Author: lgsjr

Verona

You’re planning a vacation in northern Italy.  And you’ll certainly want to spend some time in Venice.  Lucky you.  As a wine lover, you’d like to do some wine tasting.  Right around Venice are Soave and Venetzia-Friuli, both famous for their white wines.  Oh, but you wanted to taste some major league red wines?  In that case, you can drive about an hour and a half west and you’ll be in Valpolicella, where you can sip Amarone to your heart’s content.  We’d like to suggest that you take more than a day trip and enjoy the pleasures of the main city of Valpolicella, Verona.

It’s an ancient city, as evidenced most of all by the magnificently intact Roman stadium on the grandest of Verona’s wide plazas, the Piazza Bra.  They still stage an opera festival there every summer.  Even if you can’t get a ticket, it is quite a pleasure sitting in sidewalk caffe on the piazza, sipping a cappuccino and admiring the stadium and other grand buildings of a more modern era.

The ancient Roman Arena on the Piazza Bra.

In fact, Verona is a city of many wonderful piazzas, much like Venice.  The Piazza d’Erbe was the herb market in the Middle Ages.  Today it is lined with restaurants, all with tables in the open air.  The middle of the square is full of carts selling all sorts of touristy items, most importantly little puppets of Pinocchio, a famous local resident of the past.

In many ways, the Piazza d’Erbe is best appreciated at night, when the Renaissance buildings and towers are lit up.  It’s a dramatic backdrop for a bowl of spaghetti or big fat pici, the locally popular pasta.  (A word of warning about the food in Verona: horse and donkey meat are very popular there.  So if you see cavallo or asino on the menu, think twice.)

Just beyond the Piazza d’Erbe is the Piazza Seignoria, with a large statue of Dante looming over it.  He was a Florentine, but was exiled there for his political views and settled in Verona.  The Veronese adopted him quite readily.  In those days, Verona was a possession of the Venetians so anyone that Florence was against, Venice was for.

Piazza Seignoria, with its statue of Dante.

Verona has a special place in the hearts of lovers of Shakespeare’s plays.  For one thing, there were the Two Gentlemen of Verona.  And then there was a notorious feud between two Veronese families, the Montecchi and the Capeletti.  You may know them as the Montagues and the Capulets.  Today you can visit Juliet’s balcony, where single women have taken to leaving little messages on the wall asking Ms. Capulet to help them find a lover as true as Mr. Montague.  In fact, you can have dinner in a restaurant in Romeo’s house.

As you wander through Verona’s medieval and Renaissance section, you will find a high gate with a clock in it, that turns an ordinary street into a special place.  At its base is a bust of Shakespeare with this inscription in both English and Italian:

“There is no world without Verona’s walls, but purgatory, torture, hell itself.  Hence, banished is banish’d from the world, and world’s exile is death.” Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene III

 

What’s for Dessert?

With rare exception, no one goes wine tasting with the exclusive purpose of sipping dessert wines.  Sure, that’s the idea if you’re going to Sauternes in France, and maybe in the Canada’s Niagara region, but that’s about it.  On the other hand, almost everywhere in Wine Country, there will be winemakers who make a bit of sweet wine as a little extra.

In Australia, they call them “stickies”, and with good reason.  In Italy, they make Vin Santo in Tuscany, Reciotto in Valpolicella and Passito in Sicily.  Canada and upstate New York have their ice wines.  Of course, there’s Port in Portugal.  And in California, as you might expect, many wineries have a dessert wine available and they’re all very different.  Among our favorites are Grgich Hills’ Violetta, Dry Creek Vineyards’ Soleil, and Beringer’s Nightingale.

There are a lot of different types of dessert wines.  The best, in many people’s opinion, are the wines affected by the botrytis fungus that sucks almost all the moisture out of the grapes.  The resulting shriveled fruit is very sweet and very concentrated.  In Sauternes, it happens almost every year, but elsewhere it happens sometimes and sometimes not.  Ice wines are made in climates where the grapes can freeze in late autumn.  In warmer places, they just leave the grapes on the vines and produce late harvest wines.  In our opinion, Port only comes from the Douro Valley in Portugal, but many others make a wine they call Port, made from Zinfandel and other white grapes.

Photo courtesy of Royal Design.

