lgsjr – Page 12 – Power Tasting – The Wine Tasting Experience

Red Dessert

Often when we visit a winery and have tasted what was on the list for that day, we’ll sort of nonchalantly ask, “Do you make dessert wine?”. Sometimes the answer is “no” and sometimes it’s “yes, but it’s not available”. But quite often the server will reach below the bar and bring out a small slender bottle that’s full of nectar.

Wineries very rarely advertise their dessert wines for tasting for a few reasons. These wines are usually made in low volume. They may not be made every year. And they tend to be rather expensive. But they are a distinctive wine category and wine tasters should get to know them and recognize that they’re not all the same. One obvious distinction is that some are red and some are white. In this issue we’ll focus on the red ones.

First of all, red dessert wines are NOT just red table wines with sugar added, even if they are sometimes made from the same grapes. The winemakers stop the fermentation before all the sugar is eaten up by yeasts, so the residual natural sugar is quite high.

Photo courtesy of Porto Running Tours.

The most famous red dessert wines are Ports. To our way of thinking, if it doesn’t come from Portugal, it isn’t Port, no matter that some American wineries make dessert wines from Zinfandel or Pinot Noir and call it Port. The real thing is made from grapes uniquely found in the Douro Valley, such as Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz. It is distinctive and highly alcoholic, because it is fortified with neutral spirits. There are many varieties of Port including from ruby, tawny, late bottled vintage (LBV) and best (and most expensive) of all vintage Port. Take a trip to Porto and you can taste them all. Oddly, the Portuguese don’t drink it much, but it is beloved by British academics and anyone with a sweet tooth on a wintry night.

There’s a style of red dessert wine not often found in the United States. In France it’s called vin doux naturel or naturally sweet wine; there is no equivalent English term. Almost all of it comes from the south of France, in Provence and Languedoc, usually from Grenache grapes. You may be most familiar with wines known as Banyuls. Of course, all grapes are naturally sweet, but they aren’t all processed the way these wines are. Fermentation is stopped by the addition of some eau de vie, which stops the fermentation. There’s less alcohol than in Port, but it still has a kick.

Finally, there are some specialty wines with long and unique histories. For example, Recioto is made in Italy’s Valpolicella region. It’s Amarone that’s been stopped before it’s finished. The people of that region like dessert too, and you’d better sample it there because it’s not found that often on American wine store shelves. Another is the Greek Mavrodaphne, which you may find in some Greek restaurants and neighborhoods, and is another fortified wine. It may remind you of Port.

How to Order from Unfamiliar Wine Lists

When we go wine tasting, we are almost always tasting wines we’ve never tasted before. Even if we’re at a familiar winery, we’re going to sample a new vintage. Often, the tasting room will put some bottlings on their menu for the day that we’ve never heard of, much less tasted. If we’re visiting a winery we’ve never been to before, especially when we travel abroad, we’re in the dark.

This is all great preparation for ordering wine off a restaurant’s list, where we know nothing (or almost nothing). What to choose? This is where our experience with wine tasting trips comes to our aid. A few tips might help you, too.

You could ask your waiter. These days, your waiter may not be old enough to drink, much less to develop expertise in wine! The best you can hope for is that he or she can tell you what’s the most popular. In fairness, the type of establishment that has inexperienced wait staff often has a less-than-inspiring wine list, sometimes consisting of two choices: red or white.

Photo courtesy of Sommeliers Choice Awards

Or a sommelier. At the other extreme, restaurants that do have quality wine lists may also have someone trained to help you choose, i.e., a sommelier. But there are problems here as well. The sommelier is an employee of the house and has an incentive to direct you to the more expensive items on the list. A good one will ask you what types of wine you like and the characteristics you prefer, such as robustness, acidity or intensity. And definitely what your price range is. Even then, you’re going to be offered what he or she thinks meets your tastes, which may or may not work out.
Go with a wine that’s from a familiar region. If we’re dealing with wines from California, France or Italy, for example, we know enough to say “We don’t know these wines, but we know that a Bordeaux usually pleases us”. But if we’re at a Hungarian or an Argentine restaurant, for instance, that’s not going to help. And when we’re overseas, our best hope is to try our luck.
Choose on the basis of price. Think about your overall restaurant experience with wine. How much do you usually pay for wine as a percentage of the overall meal. A third? A half? More? Less? Use that as your guide.

