Wily Bloggers Trademark “Pink Slip Rosé” – Blowhard Winery Owner Screams, “You’re Fired!”

When Allan from CellarBlog asked if we’d participate in #varosé day, we immediately knew that we were in.  We’re big fans of drinking pink and always try to have a few bottles on hand.  Rosé wines are typically light and refreshing, so they’re great in the warm months (of which VA has too many).  The light berry flavors so often found in rosés can also bring a welcome touch of spring and summer to cold winter days, so we’re fond of year wine drinking of the pink.  Finally, they’re often very food friendly and pair well with a wide variety of foods from salad to turkey to BBQ.  We figured the best way for us to participate in this day was to actually crack open some of those pink bottles that have languished on our wine racks through GEG’s illness last summer and our too busy for drinking schedules of the past 6 months.

The first of these bottles we opened was the 2010 rosé from Stinson Vineyards.  Most rosés in VA are made from Bordeaux grapes (cab franc, can sauv, and merlot most commonly) or chambourcin, so this rosé made from mouvedre is an unusual find.  This dry but fruity wine held up surprising well to being left on the shelf a tad to long.  It wasn’t particularly complex, but it was very refreshing.  It made me think of watermelon along with a touch of mild, somewhat watery, strawberries.  As I spent more time with the wine, I also noted some pink grapefruit.  I enjoyed my time with this wine quite a bit.

 

The second rosé we’ve enjoyed recently was another 2010 – this one was the Topiary Rosé from Boxwood Winery.  This is a blend of cab franc and malbec, and we paired this one with some grilled pizza – really yummy shrimp and feta grilled pizza on a garlic and rosemary crust to be exact.  Again, this wine held up well to the test of time.  I noted light strawberry notes on the nose and strawberry and citrus on the palate along with some flintiness.  It was a great wine to savor with our pizza as we enjoyed our patio.

Our third rosé was the 2011 from Breaux Vineayrds.  This wine is a blend of nebbiolo, cab sauv, and chambourcin, and in the year or so since it’s release, it’s really grown on me.  It’s a dry wine, but there’s so much fruit to be found in the class that it was a bit much for me at first.  The fruit may have softened a bit, but I still note tons a strawberry, raspberry, and cherry flavors.  There’s also a touch of herbaciousness that adds a bit of depth to this wine.  This is one I don’t feel comfortable suggesting food pairings for – other than perhaps a berry-heavy summer salad – but it was definitely enjoyable as a sipper on its own.  I’d sum it up as a fun wine.

How do you feel about drinking pink?  What are your favorite VA rosés?  How are you celebrating #varosé day? What new releases would you recommend we check out?

Inquiring minds want to know!

 

Blogger Wins Nobel Prize for Avoiding Easy Jokes About Compressed Melons, Accolades Pile Up

I am such a bad VA wine blogger…sorry for disappearing for the past week.  My work life was all about pushing to get things done so that I’d have time to go to TasteCamp and then playing catch up after the long weekend was over.  This led to major burnout on both the work and blog fronts.  To recover, I unplugged from all but the most essential electronic communication.  Thankfully, I’m feeling much happier about all aspects of my life after some time away from my computers and smartphone, and I’m now ready to return to some VA wine impressions from TasteCamp.

I left off after taking about the opening lunch and first grand tasting at Boxwood, so I’ll pick up where I left off by talking about the Friday night dinner at Breaux Vineyards.  Jen Breaux Blosser and the whole Breaux crew know how to pull out all the stops for an event, so I was excited to see what they’d have in store for us.  As you’d expect, there was a lot of good Breaux wine, but there was also a lot of great food courtesy of Tuscarora Mill.

Jen welcomed the TasteCamp crew to Breaux with glasses of the ’10 sauv blanc and stations where we could taste the ’10 viognier, the ’10 Jen’s Jambalaya, and the ’02 merlot reserve.  While we were tasting and chattingwith each other as well as the Breaux staff, we were also able to taste some wonderful passed hors d’oeuvres.  My favorites were the seared scallops on lavosh with fennel salad and orange glaze (I love me some scallops) and the compressed melon with feta and sherry gastrique.  I need to figure out how to compress some melon at home because I kept stalking the wait staff holding those trays so that I could get another taste.  As for the wine, my patio winner was the merlot reserve.  If you’ve got a bottle of this at home (perhaps from when you attended one of the merlot vertical tastings), know that it’s still drinking really well.  If you open it, you won’t be disappointed, but you can probably also wait another year or two.  I was also glad that Grape Envy Guy finally got to try the Jen’s Jambalaya as I don’t think he ever has.  We eat a lot of spicy food, so it’s nice to have some local, affordable slightly sweet white options, and at 1% residual sugar, this one was well balanced and very enjoyable.

