma, you will see pickers in the vineyards filling baskets with grapes.  Huge harvesters will be gathering grapes on an industrial scale.  And even though the wineries are open for tastings, you will see people scurrying to fulfill the hundreds of tasks that change grapes into juice into wine.

Destemming the grapes before they get crushed.

As visitors, you get to share in the excitement without the necessity of doing any hard work.  Many wineries curtail tours during the crush, primarily for reasons of safety as well as keeping tourists out of the way of the workers.  What you see in the vineyards reminds you that wine is agriculture; in the working parts of the wineries, you remember that wine is industry, too.

There are advantages to visiting Napa/Noma in September other than observing the harvest.  The weather is foremost among them.  It can still be quite warm, especially in the earlier weeks of the month.  You can plan on taking a dip in the pool after a day’s tastings.  However, the mornings can be cool and damp and it’s a good idea to have a sweater in your bag, because temperatures sometimes cool off in the evenings.

And speaking of evenings, the late summer/early autumn sunsets come in right about aperitif time.  Sitting on a terrace or by the pool with a glass of local wine just adds to the pleasures of being in Napa/Noma.

There are fewer cars on the roads, particularly Napa Valley’s Route 29, because many of the summer vacationers are back at work.  That means fewer little children in the tasting rooms, as well.  On the other hand, the harvesters and the bins carrying grapes to the crushers use the same roads as the cars, so traffic can still get backed up.

In the first weeks of September, you’ll see the vines heavy with grapes.  You can even – shh, don’t tell – sneak a grape to taste.  You’ll find that wine grapes are far sweeter than any fruit you’re likely taste at the supermarket.  Alas, by the end of the month, you may have to keep your eyes peeled to see any laden vines left.

For the most part, restaurants and tasting rooms are still pretty busy in September, especially on the weekends.  Hotel rooms are somewhat difficult to find, too, since so many people want to be in Napa/Noma for the crush.  It’s best to book a room well in advance.  You’ll be able to get a table for dinner on the same day, but if there’s a place you’re particularly eager to try it’s best to make an advance reservation.

The wines taste the same in February as they do in September and you might even find more of a selection of wines to taste early in the year.  But for real wine lovers, there is a certain thrill to tasting wine as it is being made that can’t be experienced as well at any other time of year.

When you think of Napa Valley or when you see pictures of it, the skies are always blue and the sun is always shining.  One of the beauties of California is the great weather, but that’s not always the case.  Mornings in Napa Valley are often foggy and a bit chilly.  There are rainy days in the vineyards, too, or there wouldn’t be any grapes from which to make wine.

For sure, it’s a bit disappointing to go on a wine tasting trip when the weather is poor.  We have been in Napa Valley when the temperature was in the 20s, when there were floods and when rain came down in buckets.  It wasn’t what we were hoping for but it was what we got.  And there were some advantages.

 

The view from Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ windows, when the sun pierced the clouds for a few minutes.

For one thing, there is a gloomy beauty in seeing the vineyards shrouded in mist.  There is always the chance that the sun will poke through if only for a few minutes.  The vines (even without leaves and grapes) are quite dramatic against grey skies.

The great advantage, though, is that fewer people go wine tasting on cold, rainy days.  So a nasty Thursday in December, for example, has its own charms.  There are fewer people in the tasting rooms and you get more attention from the servers.  Often you get more wine as well.  After all, the servers have nothing to do except wait for visitors.  When you show up, they’re happy to see you and maybe pour a smidgen more of this and open a bottle of that.  As always, you need to be polite and inquisitive; servers have no more interest in jerks on rainy days than on sunny ones.  But when there are fewer people around, the servers may think, “Well, that bottle of the 1998 Cab is open anyway so why not give it to these nice people who braved the weather to come to our winery”.

The Robert Mondavi winery.

Perhaps even more important is that if you are served by a true wine educator, you will have so much more of an experience.  Sure, anyone can tell you the grapes and the vintages – they’re written on the bottle.  But a server who knows a thing or two will explain about the growing conditions that year, how one vintage stacks up against the others or about the different vineyards where the grapes were sourced.  If you’re not interested in those sorts of things, it’s quite probable that you won’t be make the trip to Napa Valley in the rain anyway.

