Last night I pulled out a bottle of Ravenswood Amador County Zinfandel from my cellar to enjoy with some Italian food. Once I poured the first glass, I knew something was not quite right and the first whiff was a mixture of cork and plums. Usually when you have a truly “corked” bottle, the aroma is not like fruit or wine but wet cardboard and this didn’t smell that bad. The taste was OK, but clearly affected by a faulty cork. If I had bought this at my local wine store, I might have poured out the glass and put the bottle aside for return, but I bought this one directly from the winery about a year ago. Thinking that this defect might blow off like the GSM I tasted last week, I let it breath in the glass during dinner. By the end it was diminished, but not totally gone…

As fate would have it, I voted on my preferred closure over at eBob earlier in the day and had selected screwcaps as my closure of choice for wines meant to be consumed within 3 years. For the other two choices I selected natural corks, as they are the only closure with known performance for aging wines over 5 years or so. Plastic corks tend to age wines more rapidly than the other two, so these are only useful for everyday wines meant to be drunk soon after purchase. Screwcaps seem like the best alternative to cork, but we don’t have much data on aging fine wine with them. After my most recent experience of two corked wines in as many weeks, I would change my vote to screwcaps for wines to be aged 3-7 years and cork for wines only to be aged for decades. I hope more wineries will adopt this closure for their premium bottlings in coming vintages. Cheers to the folks over at Argyle, who have been sealing their fine Pinot Noir with screwcaps for a few years now.

Today’s theme varietal is the lead grape of the southern Rhone, Grenache, and I conclude the cellaring series with an interview with Eric LeVine of CellarTracker.

Show Notes:

0:21 - Welcome and show theme
0:35 - Background of Grenache grape
02:34 - Tasting notes disclaimer
02:56 – Tres Ojos, Old Vines Garnacha, Calatayud, Spain 2003 ($6)
03:17 – Las Rocas, Garnacha, Calatayud, Spain 2003 ($7.50)
03:41 – Kaesler, “Stonehorse�? GSM, Barossa Valley, Australia 2002 ($15)
04:34 – Rosemount Estate, GSM 2001 ($22)
05:04 – Domaine des Relagnes, Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2000 ($20)
05:33 – Best of Tasting
05:38 – Best Value
05:43 – Review of CellarTracker
07:54 – Interview with Eric LeVine
23:52 – Wines for next virtual tasting
25:02 – Hurricane Katrina PSA from C.C. Chapman
26:07 – Contact Details
26:32 – Next show theme

Feedback: winecast@gmail.com | Audio comments: +01-206-33-WINE-9 (+01-206-339-4639)
Copyright 2005 Tim Elliott. Licensed to the public under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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Way back on Winecast 16 I started a new way of presenting my tasting notes which I called virtual tasting. The idea is to preannounce three wines and invite you to buy one or more and taste them as you listen to the show. Yes, instead of pretasting and reading my notes, I actually tasted them “live” as I recorded the podcast. This feature proved quite popular, and I incorporated it into other shows before stopping for some unknown reason at Winecast 22. Many listeners have written over the summer asking when or if I intended to continue this practice on future podcasts. Well, I have finally gotten my act together and will now return to this format for Winecast 43, which I plan on recording the second week of October. Since I left off with the Three Big Reds last time, I will continue with the Three Big Whites here:

- Los Cardos, Chardonnay, Mendoza, Argentina 2003 ($9)
- Brancott, Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, New Zealand 2004 ($9)
- Dr. Fischer, Ockfener Bockstein Riesling, Mosel Saar Ruwer, Germany 2003 ($14)

Most of these should be fairly easy to find in the U.S., but feel free to improvise with other producers in the same regions and vintages. In the future, I plan on a virtual tasting show about once every 6 weeks.

St. Francis Winery, “Red“, Sonoma County 2002 ($10) – A blend of Merlot, Zinfandel, Grenache and Sangiovese. Dark ruby color, spicy blackberry and plum aromas with bold blackberry, raspberry and black pepper flavors finished with healthy, but somewhat polished, tannins. If tasted blind I would have sworn that Cabernet Sauvignon was involved here. Could use a year or two in the cellar to develop further. A nice value and an innovative package with 12 different labels plus a cool, black plastic cork. Score: 8.5/10

Anne has just posted a new Eat Feed podcast with me appearing suggesting some picnic wines. Check it out here.

