Homefire Zinfandel

It's been a long time. Sure, I could bandy about excuses such as:

"I was finishing my cello book"

or

"I was dealing with a very sick cat"

or

"I was freaking out over the Trojans loss to *insert Pac 10 team here*"


...but the real reason is that I was drunk off my ass for weeks on the 2007 Zinfandel from Homefire, out of Sonoma. Ok, not really, but I should be so lucky. I first met this wine a few years ago, and fell wildly in love with their 2005 effort. I bought a case that went all too quickly. It tastes like Christmas at your folks house after you got everything you wanted and your favorite movie is on the tv and you're in a balanced relationship and you're happy with your weight.

So when I sampled their 2006 offering, I was so sad. It was like Arbor Day at your cheating boyfriend's house with him texting the other woman in the bathroom doing God knows what and his family likes her better anyway.

This latest selection is a triumphant return to the heady days of old. Spicy, brilliant, purple-tasting and glorious. I've sobered up enough to write this little blog, but then I'm going right back in for another month of blind-drunk winey goodness.

Not really, but it is a lovely drink, and worth the $20 or so, if you're into round, deep reds.

Poggio Molina

A few nights ago, the IMA Tuscany participants went to Poggio Molina vineyard to have a sumptuous wine tasting and the rare privilege of an enormous meal cooked for us. Un-reproduceable, the meal included pesto pasta with pea-sized bits of potato, paper thin slices of wild boar, the most magnificent tomatoes (so rich and thick that the most fervent carnivores were passing up meat for a third helping) and other things that went by in a blur of sweet, sour, piquant, verdant, and decadent. The most amazing thing? Poggio Molina produces 90% of everything we ate, from the vegetables, to the meat, to the semolina used in the pasta. What is now so "green chic" in Los Angeles and other culinary centers is the old way in the rolling hills of Tuscany.

Vineyard.



Can you believe these grapes?



Roz, the great and powerful.



More vineyard.



The tasting begins.




No more pictures after that, because we were all so busy eating and talking that pictures seemed silly.


Recommended wines, all from Poggio Molina:

I Vecciali Toscana: a nearly efferscent Chianti.

2005 Le Caldie: a rich, jammy Merlot (if you'd believe it!) with all of the Robert Parker fruit-forward that you can handle.

2005/2006 Vinobono: spicy and flirtatious Sangiovese. A table wine that food needs more than it needs food.

2005 Lo Scopaio: more elegant and dignified than you'd expect for a table wine. Non varietal, has lots of cherry and maybe some vanilla too.

In Rome now, just for one more day. I will miss this place, but California has the siren call of convenience and a global wine marketplace. Still, I have not slept so well in years, and I have to think that it is that same cacophonous siren call that may be responsible for the listlessness of my slumber.

Phantastic

Considering my shrinking finances, expanding waist, and the general jackassery my life is presenting me with, I really have been spending too much time down at Ludo's place. Each time I go, I am delivered on high to food heaven, and then next morning I ask myself things like, "What am I doing with my life?". Then the 11am hunger arrives, and I am sure I could go another round of lobster medallions, escargots, and magical chorizo with cornichons.

But wine! About the wine! Since Ludo Bites is BYOB, we were quite indulgent and sampled two:

Joseph Phelps 2006 "FogDog" Pinot Noir

La Milliere 2007 Châteauneuf du Pape Vielles Vignes (RP score 94)

Both were amazing, but let me just say that Pinot drinkers will love Mr. Phelps' latest entry. All of the charms of a Pinot, but definitely from the same place Insignia comes from.

I got away with my life.

I recently purchased a number of Argentine wines on a lark, and each of them was drinkable, except this one. It conjured up a musical analogy I frequently use: when someone is not yet adept at their instrument, it can sound like the worst version of what it is. In the wrong hands, a flute will sound like someone huffing into a metal tube, the cello tends towards a box with metal strings pulled tightly across its front, and the horn turns into a wild squiggle of plumbing. The same is true of wine: in the wrong hands, it tastes too much like what it is. Grape juice, gone bad. This wine managed to be cloying and ...bitter! A most remarkable feat. So in honor of this disagreeable experience, I present you with Monty Python's famous Australian Wine sketch:


"A lot of people in this country pooh-pooh Australian table wines. This is a pity as many fine Australian wines appeal not only to the Australian palate but also to the cognoscenti of Great Britain.

Black Stump Bordeaux is rightly praised as a peppermint flavoured Burgundy, whilst a good Sydney Syrup can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines.

Château Blue, too, has won many prizes; not least for its taste, and its lingering afterburn.

Old Smokey 1968 has been compared favourably to a Welsh claret, whilst the Australian Wino Society thoroughly recommends a 1970 Coq du Rod Laver, which, believe me, has a kick on it like a mule: eight bottles of this and you're really finished. At the opening of the Sydney Bridge Club, they were fishing them out of the main sewers every half an hour.

Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.

Another good fighting wine is Melbourne Old-and-Yellow, which is particularly heavy and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat.

Quite the reverse is true of Château Chunder, which is an appellation contrôlée, specially grown for those keen on regurgitation; a fine wine which really opens up the sluices at both ends.

Real emetic fans will also go for a Hobart Muddy, and a prize winning Cuivre Reserve Château Bottled Nuit San Wogga Wogga, which has a bouquet like an aborigine's armpit."



I know exactly what they mean.

doppelganger! on the cheap!

If you're a fan of those mouth-busting, Full-Frontal fruit, palate-redefining Aussies like Mollydooker's "Carnival of Love" or my all-time favorite, Noon Eclipse, then try Santa Ines Winery's 2006 Cab Franc. It's just as velvety, just shy of overwhelming, and purple tasting as the high-end Australian guys at about 1/10 the price. I'm going to buy a case. I got mine at Trader Joe's. Synthetic cork.


A Beech KingAir, landing at KIZA, better known as Santa Ynez airport. The approach is right over endless rows of grapes.

first post!

Welcome! I've created this little side blog to discuss, review, and learn more about wine and viticulture. I consider myself a novice, and my recommendations are more just to keep a record than to bestow advice from on high. Still, I have sampled a whole lot of wine in the US and Europe, and I think even Robert Parker, Jr. would agree: it doesn't take any kind of sophistication to delight in the joys of wine.

Two successful wines in the $10-$20 range I've enjoyed this past week:

2008 Hughes Beaulieu Coteaux du Languedoc, Picpoul de Pinet (w)

I'm still working on cultivating a taste for white wines, and this one really lays down a nice paradigm for what is good about a white. For any of you other red wine only people who think white just tastes like red with all of the nice stuff taken out, this might be a good place to start. Also, I drank it right out of a 55 degree wine fridge, and it was super refreshing.

2008 Maipe Malbec (r)

Like drinking the sun. I know! Who talks like that? Musicians and wine people, that's who. It has beautiful, rounded fruit flavors and a friendly kick to it. A big wine that rewards people who like a bit of adventure, but doesn't challenge the new palate either.