Inama Soave Classico

Azienda Agricola Inama
Vin Soave
Garganega
Soave Classico DOC
Verona, Veneto, Italy
2009
12%
$11.99 -- Twin Liquors, Bee Cave, TX

Color: Medium gold
Nose: Charred wood, honey, pear rind
Body: Light
Front: Honey
Middle: Sea air, honeysuckle
Back: A hint of hazelnut
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Cork

Secretly, inside my overarching Washington wine tasting mission, the Italian white experimentation continues.

Ok, it's not secret, 'cause there you are reading this, but look: Pinot Grigio, perhaps the best known Italian white wine, mostly sucks. Largely, it tastes like acrylic with lime juice, no salt on the rim. Whereas by contrast the Greco di Tufo and Falanghina I've tasted lately--wines I'd never heard of before last year--have changed my life forever.

Now this wine didn't do that, but it wasn't bad. This bottle's a little disjointed and watery on the midpalate. But it's ruthlessly refreshing, and way, way better than the Soave I associate with my childhood. That's right, childhood, America; that is how we rolled in the backcountry in the early 80s, with the Soave Bolla.

If you like a delicate but not too complex wine, this will delight you; pair it with salty or shellfishy items, sweet nuts, or lemon vinaigrette-containing things.

Terredora Dipaolo Falanghina

Terredora Dipaolo Viticoltori
Falaghina
Irpinia DOC
Montefesco, Campagnia, Italy
2008
13%
$10.49 -- Whole Foods, Austin, TX

Color: Medium gold
Nose: A fire in the apple-flavored graham cracker factory
Body: Medium to full
Front: Meyer lemon
Middle: Apple-flavored tobacco
Back: Cedar, thyme
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Fake cork

A couple of days ago I lamented the passing of a 2007 Falanghina. Remembering that there was some more of this, one of my absolute favorite Italian whites, around, I reckoned I'd better move it up on the ol' Asmodeus food chain.

I'm glad I did: not only is it damn tasty, but it's palpably right on the edge of oblivion. The maderization is coming through (how could it be, since this isn't aged in oak?), flattening out the acid and the focused apple (I've had an 09 of this wine, and it's applerific); but it's still delightful, full, complex, and balanced. To folks who like fruity American whites, the nose on this will be almost alienating, reminiscent of a red wine.

Indeed, I'd expect Americans to divide seriously on whether or not they like this wine, because it doesn't play ball the way they're used to. But with food--even spicy food; I'm having it with cherry peppers, a spicy cheese (Oregonzola!), and paprika-laden chorizo--it's fantastic.

Just don't wait too long before you drink it!

Feudi di San Gregorio Greco di Tufo

Feudi di San Gregorio
Greco di Tufo
Campagna 
Serpico, Avellino, Italy
2008
13%
$15.49 -- Twin Liquors, Bee Cave, TX

Color: Light gold
Nose: Grass, pear, honey
Body: Medium to full
Front: Lemony pear
Middle: Apple, banana
Back: White pepper, honey
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Cork

Wow. This is a phenomenal wine, to my taste. Acid up front, interesting fruit and secondary flavors battling it out in the middle, and a long, long finish with minerals and honeysuckle. This might be on the old side for Greco, at three years, but it's still seductive, like a good conversation. There may be a lot more of these appearing on the ol' Caveat Emptyer. I think would be fantastic with many, many things, especially seafood.

Ornellaia Le Volte

Tenuta dell'Ornellaia
Le Volte
Toscana
Sangiovese, Cabernet, Merlot
Bolgheri, Italy
2006
13.5%
$23.39 -- Twin Liquors, Bee Cave, TX

Color: Dark ruby with tiny brown tinge
Nose: Cherry, olive, rose, wet earth; mint and raspberry after a couple of hours
Body: Medium
Front: Cherry tea, or possibly cherry-flavored tobacco smoke
Middle: Licorice, black olive, coffee bean
Back: Thyme, soft but graphitic tannins
Burns clean?: Immaculately
Cap: Cork

This is an entry-level red for the famous Ornellaia brand. It's an odd blend, in my experience; this one is delightfully complex, with a beautiful nose. I'm no fan of Sangiovese in general, but the layers in this wine are seductive and ceaselessly changing. I've had the 2005, which was also delightful, but a little age seems to have benefited this. The texture is largely smooth, with some tannins still noticeable at the end, and it's light-bodied but complex-flavored.

