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We Interrupt This Blog to Bring You: Vinography Jr.

I wrote this post in advance, knowing that I'd probably have to throw it up here at the last minute and sprint. Things might be a little erratic around here for the next couple of weeks, thanks to a new addition to the Vinography family.

See what happens when you drink wine? Let this be a lesson to you. A few good nights with a few good bottles, and nine months later? Pop. Just like a cork.

So we're off to the hospital with a bottle of Krug, and you probably won't see a post here for a few days while we get to know our daughter, Sparrow Lieu. I know it will be tough, but you'll just have to hang in there without your daily dose. Perhaps you can wait in anticipation that my tasting notes will go off the deep end as I'm making them in a state of complete sleep deprivation when I resurface. Lord knows I'll need a good glass of wine.

Cheers!

Alder

Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival: May 16-18, Philo, CA

California Pinot Noir lovers take note. Wine lovers with a free weekend, listen up. It's Spring, and the wine events are coming fast and furious. It seems like every week there's a new wine tasting to go to. But some are more worth paying attention to than others.

Anderson Valley is known for two things in California, and not coincidentally, it has more or less two major wine tasting events per year. The first, the International Alsace Varietals festival took place a few months ago, and I was sadly prevented from attending.

The second is the annual Pinot Noir Festival, which it looks like I'll also be unable to attend, much to my disappointment. But if you're a fan of Pinot Noir and you don't have plans this coming weekend, I seriously recommend it. It's definitely worth the three hour drive.

Not only is this a gorgeous time of year in the Anderson Valley, but the Pinot Noirs on offer include a few of the better ones in the state. This isn't a huge tasting, and consequently you'll find very few huge wineries there. Instead you'll find a bunch of small, dedicated growers and producers pouring their (mostly) small production wines.

The event includes a technical conference and BBQ on Friday May 16th. One of the guys speaking at the technical conference is John Winthrop Haeger, author of North American Pinot Noir, which is one of the definitive works on the grape. Saturday features the grand tasting and winemaker dinners, and those who choose to stay through Sunday can wander around to the many open houses hosted by the valley's wineries.

Participating wineries include: Baxter Winery, Black Kite Cellars, Breggo Cellars, Brogan Cellars, Cakebread Cellars, Copain Wines, Drew, Elke Vineyards, Foursight Wines, Goldeneye Winery, Greenwood Ridge Vineyards, Gryphon Wines, Handley Cellars, Harmonique, Husch Vineyards, Jim Ball Vineyards, La Crema, Lazy Creek Vineyards, Londer Vineyards, MacPhail Family Wines, Madrigal Vineyards, Navarro Vineyards, Phillips Hill Estates, Philo Ridge Vineyards, Raye's Hill Vineyards & Winery, Roederer Estate, Roessler Cellars, Saintsbury, Scharffenberger Cellars, Standish Wine Company, Toulouse Vineyards, Williams Selyem and Zina Hyde Cunningham Winery.

The full conference details can be found on the event web site.

11th Annual Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival
Grand Tasting
Saturday, May 17th, 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Goldeneye Winery
9200 Highway 128
Philo, CA 95466
707-895-3202

The $85 tickets to the Grand Tasting can (and should) be purchased in advance online. The Friday technical conference will cost you an additional $100 (yes there is wine to taste at this event), and winemaker dinners vary in price.

If you are driving up for the event, I recommend giving yourself a bit of extra time to get there. Perhaps drive up in the morning and have some breakfast before the tasting.

Hamilton Russell Pinot Noir Walker Bay 2006

Very elegant, with ripe, alluring red and black cherry fruit nicely layered with hints of sweet spice, mineral and mocha. The long, tangy finish lets the minerality play out and pulls you back for more. Shows better length and integration than previous vintages. This wine has good track record, and it's getting even better. Drink now through 2013. 5,380 cases made.

Columbia Crest Two Vines Vineyard 10 White Washington 2006

A juicy, zippy style of white wine that has ripe pear and pineapple flavors, a polished texture and a tangy finish. Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon, Viognier and others. Drink now. 30,000 cases made.

Terredora Fiano di Avellino Terre di Dora 2006

Has subtle aromas of banana, cream and fresh pineapple, with some mineral. Full-bodied, with lots of white pepper, mineral and lemon. Long and lively. Drink now. 14,000 cases made.