Just a quick note for Twin Cities listeners that I will be attending the Surdyk’s charity tasting this Thursday evening. Even though there will be a lot of people at the event, I shouldn’t be too difficult to spot tasting and spitting with Johnee Bee armed with varietally correct Riedel stems and taking copious notes. Drop me a line if you want to taste some juice with us, and we’ll figure a place to meetup at the tasting. More tasting notes and show material will follow shortly thereafter

The ever creative and prolific Beau Jarvis of Basic Juice and jZepp fame has unleashed a wine and food blog meme, “The Best in the Last 30“. He has challenged wine bloggers to recall their best wine sampled over the past 30 days. He then “tagged” Lenn over at LENNDEVOURS, who then passed the love to The Wine Chicks. Jay & Kristin sent the ball my way after posting a pair of Italian reds and a fairly obscure Rhone white (nice call, Jay!).

This has been a pretty light tasting month for me, with typical summer quaffers and a single tasting that produced an undistinguished group of notes with only a couple in the 8.5 range. This brings me to the previously posted wines for the most recent Wine Blogging Wednesday, the Trinitas Cellars, Old Vine Zinfandel 2002 and the M. Chapoutier, Banyuls 1998. Both wines earned the same 9/10 score, with the Banyuls edging out the Zin in a head-to-head duel with a bittersweet chocolate cake. I’d have to say that the Zin has to get the nod for the “best” wine, however, because it redefined for me what old vine Zin’s can be with much less of the in your face whack of fruit, tannin and oak, but some depth and structure revealed after decanting or breathing. Here are my full tasting notes for the record:

Trinitas Cellars, Old Vine Zinfandel, Contra Costa County 2002 ($17.50) - Ruby color with blackberry, spice and cedar aromas; bold blackberry, raspberry and white pepper flavors with some oak notes and firm tannins. Not as thick and extracted as other old vine Zin’s, but a pleasure and a great find at under $20. Delicious now, but will cellar for 3 or more years. From Matt Cline, former winemaker of Cline Cellars, who has produced some great Zin’s over the years. I’m looking forward to tasting Trinitas vineyard designated Zin’s in the future. Score: 9/10

So I will now pass the baton across the pond to Andrew from Spittoon and Slashfood; you’ve been tagged, chap

Update 9/18: As can be seen in the comments, Beau has asked me to tag a food blogger as well (Andrew doesn’t count since he writes mostly about wine for /food). So, I will go to the left coast this time and challenge foodista Viv over at Seattle Bon Vivant to recount the best food and wine match from the past 30 days. You have been tagged, Viv!

Yesterday it was announced that the U.S. and EU have reached agreement, after 20 years of negotiations, on a variety of winemaking practices and the use of semi-generic terms such as chianti and burgundy. The agreement will allow now EU-banned winemaking techniques common in the U.S. like vineyard irrigation and adding wood chips to fermentation tanks to extract oak character without barrel aging. Missed in the agreement were some of the most contentious issues of place names, like champagne, port, burgundy and sherry, which are used by some wineries in the U.S. to designate a specific style of wine. While new brands can’t use them, existing wineries can, which doesn’t satisfy the EU wine industry who argue that this confuses consumers. Hopefully this issue can be resolved in less than 20 years or U.S. customers can be educated that Andre “champagne” is not made in France, but in a factory in Modesto, CA. Since these negotiations started, most U.S. wine consumers have learned to look not at the generic terms, but varietal names, on wine labels. This trend is something EU producers should take note of in their future labeling practices.

Anne has posted another Eat Feed podcast that has me giving a bit of background about the origins of wine and some Porto recommendations. Check it out here. Going forward, I should be on her show roughly once a month or so.

Well, Wine Blogging Wednesday has extended into week two for me this month, as I have still not recorded my podcast based upon my post from last week. In the meantime, Jens over at Cincinnati Wine Garage has posted the theme for the fourteenth edition: New-New World Pinot Noir. Basically, he proposes we choose Pinot’s made outside of the famous regions such as Burgundy and the West Coast of the U.S. This leaves the rest of the world open for exploration and a chance to uncover new meaning to the term, terroir. I’ll be looking for extreme Pinots from Spain and Australia, with an eye on emerging wines coming from South America. I’ll also get back to posting my podcast on the same night as the blog post, in this case October 5th.