Taste Camp – Roanoke Vineyards and Paumonok Vineyards

It has been a week since TasteCamp and I need to make sure I get everything down before I forget it all.

The Roanoke Vineyards were the first stop we made on a hectic Saturday of wine tasting. We got there at 10:00 in the morning, the perfect time to start tasting red wines.

We tasted their Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc as well as a few blends. To be honest, none of these wines really excited me, although I enjoyed the Cabernet Franc. I thought that this wine had some nice jammy qualities, with ripe strawberries and a little spicy white pepper.

Richard (Richie) Pisacano, our guide for the tasting, was great to listen to. He was a farmer, through and through, with a great sense of familiarity about the land around him. One of the blends that they made was named Marco Tulio, named after Richie's father-in-law, which I guess was better than calling it Blend 3. While we were there, Richie told us that there was one block of Cabernet Franc vines that were cared for by his father Gabby. Gabby's grapes were grown in a very traditional way and were compared to the other vines that had more modern technology overseeing the produce. Evidently Gabby's Cabernet Franc was one of the most flavorful wines at the winery, although we did not get to taste it.

From there we went on to Paumanok Vineyards, just up the road and across the width of the fork to the other highway (there are only two). This winery was also family owned and operated, with the son of the winemaker working as the vineyard manager, and the winemaker’s wife keeping everyone in line.

We tasted some Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and some Petit Verdot. The Chenin Blanc was not my style, but pleasantly fruity all the same. The other whites did not tickle my fancy. On the other hand, the White Label Merlot 2005 was absolutely delicious. It was classic merlot, with great deep red berries and structure.

We then did some barrel tasting. It is always fun to see what is still in the barrel and to see what the winemaker is thinking about doing with the wines before they put them into the bottle. However, morning barrel tastings of Petit Verdot can be a bit much.

We then went back up to taste through the Paumanok Rieslings. The one that stuck out to me was the Late Harvest Riesling. Only 70 cases of 375 mL bottles were made. It was very nice, rich and balanced with a little petrol and apricot.

TasteCamp East 2009 - to be continued...

Always a bad thing to be the one holding the spittoon...

I have spent years mastering how to completely ruin a good photo...

A time of Hope

The world has gone feverish for Hope. It’s the word that is lying in the back of everyone’s mouth as they talk about how bad things are right now. Businesses are closing left and right, especially here in New York where you can see empty storefronts and “Going out of Business” signs, where not 6 months ago there were fall line-ups and smug salespeople. Hope is what the world clings to, a way to convince yourself that tomorrow will be better. Barack Obama ran his campaign on a message that hope will see us through and that we will weather this stormy economy and life will once again be good, or at least as good as it was.

I found a winery selling hope, or at least finding a way to use it to help others. Hope Wine is a concept created by Jacob Kloberdanz in 2006 after he witnessed the sales power that teaming a wine business with a non-profit organization can have. Kloberdanz worked as a wine sales manager and would work with non-profit organizations on a monthly basis, not only to get that warm feeling when you help those in need but to also sell more product. After seeing these results, Kloberdanz decided to create a brand that donated to charity and helped raise awareness all year round.

Kloberdanz and a group of entrepreneurs out of Southern California, each with sales, marketing and managerial experience in the wine industry launched Hope Wines brand in early 2007. Their company partnered with Sonoma Wine Company to help create this private label. Today the company has five different wine varieties, with plans to expand into more varieties to support a growing selection of causes.

The wines, made by David Elliot (a 25-year veteran in the wine industry) are:

Sauvignon Blanc – Supporting the Environment
Chardonnay – Supporting Breast Cancer Awareness
Merlot – Supporting AIDS Awareness
Cabernet Sauvignon – Supporting Autism Research
Zinfandel – Supporting the Families of Fallen Troops

I decided to purchase some of these wines and try them out. It is great to see a company whose main mission is to help those in need, but are the wines also worth drinking in their own merit?

The Hope Chardonnay was quite good. I really liked the freshness and excitement in the wine. I was quite surprised to find that the wine had see very little oak and showed great apple and pear notes. It was very pleasant with the grilled shrimp I had with it.

The Hope Merlot on the other hand was not nearly as good. A perfectly drinkable wine, but nothing exciting.

I haven’t tried the Sauvignon Blanc yet, but when I do I’ll put up a note about it.

Wines Tasted on November 19th, 2008

1) Chateau de Seuil Graves Blanc 2006, 12.5% ALC, AOC Graves, Bordeaux, France

2) Chateau Les Hauts-Conseillants 2005, 14% ALC, AOC Lalande de Pomerol, Bordeaux, France

3) Chateau de Lescours 2005, 13% ALC, (80% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Cabernet Franc), AOC Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Bordeaux, France

4) Chateau Merville 2001, 12.5% ALC, AOC Saint-Estephe, Bordeaux, France

5) Chateau Lacoste-Borie 2005, 13% ALC, AOC Pauillac, Bordeaux, France

6) Charmes de Kirwan 2005, 13% ALC, AOC Margaux, Bordeaux, France


Recommendations:

I liked many of these wines. Each had a certain character and was definitely closer to the earth and mineral side of taste rather than the bigger fruit explosions.

1) For those that did not know that good white wines could come from Bordeaux, you should try this one. This wine had such soft vanilla aromas. In the group that tasted with me someone said, "butter cream frosting". I think that is right on the mark. The taste was very pleasant, an easy expression of softer pear with a little lemon zest. It had some nice honeycomb overtones as well. Relaxingly good to drink.