Likewise, other visitors whom you do meet in a tasting room are likely to be as interested (and interesting) as you are.  Vivid conversations and shared observations tend to come to like-minded people.

In lousy weather, the roads are less crowded.  There are more tables available at the better restaurants, even without reservations.  And if you like hearty cooking, there’s a better chance you’ll find roasts and stews on the menus at these times.  Save your California cuisine fol-de-rol for sunny summer days; you’ll get real meals when the thermometer drops.

According to World Food and Wine, there are 19,000 (!) vineyards growing grapes to be used in Champagne wine.  Of these, 2,124 make and sell the wine itself.  Of course, the majority are small producers that are barely known outside their villages.  But there are 260 large producers, the top 76 of which are known as the Grandes Marques & Maisons, in other words the biggest players in the market.  These latter houses make two-thirds of the Champagne sold in the world and 90% of those exported from France.

Perrier-Jouët headquarters in Épernay

You surely know some of the Grandes Marques, such as Moët & Chandon, Perrier-Jouët or Taittinger.  But have you heard of, let alone tasted, such labels as Canard-Duchêne, Mansard Baillet or Charles Mignon?  These last three are also considered among the “big houses”.  And we at Power Tasting can assure you that there are many other smaller Champagne houses that make extremely high-quality wines.  They just don’t ship very much outside of France and even less that reaches North America.

Of course, with that many to choose from, no sane wine tasting visitor can hope to try them all.  Moreover, each house is likely to have a selection to choose among.  Almost all will have an Assemblage, made from the three Champagne grapes: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.  Then there will be a Blanc de Blanc made from Chardonnay only and, so we are told, most connoisseurs prize the BdB most highly.  Maybe we’re not connoisseurs, because we often favor a Blanc de Noir, made from red grapes, usually Pinot Noir.  Oh, yes, and then there’s the Champagne rosé as well.  And then each Champagne house has its top wines (known as the tête du cuvée) that you really want to try if you’ve travelled all that way to taste Champagne.  But don’t expect to taste too many houses’ Champagne in any one day.

There are local people and Champagne specialists who can differentiate wines from different sectors of the Champagne region.  It’s no different than being able to taste the differences between, say, a Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon and one from Calistoga.  (Quite frankly, we can’t do either one.)  But it is interesting, though not surprising, to see that the white grapes come from one part of the region and the reds from another.

The one thing that does makes true Champagne distinct from all other sparkling wines is the chalk just below the soil.  The caves where they age the Champagne are also made of chalk.  The controversy over terroir vs. winemaking skill will never end, but there is no doubt that the soil in this part of France makes Champagne different – and we would say better – than bubbly from anywhere else.

Of course there’s no shortage of winemaking skill in Champagne.  Some of the credit that goes to Dom Perignon may be apocryphal, but there is no question that a few centuries of making these marvelous wines do develop a certain proficiency.  And it is a very interesting exercise to taste a few different Champagnes, available by the glass, made by the winemakers from various houses.  This kind of tasty test raises the level of your understanding of the subtleties that go into making Champagne.

 

 

It’s unusual to have wine tasting, a natural wonder and history all in one place. But Mt. Etna, on Sicily’s east coast between Taormina and Catania, fits all three descriptions.  On any clear day – and most days in Sicily are fair – you can see steam wafting out of the top of the mountain.  Mornings are best for viewing, before the peak gets shrouded in emissions.

Mt. Etna looming in the distance, from Taormina

There are many tours available.  Unless you are an avid hiker in rather severe conditions, it’s best to take one of them.  Some tours are rather strenuous but others, such as the one we took, are for people who would rather take a brisk walk.  Much of the mountain is forested and quite pretty but the parts you’ll be most interested in seeing are those where there is hardened lava from previous eruptions.

And oh, yes, Etna does still erupt.  Leaving aside the ones documented in Roman antiquity (or even further back) there have been major blasts as recently as 2017 and 2018.  The former injured ten people.  The latter was accompanied by an earthquake that injured a few people as far away as Catania.  Your tour guide will show you lava deposits and note that this one was from 1928, that one from 1997 and that one over there was 2002.  Fair warning: The solidified lava is granular and has some sharp edges.  One of the people on our tour slipped and was pretty badly scratched.

