Catena 2005 Malbec

Third in my series of South American Malbec tastings...

This was the most expensive malbec that I could find at the store, so I bought it to round out my price range of $10-$20. Turned out this is the best one of the bunch!

Catena 2005 Malbec
Winery: Bodega Catena Zapata
Country: Argentina
Region: Mendoza
Made from grapes sourced from 4 different vineyards ranging from 2850-5000 feet altitude (now that's some high altitude!). Aged 12 months in 70% French Oak (20% new) and 30% new American Oak.
Stats: 13.5% abv, pH = 3.78, TA = 5.13 g/L

Appearance: Deep, deep purple. Essentially opaque to the eye.
Aroma: Dark cherries, blackberries, and black currants. Underlying oak and leather with some spice notes.
Taste: A very complex, but mild wine. A weave of cherry, toasted oak, leather, and chocolate with mild tannins and even some floral notes in the finish. Long lingering finish.

I think this wine actually has the acid balance to drink as a stand alone wine, not just with food.

Salute,
a Wine Student

La Posta 2006 Malbec Angel Paulucci Vineyard

Continuing on my South American malbec tasting and reverse engineering experiments, the next wine on the docket is La Posta 2006 Malbec. Interestingly, this is a single vineyard wine made from grapes from the Angel Paulucci Vineyard.

La Posta 2006 Malbec Angel Paulucci Vineyard
Stats: 13.9% ABV, pH = 3.68, Total acidity = 3.96 g/L
Cost: $16.99 at Acton Wine & Spirits, Acton, MA
Region: Argentina, Mendoza Region, Ugarteche

Appearance: Deep purple, huge legs
Aroma: Big fruity nose with loads of cherries, blackberries, blueberries.
Taste: Big initial fruit burst with cherries and blackberries predominating. Very mild tannins and a smooth finish. Not much lingering after taste.

For those who like to keep score, this wine received a 90 pts rating from Wine Advocate.

I tasted the wine before and during a dinner of spaghetti & meatballs prepared by my lovely wife. The wine improved tremendously when drunk with the meal. The low acid was a good compliment to the acidic tomato sauce. This wine needs to be drunk with food. Otherwise, it's fairly forgettable. I get a kick out of the reviews that I've found online that describe this wine as "well-structured wine that is incredibly full of life". Sorry, I just don't see it. Good Italian food wine, but otherwise, pretty bland.


Salute,
a Wine Student.

I Made Vineyard & Winery Management Magazine!

Earlier this week, I received my latest copy of Vineyard & Winery Management magazine. I got a free subscription to the magazine when I attended the Wineries Unlimited 2007 convention in Valley Forge, PA last March as part of the registration fee. Part of this issue was devoted to advertising the upcoming Wineries Unlimited 2008 convention, but it was full of pictures from last year's convention. Imagine my delight when I discovered that I was included in a picture! On page 47, in the bottom right hand corner is a picture of one of the seminars, and way in the back, silhouetted against the wall, you can see me completely engrossed in the speaker while seated in a classic Thinker pose. I think this was one of the presentations on making ice wine given by a microbiology professor from University of Ontario. I did find that presentation fascinating--different glucose metabolic pathways in yeast in a high sugar environment that produce acetic acid and glycol to balance the osmotic pressures.

See, I told you it was fascinating!

Salute,
a Wine Student

Terrazaz 2006 Malbec

Since I'm planning on make wine from Chilean Malbec this spring (see post), I decided to do some competitive intelligence and reverse engineering on some commercial malbecs. I went to a couple of local wine stores and purchased 3 bottles of Malbec in the $10-$25 price range. I was a little disappointed that all I could find was Argentinian Malbec (even when the shelf at the Acton Wine & Spirits was proudly labeled "Chilean Wine"). Yes, I know that's two different countries, let alone wine growing regions, but I reasoned that both regions are located in high altitude arid valleys, so the resulting wine should be similar enough for my purposes. I started opening the wines this week, and will report on each in turn.

Terrazas Malbec 2006 (Wine Spectator ranking: 88 pts)
Cost: $10.99 at Westford Liquor
Country: Argentina
Region: Mendoza
Altitude: 1067 meters (3500 ft) above sea level

Stats: 13.5% ABV, pH = 3.70, total acidity = 4.05 g/L

Appearance: Deep, dark purple--very hard to see through with nice long legs.
Aroma: Big fruity nose with loads of blackberries, cassis, and plums. There's a background smell that I'm still trying to figure out if it was toasty oak or mold.
Taste: Fruit forward with initial broad blackberry. Mellow tannins with a hint of vanilla. Ended rather abruptly with a flat finish and not much lingering after taste.

I tried the wine again the next day after it had sat for ~18 hours under a vacuvin seal and found a good improvement. The aeration brought out a little more tannin pucker, but I still missed the finish. Overall, a nice inexpensive wine, but rather forgettable. I think the addition of a little tartaric acid to give the finish a bit of a bite would go a long way in improving this wine.

Salute,
a Wine Student

Grape Pomace Good for your Smile!

