I just read Neal Rosenthal’s Reflections of a Wine Merchant, in which the importer — who is well-known by his fans to be a master of the geographical intricacies of French Burgundy — confesses that he learned from Barolo to appreciate the influence of the land on wine. So it was Barolo, not Burgundy, that made him appreciate terroir.
 
I guess that kinda makes sense. Barolo is a red wine made (like Burgundy) in very small quantities, usually from single vineyards, in the north of Italy. And like Burgundy it’s made from only one, very temperamental, highly sensitive grape called nebbiolo. So, as in Burgundy, the character of the site where the grapes are grown tends to shine through.
 
Click here for our trip to the training camps in the foothills of the Alps that turned Mr. Rosenthal into America’s most notorious home-grown terroirist: So in part because Rosenthal’s book instilled in me a thirst for Barolo and in part because we were splurging on a special menu at Restaurant Gary Danko for my birthday all organized around truffles from northern Italy — now that’s terroirism — we ordered Elio Grasso’s Barolo “Ginestra Vigna Casa Mate” from the 2004 vintage. “Ginestra” refers to the village nearest to the “Case Mate” 12-acre or so vineyard where all the nebbiolo fruit that went into this wine came from.
 
We loved it. It showed really lovely aromas of crushed violets and berries. And although it was not a particularly concentrated or fruity wine — more delicate, dry, and minerally — it still had a distinct sweet berry taste in the middle. Our waiter decanted it, but still we had the pleasure of watching and tasting it unfold, getting darker, bolder-flavored, and more interesting over time in our glasses. I managed to save a few sips for our cheese course, and was handsomely rewarded.

A recent trip to France convinced me that, ironically, the best place to drink French wine nowadays is in California. Let me give you an example: a red wine from Cairanne in the Southern Rhône, a 2007 Côte du Rhône Villages from Domaine Catherine le Goeuil, which I bought at Kermit Lynch Wines in Berkeley last week for $23.
 
I love this Cairanne. It’s a mouthful of ripe red plums, earth, and that brambly Southern Rhone “garrigue” flavor. It’s got delicious aromas of framboise, blueberry compote, asian spices, and licorice. It’s totally dry but tastes sweet on the palate, enough to go *great* with the BBQ sandwich I am now enjoying. Clean, fresh, slightly soft mouthfeel, though not lacking in heft. I haven’t enjoyed an under-$25 bottle of wine this much in a long time.
 
Why is this wine so exemplary of my new theory? Click here to find out:
 
My guess as to why I’m loving this wine so much is that Lynch, Madame Le Goeuil’s importer, has taken the time to search her out (she’s from a lesser-known village in the Rhône), promote her methods (she’s organic and low-tech in the cellar), and do a bottling with his own name on the label. In contrast, during my recent trip to France, I made a guess that within France itself, wine buyers (especially at restaurants) are paying less and less attention to the particulars of the craft at the wineries they buy from, and no attention at all to new wineries in semi-anonymous regions. So all you can order from, say, Guy Savoy, is so-so wine from a recognizable name, but nothing startlingly good from people and places you’ve never heard of.
 
Cairanne sounds guy-RAN but starting with a k sound. As for Catherine’s last name, good luck! I’d say “luh-goo-EEY.” Let me know if I’m way off.

Last night the Ladies Tasting Society met to blind-taste five red varietals, that is, wines made primarily from, and named after, one grape variety (for example pinot noir or cabernet sauvignon). It was an exciting and highly competitive tasting, since not only did the ladies score ourselves based on how many aspects of the wine we could detect correctly (grape? vintage? French or Californian?), the wine types were also vying with each other to be our favorites of the evening.
 
One lady and one grape prevailed. Click here to find out who and what :
 
Each member brought one example of five red varietals: syrah, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and zinfandel. We were allowed to bring blends, but the grape in question had to represent at least 70 percent of the mix. Otherwise, the wines could be from anywhere, any vintage, and any price point.
 
Not surprisingly, we picked out the pinots and the zins immediately from the line-up. The former gave itself away with the varietal’s characteristic bright ruby color, silky texture, and vivid cherry flavors. With the latter, zinfandel’s tell-tale garnet shades, slightly viscous mouthfeel, and rich black fruit tastes were its calling cards. Pinot and zin, too, aren’t particularly tannic wines, so their softness on the palate helped us distinguish them from the others.
 
But oh, those others. They really tripped us up.
 
