Every Saturday, I do a plan a tasting/seminar for the staff at a store I consult for.
Big reds was the theme this week - yikes. Purple mouth disease is on the run. The tasting included Jax Cabernet Sauvignon from Calistoga, Chateau Montelena Cabernet Franc, Chateau Montelena Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Far Niente Cabernet Sauvignon, Diamond Creek Volcanic Hill Cabernet Sauvignon and Diamond Creek Gravelly Meadow Cabernet Sauvignon.
Like I said, yikes. A collective of over $600 worth of big Napa Cabs. The Jax is a newish project from Calistoga in which 2003 was the first wine bottled under the Jax label, it is very limited in quantity and almost impossible to get. Is it worth it, well the price is right, but nothing to search frantically for as wines such as Judds Hill and the regular Montelena are just as fine if not better. The wine has big rich aromas of vanilla, black raspberry, rosemary and mint, the palate is rich and full but well balanced by decent acidity even with the touch of heat in the lingering finish. After about twenty minutes in the glass the amount of very sweet black cherry jumping out of the glass was amazing. Good wine for the about $42 you might find it for. We'll keep our eyes out for it next vintage though.
The Chateau Montelena Cabernet Franc is an odd ball, first it's not available but at my clients place in the city (gotta contact me to find out where - fees may apply), second they never make this wine, just use Cab Franc as a blender in their Cabernet Sauvignons, and they tried this with Merlot in a previous vintage and I was not impressed at all, maybe even a touch depressed as Montelena is one of my favorites from California. Anyhow the wine had notes of Provencal, cassis, rosemary, blackberry and was very Bordeaux in character - it was at least as good if not better for me than the Jax. Probably due to the Bordelais character.
Far Niente has never been one of those wines I feel a need to have, it is always a very good example of big ripe, lush Napa Cabernet - but I look for more minerality and complexity in my wines than what I find in this and similar wines. It is actually funny because while tasting this a discussion broke out about Parkers palate for such wines and how this is pretty indicative of the 'Parker' style, yet he never gives the wine very good marks. I think this has to due with his not tasting such wines blind. The wine has all the hallmarks of a Napa Cab, lush, big, ripe, sweet, sweet fruits, vanilla, black berry, black currant. Just all around ripe and sweet with a lushness to it and a bit of glycerin in both the palate and finish. A real crowd pleaser, no sense of terrior except the fact that it has that Napa Valley floor character. For about the same money (~$110/btl) I'd rather have the Chateau Montelena Estate Cab.
The Montelena Estate Cab has cassis, tobacco, licorice, cherry, raspberry and cedar - the note that really makes me love this wine is the all important Pencil lead character mingling with the cedar that reminds me of a top wine from Pauillac. The length and complexity evolves with air and keeps you guessing what aromas you'll run into each time you reach for the glass. I personally have to be careful with such wines as I often forget to drink the wine and just continually smell it...this is alright when drinking such a wine with one other person, but when sharing it with a group, I'll end up with a glass of the wine while everyone else has a second. Sometimes it's a mistake to stop and smell the roses, especially if someone else is picking them while you just stand there and smell.
The Diamond Creeks represented other problems, first the tiny production makes them both quite expensive and rare. The vineyard sites are tiny and in a great location, plus the vines were propagated (maybe nicked) from two of the four Bordeaux Premier Crus. Four you say, yes in 1966 there were only four Premier Crus, so my guess would be the vines originated in Haut-Brion and Latour. Mouton was not a 1st Growth at the time, Lafite is far to elegant to be related to wines made from Diamond Creek vines and Margaux was having a bit of a slump and was not really of 1st Growth quality back then.
On the really fine web-site you can find pictures of the vineyards and a neat little map of them too. With that and some of my own memory of the wines I deemed that the Gravelly Meadow would be gentler and more elegant of the two - oops I was wrong, doesn't make sense but the Volcanic Hill is the less massive wine of these two giants. They remind me of Randy Dunns Howell Mountains. The Volcanic Hill was very concentrated, big yet balanced with an absolute ton of cassis and black berry/cherry aromas (this made me think of it being Latour cuttings). There were notes of ripe blueberry, gravelly minerals, dust and just a hint of lead (just lead no pencil - still counts though), a touch of cedar popped up in the finish along a some saber rattling tannins in a long complex and evolving finish. A truly amazing wine but not something I could handle for more than a glass, while compared to the Montelena Estate which I could drink several of.
