More and more farmers, fisher and winemakers are getting involved in the Salmon Safe program to help renew and sustain the health of our salmon streams. Check out this fun video from Salmon Safe – and my article in Seattle magazine!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HKvCr9ZOuk
http://www.seattlemag.com/0p192a1623/tasting-notes-salmonsafe-wine/
Last week’s Rhone Ranger’s event was better than ever. I was delighted to find that a few of my favorites were Washington wines – Jon Martinez, winemaker/owner for Maison Bleue Winery in Prosser (now, with a new tasting room in Woodinville) brought a Viognier that was one of the best, I thought. Peachy, apricot nose, yes, but not too soft on the palate – great acidity and balance. He opened a bottle of Rhone Viognier and was smelling and tasting them side-by-side, and it was strange, but in aroma they were almost identical – stone fruit, a bit of citrus peel, a bit stoney. All the winemakers/representatives should try that next year, bring a bottle of something from the Rhone Valley and taste them together – even if it is just for the curiosity factor. A fun exercise.
Another winery I’m always impressed with is McCrea Cellars. They were pouring a 100 percent Picpoul – which is rarely made as a varietal wine, even in the Rhone region of France. But they finally got enough to make a few cases, and there it is – quite spicy, I thought! But refreshing acidity and soft lime zest and some stone fruit flavors. Ditto with their Grenache Blanc, which in 2007 was the first GB in the state, considering there was only one acre planted in Washington – in the Boushey vineyard. Now, there must be more – anyone? I’ll have to find out. This is a lovely wine, again, fresh stone fruit, a bit of a softer mouthfeel which makes it a good match with grilled shrimp or spicy Asian food, but still a nice glass on its own.
I also liked Cline Cellar’s rose of Mourvedre – really light in color, which I love, with nice strawberry and spice on the nose. Another newer winery I liked was Verge’s Viognier from Dry Creek Valley and Villa Creek (Vee-a), in Paso Robles. Their White, with a blend of 55% Grenache Blanc, 35% Roussanne, and 10% Viogner is lovely and fresh, with a pineapple, peach and stone nose and mouthwatering acidity.
As I’m writing this on a Sunday morning, I’m watching the neighborhood’s three-legged cat hobble around a construction site next door. He gives me hope—that even though I’m a procrastinator and often don’t post when I know I want to, that I’m still hobbling around nonetheless! I’m out there searching for mice even though I might not catch them! That said, here is the post I should have posted two weeks ago right after I came back from my trip to Okanagan, B.C., Canada. Here it is!
We finally have summer—the days are dry and even what you might call hot. I’m off on my friend Danielle’s annual birthday wine tasting trip—two years ago we went to Willamette Valley, and last year we went to Chelan. This year, the four of us ladies, of various ages and positions in life, agreed wholeheartedly on B.C.’s Okanagan region, just north of central Washington.
I drove out, they flew, and I was the designated rental car. Our first day, we visited three wineries and a goat cheese maker, a full day for five hours. Lunch at Quail’s Gate, then to the famous, fabulous Mission Hill. tried Chardonnay and Ice Wine, but mostly drank in the view and the architecture. This place is known as the most beautiful winery in the area, and I’d have to agree. It’s Mondavi-ized the area, created a destination for people to ooh and ahh over, and then go taste the wines at the smaller, more boutique or mom-n-pop wineries.
We also went on a trek to find the Carmelis Goat Cheese Artisan farm and shop, off in the hinterlands of Kelowna’s alpine hills along the shores of Lake Okanagan. They featured over a dozen styles of goat cheese with lovely names like Misty, Blue Velvet and Heavenly—and they were—from fresh yogurt cheese to ash-covered soft-ripened cheese, to smoked cheese to hard, tangy cheeses to a fantastic blue. I bought two Moonlights, a soft-ripened cheese similar to Mt. Townsend Creamery’s amazing Cirrus. Then to Cedar Creek Winery just down the road.
