More joys of South America

Coffee at Ceiba is a French press of South or Latin American beans, served promptly and poured for you. It's very good. Everything I tried at Ceiba was very good, from the Hemingway Mohito to the "Cheesecake" pudding served in a tiny cup with small slices of cake to the side. Gazpacho comes with the ingredients laid out in a long narrow trough-like bowl over which a rich golden tomato soup is poured (superb). On a down note, my cold jerk chicken soup was a little bit off - it tasted like it sat on a burner in a pot for 10 minutes too long. Oysters fried with (I think) a blue-corn crust and stuffed with blue cheese are succulent without being nasty or oily. Ceiba is by the same team that created DC Coast, another excellent restaurant. I thoroughly enjoyed dinner there with my wife and parents last evening. I wish I had written down the exact name of the Carmenere I tried since it was good and affordable. I'll do some checking and relay that info here when I have it.

I've been trying more South American wines lately looking for good value. I tried the 2002 Salentein Cabernet Sauvignon from Mendoza (Argentina) earlier this week. It has a very different character than Californian Cab or French Bordeaux or Australian Shiraz. Regrettably I didn't care for that unique and welcomed difference. It left a chalky, unpleasant feel in the mouth and was a bit astringent. I would understand this in a less expensive wine (say, under $12) but I found it unforgiveable at this price range ($17).

I also tasted this year's release of the 2003 Catena Malbec. Malbec is pretty distinctive when done well and Catena is one of the more reliable producers of the variety. The 2003 is dry, dark and intense. It has a very earthy aroma almost like mulch. There is significant sweetness, especially on the tip of the tongue, but this flavor is almost entirely masked by intense tannins that attack the back of your mouth. It's not a "fruit-forward" wine by any means. You'll want to pair this with pretty heavy foods. If you're looking for a change of pace or to impress your friends the Catena is a good choice. It's not a bargain (north of $20 usually) but it's a more reliable option than some random Malbec you haven't tried before.

To summarize my experience so far - when buying inexpensive South American wine seek out Carmenere and Malbec, avoid Carbernet.

This weekend the Manor is doing an informal wine tasting. I hope to take a number of pictures and gather opinions from our guests to do a bit of comparison. I'll serve Prosesco, Riesling, Zin, Pinot and a Cab of some kind. Hopefully at least one of those wines will be a hit!

Style

I'm trying out some new styles for the blog.

Chilean Carmenere

Welcome to Monsoon Season! In Arlington it's raining steadily, as it has been over much of the mid-eastern states for the last several days. In Hyattsville over the weekend they had the most rain ever recorded in a 24-hour period. That includes hurricane Agnes in '72 - more than 10 inches fell. Pretty remarkable!

Before all the rain hit I wandered by Safeway to pick up dinner, and saw a wine variety I was unfamiliar with. I picked it up on whim and because of some synchronicity. I had a conversation some time ago with my co-worker AstroBoy about Chilean wines and where they grow. He spent some time in Chilé doing astronomy work but didn't manage to do any winery tours or sight-seeing. The office talk made me think about the wines of Chilé and resolve to do a bit of research. Chilé is a pretty vast country covering numerous latitudes and has some prime climatic conditions for grape growing. My theory is that as globalization spreads further many more Chilean wines will show up in the local grocery stores.

Tada! The 2005 Casillero del Diablo Carmenere is a new arrival at Safeway. At $10 I was willing to take a chance on a total unknown. Wow I'm glad I did - this is probably the best $10 wine I've ever had. It has an aroma of toffee and spices. Distinct toast, chocolate and coffee flavors are immediately apparent, balanced with good acidity and a touch of exotic fruit. The tannin content is pretty low (putting it near Merlot) but it's not missed here due to the oak aging. This will go well with big foods and soups but is fine for a stand-alone taste as well. It totally blows away cheap Australian Shiraz.

Casillero del Diablo is run by Concha y Toro, the large and famous Spanish winery. Some info about Caremenere can be found here and here. Apparently in Chilé it used to be mistaken for Merlot and used interchangeably with that grape. I can feel the Merlot in this Carmenere, but they've propped up the flavor with Cabernet and Syrah grape.

I also had a chance to try a bit of 2003 Seebrich Spätlese Riesling from Germany. Spätlese means "late harvest" and there are the usual colorful legends surrounding how and why the grapes were harvested beyond peak ripeness. Because of the very high sugar content and slight spoilage of the grapes, Spätlese is a sweet Riesling. In California the trend is definitely towards dry Rieslings, and I enjoy those very much. The sweetness of this wine means that you will want to accompany it with something equally sweet, perhaps cheesecake and cherries or a similar rich desert. I enjoyed the flavor of the wine but wasn't able to pair it properly with food and get the full experience of it. (I didn't know what Spätlese meant until I'd tasted the wine.)

