TN: Chateau Aney 2007 Haut Medoc

The Chateau Aney 2007 Haut Medoc is another Kermit Lynch import. If you are familiar with Lynch, you probably know he doesn't import much Bordeaux. The problem being that Bordeaux is a sort of vinous pyramid scheme. Typically an importer cannot purchase direct from the cellar because negociants insure the wine passes through middle men along the way, sometimes several sets. Every penny is squeezed out of buyers along the way.

Cheateau Aney (see Lynch's tech sheet here) is an exception, a Bordeaux producers not tied into the cartel of cynical schemers known as negociants. They make wine, good, elegant, drinkable wine, and sell it at a fair but not cheap price. It certainly drank very well now, though perhaps I am not giving it enough credit for potential. While it is elegant and enjoyable, perhaps the overall balance will bode well for development.

• 2007 Château Aney - France, Bordeaux, Médoc, Haut-Médoc
  
  
  
  Gets better and better with air. Leather, tobacco, black currant and pomegranate. Creamy mouthfeel with medium acidity and mild tannin. Well-structured for near term consumption. Some chocolate and earth on the finish. Savory. Yum.
  
  

TN: Luna Beberide 1999 Tinto

Once again, I'm following in the footsteps of Jeff at Viva la Wino in tasting the Luna Beberide 1999 Tinto. It's a $20 wine from Castilla y Leon in northern Spain with over a decade of age on it. What really pulled me in, though, is the curious blend of 30% Mencia (an indigenous grape) with 40% Cabernet and 30% Merlot (Bordeaux varietals).

While this is a decent wine, it didn't really have a wow factor for me. There's plenty of life left in it, but it tasted like a fairly green and extracted Bordeaux blend. The nose opened with a medicinal cherry aroma, but evolved to show mostly dried herbs, mint and bell pepper. Although I like green aromas, the flavors essentially mirrored the bouquet. The acidity is high, and there's a definite seam of rustic tannin complementing herbaceousness on the finish.

From my perspective, this bottle--for older wines, there are great bottles, not great wines--seemed to have lost most of its primary fruit, yet hadn't developed much in the way of tertiary characteristics. However, there's plenty of structure, and this would be a relatively inexpensive wine to lay down for even longer. I'll probably stick with varietal Mencia in the future, though, as it works better for me expressing itself as opposed to blending into a Bordeaux-styled wine.

Pros: Herbaceous, Fresh, Mellow Tannins
Cons: One Dimensional
Decant: Yes, there is sediment
Price: $20 from K&L Wines
QPR: Fair (out of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point)

TN: Chateau Nenine 2006 Cotes de Bordeaux

The Chateau Nenine 2006 Cotes de Bordeaux is a blend of 40% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. It's also inexpensive and available at Trader Joe's.

It's not terrible, but not interesting, either. The nose is tight, with only Bretty band-aid and some metallic cherry aromas. I don't often call a wine thin, but this wine qualifies. There's just not much intensity to the flavor. It's mostly a medicinal cherry flavor anyway, so maybe that's a good thing. On the finish there are drying tannins and little else.

On one hand, this isn't over-extracted and over-oaked in the way a cheap California wine would be. But it's equally boring. An unstructured fruity wine from Spain or Southern France would be far better at this price point.

Pros: Not Offensive
Cons: Thin, Dull, No Finish, Hollow mid-palate
Decant: No
Price: $8 from Trader Joe's
QPR: Mediocre (out of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point)

Thanksgiving Red Redux

This has been a good Thanksgiving weekend. There's been some relaxation, some socializing, and of course some eating and drinking (made all the better by the fact that we weren't hosting).

Here's a run down of the red wines from the weekend tasted at various junctures. The nice thing about a big get together, wine-wise, is you can sample an open bottle, then pour a full glass if you like it. As the day goes on, even the less interesting wines are finished off by those who are less picky or just are "thirstier."

Abadal 2006 Cabernet Franc-Tempranillo: A blend of 60% Cabernet Franc and 40% Tempranillo from Catalunya in northeastern Spain. This was a "real" wine as evidenced by the ample precipitate in the bottle. The bouquet was dominated by the Cab Franc giving it more of an herbal and wet forest character. The palate was very dry, and the finish was firmly tannic. Not a wine that I loved, but definitely one with a sense of purpose and identity that probably would have been better in a few years.

Score : 85-89 out of 100

Carmody McKnight 2005 duets: This was a stunner with prime rib at Thanksgiving. This wasn't a wine I picked out, but it might as well have been. It's a Bordeaux blend of about 2/3 Merlot and 1/3 Cabernet Franc from a small winery in western Paso Robles on the Central Coast. Once again Cab Franc did the heavy lifting on the aromatics, while a healthy dose of barrel aging enhanced the structure of the wine. This was a rare wine where the oak complemented ripe fruit instead of masking it. Not over-oaked, not overripe, just an immense wine that nonetheless was true to the varietals in the blend.