FERRANTE WINE FARM

5 of 5 stars -

The Winery at Wolf Creek

5 of 5 stars -

The Winery at Raven's Glenn

5 of 5 stars -

Candlelight Winery

1 of 5 stars -

BREITENBACH WINE CELLARS First Crush

5 of 5 stars -

Mellow mouthful

2007 Franciscan Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley, about $18. The sheer prettiness of this wine justifies its somewhat loft price tag, in my view. It's a little softer and not as piercingly acidic as other Sauvignon Blancs, and instead of grapefruit...

L'Ecole No. 41 Cabernet Sauvignon Walla Walla Valley 2005

Lithe, elegant and refined, this silky-textured red shows layers of raspberry, red cherry and sweet red pepper flavors that linger gently on the polished finish. Drink now through 2013. 1,761 cases made.

Michel Torino Torrontés Cafayate Valley Cuma 2007

Fresh and bright, with tasty green almond, kiwifruit, clementine and floral notes. The lively finish shows nice definition. Drink now. 14,583 cases made.

Conundrum California 2006

Floral and aromatic, with peach, nectarine and spicy melon flavors that are intense and vivid, lingering on the finish. Has a fleshy texture and refreshing acidity. Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat Canelli, Chardonnay and Viognier. Drink now. 86,000 cases made.

Meteor Vineyard, Napa: Debut Releases

Barry Schuler may know a thing or two about running multi-billion dollar technology companies, but what he really wants to talk about, given the chance, is food and wine. The former CEO of AOL, Schuler often gets credited along with Steve Case (who preceded Schuler as CEO) for the company's success in the late Nineties. But while his colleagues and most of America's top technology executives were returning home at the end of their long days to comfortable suburbs near major metropolitan areas, at the end of the week Schuler was making his way back to Napa, California. Schuler may have been one of the country's top technology executives, but now he spends as much time thinking about wine as he does anything else.

Schuler says that he can remember wanting to live in Napa as early as the age of 18. In addition to dabbling in photography and filmmaking as a teenager, he says, "I was really into cooking. And drinking." His obsession with food and wine, led him to the altar of Alice Waters' restaurant Chez Panisse, which he visited for the first time in 1974 on the pretense of considering a graduate degree at UC Berkeley. Instead of attending his interviews and exploring the campus, however, Schuler dined at Chez Panisse, and drove to Napa, where he spent days wandering around in a daze. "It was like mecca," he says, "like I was hit by a lighting bolt. It truly was amazing. I decided then and there that I had to figure out how to live [in Napa] someday."

By his own account, Schuler spent the next 15 years "chasing French wine" and working out the math that would get him back to the Napa valley. While he wasn't in his own kitchen dreaming of his future Napa estate, Schuler was busy making a name for himself in the emerging world of digital interactive media. He founded an early advertising agency to serve the emerging home and business computing market, then ran one of the first successful Macintosh software companies, and finally ended up founding an interactive design agency called Medior, with several colleagues, including Tracy Goldman, who is now his wife.

Schuler finally moved to Napa in 1989, settling closer to the town of Napa than to the centers of culinary and wine activity farther up the valley, because he was attracted to the change he saw underway in and around the city of Napa. "It was a train wreck in those days," says Schuler, but he saw something of a diamond in the rough in the scrabbly area to the east and north of town known as Coombsville. When he finally decided he wanted a bit of land on which he might one day plant some grapes, "mostly just to sell, I was thinking," he says, "I started looking in Coombsville." Good lots were not immediately forthcoming, so Schuler would spend several years poking around the area until in 1998, when someone told him that a 35 acre parcel was due to be sold in the area, and that he might want to take a look at it.

After rounding the shoulder of the hill and seeing the view of a green cow pasture roll out from underneath the mossy shade of oaks all the way to the San Francisco Bay in the distance, Schuler purchased the property on the spot, thinking he'd figure out whether it could grow grapes later.

What Schuler ended up with is an interesting geologic and climatologic anomaly in the region. The hilltop of ash and clay soil is layered thinly on a deep base of round river stones, and sits up higher than most surrounding points in the traditionally cooler region of Napa. This makes the property a little island of heat that misses much of the fog influence that creeps up from neighboring Carneros and the wind patterns that sweep through the rest of the region, which is a pending AVA (American Viticultural Area) under the name Tulocay.