Or go at it the other way round. How much do you want to spend on a bottle that night? Probably less on a random Tuesday, more on a weekend and even more for a special occasion. Let’s say you’re ready to spend $75. Look for a number in the $65 to $85 range on the right side of the list. If the restaurant is knowledgeable and honest, you’ll get a bottle that satisfies you. This isn’t a perfect rule, but it has worked out pretty well for us.

Visiting Beaune

If you are a true wine lover, then at some point in your life you have to go wine tasting in Burgundy. Now, Burgundy is a big place and it includes winemaking areas such as Chablis, Beaujolais and Mercurey, all sources for very fine wine. But when people think of Burgundy what they really have in mind is the fabled Côte d’Or, French for the Gold Coast. That’s where the Grand Cru Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs come from. It runs from Dijon (of mustard fame) in the north to a cluster of villages on the road to Chalons to the south.

And smack in the middle is the town of Beaune.

Anyone who goes wine tasting in the Côte d’Or will pass through or around Beaune. For many visitors, Beaune is simply a starting point for going somewhere else. Mostly they’re going to villages that equate to wines, like Nuit St. Georges, Gevrey-Chambertin, Volnay, Pommard or Montrachet. We would like to recommend that you stop a while in Beaune itself.

The Place Carnot in Beaune. Photo courtesy of Beaune Tourism.

The center of town is the Place Carnot, named after 19^th century President of France who had the ill luck to be assassinated. There is a small carousel in the middle of that, that in its way says this is pleasant square is in a pleasant town where visitors are always welcome.

Cheeses at the shop of Alain Hess. Photo courtesy of Wine Keller.

The square is ringed by shops and cafes. One shop kept bringing us back time after time: Alain Hess, Maitre Fromager (Master Cheesemonger). Charles DeGaulle once questioned how anyone could manage a country with 500 types of cheese. We never counted, but we think you can find all 500 of them at M. Hess’ shop. And of course he can sell you the wine and some charcuterie to go with the pique-nique you’ll have next to a vineyard.

There are lots of interesting things to do while you’re in Beaune. In a previous edition, we’ve described the Hospices de Beaune, which is a treasure not to be missed whatever else you do in the region. You can do some in-town tasting at Louis Jadot or at numerous oenothèques. There’s the Musée de Vin, which is installed at the former palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. And here’s a special tip: We’re not sure it still exists, but if you walk down the Rue du Faubourg Madeleine, away from the Place Carnot, on your right there’s a nondescript tabac with the best chocolate ice cream we’ve ever eaten.

There are many restaurants in the Côte d’Or where you can dine on French haute cuisine, and a few of them are in Beaune itself. But if you want to feel French while you dine, go to a little café in Beaune where you can order a meal made from the fine Burgundian farms. Start with escargot, drowning in garlic butter. Then it’s either a boeuf bourguignon made from local Charolais beef or a roast poulet de Bresse, considered the finest chicken in France. There will be local cheese before dessert, such as the bleu from the aforementioned Bresse. You will soon realize that you’ve spent an afternoon indulging yourself, all the while pretending that you’re a local.

Bale’s Mill

There are times when we’ve been on a wine tasting trip that we’re eager to do something else than tasting wine. (Gasp!) Often it’s because we know we’ve had enough alcohol for one day, but sometimes it’s just a desire to take advantage of other things that are of interest in the area we’re visiting. As with most Americans interested in wine tasting, we’ve been to California’s Napa Valley more often than any other destination, which has led us from time to time to Bale’s Mill.

Bale’s Mill, as it is today. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The precise name is Bale Grist Mill State Historic Park, but we’ve never run into anyone who calls it by its full name. The road signs don’t, either. It’s located on Route 29 where St. Helena and Calistoga meet. There’s parking just off the highway and then you follow a trail through the woods until you reach the mill. The trail is paved, so if you didn’t wear your hiking shoes, you’ll be all right. And there are more than two miles of trails through the woods if you did come appropriately attired.

