California vs. some of the others

[robert brown]

Steve, thinking you might have something to do with Astor Wines and Liquors, I ended up viewing the page about your California wine tasting. Have you given up on them (CA wines) because of some epiphany or something? What do you drink these days and how do you find whatever wines they are compared to the Cabernest and Chardonnays from CA? Then I'll tell you what my wine preferances are. It would be fun if other people joined in, perhaps either defending CA wines or why they prefer wines of some type and/or country.

(Edited by robert brown at 11:10 am on Dec. 21, 2001)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Robert - No Astor Place Wines. But my office was on the corner of Astor Place and Broadway for 14 years. Hence the email name.

When I first got into wine I used to drink California wines almost exclusively. Then I attended a 14 vintage Latour tasting and a 14 vintage Cheval Blanc tasting and they changed my life. So I sold off my Ca. wines in favor of Bordeaux. Sure enough, I ran into a bottle of 1990 Chave and a bottle of 1985 Ponsot Griottes Chambertin and I then proceeded to sell off all of my Bordeaux (except the top stuff from the best vintages) in favor of Burgundys and Rhone wines. I always had a palate for white Burgundys. Recently, I have acquired a taste for older Barolo and Barbaresco due to a bottle of 1978 Giacomo Conterno Monfortino. The only Ca. wines I still drink is Harlan (which is like the Latour of Ca.), Araujo and Shafer Hillside Select. I like Dominus in certain vintages (1990 being my favorite) and I have a whole stash of 1987 Mondavi Cab Reserve because I have twin boys born that year.

I currently drink about 40% Burgundy (both white and red) 40% Rhone wines (north and south) and the other 20% a mix of Italian, Alsatian, some whites from the Loire etc. Maybe I drink Ca. wines on the occassion of 3-4 times a year. For me they aren't complex enough, too ripe, and usually too alcoholic. Some of them like Harlan are better balanced. But although they can be delicious, they don't express my sensibilities about wine the way a Roumier Bonnes Mares can.

I used to like drinking Peter Michael chardonnays. They are different than say Marcassin or Kistler because they blend 3 different vineyards together to make a cuvee. But  they are no comparison to the wines from Niellon, Ramonet or Leflaive.

I think Ca. wines are good but they are too much the same from producer to producer. They seem to taste generic to me now. Maybe the vines just have to get older.

[robert brown]

Steve, for a while there I though perhaps we weren't joined at the hip or separated at birth after all. But now I can breath a little more easy. Apparently you did have an ephiphany, even two of them it sounds like. I have a much larger percentage of red and white Burgundies, but not because I have anything against Rhone Valley wines; I just haven't delved into them. I do own them a bit, and maybe one day we can open a 1989 Hommage a Jacques Perrin (but a warning: I bought them at a Davis & Co. sale, and I haven't opened any). I don't own a lot of wine and some of it (most of my Piemonte stuff) I buy and keep over there. But since I can buy older Burgundy privately from a friend, I can get what I need on a "need to drink" basis, although he is too disorganized to find exactly what I might request. But I have some nice juice at home and in storage.

I would be curious to know if anyone got into California Cabernets and Chardonnays after discovering and buying red and white Burgundy. I would be surprised. It's like going from being interested in the Modern Movement to developing a fascination with Art Nouveau.

(Edited by robert brown at 11:47 am on Dec. 22, 2001)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Robert - I was just in the cellar pulling a 1990 Leflaive Puligny Combettes for tonights dinner when I saw the notification.

For a long while I followed the general rule that wine was something to drink everyday and I purchased accordingly. But I have found that it is more like a 2-3 time a week thing for me and as such, I have pretty much eliminated buying everyday wine and have concentrated on the big guns. So I don't really want to drink anything but Grand Cru and the very top Premier Cru Burgundys. And if I only drank Burgs it would be too expensive a habit.

But I can buy great and mature Cote Roties or Chateauneufs from the 80's for ๛ a bottle. They are not as refined as a great Burg but offer a robust and complex drinking experience. And the flavor profile is competely different than Burgundy. They are sort of savory to Burgundys sweet.

Speaking of the '89 Homage, we brought the regular '89 Beaucastel to dinner at Marseille this past monday night. Great bottle but at least 5 years away from reaching a drinking window. The Hommage  must be a good 10 years away. But one day I can regale you with a great tasting I had at Beaucastel in March of 2000. In fact, a bunch of us are going on a truffle/wine tasting weekend this coming Febrary and we will revisit Beaucastel.

[robert brown]

Steve, I hope you're too conservative on the 1989 Hommage. I'll refer to Parker for "anticipated maturity", if nothing else other than background, and see what he thinks. Since I have three 750s and a 1.5, maybe I can sneek a peak anyway. But I bet you're right.