Now, here is a thing: I think this is sort of a wine-geek wine. You'll find it on restaurant menus, I know, and if it's really old or really young, my guess is, it's a good call. But even this, at 5 years old, really only came into its own after a couple of hours open. So make 'em decant it, or aerate it, or something, just in case. And though it's made from varietals with legendary presence, the combination of them is quite fascinating and subtle. Some wines taste the same, each time you take a sip (within the first couple of hours after they're open, anyway). This one changes, and next to the fascinating aromas of the wine, it's the best part of the show.

Poggio al Moro Bolgheri

E. Santini
Poggio al Moro
Bolgheri DOC
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sangiovese, Syrah
Tuscany, Italy
2007
13.8%
$21.49 -- Costco, Austin, TX

Color: Opaque garnet
Nose: Cherry, vanilla, stewed plum, tar
Body: Full
Front: Black cherry
Middle: Stewed plum
Back: Black tea, tenacious tannins
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Cork

This is a Tuscan, big and dark. It's rich, with a few focused, intense fruit flavors, and a leathery tannic backbone that reminds me of a good Assam tea. This stuff is nice, though I think that it'll be far better with some foods than with others--it wasn't a knockout with the cheeseburger I grilled this evening, but I'm willing to experiment more to see what it will get along with, especially at a reasonable price like this.

Argiolas Costera

Argiolas S.P.A.
Costera
Isola dei Nuraghi
Cannonau, Carmenere, Bovale Sardo
Serdiana (Sardinia), Italy
2007
14%
$11.98 -- Wine Library, Springfield, NJ

Color: Medium to deep garnet
Nose: Cherry, raspberry, Mint
Body: Medium to full
Front: Slim JimTM, CheerwineTM
Middle: Licorice, mussels, raspberry
Back: Bread, soft tannins
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Cork

After a long day of travel, it's divine to come home to a splendid, but cheap bottle of wine. This is a balanced, elegant, charming one. It's got delicious fruit, a curious little seafoodyness, earthiness, and grip, without being overbearing. Only if you are addicted to massively oaked Cabernets or hot, fruit-bomby Zins would you dislike this. Even then, I bet you'd tolerate it.

One note: this wine opened rapidly, within an hour, into a lush, blooming garden of awesomeness. This suggests it won't cellar long.

A concerned reader with too much time on his hands claims I am a coward because I do not rank wines. "You don't have to give them scores," says this would-be pugilist, "but for heaven's sake tell me whether you think it's good or not!" I'll quote Mark Twain on tobacco, saying something I think applies perfectly to wine:

A congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much influence us.

The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He hasn't. He thinks he has, but he hasn't. He thinks he can tell what he regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one--but he can't. He goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm off the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke it contentedly and never suspect. (Read the rest here.)

Many famous wine critics have said something like what Twain says in the first sentence above. But few have "gone there" with him on the second. It wouldn't be in their interest to do so, I'd argue. The claim is clearly over-the-top, as Twain's so often are. Yet what he says is true of a lot of folks--and he goes on to claim that he's utterly un-picky about his cigars. "To say true," he writes, "my tastes are so catholic that I have never seen any cigars that I really could not smoke, except those that cost a dollar apiece."

So it's value for some; taste for others; the experience for a third group; all of the above for the picky few. This in part explains my cowardice. And then there's the perhaps-as-important consideration of the marketplace: ranking is a market function. If I were a wine seller, or indeed made any money from wine, I might well rank bottles. But then...well, let us simply say, one would be wise to take anything Mark Twain says about books or writing with a grain of salt...