The mill has been there in one form or another since 1846, when that part of the world was called Mexico. It was in actual use until the 1900’s and has been retained and restored several times over the years. The most recent renovation was only completed in 2020.

The mill was erected by a doctor named Edward Bale. It was used by local farmers who brought their grain there to be ground into flour on the mill stones, which were powered by a large wheel driven by Mill Creek. No doubt the mill came first and the name of the creek followed. Bale had married into the Vallejo family that governed the region and when he died in 1849, his widow took over its operation. Evidently she was a canny businesswoman and did quite well with it.

There are tours (with guides in historic dress) and milling demonstrations on the weekend. School tours happen during the week, so you might have a troop of little visitors with you when you go.

There is an attraction to Bale’s Mill for those whose primary purpose for being there is tasting wine. Napa Valley was and is primarily an agricultural area (although tourism is rapidly catching up). It’s one thing to read about the history of the region and what has been grown there and quite another to see and experience it. Bale’s Mill is a trip into Napa Valley’s past and in a way of the people who made it what it is today.

Before there were big corporations selling expensive bottles, there were farmers, many of whom were Italian immigrants who tilled the soil. Yes, they planted vines to remind them of the homes they left behind but they had to eat more than grapes. They grew wheat and corn and brought their produce to the widow Bale. There was – and is – an elevator that carried the grain upstairs to be cleaned. Then it was fed into the grindstones to make flour and cornmeal, which ultimately became bread.

All in all, Bale’s Mill makes a fine diversion from a day of sipping wine, one with a lot of history to be discovered.

A. Rafanelli Winery

You may have tasted a Rafanelli wine and if you did, it was probably in California and it was probably a Zinfandel, the wine they’ve been best known for for decades. If you tell someone about what you tasted, they’ll either give you a dull look indicating that they’ve never heard of it or you’ll get a knowing nod that says that you’re now an initiate in a special club of Rafanelli admirers.

It’s not a winery that’s off the beaten path, since it sits on a hill along the well-travelled West Dry Creek Road. And while you can go there for a tasting, you will need an appointment, which is not that easily come by. (You even need an appointment to buy wine.) When you go, you won’t find yourself in a handsome tasting room with servers waiting on you. You’ll be in the barrel room with a worker who will be back growing grapes or making wine as soon as you leave. Rafanelli is a throwback to an earlier era of wine tasting, one that is rapidly fading away as wine tasting has become a popular attraction for tourists.

Sometime in the early 1900’s, Alberto Rafanelli came over from Italy with his wife Letizia and planted vines. It’s not clear whether those were Zinfandel grapes; in those days immigrant farmers planted whatever they could and mixed vines together in the fields. By mid-century, their son Americo had moved the winery to its current location and had focused on Zinfandel. From then to now, a Rafanelli Zin is a powerful, deep, fruit forward wine. Was Dry Creek Valley famous for Zinfandel before the Rafanelli’s started cultivating it or did they cultivate it because the grape does well in Dry Creek. Who knows? And really, who cares except for the family itself.

As a visitor, what you should care about is what they serve you. Some things you know in advance: It will be red wine. You’ll certainly get to taste the Zinfandel. You’ll get a feel for winemaking more than salesmanship. You will probably be given a little of their other wines, variously going from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon to a 60-40 Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blend. Their top-rated wine, the Terrace Select, does not show up often in tastings (at least to our experience).

You will be in a working winery when you visit, no palaces here. There is a loveliness about the location, though, sitting on a hill, surrounded by flowers. We have a particular fondness for springtime, when the hill is alive with daffodils.

There’s another factor that makes a visit to Rafanelli attractive. The management, winemaking and vineyard cultivation are in the hands Alberto’s great-grandchildren. In this highly commercial age, it is rare to discover a family-owned winery, much less one that is carried on to the fourth generation. Though we don’t know this as a fact, we believe that this tradition gives Rafanelli the freedom to make wines as they like them and not as some marketing department tells them to do. We’re sure that the family hopes you like what they do, but they’re going to continue to do it their way.

