Wine & Words

Often it's hit or miss when one of our wine distributors brings us wine to taste. The wines they bring could be end of stock items they want to unload (which I'm never interested in, unless they're offering a really good price). Or the wines they bring are what they happened to have with them on their way to another tasting or wine dinner. Distributor reps usually bring 6 or 8 wines. Sometimes I'll like 1 or 2; sometimes they just don't fit in any of our open slots for country of origin, style or price point. Often I politely decline all that's offered.
This is not true of Sarah Koestline Stewart, our Tryon Distributors rep. We've known Sarah since she was the manager of The Curiosity Shop and a regular customer in our downtown Washington store. Now that she's our rep, I find that Sarah understands our stores and our customers. When she walked into the Washington store the other day and asked "You wanna taste some wine?" Mary and I replied, as always, "Sure!" I didn't expect that I'd be Featuring those wines this week. But, sure enough, Sarah went "four for four." Four wines that fill needed slots and are very fine additions to our list. Way to go, Sarah.
 
Valckenberg Dornfelder (Rheinhessen, Germany) Regular Price $14.35/ Feature Price $11.48
We start with a very well made, lightly sweet red from Germany. This is a "QbA" wine. Do you remember my little riff on German wine labels when we introduced the "Shine" Riesling? This is the middle level of German wines, a Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiet ("quality wine from a specified region"). It's from the same region as the Shine Riesling (Rheinhessen) and has the same low alcohol content of 10%. It's made by the same producer that makes the Madonna Spätlese that's the Riesling of choice for those of you who like it sweet.
This Dornfelder is not nearly as sweet as the Madonna. In fact it has a soft, red berry taste that makes it very pleasant for lightly chilled summertime drinking. If you want to downplay the fruitiness of the wine, you can serve it at room temperature. Chilling brings out the fruit. In fact, I think this wine would make a wicked Sangria. It would also go well with any of our delicious cheeses and some fruit and crackers for a casual dockside get-together. Or serve it like you would a red Zinfandel, with barbecued meats that have a fruity, semi-sweet sauce (it wouldn't pair well with the vinegar-based Eastern NC barbecue sauce). Or serve it with dark chocolate...now there's a treat!
 
Domaine Pascal Renaud Saint-Véran (Burgundy, France) Regular Price $21.95/ Feature Price $17.56
For our Featured white, we turn to my favorite style of Chardonnay wine, from the Burgundy area of France. This one is from the appellation of Saint-Véran (san vay-RAHN) in the southern half of the Maconnais sub-region of Burgundy. The zone covered by the appellation is divided roughly into two islands, separated north from south by the vineyards of the Pouilly-Fuissé appellation. The award winning family team of Pascal and Mireille Renaud produce wonderful wines from several small parcels of vineyard in and around the Pouilly-Fuissé region. The whites of this region are usually considered to run in quality from the top-rated Pouilly-Fuissé, through the mid-range Saint-Véran, down to the less expensive and less focused Macon-Villages. The Renauds make them all. We have carried their lovely Macon-Villages for some time, and now we step up to the somewhat more sophisticated Saint-Véran. Pascal Renaud comes from an old established family of wine growers in Pouilly. His estate covers 25 acres in the villages of Pouilly, Solutre and Davaye. Within their new cuverie (the French term for the building where fermentation takes place), built about five years ago, they work predominately with stainless steel and large German barrels. This is done to maintain brightness and freshness of the fruit and the purity in the expression of the terroir without gumming up the works with a lot of oak.
All Saint-Véran wines are made exclusively from the Chardonnay grape variety and are traditionally dry in style, yet more full-bodied than other white Burgundies. This is partially because the climate in this region is slightly warmer than most of Burgundy and partially because the soils are chalk rather than the flinty limestone of more northerly Chablis. This wine is an elegant white dinner wine. It pairs well with anything you'd want to serve with a classy white. This should become one of your go-to standards when you want a great bottle of white wine at a price that doesn't break the bank.
 
Domaine de Fontsainte Corbieres Gris de Gris 2008 (Languedoc, France) Regular Price $19.00/ Feature Price $15.20
You know that Mary and I are both huge fans of dry French rosé. Sarah knows it, too. So when she pulled this wine out of her tasting bag, our eyes lit up. We were not disappointed.
The classy label on the wine says it is a "Gris de Gris." In this region, the French "gris" (gree) doesn't mean "gray," it means "pink." So this is a pink wine made from pink grapes, and indeed it is lighter in color than other Languedoc rosés. This tasty blend (70% Grenache Gris and Grenache Noir, with 10% each of Mourvedre, Carignan and Cinsault) is made in the traditional saignée method, with the whole grapes resting with the dark-colored skins for about 24 hours. The fermentation then takes place at 18° Celsius (64 F.) for 35 days, and the wine "rests" for a month before bottling. This careful handling and attention to detail brings out all the freshness and subtlety of the blend.
The wine should not be served as cold as a crisp white...45 to 50 degrees would be about right. In this warm season you can take it out of the fridge about 20 minutes before serving. As it warms, you'll taste the various elements as they unfold.
I like this wine before a meal, with any kind of cheese or tapa, but you can also serve it with grilled seafood (salmon would be my choice) or maybe a grilled chicken salad. It's one of the unmistakable pleasures of summer.
 
Marietta Petite Sirah 2006 (Alexander Valley, Sonoma County, California) Regular Price $23.30/ Feature Price $18.64
There's a rumor going around that I don't like California wines. Not true! I just find that the low end of California offerings is occupied by rows of grocery store shelves full of unremarkable, and sometimes undrinkable, wine. And the stratosphere of California premium wines is often over-hyped and way overpriced. But when I find a great one at a reasonable price, I can be all about California wine.
A few weeks ago we Featured Marietta Cellars Old Vine Cuvee Lot 51. This was mostly Zinfandel, made in an easy-drinking style that caused it to sell out regularly. The Marietta Petite Sirah raises that bar another notch.
This effort of winemaker Chris Bilbro is 100% estate grown grapes from the Alexander Valley, an area that, because of less Pacific Ocean fog, is a little warmer than most of Sonoma County. This is an astounding big red wine of 76% Petite Sirah, 22% Syrah (possibly a distant relation), and 2% Viognier (a white grape used to lighten things up a bit).
Theories about the origins of the Petite Sirah grape keep shifting, and the prominent current notion seems to be that it is related to the Durif grape of the Rhone valley, rather than the more widely known Syrah of the same region. One theory suggests the viticulturists who planted Durif in California called it "little Syrah" because its berries grew smaller in the California climate than what they were used to in the Rhone. Whatever. There's nothing small about this wine. It is dark and opaque in the glass with a nose that shows it has spent 12 months in French oak. Wine Advocate reviewer Robert Parker gave this wine 91+ Points. He says the wine "should soften over the next decade, hold steady for another 10-15 years, and still be alive at age 30." Well, I don't plan to have it around that long. I plan to drink it soon...and so should you...with grilled meats or hearty game dishes.