skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A tasting seminar with Woodford Reserve Master Distiller Chris Morris raised the big question about branded spirits: where's the fine line between branded marketing and artisanal quality? Whisk(e)y producers from both Kentucky and Scotland love to cloak themselves in the aura of old traditional products, produced back in the hills for generation on generation. In truth, the modern distilleries in both countries have their roots firmly planted in the industrial revolution.
Mr. Morris was very up front with the issue. While there over 300 brands of Kentucky whiskey on the market, there are only 10 distilleries, a fact that is at odds with the current fascination with local and authentic sourcing. Mr. Miller emphasizes this fact since Woodford Reserve is a single brand that comes from a single distillery, leaving over 299 brands to come out of the remaining 9.
But Woodford is a young brand. It was the vision of Owsley Brown, chairman of Brown-Forman, the large (but family held) diversified producer of wines and spirits who saw the need for a super-premium Kentucky Bourbon. It was released in Kentucky in 1996. After four years, the market was expanded into neighboring states, then was released nationwide. Not exactly your grand-daddy's mythic whiskey.
So, when the clouds of marketing are swept away, how's the product? Pretty tasty. And for solid reasons that will ring true with artisanal authenticity.
Grain: 72% food grade #1 dimple yellow corn grown in Shelby County, Ky.,18% Dakota grown rye, 10% Milwaukee Malted Barley. Most Bourbon recipes use 5%. Malted Barley provides enzymes that help release the sugars.
Water: unfiltered limestone well water. No surface water which is required to be treated by the FDA.
Yeast: like most distilleries, they grow their own. However they only used a small amount of the sour mash and ferment twice as long as most distilleries to give a rich, flowery, fruity character to the beer.
Pot still: triple distillation utilizing three copper pot stills. The lower temperature of the pot stills brings more flavors through the distillation.
Maturation: Barrels are wine toasted before charring. The whiskey is proofed to 110 before barrel entry. Barrels are selected by flavor in lots of 100 for bottling. The last batch Chris bottled had dates ranging from Nov 2002 to March 2003 making the whiskey 8-9 years old.
They did their homework and made all the right-sounding decisions about putting a product together. How does it taste?
Complex aromas of vanilla wafers, butter, butterscotch, pralines, burnt orange and cinnamon are framed by floral perfumes. The whiskey is smooth and luxurious on the palate with notes of vanilla, honey, and butterscotch followed by spicy orange peel and caramel with anise highlights and a long finish with vanilla and white chocolate. Delicious by itself, dry enough to use for cocktails.
It's red.
It has a little age but not too much.
After that, it's anyone's guess. Ahh, we were a little better than that. It was a small group that gathered around the conference table on a recent Sunday afternoon to enjoy some wines. And taste them blind. No theme. Just bottles in brown bags or decanters. In the name of family and responsibility (???) we decided to keep it down to one bottle per participant, but there was question whether bottles of white or bubbles really counted.
The first wine showed pale gold straw and a delicate mousse that quickly subsided to a still presence in the glass. Showing subtle streaks of honey through racy minerals. Notions of champagne (and especially not THAT ONE Mr B!) were quickly dispelled by the lack of yeasty creaminess. The beams of honey reminded Corey of a Cremant Vouvray he had had recently and that's what it was. 2005 Petillant from Domaine Huet.
Last February, I briefly wrote about Barolo Chinato after a trip to New York City. The post was about cocktails and the Chinato had been used in a Manhattan. The Manhattan was consumed in Brooklyn, to be precise.
I had become aware of Chinato sometime in the previous year and it quickly became something of an obsession. Finally, at Christmas of '09 I acquired a couple of bottles of Barolo Chinato. One was a gift from my son Travis who brought a bottle of Vergano Chinato from the big city. It was a deep red with rich cherry tones.The other bottle was purchased from Susan's Fine Wines and Liquor in Santa Fe where my other son Michael is the assistant manager. That bottle was produced by Boroli, a Barolo producer, and was much darker with darker fruits and chocolate and creosote undertones. In Brooklyn, we acquired a bottle of Vergano Americano which is made with Grignolino. The Americano is lighter than the Nebbiolo based Chinatos and that is what we used in the drinks in lieu of sweet vermouth.