So wherever you travel, if you want to tickle your sweet tooth after drinking dry wine, here are some tips.

  • Most of the time, you’ll have to ask. Many wineries don’t make dessert wines and of those that do, many keep them below the bar.  After you’ve completed your allotted tastes of table wines, you can politely mention, “Do you make a dessert wine?”.  Some visitors are shy about asking, especially if they have paid for, say, four tastes and they’ve had them all.  Don’t worry about it.  The mere fact that you knew enough to ask is enough to show a server that you care.
  • Sip it like it’s the nectar of the gods. You’re often getting something extra so show your appreciation.  They don’t call it dessert for nothing.  Unless you buy some, you may never taste this wine again, so make every drop count.
  • Drink these wines differently than you would a table wine. You’ll probably get a small glass with a small lip.  Take just a little liquid in your mouth and roll each sip over your tongue.  Let your sweet sensors do the work.  Then remember you’re drinking wine and look for the complexities.  It’s that complexity that makes the botrysized wines like Sauternes stand out from the others.
  • Remember you’re drinking it young. Most wineries sell out their “stickies” very rapidly, usually to their club members.  It is rare to find an older library dessert wine.  Many change character as they age and some (not all) people like them better when they’ve gotten brown and mellow.  You’ll be sipping honey and fruit juices and sugar.  Enjoy it while you can.

A Letter from Andrea Contucci

In the December 2018 issue we published a review of Cantine Contucci in Montepulciano, Italy.  That town is best known for its voluptuous red wine, Vino Nobile.  We received a letter from Andrea Contucci, which points out an error we made, which has already been repaired.

I have just commented your nice article about Vino Nobile and Contucci winery on Power Tasting.

I’ve also shared it on our Facebook page.

Many thanks for your delicious words about Vino Nobile appellation, about Montepulciano and about Contucci.

In the article I noticed a detail to correct; when you speak of grapes for Vino Nobile, the Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasìa grapes should not be mentioned, because they are actually used for white wine and Vin Santo, not for Vino Nobile.

I really invite you to return here to have a real meeting and toast with one of our Vino Nobiles.

 

Happy holiday seasons and see you soon in Montepulciano.

The Side Streets of Napa Valley

If you look on a map at the winemaking area of Napa Valley, it’s shaped like a ladder.  The uprights are Route 29 and the Silverado Trail.  The rungs are the Oakville Cross, the Rutherford Cross and so on (with a few others with names like Zinfandel Lane thrown in).  When you drive along these roads, you have the opportunity to see many of the most famous wineries in the region and, in fact, of the world.  We’ve traveled that way many times and have tasted some spectacular wines.

On occasion, though, it’s a good idea to take some of the side roads. Because they are off the main drag, some of them are less visited, meaning smaller crowds and easier traffic.  On the other hand, some of Napa Valley’s most renowned wineries are to be found on these smaller roads.  For example, you can taste Joseph Phelps’ Insignia blend on Taplin Road, Caymus’ Special Selection on Conn Creek Road or Chateau Montelena’s Chardonnay, the winner of the famous Judgement of Paris, on Tubbs Lane.  All of these are perhaps a bit out of the way, but the rewards of heading there are self-evident.

We are not including among these side streets the many wonderful wineries up in the Vaca and Mayacamas mountains on either side of Napa Valley.  They too are out of the way but require a great deal more time and effort to visit them than those discussed here.  One such is the subject of the winery review in this edition.

There are other wineries established on the side streets that are well worth a visit for several different reasons.  As always, it’s a pleasure to discover wines you haven’t heard of and may very well enjoy.  However, Power Tasting is about more than just the wines; our objective is to encourage wine tasting as an overall experience.  In many cases, these out of the way wineries enhance the experience in order to attract people to their tasting rooms. They are less likely to have visitors who were just passing by, so they need to make themselves destinations.

A few examples on just one such side road make our point.  Andretti Winery (http://andrettiwinery.com/) and Monticello Vineyards (http://www.corleyfamilynapavalley.com/) are side by side on Big Ranch Road in the southern Napa Town end of the valley.  If you’ve ever even heard of motor racing, the name Mario Andretti will be familiar to you, and if you are a racing fan, you will enjoy looking at all the trophies and maybe buy a souvenir.  Mario was part of the group that founded his namesake winery, which is deliberately reminiscent of a Tuscan villa, in honor of Mr. Andretti’s heritage.  While they do make the widely encountered California wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, they are differentiated by the availability of Italian varietals including Pinot Grigio, Barbera, Dolcetto and a sweet Moscato.