How to Make Wine Tasting Discoveries

Christopher Columbus wasn’t trying to discover America. He was looking for China and stopped in Hispaniola, which of course had already been “discovered” by the people living there. All the same it worked out pretty well (except for the natives). If you want to make discoveries on a wine tasting trip, you can’t set out to find them; you have to let them happen and recognize them when you do.

Moshin Vineyards’ tasting room.

Be adventurous – Take the side roads off the main drag, whether that be Sonoma County’s Route 101, Burgundy’s Route des Vins, or the D2 in Bordeaux. You don’t know what you’ll find there and in fact there may be no wineries at all. But sometimes there’s a little château with a small production and a limited distribution that blows your mouth away. As often as not, you’ll get to meet the owner, who doubles as the winemaker and whose daughter is the only one there who can speak English. And you’ll be served in their kitchen. You won’t forget an experience like that.
Be prepared to fail – Alas, some of those little unknown wineries are small and unfamiliar for a reason. This is especially true if you’re on a tasting trip through regions where the wines are just names to you. If you’re on your own, for the first time in the South Africa’s Stellenbosch, the Barossa in Australia or California’s Santa Clara Valley, you’ll have no idea what’s to be found in the next winery down the road. Maybe you’ll get lucky but there’s just as good a chance that what you’ll find is something you wouldn’t put on your table. You have to take your chances.
Recognize a discovery when you make one – Most American tasting rooms have a variety of wines available to taste. (So do many overseas, but in regions such as Burgundy or Tuscany, they may make only one kind of wine.) If you’ve never heard of the winery or the wines they make, your reactions may be summarized as “eh, meh, ugh, and wow”. It’s important not to let the first three color your perceptions so you can tell that a wow is a WOW.

Iron Horse Vineyards’ “tasting room”. Photo courtesy of Pinterest.

Make the most of what you find – The wines you try in an unknown winery may fall well below your standards but the overall experience may be a discovery in itself. There may be a beautiful landscape or a fine art collection or architecture that thrills you. Contrarily, you may find superb wine being served in what is little more than a shed. Iron Horse Vineyards fits into this latter category and is truly a discovery in itself. The entire premise of Power Tasting is that the wine tasting experience is more important even than the wines by themselves.

The overall point is that you can’t and won’t make discoveries unless you are open to them. Throw away your preconceptions. Be ready to try something you’re unfamiliar with. Trust your eyes and your taste buds. You’ll reap rewards.

Discovering in Wine Country

When we first started going wine tasting as a recreational outing, everyplace we went, everything we tried was a discovery. We will never forget the wonderment we felt as we drove along Route 29 in Napa Valley. All those wineries! Such famous wines and they come out of those buildings! And they let you try what they make (for free in those days)!

We have recreated that feeling often in our travels and it’s always the same. Aha, so this is really Bordeaux or Burgundy or Paso Robles or Montalcino! In a way, it has been the same rush as we once felt on Christmas morning. But over the years, as we have returned to our favorite corners of Wine Country, that initial thrill has given way to pleasures of familiarity, of knowing what we were going to taste and knowing that it would be good.

There is still plenty of opportunity for discovery as we make our way through Wine Country. They never happen where you expect them to be; they always come as a surprise.

Discovering wine making where we didn’t expect it – There have been occasions when we were travelling for business or even on vacations where we didn’t expect to find vineyards – and suddenly we found wine making going on. Perhaps the best example of that was finding Testarossa Winery in Los Gatos, the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. Another would be our first trip to Temecula, just north of San Diego, in a desert setting.
Discovering new wineries in familiar locations – This kind of discovery is the exact opposite of the one above. How many times had we been to Sonoma County’s Russian River AVA? More than we can remember, but although we had driven past Baciagalupi Vineyards and Moshin Winery many times, we had never stopped there. These small, out of the way wineries, and others like them, sometimes produce wonderful wines (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in these cases) and reward a little adventurousness.

William Hill Winery.