All quite delicious and though dolled out in small portions, the bottles did not last long. Well, the quality held up, but consumption, not deterioration was the problem. I grilled suppliers here in Dallas, but no one had any in stock. Chinato. It's what I craved.
You might ask, "What is all the fuss about?"
Start with Barolo wine (made from the Nebbiolo grape). Age the wine for a year in a barrel. Then infuse the aromatics and age for another four years. The proprietary recipes for the infusion always start with cinchona bark (quinine) and wormwood and go from there into clove, cardamom, cinnamon and beyond. Production has always been tiny and the cost expensive.
Chinato is sweetened and lightly fortified. Extremely aromatic with rich complex flavors, it starts sweet and moves to bitter and finishes sweet. Heavy textures finish with a light refreshing flourish.
Dr. S asked me what I knew of Chinato last week and the dormant cravings came back in a heartbeat. And what do you know, one of our suppliers had a few bottles in stock, so I procured a bottle for Dr. S and bought a bottle myself. I shared it with my colleagues and now we are all in agreement: Chinato, it's what wineguys crave.
Despite the lack of evidence on these pages, I am still alive and well, eating and drinking...
Met this morning with Joe Cafaro, winemaker. He makes about a thousand cases a year of Cafaro wines, mainly Cabernet and Merlot. When the vintage is right he makes a reserve tier called Alta Tierra.
Joe's a little old school. His goal is to make wines to go with food, so he tries to avoid the high sugar, maximum ripeness, blockbuster style. He picks at lower sugar levels so his wines will be totally dry around 13.5%. And he wants good acid levels, so he picks a little earlier than most grower/winemakers! Which means his wines have a more European feel to them, and like European wines, Joe's are a little more dependent on the ripeness of the vintage.
The first few years I tasted Joe's wines he was using purchased fruit as he waited for his vineyard (planted in 1996) to mature. The northen edge of the hillside vineyard touches the southern border of the Stags Leap AVA, Joe's immediate neighbor is Shafer. For the last few years the wines have been made with grapes from estate vineyards and the quality has been much more consistent. We tasted the current releases this morning, all from outstanding vintages and the wines were just delicious.
The 2007 Merlot featured deep juicy black fruit with velvety texture and spicy acids on the finish. It would be perfect with any meats or with rich, oily fish or seafood dish like paella or cioppino. The 2006 Cabernet shows deeper black fruit with cedar notes and integrated tannins. Rich textures and good acid keep the wines alive on the finish. Both wines are blends with small percentages of Cabernet Franc and Petite Verdot. All the wines are vinified separately then blended.
The current Alta Tierra is a treat. 2002 Cabernets were characterized by outstanding integration of the fruits and tannins and the Alta Tierra is no exception. It exudes balance and elegance.
Holy Cow!!!
It had been a while. I guess it took some time for the reverberations to subside after our last Blind Tasting w-a-a-a-y back in May (????) Yes. Back in May. That was a doozy!
Scott courageously tried to rally the troops for a Sunday get together before Thanksgiving but couldn't raise sufficient muster. A couple of voices tried to bring together a small group, but by then even Scott had other plans. Finally three of us got together early on a cloudy Sunday with a couple of newcomers and pulled some corks out of some bottles.
As always, tasting blind is just a damned intimidating endeavor. Our newcomers were a little hesitant about speaking out, but we prodded and were rewarded with some great insights. It's easy to be intimidated by display of wine knowledge, but that's just book learning. We are all tasters and we all bring a lifetime of tasting experience to the tasting. Then it just becomes association of flavor with experience and any answer based on experience is valid. If vocabulary differs from the standard 'sommelier' descriptors, the somm's should pay attention to the differences and learn. In a blind tasting all are naked before the wine. On to the wines...
#1: Dark ruby in color, not showing much color change, but doesn't have the bright lustre of a young wine. The rim doesn't show much glycerin, everyone's in agreement that it's definitely old world, which is confirmed by the earthiness on the nose. Flavors speak of red and black fruits and darkness. Speculation focuses on Spain, then the Rhone. 1999 Hermitage from Guigal.
