Compare: 2012 Guido K Vintners Sangiovese

Wow! We enjoyed this tonight with Italian-style grilled chicken (slathered in olive oil, Tuscan spices, and fresh Oregano and Rosemary), with whole-wheat egg noodles and a wonderful veggie-heavy cream sauce. This wine came with our K Vintners allocation. The wine is about $42 Retail; wine club members get it at a cheaper tariff.

Wow! What a nice wine. Not too fruit-forward, though truth be told I appreciate nice fruit notes in a wine. Compared to a good Italian Sangio, this was fruitier, and had much better bouquet, and was delightful with the above dinner. We drank the bottle effortlessly, with gusto.

This wine came to us through our K Vintners club membership. Not sure how difficult it is to find on the market. But what a pleasure!

2012 Turley Old Vines Zin

I think five proper storage years is about perfect for this wine! The bouquet is rich, jammy. On the palate, there is succulent fruit, mostly plummy and quite forward.  The body's a little unctuous, but fresh and crisp. Young.  Spectator gave it 91 points; I'd say 92.

Four days later: Update: The leftover wine was finished tonight. Sadly, this wine didn't survive four days in the refrigerator. Perhaps a four-day survival of a half bottle is too much to ask, but for $50 one might be excused for hoping so. Tonight, the four-day-old Turley Old Vines Zin was gone to prunes and hardly drinkable. The wine wasn't that old, so I view this as a serious flaw. As Baby Boomers age, a bottle of wine that's not very old (and which is quite spendy) should be able to survive a mere four days in the fridge without falling apart.

There are more good Zins coming out of Lodi now. Lodi CA used to be a place where no true wine lover would dare to tread, but now many wineries are making very good, lower-priced Zins from there. Sure, maybe they harvest in July and that is weird, but what the hay! Give them a try--you can buy four or five of them for the price of one bottle of Turley Old Vines Zin!  (P.S. - And in my opinion, they're just as good) Give up on this Turley wine. There are many better Zins out there for far less money.

Here's a general rule: Once a wine has achieved cult status, be very cautious about buying it. I've learned that the number of wineries who can sustain truly high quality after achieving acclaim, is rather small.

For those of you in CA, please check out the better wines from Walla Walla WA. Many of them are FAR superior to CA wines of higher price. What are you waiting for? At what point will you finally admit you are wasting money, and will have to retire two years later than you'd like, just because of the money you spent on so-called great CA wines, when you could spend half as much for far better wines from WA? Wake up! Open your mninds! You are good people. You lead the nation in Progressive political thinking. So, get just as smart on wine!

2011 No Girls Grenache: Tasting Notes

I'm feeling chuffed tonight--I manned a table at the Woodland Chamber of Commerce, and got quite a few new wine customers, including the mayor and the rising Chamber President! So I pulled out a 2011 No Girls Grenache (this is by Christophe Baron of Cayuse):

- Bouquet: Hits initially of a heavy barnyard note, coexisting nicely with cherries.
- Palate: This is a BIG wine. Those cherries are dark dark dark, and heavy. There is much acid here; will go great with lamp chops being grilled with olive oil, mint, and rosemary (and S&P and garlic).
- Finish: Light. The wine is still very young. Oh, there's a finish-a bitter note, like citrus peel.

This wine isn't as popular in places like California as their Syrahs are, but I'm glad to have it, and to have opened it!

Tesoaria wine

During a visit to Tesoaria's wine room on N. Mississippi a few years ago, we loved, and I bought a bottle of, their 2012 Coeur Noir, which if I recall correctly was a Sangiovese-Barbera blend. Pretty expensive bottle--maybe $40?

Five years on, it didn't age well at all. It was easily the worst of the three wines I opened for a dinner party featuring Italian dishes. The other wines were 2012 La Quercia Riserva Montepulciano de Abruzzo (this was the best wine) tand 2010 San Rustico Amarone (second best).

I don't know why the Tesoaria fell apart with just three years in our cellar.

Blattner modern grape varieties do well on Vancouver Island

Here's an article about Valentin Blattner's grapes' succeeding in Canada. (Note: The link doesn't work right--you have to go the magazine's website, then enter "Blattner" in the magazine's search box, and then you can get the article.)

Exciting stuff! I imported these grapes to SW WA, at Epona Vineyard, and will have cuttings available in a couple of years. I've met Paul (that's him in the photo) and one of the winemakers mentioned in the article. And that fruit--48.05.83--is very special. It makes a good Bordeaux-blend style of wine.

Is there not some limit to Walla Walla's wine growth?

Every time I visit Walla Walla, I find many more new wineries, many of them opened by Assistant Winemakers who learned their craft well and are making really good wines. But it makes one wonder: Is there not some limit to what the market will bear? Downtown in this tiny town there are enough wine bars for a city of half a million. And the prices! No longer the bargain it once was, but still among the very best wines on the planet.

I asked a gentleman pouring at Sinclair (See-have you heard of that one? Wines there are great) how many wineries went out of business, and he said it only happens when there is some personal crisis such as a failure of good health or a divorce. That suggests there is still room for growth. I think the economic boom in Seattle (and Portland) is allowing these wineries to print money like mad...

Photo is of K Vintners' downtown tasting room; a great space. 

Flowers flowers!

Wow! We deserve Spring this year, after a very long, cold, wet winter. What a view from the front porch at Epona Farm.