Discovering new wines at familiar wineries – Of course, many American wineries are producing new offerings all the time, but we don’t consider a new wine at Robert Mondavi or Etude to be true discoveries. But there have been cases in which we have given a winery that we know produced widely sold commercial wines and were well surprised to discover some excellent offerings in a surprisingly pleasant location that we’d never seen before. William Hill Winery and Clos du Val fall into this category.
Discovering that winery you hadn’t appreciated in the past had returned to form – Often when there is a change of ownership or winemaker, a winery that we had liked had disappointed us. It’s a good idea to give these a second or even a third chance. Perhaps the new owners took over in a particularly bad growing year, as happened at Limerick Lane Cellars. Or it may take several seasons for a winemaker to align his or her techniques with what the terroir has to offer.

And these sorts of discoveries don’t even include the pleasing response to a winery where the wine may not be to your taste, but the overall experience makes a visit worthwhile.

Long Island’s North Fork Wineries…Today

For New York City residents and Long Islanders, a wine tasting trip to Long Island’s North Fork was and is the primary destination that didn’t require an extensive journey. The roads on the North Fork are a bit of well-groomed Americana; the vineyards are beautiful; and the people in the wineries are eager to demonstrate that Long Island belongs on the viticultural map. However, in the past the wines, to our taste, with few exceptions did not rise to the quality that the winemakers wished to credit them with.

We are pleased to report that a lot has changed in recent years, much for the better. There are more wineries, with more interest in improving the wine tasting experience and, again to our opinion, there are more wines worth a two-hour drive on the Long Island Expressway.

How have things changed, or not?

Tasting near the vines at McCall Wines.

Many of the experiences of wine tasting on Long Island have not changed. Once you get past Riverhead, there is village after village with wineries, either on Route 48 to the north or Route 25 to the south, with more on the latter road. The homes are gracious, huge trees overhang the roads (again more so to the south) and the wineries are well marked so that finding your way is simple.

But certain changes are more evident. Visitors don’t belly up to the bar and taste a broad selection of a winery’s offerings. In most cases, wines are available in preselected flights, or by the glass or bottle. Thus the atmosphere is a little more like being in a bar than a winery.

And even where there is a bar – some wineries don’t even have one! – most people take their tastes outdoors, on a patio, on a lawn or even right up next to the vines. This works spectacularly well on beautiful summer days (which we have been fortunate to experience) but might not be so enjoyable on a grey, muggy or rainy one.

The tasting room at Sparkling Pointe.

Another noticeable difference is that the food trucks are gone, at least on weekdays. Many of the wineries now offer food to pair with their wines. Mostly it’s cheese and charcuterie that are available, with some making more memorable repasts than others.

The pioneering wineries are still there and, based on some sampling, we can say that they are much as they were: not terrible but nothing to write home about either. But people with money have begun to open or take over wineries. They have invested in more architecturally pleasing tasting rooms and better winemaking equipment. With money, they can afford to invest in crafting better wines: dropping more fruit, hiring more workers to prune and care for the vines, and letting the grapes reach the fullest maturity.

The result has been a distinct heightening of the quality of the wines of the North Fork. To our tastes, Paumanok, McCall’s, Mattebella and Sparking Pointe lead the way. (Mattebella is reviewed in this issue. The others will be in focus in later editions.) We’re sure that others are coming to the fore as well.

In a few words, the North Fork has gone from being a pleasant diversion to a wine lover’s destination.

How to Go Wine Tasting on Long Island

The headline might seem a bit facetious. You taste wine on Long Island just like anywhere else: lift glass, swirl, sniff and sip. Sure, but there are wrinkles to wine tasting on the North Fork that are somewhat unique. Before heading out, give some consideration to these issues.

Workers tending the vines at Paumanok Vineyards, where visitors will soon sip wine.