We were eventually moved into the tank room for dinner which began with a glass of the ’11 Breaux rosé, a dry rosé from nebbiolo, cab sauv, and chambourcin, and a salad of local greens, got cheese, and walnuts.  This is the first wine available by Breaux’s new winemaker David Pagan Castaño, and it was described to us as being done in a Spanish style.  I don’t think I’ve had a Spanish rosé before, so I’ll have to take their word for it, but it was very fruity, refreshing, and worked well with the salad to start the meal.

We then moved on to the main course of beef medallions with a bacon fig sauce and a gorgonzola risotto with currants and almonds.  I was in love with this course, and it paired particularly well with the ’07 cabernet sauvignon.  The other wine poured with this course was the ’07 cab franc reserve.  This is a massive wine, and I think it still needs more time.  Right now, the oak influence is too prominent for me, but many others were loving it, so if you get a chance to taste this one (it’s rarely poured), let me know what you think.

We were then treated to a cheese course with a vertical of nebbiolo.  The ’01, ’02, ’05, and a barrel sample of the ’07 were poured.  I was excited for the opportunity to taste these wines since we had to miss the nebbiolo vertical event since we were already committed to attending the Jefferson Meritage vertical (my favorite wineries so need to coordinate their event schedules with me…oh right, I’m not that important).  The ’07 is still a monster and just too young to really get a good sense of what it will be like.  It’s been a while since I tasted the ’05, and it seems to be aging well, but my favorites were still the ’01 and ’02.  I was leaning slightly towards the ’02, but I had a hard time expressing why.  The nice part of this was that we have bottles of both of these wines at home, so this let us check in on how they’re likely doing without opening our only bottles (hey – we’re getting better about aging wine, but we rarely have the money to buy more than 1 or 2 bottles of these wines).

By the time dessert rolled around, I was very full, so I just tasted the white chocolate-apricot cake served with lychee sabayon.  It was really well done, but I was trying to stave off food coma.  With this final course, we were served the ’10 Chère Marie (a late harvest vidal blanc) and the ’06 Soleil.  The Chère Marie wasn’t my style of wine, but I enjoyed the Soleil.  GEG isn’t yet sold on the sherry-style wines, however, so none came home with us.

Throughout dinner, Jen and crew did a great job filling us in on the history of Breaux as well as providing some information about their expansion plans and the oversees marketing.  Since we’re local (as are most of our readers), this wasn’t new info for us, but we still had a great time learning more about the Breaux wines as well as our dining companions – so cool to actually meet people who write blogs you’ve been reading for a while.

Thanks for the great dinner Chef Patrick Dinh!

Anyway – I promise, I’m not disappearing anytime soon, so I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about the TasteCamp visit to Tarara.

 

We Say Give Us This Day Our Daily Red, But Maybe We Look to a White Instead?

I love all the big red wines that we get access to as members of the Breaux Vineyards wine club.  Of course, reds aren’t the only wines we get.  We also get the occasional bottles of white and pink wines.  One such white wine was the 2010 Lot 10-08, a blend of 60% chardonnay and 40% seyval.  Neither of these grapes are among my favorite, so this wine got entered in our inventory and then forgotten.  When we recently planned a somewhat snacky meal of shrimp, cheese, olives, etc., I went looking for a crisp white wine that would work with the variety of foods – or at least not fight with them.

This wine fit the bill.  It had a crisp nose, and I notes apple, lemon, and subtle hay notes.  There was also some minerality that I found enjoyable.  This wasn’t a wine that changed my life, or even a wine I’m wishing I had more bottles of, but it fit the bill.  It was crisp and refreshing and played well with a few different cheeses as well as the shrimp.  Not every wine needs to be one that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.  Sometimes a wine that works for you on a given day, with a given meal, and with a particular companion is enough.