More later. Some people just fell by.

[robert brown]

Okay, they just split. I may have some older Beaucastel in the wine warehouse. I'll let you know which, if any. I bought some 1982 Hermitage La Chapelle of Jaboulet in an auction. Six or seven bottles were good and then rest started falling apart. I'll put up a thread here so people could talk about buying wine at auction. I don't/won't do it anymore. What are you serving with the Combettes? It's really nice as I recall.

(Edited by robert brown at 3:01 pm on Dec. 22, 2001)

[Steve Plotnicki]

Robert - '81 Beaucastel is the really good one and really underated too. Cases still come up for sale all the time in Europe. I buy wine at auction but buy most of my wine from brokers in Europe or auction in Europe. The quality of auction wine in Europe is much better than here because of poor shipping and storage conditions imposed on wines by Amercican importers until the industry wised up which was not that long ago. '82 La Chapelle isn't a wine I've had. '79 La Chapelle is very good. If you like truffles, they have it at Chez Josephine in Paris with that great truffle menu they serve durting season. Did you post on your truffle trip? Where did you go?

We are serving Nantucket Bay Scallops with the Combettes and then some Filet Mignon with a Portugese styled sauce of raw tomato, lemon, anchoveys, garlic, parsley etc. Will probably serve either a Rioja or a Chateauneuf. I haven't zeroed in on the red wine yet.

(Edited by Steve Plotnicki at 3:34 pm on Dec. 22, 2001)

[Beachfan]

After living in California  for 20 years, I'd like to shout out for my home boys.  But I can't.  

The comments made above are generally true; worse, the price inflation has made it a poor choice.  You can raise prices 25% per year while there's a boom economy and great vintages; combine a lousty vintage (1998 in general) with a recession, and there will be some very sad songs being sung.

Nonetheless, here are some oasis of excellence:

Kistler Pinot Noir (trojan horse) winning in a Premier/Grand Cru Burg tasting

1991 Dominus and 1990 Pichon Baron - almost dead ringers for each other!

Chateau Montelena in 1991, (and pretty steady throught the years)

Martinelli Pinot Noir's

Zinfandel (Martinelli, Turley) - like jazz, a true American (very fruity and alcoholic, true)

Now that I've done my patriotic duty, I confess that I usually find Italian wines far better value and provide some of the same early drinking pleasures (Paradisio Saxa Calida, Sportoletti Villa Fidelia),

not to mention the Southern Rhone.

Sad to say, I got very solid Bordeaux 2000  futures (Lynch Bage, the Leovilles, the Pichons) and better prices than I could get the California super seconds.

However, California will rise again (once they get rid of the unsold 1998 Cabs that are causing distribution to grind to a halt and recognize they aren't competing with Bordeaux, they're compenting with Australia, Umbria and Spain).

[project]

The expertise in this forum is awesome.

I know I'm wrong, but I don't know the details of

why so am ready to learn:

I started in wine with a copy of

Frank Schoonmaker, 'Schoonmaker's Encyclopedia of

Wine', Hastings House, New York, 1968.

and shopping in Georgetown in DC in the late 1960s.

Bought Volnay, Pommard, Beaune, Corton, Nuit St.

George, etc. up to Chambertin.  Tasted good to me.

Keep the temperature a little under 70 F and let

some air get to it for maybe 30 minutes, and it

often took on some unbelievably good aromas.  As I

recall, 1964, 1961, and 1959 were good.

In the early 1990s, had some Morey St. Denis from

1985 shipped by Neal Rosenthal -- "one of the few

good old-time flavors left to enjoy!"

Tried some of the more expensive common samples from

Chianti and Barolo -- liked them.

Anything Appellation Controlee from around Macon --

fine with me.  Meursault?  A favorite.  Put ten

pounds of ice cubes in a plastic mop bucket, cover

with water, bury the bottle, wait 30 minutes, and

enjoy, say with a buttered white sauce over seafood.

These whites all seemed dry (no sugar?), 'crisp'

(some acid?), and 'clean' (nicely balanced delicate

flavors?).

One I used to get in the early 1990s was shipped by

Neal Rosenthal and was from a little northwest of

the town of Macon -- liked it a lot.

Rhone Valley and Chateauneuf du Pape?  Seemed, say,

'less intense flavors' than Chambertin but fine.

Bordeaux?  Reminded me of chalk or "licking dusty

window panes".  Mostly didn't like it too well.  One

Brane-Cantenac seemed okay.  And, the whites seemed

too sweet.

California?  I tried and tried.  Poured a lot down

the drain.  I couldn't try them all, and then try

them all again each year, before forming an opinion.

So, I formed an opinion:

The reds -- Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir --

tasted, say, 'crude'.