Try to visit on weekdays. Of course, wineries are busier on the weekends everywhere. But many of them on Long Island work on the presumption that they can make more money from partiers than serious wine drinkers. You can expect to find rock bands, food trucks and a lot of louder than usual people Friday through Sunday. Early in the week, even the most popular wineries are fairly empty, giving more time for individual attention.
Take off early. If like us you are starting from New York City, you can expect delays on the Long Island Expressway, mostly in leaving Manhattan and putting Queens behind you. Generally, but not always, it’s smoother sailing once you get into Nassau County. (The North Fork is at the extreme east of Suffolk County.)
Consider making appointments. They are certainly a necessity on weekends, and although we haven’t been turned away on weekdays, we’ve been told by some tasting room managers that they have done so if they find they can’t accommodate walk-ins. Of course, this means you need to know where you are going before you set off, which eliminates serendipity, the delightful discoveries that make wine tasting trips so rewarding.
Think about lunch. Almost no wineries allow picnicking any longer. Many sell food, but it’s more snacks than meals. There are places to stop for lunch, mostly along Route 25, but only a few where you can dine, rather than grab a quick bite.
Plan on staying over. We used to take day trips, but then we realized that we were spending four to six hours on the road for four or five hours of tasting. Plus there was the danger of driving back having consumed alcohol. There are many bed-and-breakfasts and some hotels, mostly in Riverhead and Greenport. They can run a bit expensive but an overnight stay really adds to the trip. And it gives you a chance to sample the local cuisine, which leans towards seafood.
Try places you don’t know. If you’ve never been to the North Fork or last were there many years ago, then everything will be new to you. Today, new owners are buying up familiar wineries and changing their names (and, to an extent, the quality of the wines.) For example, Shinn is now Rose Hill; Laurel Lake is now Ev&Em. Even more so, some people have invested serious money in new wineries. These are often the best places to stop.
Now, as before, the North Fork offers glimpses of small-town America. You’ll find that spirit in Greenport and Southold. You’ll notice the plethora of churches of every denomination. They are indicative of the roots of many of these towns going back centuries to America’s earliest European settlers. And the names of many of the the towns – Cutchogue, Mattituck, Peconic, Paumanok – evidence the influence of the First Nations.

Love Lane, Mattituck

Yeah, the name of this place to visit when you go wine tasting on the North Fork is just too, too cute. Evidently, back in the mists of time, it was a simple trail that came to be known as the local lovers’ lane and the name, with a little editing, has stuck. For the visitor to the North Fork, primarily interested in wine tasting, it offers several reasons to stop.

First, and perhaps foremost, it’s a place midway between Riverhead and Greenport where you can get something to eat. Of course, if you’re going to be sipping wine all day, it’s important to put some food in your stomach. So if you’ve visited one or two wineries already, you’d better stop and Love Lane is really the only place to go.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times.

There are two dining spots to choose from, Ammirati’s and Love Lane Kitchen. With no criticism of the former, we keep going back to Love Lane Kitchen. It’s the sort of eatery where everybody seems to know everybody, welcomes one another by first name and always has time for a cup of coffee. There always seem to be a few moms with youngsters trying hard not to be noisy. The menu is primarily sandwiches and salads, although breakfast can still be had through lunch time.

Oh, and the cakes are made by Mom.

Besides the food, there is an attraction to Love Lane that is more atmospheric than commercial. The street is three blocks long but everything you might want to see is on only one of those blocks. It hearkens back to a small-town America that may never have been quite so shined up for the tourists but that nevertheless was and still is real. Trees line the street. There are places to park. The shops have old-timey storefronts. And there’s a charming white clapboard church at one end of the street.

The shops on Love Lane do reflect the sensibilities of wine tasting tourists. Lombardi’s Love Lane Market is the sort of gourmet grocery that would be right at home in New York City. So are the cheese shop, the boutiques and the sweet shop(pe). But they don’t have the feel of bits of Manhattan that people have dragged with them out to the country. Locals patronize here as well, and they all stay open in the winter.

Sure, lots of countries have small towns. In Bordeaux or Burgundy there are also little villages, each with un café, une épicerie and une église. But those are French cafés, groceries and churches. This is unmistakably an American small town, with a vibe more New England than Big Apple.

The other end of Long Island is Brooklyn, definitely urban. The North Fork is rural and Love Lane is a corner of that lifestyle, only two hours away. It is a destination in the sense that you would come there to have lunch and then stroll around. If you don’t pop into every store or the wine tasting room that’s right there, you can see it all in ten minutes. But those are ten well-spent minutes.