Every now and then one comes across a wine that seems to tell you that you are enjoying a very rare experience.

Tasted 12/31/2023

One last entry for 2023. I’ll start a new post for 2024. New Year’s Eve we enjoyed stuffed cabbage with beer, so later in the evening with our “poo poo plater” I went to the cellar for something nice. I gave Alice the choice of France, Spain, California or South America. She chose California so I started looking at tags and the 2004 Kathryn Hall Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (14.3% abv) CA current vintage about $225 stood out as a wine I’ve passed over too many times and probably needed to be drunk. The wine is not ready for the “dead or alive” quandary but it certainly smells old and pretty dusty. Not corked, but the age is starting to develop some of those types of nuances. The color is great, beautifully clear with deep reddish brown highlights. Huge black fruit completely fused with earth and exotic aromatic cedar-like spice make one feel like this could be a wonderful. But, there the suggestion of youth ends. This is a massively complex wine, but unfortunately we should have opened it sooner. It is enjoyable to drink for people like us who like to contemplate the nuances that evoke memories of times, places and flavors encountered. But, I’d say most tasters would simply say “too old”. The balance is fine and for such a big wine I might even call it elegant. The finish is fine and clean. While searching for the abv, I noticed that it is “VINTED AND BOTTLED BY HALL”. This normally indicates that the winery bought a finished wine from elsewhere and then aged and bottled it at their winery. Supposedly, Kathryn Hall is a the apex of Hall wines utilizing their Sacrashe vineyard as a base plus other mountain vineyards, all from their own holdings. So the VINTED disclaimer suggests it is not only not estate bottled but not even produced at the Hall winery. If anyone can shed any light on this please press “reply” and fill me in. HAPPY NEW YEAR’S

Tasted 12/24-5/2023

It’s Christmas Eve, so that means crab cakes. Initially, I was thinking Spanish Verdejo but as I dug around, I figured, what the heck, it’s Christmas Eve. Why not go big? I love White Burgundy, but because of the price and because most of the time it isn’t any better than a $12 West Coast Chardonnay, I rarely take the dive. However, the Village Corner recently had an offer on a small “end of vintage” lot of 2018 Raymond Dufont-Fahn Auxey-Duresses “Les Vireux”, Bourgogne FRANCE (13%abv) $35, new vintage $50 and from Dick’s notes, it sounded like my kind of Burgundy at a price I could justify if it is that type of wine. To Alice’s and my delight, it is exactly the type of wine with the attributes for which I treasure White Burgundy. I’ve had good luck with Auxey-Druesses over the years. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with local tradition or maybe something in the soil that really excites my palate. But this seemingly obscure cru is just up the slope and adjacent to the Meursault Premier Crus and only a tad more than a four iron to the north of Le Montrachet. Even the color looks tantalizing. The nose is initially minerals and lemons but quickly embodies a rich sense of oak cooperage. No, it does not taste of oak, but the marvelous bacterial fermentation taking place in the oak barrel is very evident. Sure, you can induce ML in a steel tank, but this wine is far more complex with a rich, bright, sweet and sour buttery edge. The finish is seamless from the perfect balance of terroir and fruit to the traditional winemaking style exhibited throughout. I’m really kicking myself now for only buying a couple of bottles. I may just have to bite the bullet and pay the price for the 2020 on offer now.

For Christmas we were invited to dinner at the Lilly’s (my sister and brother-in-law) to have dinner with our niece and nephew as well as their children and our niece’s parents. So, with our niece’s appetizers of stuffed bacon-wrapped glazed dates and baked brie, I brought a few unusual wines that I was pretty sure no one had enjoyed previously. 2020 TIKVEŠ Alexandria Cuvee (60% Vranec/20% Merlot/20% Cabernet Sauvignon) (13% abv) MACEDONIA is a bottle Alice bought at Mega Bev for $16.99. I served this first assuming it would be more elegant and less powerful that what was coming next. This is a very stylish wine but really has a great deal of substance to it much in the same way that Bordeaux Petites Chateaux do. Up front, it offers fine, pure black fruit with presence but not over the top. On the palate, it is both mature and balanced while full of energy. The color looks much older than three years but it is sturdy and shows the balance and depth of a wine that will last. Next up, I poured 2018 Sonoran Wines Cochise County “Real De San Bernardino” (38% Mourvedre/33% Petite Sirah/24% Grenache) (15.3% abv) ARIZONA probably at least $25 purchased at the “Off the Vine” festival in Tucson. As I mentioned earlier, I assumed this would be a blockbuster, considering the abv. Yes, it is very ripe even a bit of raisin-like essence but the fruit is very pure and complex with a bit of exotic aromatics not unlike a wine affected by botrytis. It does indeed possess a Chateauneuf du Pape-like texture which is both smooth as silk yet with a grip. There is bright red fruit too owing to the Rhone varietals. It does not come across as big nor even with as much depth as the Tikves.