Score : 91-94

Lafond 2006 Pinot Noir SRH: Lafond Winery, somewhat surprisingly, is not some gimmicky attempt at putting a famous name on a mediocre bottle of wine. Lafond is a serious winery based in the Santa Rita Hills (SRH) appellation of Santa Barbara County that focuses primarily upon Chardonnay, Syrah and Pinot Noir. The 2006 SRH Pinot is a balanced, elegant expression of the grape. The acidity, tannins, oak influence, and alcohol (13.8%) are all harmoniously balanced, making this a wine that pairs well with food or can hold its own for sipping. The nose provides a little cinnamon, mint and strawberry. It's fruit-forward, yet not made in the bruising style of many Santa Barbara Pinots. I'm not a huge Pinot fan largely because of the exorbitant prices it demands, but this one was worth the $24 price for a special occasion.

Score : 87-90

Red Diamond 2005 (?) Cabernet Sauvignon: I'm actually not 100% sure on the vintage. But odds are it wouldn't really matter. This is a mass produced Cab that aims to be likable instead of interesting. It doesn't smell or taste like Cab and it has a definite burst of sweetness suggesting human intervention before S. Cerevisiae has finished the fermentation. Non-descript, not bad, not good.

Score : 75-79

Santa Barbara Winery 2005 ZCS: Santa Barbara Winery is the second label of Lafond. The 2005 ZCS is a promising blend of Zinfandel, Carignan and Sangiovese. An almost effervescent peppery quality punctuates the finish, which is supposedly a hallmark of Zinfandels. This was a first for me picking this up in a Zin. However the bouquet was sort of half rubbery and half rotten. Interesting, but not great. Maybe some decanting would have given the funk a chance to dissipate or develop.

Score : 80-84

Bodegas Primicia 2001 Rioja Reserva: This is 100% Tempranillo from Rioja, Spain's most historically respected appellation. The Reserva designation requires at least a year of barrel aging and three years aging total before release (though the reserve label is used more liberally outside of Spain). This wine was a big winner. The vanilla of the oak comes through in the bouquet but is complemented by spice, a little barnyard/Brett, coffee and rose. The mature tannins are mellow and the finish is smooth. Although this is not a big wine, it is a sophisticated and complex one. This is definitely a wine with its own identity that scores on every level.

Score : 89-91

Buttonwoods and Corks

Last weekend was a Buttonwood weekend, to be sure. My girlfriend and I are members of precisely one wine club, that of Buttonwood Farm Winery in Santa Ynez. If price were no object, then we might opt for a winery that sell its wines at a higher price point, or multiple wine clubs for that matter. But Buttonwood has a lot going for it: a varietal Cabernet Franc, a consistent "house style" that eschews the current fashion for massive, super fruity and oaky wines, and no wine over $22.50 (for club members). There's also a consistent aroma in their wines which I suspect might be a hint of Brettanomyces, but that I'm happy to simply chalk up to terroir as it's a smell that I find curiously enjoyable in the context of the wine. Buttonwood may not have any wines capable of producing an epiphany, but its wines do have a distinct character and a sense of purity unencumbered by heavy oak treatment or other manipulation. This is quite an accomplishment at such a modest price.

Friday night we revisited the Buttonwood 2003 Cabernet Franc. This was the wine that got me started on Cab Franc. My palate has evolved since first tasting this wine, but it held up surprisingly well to the evolution of time, both in terms of the contents of the bottle and new experiences in the taster's mind. What I hadn't noticed originally was a little bit of sweetness hanging in there. But everything that I've learned I like in a wine was there: mellow tannins, well-integrated alcohol, an acidic backbone, herbal and earthy tones, red cherry and raspberry flavors, and a subdued floral characteristic. This was a pleasurable, balanced wine that never tired the palate.

Saturday we went to the vineyard to pick up the November wine club shipment and to taste a vertical of their Bordeaux-styled Trevin, a blend of Merlot, Cab Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon. The tasting was actually held inside their winery and featured the 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2003 vintages of Trevin. What stood out most, perhaps, was that the 1997 vintage seemed fresher than either the 1999 or 2000 vintages. Perhaps not coincidentally, I noticed after tasting the vertical that the '97 Trevin was the only vintage finished with a natural cork. Every vintage after '97 was sealed with a synthetic cork.

Having read "The Science of Wine: From Vine to Glass" by British wine expert Jamie Goode, I'm aware of the pros and cons of different closures. Natural cork provides a nearly ideal seal, but can often taint wine with TCA, giving it a moldy, musty smell. Synthetic corks are taint-free, but don't seal as well as natural corks, allowing wine to oxidize more rapidly. Screw caps offer perhaps the best of both worlds, but aren't as aesthetically appealing and can't be applied in a bottling line that is set up for cork closures.

Thus, my suspicion is that Buttonwood's wines may not be ideally suited for long-term bottle aging because of their choice of closure. However, Buttonwood tends to release its red wines 4 to 6 years after harvest, with a significant chunk of that time devoted to barrel aging. They're usually ready to drink upon release because they've had some time to settle down. In fact, the winery website notes that they stopped using natural cork because of excessive TCA taint, and are less concerned with the potential problems of synthetic corks because most consumers drink their wine within a year of purchase.

I suppose I'll follow their lead. If the wine is ready to drink upon release, then I'll certainly be happy to enjoy it in the short term!