Bottle Label’s Secret Decoded as “Three Vermillion Ferrets Playing Battleship,” Codebreakers Admit Slim Chance of Error

I hate paying for overpriced oil changes and hard to find parts, and while I can appreciate craftsmanship, I have to say that I’m not really sorry that I don’t own a Ferrari. One of the biggest reasons I’m glad to not have one is the fact that many of Virginia’s wineries are reached via gravel roads, which are probably not ideal for low-slung vehicles with way too much power going to the rear wheels. This occurred to me as we powered up the hill to Mountfair Vineyards in the Winery Assault Vehicle, which is decidedly not a Ferrari. It’s also not a DeLorean, which kind of sucks.

We’ve tasted here numerous times before, so we were familiar with the great little post and beam tasting room as well as many of the wines. Every vintage is different, of course, so we came back for another taste. The tasting now kicks off with two Thibaut-Janisson wines. The first was the Blanc de Blanc ($30), a dry sparkling wine with yeast and apple and winning in it. This was followed by the Virginia Fizz ($25), a sparkling with a little sweetness that still has great acid backbone and gobs of flavor.

The Mountfair wines started with the 2009 Merlot ($25). I got light berry fruit, and found it to be a solid, drinkable red. The ’09 Belated ($30) was next, a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot. It had a big rich nose but was lighter than expected on the palate. We ended with the 2010 Inaugural ($30). Sorry, I didn’t catch the blend. There was a nice fruit character to the wine but the acid was a little off for me on the finish. I’d have to say that this time around, I preferred the Merlot to the two blends.

Oh, and you all should be proud of me. We noticed the pool table in the barrel room, and not once did I make a crack about getting felt in the barrel room. So, score one for me!

 

Super Villainess Rose deWine Takes on Spicy McCurd in Grudge Match, Bystanders Flee

Not that long along, we found an incredible wine pairing for our kung pao tofu: torrontes.  We definitely want to explore that grape more, but we don’t want it to just be a default wine for this recipe or that recipe to became our only pairing for that wine.  We are both big fans of this relatively simple and very flavorful meal, however, so it makes it into rotation with regularity.

The most recent evening when we made it, we decided (and by we, I mean me) that wine was called for, and I turned to our inventory to see what we had that might work.  I first looked to our whites to see if we had anything with some residual sugar that might fit the bill.  We don’t keep a lot of these wines on hand, however, and what we figured that what we did have was either too floral or had too much tropical fruit to work with this meal.

Grape Envy Guy then had a flash of inspiration: what about rosé?  I thought this was brilliant, and I turned to the rosés on our list. While most people tend to think of rosés as options for the heat of summer, I like them year round, and I try to always keep at least a few on hand.  In the end, we opted to open the Stinson Vineyards ’10 rosé (from mourvedre grapes).

Neither one of us remembered much about this wine, but we figured no risk, no reward and popped the cork.  I found a wine that offered a watermelon nose and flavors of watermelon and strawberry.  It was a light and refreshing wine, and I generally found it enjoyable.

When it came to pairing it with the food, I was a bit nervous that the berry flavors wouldn’t work with the dish, but the softer, refreshing watermelon flavors really carried this wine when paired with the food, and the combination just worked for me.  It wasn’t the home run we hit with the torrontes, but it did remind me that I shouldn’t underestimate the versatility of a dry rosé!

 

Merlot Screams From High Ledge: “I’m More Than Just ‘The Wine Reviled in Sideways,’ People!”

Merlot is a grape about which many are dismissive.  Some blame it on the movie Sideways – I think it has more to do with boring, supermarket merlots.  Regardless, I think it’s important not to be dismissive about a whole class of wines.  No one will love every wine, and some people just don’t like a given grape, so it’s important to keep tasting.  For me, that’s definitely the case with merlot.  I have a pretty mediocre reaction to most, but some are just amazing.  Even when they’re not amazing, a good merlot is a good thing to have on hand as it can be a wonderful all-purpose red to work for a group.

