Beer Brand Saved By Prohibition Cheese

Santa Barbara County Wine: Presqu'ile

Driving California's Central Coast offers so many great places to stop and enjoy life that volumes have been written about them. The wineries of the region are just one facet of the joy of the Central Coast. On a recent long weekend that found us staying at Cambria's Moonstone Beach, I sampled the Presqu'ile white wines in their gorgeous and elegant Santa Maria tasting room.

I had tasted some of winemaker Dieter Cronje's bottlings before, but only his red wines. Sticking with the whites on this occasion gave me a chance to try the other side of his talents.

Their 2015 Sauvignon Blanc, Santa Maria Valley is made from estate fruit and vinified in three cuvées, in steel, oak and concrete egg.  The nose is fresh and a bit grassy with a palate full of minerals and citrus.  $22

The 2014 Chardonnay, Santa Maria Valley was aged for 12 months in oak and six months in steel.  The nose features lemon and vanilla while the flavor profile shows Meyer lemon and creme brulée. It's absolutely gorgeous.  $35

The Presqu'ile 2014 Rosé of Pinot Noir gives off lovely strawberry, citrus and a tiny bit of grapefruit. It's an earthy wine, and got a rave review from Karen MacNeil, who called it "refrigerated sunlight." It's a superior California rosé.  $20

Two single vineyard Chardonnays really steal the show.  The debut vintage of the 2013 Presqu'ile Vineyard has a nose of lemon chess pie and a palate of vanilla and lemon zest. It's aged for 18 months in oak and features great acidity yet a very soft mouthfeel.  $45

The 2013 Steiner Creek Vineyard Chardonnay is from San Simeon, just up the coast a bit. It's very much like a Chablis, with soft citrus and tropical fruit and a mineral-driven palate.  $40


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Valentine Wine

Catching A Cab From Australia

The McPherson MWC wines are crafted by winemaker Jo Nash, who just celebrated her fifth year as the head of the cellar at McPherson in 2016.  She’s also married to a winemaker and they have a brood of grape-stomping kids at home.

Victoria is the Australian state in the extreme southeastern part of the land mass, just north of Bass Strait from Tasmania. This location results in a cooler expression than you may be used to with Australian wine. Their Sinclair Vineyard, along the Goulburn River sits next to the winery. The Croftwood Vineyard is in the huge Murray Darling region.

The MWC line was introduced two years ago and is just now making its breakthrough in the U.S. They call the wines "rustic" and say they are, "soft, savoury, earthy styles with a European influence."

Nash says of the weather in her part of Victoria, "Cooler climate means slower ripening." The Australian state is about the size of Oregon.

The MWC Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 is a full varietal estate wine from Victoria's Goulburn Valley. Their Sinclair Vineyard offers "old vine" - 16 years - Cabernet planted on sand.  The wine was aged between six and 12 months in French oak barriques, with alcohol sitting at 14.5% abv. It sells for about $20.

The wine is extremely dark, black, with no light coming through it. The nose offers blackberry fruit aromas and earthy minerals, with a slight anise and eucalyptus note coming through behind it all. The palate has a minty sense as well, but that dark fruit and extreme earthiness steal the show. The herbal aspect rises again on the finish to cap a delightfully different Cab experience.

Pair it with meat, of course, or even a strong cheese. after dinner, do some chocolate with it.


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Message In A Bottle

Randall Grahm says the 2014 Old Telegram "is arguably the most interesting Old Telegram" he has made in years. He says he used a "very clever trick" he borrowed from the winemakers of Veneto - indoor air-drying the 100% Mourvèdre grapes for about four days, before foot-stomping them.

Grahm says even that length of time "results in a certain degree of concentration of flavor, sugar, and most significantly, a transformation of the stems of the clusters from green to brown, with the disappearance of green, stemmy flavors."

Old Telegram sells for $45 and 277 cases were produced. Alcohol is 13.9% abv. The grapes - Grahm likes to call the Mourvedre fruit Mataro -  hail from Contra Costa County's Del Barba Vineyard, 56 acres of vines at an average age of 73 years.

