TN: Holiday Red Recap

Here are some red wines from the holidays. Since throughput is higher with guests in town, I've consolidated several wines into a single post.

Red Wines

Lane Tanner 2008 Block 4 Santa Maria Valley Pinot Noir - This is a Trader Joe's only offering, produced by Lane Tanner for TJ's from fruit that was supposedly left un-purchased last year. Based on the appellation and block designation, I'd be willing to bet this is Bien Nacido wine that TJ's and Lane Tanner agreed to de-classify in return for a great price on the fruit. Trader Joe's also has Block 2 and Block 7 Pinot Noir from Lane Tanner, and if you check out a map of Bien Nacido you'll see blocks 2, 4 and 7 that seem plausibly small enough to support one-off cuvées.

I will say this is no uncertain terms: this is the best wine I have ever purchased from TJ's. The nose is pure, classic, young Santa Maria Pinot Noir. There are spice, floral, mushroom, earth and red stone fruit aromas all readily accessible. The flavors are ultra-fresh, buoyed by high acidity and low alcohol (for the Central Coast, at least, at 13.2%). It is a lighter bodied wine, and is pure and honest. Good finish, too. Those who prefer Power Pinot from Santa Rita Hills replete with coastal sage aromas, the viscosity of high alcohol and oak aging may not like this. But I'm on this like butter on toast as a Pinot to drink young for its varietal expression. Not cheap at $20, but boy does it deliver! I'd consider it a good QPR simply because it is very well made and varietally correct as a Pinot, which is extremely rare at this price point.

Pros: Fresh, Varietal Typicity, Complex Nose, Fruit-Forward Flavors, Good Finish
Cons: None
Decant: Maybe, I did, but it didn't develop
Price: $20 from Trader Joe's
QPR: Good (out of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point)

Vigne Irpine 2006 Giubilo Aglianico - This is an Aglianico, a hearty, structured grape variety, from Campania, Italy. The wine is pretty straight forward on the nose with aromas of currants and leather. On the palate it's all about balance. There's plenty of fruit, sufficient acid, and moderately drying tannins on the finish. I'm especially impressed by the finish. There is no alcohol bite, medicinal flavor or bitterness; it's clean and cleanses the palate. While it's not especially structured, it's not overly oaky or spoofy and has just enough body. Basically an excellent table wine for what I paid.

Pros: Balanced, Fruit Forward, Food Friendly, Clean Finish
Cons: Not Complex
Decant: Not necessary, this one is good from first pour
Price: $10 from Wine Library
QPR: Good (out of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point)

Vinos Sin-Ley 2007 Gra2 Rioja Graciano - Graciano is a grape variety typically blended in small quantities with Tempranillo in Rioja. I'd imagined it's a bit like Petit Verdot: a structural grape that adds tannin, acid, aroma and color to a finished wine. An inexpensive varietal Graciano thus was hard to pass up. Unfortunately, this was disappointing. The bouquet consisted of cherry and a little barnyard. The flavors were more along the lines of cherry cough syrup, though there was a bit of tannin and acid to keep it in balance. This was perfectly drinkable on virtue of its balance, but just not interesting. It tasted exactly like some anonymous inexpensive wine, thus I doubt this really showed what makes Graciano unique. Yet critic Jay Miller curiously rated this a 91. A head scratcher to say the least. There should at least be some clean, simple fruit or attractive rusticity at this price point. The back of the bottle does offer up quite a bit of info on the region, varietal and terroir.

Pros: Not Flawed, Drinkable
Cons: Medicinal, Dull
Decant: No, didn't develop with air
Price: $11 from Wine Library
QPR: Mediocre (out of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point)

Mosaic 2005 Alexander Valley Malbec - This is a typical New World Malbec along the lines of a mid-priced Argentinian version. Blackberry fruit, spicy oak, coffee and a little bacon all factor into the flavor profile. Fruit-forward with some complexity, but not especially structured. It's a pleasant wine to drink now, though at full price doesn't present a good QPR. At half price, it is worth it.

