Wine of the Week: May 4

Hello Everyone,

This week we’ll celebrate 400 weekly eWines with a bottle of bubbly (and mention one that’s new to Arkansas), with a discussion of where to find some of the greatest, the most popular and the best bargains.

Try a new wine this week!

Bruce

Some of the world’s most popular sparkling wines are from Italy, and some of the world’s greatest sparkling wines are made there, too.

Just about any wine lover knows the term Asti Spumante, even if they might not have tasted it lately.  Asti, a city in the northeastern state of Piedmont (“Piemonte” in Italian), has made sparkling wine (“Spumante”) from sweet moscato grapes, for decades before the current moscato craze currently sweeping the U.S. And many wine lovers have enjoyed Moscato d’Asti for a long time.  It tends to have just a touch of sparkle, a style called “vivace”, or “lively”.

There is a second level of sparkle for wines that falls in between the fully sparkling spumantes and the barely sparkling vivaces.  It’s called frizzante, or “fizzy”.  That’s what the popular Rosa di Rosa is, and many of its Piedmontese cousins from Aqui Terme.
The great ones of Italy, though, are made to the west of Lake Garda in a region called Brescia.  It’s a beautiful, prosperous part of the country, in the shadow of the Alps below Switzerland.  Dotted with mountain lakes, sloping vineyards, castles and second homes for Milanese industrialists, they use the same grapes and methods as the French do in their Champagne region—and charge similar prices for it.

But the most popular Italian sparkling wine now is Prosecco, from northeastern Italy’s Veneto.  Made from a grape of the same name, it’s crisp, light, dry and delightful, an uncomplicated, inexpensive pleasure that can make sparkling wine a popular choice for any occasion, not just special ones.

And recently I found a new twist on Prosecco, something of an upgrade in quality without an increase in price.  Secco Italian Bubbles is a single vineyard wine made in the Prosecco region, but the grapes are primarily chardonnay and pinot noir—the same types used next door for those expensive “Italian Champagnes”.  Secco  (the Italian word for “dry”), is a collaboration between Charles Smith, of Kung Fu Girl Riesling fame, and Sorelle Casa (“Sisters Casa”), Ginevra and Olivia Casa—Italian sisters from the area.  Secco Italian Bubbles comes in white (Brut Bianca), and rose (Brut Rose).  Both retail for around $14.

Secco Italian Bubbles is blended primarily from chardonnay grapes in Italy’s Prosecco region.

Bruce Cochran’s
Wine of the Week: April 14

Hello Everyone,

Running a day late this week. Just got back from a trip to the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America convention in Orlando where nearly 2,000 people gathered around hundreds of wines and spirits for three days.  Good to go, and good to get back.

This week we’ll discuss California’s coolest wine county — literally.  And I learned something new with this one.  It’s an appellation in California that I didn’t know: a small, high-altitude valley where cabernet grows in the heart of pinot noir country.  That’s unusual.

Try a new wine this week!

Bruce

Located on the south end of California’s Central Coast, Santa Barbara County has become famous for rich yet elegant chardonnay and pinot noir, and recently parts of it have become known for Rhone varietals as well, particularly syrah.

Geography is most important reason.  Not only do mountains run east to west there, but for 50 miles so does the coast. Cool Pacific breezes flow inland, making some of their vineyards the coolest in California.

There are four official wine appellations, with plenty of diverse microclimates within them. Today there are more than 60 wineries and 21,000 acres of vineyards, mostly in three districts: Santa Maria Valley, Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Rita Hills.

Santa Maria Valley

Far smaller than the Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Maria Valley runs east to west, allowing Pacific fog and coastal breezes to enter, extending the fall ripening period and allowing the grapes more time to develop flavor.  Much of the region is planted to chardonnay and pinot noir, with a large part of that in three famous vineyards: Tepusquet, Sierra Madre and Bien Nacido.
Very close to the ocean and therefore one of the county’s coolest regions is an area called Solomon Hills.

Santa Ynez Valley

The Santa Ynez Valley is the largest wine region in Santa Barbara County. It’s a long valley formed by the San Raphael Mountains on the north and the Santa Ynez Mountains on the south. The western section is tempered by the Pacific, and is planted mostly in chardonnay and pinot noir.  Up the Santa Ynez River to the east—inland—the elevation rises nearly 1,000 feet
At this higher altitude, in north-south running side canyons, vineyards have higher temperature fluctuations between daytime and night, and a warmer climate overall. This is where much of the region’s syrah is planted.

Santa Rita Hills

Santa Rita Hills is one of  California’s newest — and maybe best—cool-climate wine regions. It’s very small, and until recently was mostly considered as a part of western Santa Ynez Valley. The leading grape varieties are chardonnay and pinot noir, as well as some syrah. The Santa Rita Hills also benefit from Pacific breezes, leading to low yields and intense flavors.  The official name is Sta. Rita Hills, changed to resolve a dispute with Chilean winery Vina Santa Rita.

Recently, a fourth official appellation has emerged, with one of the best names:  Happy Canyon of Santa Barbara.  It’s small, so you won’t see a lot of wines from there.  It’s at the far eastern end of Santa Ynez Valley, with the county’s warmest temperatures.  Bordeaux varietals like cabernet sauvignon are doing well there.