Villa Pozzi Nero d'Avola

Cantine Francesco Minini
Nero d'Avola
Sicily
Verolanuova, Italy
2007
13.5%
$12.99 -- Wine Pro, Paducah, KY

Color: Dark garnet
Nose: Roasted Fruit-Roll-Up-stuffed mushroom
Body: Medium to full
Front: Roasted plum
Middle: Rosemary
Back: Black currant jam
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Plastic pseudo cork

This is a lovely wine, fruit-rich and great with food.  It's not many-layered, but it's a crowd-pleaser, with some interesting earthy dimensionality.  It's certainly easy on the tannins, so I'd be surprised if it will age much; it was an excellent match with pizza tonight.

The Great Maderized Wine Tasting

Hello, ancient beauties.

DOWN IN MY PARENTS' BASEMENT IN WESTERN KENTUCKY are a few wine racks.  The temperature is perfect for wine storage.  For some time, there have been all sorts of interesting things down there, including a lot of white wine bottles so covered with dust that it's hard to see what they are--or were.  The oldest of them date from the Reagan Era (that's President Ronald Reagan, kids), the youngest from the middle 1990s; they span the globe in origins.

A couple of years ago my father suggested that we haul a sample of them up and taste them someday; this week, a cold winter day in Kentucky called out for a couple of good friends, a light seafood lunch, and a case of aged wine.  Today's blog entry may not have much practical use for my readers, but both of them may find it amusing.

Like white people, some white wines age well, and others don't.  But to complicate this, many white wines that are made to age are also deliberately made to taste quite unusual after a decade or so.  An open mind makes wine taste better, no matter the tendencies of the palate.  Going into the tasting, we knew that there were several possibilities: all the wines might taste the same (and awful); a few of them might have survived and be quite good; and we might be surprised by which ones were which.

Still, we did take some precautions. Many of these wines were not built to age, by any means, and none of them originally retailed for more than about $15. So we decided to order them by "guessed likelihood of not sucking" rather than from lightness to heaviness of body as is customary.  What follows are my notes on what happened, accompanied by a couple of photos to show both some of the colors of the wine and the unusual cork phenotypes that we found, ranging from white mold-covered to dirt-covered.  I was exhausted just trying to get the bottles clean enough to put on a table.

All spruced up...mostly. White mold, left; brown "dirt," right.

Monteagle Wine Cellars, Tennessee Seyval Blanc, 1990, 12.5%, Monteagle, Tennessee, USA: A mellow, deep, golden brown color, this one had a nose of burned hazelnut, apricot, and varnish.  The palate delivered old lemon peel, leather polish, and toasted acorns.  It was praised by one of the five members of the crowd, and detested by most of the others.  But in retrospect, most drinkers considered it to be in the top three of the tasting.  In this respect, a complete shock.  Also the first Tennessee wine I've ever had, and only the second Seyval.

Slaughter Leftwich Vineyards, Sauvignon Blanc, 1990, 12.5%, Austin, Texas, USA: First Texas wine I've ever tasted, too.  What a day!  A deep, clear straw color, and a nose that brought poetry from one of the assembled company: "Smells like the hill country...in a dust storm."  Do they make mango varnish?  That's what it smelled like to me; the front palate was a blast of apricot gasoline, then an eerie emptiness in the middle, and a finish of butter and oak.  If you came in on the last 5 seconds of the taste, and then left again immediately, you'd swear it was a California Chardonnay.

Sebastiani Vineyards, Eye of the Swan, Pinot Noir Blanc, 1984, 13.2%, Sonoma, California, USA: This was a piece of my parents' past, and brought smiles of recollection all around.  Yet no stories were forthcoming.  A cloudy golden brown color, this Pinor Noir blanc (meaning it spent just a little time on the skins before being bottled) was the crowd favorite for the day.  With more tannins, and also in a magnum format, it had a better chance in the basement.  Still, 25 years is a long time for what was a bottom-shelf wine at the time!  My pronouncement that it had a nose of wet dog ass mixed with Pine SolTM was mocked, but I stand by it.  Flavors of peach and oak were rapidly followed by something like kirsch-flavored paint thinner.