#2: Opaque and ruby, turning to brownish red on the edge of the rim. Old World for sure. The group surges over the familiar ground of cedar, dried fruits and hints of mint kissed barnyard. Bordeaux? Yes. Pauilliac? Yes. Age? Not twenty years old, better than '97 or 98, must be 1996. Yes! Do we have to start guessing estates? No, it's the classic Pauilliac, Chateau Pontet-Canet, 1996. The second vintage after Alfred Tesseron became the proprietor and began to initiate the drive to the exalted quality the estate has achieved in recent vintages.
#3) New wine! Bright red fruit jumps out of the glass supported by dark undertones and massive oak and vanilla. I was not alone in writing down the name of a property right off the bat, ( I had it pegged as a precocious 2007 Cabernet from Napa.) But I was thrown off by the oak, vanilla and tannins. The wine showed way too much cherry for Cabernet. As the spectacular wine opened in the glass, we chased and guessed around the world and never did get it. 2007 Aquilon, ultra-ripe Garnacha from Alto Moncayo in Campo de Borja. The immense wine is typical of the work of the renowned Australian winemaker, Chris Ringland.
#4) Another younger wine. Rich, dark and opulent in the glass, it has the appearance of a ripe New World wine. Intense aromas of cassis, cedar, vanilla, smoke and espresso follow through on the palate. The long gripping finish is tinged with a perfumed minerality. Despite the ripeness, the wine has an Old World sensibility. Not Bordeaux, not Spainish. It must be Italian and could only be a Super-Tuscan. 2004 Petrona Galatrona.
#5) After a whiff of funk which blows off quickly, the aromas of the last wine show copious black fruit with hints of herbs and vanilla. Once more we venture to say that it tastes like Napa Cabernet, but this time we're correct. A bit of age is correctly noted! 2003 Arns Estate.
And that was it! All that was left was to sit and visit with each other and revisit the wines and compare and contrast. We all had intended to leave around 3, but we stayed until 4:30, but that's the magic of wine: it creates a place where time and space are suspended and friends are made.
It was a crisp cold Sunday with clear blue skies. It was noon as I was driving home, when I was seized by a craving for tamales. A quick check revealed no other lunch plans, so I cruised by the Dallas Tortilla and Tamale Factory, picked up a quick two dozen, a bag of chips some of their incendiary hot sauce and headed for the house.
The tamales were still warm, we just grated some cheese, drizzled some hot sauce and melted the cheese in the microwave. They were moist,meaty and delicious with the rich flavors of pork and fat (they still use lard) permeating the masa. Delicious and comforting.
The meal called for beer and we pulled a large 750 ml bottle of Chipotle Porter from Mikkeller, a dark, rich ale brewed with Chipotle Peppers. The rich, bitter chocolate flavors faded to reveal the spice of the peppers punctuating the finish. The porter integrated well with the rich corn and took the flavors down into earthiness.
We don't hear a lot about European craft breweries. Part of the reason is the highly developed level of craft in traditional European breweries, which provide the inspiration and models for the American craft brewers. Europe does not have the great void of quality beer that has afflicted the America's until recently.
Mikkeller is based in Copenhagen and their products are just now beginning to penetrate the Southwest.
The cold, gray rainy day gave rather certain credence to the fact that the baseball season was finally over. In the space of a few hours the fact that just yesterday the Rangers were playing in the sunshine of the World Series seemed a distant illusion.
After spending the morning napping in the hospital receiving an antiviral infusion, I decided to head to Grailey's new location in the design district to taste through the wine portfolio of Kermit Lynch, the legendary importer of artisinal French wines. The warm, cozy room lined with great bottles of wine seemed like the perfect place to be.
Kermit Lynch's Sales Director Bruce Neyers was pouring at the first table. I know Bruce because Sigel's carries his wines and I've poured Neyers wines with Bruce at several tastings, so encountering him here was slightly out of context. I listened and tasted as he poured and commented on the wines. A few of the my favorites:
Chateau Ducasse Blanc 2009 Bordeaux Blanc; Chateau Graville Lacoste 2009 Graves Blanc - These wines are made by the same winemaker from the same blend of grapes (Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and a dash of Muscadelle) but are separated by about 5 miles. The Ducasse is actually in Sauternes (but is finished bone dry, hence the Bordeaux Blanc appellation) and the clay soil gives the wine a soft, richer setting for the the dry citrus infused flavors. The gravelly soil of the Graves gives the same flavors a steely mineral character. Both are delicious, it's a matter of style!