I have some new things to try thanks to a 15% off case sale at the 'Teeter, so more later in the week!

Image fixes

I've rescaled all the images to fit on the page properly. If you notice any that I missed please let me know via comments or whatever.

For those that know CSS, my issues seem to be because my images aren't all the same size. I tend to crop out everything except the title, resulting in 760x1125 and other odd sized pictures. When I apply a fixed or relative width and height in CSS the resulting image is distorted. Omitting the height field causes even worse problems. Until I figure out an easier solution I'm rescaling all the pictures to be 240px in width.

Wine Matching with Roast Pig (failed)

This past Sunday I cooked up some Cuban Roast Pork based on a recipe in Cook's magazine. The result was excellent, a tender and flavorful roast loaded with cumin and garlic flavor, balanced with just a touch of sweetness from orange juice and sugar. I now have about two month's worth of leftovers to dispose of in one way or another. I find that no matter how well it's prepared it gets tiresome eating the same meat dish every day. Vegetables and salads don't seem to have the same "tire you out" factor.

The meal also included black beans and rice. I originally thought of matching this with a white wine, perhaps one of the Pinot Grigio's I've been trying, but I ended up going with a 2004 Archery Summit Dundee Hills Pinot Noir. I picked this up at the 'Teeter because I wanted an Oregon Pinot to contrast some of the Napa and Sonoma Pinot I've had the last couple of months. The wine was fairly pricey (> $20) so I had high hopes for it. Things just didn't work out - the wine wasn't bright enough to work with the garlic/orange flavors of the pork or fruity enough to contrast the spiciness of the beans. All in all I thought it was an average wine. I should have gone with my original instinct.

Speaking of Pinot Grigio I tried the 2004 Bocce Pinot Grigio from California over the weekend as well. I enjoyed this one. It's definitely made in the "Italian Style" more than the "California Style" meaning it has a lighter body and more subtle fruit flavors. This was an eminently drinkable wine at a good price that will go well with any light fare.

Lastly I picked up and sampled the 2003 Simi Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. I thought this was a very strong wine in the price range and I plan to get some more to hold on to. It has a full tannic body and is less fruity than is popular with Cab's of the last couple of years. There are definite blackberry and dark toast flavors that I found very pleasant. I recommend this one.

My friend and co-worker (who I hereby dub "ZinGal") is headed to Napa in a couple of weeks. We spent an enjoyable half hour or so assembling a list of the best possible wineries to visit during her trip. Mostly we based things on the reputed quality of the wines with a few exceptions. ZinGal already had a great list put together so I wasn't able to add much. Sometimes you head to wine country just to kick back and enjoy the scenery and sometimes you have an agenda. ZinGal definitely has an agenda for this coming trip and I wish her the best. She's promised to share with me the details when she gets back. This sort of put me in the mind to head to Napa myself. I haven't been to a winery there since the early 1980's; a crying shame. Soon enough I'll just have to suck up the $40 tasting fees and hit my favorites.

Paris, Pinot, etc.

I'm sure many of you have heard of the very famous 1976 Paris wine tasting that put California on the map as a truly world-class producer of wine. The anniversary was recently celebrated (notably in California) and some of the wines from the original tasting were tried again. In addition another tasting was done in Paris of recently produced wine, and California again did very well. Some of the articles published in 1976 are archived various places, including here.

NapaGeek attended one of the events in Sacramento and sent me a list of some of the wines that were offered. I'd be jealous, but I'm taller than he is which makes up for it. One of the wines he mentioned especially enjoying was a David Bruce estate Pinot Noir. David Bruce is located in the Santa Cruz area where a lot of great Pinot can be found (which is interesting, and something I need to look into). I noted the name and moved on to other topics, including exploring Pinot Grigio.

Loh and behold if I didn't see two different David Bruce Pinot's in the local Harris Teeter a week later. They had a Central Valley and Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir for about $25 a bottle. I say "had" on purpose; I got the last bottle they had on my first visit. When I went back today to get dinner, I noticed that they had restocked but that the restock was also disappearing. The price is a little higher than I'm usually willing to pay at the grocery store but I made a couple of exceptions. I'm glad I did; the 2003 Sonoma was one of the most balanced Pinot Noir's I've had. It just reeked quality. While it wasn't the most memorable Pinot I've tasted, it was certainly a great pleasure to drink and I recommend it if you have the cash some evening.