As if we needed another reason to like wine, it turns out that the left-over dregs after fermentation (the pomace) can yield polyphenol extracts that inhibit bacteria that cause tooth decay (see story)! Apparently, these extracts inhibited glucosyltransferases from two different bacterial strains by a whopping 85%. Bacteria in the mouth use glucosyltransferases to anchor themselves to the teeth and become resistant to toothbrushing. Even better, the research was done at the University of Rochester Medical Center and Cornell University using red grape pomace donated from wineries in the New York Finger Lakes. Cabernet Franc pomace was the best of the three varietals tried (over pinot noir and noiret). Could this be the start of a interstate anti-bacterial rivalry--"Our grape gunk is better than your grape gunk!"? Will this cause the lowly Cab Franc to be the new pinot?

Of course, we're years away from actual drug treatments derived from grape pomace, but at the moment, I can't get the picture of a dentist smearing fermented grape skins over my teeth out of my head! That would be a picture worth a thousand words!!

Salute!
a Wine Student.

Nashoba Valley Winery Visit

After church today, my wife and I decided to run down to Nashoba Valley Winery in Bolton, MA before we came home to watch the Patriots game this afternoon. Something I've been wanting to do ever since we moved here, but just haven't found the time yet. We left church at 11:00 and decided to see what restaurants we could find on the way to grab some lunch rather than go back home and fix lunch. Well, Bolton, MA is not exactly known for the quantity of restaurants within the city limit. We saw a grand total of two. One was a pizza joint inside of a tacky looking tourist trap just west of the I-495 interchange, and the other was J's Restaurant located on the winery grounds inside the old farm house. We opted to try J's Restaurant. The hostess informed us that they were normally booked solid, but had a little lighter traffic today because of the football game and had a free table available. Wow, what a find! The brunch spread was simply amazing: Cinnamon raisin French toast, gourmet egg strata, sausage, home fries with truffle butter, smoked trout and bluefish with capers, pork taquitos, Japanese seaweed salad, pumpkin bisque, farfalle pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and cream sauce, toasted banana bread, and three different salads including a nut salad with pecans, walnuts, macadamia, pistachios, and dried cranberries in a cinnamon caramel sauce. And then there was the cheese and dessert table! All that for $18.50 per adult.

After we were satiated, we ambled down to the winery and found a space at the tasting bar. Nashoba Valley specializes in fruit wines, especially apple. We started with the dry whites. First, a Baldwin apple wine that tasted nothing like apples--big burst of pineapple and citrus. Then a Chardonnay made from Massachusetts grown grapes--a big, full bodied, slightly buttery chard. Third, a Gravenstein apple wine with a little stronger apple taste, but still tasted almost like a sauvignon blanc. The last white wine we tasted was a dry vidal blanc. Another nicely made wine with big fruity nose that finished with a distinctly foxy taste.

Moving on to the reds, we sampled a blueberry/merlot that was quite good. A 50/50 blend of blueberry and New York merlot that was fermented separately and aged in oak before blending and bottling. Dark garnet color with very nice light berry aromas and smooth finish. Next was Chrysleton, a dry elderberry-apple wine that was an easy sipping light red. The elderberry added color and complexity to the apple wine. Almost like a róse.

We finished our tasting by sampling the dry blueberry and semi-dry blueberry wines. Good, but not my favorites. The dry blueberry was complex with strong tobacco and leather aromas and tastes. Perhaps a little too heavily oaked. The semi-dry blueberry was just lightly sweet, but had some oily notes in the finish.

All in all, a very enjoyable visit with some surprising fruit wines. All of the single varietal apple wines were almost indistinguishable from a white grape wine. I'd be interested in serving them along side a sauvignon blanc or perhaps a viognier to see difficult it would be to tell them apart. We ended up buying 5 wines to sample later, and those reviews will be posted here, so stay tuned.

The winery itself is in a wonderful location. The views across the orchards and vineyards are wonderful in mid-Winter, and I can only imagine how beautiful the views are when the trees and grass are green. They have plenty of picnic tables and space for summer picnics, as well as an outdoor space for weddings and gatherings. The tasting room is quite large, but the tasting bar is very small. The wine for sale is spread across a large area, but I can only imagine how crowded the tasting bar area gets in the middle of summer!

Salute,
a Wine Student

David Coffaro 2005 Barbera

On Saturday afternoon, I finished my chores and wanted to open a bottle of wine while I watched the Patriots advance to 17-0. After a little hemming and hawing in front of the wine racks, I chose a bottle of David Coffaro 2005 Barbera. Now, a lot of people don't care for barbera as a single varietal. It is used a lot for blending, but I've really enjoyed David's Barberas. I buy these as futures, but they might still be available in stores around San Francisco and Sonoma mostly.

David Coffaro 2005 Barbera
Cost:I paid ~$13 as a future. Retail now would be around $20-25.
Stats: 75% Barbera/15% Sangiovese/10% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14.2% alcohol
Appelation: Sonoma County
Sub-appelation: Dry Creek Valley
Appearance: Clear, dark maroon, almost inky. Nice legs!
Aroma: Big fruit nose filled with black cherries, currants, and raisins with hints of vanilla and toasted coconut.
Taste: Smooth, fruity foretaste. Almost floral. Big pepper and spice finish with a slight tannic pucker.

I've been drinking this solo, but it would undoubtedly pair very nicely with a steak, hamburger, or tomato pasta.

Salute!
a Wine Student