The Jefferson House at Monticello Vineyards.  Photo courtesy of the winery.

Monticello has an entirely different vibe.  Instead of celebrating an Italian-American race car driver and his background, Monticello Vineyards is a tribute to America’s illustrious third President, Thomas Jefferson.  Thus, although the tasting room is also in a gracious, neoclassical building, the real gem of the property is what they call Jefferson House.  Not a true replica of the building that is imprinted on the nickel, it is nonetheless evocative of the real thing.  Unlike many of the nouveau palaces in Napa Valley, this building is beautiful enough in itself to attract visitors.  And oh, yes, you can taste wines, the usual combination of Burgundy and Bordeaux varietals that are typical of Napa Valley.

Maybe these aren’t the first choices you would make for wine tasting if you have never been to Napa Valley.  For those seeking to expand their experience of this corner of Wine Country, they are an easy trip to make.  And why would you not want to go?

 

 

 

 

 

Cain Vineyard and Winery

There’s a lot to be said for knowing what you do well and only doing that.  Cain Vineyard and Winery makes Bordeaux blends, three of them to be precise.  No single varietals.  No white wine.  Just red blends. Even if you’re not a big fan of big California wines, a visit to Cain can be very rewarding.  (And why would you visit Napa Valley if you don’t like big California wines, made from the signature grapes of the region?)

You don’t go to Cain just because you happened to be passing by.  For one thing, visits are by appointment only and they mean it.  More important, Cain is near the pinnacle of Spring Mountain, way up in the Mayacamas range.  There are a few other wineries higher on the hill, but in general there’s no way that you’d ever be just passing by.  If you do go wine tasting at Cain, you mean to go there.

Be prepared for a winding drive of 45 minutes to an hour if you’re coming from down in the valley.  But what you get when you arrive is worth the trip.  First and maybe foremost, is the view.  The Cain web site (https://cainfive.com/) makes much of that view and rightly so.  The terraced vineyards nestled in the high hills make a stunning sight.  Much though we don’t like getting up early, not even to go wine tasting, we recommend that you make an appointment for the 10:00 tasting.  On many days, you will be greeted by the view of the vines above the clouds.  It is truly a unique Napa Valley vista.

Cain’s vines above the clouds.  Photo courtesy of Edible Arts.

The winery itself is a stylish stone building, more interesting for its restraint than for any particular architectural flourishes, of which there are more than enough in Napa Valley.  Once the group of reserved visitors has arrived, they are taken on a tour of the working winery.  It is essentially the same as any such tour, but we have found the guides to be quite knowledgeable about the way that Cain makes its wines, so you do get an interesting perspective on the wines you are soon to taste.

The Cain tasting room.  Photo courtesy of Cain Vineyards and Winery.

The seated tasting is your chance to taste their wines in a rather grand salon. As noted, they make three wines.  The best known is Cain Five, which is always made of the five Bordeaux grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec.  Cain was among the first to honor the wines of Bordeaux in this fashion, although ironically the Bordelais themselves rarely use all five.  Importantly, all the grapes in Cain Five are estate grown up on Spring Mountain.

Cain Concept is made from grapes grown down the hill, in “the Benchland” as they say.  And Cain Cuvée is made from sourced grapes from both mountain and valley vineyards.  While there is no question that Cain Five is their premier wine, a tasting at Cain gives an unusual opportunity to compare wines made from the same grapes in the same manner by the same winemaker, varying mountain and valley fruit.

For those interested in such things, Cain Five regularly receives high numbers from the ratings magazines.  For those just interested in a unique wine tasting experience, take the drive up the mountain to Cain.

 

Wine Tasting Resolutions

This is the time of year that every newspaper and magazine features articles on New Years resolutions.  There are always suggestions on losing weight, learning to play the piano and buying a dog.  Why should Power Tasting be left out?  Resolute as we are, we are looking forward to living up to some our own expectations in 2019.