As a side note you can buy the Sonoma Coast Pinot from the winery's online store. It costs more there and shipping will of course add to that. I browsed K&L Wine Merchants to see if they were selling it also; if you're looking for this wine I recommend getting it there. The price is competitive (cheapter than the 'Teeter) and they have several different ones in stock. K&L was recommended in an article in the New York Times so I assume they are reliable, but I've never ordered from them.

I have managed to try a few more Pinot Grigio's as well and I'm starting to develop an opinion on the grape. So far I've tried two from Italy and one from California and noted a distinct difference in style. The Italian wines were much lighter in body and lacked the "sizzling" flavor I noted from the Estancia. Of the Italians I far preferred the 2003 Zenato over the 2005 Ecco Domani. Not too suprising considering the Ecco is really a mass-market wine. The Zenato had distinctive apple and pear flavors and went down far too well. It was easy to drink too much of this wine. The Ecco was around $10, the Zenato about $14. I found a couple more Grigios at Best Cellars in Arlington which I'll try sooner or later and summarize here.

Lastly I had a glass of 2002 Barboursville Reserve Cabernet Franc at Harry's Tap Room in Clarendon the week past. I found it suprisingly good, very peppery and oaky with a nice body and fruit balance. I went looking for this in the store but didn't find an exact match. I'd be ecstatic if Virginia started producing high-quality wine reliably. My experiences so far have been disappointing with the occasional suprise (like the Barboursville). 'Teeter had the Cabernet Sauvignon so I gave that a try. It was decent, not great. For $15 I thought it was priced appropriately, maybe a bit high. I would have preferred to pay $12 for it.

Pinot Grigi-who?

My wine-guru status was seriously compromised today by my inability to answer a couple of questions. First, what's a good wine to try while in Seattle, Washington. Second what's a good Pinot Grigio under $15?

I couldn't even begin to answer these. I've had a number of really good Pinot's and Syrah's from Oregon and Washington (including Walla Walla which I think is really good) but I couldn't name a good one off the top of my head. I've tried a couple of Pinot Grigios but also couldn't name a good one. Time to correct these gaps!

I picked up a number of PG's from various parts of the world at the supermarket on the way home from work. I wasn't able to find any good-looking Oregon or Washington wines at the 'Teeter so a trip to Total Wine over the weekend is in order.

Pinot Grigio is the Italian name for the Pinot Gris grape. It's got a lot of different names as well. It's sort of looked down upon by snobby wine drinkers but a wine's popularity should never be the sole reason to buy/not buy.

The first PG I'm sampling is the 2004 Estancia Pinot Grigio from California. I've tried a few of the Estancia wines and found them to be decent if a bit overpriced, so this seemed like a good place to start. This wine was $11.

This wine smells like Champagne more than Chardonnay with musty and oaky overtones on top of pear and apple aromas. It almost sizzles on the tongue and has a nice granny apple flavor that slowly fades to pear. I'm pleasantly suprised by how nice this wine is. It's a lot lighter than Chardonnay and lacks the buttery flavors common in that varietal. It has a bit more sizzle and apple flavor than a Viognier, but not as much body. It's an easy-going wine that won't threaten anything else on the table.

I'll try another PG from a different region soon. Now that I have a "baseline" I should be able to start making some judgements of quality.

Opinions

For the last couple of days my work schedule has been a bit odd. A side-effect of this was that I spent considerable time with some co-workers talking about more or less random topics. As a result of these conversations I've developed a semi-philosophical theory about personality. Sooner or later, most people develop an Opinion about a certain topic. The topic varies wildly; in some cases it's automobiles, in some cases computer languages or electronics, religion, food, drink, clothes, shoes, the American justice system - there are as many items on the list as there are items. When you ask someone about the topic they hold dear, they give you their Opinion, often at great length. It's wise not to disagree since most likely the beliefs in the chosen area are based more on faith than reason. Some few folks may be able to change their Opinion simply based on rational argument but I think this is the rare exception.

A few moments after I developed this fascinating insight into human nature I realized my Opinions are about food and wine, and this is why I write about those topics here. Since these topics are of special interest to me it's necessary to be very careful that I don't treat them irrationally. It would be a shame to simply dismiss an argument (or a wine) because it doesn't fit into my pre-conceived notions of correctness.

In particular, Merlot: I wrote about a couple of Merlots that didn't impress me recently and it's tempting to write off the varietal entirely based on that. If I did that, however, I would suddenly have an Opinion about Merlot that is dangerously closed-minded. That's something I don't want to do. Accordingly I tried yet another Merlot in an effort to rid myself of the notion that it's kind of boring.