The next day, we visited the Naramata Bench, some miles south of Kelowna along the shores of Okanagan Lake. We visited Poplar Grove, Nichol, Kettle Valley (with their crazy Gewurztraminer slushy, great idea but there was nowhere near enough wine in it, just sugar icee with a splash. Then to Elephant Island Fruit Winery, one of the best tastings we had. All their wines are fruit wines, and before you get all snobby on me, you have to realize these wines are their own animal, and each is unique. The pear wine was light, fresh and dry, with a nose of jarlsburg and smoke, to me at least! The perfect thing with a goat cheese salad and an afternoon on a sunny porch. There are also wines from Fuji apples, crabapples, raspberries and their wonderful non-vintage Stellaport made from dark red Stella cherries, fermented and aged in French oak in an 8-year solera system. This wonderful wine had a nose of baking spice and mocha, and dark cherry, of course, with coffee, balsamico and prune on the palate. Would be fantastic with fondue!
We had lunch at the gorgeous little Heritage Inn, an old renovated hotel with a good restaurant. At lunch we opened a bottle of Joie’s 2007 A Noble Blend and loved it. Joie’s winemaking couple, Michael Dinn and Heidi Noble, have a small cooking school and winery (not open to the public) just up the road. This wine has a nose of lime zest with a bit of fresh tropical fruit, pineapple, and zesty acidity, great balance. We were so impressed with the wine that Monique called them right from the lunch table and asked if we could come by. Michael said sure! he’d be happy to show us around, so we trotted off to the winery and met he and Heidi and their lovely little farm. We ended up leaving with three half bottles of wine from their afternoon test tasting, and arms full of pears from their little orchard.
There’s so much more to say about this trip, but other wines I liked were Le Vieux Pin (we had lots of laughs trying to prounounce that – it’s Le (as in book) Vee-yeuu (as in book) Pa nh (nasally n!) how do you write that phonetically, I don’t know, but the wines were fabulous. Also visited their other new winery, LaStella, which was gorgeous, you MUST go there! More on that later. Also Blue Mountain sparkling wine and pinot blanc and pinot gris.
And Nk’Mip (INK-a-meep) which was big and resorty and disappointing as far as wine goes, but looked like a great place for family vacations.
More later!
Bill Powers and his organic Chardonnay
On a recent trip to the Tri-Cities wine region (Richland, Kennewick, Pasco for you non-Washingtonians) I had a chance to visit four vastly different wineries. One was one of the oldest wineries in the state—Powers (and Badger Mountain, their organic brand) on the hills above a Richland suburb, literally—we had to drive through suburban neighborhood to get to the tasting room and vineyard. I took a short truck ride with owner Bill Powers (now in his 80s) up to see the Chardonnay vines and have a sip of the Powers 2007 Chardonnay – a clean, crisp organic wine, full of fresh green apple and citrus flavors.
Powers has been growing grapes here since 1977, and has been organic almost that long. He says he was putting all these chemicals on the vines, and his boys were doing the work. He didn’t want the kids to do it, so he was doing it and not liking having to use these chemicals – so on a trip to California, he talked to some hippie grapegrowers who were farming organically, and they encouraged him to do the same, and so he did. And still, he’s one of the few certified-organic vineyards in the state. He does, as other organic farmers do as well, use sulphur to combat powdery mildew on the vines, about once a week for a certain period during the vine’s growth – this year was very humid and perfect for the evil fungus to grow. And then of course, sulfites are added to the wine to preserve it – pretty much every winery does this, or we’d be opening a lot of bad bottles. But Powers (Bill and his son Greg, the winemaker for Powers & Badger Mountain) and Mickey Dunne, part owner of Badger Mountain, have found a solution for their “no sulfites added” organic wine – bag in the box! It keeps oxygen away from the wine, and therefore keeps it completely fresh for up to 30 days! This is so common in Europe that I’ve heard box wine is almost 50 percent of the market. Here, it is growing, but still only about 10-12 percent. I hope that will increase as people put higher quality wines in completely recyclable boxes.