First of all, cabernet and merlot are sister grapes, the cornerstones of the red Bordeaux blend, and often matched up in California too because they complement each other so beautifully. Indeed, our two runner-up favorites of the evening were a 1999 Lynch-Bages from Pauillac (mostly cab, the rest merlot, with a smattering of other Bordeaux varieties) and a 2005 Pride Mountain Merlot (90 percent merlot, the remainder “cab sauv” as they say in the business), textbook French and Californian examples of how, respectively, a burly cabernet can benefit from merlot’s softer influence, and how merlot can gain some structure from a dollop of cab.
 
But boy are they hard to tell apart. Plus we threw one bottle of syrah in the mix, helping to further confuse things. Those of us who know and love syrah tried to single it out by means of the varietal’s prominent smoky, meaty, brambly flavors. But the syrah we were dealing with, it turns out, was from California and showed a purer, fruit-driven profile, so much so that a bunch of us, including yours truly, mistook it for a merlot, a couple even for a zin.
 
At the end of the day, the beautiful Lady Diana took home the crown for the most wines guessed right (she missed on only two varietals!). With an equally gorgeous Howell Mountain cabernet sauvignon from Dunn Vineyards getting “Best of Tasting,” the cabs and merlots generally outdid the other varietals.
 
Best of Tasting
Dunn Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon “Howell Mountain” 2004 ($80) ****1/2
Even as it was pouring, this wine caught everyone’s attention with its deep purple-black color. “A monster! Sexy!” cried one lady. I liked its very distinctive nose, full of camphor, licorice, and smoke, which made me mistake it for a Bordeaux. Serious blackberry, plum, and black cherry flavors, with muscular tannins. Definitely a keeper. (Interestingly, only one of us didn’t peg this as cabernet sauvignon, but a number of us goofed by saying it was Old World.)
 
Best Value
Rex Hill Pinot Noir Willamette Valley ($25) ***1/2
Bright ruby color, with aromas of fresh-picked, ripe red cherries. Some tasters detected a little funk (“car oil,” said one) on the nose, but to me the Rex Hill’s soft mouthfeel with vivid, pure, sweet flavors of cherry, raspberry, and a little chocolate, instantly identified this wine as a pinot.
 
Pride Mountain Merlot 2005 ($46) ****
Set off from the powerful Dunn Howell Mountain by its rounder, more balanced mouthfeel, most of us nailed this as a merlot right away. Pride’s merlot is no shrinking violet, though: rich aromas of cedar, cassis, and black fruit are followed by a delicious, medium-dark wine, with all its parts — cherry, licorice, chocolate, gentle tannins — in perfect balance.

Lynch-Bages, Pauillac 1999 ($90) ****
I detected a little orange around the edges of this wine in my glass, which should have tipped me off that we were dealing with an older vintage. Reserved on the nose but, especially upon second taste, this mostly-cabernet blend from Bordeaux opened up into a plummy, wild-strawberry flavored, deliciously dry wine, with lots of interesting scorched earth and asphalt notes. Great finish, great ride.
 
JC Cellars Syrah “California Cuvée” 2007 ($28) ***1/2
Pretty in purple! We all liked the look and feel of this wine, but not one of us could figure out what it was. Smoky, dark fruit aromas should have led us down the path toward syrah (as should one taster’s declaration, “different!”), but the JC Cellars’ sweet, almost jammy palate full of red fruit flavors, with a touch of cedary vanilla, sent many tasters spinning off base.
 
Château Monbousquet, St. Emilion 2000 ($89) ***1/2
Most controversial was this predominantly-merlot blend from the St. Emilion appellation in Bordeaux. “Tannic and repelling,” said one lady, “fishy” said another. But what some of us found wierd, others found inspiring: “Mocha chocolatay yah-yah!” sang one fan after first sniff; “stinky barnyard, leather shoe, but nice style,” wrote another. Alcoholic and tannic, this merlot has years to go.
 
Haywood Winery Zinfandel “Morning Sun” ($30) ***
Darkly colored, with a big black fruit nose. Intense plum and blackberry flavors, with soft tannins, and a jamminess on the palate that gave way to some pleasant tannins and a nice finish. Almost all of us pegged this Hawyood as a zin.
 
Ridge Zinfandel “East Bench” 2006 ($29) ***
Light-to-medium color, with bright cherry aromas. Big dark cherry flavors, with some anise and pepper notes. But it was a slightly viscous mouthfeel that forced this Ridge zin to show its hand.
 