Cantina di Montefiascone, Est! Est!! Est!!!, Trebbiano, Malvasia, 1984, 11.5%, Montefiascone, Italy: The color of bourbon, mixed with cloudy river water.  The nose?  Sherry, all the way.  If you were a pirate, you could say from experience that this wine tastes like a bad oyster served in a moldy rag.

Federico Paternina, Blanco Seco, Viura (probably), 1988, 11%, Ollauri, Spain: Though white wines have to have a splendid balance of acidity and other things to age well, this one testifies that color doesn't work by the same principles; it had a beautiful, rich golden hue.  The nose, however, smelled like nothing more than spoiled milk (really, it's extraordinary to think such an odor could have been produced by fruit, but some kinds of education are not edifying).  The palate was of pears preserved in acetone. "Here's to temperance," my father pronounced, upon tasting it.

Rutherford Hill Winery, Napa Valley Chardonnay, 1989, 13%, Rutherford, California, USA: I love Rutherford Hill wines, as I've testified elsewhere on this blog.  This one was the best of the bunch, to my taste, but universally hated by my companions.  Its color was a dark greenish-gold, and it had oak and butter, with an aftertaste of snow tire chains--a little radial, a little metal, a little soggy ash.  I drank half a glass.

Viña San Pedro, Gato Blanco, Sauvignon Blanc, 1991, 12%, Lontue, Chile: A hideous brownish-yellow, the nose of the Gato Blanco sported oak, nail polish remover, and roses.  Yes, roses, which didn't bode well.  The palate delivered tart, tart strawberry mineral spirits, with a bit of a novacaine effect.  Admittedly, the latter might have been a cumulative effect, by this point.

Hugh Ryman Wines, Richemont, Chardonnay Reserve, 1996, 12%, Pays D'Oc, France: A sickly bourbony color, the Richemont featured lemon peel, oyster shell, and oak on the palate, in rapid succession, until collapsing into a varnishy haze.  This one was universally despised, though we did have some hopes for it at first because of its youth (and because there are 5 more bottles of it in the basement).  The fascinatingly hideous Richemont cork is pictured here.

Louis Gisselbrecht, Gewurztraminer, Cuvee Reserve, 1988, 12.5%, Dambach-la-Ville, Alsace, France: Another lesson: whatever complex chemical stuff has to happen to keep a white wine going in the cellar in the absence of nice balancing tannins does not apply to the nose, necessarily, either.  This one had a light gold color, perhaps a little dark for a Gewurz but well within reason, and a delightful grapefruity nose.  But sadly, to quote one drinker, "It smells like Gewurz but it tastes like shit!"  Ok, it didn't actually taste like poo, but a strong front of grapefruit rapidly yielded to Testor's model glue and pine needles. One drinker pointed out that glue is not universally despised, but I think glue huffers will be disappointed that the nose on this isn't more in line with its flavor.

Bodegas Olarra, Cerro Añon, Viura, 1984, 11.5%, Logroño, Rioja, Spain: We had high hopes for this one, too, but despite an interesting medium orange gold color and a roasted pear nose, the nail polish, oak, burned hazelnut, radish, and cedar that it delivered ("Agent Orange blossoms," was my phrase at the time) got it dumped out quickly by our assembly.

What have we learned, one dump bucket-full of wine and ten empty bottles and broken corks later?  First, that the variety of bad-tasting things is nearly boundless.  Second, that wine's individuality is hard even for long-term, unbalanced chemical processes to suppress.  Third, that when you do a maderized wine tasting, you should have on hand at least two bottles of really good stuff, and something pickled, to clear palates!