We bought the ’09 Mountfair Vineyards merlot to be this kind of an all purpose red.  While we had a full house of people playing board and card games, this seemed like the right type of wine to open.  We had a house full of red wine lovers, but everyone had slightly different preferences, so a middle of the road red like this type of merlot.

The wine offered dark cherry/wild berry flavors with a touch of smoke that become more dominant on the finish.  I’d sum it up as a simple, enjoyable, everyday merlot.  This isn’t a wine that will result in a religious experience, but it worked for a room full of people and played a  role in the good time we all had that afternoon/evening.

What’s a go to wine for you when you need to please a large array of people?

 

Blogger Channels Tyra, Describes Wine as “Cray-Cray”

Sometimes you take a sip of wine (or even just smell it) and know it’s a great fit for you.  Given my myriad wine tasting experiences, I’ve (thankfully) had a number of these over the years.  Other times, you try a wine and can’t get to the spit/dump bucket fast enough because it’s completely not your style (or flawed).  Unfortunately, I’ve also had a number of these.  Other times, however, you try a wine and have a bit of a confused reaction.  This recently happened to me when we opened a bottle of the ’08 Inaugural from Mountfair Vineyards, a blend of 66% cab franc and 34% merlot.

In this particular instance, confusion wasn’t a bad thing.  At the same time, as I sipped the wine, I was never quite sure exactly how I felt about it.  I liked some aspects of it and struggled with others, and this confusion let to an intellectual wine drinking experience for me as I worked to figure out how I felt about the wine.  As an individual who defines herself as an academic, I felt right at home with this kind of self-reflective, wine drinking experience, but I get that many prefer a wine to which they can have a clean reaction and just move on to drinking.

So, what was I confused by?  Well, I noted a very dark wine with a sour cherry nose and cherry, raspberry, and spice on the palate.  I also found some barnyard notes as well.  Some encounter any hint of the barnyard and get turned off.  Others associate it with a favorite French wine and enjoy it.  I fall somewhere in the middle – hence my confusion.  Was it just enough to add some depth and complexity or was it so much that I could no longer enjoy it?  I also initially noted a bit of heat on the finish (although at 12.5% abv, this may have been more an issue of balance), and this wasn’t helping.

As I contemplated, I continued to sip.  I enjoyed the glass I had, but it was tending towards too much barnyard for me.  There was still plenty of wine in the bottle, however, so I decided to revisit it on night 2.  I’m really glad I did.  The wine had opened up a lot and the fruit was then a lot more dominant and the earthy/barnyard notes had softened.  I much preferred it then as it just added a hint of off-ness to a cherry/plum/spice blend.

In this case, I think that hint of off-ness on night 2 (not so much on night 1) was what was working for me.  Once upon a time, I used to watch America’s Next Top Model (hey – I broke myself of the habit, and I really can connect bad television like this to my day job), and I can remember Tyra talking about a model being compelling because she had a feature that was a bit off.  That’s how I experienced this one.  That off note just made the rest of it work better.  That said, not everyone would react to this wine the same way I did, and even I didn’t respond to it the same way on both nights.

 

Intrepid Wine Bloggers Try A Different Context

When we visited Glass House Winery not long after they opened, our favorite of their wines was their ’09 Barbera Reserve.  Apparently it was also popular with others since it was sold out by the time we returned with some friends.  Since we typically taste wines at the winery, perceptions of a given bottle are colored by experiences with those tasted both before and after.  Given this, we were curious to see how we reacted to the barbera on its own in the comfort of our own home.  Given this, we popped off the glass closure and dove in to an exploration of the wine.

I noted a ton of jammy plum on the nose along with a hint of spice that I eventually decided was anise.  Similar flavors were present on the palate – mostly anise and dark fruit (dominated by plum), but there were some other spice elements in there that I couldn’t quite tease apart.  There were definitely some tannins providing structure for thisw wine, but it was a bit lighter/thinner in my mouth than I had expected given the dark colors and flavors.