George Chicotot, Nuits St. George 2006 ($33)
It’s not that we didn’t like this red Burgundy. It just got out-muscled by the Californians and the bruiser Bordeaux in the bunch. Its light, almost rosé-territory color, its fruity-peppery nose, and its delightful strawberry flavors identified it as a pinot — all real red Burgundy is 100 percent pinot noir — but it was as if this featherweight contender stumbled into the wrong ring.

Despite the attacks waged by Wine Dictator magazine on poor Dry Creek Valley, after visiting 10 standout Dry Creek producers a couple weeks ago during their Passport party weekend, I remain thoroughly charmed. Although the chief California editor believes Dry Creek lacks a signature varietal, I think it’s clearly zinfandel–in fact, two zins and a cab blend made from grapes from the Rockpile AVA at the northern end of the valley were favorites of the day, so I’d even go further and say that Dry Creek has a signature grape and at least one premier cru-ish terroir. Finally, the Wine Dictator insists the valley lacks a flagship winery, too, but after tasting our way through up-and-coming Mazzocco’s delicious line-up, I’d say that even if it’s true, it won’t be for long. Or was it just the belly dancers? I’m not sure.
 
For our faves of the weekend, click here:
 
Seghesio Family Vineyards’ “Rockpile” Zinfandel 2007 ($36)
A serious zinfandel! Smokey nose, raspberry-black cherry palate, definite tannins, and a long, long finish. Soft white pepper notes, structured for a zin. **1/2
 
Mauritson Wines’ “Rockpile Ridge” Zinfandel 2007 ($35)
A huuuuge zin, more on the hedonistic side than the Seghesio. Ripe, black cherry and blackberry flavors, strong notes of chocolate and vanilla. This wine tasted so good with sliders a la Charlie Palmer, we came back Sunday for more. **1/2
 
Mauritson Wines’ “Buck’s Pasture” Red Wine 2007 ($50)
We tasted this cab, cab franc, petit verdot, and malbec blend (all fruit from the Rockpile Ridge vineyard) from barrel, and were extremely impressed with the young wine. Powerful and graceful at once, with big blackberry, cassis, and other classic Bordeaux flavors like tobacco and earth. Oak very present now but should relax. **1/2
 
Other faves of the day:
 
All of Mazzoco’s 2006 single-vineyard zinfandels:
 
Lytton ($29) A real step up from the Sonoma County cuvee, this was the most accessible zin Mazzocco was pouring. Nice nose, with loads of fruit and pepper. Beautifully integrated dark-fruit flavors. **
Stone ($29) The darkest, sweetest of the bunch. **
Warm Springs ($32) The most serious zin we tasted here, very structured, with definite tannins, delicious fruit, chocolate notes, and a long finish. **
 
Ridge “Lytton Springs” Zinfandel 2006 ($35)
A darker fruit profile, notable balance, a classy zin with dusty tannins. From 115 year old vines. (My friend Jen and I are standing in front of them in the photo above.)
 
Sbragia Family Vineyards’ Home Ranch Chardonnay 2007 ($26) 
A full-throttle California-style chard, with plenty of vanilla notes and some creaminess on the texture. But balanced, with lots of tropical fruit flavors and good structure. Delicious with the seafood bisque the winery was serving up. **
 
Mazzocco Chardonnay Stuhlmuller Reserve 2006 ($36, but on sale at Passport 50% off per case)
I had to laugh at myself: after a full two days of the big red wines of Dry Creek, I went home with a case of chardonnay. I just couldn’t resist the beautiful tropical fruit flavors and spicy complexity (nutmeg, clove) of this chard–not to mention the sale price. I like how only half this wine saw new oak, and only 40 percent underwent a second fermentation. It’s like you got the best of both chardonnay worlds, the big creamy California style versus the crisp fruity Chablis style.
**1/2

Dry Creek Valley just can’t get no respect. Lately James Laube, the chief California taster for the Wine Dictator Spectator magazine, has been pointing thumbs-down on the entire appellation, a bucolic stretch of vineyards and dairy farms tucked into the northwestern corner of Sonoma county. Dry Creek, he laments, has an identity problem: it lacks flagship wineries to bolster its reputation, as well as a signature grape to serve as a rallying point for fans.
 