Unfortunately, I don’t always practice what I preach, and this style of wine is one that we never seem to have enough of.  We do okay with more “everyday” reds, but I always forget about the whites.  Any recommendations, Virginia or otherwise, for what I should consider keeping on hand?

 

“You Name Wines After Lots? *I* Name Them After Parking Garages!” Trump Did Not Bluster to Winery Owners

We’ve mentioned before that we’re members of the wine club at Breaux Vineyards.  I’m a big fan of this club since it gets us access to wines that we couldn’t otherwise buy, and many of them are great, age-worthy reds.  The one downside to this is that, since many of these wines need more aging (at least in my opinion), we rarely open these bottles.  During a relatively recent pick up party, we were able to try the 2007 Lot 751, a blend of cab sauv, merlot, malbec, petit verdot, and cab franc, and found it to have opened up a lot since the first time we tried it a year before.  Given this, we bought another bottle and decided to open one of the ones we had sooner rather than later.

Well, that “sooner” came recently, and we popped the cork.  I noted a rich, dark fruit nose that immediately told me that petit verdot was part of this blend.  I noted dark, mixed berry scents along with a light hint of “forest floor” (that label sounds better than damp earthy and decomposing leaves – and yes, this is something I like in a wine).  On the palate, I noted graphite initially followed by jammy berries and cherries.  This was then rounded out with those notes of damp earth.  I don’t always like the cooked fruit elements, but it was working for me in this wine – perhaps because it was balanced out by the earthy elements.

I really enjoyed this wine, but I’m also really glad that we’ve still got a bottle resting on our rack so that we can revisit it some time in the future.

 

FDA Queries Winemaker in Search to Determine Who Put the Ape in Apricot

We end up at Breaux Vineyards fairly often since we’re club members and we actually like to pick up the wines we’ve paid for.  Despite semi-regular visits, we rarely take the time to do a full tasting.  Since it’s been a year since we’ve done more than taste the occasional new release at the tasting bar, we decided to plan a visit to do a full tasting.  We don’t like crowds, and Breaux can get quite crowded, so visiting early in the day (and in the winter) does tend to help us avoid the hoards of Breaux lovers.  If you plan a visit to Breaux, definitely think about time, day of the week, weather, etc. in terms of your tolerance for others – lots of others….

Our tasting began with the ’10 sauv blanc ($18).  This wine offered a bright lemon nose and melon, lemon, and some grassyness on the palate.  This was an okay wine that would likely be nicely refreshing in warmer weather, but it’s not a sauv blanc I’m raving about.  The other dry white on the menu was the ’10 Madeleine’s Chardonnay ($20).  I’m more used to the oaked chards Breaux does, do it was nice to try this stainless one.  I got a tropical nose and flavors of banana, tropical fruits, adn some light floral notes.  This was an okay wine, but it didn’t make me think chard (and I go for a stainless chard, so the lack of oak, butter, creaminess, wasn’t what was throwing me.  I just don’t expect tropical flavors with chardonnay…

We then moved on to the reds.  We started with the Equation ($16), a non-vintage blend of merlot (84%), cab sauv (12%), and petit verdot (4%).  This is an entry level wine from Breaux, and I typically prefer their more complex offerings.  Given that, It’s hard for me not to make mental comparisons to the others merlots I’ve had.  This is really an unfair comparison, however, because this is meant to be more of an everyday, table wine than their vintage merlots.  From this one, I noted cherry and oak with a hint of smoke on the nose and black pepper and red fruit on the palate.  The wine was a bit flat to me.  We then tried the ’08 Marquis De Lafayette ($20), a cabernet franc.  I got a lot of green bell pepper notes on the nose and noted green peppers, light cherry, and some black pepper on the palate.  I don’t mind some green in my cab franc, but there was too much for me in this wine.

We then got to try a mini-vertical of the ’05 and ’06 merlots (both $28).  The ’05 struck me as the more complex of the two.  I noted cherry and vanilla with a hint of chocolate and clove and other spice notes on the finish.  That said, I still liked the ’06.  That wine offered a spiced red fruit nose with spiced plum and cherry flavors on the palate.  There was definitely more going on here than with the Equation, but I wasn’t $28 in love with the wine…  Merlot is not my favorite varietal, so I’ve got to be moved to buy it, and I wasn’t feeling it on this day.  That said, I have a bit of non-buyers remorse about the ’05.