In comparison to Macon, I found the California

Chardonnay sweet, flat (I guess low in acid), and

with an unpleasant mixture of all the flavors of the

fruit section of a grocery store produce department.

My recipe for an imitation would be to start with,

say, DelMonte fruit cocktail, strain the fruit, to

the liquid add some vodka and some water, bottle it,

and price it, now, at ุ for 24 ounces.  Better,

still:  Discard the liquid and just eat the fruit.

I hate to say these things.  I know that the efforts

at UC Davis give the California wine makers some of

the best expertise on the planet.  But, I'm just

judging by what I poured.

It's been a few years since I tried California wines

and poured my last one down the drain.  Now, looking

at the prices, since I can buy a negotiated Pouilly

Fuisse for half the price of a California

Chardonnay, I'm not tempted to try again.

But, Chile?  Sure.  For Ű can get 1.5 L plenty good

enough for making white sauces and even drinking

with the resulting food.  And, the last one I got

was nicely dry and crisp although the flavors were

not quite as nice as from Macon.

I know I'm wrong about California, at least.  But,

where in detail?

I know I'm easily confused:  I like the Mendelssohn

violin concerto better than anything by Elvis, and I

grew up in Memphis!

I confess,

I'm a man.

But I can improve,

if I really have to,

I guess!

[Steve Plotnicki]

Project - Nothing to feel guilty about. Although crude is a pretty strong word. How about simplistic instead?

If your palate was oriented towards cabernet sauvignon based wines instead of pinot, syrah, grenache, nebbiolo etc., you would probably have a higher acceptance level towards Ca. wines. But subtleties are not Ca's strong point.  And the wines don't stack up well against the varietals  mentioned.

Do you ever drink Bordeaux? If so, you might try and find a bottle of 1978 Mondavi Reserve or Chateau Montelena from the same vintage. They don't offer the same level of complexity as their French brethren but are delicious wines and are most enjoyable to drink. Dominus in 1990, 1991, 1992 & 1994 are good wines to drink. And Ridge Monte Bello in almost any vintage. And 1985 Stag's Leap Cask 23 is one of the great wines of the last 20 years.  And for the modern "cult" type wines, Harlan, Araujo and Shafer make good ageable wines with a reasonable level of complexity. But again, these are all cabernets. Anyway, the wines are out there, you just need to know what they are.

I agree with you about Ca. chard, but I have to say that they are purposeful and I've thrown a number of clam bakes where they perfectly fit the bill. As for pinot, the strategy of Burgundy is so unique, that the power based winemaking technques they use in Ca. totally miss the point.

And your analogy about classical music and rock and roll is spot on. But you have to approach the wines the same you way you approach music. If you listen to Elvis and are looking for the same things you look for in Mendelsohn, you will come up empty. One listens to Elvis looking for the things that Elvis has to offer.

[project]

Steve, thanks for your explanation.

Yes, I never did like the Bordeaux wines very well.

That likely means that I won't like the best reds

from California very well.

You said:

"I agree with you about Ca. chard, but I have to say

that they are purposeful and I've thrown a number of

clam bakes where they perfectly fit the bill."

Yes, I have guessed that the California wine makers

are "purposeful".  Due to the UC Davis efforts,

etc., I have to guess that the California wine

makers know quite well what they are doing and know

what they want and are essentially getting it.

But, from what I've tasted, I mostly don't like what

they are getting:  To me they seem to want the

Chardonnay wine to be sweet, 'flat', and with too

many flavors to be 'clean'.  It's more like mixed

fruit punch.

Sure, there should be uses for it.

One explanation is that I started with French Macon

and concluded that that's the good stuff.  But,

there seems to be a little more to it:  There seem

to be a lot of white wines from Europe -- France,

Spain, Italy -- that are dry, crisp, and clean.

Yes, the Italian whites I've had seem to be a little

less crisp (if that's the word) but still with some

very delicate and nice flavors, and plenty dry.  So,

somehow in Europe, the combination of dry, crisp,

and clean seems to be a common objective.  And, the

Chardonnay I've gotten from Chile seems to pursue

this objective fairly well.

So, somehow from what I've tasted, the California

Chardonnay wine makers all seem to agree that they

don't like dry, crisp, and clean.  I'm a bit

mystified on just why.

On your

"As for pinot, the strategy of Burgundy is so

unique, that the power based winemaking technques

they use in Ca. totally miss the point."

Sure, I like Burgundy -- right at home between

Beaune and Dijon -- but what is "so unique" about

what they do?  I'm not saying that they are not

unique, but I'm in the dark on what characteristics

or aspects you are referring to.

I guess I don't understand your "power based".  Do

you mean 'production line', or 'large scale', or

'industrialized' or some such?  Gee, I would have

guessed that there would be many small growers in

California that are forced to use small scale

techniques.