With the beef tenderloin and Béarnaise sauce we opened a couple of wines. First, a 2012 Ramey Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (14.5% abv) CA current vintage about $60 which I had decanted at home was poured. The color was still black red and only a hint of burnt Sienna at the meniscus and a bouquet that was massive. Tons of big strong black fruit, forest floor, and hints of cedar dominated with fleeting tertiary nuances abounding. The palate was much the same culminating in a very rich textured long finish. As it aired and as we ate more food, the wine really lightened up and seemed to actually take a back seat to the meat, tomatoes and fried onion laced mashed potatoes. As the meal developed, we poured a bottle of 2015 Talley Vineyards “Oliver’s Vineyard” Edna Valley Chardonnay (14.1% abv) CA current cost about $60 mostly demonstrated what a fine value the Auxey-Duresses above represented. This wine has all the components, stones, citrus, tropical fruit, oak and butter but somehow none of it seemed well knit or seamless. Don’t get me wrong, it is a nice wine and maybe with a bit more time may balance out, but, at eight years, what is it waiting for? My sister felt it was a poor substitute for Kendal-Jackson Vintners Reserve! We finished it during and after the salad course and I think I redeemed myself with our grand niece’s black cherry topped cheese cake. When visiting wineries, they often pour a small taste of a dessert wine when you’ve finished the table wines and they always seem so compellingly delicious that you imagine sharing them with friends and buy a bottle or two. But, once home and into the typical routine, we never drink them. I’ve got a ton of unique dessert wines that will probably never get consumed. So, with a get-together such as this, it offered a great opportunity to open a long forgotten bottle of 1994 Trentadue Alexander Valley Merlot Port (chocolate essence) (19% abv) CA about $20 per half bottle currently. I decanted this one at home too and like an authentic vintage port, there were gobs of sediment and plate-like chunks. Fortunately, the wine poured brilliantly clear with a hue just a tad redder than a glass of cognac. The nose was very much on the money resembling an aged tawny and the chocolate was a pleasantly subtle kiss of dusty cocoa. The extent to which these wines are nearly indestructible is remarkable. This is probably my last post for 2023, so have a great holiday season and we’ll pick up in the new year with lots of wine, food and fun.

Tasted 9/30/2023

My sister and brother in law came over today to watch UM demolish Nebraska so Alice decided to serve our stand by recipe of crab cakes but with a new sauce based on dill, mayo and chopped fresh Kosher dills. With this I served a 1994 Louis Latour Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Chenevottes (Chardonnay) Bourgogne Côtes de Beaune FRANCE (13% abv). My sister likes Chardonnay so I thought this would be a huge treat for her. Well……this is a fully mature Burgundy with lots of smells and flavors derived from its age more than from its fruit. Though everyone was polite, no one, especially my sister, liked it except for me. Yes, as a white wine ages, there is a very noticeable nutty, ripe banana-like subtlety that is never exhibited in wines under 10 years old. And, being almost 30, that component was hardly subtle. ‘94 was not a great vintage but all things considered, it did hold up as well as can be expected. If there was a disappointment for me it was the lack of body and structure. It was much more frail than I would have expected and most of the complexity was due to its age and little if any Burgundian identity, finesse or class made its way into the glass. Perhaps this would have been a better candidate for “Dead or Alive” than for “More Great Wines”. I would not age it another day, but, it isn’t quite dead yet.

Tasted 8/27/2023

Tonight’s dinner is one of our very favorites; marinated lamb loin chops, artichoke and twice baked potatoes. Alice was incredulous that I had not pulled out a special bottle of wine to accompany our meal. So, I dashed into the cellar and initially pulled out a South African Pinotage (we had just enjoyed a South African Chenin yesterday, see “Ann Arbor: a few reasons……” and scroll down to Busch’s Grocery) but I remembered that we do need to drink up our cellar so why not start with the best. Though by no means the most expensive, my favorite wine in the cellar was my choice. 2008 CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva Rioja SPAIN (13.5% abv) about $65 when purchased over the past 20 years or so had been the wine that always exceeded my memories of the previous vintage. And, this was a great bottle of wine, but did not exceed my memory of previous vintages nor meet my very high expectations. Yes, it is a great companion to lamb chops and it has all of the components that this wine has always provided but it is a long long way from best ever. The nose emphatically states its origin with sweet mahogany-like toasted oak and blackberry jam. The palate is more of that plus cedar, graphite and a hint of juniper all in proportion finishing with grape skin-like tannin. So what’s not to like. I DO like it, but, I believe that I’ve given every vintage since the 1960’s a perfect 20/20 and this is more like a 17 or 18/20. Indeed a fine wine but somehow lacking that extra dimension of silky olive-like overwhelming charm that pulls the taster in deeper and deeper as he sips and savors every drop as I’ve come to expect from this wine.

