2007 Cathedral Ridge Pinot Gris

I got 6 bottles of this Pinot Gris from wine.woot.com a few months back. It’s from Hood River, OR, which is within an hour of my house. It’s a decent white wine. Not too complex and not quite enough acid for me, but enough to go with the Indian lamb curry we had tonight.  It had a nice little hint of honeydew melon on the nose.  The oak was a hair strong for me, but with the food it was perfect.  I’m hoping to get up to the winery this summer, since it’s such an easy drive up the Columbia Gorge.  I give it an 85.5.

2007 Domaine de la Pepiere Muscadet Sevre et Maine

This wine is the little brother of the Clos les Briords.  And, I must say, it is a great little brother.  It is certainly a simpler wine, but still very nice.  Crisp and light, with great acid.  The nose was pretty light, with maybe a little hint of licorice, which was pleasant, once I found it.  The finish was long and tasted nicely of grapefruit.  All in all, for $12, a great little white.  I’m planning on doing a side-by-side with the two of them soon.  Watch this space!

2007 Leth Gruener Veltliner

Wherein I make good on my resolution to write something about my daily wine intake.

This was a nice little Gruener.  It’s not overly complex, but it is quite enjoyable.  I had it with our diner of quite spicy Indian lamb, spinach and peas curry.  It must have been pretty decent, because Heidi liked it and we drank the whole bottle.  For $15, a good buy, but not a great buy.  If it were $10, then it would be a steal.

Zolo Torrontés 2007

Just a quick little note on another new grape for me..

and what an exciting find!!

This lovely wine from the Mendoza province of Argentina is a gorgeous pale yellow with beautiful green highlights and offers a delicate, yet incredibly aromatic, nose of tropical flowers and herbs.

And, the taste was just as incredible: brisk acids, medium-bodied and the flavors of white peach, pear, and a hint of lime. 

The finish can only be described as loooooong, soft and smooth.  Absoultely wonderful…. Absolutely yummy!

Enjoy this one not chilled to truly experience all its remarkable layers

Badger Mountain NSA Organic Riesling 2007

I was told that organic wines have a long way to go to match the quality of ‘regular’ wines, but my adventurous spirit won the day and I thought “What the heck… either way, I’ll have something to blog.”  And, can I just say “Hooray for adventurous spirits!!”  This little gem surprised me in the way it developed.

On Day 1, this beautiful pale gold wine offered beautiful aromatics of apple juice, pear and a hint of watermelon and the inital attack on the palatte is exactly what Riesling fans want: sharp acids and the minerality of those river rock that Gary V is always mentioning.  The mid-palatte opens with a very crisp apple and extremely soft pineapple flavors.  Then finishes with something that makes me think ’spicy oak’… kinda like if you were to put a piece of oak through a pepper grinder.  That’s exactly what popped into my mind.

Day 2 was the day of surprises.  The apple juice aroma nearly completely fell away and what was left was the gorgeous aroma of fresh ripe pear.  But, on the taste, the sharpness had a raw garlic-like bite to it.  The flavor profile had changed a bit, too, and I found myself thinking I’d stumbled upon a Perrier with pineapple juice (with that oak pepper sprinkled on top).

Definitely different for me… definitely adventurous… definitely something I’d enjoy again sitting by the pool on a hot summer day to wash away the day and welcome in a relaxing evening.

Independence Weekend Wines!

OK so the picture says 1993, but I really had the 1990.....

So I went to a wonderful dinner in Seattle over the weekend. For those fellow foodies out there I highly recommend heading to The Harvest Vine. It is a wonderful tapas (family style) restaurant which I try to go to every time I visit Seattle.

My friends and I had two yummy bottles to enjoy during dinner. We started with a bottle of 1990 Jos. Christoffel Jr. Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese.

The wine had a very nice sweet citris / pineapple quality and hint of the oiliness you would normally expect. However it was not quite as minerally as I like, but like Mr. Gary I like a little razor action on my toungue. Regardless it was a wonderful wine.