The Rhone Rangers – a membership group of winemakers who produce Rhone-style wines —seem to have developed a following and a great way of educating the public. Originally created by Randall Grahm when he was head wine dude at Bonny Doon, it has morphed and changed, but I still enjoy the annual tastings when the Rangers roll into town. This year, 39 wineries set up booths at Bell Harbor and it was an education making the rounds.
By making the rounds, I mean tasting every white wine in the room, and a few reds if I could get to them. When I go to a tasting, there’s no way you can tasting everything, so I usually go with a plan, according to what is being poured. Here’s my thought pattern, however convoluted
1. Get the big picture – what is the point to the tasting? All Washington? All pinot noir? in this case, all Rhone varietals?
2. Have a plan: If it’s a pinot noir tasting, I usually try a few whites from the region, just to get a sense of the ripeness level that I’ll encounter with the reds, and to prime the pump, so to speak. In this case, the list of very interesting, and mostly obscure Rhone whites were on my mind, and I wanted to clearly compare the differences in single varietal whites vs. blends, etc. In this case, viognier leads the pack, usually on its own, then blends of roussanne, marsanne, grenache blanc (which I discovered I really enjoy for its high acidity, and green apple – even apple Jolly Rancher – flavors) as well as bourboulenc, clairette blanc, muscat blanc a petits grains, picardin, picpoul and ugni blanc. Of the latter list, picpoul was represented, but I didn’t see the others in blends.
3. Spit! You’d be completely toasted if you didn’t.
4. Talk to the winemakers/marketing guys/gals. It is easier to remember what you like if you know something about the terroir, landscape, blend, etc. Sometimes they rattle off percentages of grapes in the blend, which I’m not really interested in – I want to know what the soil and climate and elevation, etc. is like. I usually ask – Tell me about where this wine is grown… and they are usually very willing to talk about the place – a fun way to picture the region and have a geology and geography lesson at the same time. It is kind of a neumonic device for me to picture the place with the wine made there.
5. Take a few notes in your own code, and remember the good ones! My favorites from this tasting were Paso Robles’ Adalaida Cellars White Blend of grenache blanc and roussanne – very minerally with that candied green apple taste that still had killer acidity and a slightly soft mouthfeel with peach and apricot flavors – an interestingly balanced combo of acid, fruit, soft and sharp. Love it!
Other wines I tasted -
Cass Winery Viognier – Paso Robles, mineral and mint!
Cline Cellars Viognier – Sonoma/Carneros, white peach, herbal notes with crisp white peach, not too ripe!
McCrea Cellars Ciel du Cheval Vineyard Viognier – love this producer! Fruity but lean with a lean, herbal – lavendar even – note, but also soft lemon and peachiness that is characteristic of Viognier. The difference here is that everything is in balance and delicacy and elegance are the goal.
Sawtooth from Nampa Idaho! Their Snake River Valley Viognier shows that this area has promise! A lean, mineral wine with white blossom and peach aroma, high acidity. A very refreshing wine!
So check out these Rhone-style wines – great for summer!
Stuck in the Ballard locks with a bunch of stinkpots
Vaynerchuk may have left the building, but in his wake were two days of the most intense thunder storms we’ve seen (or heard) in years. My ex (now friend) was going to sail down to Hood Canal for the 4th and had a window of opportunity to leave at about 5 or 6 a.m. on the 3rd because of the tides, but that ended up being the craziest hour of lightening, buckets of rain and ear-splitting thunder.