Monte Antico Toscana

C. Santa Lucia
Monte Antico
Toscana IGT
Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, MerlotPisa, Italy2006
12.5%
$10.99 -- Whole Foods, Austin, TX

Color: Medium to dark garnet with purple tinge
Nose: Mushrooms, blackberries, green pepper
Body: Light
Front: Cherry, earth
Middle: Some chocolate, a little light here
Back: A little game, soft wet-rock tannins
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Screwcap

This is a delightful, but not beefy, wine. Now, I must confess up front that I'm not a huge Sangiovese fan. But the blend on this wine is balanced, and for a lot of folks who don't like full-bodied wines, but like a varied flavor profile, this will be a gastronomical and economic godsend. The earthy and minerally flavors are nicely balanced with the berry fruits up front.

I had it with pizza and it was fine, but I think a pasta with lemon, butter, white wine, capers, that sort of thing would be better. The cheese was a bit of a challenge for the Monte Antico; something not too spicy or heavy would pair well with it. I'm not listening to music tonight--there's a howling wind outside.

Castello di Lucignano Chianti Classico Riserva

Castello di Lucignano
Chianti Classico
RiservaSangiovese
Chianti, Italy
2000
14%
$18.99 -- Weaver St. Market, Chapel Hill, NC

Color: Medium red with brown
Nose: Peppery strawberries
Body: Medium
Front: Tart raspberries
Middle: Apricots
Back: Leathery thyme, mint
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Cork

This is one of those old-world wines that it'll take a miracle to replicate in the U.S. It's subtle; the flavors lurk below the surface and it takes focus to figure out what's going on. I still can't quite tell what's going on in the nose. But check this out: after sniffing for a few minutes, trying to get a read on it, I gave up and went back to the kitchen. A chicken onion garlic thing was roasting in the oven and, thanks to the contrast, it smelled like candy when I first walked in. So: alchemy in the nose, herbs kept in your wallet all day in the glass.

Abbona Bricco Barone Nebbiolo

Azienda Agr. Abbona
Bricco BaroneNebbiolo d'Alba
Dogliani, Piedmont, Italy
2003
14%
$15 -- Parker & Otis, Durham, NC

Color: Medium red, almost peachy at the edges
Nose: Like violets growing next to a car-painting facility
Body: Medium to heavy
Front: Cherry, tannic almost immediately; after it's been open awhile, a hint of spice at the front, and the fruit part moves to the middle
Middle: Leather, but no spice
Back: Fruity cardboard, but in a good way. When you were a child, chewing on cardboard, you wished it tasted like fruit, yes?
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Cork

This is a lovely wine. The structure is clear and elegant. It's fantastic with food (roasted chicken with lemon and garlic; sauteed spinach); the tannins are less dusty with the meal. It's also great with Aimee Mann or Dan Cohen playing in the background. Would you have thought these would go well with Italian? Perhaps not. But there it is. This sets a standard for wines at this price from Europe, as far as I'm concerned.

Tenuta Casabianca Super Tuscan

Oct. 29, 2007
Tenuta Casabianca
Toscana IGT
Merlot, Cabernet, Sangiovese
Murlo (Siena) Italy
2001
13.5%
$25? – Weaver St. Market, Chapel Hill, NC

Color: Beautiful deep cherry red, tinged brown at the edge
Nose: Meaty, spicy strawberry
Body: Medium—not heavy, but not thin
Front: A little fruit--cassis
Middle: Fuzzy and tannic
Back: Leathery, blackberryish
Burns clean?: Yes
Cap: Long cork

This one takes time to open up. It’s all old world leather and tannin, with three distinct stages of structural unfolding and an awesome shift in mouthfeel from watery to tannic to chewy. It’s not great with salty cheese, interestingly—but something medium would be good. As it sits open, it gets better: cherry enters the front of the taste, a little wood and vanilla enter the nose, and the end of the taste gets more rounded and soft.