With the help of vineyard consultant Michael Wolf, close friends Bill and Dawnine Dyer, (of Dyer Vineyards) and friend Tony Soter (of Etude Wines) set about carefully establishing their 22 acre vineyard, still with the idea that they'd sell the grapes, and perhaps make just a tiny bit of wine for themselves. After some struggles, the vineyard began yielding grapes in 2003, and by the time the 2004 grapes were going into bottle, it was clear that the fruit was on track to being exceptional. The folks who had purchased the initial lots of grapes were clamoring for more, and new requests were constantly being made.

"At that point," says Schuler, "we couldn't resist." Barry and Tracy enlisted the Dyers to make them 40 cases of wine from the 2004 harvest, and asked them to become the official winemaking team for their first commercial release in 2005. For the name of their project they selected a rephrasing of Medior, the company that had brought them together, and arguably made possible the fulfillment of Barry's teenage dreams. For their label they chose the silhouette of the solitary, ancient oak tree that anchors the center of their vineyards.

Most of Meteor Vineyard's grapes are still sold to select wineries around the valley, but the family holds back enough fruit to make about 700 cases of their estate Cabernet, and about 90 cases of their Special Family Reserve, which represents the best barrels from each vintage.

TASTING NOTES:
2004 Meteor Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Coombsville/Tulocay, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine has a perky nose of nutty, cherry aromas that are tinged with hints of tobacco and anise. In the mouth its initial impression is of brightness and good acidity, with earthier flavors of tobacco, leather, cherry, and a hint of "stemmy" green wood that doesn't keep the wine from being tasty. Score: around 9. This wine is not commercially available.

2005 Meteor Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Coombsville/Tulocay, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in the glass, this wine bursts from the glass with bright cherry and chocolate aromas that are followed rapidly with sweet tobacco and vanilla scents. In the mouth it is silky, even sexy, on the tongue, with a nice weight to it. The wine is juicy, with acidity that might even be slightly too sharp in comparison to the rest of the beautiful lush cherry and cedar fruits that mingle with pipe tobacco to finish with great length and satisfaction. I would expect this wine to smooth out in the next year or so in the bottle, and continue to improve for several more. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $225.

2005 Meteor Vineyard "Special Family Reserve" Cabernet Sauvignon, Coombsville/Tulocay, Napa
Medium to dark garnet in color, this wine smells of tobacco, earth, and cocoa powder. In the mouth it displays a deeper earthy quality than the label's primary release. Nicely balanced flavors of cherry and wet earth, with hints of blue fruit, sit poised on the tongue, nicely balanced for a finish that feels like a leisurely backstroke in a placid pool, as the wine slinks and slips down the palate. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $300.

The 2005 vintage will be available for purchase starting at some point in the next couple of months. Interested parties can sign up for the winery's mailing list on their web site.

I also had the opportunity to taste several clonal selections from different blocks of the vineyard, vintage 2007, that will soon be blended. These samples displayed a broad range of deep, complex fruit that are showing their first incarnations in the wines above. The clone 7 cabernet fruit was classically Cabernet Sauvignon -- cherry with hints of stem tannins. The Clone 4 fruit was deep and earthy, with notes of slate and graphite aromas and spicy flavors of espresso and orange rind. Finally the clone 337 was an impressive, powerful luge-run of cherry fruit that nearly knocked my socks off. There are clearly many good things to come from Meteor.

PENFOLDS 2006 Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet

5 of 5 stars - Very smooth fresh wine. Highly recommend this one. Moderately priced too (10 -15$)

Not so crazy afterall

2007 Smoking Loon Pinot Grigio, Calif., about $11. This is definitely not made in the Italian style, meaning there is some oomph here, in the form of sweet pear flavors. But it's also rather simple and fat and is missing...

Charles Travers Winery 2006 Merlot

5 of 5 stars - We tried some of Charles Travers 06 Merlot it had a chocolate berry aroma and tasted great. I do highly recommend trying some of this nector.

Charles Travers Winery 6 Cabernet

5 of 5 stars - GREAT Cabernet dont change anything.

Francis Coppola Presents Rosso California 2006

Straightforward, showing cherry, cola and charred oak aromas and flavors, with rustic tannins. Zinfandel, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. Drink now. 70,000 cases made.