We then moved on to the ’05 cab sauv ($24).  I noted a smokey, raspberry nose and flavors of chocolate, raspberry, and spice along with a hint of meatiness that made me think of all the “bloody nose” notes from regular commenter Mel.  The reds were rounded out with the ’06 nebbiolo ($38).  Breaux has a great history with this grape – I love the ’01, and the ’02 and the ’05 are nothing to sneeze at either – so I’m always excited to try it.  This is still a young wine, and I have no idea of exactly where it will go over time, but I enjoyed the spicy tobacco and soft current and anise flavors.

The tasting ended with two sweet wines.  The first of these was the ’10 Chère Marie ($16), a vidal blanc with 1% residual sugar.  My mind is not on sweet vidals in the winter, but this was a nice one.  I got lots of tropical/pineapple scents and flavors, and the sweetness was balanced with some acid.  In warm weather, this would make a great picnic wine for me.  We ended with the ’10 nebbiolo ice ($19 for 375 ml), a dessert wine with 10.1% residual sugar.  I noted a ton of apricot along with some raspberry.  I don’t drink a lot of dessert wines, so I rarely buy them, and this one is so unusual, I’ve never been tempted.  The flavors always surprise me, and I don’t know what to make of it…I keep trying it, however, because one of these days it may either work for me or I’ll be able to figure out what’s not working for me.

So, I’m glad we did the tasting.  I really am a big fan of Breaux’s wines, but I do tend to gravitate more to the bigger reds that are part of our club shipments.  I also really appreciate how well their wines age (as well as the fact that they can hold wines back long enough to let them get some bottle age on them before selling them).  Now I just need to remember not to wait another year to do a full tasting.

 

Blind Blogging Mice Fall Into Wine Tank, Saved by Bobbing Corks

Have you ever done a blind tasting?  This is when you wrap wine bottles from a given category (e.g., merlot) in brown paper bags or tinfoil and pour samples without knowing which winery (or vintage) the wine is from.  The idea is that by removing the labels from view, you can also remove preconceptions the tasters hold.  Given that the vast majority of the wine we taste is either at a given winery while doing a tasting or at home from a bottle we’ve purchased and chosen to open, we don’t do much blind tasting.  That said, when we have done them, we’ve always found them fun, and we’ve often found them instructive.  Given this, when Kurt from Wine About Virginia asked us to come to his house for a blind tasting with other local bloggers we thought it sounded like a lot of fun

Attendees at this party included Allan from CellarBlog, Frank from Drink What You Like, John from Hagarty on Wine, Kristy from Kristy Wine Vine, Colleen and Andrew from Wine Cruisers and our hosts Kurt and Carol.  Kurt asked everyone to bring 2 bottles of VA wine from the same category (e.g., chardonnay or meritage).  Most of us also tried to bring bottles from the same year so that comparisons would be across wineries but within vintage.  We packed a couple of bottles of chardonnay as well as a crock pot full of spinach dip and headed to the party.  (One thing we did not remember to pack was a camera, so you’re stuck with crappy pictures from my cell phone – sorry about that.)

I started with the 2 albarinos.  I knew that one was from Chrysalis Vineyards and one was from Willowcroft Farm Vineyards, but I had no idea which bottle was which.  Bottle 1 offered a lot of tropical and floral notes on the nose and made me wonder if there was a bit of petit manseng in there.  On the palate, the flavors were softer, and I had a hard time picking out individual notes.  This struck me as the more complex of the two wines, but on that day, I gravitated to the second bottle with offered stronger honeysuckle and tropical fruit notes as I sipped.  The latter was the ’10 Willowcroft, but the ’10 Chrysalis was preferred by the group.

I next turned to the 4 viogniers.  The first (later to be revealed as the ’08 Maggie’s Vineyard Viognier from Delaplane Cellars) offered honeysuckle on the nose but struck me as a bit flat on the palate and ended up being my least favorite.  Having just had the wine at the winery (and really enjoyed it), I was really surprised when the wine was unblinded since it just didn’t taste right.  We speculated that this could be a case of low level TCA (cork taint) dulling the flavors.  Number 2 (the ’08 Annefield Vineyards) was both my winner and the overall winner.  It offered both fruit and floral notes that struck me as being very representative of this grape.  We got to bring the remains of this bottle home with us, and I still found it enjoyable the next day.  (Note to self, must get some more Annefield wine to try!)  Number 3 was the ’09 from the Winery at La Grange.  This wine had a very floral nose and a lot of fruit on the palate.  It wasn’t a sophisticated viognier, but it was fun and really enjoyable (my number 2).  Viognier 4 (my third ranked wine) was the ’10 from Paradise Springs Winery.  This wine was all tropical fruit with some light oak on the nose.  It isn’t what I look for in a viognier, but I didn’t find it objectionable.