  • Enjoy a part of Wine Country where we have never been before. In recent years we have discovered wines in Sicily, Tuscany and Languedoc.  Maybe in this coming year we will be sampling Blaufrankisch, Tempranillo or Jacques Capsouto reds.  There are no plans yet, but we are eager to go wine tasting wherever the road takes us. We hope that all our readers are open to the experience of discovery that makes wine tasting such a tantalizing pursuit.

  • Visit the new homes of old favorites. There are a few Napa Valley wineries that have built new tasting rooms because of the damage wrought by earthquakes (Trefethen), the terrible fires (Signorello) or just because they wanted a new place to welcome visitors (Joseph Phelps).  We haven’t been to see them yet and would really like to do so.  And when we do, we’ll report on them in the pages of Power Tasting.
  • Go back and try a few places we didn’t like that much in the past. Taking our own advice, we’ll go back, because we may fall in love again.  It won’t be just little, out-of-the-way wineries that we hadn’t heard about before (although we’ll try a few of those as well).  There are some internationally known wineries that changed hands, usually in corporate takeovers.  We haven’t always been happy with the changes they made, but now that they’ve been in place for several years, it’s worth giving them a second chance.
  • Find wine tasting adventures close to home. Power Tasting is based in New York City.  There have to be some wonderful wine bars that we haven’t tried yet.  Actually, there are a lot of wine bars where we haven’t been.  Wine tasting is a part of travel but it should also be a part of staying home.
  • Do at least one international comparison. We’ll open bottles of wines made from the same grape or grapes from different parts of the world.  We’ve done this before, but it’s been a long time.  So maybe Syrahs from Australia, the US and France.  Or French, American and New Zealander Sauvignon Blancs.  It’s a great way to see how different terroirs lead to unique expressions of the same grapes.
  • Go to San Francisco. We’ll certainly be in California again this year.  After all, we’ve tasted there every year since the 1970’s so why  stop now?  But in recent years we’ve gone straight from the airport to the vineyards and haven’t passed any time in the City by the Bay.  It’s time we went back.
  • Eat well when we go wine tasting. We always have.  We’re not going to change now.

 

The Bounty Hunter

This article is another in Power Tasting’s series on great wine bars of the world.  The most recent additions to this list were Vinauberge in Languedoc and Petits Creux et Grand Crus in Québec City.

 We have written about the Bounty Hunter before, in the context of things to do in the town of Napa while you are on a wine tasting trip.  It deserves to be taken on its own merits, as a place to sample some pretty good wine in a, shall we say, distinctive setting. Located on the corner of 1st and Main Streets, the Bounty Hunter (http://www.bountyhunterwinebar.com/) attempts to bring the ambiance of Western movie set saloon to the modern-day tourist mecca that is Napa Valley.  And, to our point of view, it succeeds.

Photo courtesy of timeout.com.

In the old Western films, a bounty hunter was not a nice person, but rather reminiscent of Inspector Javert in Les Miserables.  Fear not; we can attest that the people at the Bounty Hunter are all very pleasant and helpful in selecting wines to drink.  And help is often needed, as you have a choice of 40 wines to order by the glass and 400 by the bottle.

You may already know about the Bounty Hunter even if you’ve never been there.  If you’re a wine lover (and why would you be reading Power Tasting if you’re not?) you’re probably on a buyers’ list so you may have received their catalog in the mail.  It’s notable in the way that they highlight individual producers, mostly but not exclusively from California, and it makes good reading even if you’re not buying.  The wines in the catalog, for the most part, are the same wines you can order at the saloon.

The layout of the Bounty Hunter places the bar at the rear (unless you enter from the parking lot, in which case it’s the front) and restaurant tables at the street entrance.  The restaurant specializes in what the proprietors aptly describe as “Smokin’ BBQ”.  Although some of their wines do go with barbecue – Zinfandel always works for us – they have many high quality, rather delicate wines to choose from.  We think their idea is for you to drink a rough, tough wine with dinner and then take a bottle of Burgundy home with you.

The interior of the Bounty Hunter.  Photo courtesy of oenomad.com.

We must note the décor, which is notable for old Wild West posters, the heads of dead animals and a florid nude over the bar.  All that’s missing is a piano player.  You can easily imagine Black Bart walking through the front door to have it out with the sheriff.