2) Lots of mineral/earthy smells came out of this wine for me. There was a bit of leathery, cedar boxish things going on here. The taste was something to get used to, not in a bad way, but in a way I did not expect. It was smooth up front with most of the taste coming well after the wine had past my lips. The texture was of fine grain sands washing over your tongue, or as one of our group said, "velvet".

4) To me, this is the best wine of the bunch. The nose was so funky that it almost put many of our group out from tasting it. However, when we tasted the wine it showed itself to be complex and elegant. There were some great black cherry and strawberry flavors with length and structure. A really solid and balanced wine.

5) When I tasted this wine I just wanted food. Perhaps that was because it was roughly 7 pm and I had not eaten dinner yet, but this wine made me crave a rosemary lamb stew. This wine was rich, with some dark chocolate and blackberry flavors. The scent was a little hot, reminding me of fresh leather and cassis.

Wines tasted on October 29th, 2008

Pinot Noir

1) Fleur de California Pinot Noir 2006, 13.5% ALC., Carneros, California, USA

2) Joseph Drouhin Cote de Beaune-Villages 2005, 13% ALC., AOC Cote de Beaune-Villages, Cote D’Or, Burgundy, France

3) Baden Biengener Maltesergarten Pinot Noir 2003, QmP Troken Auslese, Markgraflerland, Germany

Merlot

4) Sterling Vineyards Merlot 2004, 13.5% ALC, Napa Valley, California, USA

5) Chateau Beaumont Cru Bourgeois Supérieur 2005, 13.5 ALC, (51% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Cabernet Franc, 3% Petit Verdot), Haut-Médoc, Bordeaux, France

6) Chateau Haut-Surget Lalande de Pomerol 2005, 13% ALC, AOC Lalande-de-Pomerol, Bordeaux, France

Merlot

Merlot ('MERL-oh' in British English, mer-LOH in American English and standard French) is a red wine grape that is used as both a blending grape and for varietal wines. Merlot-based wines usually have medium body with hints of berry, plum, and currant. Its softness and "fleshiness", combined with its earlier ripening, makes Merlot a popular grape for blending with the sterner, later-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon, which tends to be higher in tannin. Merlot is also one of the most popular red wine varietals in many markets. This flexibility has helped to make it one of the world's most planted grape varieties. As of 2004, Merlot was estimated to be the third most grown variety at 260,000 hectares (640,000 acres) globally, with an increasing trend. This put Merlot just behind Cabernet Sauvignon's 262,000 hectares (650,000 acres).

The earliest recorded mention of Merlot was in the notes of a local Bordeaux official who in 1784 labeled wine made from the grape in the Libournais region as one of the area's best. The name comes from the French regional patois word "merlot", which means "young blackbird" ("merle" is the French word for several kinds of thrushes, including blackbirds); the naming came either because of the grape's beautiful dark-blue color, or due to blackbirds' fondness for grapes. By the 19th century it was being regularly planted in the Médoc on the "Left Bank" of the Gironde.

It was first recorded in Italy around Venice under the synonym Bordò in 1855. The grape was introduced to the Swiss, from Bordeaux, sometime in the 19th century and was recorded in the Swiss canton of Ticino between 1905 and 1910.

Researchers at University of California, Davis believe that the grape is an offspring of Cabernet Franc and is a sibling of Carménère.

Until 1993, the Chilean wine industry mistakenly sold a large quantity of wine made from the Carmenere grape as Merlot. In that year, genetic studies discovered that much of what had been grown as Merlot was actually Carmenere, an old French variety that had gone largely extinct in France due to its poor resistance to phylloxera, which as of 2006 does not exist in Chile.

The labeling Chilean Merlot is a catch-all to include wine that is made from a blend of indiscriminate amounts of Merlot and Carmenere. With Merlot ripening 3 weeks earlier than Carmenere, these wines differ greatly in quality depending on harvesting.

Merlot is produced primarily in France, Italy (where it is the country's 5th most planted grape) and California, Romania and on a lesser scale in Australia, Argentina, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, Slovenia, and other parts of the United States such as Washington and Long Island. It grows in many regions that also grow Cabernet Sauvignon but tends to be cultivated in the cooler portions of those areas. In areas that are too warm, Merlot will ripen too early.

France

Merlot is the most commonly grown grape variety in France. In 2004, total French plantations stood at 115,000 hectares (280,000 acres). Merlot's status as France's most planted variety is a recent phenomenon, from the early 2000s, owing both to the increase of Merlot and the decline of varieties such as Carignan and Ugni blanc. Plantations of Merlot in Bordeaux have expanded, as previous white wine areas have been converted to the production of Merlot-dominated red wines. The largest increase in Merlot plantations, however, has occurred in the south of France, such as Languedoc-Roussillon. Merlot, as well as Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah have partially replaced the previously popular varieties of the south such as Carignan and Cinsault.
In the traditional Bordeaux blend, Merlot's role is to add body and softness. Despite accounting for 50-60% of overall plantings in Bordeaux, the grape tends to account for an average of 25% of the blends-especially in the Graves and Médoc. However, in the regions of Pomerol and Saint-Emilion Merlot commonly comprises the majority of the blend. One of the most famous and rare wines in the world, Château Pétrus, is almost all Merlot.

Rest of Europe

In Italy, the Merlot grape is often blended with Sangiovese to give the wine a similar softening effect as the Bordeaux blends. The Strada del Merlot is a popular tourist route through Merlot wine countries along the Isonzo river.
In Hungary, Merlot complements Kékfrankos, Kékoportó and Kadarka as a component in Bull's Blood. It is also made into varietal wine known as Egri Médoc Noir which is noted for its balanced acid levels and sweet taste.