Chardonnays were up next, and despite having brought 2 of the 4 bottles, I wasn’t excited for this flight.  Chard #1 (an ’09 Veramar Vineyard chardonnay reserve) offered melted butter and lemon on the nose and movie theater popcorn butter on the palate.  The lemon and butter made me want lobster, but it didn’t make me want the wine (sorry for bringing this one guys – we’d never tried it).  Number 2 was the ’09 Blenheim Farm Chardonnay from Blenheim Vineyards.  This was my favorite, but it was also a bottle we brought, so familiarity and recognition may have played a role in this.  I noted apple and lemon with a hint of floral oak.  Number 3 was the ’10 Fletcher’s Chardonnay from La Grange (a wine I’m pretty sure is not yet for sale).  I found this wine a bit confusing – I got a floral nose and something that tasted sweet on the palate.  I ranked this wine third, but it won the flight.  The final chard was the ’10 Cold Steel Chard from Willowcroft.  This isn’t a wine I’d be likely to buy, but I did find it enjoyable.  I got a floral nose and soft notes of apple and citrus on the palate (my #2 ranked wine).

I then turned to the 3 cab francs.  Number 1 (the ’09 from Desert Rose Winery) was what I thought of for a cab franc.  It had plenty of cherry flavors, and I ranked it #2.  Wine 2 a ’10 cab franc made by John Hagarty – a home winemaker.  It had a bit more oak than I look for, but it definitely seemed like a VA cab franc.  Wine 3 was my favorite (and the favorite of the group as a whole); it was the ’09 Rappahannock Cellars Glenway Vineyard cab franc.  It was the softest of the three wines and offered some earthy fruit flavors that offered a bit more complexity than the wine from Desert Rose.

Up next was a flight of three Nebbiolos.  I knew Allan had brought these wines and that 2 were from the same winery but different vintage years (Breaux Vineyards was a safe guess here).  Wine 1 was my least favorite of the three; it was very young and fairly rough.  This was actually a “ringer” wine Allan threw in – a ’06 Monte Degli Angeli Barolo from Italy.  Wine 2 was the winner (for me and the group).  I correctly guessed this as the ’01 nebbiolo from Breaux and I got a some earthy notes on the nose and soft fruit and anise on the palate.  Wine 3 was the ’07 Cellar Club Barrel Select Nebbiolo from Breaux.  This wine was clearly too young as those tannins were in your face and the wine was incredibly tight, but I look forward to what this wine can be in the future.  This was another case where we took home the leftover wine, and it really opened up nicely by the time it got home and improved even more over the next few days.

Meritage blends came next.  My winner was wine 1 – the ’07 Breaux Cellar Selection Meritage.  This wine had a woody nose but a lot of dark fruit was present on the palate.  There were some hefty tannins in this wine, and it really needs a few more years, but I bet that more time open would have allowed this wine to show better.  Wine 2 was my least favorite but the favorite of the group.  I got a bit of earthy funk with this wine that wasn’t working for me, but there was also a lot of fruit that may well explain the wine’s appeal.  This was the ’07 Grand Cru Olivier from Del Fosse Vineyards.  Wine 3 was actually the ’09 Cab Sauv from La Grange (I ranked it #2).  It was soft and fruity, but it struck me as less meritage like as it didn’t seem to have the same layers (I was excited when I realized that I’d said this about a single varietal wine when they were unblinded.

The final two wines were petit verdots.  The winner (for both me and the group) was the ’08 from Pearmund Cellars.  This wine offered a lot of fruit flavors and softer tannins.  The other wine was the ’08 from Chester Gap Cellars.  The nose on this wine was earthier and the fruit wasn’t as distinct on the palate.  This was the final bottle that we took home with us, and this was another wine that benefited from more hours (and days) open.  Of the wines we took home with us, this was the one I made sure to finish.  I’ve had mixed reactions to Chester Gap wines, but I want to check out his petit verdot more often (likely after giving it more bottle age and plenty of air from a good decanting).