The 2008 Morgon from Domaine Lapierre was something of a revelation. The wine comes from 45 year old vines farmed "bio-dynamic" and is made naturally without additional yeasts, enzymes or SO2. Violet perfumes and gentle fruits lead to flavors that start subtly and delicate and grow in authority as the wine is enjoyed and swallowed. Gentle tannins and vibrant acids keep the perfumes alive on the finish. Great Beaujolais is so hard to find and so misunderstood.
Next up were the Burgundy's from Domaine de Villaine. Yes, the same de Villaine family as DRC. But these wines are from Bouzeron, Rully and Mercurey in the Cote de Chalonnaise just to the south of the famous slope of the Cote d'Or. The fruit does not offer the potential of the famous slopes, so the work in the vineyards and the cellar must be impeccable and that describes these wines: clean, crisp, focused and delineated. The Bouzeron, made from Aligote was Chablis-like in its lean attack. The 'Les Clous" Bourgogne Blanc opened up in breadth and the Rully gave hints of vanilla and spice to the lean and focused wine. Lightning quick with hints of richness, these wines could only come from Burgundy. Two reds were offered, "La Fortune" and "La Digoine," both from Mercurey. "What is the difference?" we were asked. The two wines tasted the same, pinot perfume with lean red fruit and a mineral finish, yet one was clearly richer. The wines were from the same vineyard. The difference was about the age of the vines: about twenty years.
The wine was weaving its spell. I was rediscovering the magic of the French wines in the warmth of the room on a cold dreary afternoon.
French wines captured my imagination in the early seventies as I discovered wine and read and reread Hugh Johnson's World Atlas and Frank Schoonmaker's Encylopedia of Wine. My battered copy still has old labels that I steamed off bottles thirty five years ago. By the nineties, good California wines had outgrown what I was willing to spend and Cotes du Rhone became my standard alternative to dreary bottles of domestic Cabernet and Chardonnay. When I started working as a wine consultant ten years ago, Rhone wines became a passion which was culminated when I went to for Sigel's and was able to go to France one of Bobby Kacher's legendary 'death marches.' We tasted and drank wine from 10 in the morning to 10 at night as we visited properties from the Languedoc up the Rhone River to Burgundy. (It's a young man's trip!
And so I was reconnected to that magic as I left de Villaine and headed for the last table to taste with Daniel Brunier, the proprietor of Vieux Telegraph in Chateauneuf du Pape. The 2009 Le Pigeoulet Rouge, a vin de pays de Vaucluse stole my heart. Offering warm fruits, focused with a slight grip on the finish, it brought me back to the soul of wine. Simple, but with subtle complexity, not so showy that it demands to be the star of the evening, but certainly capable of spreading its magic over a table with food and friends. And priced so you can enjoy a bottle or two and not worry about the cost.
Of course the 2009 Vieux Telegraph was its big rich self, dark and brooding and not too structured so as to offer immediate pleasure. The Bruniers also produce the wines of Domaine la Roquete, a Chateauneuf du Pape and the 2007 L'Accent de Roquete, a cuvee that is 90% Grenache and 10% Mourvedre. I find that Rhone wines that are 100% Grenache generally have an empty spot on the backside of the finish. The Mourvedre filled that spot with authority! L'Accent is not made every year. There was no 2008, the 09 will be released next September.
What a way to finish a great tasting! Yikes, I spent a lot more time at the tasting than I had intended and there was something else I had to do that afternoon. I remembered, VOTE. So as I said my farewells and headed for the door, Bill asked me if I'd had any of this wine as he pulled a bottle out from under the table: Le Montrachet 2006 from Domaine Amiot. No, I hadn't, but that was soon remedied. Rich, golden chardonnay; redolent of baked pears and apples, mouth-filling and luscious, it was great wine. But I expected fireworks and excitement, I expected to be dazzled and blown away, and I wasn't. Not like I had been earlier by the impeccable wines from much less prestigious vines.