Tasted 4/20/2023

Today is Alice’s birthday so we splurged on a pizza with four toppings. How do you follow up on that with a birthday wine? I pulled out a 2008 Produttori del Barbaresco, Barbaresco Rio Sordo Riserva DOCG, Piedmont ITALY (14.5% abv) today’s price in the $85 range. This is one of Carl Tacey’s picks. All of the critics gave it high praise, big scores and seemed to think that sometime after 2018 would offer the prime drinking window. Was I ever surprised at how supple, fresh and lively it is. I knew it was nowhere near close to being too old, but, I had no expectation that it would be this easy drinking and fresh either. If I had tasted it blind and had been given 20 questions, I’m sure I would have been stumped. Unlike most Barbaresco’s that we’ve enjoyed, it is very rich and dark black red. Normally, Nebbiolo is about the color of a Pinot Noir. It is so bright and juicy that it resembles a Grenache based cru such as Chateauneuf du Pape or Gigondas back before the Parker palate influenced the Southern Rhone. It is not closed, brooding or hard. The finish is big yet not terribly tannic. The balance is ideal and although it will surely last a long time, it is neither tough nor gives you the feeling that you need a tongue scrubbing. Yet it smells and tastes exactly like what you’d expect a great single vineyard Barbaresco to smell and taste like without the oppressive mouth feel. It gives me hope that serious Italian wine can be fun and friendly. What a delightful surprise to find such an agreeable easy-to-enjoy birthday wine!

Tasted 2/7/2023

I choose to write about this 2013 Franciscan Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Estate CA originally about $20 not because this wine will go down in the annals of great wine but because of the curious way in which this brand has ceased to be. As Franciscan Estates used to say about its flagship wine “a wine with a reason for being” is now simply a brand with no real legacy or identity. Back when this bottle of wine was made, Franciscan Estates had a very imposing winery complete with a grand fountain and vineyards rubbing elbows with the who’s who in Napa Valley. A while back, I noticed while in the wine aisle at Meijer that the appellation on the Franciscan Cab was Monterey. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Why on earth would the owners (Constellation Brands) ditch generations of winemaking history and decades worth of tourists good will along with memories of this quite majestic winery right on Hwy 29? It seemed inconceivable until I went on Google Maps to take a street-side view of the place and saw the name out front of the winery; The Prisoner Wine Company. Makes sense now. Plus, Constellation had an eager buyer for the brand name; E&J Gallo who seems to have filled their portfolio with legacy brand names without any bearing on what made those wines famous in the first place. So, like so many of today’s products, especially those marketed by Gallo, Franciscan is just a marker taking up a place on the shelf to guarantee Gallo a larger market share in every category, every price point. What is in the bottle no longer matters. Having bought The Prisoner Wine Company from David Phinney in 2016, why not locate one of the hottest brands in the valley right where throngs of tourists congregate? Sorry to say, legacy wineries are few these days with everyone giving the utmost attention to what’s hot. Like most things American, wine legacies are short lived with the very short attention span of the wine drinking public. Tasting this 2013 Cab was quite enjoyable in that we’d been drinking Finger Lakes reds for the past week or so and it was really nice to lean into a quintessential California Cab. This is not a great wine by any means though like most of the wines from long standing legacy wineries with well located vineyards, it has class, identity and just enough of a nod to fat ripe fruit and toasty oak to show itself as unmistakably American. Surely those grape vines are still in the ground providing fruit for someone in Napa Valley (maybe The Prisoner WIne Company?) but, whatever the outcome, one can be certain it will cost more than this bottle of Franciscan Cab.

Tasted 1/23/2023

It has been quite a while since Alice and I have enjoyed a really superb white Rioja. In the 1990’s we purchased a white Marques de Murietta in the Toronto train station. How unlikely it was that of the dozen or so bottles of wine that they had in stock one of them would have been a very old white Rioja that by the dust and leaky capsule looked like it had been there a long time. It was one of the two finest white wines I’ve ever tasted. The other being a bottle of white Federico Paternina Rioja that we tasted at the winery on a visit to Spain in 2003. It was 40 years old and the finest white wine I’ve ever tasted. So today with our shrimp and mushrooms in garlic sauce with curry seasoned spaghetti (purchased at the farmers market in Tucson), I popped the cork on a bottle of 2011 R Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia, Viña Gravonia (Viura) Rioja Crianza SP ($34.99 at the Village Corner). It was probably a bit big for the dish or so Alice insisted. But, I thought is was a perfect companion. The wine is HUGE but the garlic, hot peppers, sweet shrimp, curry and Parmesan aren’t exactly bland flavors either. The nose mostly focuses on the citrus scents laced with caramel and tropical fruit while the creamy buttery toasted oak explodes as it enters your mouth. For just a second, I might have agreed with Alice, but as soon as it slid across the palate, the acid kicked in making the experience as refreshing as it was complex and potent. I’m not sure if it was in the same league as the previous two wines that I mentioned above, but this wine is still just a baby at age 12. This is a very rare style of Rioja white wine that few produces make anymore. And, those that do rarely export it to the US.

