2007 off to a good start...

Carrie and I both talked about wanting to both exercise as well as cook more in 2007. A great weekend to do both in the Bay Area, the weather was sunny and almost 60 degrees today. We got out for a great power walk of the neighborhood that included a stop at the local grocery store for items needed to cook tonight.

Carrie decided to make a chicken ratatouille from The Silver Spoon cookbook. She had never tried it before, but it came out really well. As it was coming together, we decided to invite our friend Sandy over and started us all off with some Vermont cheddar cheese and nuts. The chicken ratatouille was delicious and we finished off the meal with Carrie's amazing chocolate chip cookies.

To match up with the chicken ratatouille, I opened up a 2005 Alcina Cellars Sangiacomo Vineyards Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. It is a young wine that is meant to age, so I opened it and decanted it to give it air for about an hour and half before dinner started.

The Alcina Sangiacomo is an amazing wine. Nose is deep with cranberry, spice, and a little earth. Palette has wonderful red fruit - especially cranberry and tart citrus notes like grapefruit. Light, yet balanced with nice acidity to match nuanced fruit on the finish. The finish was incredibly long, probably close to a minute, with lingering grapefruit. Great food wine that went well with dinner.

Greg P. is making some great wines and his entire 2005 lineup is spectacular! It is worth signing up for his mailing list and seeking out Alcina wines if you like food friendly, well made wines with distinct personalities.

A wonderful day accomplishing some of our early goals for the year.

The season of gluttony continues

The season between Thanksgiving and New Year's is the season of gluttony. We all eat too much, that is just part of the season.

Just got back from spending ten days in Chicago for the holidays seeing family and friends. The weather was the nicest it has ever been in December, no snow and sunny the entire time.

We got the most inspired Christmas gift from my in-laws: an evening at Charlie Trotter's! We went on the Wednesday after Christmas for a near four experience. The service was wonderful, they had an exotic juice pairing for the non wine drinkers, and all in all a wonderful evening more later after I review the menu.

A couple of other interesting restaurant highlights from the trip were trips to Avec and Mia Francesca.

Avec is a hip, small plates restaurant with a great bar. The pork shoulder was amazing. Definitely a great place for a fun night out with friends.

Mia Francesca is more of an old school Italian place for the younger generation. It was suppossedly the hang out for Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn while they were filming the Break Up in Chicago. Place was packed and the pizza was really nice.

Both are recommended.

The Wire is the best show on television

HBO is responsible for the best shows on television in the last ten years: The Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, and many others.

However, I think that "The Wire" is the best show they have run to date. Season 4 continued the story arc of both the street and police involved in the Baltimore drug war and how it impacts kids, education, and politics. The ensemble acting is incredibly strong with no one star, it is the power of the entire cast and more importantly the writers that carry this show.

Omar is an amazing character as the thief with a code that only steals from drug dealers and thugs and kills them if necessary. He doesn't go after civilians at all and when framed for a civilan murder, tells Bunk "a man has got to have a code". Even McNulty said "when has anyone know for Omar to do a civilian" and he was right. The police let Omar off for this framed murder. He is gay and also takes his grandmother to church on sunday. Just fascinating stuff.

I am sad that I won't be able to follow this show again for another year until season 5 arrives.

If you don't have HBO, go put "The Wire" in your Netflix queue now.

Been a busy month...

With the holidays on us, things are just crazy. I went to visit my family and came by really sick for a week. Not fun times.

A couple of quick wine updates.

I was recently introduced to Rick Davis of Calstar Cellars. Rick makes a few hundred cases a year of Zinfandel and Pinot Noir. All are excellent values. The 2005 Sonoma Coast Pinot has wonder cranberry and tea profile. Nice balance and acidity. One of the best sub $30 Pinot Noirs I have tasted, I split a case with a friend which brought it down to $23 a bottle. Highly recommended. Contact Calstar directly for more details.

I went up to Siduri for their holiday open house with a friend. They had a 70's theme going on, which was fun. Siduri is an amazing operation run from a warehouse in Santa Rosa and in fact the San Francisco Chronicle said Siduri was a winery to watch. This proves that you don't need to have a fancy winery to be successful.

There were over 30 Suduri and Novy wines poured. The highlights for me were the 2004 Novy Rosella's Chadonnay, the 2005 Siduri Sonatera Pinot, the 2005 Siduri Keefer Pinot, the 2005 Siduri Terra de Promissio Pinot, 2005 Siduri Rosella's Pinot, and the 2005 Siduri Clos Pepe Pinot. All excellent wines worth keeping an eye out for at your local retailer or by calling Siduri.

Urban Winemaking

Been a busy two weeks getting ready for a big work trip last week, so I haven't had much time recently to try much wine or anything else.

There was a good article on East Bay urban wineries in the San Francisco Chronicle. There are 13 members of the East Bay Vintner's Alliance. Many of the wineries in this group are full time winemakers, which is great to see small winemakers make it. I am very familiar with a number of the wineries in the area and I am quite happy that they are successful.

For another friend of mine, making wine is a passion, but it doesn't pay the bills quite yet. He keeps his day job in technology, but makes wine whenever possible. Eric will launch his winery, Ladd Cellars, later this year with the release of two 2005 Pinot Noirs. I was fortunate to be able to help him as his made these first wines in Berkeley last year and it was a great experience.

I was able to squeeze in some time last weekend to help Eric press the 2006 Ladd Cellars Gaps Crown Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. While we were there, he tasted us on the 2005 Gaps Crown Pinot that should be bottled later this year and it was great. It will be worth seeking out early next year.

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!