Monthly Archives: December 2014

Top 100 Wines and Restaurants; Christmas and Kinky Boots

I don’t usually pay too much attention to serious top 10 or top 100 lists, especially for wine and food. However, the lists that I do look forward to each year are those from the San Francisco Chronicle. I’ve found over the years that my tastes are usually pretty well in line with these critics; it’s pretty rare that I’ve had a sub-par experience going off one of these lists.

On Christmas we were invited to a friend’s house to join their family and friends celebration, and we brought a bottle of Winemaker B’s Armida 2012 Chardonnay, Stuhlmuller Vineyard, Alexander Valley. I had last tasted this in the barrel nearly 2 years ago, and had been waiting to taste this from the bottle, since another winery’s Chardonnay – same vineyard, same year – had made this year’s Chronicle top 100 wine list. Well, I haven’t tried that Chardonnay, but I can tell you that the Armida Chardonnay was delicious. And the Christmas party was great fun, with some great food. And wine.

The next day Lori and I went into San Francisco to see a matinee showing of the musical Kinky Boots. We love live theater, we had enjoyed the movie when it first came out 8 or so years ago, and the musical (by Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper) had won multiple Tony awards. It was a lot of fun, with the audience even clapping along to a couple of the songs.

Afterwards we wandered around wasting time before our dinner reservation, and found a wine bar and shop, Arlequin, where we could sit outside and have a glass. Lori had a Sangiovese blend from Tuscany (La Mozza, Morellino de Scansano, 2012), while I had a Melon de Bourgogne (Luneau-Papin, Loire 2012). When I think of white wine from the Loire region, I’m thinking of Sauvignon Blanc, but this is not anything like that. Melon de Bourgogne is the grape varietal used to make Muscadet wines. (Interesting side note: Muscadet is the only wine made in France that is neither called by its region nor by its grape varietal.) I found it to be closer to white Rhone wines, like Viognier, than to Sauvignon Blanc, but with a less floral nose and more acid. Quite nice actually. Lori seemed to enjoy her wine as well, which was a blend of 85% Sangiovese with Syrah and Alicante, with a few percent of others thrown in. Very much a Sangiovese to be sipped while sitting on the sidewalk and watching the world go by.

For dinner we had reservations at Lers Ros, a Chronicle top 100 restaurant that does Thai food. Wow. We like Thai food, and there are a few good restaurants in our area. But nothing like this. The soup, the prawns and asparagus, the green papaya salad took this cuisine to a new level for us.

L’Chaim,

Larry

2014 Harvest Wrap-Up

We went up to the Russian River and Dry Creek Valley area in late October to see the kids and grandkids, and check on the 2014 harvest. That weekend was the end of harvest for Winemaker B, and he was taking a few days off. We went to Armida anyway, to show my cousin the winery and taste some of the wines. It was a beautiful day, as you can see from the photos below. We also went to Arista, as we were invited by Kim, wife of Winemaker B and manager of Arista’s “A-List”, to their pick-up party. While we weren’t picking up any pre-purchased wine, we did come away with a few bottles of the 2012 Arista Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, Two Birds Vineyard, which was our favorite from the day.

Here are the key points from the harvest:

Start early, end early. Harvest started early this year, as previously mentioned in our Harvest Update post. It’s not surprising then that harvest ended early too. From the winemaker’s perspective harvest starts when the first grapes come in, and ends when the last tank is emptied, and the wine moved to barrels. From the winemaker’s wife’s perspective, harvest starts when the first grapes come in, and ends when the winemaker gets his first day off. In between, the “harvest widow” gets to deal with the winemaker leaving the house by 6am and getting home around 8pm (if lucky), for about 9 weeks in the case of Winemaker B and family.

The drought had minimal effect. A lot of the vineyards are “dry-farmed”, not irrigated, and those handled the drought just fine, with a slight decrease in quantity. Irrigated vineyards also had a slight decrease in quantity, as water cutbacks were required in most areas. However, quantities were going to be down a bit no matter what, as the 2012 and 2013 harvests were near record volumes.

The grapes/juice/wine are tasting excellent. Throughout the process, from harvesting the grapes to the initial juice to the initial post-fermentation wine, everything is tasting great. We’ll see how things taste in a few months, when the first whites like Sauvignon Blanc will be bottled, but right now Winemaker B reports that everything is going great. He is in the medium high maintenance mode on the wines, not quite working on every wine every day, but the wines don’t go unattended for long. Those wines that are getting a malolactic (ML) secondary fermentation are starting that process, some doing it on their own and some with help and tight control from the winemaker. The ML fermentation on these wines, which takes a lot longer than the primary fermentation, should be done by about the same time as those first wines (which don’t go through ML) are bottled, so early next year is the next major checkpoint for the 2014 wines.

As to where the 2014 vintage will sit compared with recent vintages, it’s too early to say. We’re still not sure about the 2012 and 2013 vintages, although they seem so far to be quite good. In the Russian River and Dry Creek Valleys, probably the best recent vintage was 2009, with 2007 close behind.

Since we were up there seeing kids and grandkids, we brought up a couple of bottles to share with the family. We opened up a Windy Oaks Estate 2001 Pinot Noir, Santa Cruz Mountains, Proprietor’s Reserve, Schultze Family Vineyards, and a Failla 2009 Pinot Noir, Russian River Valley, Keefer Vineyard. The Failla justified the general feeling that 2009 was an outstanding vintage in the Russian River area. The Windy Oaks was our second to last bottle of that wine. We have opened bottles for family and friends, and even for business associates. (There was one interesting dinner with an associate from France, who I didn’t realize was a Burgundy aficionado and had a 1,000+ bottle cellar. He thought the Windy Oaks would stand up nicely to some of his best Burgundies.) This has been a great wine every time we’ve opened a bottle, and this one did not disappoint. Beautiful.

L’Chaim,

Larry