So he couldn’t make the trip, and later that day, when the storm had left billowing clouds and still water behind, I was roped into–I mean graciously volunteered–to help him bring the boat BACK through the Hiram H. Chittendon locks, where the water level is raised and lowered between the salt water of the Puget Sound and the fresh water of Lake Union. We got stuck waiting for a gravel barge and ended up stuck outside the locks for THREE HOURS, getting to know the mussel-covered pylons, the kingfishers, and a few purple seastars very well. So of course, after a while, I started rummaging below decks and came up with a bottle of white wine that was fairly cool from being stored below the waterline. In desperate times, wine is where you find it, and I thought this was the perfect occasion for my first wine post – the essential Seattle moment. Stuck on a boat with the cityscape and the water all around, searching for refreshment.
What is your favorite boat wine? I have to say, I usually like dry rosé, but that is a fall back all summer, whether i’m on a patio, a boat or whatever. This 2006 Casalone dry Italian white from the Piemonte region made from the Cortese grape, definitely hit the spot, and was eye opening in terms of what we usually think of as dry crisp, refreshing summer wines. This one smelled of lemon gumdrops to me! Not a lot of fruit, just white flowers for sure, and a funkiness like light mushrooms. Interesting! There’s SO much to learn about Italian wines, but the main thing is to stay open to their classic combination of fruit and funkiness. This Cortese was a great example. Fresh, and light, it still was full of minerality, acidity, yes, but also mushroom and dried leaves. Not what I would usually choose for a boat sipper, but it was actually great with the salty chips that were the only food on board.
Come to find out, this wine WAS the perfect thing to drink with the scent of boat exhaust, salt air and fish in our nostrils, as it is produced all along the Ligurian Coast and served in the fish restaurants of Genoa—an area that probably looks very similar to the salty, mast-packed shores of Lake Union. Citrus complements salt – that lesson was learned here, with a little exotic mushroomy funk thrown in that I will remember for my next fish fry.
Wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk (VAY-NER-CHUK!) (winelibrarytv.com) was in town promoting his first book, 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World, and we had lunch at Taste at the Seattle Art Museum, across the street from Seattle’s famous lesbian-owned strip club, The Lusty Lady, of course. The marquee read “Inspiring Exhibitionism” and as we ate Chef Craig Hetherington’s gorgeous seared Vessel St. Jude albacore and drank a glass of Masterpiece White (an aromatic – honeydew, cantaloupe, white blossom – blend of Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc made by Taste general manager Danielle Custer, former Chef Chrisopher Conville and a bit of myself), it began to make sense. Shouldn’t everyone’s life work be about ‘inspiring exhibitionism’ – creating your show, showing your stuff, puffing up your feathers, flapping around—whatever that may be? One person’s exhibitionism inspires another. Townshend Cellars winemaker Don Townshend met Danielle at a winemaker dinner and said “you should come and make wine with me” because she was so passionate about wine. And she replied, “ask me again, and I just might!” So there you are. Danielle asked me—a fellow wine freak—to help chronicle the making of this wine and join her in its creation, so we traveled to Spokane to work with Don on several occasions, blending, racking, bottling…laughing, eating and drinking. And now its in a bottle—it’s out there!
Gary shares his love of wine every day and said that TODAY (well, what he really said was TOMORROW, but that was yesterday) I should begin blogging and sharing my love of wine, poetry, whatever. With whomever. Yeah, yeah, I say, who needs another blog? It’s truly information overload out there. But at the same time, losing inhibitions like the ladies of the Lusty, makes life WAY more fun and I definitely need that in my life right now, and so Gary, I’m taking up your challenge, dude!
I love the book—Gary cracks open the traditional language we use for tasting wine to include terms like “haunted house” which is his version of a wine that smells or tastes of dusty wood, cellar must (in a good way), and cobwebs. Come on, do cobwebs really have an aroma? Next time I see one, I’ll find out. Thanks a lot Gary, for making me smell a goddam cobweb! I’ll NEED a glass of Clos Delorme Valencay 2005 (Gamay, Malbec, Cab Franc, Pinot Noir from the Loire Valley) after that!