The Gravelly Meadow was a giant with Syrah like darkness to the appearance. The aromas also had the similar cassis but this time it was very sweet cassis also with a touch of lead, but the oak was more obvious and the palate was very rich with very sweet fruits including sweet raspberry, cherry and giant tannins. The finish was again very long but slightly puckering due to the tannins (they need some time) and a bit of heat. Quite the wine but if the Volcanic was too much than this is off the charts.
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( 3 / 387 )by Chris Miller
Every Saturday, I do a tasting/seminar for the staff at a store I consult for.
California Whites was todays seminar theme, and this is one that can cause me to worry if it will come off well. Cause you know the white wines of California can sometimes be high in alcohol and low in acidity...meaning, clunk. But this line-up offered some interesting options. Two SB's, two Chards, a Sparkler and a wacko blend - oh yeah a two blinds. All pretty interesting.
The Sauv Blancs were Matanzas Creek (at one time in the 1990's one of Cals best) and Grgich Hills Fume Blanc.
Mantanzas Creek Vineyards:
Matanzas Creek was bought by Jess Jackson in the mid 1990's and went though a bit of a slump and some identity complexity issues. I've visited the winery twice, once under the original owners - the McKivers (sp?) and then in 2003 under the Jess's control. In 2003 I tasted many different wines and the current releases at the time were, um indifferent? But then the winemaker brought me to the cellar and I tasted from both the barrel and the tank and I was greatly impressed with both the Merlot (which the McKivers had also made a rep with), the Chardonnay and the Sauvignon Blanc.
The Sauvignon Blanc I tasted today had aromas of ripe grapefruit, a touch of green apple, some ripe citrus and that musky note of...hmm sweaty sex or wet dog or a musky kind of perfume but in a good way - well to me anyway. That musky character comes from the 17% of the Musque Clone of Sauvignon Blanc, blended into the wine. The palate is crisp but rich with a lingering finish and just a hint of alcohol burn in the finish. Yeah it's around 14% alcohol but the acidity balances that nicely.
OK, now who remembers the winemaker for the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay (well for that matter all the 1973 Montelena wines)? Why is that a worthy question you might wonder...well there was a very famous tasting in Paris in 1976, it was done blind with the greatest French wines and the American upstarts. Well the 1973 Chateau Montelena beat out comparable wines from Montrachet, Burgundy (considered the greatest site for Chardonnay in the world - oh and the most expensive vineyard land too). The Chardonnay that took 1st place was the 1973 Montelena, which was made by a Croatian name Mike Grgich. That's right, Mike then went on from that success to start his own winery, and today along with Montelena, Forman and a couple of others makes Napa Valley's finest white wines.
Grgich Hills 2005 Fume Blanc, this wine has all the bright, crisp notes of a classic Sauvignon Blanc with a touch of roundness from maybe some old oak treatment. Makes sense anyway as Miljenko “Mike” Grgich uses a bit of new oak for his Chardonnay and why not use that expensive oak once of twice more before making them into planters or displays at a restaurant or store. The wine has a Pouilly-Fume character to it, still grassy and citrusy but with a touch of roundness that is more Pouilly like than Sancerre like. Long and classy in the finish and palate - it's not cheap though, but neither is fine Pouilly-Fume or even Sancerre.
The Chardonnay was Hartford Court Three Jacks Vineyard in Russian River Valley. This wine is not produced anymore as the Hartford program has changed and they no longer use purchased fruit for their wines. Three Jacks is the name Hartford used for the Duttons J-L Ranch. The wine is not at all my style, yet very well made, it is a big, rich, tropical Chardonnay with a good dose of high quality oak (you know the French kind ~$900 a barrel), though the wine is creamy and lush the acidity does actually hang in there.
This is a picture of a vineyard near to the Duttons properties in Russian River Valley
After these wines we had two blind wines, they both stumped me and for that matter everyone else as they were not typical. I new they were both new world wines but the Viognier had too much zing and zip to be such and the Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier blend tasted like Semillon, and many agreed with me. While the Calera Viognier remained atypical with air, the Niebaum-Coppola Blancaneaux actually did start to bring out the Marzipan and floral components found in Marsanne and Viognier and really wasn't a bad wine, but no way for a price tag of close to $45 a bottle. And Josh Jensens reds are more interesting for me than his whites and for close to $40 for the Calera Viognier, I can think of more interesting wines to spend that kind of dough on.
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