I should clarify: the five permitted red wine grapes is what I meant. They do grow some white bordeaux grapes, primarily semillion and sauvignon blanc (and a bunch of that is used to make Sauternes).
And OCWR…have you tried any Rieslings from Germany, especially from the Mosel?
FGIE, no I haven’t. German wines scare me, probably because of the sweetness of some (e.g. liebfraumilch) which was where my wine tasting began in college. Loved it then, can’t stand it now.
Any suggestions welcomed. Price not an issue - the wife and I spend an obscene amount on good wine!
Unfortunately Riesling gets a bad rap because of cheap stuff like Liebfraumilch. Riesling is made in a dazzling array of styles/ripeness. Its often thought of as being the most terroir-transparent grape, and i agree with that sentiment. I mention the Mosel area because its soils have a very high content of shale, which the roots of the vines draw water through and thus impart a distinct minerality (wet stones) to the aroma and flavor of the wine.
The sweetness issue has always bugged me. People say “I don’t like sweet wines” and my retort is usually along the lines of “What, you don’t like sweetness when you bite into a peach?”
The problem with people feeling that way is because there is a vast ocean of inferior, insipid sweet wine out there (lookin’ at you, White Zin!). Well-made sweet wines abound however, and this is why I always prefer German Rieslings to just about any other: mouth-watering acidity. A poorly made sweet wine is often cloying and out of balance. With the good German Rieslings the acidity provides structure to the wine so the residual sugars are balanced with the rest of the wine. It should be noted though, that dry Rielsings are made in Germany too.
Wikipedia’s Riesling page isn’t too bad. Check it out.
Wow, we share quite a bit in terms of wine love! Some friends of ours like white zin; to which I refer as “that insipid pink shit,” and say something like “What a horrible thing to do to the noble zinny grape!”
<Us wine snobs are fun to be around, aren’t we?>
Sweet wines have their place, and not exclusively as dessert wines. It’s all about balance, as you say. I think what puts me off most is sweet wine on my palate brings back memories from 30-odd years ago, and stuff like Boones farm and Reunite (sp?) which were big in the 70’s and 80’s.
Thanks for the advice, I will seek out some examples of German (Mosel region) wines.
If cost isn’t an issue, Donhoff is my favorite producer. I’ve had some of their wines with over ten years of bottle age on them and they were just fantastic. Like other-worldly good. You know what else? If you are going to drink it with food, have it with spicy food, particularly something like Thai food. The slightly sweet Riesling is a perfect foil for spicy food.
What’s funny is that Donhoff is in the Nahe and not the Mosel region. But there are a stupidly good wine producer. Arguably the best in Germany. If you can find a Rielsing from their Hermannshole vineyard, get it.
Here’s Donhoff’s website (click on the little “EN” on the bottom right for English): Weingut Dönnhoff
Dang, firewall here at work won’t let me go there. I will try this at home.
OP, sorry for the slight hijack. Hopefully this conversation has some useful info for you as well.
Yeah, sorry OP for the hijack. Maybe try adding red food coloring to a Riesling and nobody’s the wiser?
I was looking for a bottle of Eroica Riesling at Safeway the other day, and they didn’t have any, so I bought a bottle of Trefethen Riesling instead. Very dry. Very good. And only about $10. I had been to the winery in Napa, and I know their reds are quite good, so I was expecting the Riesling to be decent. I was pleasantly surprised with how good it was.
I’ll have to give that one a shot. I’m with you in that I wouldn’t have expected their Riesling to stand out.
OCwR, you might want to try Claiborne & Churchill’s Gewurz. U.S., inexpensive, and varietally correct, IMO. Navarro is probably the best U.S. producer of Riesling and Gewurz (though Eroica is damned tasty stuff), but they are only mail-order, IIRC.
Alsace Rieslings are—usually—going to be drier than the German equivalents. (Yeah, yeah, Zind-Humbrecht.) Unlike the Germans though, you generally can’t tell how much residual sugar’s in the wine from the label. (That’s what your wine store clerk is for.) If you see the words “halbtrocken”, “trocken” or—if you’re made of money—“Grosses Gewächs” or “Erstes Gewächs”, the wine should be more or less dry. Half-dry, in the case of halbtrocken. I love German Riesling with Asian dishes, and IME, they also go well with meat dishes with fruit sauces. E.g., pork loin with apricot sauce and a Spatlese. As FGIE pointed out, the acid balance is so good in good German Riesling, you don’t mind the sugar.
Dönnhoff is great, but as you said, FGIE, damn are they expensive. I’ve yet to be steered wrong by anything Terry Theise has imported, and I believe Dönnhoff is one of the properties he represents. So’s Kurt Darting, who’s really good, and a whole lot cheaper. Also not in the Mosel, rather the Pfalz.
Getting back to reds, Johanna, given your love of Chianti Classico, have you tried any Brunello, and if so, what did you think?