Ken Volk’s “Santa Maria Cuvee” Chardonnay has grapes from  his Santa Maria Estate Vineyard, the famous Sierra Madre Vineyards in south Santa Maria Valley, and Garey Vineyard, planted in the heart of Santa Maria Valley by Robert Mondavi in 1998.

Each contributes its own unique feature to the three-vineyard blend.  It retails for $18-$20 per bottle.

Recommending “Suendero”
from Vina Robles

Hello Everyone,

In answer to some recent queries, yes, I have noticed that we’ll soon reach our 400^th edition of Bruce’s eWine of the Week.  And yes, we’ll for sure celebrate the occasion with something special.  More on that later.

This week we’ll take a new look at an old name of an ancient blend, today’s modern take on the world’s most famous red wine..

Try a new wine this week!

Bruce

Several years ago, the word “Meritage” was invented as a new name for an old blend.  A newly-popular wine magazine called Wine Spectator (that tells you how long ago it was), gave a prize of many cases of wine and other things I can’t remember for the winning entry of a contest.  The challenge was to help California wineries find a way to say, in one word, “a California blend of the same grape varieties that are used in Bordeaux, France”. They really needed a shorter way to say that.

And they were saying it a lot.  Until the late 1970s and early 1980s, a typical California cabernet sauvignon was 100 percent cabernet sauvignon.  But, in that grape’s native home of Bordeaux, in southwestern France, it was (and still is) blended with merlot, and oftentimes with cabernet franc, malbec and petite verdot.  (There is also a less-popular white grape version.)

California wineries were beginning to see merit in softening their cab’s with a little merlot, and using cabernet sauvignon to give merlot a little more backbone.  All they needed was a simple name, especially for blends that didn’t contain at least 75 percent of one grape variety (the minimum in California to label a wine with a single grape name).

The winner was Meritage, rhyming with “heritage” (which was immediately and nationally pronounced “mair ih TAGE”).  But, it accomplished the goal. A blend of any or all of those five “Bordeaux varietals” is, even today, called either “MER i tage” or “mer i TAGE.”  You won’t always see the word on the label because the name was trademarked.

Today’s “Bordeaux blends” are sometimes very unlike their French cousins.  One example is from Vina Robles, near the California Central Coast wine town of Paso Robles. It’s named “Suendero” (“Dream Path”), for the rugged terrain of Adelaida Springs Ranch, a small vineyard in the coastal mountains west of Paso Robles. Its elevation of 1,500 feet and proximity to the Pacific Ocean (12 miles), give it an intensity of flavor and elegance of style not often found in more conveniently-situated vineyards.  Its blend of cabernet sauvignon and petite verdot (52 percent/48 percent in the 2006) is also uncommon.  Suendero retails for around $50 per bottle.

“Suendero” from Vina Robles is aged for 18 months in French oak barrels, most of which are new.

Bruce Cochran has traveled to every major wine region on four continents. A 30-year veteran of the wine trade, he taught continuing education wine classes for 26 years at colleges throughout Arkansas. www.brucecochran.com

Hello Everyone,

Today let’s look at one of the most diverse parts of one of California’s most diverse wine regions, a place where just about every grape variety can and does find a home.
Try a new wine this week!

Bruce

Quite likely the most important and most diverse part of California’s Central Coast wine country, San Luis Obispo County may also be its least known name.  It lies between Monterey County to its north, and Santa Barbara County to its south. This most central part of the Central Coast has two main wine appellations that wine lovers should know:  Paso Robles and Edna Valley.  Because of their very different climates their wines can be very different.  A third and smaller area, Arroyo Grande, is in the south.

Paso Robles is in the northern part of SLO county.  Most of the vineyards are east of town along Highway 46E, on the inland side of north-south running coastal hills, which mostly block cool Pacific breezes.  Daytime temperatures can easily reach 100°F, at times cooling down at night by 40° to 50°, mainly due to cool ocean breezes flowing through a gap in the hills called the Templeton Gap. This wide temperature swing is something that grape vines like a lot.  With daytime temperatures this warm you see a lot of heat-loving grapes like zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon and syrah. Climate and soil in the western hills can be very different.

What you don’t see much in Paso Robles is pinot noir and chardonnay.   You see those grapes a few miles south near the city of San Luis Obispo in the Edna Valley wine region.  This area is closer to the ocean, and cooled by it.  Its moderate climate gives it one of the longest fall ripening periods in California.  This allows the grapes to remain on the vines longer into the fall, letting them develop more and more flavor before harvest.   This extended ripening period has helped to make Edna Valley famous for richly flavored pinot noir and chardonnay.

And in the southern part of San Luis Obispo County is Arroyo Grande, a small region that’s very close to the ocean.  Here they sometimes protect the vineyards from the very cool temperatures combined with ocean fogs by planting on south facing slopes, a practice more associated with northern European climates than with sunny California.  Because of its cool climate it has a history of sparkling wine production.
RED4, “Red to the power of 4”, is made from four red grape varieties — petite sirah, syrah, grenache and mourvedre — each well suited to the warm climate of Paso Robles.