The second bottle we had was a 2005 Walter Hansel Alyse cuvee Pinot Noir.

Thanks to wallywine.com for having a current image.

The wine is great blend of Burgundy and New world .. leaning more towards Burgundy. Everyone enjoyed the earthiness of the wine, but it was not dank nor unapproachable for being younger. It went amazingly well with the Lamb and mushroom dish we had. There were good components of black cherry and hay without being to overpowering for some people at the table who “didn’t like red wine”. They really enjoyed this one.

Cheers!

2006 Thomas Leithner Gruener Veltliner

I originally bought this wine to drink on the 4th of July, as a nice change-of-pace white wine for hot weather.  As it turned out, the 4th wasn’t all that hot here in Portland, so I ended up just drinking way too many margaritas for my own good.  So here it is Monday, July 7th and I finally popped open this bottle to drink.  $10, 1L green (appropriate) bottle with a white bottle cap, 12% alcohol.  Yes, you saw that correctly, this wine is bottled with a bottle cap.  Clearly it is not meant to be aged any length of time at all.  I am actually not 100% sure this is actually vintage 2006 wine, as it is not labeled as such, but I am assuming it can’t be any older.

I drank this wine cold, out of the refrigerator, as my (admittedly limited) experience with GV has shown that it is not generally a white that should be enjoyed warm.

Nose: Nothing much to report here (drinking it cold, I didn’t expect much).  Smelled like white wine.

Taste: Delicious!  This was exactly what I was looking for in a summer white.  Nice and light, with excellent back-end acidity.  I had it with potato salad and hamburgers for dinner and it hit the spot.  For $10, I am going to buy a couple more bottles of this nice little Austrian gem and drink it up this summer.  Highly recommended by me.

Update, Day 2:

Nose: I worked really hard today to try to find something interesting to say about the nose.  I managed to dredge up some hints of butter, and once I let the wine warm up a bit, some fairly strong honey.  In fact, my main impression of the nose on day 2 is that it really smelled quite a bit like some mead that I’ve had.

Taste: Ok, I was searching for the green apple (thanks, Patrick), but what I got was actually green apple Jolly Ranchers.  I also get a fairly strong taste of lemon juice (the acidity, I guess) and a little butter, like on the nose.

It is interesting to note that this GV was actually still quite tasty, even warm.  I still like it and I’m definitely going to try to see if I can buy some more at the shop on Friday.

2006 Foloi

Most Friday afternoons, I go to Mount Tabor Fine Wines for their weekly wine tasting.  Since I wanted to try something new and I’ve been craving some acidic white wine in the Portland heat the past few weeks, I asked Sandy for a recommendation.  He recommended two Greek white wines and this was one of them.  The other I finished a few days ago, and I didn’t take any notes, so I’m going to skip.

This wine is described on the bottle as “Regional dry white wine of Pisatis”.  It is labeled as from the “Mercouri Estate, Greece” with an alcohol content of 12.3%.  It is made from the Rodatis grape variatal (never heard of it before this).  The blurb on the back says “..grown at altitude on the plateau of Pholoe, Ilias – an area famous in Greek mythology for its aromatic wines.”

My notes are from the 3rd day I had this wine and I did drink it cold, so take that for what it’s worth (what’s it worth?  Well, chilled wine can cover up unpleasantness and make a mediocre wine taste better.)

What did I think?  The nose was pretty blah, and I have no comments on it.  I had asked for a recommendation for a white wine with high acid.  This wine had a nice acidity to it, but it’s what I would describe as a “rounded acidity” rather than a razor sharp acidity like Gary will often describe.  It had a nice taste of fresh pears on the mid-palate with some hints of lemon as well.  I would describe this wine as “pears with a hint of lemon juice squeezed on top”.

Overall, I think this is a really nice hot-weather wine to enjoy chilled.  I’d rate it an 86.  Probably not worth the $20 I paid for it, but it was interesting to try something new and different.