It would all be very kitsch, except for that wine list.  The by-the-glass offerings change frequently.  You can look up the choices on their web site, but why bother.  As of this writing, they offer quite a few wines we know well (e.g., Veuve Cliquot, Frog’s Leap, Renwood, Chappelet) and then many more with which we are unacquainted such as Poetic Justice, Jigar or Ken Wright.  A sign of a good wine bar is that if you are comfortable with the wines you do know, you can have the confidence to experiment with the ones you don’t.  The Bounty Hunter also offers eleven flights of wines to help guide your experiments (including one to go with barbecue).

We don’t go to Napa Town without stopping for a glass or a meal at the Bounty Hunter.  We recommend that you do the same.

 

 

 

 

Going Wine Tasting with Friends or Relatives

Although there have been a few exceptions over the years, we mostly go wine tasting as a couple.  Our tastes in wine are not exactly the same, but they’re close enough that we generally like and occasionally dislike the same wineries.  It has happened that we have visited Wine Country with friends or relatives.  Some have been quite knowledgeable themselves and so having them along was simple.

But there have been other times when our friends knew little about wine, had never been wine tasting before and wanted to experience it with us. The objectives (well, our objectives, if not theirs) is to have a pleasant day, to introduce your guests to a pastime that you are fairly passionate about and to give them a sampling of some good wines.  Such a trip offers some nice opportunities but there are some pitfalls as well.

Photo courtesy of Food & Wine Magazine

Here are some tips for taking advantage of the former and avoiding the latter.

  • Make sure your friends will still be your friends when the day is over. Don’t be a wine snob; don’t talk down to them; don’t use fancy wine lingo.  Yeah, you knew that already but say it to yourself before you set off and repeat it several times during the day.  The temptation to brag is insidious and it can be overwhelming.
  • Make the day about more than wine. Plan a nice lunch, either a picnic or at a good café or deli.  Drive around in some of the prettier areas of the section of Wine Country you’re visiting that day.  Choose at least one winery with interesting architecture.  If possible, go somewhere you know the servers are good at explaining what they’re pouring.  All these steps will keep your friends from feeling overwhelmed.
  • Go easy on the top end wineries. There are all too many that charge you forty dollars or more for a few sips of the one or two wines they make.  For sure, these are some of the best winemakers in the world or at least they claim to be.  But if your friends don’t have the taste buds to distinguish between “very good” and “great” you’re probably not doing them a favor by visiting the heavy hitters.
  • On the other hand, don’t play down to your perception of their sophistication. Only go to places you would visit if you were on your own.  Your wine tasting adventures probably aren’t all Screaming Eagle and Château Margaux, so don’t show off.  A good idea would be to choose wineries with two tiers of tastings, with one from their lower priced, popular wines and another with their reserves.  That way your friends can taste these wines side by side.  They may prefer the easy drinking accessible wines, what’s wrong with that?
  • Focus the tastings on your friends, not yourself. Tell your server that you’ve tasted their wines before but it’s the first time for your friends.  This enables the server to pitch his or her spiel to the right level, educational for them and not too elementary for you.  You may come back some day and then you can get into all the intricacies you want.

The day will be a success if your friends enjoyed themselves and understood wine better than the day before.  It would be great if they decided to visit Wine Country again on another day.  But if they just added this day to their pleasurable memories and no more, that’s okay too.

Le Somail

On the eastern edge of the Minervois appellation in the southwest of France, there is a small village – a hamlet really – named Le Somail.  There are no vineyards immediately surrounding it, the nearest ones being only a few kilometers away.  When you are visiting wineries in the general area, leave yourself some time to visit this charming spot.

It has a certain Brigadoon quality, as though time had slowed down, if not stopped, in the 17th century.  That’s because Somail exists solely because it was at a convenient point between Toulouse and the Mediterranean Sea on the Canal du Midi.  It provided a stopping-off point for the boatmen and a harbor for their ships.

And so there were inns built, a bridge over the canal, a chapel, a few cafés.  They are all there today, some of them updated for the 21st century of course, with the enhancements done with a dash of French élan.  There are many boats, called péniches along the canal, and vacationers with rentals continue to steer their way (a bit shakily in some cases) under the ancient bridge.