And, I see another anomaly:  I can get a bottle of

wine from France, Italy, Spain, some places in the

Balkans, Chile, and sense that the wine maker and I

share some values.  Somehow there is something in

common in the values, and it seems that California

is pursuing different values.  Curious.

Yes, it will be tough to argue that there is one

best set of values in wine.

[Steve Plotnicki]

Project - When I was describing Burgundy, I was describing the terroir system. The entire strategy of Ca. winemaking is not terroir driven. I mean what is the equivalent of Montrachet, i.e. the actual best spot in Napa or Sonoma to grow chardonnay? Or where does Ca's best pinot come from? Is there an equivalent to Musigny?

This is a long and complicated topic, and it really is a corrolary to some of the conversations we have recently had on the restaurant boards about the homogenization of food, wine and travel. But the French system of doing things evolved at a time when wealth was poorly distributed, and marketing techniques were

unsophisticated. I mean when they came up with the A.O.C. classifications, how many people could afford the Grand and Premier Cru wines? So all you had to do was label them properly and the wealthy would know what to buy. The Ca. wineries are making wine at a time and in a place where wealth is prolific. So the economics are to make thousands of cases of wine, instead of 150 cases of Chevalier Montrachet that go to a handful of people.

The climate is an issue too. The growing season in Ca. is much longer than it is in France and it's hotter too. In France they can pick their grapes at the end of August and if they go through mid-September those are really ripe grapes. But I was Napa at the end of October 1999 and the grapes were still hanging. And they were going to let them hang for two more weeks. The grapes were so ripe that we pulled a few off the vines and tasted them and they were like port.

[project]

Steve,

Thanks.

For

"When I was describing Burgundy, I was describing

the terroir system.  The entire strategy of Ca.

winemaking is not terroir driven.  I mean what is

the equivalent of Montrachet, i.e. the actual best

spot in Napa or Sonoma to grow chardonnay?  Or where

does Ca's best pinot come from?  Is there an

equivalent to Musigny?"

Okay.  I see what you're saying.

Sure, we all know basically what's in Macon,

Chambertin, Haut Medoc, etc., and that knowledge

helps growers sell and buyers select.  But, on a

given hill in Napa Valley, I don't know if they are

growing red, white, table grapes, or raisins, and it

might have changed since last year!

In my naive way, I had been assuming that a

California grower with some 50 acres and trying to

make good wine would of course just naturally grow

the grapes that made the best wine in some

reasonable sense on that 50 acres.

Hmm.  Maybe not:  Fundamentally they are trying to

sell their stuff.  Soooo, they can (1) establish

their own reputation for quality in some basic and

direct way as in my naive view or (2) hook on to

what wine buyers might go for.  So, assume that some

wine buyers ask "Now, the best red grapes are

Cabernet Sauvignon and the best white grapes are

Chardonnay, right?".  For such a buyer, the poor

grower can't select Pinot Noir, Riesling, Merlot, or

anything else.

Gee, when I was trying Chianti or Barolo, I didn't

ask that they be like something from France.

With such a long hot growing season in California,

sounds like the growers further up the coast have a

good chance, if the humidity is low enough to keep

the mold off the leaves.

I'm getting tired of cooking up rationalizations for

California.  Chile seems to make good wine from

Chardonnay.  They could have gone off and done

something strange, but from what I've tasted, they

didn't.

Sounds like some other things from near there in

California:  To heck with what we really know makes

good sense.  Instead, the customers are prepared to

believe that "this is the next, next big thing and

changes everything", so, start-up another

dogFood.COM!  Then, don't be between the VC and the

door when the lock-up period is over!

Hmm.  Maybe before we buy, we should sneak around

back and see what the grower is drinking with

dinner?

[Steve Plotnicki]

Project - You bring up a good point. Every important wine region is based on an indiginous grape. California wines are based on varietals where the benchmark bottling comes from elsewhere. The indiginous grape to Ca., Zinfandel, is not really ageworthy. So Ca. as a whole has to compete with varietals that have been growing in other parts of the world for centuries, if not thousands of years. And show me a place where Cabernet Sauvignon has been growing for 500 years instead of 50 and I will show you a place that makes a more complex wine.

[Jason Perlow]

Steve are you -sure- zinfandel is native to California?

Isnt the general consensus is that it came from Austria at some point but the varietal in europe is now only grown in Italy?

http://www.stratsplace.com/7ich/austrian_zin.html

[Steve Plotnicki]

Jason - That's like saying tomato sauce and pasta aren't from Italy because the tomato came from the U.S. and pasta from China.  The issue isn't origin, the issue is where is the best expression of those food products. So the issue for Zinfandel isn't where the grape originated, it's who has created the standard for expressing the varietal.