A nice dinner at home

After a busy weekend of getting organized around the house, Carrie stopped at the Montclair farmers market to pick up some fresh vegetables for dinner. So, we decided at the last minute to invite over Charles, Julia, and Sandy.

Carrie made a wonderful butternut squash soup. She also made a nice salad with heirloom tomatoes and I threw some chicken breasts on the grill to accompany the salad. Finally, she made a plum buckle for dessert.

I opened a 2003 Porter Creek Hillside Pinot Noir to have with dinner. This is a young wine. Shutdown when first opened, after an hour in a decanter it started to open up with better floral aromas and sour cherry. This is a lighter, more traditional style. Need more time, though it has great potential.

A very nice evening with friends at home. Need to do this more often.

Great education, horrible tasting

Greg pulled the group together to taste Santa Cruz Mountain area Pinot Noir last night. We tasted through the four groups, broken down by vintage blind. I have never had a more disappointing blind tasting. Almost 75% of the wines were flawed and undrinkable.

There were a lot of metallic, chemical, or turpentine aeromatics with very limited or no fruit on the palette. That was true of the the 2002 Mount Eden Estate, 2000 David Bruce Estate, and the 2001 Thomas Fogerty SCM Pinot.

There were a number of musty noses with green palettes as well. The 2001 Storrs was very musty on the nose for sure.

The 2003 Mount Eden Estate was entered twice and both bottles were bad with one worse than the other.

The 2004 Alfaro Family was a bit musty, barnyard on the nose, but the acidity was incredibly out of balance and a very bitter finish. It was very astringent.

The 2004 Windy Oaks had an overly alcoholic nose with liqueur and slight metallic notes. There was some cherry on palette, but there was no finish. Seemed to have CO2 quality as well.

The 2005 Bargetto had metallic, paint, and musty notes. Metallic and green on the finish. Completely undrinkable.

The only three drinkable Santa Cruz Mountain Pinots out of twelve tasted were:

2001 Storrs Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noir
2003 Burrell School "Veranda Vineyard" Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noir
2004 Varner "Hidden Block" Spring Ridge Vineyards Santa Cruz Mountain Pinot Noir

I thought that the 2004 Varner Hidden Block was by far the best SCM Pinots we tasted. The palette with nice cherry tones was solid with a good light finish. However, I found the nose had some herbaceous qualities and something else I couldn't capture.

The 2003 Varner Chardonnay Spring Ridge Vineyard, Home Vineyard was more enjoyable than the Pinot. Nice marzipan and peach. A bit buttery on the finish, but very enjoyable.

While the Varner was the best and quite drinkable, it isn't good enough to complete with Sonoma Pinot in the same price range. In fact, Greg threw in a bottle of his 2005 Alcina Cellars Sonoma Coast as a ringer which I called as a immediately.

It was delicious with nice cherry with some floral and hints of tea on the nose. Good cherry, spice, and a little tea on the palette. Nice fruit balance with the acidity and good finish. Opened up with to be more expressive as we tasted it. A very nice wine and great with food.

A very informative evening on learning more about wine flaws, but not a very enjoyable tasting.

Côtes du Rhône vs. Cal-Rhone

Erik and I each purchased some 2004 Novy Family Wines 50% Grenache/50% Syrah ($20) from Judge Family Vineyard. When we opened a bottle after we picked up the order in March, the wine seemed very disjointed and highly acidic. The fruit was not showing at all, which is unusual for Novy or Siduri wine.

I recently received a bottle of the 2004 J.L. Chave Côtes du Rhône Mon Coeur ($16) from a friend. Since it is a 50%/50% Grenache/Syrah blend from the same vintage as the Novy, I wanted to retaste the Novy side-by-side with the Chave for a comparison of two similar Rhone blends.

In the end, there was no comparison. The Novy came alive after being open for 45 minutes and showed nice fruit and complexity, while the Chave had too much brett (horse smell) on the nose and no fruit. Bottom line, the Novy was much more interesting, while the Chave isn't for me.

Finally, I threw a 2004 CORE Grenache ($18) into the mix and it seemed only about the fruit when first opened. However, it gained complexity with three hours of air. A good daily drinking wine. Special thanks to Dave Corey for dropping off these and my other CORE wines last week!

For more details on the wines, see my Novy, Chave, and CORE tasting notes in CellarTracker!

Trying to cook more

We have been trying to cook more, so last night I marinated a couple of chicken breasts and threw them on the grill. Carrie made a great balsamic, red pepper puree from the At Blanchard's Table: A Trip to the Beach Cookbook for the chicken. She also made baked, sweet potato fries and we sautéed some green beans. A nice healthy and yummy meal at home.

Before dinner, I finished the last glass of 2001 Morgan Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir that Sandy brought over the night before. A nice pleasant Pinot.

With dinner, I opened a half bottle of the 2001 Ridge Geyserville. An wonderful zin blend that was great with our meal.

For more details on the wines, see my tasting notes on the Morgan and Ridge in CellarTracker!

Karl Lawrence turned me into a wine fanatic

In the 1990s, I would have wine with friends when we had nice dinners and enjoyed it, but I wasn't seeking wine out on my own.

Things changed in 2001 when a good friend who was into wine went into his cellar and opened the 1998 Karl Lawrence Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. It had that WOW effect, just flat out delicious and it kept getting better over the course of the evening.

After the 1998 Karl Lawrence experience, I decided that I needed to learn more about wine and have spent the last five years doing lots of research and more importantly trying and buying different wines.

So, the friend who got me into wine had a very special tasting on Friday night to celebrate Koko. We tasted every Karl Lawrence vintage to date: 1991-2003 and I brought along the 2000-2003 Aldin Red Table Wines, which is the second label of Karl Lawrence.

Special thanks to Mike and Rick from Karl Lawrence, who made available the 1991-1996 wines. It was a pleasure to see how these wines have developed.

The early 90's wines had developed great secondary flavors with leather notes and dried red fruit. They went well with a steak sandwich, very good food wines.

While I didn't take detailed tasting notes after the first couple of wines, the wines that stood out for me were the 1992, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2003.

The 1998 is still drinking beautifully. A great reminder of why I like wine so much and Craig for turning me onto wine!

It was great to see that the Aldin Red Table Wines held their own against the main Karl Lawrence wines. In fact, I think that the 2000 Aldin was much better than the 2000 Karl Lawrence.

This tasting reinforced for me that Karl Lawrence makes some of the best cabernet in California and that their wines are one of the best values starting with the $32 Aldin Red Table Wine and then the $50 Karl Lawrence Cabernet Sauvignon.

Thanks to Craig for his generosity in opening his home and cellar for us on Friday and for turning me onto wine to begin with.

We will remember Koko forever!