As a tourist, you won’t be suddenly surprised by lava spewing during your visit.  The mountain gives fair warning by rumbling and burping before it blows.  The local authorities will keep you away from anywhere near Mt. Etna.  You’ll get some great photos if you’re there for an eruption (we know someone who was there in 2002) but your vacation will smell a bit of sulphur and smoke.

The remains of an inn buried in lava from the 2002 eruption

The people in the villages around Mt. Etna take the possibility of eruption with stoic acceptance.  If it happens, they take it in stride and visit their families somewhere else.  In the meantime, they’re preoccupied with making wine.  (And olive oil and sausages and pistachios, but let’s focus on the wine.)  They make whites from Carricante, Catarratto, Grecanico, Inzolia and Minnella, all of which are virtually unknown outside of Sicily.  As good as they are – and we find Sicilian whites very good indeed – they are best known for Etna Rosso, red wines made from two different clones of the same grape: Nerello Mascalese and Nerello Cappuccio.  The majority of the vineyards are on the northern and eastern slopes of Mt. Etna.

To be a DOC Etna Rosso, a wine must be at least 80% Mascalese and many are 100%.  These grapes make mellow, tannic wines.  If you like to taste the minerally characteristics of grapes grown in lava, look for the Cappuccio.  If like us you don’t care for that taste, try to avoid that blending grape.

 

 

 

Power Tasting is not in the business of reviewing restaurants and we won’t be starting to do so now.  But it is not saying much to state that The French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s flagship restaurant, with its three Michelin stars, is the best eatery in Yountville.  Maybe in all of California.  Possibly the United States.  We’ll leave it to others to say where it stands in the world’s gastronomic pantheon.  In this edition of Power Tasting, focused on Yountville, we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about our experiences there.

We’ve dined at The French Laundry a few times.  The first was just a short while after it opened in 1978, prior to Mr. Keller’s involvement. We were on a wine tasting trip with friends, passed by on a Saturday afternoon and walked in, asking if we could still get lunch.  Try doing that today!  The contents of that meal are lost in the fog of time, but not the overall experience.  We were seated upstairs by a window, looking out on the farms – not vineyards – of Yountville, including one just across the street.  The fare on the menu included chicken from this farm and lamb from that one…and the farms were in walking distance.

The French Laundry today.  Photo courtesy of thomaskeller.com

Today, The French Laundry is on a section of Washington Street that is largely residential, but shopping, hotels and tasting rooms are not far away.  The only remnant of yesteryears’ farms is the French Laundry’s private garden just opposite the restaurant.  Last year, Thomas Keller has completely renovated the restaurant, spending $10 million to make it very modern.

In 1998, we dined there after Mr. Keller had taken over.  The highlight was that we were invited into the kitchen to meet Chef Keller.  The stainless steel surfaces gleamed and a small army of cooks scurried around making last minute dishes and making sure that all was in good order.

The French Laundry’s kitchen.  Photo courtesy of thomaskeller.com

In 2014, we were riding on the New York subway when we saw Mr. Keller across the car, on his way to Per Se, his East Coast equivalent of The French Laundry.  A few weeks before, the New York Times had published an article about Mr. Keller and a favorite recipe he used to make for his father.  We tried it at home and loved it. We all got out at the same station and we took a few minutes to speak with the chef, extol his restaurants and cookbooks and say how much we enjoyed the recipe of his that had appeared in the newspaper. He was very friendly and talkative.  On the basis of that “deep, personal relationship” we wrote Mr. Keller requesting a table at French Laundry for a wine tasting trip we were planning several months hence.  It worked.

As it happened, the dinner coincided with Lucie’s birthday that year.  When we arrived, the staff wished her a happy birthday, and that wish was repeated on the custom-printed menu we were given.  Again the meal was astonishingly good, but then something totally unexpected occurred.  The power went out in Yountville and the restaurant was shrouded in darkness, but only for a few minutes.  The staff brought out stout candles and placed them all around the restaurant and along the stairs.  French Laundry is beautiful as it is; by candlelight it’s extraordinary.