The extremely dark wine smells of black pepper, burnt cherries, licorice, meat and smoke. It's a beautiful nose. Savory squared. Flavors of dark fruit power over the earth and coffee and mint.


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Pinot, Hit Me One More Time

Owner and winemaker Joe Wagner runs his Copper Cane Wine and Provisions out of Oregon, where he makes the delightful Elouan Rosé. The 2015 Böen Pinot Noir is from one of California's great regions for Pinot, Sonoma County’s Russian River Valley.

Produced and bottled in the Napa Valley, this wine carries an homage to farmers on the back label. It's a quote from Senator Daniel Webster, extolling the virtues of growing things in the ground. "When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization." And you thought they were just raising food.

The 14.3% abv number is a bit high for my liking, but that's California wine for you. When the fruit gets really ripe, the wine can get really alcoholic.

The Russian River has deposited volcanic and bedrock remnants over the millennia, so the mineral aspect of the growing area is great, while the cool, foggy conditions that typically last much of the day are what Wagner calls "ideal" conditions for growing Pinot Noior grapes.

The 2015 Böen Russian River Valley Pinot Noir really comes on strong, but it does so in a very affecting way. California Pinot is always too ripe for me, too dark, too strong. But this wine is a savory gem that begs you to find its eccentricities appealing. Black as a moonless night, the Böen gives some of the strongest aromas of cola and black tea that I've ever noted in Pinot Noir. Heavy blackberries and plums also are in there. On the palate… well, just be ready is all I can tell you. It packs a wallop. The alcohol is predictably high, but it's more the intensity of the flavors that grab me by the lapels and slap me around. If you like Burgundy, this is probably overload. If you like Syrah, get on board.

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How To Taste Wine

Cava: Fun In A Bottle

Made from Spanish varieties, the Segura Viudas Brut Réserve Heredad Cava consists of Macabeo (67%) and Parellada (33%) grapes. They are grown at estate vineyards in the Penedès region outside of Barcelona. The estate - or, heredad - dates back an actual millennium. The bubbly wine is light on its feet at 12% abv and comes in a decorative bottle with pewter embellishments. It's a heavy bottle, too, and can stand in as a doorstop when the party’s over. It’s imported by Freixenet, if that makes a difference to you. That's a pretty reliable name for Spanish sparklers.

The wine is made from nine different cuvées, vinified separately then blended. Aging takes place over 30 months, which means it takes three years to make this wine, grape to glass.

It's a fun sparkler that sits pale in the glass and smells of lemons and limes, with none of the toasty notes one gets in a Champagne. That's not the only difference between Cava and Champagne, either. Check the prices. The palate does show some earthiness along with the citrus, apples and minerals, which are dominant.

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Stealth Wine Labels

Santa Barbara County Riesling - Why Not?

Pierre Lafond started the first winery in Santa Barbara County since Prohibition. He did that in 1962, and the second one wouldn't come for another decade. So, Lafond is a big name in Santa Barbara County wine. It's always worth a visit when the car is anywhere near Buellton.

The 2013 Lafond SRH is a lively Riesling, from a land known more for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. This Sta. Rita Hills Riesling comes from the cool part of Santa Barbara County, so Riesling should figure bigger here than it does, I've always thought.

The grapes were grown in the western end of the Santa Ynez Valley, in the transverse valley that sucks in the cool Pacific air and shuttles it inland. The winery says the Sta. Rita Hills region is the southernmost cool-climate region in the northern hemisphere

If this one is any indication, a lot of winemakers are missing the boat.

The pale wine gives a beautiful apricot and peach aroma on the nose, with just a touch of gasoline coming on. I love that part of Riesling with a few years under its belt. The palate has stone fruit, too, and some truly edgy earth from the Lafond estate.