Since it’s July, let’s not forget rosé. Not the cheap crap most Americans are used to, but the good, French stuff (still usually not expensive). There’s good American rosé, too, but it’s hit or miss.
No. It’s something I dream of a lot more than I get to drink.
Yeah, the Terry Thiese portfolio is impressive and most of the wines are reasonably priced. And Darting is fantastic too. And in some instances you can tell if an Alsatian wine is sweet if it says “Selection de Grains Nobles” on it its a dessert wine (and terribly expensive too). Ditto anything that says “Vendange Tardive” (late harvest). By and large most Alsatian wines are dry…certainly on average much drier than their German counterparts. Austria is doing some good thinks with Rieslings and Gruner Veltliner too.
Speaking of Brunello/Italian wines, given my love of barolo, there’s a producer of Nebbiolo d’Alba that I am trying to recollect…all the fun of the Nebbiolo grape without paying through the nose for the Barolo distinction…its not bruno giacosa or pio cesare, both of which are good…damn. I can’t remember. It was about $25 a bottle and a steal at that price. Crap!
Yeah, Americans are scared of pink wines. Many of the dry rose’s from France are really good, particularly from Tavel, Anjou and Bandol. These wines are awesome on a hot summer day or with something like a good pizza.
I was wine tasting in Amador County California and got into a discussion about this with one of the owners of a small winery. He was trying to come up with a tradition to go with the opening of screw top wines. He tries to open the bottle so you can hear each of the 6 small pieces of metal break. He would probably be the first to admit that this method does not have quite the same romance.
People need to get over the “romance” aspect of a cork. Admittedly, there are a lot of wine drinkers out there whom have no idea what TCA is and would drink a wine infested with it without wrinkling their noses at the wet cardboard aromas.
My Dad is spectacularly bad about his wine. He likes the inexpensive quality wines I have introduced him to, but he won’t store opened wine properly. I will bring him a bottle of something decent and red, he’ll have a glass that night, and I will see the same bottle on their kitchen counter 3 weeks later with about a glassfull left, which he will still drink, even though when I smell it I tell him it’s turned into a glassfull of grossness.
Rioja.
This is another good use of Tempranillo, but Riojas can also be hit or miss if you aren’t familiar with producers…but they do generally yield a lighter-bodied red that’s in line with the OP. But again…you really have to know your producers…or have a really good and reliable salesperson in your local wine store to guide you.
Roses are, indeed, the perfect picnic/summer quaffing wine. I learned to love them when I lived in Europe and was exposed to drier styles of rose/blush (not white zinfandel.) Also, there was a program called “Floyd Uncorked” with Keith Floyd and Jonathan Pedley, and I watched an episode on roses they did where they talked about the somewhat negative reputation of roses and how they really can be good wines, and that encouraged me to go out and give them another chance. They do tend to be “simpler” wines, flavor wise, but on a summer’s day, they just have the right balance of thirst quenching and flavor. I’m more of a beer drinker, so I think of roses as the American wheats or summer ales of wines.
Edmunds St John, one of the most respected California producers of Rhone varietal wines, agrees with you: http://www.edmundsstjohn.com/TheWines/PincFroid/2004.html
(I don’t think they produce this every year).
By the way, Edmunds St John is arguably the very BEST producer of Rhone varietals in all of California. Only Sean Thackery with his weird blends comes close.
Love some roses. Essential for some of the combinations that make up a Triple Larry. Domaine Ott’s is spendy, but worth it, IMHO. Just feel weird spending $40 for a rose… Bonny Doon’s Clos de Gilroy rose is, in good years, the essence of strawberry, but dry. It is a good deal less than $40.
Steve Edmunds seemed like a great guy—the one time I met him—and for QPR, he’s nearly impossible to beat on CA Rhones, but I’d put Alban (is he even making wine anymore?), Sine Qua Non, Qupe, and Ojai ahead of him on sheer quality. I guess he doesn’t do the Gravel and Rocks wine anymore; too bad. Other people have similarly raved about Sierra Vista and Terre Rouge. I’m sure there’s a bunch of mailing list stuff that I’m omitting.
I was going to recommend Mat Garretson for American viognier, and then I read that his Garretson Wine Company went out of business about 5 years ago. And then I read that John Alban took over for him for the Hospice du Rhone, (so I guess he’s still making wine, LOL.) and now that’s being cancelled after this year. Wonder what happened to him?
Christ, how time flies.
Gosh, I forgot all about Qupe. I’ve heard of Sine Qua Non but never tried them. Never tried Ojai either.
And Steve is a really good guy. I met him once at a multi-course wine dinner we were having where his wines were being featured. When he gets to talking about his wines its patently obvious how passionate he is about them.
I hadn’t heard he stopped producing Rocks and Gravel…that would be a shame as it was a very nice blended wine that wasn’t too terribly expensive.