Tasted 12/31/2022

I received a note from an old friend, DuWayne Schuler, who I worked for in the 1970’s, that he had opened and to his surprise, thoroughly enjoyed a bottle of 1966 Inglenook Pinot Noir. With every expectation of dumping it down the drain, to his delight, the wine was still alive, showed fine Pinot fruit, the color of a much younger wine and enough texture and complexity to make it a really interesting, albeit old, fine wine. So, Alice asked me to break out an old bottle of our own to accompany Popeye’s Louisiana Chicken while watching the TCU vs UM football game with Linda and George Lilly. Somehow, in the move from W Michigan, I seem to have lost my first and last edition of Robert Parker’s BORDEAUX*. I may have even given it away thinking that every word of either book would be on line. So, I was really limited regarding information on Bordeaux wines from 1979-1985 which was the range I had decided would fit the occasion. But, from what I could glean, several of the wines I still had in the cellar might well be holding well though probably well past their peak. I decided on a 1979 Chateau La Lagune Haut Medoc Grand Cru Classe Bordeaux FR currently about $80 for the 2019 vintage. This is a wine that we had acquired from the late John Beadle’s widow Sue when she moved to Florida permanently. Like all of his wines, this was stored in a very cool, pitch dark basement cellar from the original date of purchase which in this case was GB Russo in the early 1980’s. The color was remarkably saturated and red at the core with only a slight burnt Sienna appearing in the meniscus. The smell was very mature with loads of classic Left Bank cedar, classy fine earthiness and leather while the palate still provided fruit essence not unlike a strawberry confection might. I was really surprised that although fully mature, maybe even well past its prime, there was no really old sense to it and though it certainly was in decline, it wasn’t going to die any time soon. In short, it tasted like just about every fine mature Bordeaux that I’ve ever enjoyed. The soft middle and gentle finish clearly illustrated that this wine was never a blockbuster but rather a testament to the finesse, complexity and ageability of classic Bordeaux. Not a wine of the century but as solid and enjoyable as it gets. *I just received new copies of Parker’s BORDEAUX and in the book published in 1985 he states that wines from this chateau are fully mature in 10 years and the 1979 should be ideal from 1987 to 1995. In the newer book published in 1998, he states that the last time he tasted it in 1989, it needed to be drunk NOW! Well, 24 years after “now” it is still hanging in there.

Tasted 12/24/2022

Tonight with turkey and all the fixings we had our last bottle of 2007 Simi Alexander Valley Landslide Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon. Although this brand still exists and sells for about $50 I cannot vouch for the origins of the current lots. Once upon a time, this magnificent wine was grown on unique mineral rich volcanic soil which resulted from an ancient eruption of Mt. St. Helena in which the top of the mountain blew off and landed in Alexander Valley. When gigantic multinational companies buy brands, sometimes the source of the grapes stays the same and sometimes it is simply a brand with no connection to anything unique or lasting. I keep saying that I’ve got to taste a current vintage of Simi Landslide to find out, but, one can neither delve into the past nor transport to the future so I guess there is really no way to know what a 2018 Simi Landslide will taste like unless we live another ten years and taste it then. So, I’ll just be content to know what a fine wine we experienced tonight. Like it’s brother (see “Dead or Alive” Tasted 6/15/19 for a review of the 2005) the nose is completely mature but in no way old. It could just as easily be 40 years old as ten. So, at age 16, it is fully resolved with classic cedar, tobacco and leather scents superimposed on berry liqueur aromas. There is something about the greatest Cabernet and Merlot based wines that all have that. The palate is starting to dry out a little though there is still an abundance of sweet fruit scents and a lingering feel of juicy acidic youthfulness coming through the quite tannic mouthcoating mid palate. Though it tastes exactly like the 2005, it is not nearly as perfect of a wine. Though certainly in the same class as the top Bordeaux and California Cabs, the balance is not quite as balanced. A great wine nonetheless. If I were to give the 2005 a 100 point score, the 2007 would probably be a 93; an experience to remember.

I will add to this column as we encounter magnificent one of a kind wines.

Enjoy in Good Health,

A Brian Cain, the Michigan VIntner