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Big, Badass California Pinot Noir

Ferrari-Carano Vineyards and Winery was founded in 1981 on a small patch of land in Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley. Don and Rhonda Carano started small, but kept thinking big as they snapped up grapevines over the years. They say they now have 19 estate vineyards in six different California appellations. The company operates as a Certified California Sustainable Vineyard.
Winemaker Christy Ackerman makes all of the Pinot Noirs for Ferrari-Carano. She says she feels "very lucky" to work with Pinot Noir in general, and especially the grapes from the estate vineyards.

The Heritage and Dijon clones of Pinot Noir grapes for this wine came from their Anderson Valley ranches.  Steel fermentation started things off, and French oak aging for ten months took place in 38% new oak, 62% older barrels. The wine underwent full malolactic fermentation, offering the benefit of a creamy and full mouthfeel. It costs $38 retail.

This dark, brooding 2014 Pinot Noir is bigger and badder than I like my Pinot to be, but I’m going to pretend it's something else - say, Syrah - and just enjoy its powerful assets. The black and blue berry aromas show off the cool-climate origin of the grapes with notes of forest floor, motor oil and black olives. The savory show continues on the palate. Big, dark fruit turns to one side and lets the leathery, musty flavors mix with tea and coffee. Happily, the cola note is too shy to get through the door. Big wine, big finish, with the fruit outlasting the savory, but not by much.


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Wine For The Oscars

Wanted: More Torrontés

It’s a wide world of grapes out there. There are many grapes in this bountiful vineyard of a world that I have not sampled in the form of wine, many that I have. Many are there that I return to over and over, and many that I ignore for long stretches of time. Torrontés, I’ll try to do better by you in the future.

Sometimes, oftentimes, the premier white wine grape of Argentina does not find its way onto restaurant wine lists. It’s rarely on a "general consumer" type of shelf. When I go to specialty wine stores, it seems I’m always searching down another aisle. Maybe I just need to hit more Argentine restaurants for dinner.

I was at Gaucho Grill in Brentwood recently, about to dig into their superb Argentine cuisine for the first time in a while. Gaucho was once an easy roll on the craps table of dinner in L.A., but they closed the one most convenient to us, and it became geographically undesirable. I’ll just have to drive a little longer from now on.

The Atlas Cumbres Torrontés 2015 from the Lagarde Winery made me realize how much I missed the grape. The wine is made from 100% Torrontés grapes, sourced from a third-party vineyard in Cafayate, Salta, in the northern part of Argentina. There is no malolactic fermentation and and they employ only pure steel tank aging. They also let the wine age for up to two years in the bottle. It carries alcohol at 14.7% and sells for about $12 online.

This Torrontés is lightly tinted and smells of beautiful flowers, minerals and citrus. Perhaps my favorite white wine aroma is that of wet rocks in a stream, and there’s plenty of that here. On the palate, citrus meets peaches amid a low, earthy note that anchors the wine like the best bass player you ever heard. It’s perfect with sea bass and grilled zucchini and blended nicely with Gaucho’s new chipotle-infused chimichurri.

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L.A. City Council Honors San Antonio Winery

Keep An Eagle Eye Peeled For Great $20 Chardonnay

Adler Fels is reportedly German for "Eagle Rock," which plays into their location "high in the Mayacamas Mountains." From there they look across California, spyglass to eye, searching for the great grapes they want to use. Of course, nobody needs a mountaintop watchman to find those locations. Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, Monterey County, Santa Barbara County - they are hardly off the beaten path. Adler Fels makes what they term, "artisan wines with intense varietal character."

The Adler Fels The Eagle Rock Chardonnay 2015 is made from half Sonoma County grapes, half Monterey County. Winemaker Linda Trotta likes her Chardonnay "luscious and lively." She says she likes to "tease the nuances from the variety" and make wine that stays off the extremes it is known for while exploring the virtues of the variety and the terroir. It’s a $20 wine that tastes much richer. The alcohol level is 14.4% abv.