The bridge is festooned with pots of flowers and offers a view of the hamlet and its boats.  One near to the bridge is quite a sight.  It’s a floating grocery store, good for a few provisions for the boaters and croissants for the locals in the morning.  It, too, hearkens back to another era.

The Epicerie Flottante, or the Floating Grocery Store

A good idea is to save your visit to Le Somail for lunchtime.  There is a row of outdoor cafés stretched along the southern bank of the canal, several of which have quite a reputation in the region.  Steve had one of the specialties, frog legs in a garlic cream sauce.  It was particularly delicious and would surely have been enough for two, except that Lucie doesn’t eat the little hopper sand could not even look at him eating them.

The southern bank also has all the requisite craft shops and galleries that seem to pop up wherever tourists gather.  They’re fine, but really no better than all the other sun dappled villages in the south of France.

On the other side of the bridge from the restaurants are several small hotel/guest houses and restaurants that offer fancier fare than the previously mentioned cafés.  The old chapel is worth a glance as well.  And there is a truly unique attraction: the Librairie Ancienne (the Old Bookstore) which claims to have 50,000 books, surely an undercount.  Of course, most of them are in French but there are plenty in all languages.  There are marvelous picture books to thumb, rare books to stare at under glass, comics, kids’ books, lithographs, engravings, antique maps and more.  If you are a bibliophile, you could get lost in there forever.

A partial view of the interior of the Librairie Ancienne

You can see all there is to see in Le Somail in an afternoon, lunch included, or you can stay for the night and really get the feel of the place.  It does come down to a choice, wine tasting or soaking up the atmosphere.  We chose the former, but not without a little twinge of regret as we pulled away.

Cantine Contucci

Vino Nobile de Montepulciano occupies an unusual place among the wines of Tuscany.  It is not as well known as Chianti, nor as esteemed as Brunello, as trendy as Maremma nor as expensive as Bolgheri.  But the Noble Wine is quite ancient, well respected and very delicious, in our opinion.  If you want to really learn about it, you have to visit the town of Montepulciano, the name of which causes considerable confusion.

There is also a grape called Montepulciano, best known in the form of a different wine, Montepulciano de Abruzzo, from the section of Italy east of Rome.  That wine is hearty, a bit rough and very widely available.  Quite often if you simply order a glass of red wine in an Italian restaurant in the US, you’ll get Montepulciano de Abruzzo.  The wine from Montepulciano is Vino Nobile.  If you visit the town, you’ll find many enotecas where you can try the local wines and also several tasting rooms from some of the better producers.

We recommend that you walk all the way up the hill to the Piazza Grande, home to the cathedral and the imposing city hall.  And tucked into a corner of the square is a stately palazzo where you can taste the wines of Contucci.  This was not our first encounter with these wines; we had ordered them in restaurants in both New York and Siena.  So the enjoyment we had in the elegant tasting room was in learning about the range of the wines that Contucci produces: notably several different Vino Nobiles, a Rosso de Montepulciano, and a Vin Santo dessert wine.  However…

The Contucci tasting room on the Piazza Grande in Montepulciano. Photo courtesy of Cantine Contucci.

If you go down the hill at the same corner of the piazza you will almost immediately see a door with a big sign above it announcing the Cantine Contucci.  No disrespect to the fine building on the piazza, but this is the place to visit.  Here you get a much more rustic and warmer welcome and you see the caves where the wines are aged in huge oak casks.

The other location to taste Contucci wines.  Photo courtesy of tripadvisor.it.

You will learn about the history of the Contucci family (over 1000 years in Montepulciano), their role in the development of Vino Nobile (attested in the 18th century), the popes who have visited and how Vino Nobile is made.  It has to be made with at least 70% Sangiovese (in Chianti it’s 80%) but then they mix in other local grapes such as Canaiolo Nero, Mammolo or Colorino.  Just to confuse matters further, in Montepulciano Sangiovese is called Prugnolo Gentile.

The wine casks in the cellars of Cantine Contucci.  Photo courtesy of Cantine Contucci.

We told the nice gentleman who was pouring wine that we had tasted his wines at the palazzo up the hill and he said we should just try them again.  We objected, he insisted and, oh well, why not.  If you want to combine good wine, good stories and some interesting history, a stop at the Cantine Contucci is just your thing.