Pros: Fruit-forward, Spicy Oak
Cons: Not Much Structure
Decant: Maybe, but good upon opening
Price: $12 from Wines & Makers
QPR: Fair/Good (out of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point)

TN: Weinert 2003 Mendoza Malbec

No picture for this post. But the Weinert 2003 Mendoza Malbec still deserves a note despite less than ideal circumstances for formal tasting. I picked up a bottle in Pennsylvania for a family dinner featuring roasted red meat. While Argentine Malbec is usually a safe choice with its soft tannins and ripe, plummy fruit, this bottle was surprisingly complex if not a bit challenging. In fact, while I've been shying away from Malbec recently, this bottle has me thinking there's more out there beyond monolithic fruit bombs.

The nose had an intriguing mix of musty leather and cedar. While the bottle indicated 3 years of oak aging, a little e-digging revealed the aging takes place in large, neutral oak casks. Thus, the oak was held in check. The wine was medium to full-bodied with plenty of ripe red fruit on the mid-palate. Yet there was serious depth to the persistent finish that has coffee-like flavors as well as some mildly astringent oak tannins. Its age gave it an overall mellow impression.

Even though we drank from small, shallow glasses, the bouquet was effusive. With better stemware, I'm certain this wine could be stunning. It's a sort of cross between Old World funkiness and New World opulence. Weinert is definitely a producer to watch for given its approach. Not only do they practice extended aging in neutral oak, but they also bottle age before release as the 2004 Malbec is their current release. I love producers that have the guts (and capital) to put their wine on the market when it's actually ready. This holds doubly true for those that can mix a bit of rusticity with riper fruit.

Pros: Complex, Medium/Full Bodied, Balanced, Ripe Fruit, Strong Earthy & Funky Bouquet
Cons: Slightly Astringent Tannins
Decant: Yes
Price: $20 from Pennsylvania Wine & Spirits
QPR: Good (out of Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good or Excellent with Fair denoting expectations were met for the price point)

Cam the Man: Cameron Hughes Wine

A few years ago, a man named Cameron Hughes had a great idea. Buy up super premium wine that would ordinarily end up on the bulk market and ultimately blended into not so premium wine, then put it in a bottle as is with his Cameron Hughes label on the bottle. Or, even better, if the wine was bottled but unlabelled, just slap a Cameron Hughes label on it. If the sale of a winery led to orphaned wine, he'd be there to buy up the leftovers. If a product line ended, Cameron Hughes would be there, too. If a winery just needed to raise capital or clear inventory, he'd also be there.

There's a name for this sort of middle-man wine trader, a negociant. This is actually quite common in Europe, but Cameron Hughes was the first negociant in America to really tap into the premium market and start bottling the unadulterated good stuff under his own label.

It took a while to get this idea off the ground, but now Cameron Hughes had bottled over 100 "lots" of wines in his Lot Series. Each "lot" originates from a particular region or (anonymous) winery. They're never backblended with lesser wine, so what you see is what you get. If you buy a Cameron Hughes Lot 75 Oak Knoll Cabernet, you know you're getting Cab from a sub-appellation in Napa, probably from a single producer.

Now, as awesome as paying $12 for wine that would cost $30 in its "native" bottle sounds, there are some drawbacks. Cameron Hughes keeps costs down by constantly moving inventory. He bottles then sells the wine at a pretty quick pace. However, some wines really do need some time in the bottle to integrate. Many upper-end producers (i.e. the ones who orphan their wine occasionally) age their wine extensively in new oak and would bottle age even after barrel aging. So in many cases you'll be buying a wine that is very young. But if you can let it rest or decant a young Cameron Hughes wine, you'll typically get something that outperforms the price.

In other cases, the wine really wasn't up to par to go into a $30 bottle. But even in those circumstances you're not going to get a bad deal paying $10 or $15 per bottle. The bottom line is, at the very least, you will get expensive tasting wine since it was made using costly methods even if there's some moderate imbalance in the finished wine.

Here a few Cameron Hughes wines I've tasted over the last year.

Cameron Hughes Lot 95 2007 Chilean Meritage: This is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Carmenere. The nose is perfumed with some nutmeg. This one was a bit surprising in that is was ready to drink immediately out of the bottle. There's little structure, but it's an amiable, easy drinker that's right for the price.