The wine is a masterful rendition of what Chardonnay can be, what lovers of the variety want it to be and what those who disdain it wish it were. The mouthfeel is full and lovely, with a bountiful acidity considering the lushness. Tropical fruit plays into wonderful citrus peel notes and peaches follow along the trail laid out by the minerals. I admit I feel less adventurous than I want to feel when contemplating a bottle of Chardonnay. This is the kind that makes me glad I pulled the cork.


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Enough Oak To Build A Warehouse

This a tough wine about which to write, because it is designed from the ground up for a completely different consumer than myself. It's off-dry - not my thing - and oaked within an inch of its very existence. It's pleasing somebody, though. I was taken aback by the numerous four- and five-star reviews online for Apothic Red. It's supermarket-priced at right around ten bucks.

The name is inspired by the Greek word, apotheca, which is defined as a repository or storeroom where wine was kept. I've seen wines named after natural beauty, mythological creatures and spaceships in France, I've never before seen one named after a warehouse.

It's very dark in the glass, black almost. A purple ring around the edge is the only thing differentiating the color from, say, motor oil. The nose is amazingly oaky. Fire, smoke, burning things - all these traits come across with the fervor of a four-alarm blaze. Those grapes are there - Zinfandel, Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon - but it's like "Where’s Waldo" to find them. Sweet oak is what you taste. And put the emphasis on sweet. This is one of those wines made exclusively for millennials who just got rid of the training wheels last week, so pardon me if I don't seem too enthusiastic. The oak isn't supposed to be the whole show in a wine.


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New SoCal Wine Trail

Santa Maria Valley Pinot Blanc

A New Year's Eve day trip to Santa Barbara County brought us, once again, to Sanford Winery's outpost west of Buellton. It was raining in L.A. when we departed in the morning, but the day turned amazingly beautiful once we arrived in wine country.

Sanford's Pinot Blanc is a bit of an oddity on their menu, in that it's not Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. This 2013 was the first vintage of the wine, made from a grape they say can be as hard to manage as the Noir variety. The wine retails for $34.

This wine carries a 14.5% abv number and had no malolactic fermentation at all. Still, it has a nice, full mouthfeel due to the aging in neutral French oak. The Sierra Madre Vineyard, from which the grapes come, is in the Santa Maria Valley of Santa Barbara County. It's one of my favorite wine regions, as the earth and mineral aspects always seem to come through so strongly, especially in the whites.

The cool climate of the Santa Maria Valley also makes for a delightfully refreshing acidity. This one actually is somewhat reserved in that department, but it has enough acid to make for a good pairing with food. The nose and flavors are quite dark and earthy, with a savory mask placed over the fruit to give great complexity.

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Wearable Device Gives BAC

If You Pass On Pinot Grigio, Try This One

Brothers Luigi, Ercole and Fernando bought what is now the Pighin estate in 1963, and it became a full-fledged winery four years later. Fernando and his wife and kids have run the place since 2004.  The building on the property dates back several hundred years. They say the "vineyards of Grave del Friuli overlook the north shore of the Adriatic Sea."

Kobrand, the wine’s importer, notes the relationship between the name and the soil: "Like the gravelly Graves region of Bordeaux, Grave del Friuli owes its name to the gravel in the subsoil, which forces the roots of the vine to grow deep into the earth in search of water. As the vine struggles, its fruit grows richer, resulting in full, well-structured wine with remarkable minerality."

This Fernando Pighin Pinot Grigio is one of those Pinot Grigios for people who think they don’t like Pinot Grigio. Flat, unimaginative juice this is not. It carries an alcohol number of 12.5% abv, and sells in the $10 to $15 range.

This wine a bright and beautiful yellow-gold in the glass. The nose is fruity and floral, with Meyer lemon and tangerine zest. Stone fruit and white flowers complete a delight for the nostrils. On the palate, there is ample fruit balanced with earthy minerality. The acidity is quite good. I enjoyed mine with lentil soup, and the winery also likes it with fish and risotto.


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