The 2002 Esterlina Cole Ranch Merlot is a merlot with a high C note thrown in the mix. It's higher in acidity and with more fruit flavor than the Ceja I recently tried. I'm not entirely certain that the result is a better wine, but it's one that I enjoyed a bit more. And, unfortunately, it still tastes mushy and without much character to me. All this in spite of the fact that I really enjoy Esterlina's products. Regrettably my Merlot opinion will remain for a bit longer.

I also tried to branch out a bit with a French wine picked up a few months ago from Whole Foods Market. The $18 2003 Château Graves de Pez Saint-Estèphe was dark and murky to me with overwhelming earthy and mushroom flavor. I thought it might be a bit corked, though I'm not sure how much of that is intentional. I didn't like this one very much at all. It's rather timely that I had this since NapaWonk sent me a great article about Bordeaux from the San Francisco Chronicle. Based on what I read there I intend to pick up a couple of bottles in the $20-30 range to see if there really are decent young wines available. I've been told, and in general I agree, that real Bordeaux takes about 10 years to mature (the newspaper article also mentions this). This makes me very reluctant to actually buy any good French wine. 10 years is a very, very long time for something to sit around in your house, especially if you don't have controlled temperature storage.

Two more items of note. I'm thinking about attending the 2006 Washington D.C. International Wine & Food Festival which is the weekend of the 24th. It seems a reasonable bargain ($45 per day for tasting). I was not terribly thrilled with the list of participants but that may be just my ignorance. Lastly, I finished my under $10 tastings with the 2004 Black Opal Shiraz. It was adequate and tasted a lot like all the other < $10 Shiraz I've tried. Not recommended.

Ceja!

Does Merlot deserve the bad rap it has? The most recent round of insults to the fruit started with the movie Sidways (which I still haven't seen). In a scene during the movie one of the main characters throws a fit about the possibility of drinking Merlot during dinner. Even before that, however, Merlot has been seen as "wine for wimps" by some.

I managed to find the exact quote from the movie:

Jack: If they want to drink Merlot, we're drinking Merlot.

Miles Raymond: No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!

Merlot is a medium-bodied, "fleshy" varietal that's often blended with Cabernet. French Bordeaux wines are blends, and Merlot is a big part of their make-up. In fact Chateau Petrus (very famous wine) consists of almost all Merlot grapes. If it's good enough to go into expensive French Bordeaux is it good enough for the casual wine drinker, or even a wine geek, to drink the pure version?

I've had a couple of opportunities to try Merlot recently. The first was the 2000 Arrowood Merlot I reviewed a few weeks ago. Even though I gave that wine a good review, when we tried is at the recent BBQ it just didn't seem to belong. It felt flat, bland, soft and mushy by comparison to the Dobra Syrah or the Sebastiani Cabernet. Is this the fault of the wine or the grape?

At the recommendation of NapaWonk (hope he likes the new nickname) I picked up some wines from Ceja as part of my internet buying explorations. Those are far from over by the way; I recently read an article in the New York Times about the best sites to buy wine from (not direct from the wineries themselves) and plan to try a couple of them out and share my experiences here. NapaWonk hasn't steered me wrong yet so I got one of everything from Ceja, including the Merlot.

The 2001 Ceja Sonoma-Carneros Merlot is 13.9% A.B.V, right in the middle of the expected range. It has an aroma distinctly Merlot-ish to it. I'm starting to be able to tell the standard varieties apart now but I'm still stumped by things like a Grenache, Barbera and sometimes even Syrah. This one is distinct enough that I can tell right away it's not Cabernet or Zinfandel. The smell isn't exceptionally fruity but you immediately know that this is made from grapes. Words are failing me here - it smells like Merlot, and a good one.

It passes all the visual tests, color is a fine purple. The initial flavor feels light, almost delicate. Distinctly Merlot-like yet again and the source of complaints from folks who expect more impact from a wine. There is a hint of grape soda to it, or a lollipop. Definitely evocative of industrial grape-flavoring. It finishes with a distinct tingly acid finish and a long aftertaste of tannins. Overall I feel this is a good wine, and I enjoy it, but I would pass over buying it to accompany dinner. It lacks impact and character. I would match it with fish or something equally light. Here's your gratuitous analogy of the day: Merlot is like a beanbag, mushy and very comfortable but not stylish and bad for your posture.

Would I buy this again? Yes if I had to buy Merlot. If I had a choice I'd pick up a Cabernet, Syrah or blend for the same price. For now at least this variety is going to get a skeptical glance when I'm shopping.

I also tried the 2001 Ceja Cabernet Sauvignon. It was a bit disappointing, honestly, having many of the same characteristics of the Merlot (mushy). I expected a bit more based on the price I paid for the wine (about $30). If you see the Ceja and feel like giving it a try expect a good, easy-drinking but not very powerful wine.