Score: 83-85
Price: $8

Cameron Hughes Lot 75 2006 Oak Knoll Cabernet Sauvignon: This is a textbook example of what a really oaky, young wine tastes like. It smells like vanilla and cedar planks. It tastes like oak, and the oak tannins are mouth coating and almost creamy in texture. However, the wine is very smooth and has a nice lingering finish. There's some good juice underneath the oak, though, and maybe in a year or two more fruit will be showing. This is a style that many people would love even at this juncture, and a great example of why you don't need to pay $30 for a Napa Cab in this style. Buy this, sit on it for a year or two, and you'll definitely have something good if not very good (especially if you like oaky wine).

Score: 84-86 (but could definitely develop for the better)
Price: $12

Cameron Hughes Lot 64 2005 Red Wine: This is an everything but the kitchen sink blend of Tempranillo, Carignane, Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Verdot. It took about 2 hours of decanting for this wine to emerge, but at that point it was kickin. It started with some tar, them some floral and herb aromas. The palate had a mix of blueberry, chocolate and coffee. The tannins initially were a bit bitter, but the wine softened as it aerated. There's a ton of structure there, too. Definitely was one to buy young and cheap, then sit on. Too bad I only had one bottle!

Score: 85-87 (and again could definitely develop for the better)
Price: $10

Cameron Hughes Lot 51 2004 Mendoza Malbec: This was a great find. Plummy fruit and violets on the bouquet, and a soft subtle impression on the palate. My notes at the time indicated it had a "minerality" and tasted like "liquid velvet" because of the seamlessness and soft tannins. In retrospect the bouquet was pretty shy, but this just tasted really good and was rather elegant.

Score: 89-91
Price: $12

Cameron Hughes Lot 49 2004 Priorat: This is a blend of Grenache, Carginan and a handful of Bordeaux varietals. If you've tried an old vine Zinfandel, now imagine that with a little leathery/barnyardy Brettanomyces and volatile acidity (VA). This wine immediately out of the bottle was pretty harsh on the nose, probably due to the vinegary VA blowing off. After a couple of hours the brooding concoction came into focus. Now there was ripe aggressive berry and leather at the forefront with mocha and herbs in the backgrounds. The wine had an ultra concentrated ripe berry flavor with persistent drying tannins and great acidity on the finish. It's really a fun wine that's a bit primal (instead of elegant), and a wine that came together nicely over time. This one might develop positively with some more time as well.

Score: 88-92
Price: $20

Cameron Hughes Lot 25 Sparkling Wine: I've had this on several occaisions and haven't been disappointed. This is a top-end Napa sparkling wine made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir using the traditional methode champenois. It's about 10 years old now and has a yeasty, bready nose. The bubbles are refined and small, which is what I prefer in a sparkling wine. The palate is dry with good acidity, which again are requisite for a good sparkling wine in my book.

Score: 88-90
Price: $20 (or even less at Cost Plus)

WBW #52: Viña Maquis 2004 Maquis Lien (WN)

Wine Blogging Wednesday #52 is conveniently right up my alley. The subject: Chilean Value Reds. A Venn diagram of my typical drinking preferences and the red wines Chile has to offer would look something like this:


That's not to say most of what I drink is Chilean wine, but that I usually buy wines that are under $20 dollars and have a little something there to pique my interest. Chilean producers seem to be hitting the mark in this respect. They're usually neither excessively fruity or herbaceous, and have decent structure. That's far more than you can say about most domestic offerings at that price point. Chile also has its own signature varietal, Carmenère, that was introduced from France before phylloxera virtually wiped out the varietal in Europe. I haven't had a really great Carmenère, but it usually makes a decent earthy wine and may be even better as a blending grape.

For WBW #52, I've selected the Viña Maquis 2004 Maquis Lien. I tried the the 2005 Calcu from the same producer a few months ago and was not overly impressed as it came across as both herbaceous and hot. I can handle more green bell peppers and pickle juice than most in my wine, but the Calcu was too one-dimensional in this respect. The bigger problem was the un-integrated alcohol as it replaced any nuance that might have emerged on the finish with heat.

The 2004 Maquis Lien, a blend of 50% Syrah, 23% Carmenère, 12% Cabernet Franc, 8% Petit Verdot and 7% Malbec from the Colchagua Valley, is a bit better than its cousin, but still misses the mark by a bit. There was quite a bit of precipitate in the bottle suggesting the winemakers limited the fining and filtering prior to bottling. The nose is like pure blueberry juice, which is an aroma I usually get from Syrah. There's also earth and a savory, meaty component to the bouquet. So far so good. But there's also that unmistakable ethanol aroma. Unfortunately, the heat carries over to the palate. The wine is fruit-forward on the attack and mid-palate, then unleashes the kind of pure heat on the finish that you catch in your sinuses. OK, that's a bit of hyperbole, but this wine does not carry its 14.5% alcohol particularly gracefully. That's unfortunate since there's a solid backbone of structure with dry, tough tannins to prop up the fruit.