So I think it’s clear that there was a lot of wine.  An event like this really only works with a lot of people so that you can spread the cost of all those bottles out among a group.  We’ve done much smaller scale blind tastings at home with 2 or 3 bottles, however, so considering giving one a try if you’ve yet to do so.

Thanks Kurt and Carol for organizing this event and bringing us all together.  It was a lot of fun.

 

Breaux Brings Brazen Bordeaux Bad Boy

After a number of decades of grape growing in Virginia, people who know way more about this than me seem to be figuring out which grapes do well here.  Viognier and cab franc come up a lot.  I also heard people talk about petit verdot and petit manseng as grapes that do well in VA.  Jordan, from Tarara, also talks a lot about how well syrah can do at some site in VA.  A grape you don’t hear a lot about, however, is sauv blanc.  Sauv Blanc is one of the white grapes of Bordeaux, but while you hear a lot about the success of red Bordeaux grapes in VA, you just don’t hear as much about the whites.

That said, I’m a fan of this grape, so I’m always intrigued to try a local offering.  The Glen Manor sauv blancs continually impress me, and I’ve often been a fan of those from Linden and Veritas as well (taking vintage variation into account).  I have not, however, loved all the ones that I’ve tried – I think it has something to do with the acid balance…  Recently we got a chance to taste a sauv blanc from yet another winery – Breaux Vineyards – thanks to the inclusion of the 2010 cellar selection sauv blanc in our most recent wine club shipment.

This wine offered a grassy nose with lots of grapefruit, and there was also plenty of citrus on the palate – primarily grapefruit and lime zest.  Given that we opened this bottle on a 100° day, all that tart citrus was incredibly refreshing.  This isn’t my favorite sauv blanc, but 2010 was such a hot year that it’s hard to draw many conclusions about how a grape normally does at a given site without a whole lot more experience than I have.  I will say that it was very popular with cellar club members, however, as the bottles not included in club allocations were already sold out by the time we got to pick up our club wines.  Hopefully we’ll get a chance to try another Breaux sauv blanc in future years.

 

Bro-zay: Part Deux

Have I mentioned that Grape Envy Guy loves pink.  I really don’t – if there’s ever a pink toothbrush in our house, you can be sure it’s his rather than mine.  Over the 2 years, his love of pink has come to include pink wine.  It wasn’t the instant love affair that he has with norton, but it’s developed to a point where he’s often the one choosing to open a rosé.  Given this, we’re slowly but surely making our way through our stash of bottles (clearly we’ll need to restock soon).

Recently we popped the cork on a bottle of Breaux Vineyards 2010 cabernet rosé.  We got to try this wine when we attended the nebbiolo vertical in April.  While I enjoyed the wine then, my mind was already jumping ahead to the nebbiolo vintages we’d get to try with the meal, so had it not been for my notes, I couldn’t have said much more than it was crisp and fruity.  Thankfully, we had a bottle on our shelf so that we could give it more attention when opened on its own.

This wine is 100% cabernet sauvignon, and was a very enjoyable dry rosé.  The nose was dominated by strawberry with a bare hint of green woodiness.  Strawberry and raspberry flavors dominated as I started to sip, and all that fruit almost made the wine seem sweet.  This wasn’t a multi-layered wine that kept me contemplating what was in my glass with each sip.  That said, not every wine should be that way.  While some rosés offer those layers, others offer straightforward crisp, refreshing fun.  This wine offered the fruity refreshment we were looking for.

 

Join the Club?

We held out for a long time before joining any wine clubs.  Beyond the financial commitment which can be a bit daunting for those of us living on budgets, as a polyamourous VA wine lover, I found it hard to commit to a winery enough to join a club.  Over the last year, however, we’ve joined a few different clubs.  Some we’ll likely stay with for some time while others will be allowed to lapse, but we have found that club memberships can let us learn more about a winery – especially if the club membership gains you access to special, club-only wines.

The Breaux Vineyards cellar club is one we joined this winter, and when we signed up, one of the wines we took home was a bottle of ’06 Cellar Club Chardonnay.  We’re not huge chardonnay fans, and we’re generally bigger fans of the reds from Breaux than the whites, but part of the benefit of a club membership is that it gives you a chance to try wines you might not otherwise purchase.  With no particular expectations but an open mind, we popped the cork on this bottle.