All in all, this was an enjoyable wine, but it wasn’t earth shaking.  That said, I’m looking forward to see what Glass House offers over the next few years.  In the meantime, I just wish I’d had some of their chocolates to enjoy with this wine….

 

Batboy Not Spotted at Winery Grand Opening

Like many people throughout Virginia, we took advantage of the 4th of July weekend to do some wine touring.  Our first stop was at Stinson Vineyards.  They opened this spring, but their official grand opening was the Fourth of July long weekend, so it looks like we had some fairly good timing with this visit.  Before we got there, all I knew was that they were part of the newly formed Appellation (Wine) Trail and that they had Gryffon’s Aerie meat for sale in their tasting room.  What we found were some solid wines that have us excited to see what develops at Stinson over the next few years.

The tasting room is small, but with multiple tasting stations they seem well set up to handle a number of visitors at one time.  I also like some of the “farm-style” touches throughout the space such as the milk bottle light in the center of the room.  That said, the space may start to feel small before too long.

Once we made our way to an open tasting station, the first wine, a ’10 sauv blanc ($22) was poured.  There are only a few sauv blancs in VA that I’ve really enjoyed, so I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for this one, but the nose was really promising.  I notes lemon, some grass, and a hint of the boxwood/cat pee that you often find with this grape.  When I sipped the wine, however, it was a bit watery and all the flavors were muted.  We then tried the ’10 rosé ($20) from 100% mouvedre.  I got a light fruity nose with a hint of smokiness that took me by surprise.  Ont eh palate, I mostly noted pink grapefruit.  This was my winner of the tasting, and it seems perfect for all the hot weather and grilling that seem to define VA summers.

We then tasted the ’10 chard ($20) – 25% of which was aged in new french oak.  The wine was fine, but it didn’t rock my world or particularly stand out.  I noted a light floral oak nose with stronger oak notes on the palate.  There was a bit of apple/pear in the middle, but the finish returned to the oak with a hit of vanilla.  The final white was the ’10 Sugar Hollow White ($15) which is a blend of Petit Manseng and Rkatsitelli with about 1-1.5% residual sugar.  This wine was too cold to get much of a nose, but I noticed a lot of nice fruit flavors – peach, apricot, and lime primarily.  This is a great summer sipper that’s not too sweet and would likely please many.

We then moved on to reds with the ’10 cab franc ($22).  This was a solid VA cab franc, but it doesn’t particularly stand out or do it for me.  I noted a ton of black cherry on the nose and some black pepper joined the party once I started to sip.  There was a also a smokey tobacco finish.  We then tried a ’10 pinot noir from Ankida Ridge Vineyards, a guest wine from a winery in southwestern VA that plans to open this fall.  I’m one of those people who believes that pinot noir has no business being grown in VA (with the possible exception of some being harvested very early for sparkling wine), but Anika Ridge must have some kind of interesting micro-climate going on.  The wine struck me as incredibly overoaked, but underneath all that wood there was some really nice fruit (mostly dark berry).  I’m not sold on this wine, but I’m definitely curious to try a few vintages.

Our tasting ended with the ’10 petit manseng dessert wine ($25 for 375ml) with 9% residual sugar.  I noted peach, apricot, and pineapple and generally described the wine as a tropical fruit salad in a glass.  As I revisited the sample, I altered this slightly to be canned peaches in syrup with a bit of honey and pineapple juice on the finish.  I found it very enjoyable, but we drink so little dessert wine that I have to be really moved to buy any.  FYI, this wine as aged in acacia barrels (don’t you just love trivia?).

Stinson is brand new, and they’re still making wine with fruit purchased elsewhere (although many established wineries do this as well).  As their own vines mature and they start to develop standing relationships with growers, it will be interesting to see how their style of wine evolves.  That said, I can think of far worse places to spend an afternoon sitting on a patio and sipping some refreshing pink (or lightly sweet white) wine with friends.