It's a bit frustrating in the end because this one is very close to being a great wine. There's some good depth to it and it's not a completely one-dimensional wine. But the lack of balance knocks this one back a few notches. Future vintages are likely worth trying as Viña Maquis develops its viticultural techniques. I'd bet that right now at least some of their grapes are reaching sugar ripeness before phenolic ripeness, leading to some of the rough edges like herbaceousness, hard tannins and heat. If they're overcropping or not managing the vine canopies properly, these are issues they'll likely address over time.

Score: 81-84
Price: $14 at Cost Plus World Market

For a superior alternative for roughly the same price, I'd recommend the Marques de Casa Concha 2005 Merlot. It has some earthy, herbal notes and a hint of tar to complement ripe dark fruit as well as a healthy dose of oak aging. And, most importantly, it is balanced. It's a Merlot that absolutely blows away fruit-bomb California Merlots (i.e. the sort of Merlots that Miles was bashing in Sideways) at the same price point. Just give it some time in a decanter first to let it breath and it'll drink like a wine that costs twice as much.

WN: BenMarco 2006 Malbec

As wonderful as it would be, one can't drink Cabernet Franc all the time. There just isn't that much of it around in the first place and it would eventually get a little boring. Fortunately South America is a big help as a producer of tasty wines that won't destroy your credit card. My latest venture south of the equator was the 2006 BenMarco Malbec.

Malbec, like Cabernet Franc, has a role as a blending grape in Bordeaux that lags significantly behind Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in importance. And like Cab Franc, Malbec is prominent in certain appellations in the Loire Valley of France where it's sometimes bottled as a varietal wine. Curiously enough both Cab Franc and Malbec go by other names in the Loire, Breton and Cot, respectively. Unlike Cabernet Franc, however, Malbec is white hot. Like branding iron on a longhorn's behind hot.

Argentinian Malbec in particular has earned a reputation as a great value wine in the US. The Mendoza Valley is ideally suited for growing wine grapes on their original rootstock, which isn't possible in the majority of wine regions where Phylloxera has been introduced. Additionally, many vineyards are at altitude and the climate provides a long, relatively dry growing season that provides grapes every opportunity to ripen perfectly. From past experiences, I've found mid-priced Argentinian Malbecs to be almost like liquid silk.

The BenMarco 2006 Malbec was no different. It's a seamless wine. You sip, the plummy flavor envelops your mouth, then it tapers off every so slowly. The tannins are perceptible, yet very fine grained. There's good mouth-watering acidity, too, to balance out the ripe fruit flavors. Another big plus was the information provided on the bottle. The grapes were grown at about 3000 feet above sea level, there's 10% Bonarda blended with the Malbec, the wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered, and the wine was aged in 50% new barrels and 50% one year old barrels. That's much more useful and honest than a bunch of hyperbolic adjectives that typically are a bunch of lies dreamed up by a marketer.

The one sticking point on this wine is probably the barrel aging. The use of 50% new oak barrels makes a definite impact on the wine. This Malbec didn't taste like pure oak and the subtle oak tannins likely added to the nice finish. But the bouquet was very closed, which is a characteristic I notice in many wines I know have spent a lengthy period in new oak. The aromas of the grape are suppressed, while hints of secondary aromas like vanilla, mocha and smoke from the barrels are about all you can extract. The result is a wine that smells good, yet doesn't really have its own character.

Fortunately, I have a second bottle which I'll try in a year or two. It may just take some time for the fruit to re-emerge and for other nuances to develop. As it is, this is a very enjoyable, technically perfect wine, but a wine that doesn't have much individuality. For $15, though, it's a superb value and you'll be hard pressed to find any wine in that price range with such sophistication.

Score: 88-91 out of 100 (though more of 88 on this night for me)
Price: $15 at Costco

Scoring disclaimer: Scores are based on the "typical" 100 point scale, though I've included a range since there's uncertainty in any human rating where context and expectations can influence the results.