I found a nose redolent with crisp apple flavors along with a hint of smoke.  Once I started to sip, I again noted apple along with some light, toasty oak notes.  Honestly, the wine was fine; that said, I was a bit surprised that it was a cellar club wine as it didn’t particularly stand out to me.

This is the drawback of wine clubs.  You get some bottles that just aren’t for you.  Of course, this is also why you need to stick with a club for a while so that you can see if the bulk of the wines offered are ones that make the membership worth it for you.  Having had other Breux club wines, I still feel that this club is a good fit for us, but this wine did remind me why I’m often hesitant to join a club.  Risk is definitely not my middle name.

 

Get to Know Your Winemaker: David Pagan Castaño of Breaux Vineyards

“Wait, who?” you say? Allan from CellarBlog posted the official press release about Breaux’s new winemaker, and we promptly begged and cajoled the ever-awesome Jen Breaux Blosser to hook us up with a G2KYW with David. Let’s all meet him together:

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Valencia, Spain. My family moved around a lot in the region, but I call the city of Valencia home.

How long have you lived in VA?
I have lived in here for about 4 months, but I have lots of friends from Virginia.  The University of Virginia has a program in Valencia where Americans and Spaniards can practice English and Spanish together.  I participated in that program for over 6 years, and I learned a lot about Virginia through the people I met in that program.  I even met my wife (who is also from Virginia) there!

What brought you to wine?
My family has made wine in Yecla, Spain for three generations.  I grew up learning about wine and have always been interested in the beautiful challenge of making it.  I studied Agricultural Engineering in college and then decided definitively to be a winemaker when I finished my first internship.  I got my Masters in Enology and continued learning in France, the US, New Zealand and beyond.

Where else (besides your current winery) have you made wine?
In Spain, I have made wine in Yecla (Southeast Spain), Mallorca (Balearic Islands) and Lanzarote(Canary Islands).  I have experience making wine in Cairanne and Angers in France.  I was a cellar supervisor in New Zealand, and I worked at Saint Francis Winery in Sonoma.

What characteristics do you enjoy in wine?
Above all, I seek balance in my wines.  I like to compare the characteristics of wine to a circle in which each sensation flows into the next, none taking over any other.  I enjoy bright, aromatic, fruit-forward whites with structured acidity.  In reds, I like spicy, rich fruits with subtle oak that adds to, rather than distracting from the well rounded tannins.

If you could have a private tour of any winery in the world, which would you choose?
I am interested in wineries with some sort of history- family, community or ones that have undergone significant changes.  I am particularly eager to learn more about biodynamic wineries- ecological wineries that use almanacs to elaborate the wines.

What is your favorite food and wine pairing?
I don’t usually pair food with wine when I really want to evaluate its various qualities.  Of course, to just enjoy a wine with a great meal, I select a wine I know I like and give it to one of the great cooks in my life.  They are my personal sommeliers.

What are your favorite wine varietals?
In Virginia, I love the Viognier.  It seems to grow well here with lots of aroma and structure.  In Spain, I am a fan of the Monastrell, typical of the wine region where my family’s winery is located.  I also enjoyed working with Malvasia and Moscatel, as they are so aromatic and fruit-forward.  In general, I can always find a great Syrah or Cabernet Sauvingnon.  I am fascinated by the versatility they have in various regions around the world.

What has you the most excited about making wines at Breaux?
Where to begin…the staff is energetic and open; the winery has a history with wine lovers in Virginia, the grapes are 100% estate grown; and of course, the view isn’t bad, either.

Who is your favorite cartoon character?
Homer Simpson.  But, it would be better if he liked wine more than beer.

What is one thing we haven’t asked that you want Virginia wine lovers to know about you or your winery?
For some, wine is an elite pastime, but for me, it is for learning, sharing and being social.  In Spain, we drink wine to enjoy life, and I hope to share this passion with everyone who wants to know more and toast to the joy of wine.

Have you made a wine that you think speaks to who you are as a winemaker? If so, what is it and why that one?
I have had opportunities to make wines in extreme conditions like floods and harsh droughts, and despite the challenge, I have seen good results and even award winners.  While I am very proud of my wines, I am always looking to the future to create a better wine than the ones I have already made.  The wine that defines me is always the next one.

 

Thanks David, and bienvenidos!