On the occasion of the Winegrowers of Dry Creek Valley’s Passport weekend, I spent last weekend tasting up and down the creek. And although there’s some truth to Laube’s assessment, click here for some important exceptions to the dictator’s rule:
 
First of all, it’s not true that Dry Creek Valley has no “signature grape.” It’s zinfandel, and anyone who actually visits and tastes her way through fifty zins at twenty Dry Creek venues, many of them offered in series of single-vineyard bottlings, all of them made with the pride and care that a Napa vintner would put into her cabernets, will agree.
 
A good example is Ridge Lytton Springs, one of our favorite stamps on our passport. They make two zinfandels, one from the gnarly, 115 year old vines behind the winery and the other from a vineyard called Del Carlo. The Lytton Springs zin was very serious, with gorgeous aromas cherry and pepper aromas, plus a delicious, balanced feel on the palate. Some tannins. Nice long finish too. Plus we loved any zins that came from the Rockpile vineyard, especially Seghesio’s. And although I tasted lots of good cabernet over the weekend — including the culty A. Rafanelli
– thee best wines of the weekend were zins, and in genereal I felt as though when I was drinking them I was tasting Napa cabernets, at one-third the price.
 
For my full report on the wines we tasted, plus the embarrassing fact that among all the big reds we tasted, I came home with a bottle of chardonnay (which one?), stay tuned.

My wife likes to tease me by saying that I “woefully under-decant.” I don’t think so. But it is true that I rarely decant. And I admit that a few times I’ve been burned by not decanting — take the example of the Glen Carlou 2005 Grand Classique I wrote about recently. In fact, the Grand Classique, which tasted “weird” when I opened it but delicious the next day, inspired me to review my theory about when (and when not) it’s a good idea to decant. For my guide, click here for more:
 
As most of you know, decanting is a process whereby you pour a bottle of wine into a larger vessel, usually designed to expose the wine to oxygen, so that it can sit and aerate. Depending on the wine, some people will decant for hours before drinking. The idea is that the exposure to oxygen softens the wine and allows hidden aromas and flavors to emerge. That’s it — unless you want to get into the snob factor behind decanting, which is definitely at play for some drinkers, since somebody apparently is spending almost $500 on penis-substitutes like this three-foot-high python-shaped disseminator.
 
The first instance in which, in my opinion, it’s a good idea to decant is when the wine you’re drinking is very fine and very young. See, unlike everyday wine which is made to be ready to drink (and indeed, 90 percent of all bottles of wine are ingested within 24 hours of purchase), fine wine is made to be unfit for immediate consumption. With collectible, expensive wines, the ideal drinker is a devotee who buys it every year, often by the case, cellars it, and enjoys it over time. She likes to witness how — because of the micro-oxygenation that occurs with the air left in the bottle, plus the tiny bit of porosity of the cork — the wine pokes its head out, blossoms, fades, and then dies, sometimes over the course of 20 years or more.
 
Sometimes, though, you just can’t wait. And that’s when a decanter comes in handy. It fast-forwards the ageing process, so that wines built for the long haul can be enjoyed in the short term.
 
The only other time I think wine should be decanted? Precisely the opposite situation: when the wine is very fine and very old. This is because after a fine wine has sat around for a long time, it tends to throw off sediment, and you don’t want that bitter, mucky stuff going into your glass. So decanting — even the seemingly pretentious method you see in restaurants, where the sommelier pours the wine from the bottle to the decanter over a candle — helps you see when the sediment starts to travel toward the neck, at which moment you stop dispensing. Then I recommend you serve the wine in the decanter immediately. In this instance, we are dealing with a wine at its maturity, so decanting is not about aerating. In fact, further exposure to oxygen can cause a delicate old wine to expire before your eyes.
 
So now you see why I rarely decant. Fortunately, it’s very rare that I risk infanticide on a fine young wine. Unfortunately, it’s even rarer that I get a chance to drink very fine, very old wines. In fact I might never decant if there weren’t two corollaries to my rule. For example I am coming around to my wife’s opinion that, young or old, French wine should always be decanted. She feels that Burgundy and Bordeaux in particular taste horrible upon first sip but then delicious if you revisit a half hour later. Alice’s axiom was reinforced for me recently at a dinner party when I poured sans decanting a 2002 red Burgundy, a Chambolle-Musigny from Pierre Bertheau et Fils. After we toasted and took our first sip we reared back, surprised by the utter absence of flavor. “It’s over the hill already!” I exclaimed, embarrassed. But on Alice’s advice we simply put our glasses at the end of the table and then came back 45 minutes later. And what a change. It was as if the wine woke up, gasped, literally filled its lungs with air, and was reborn with all its fruit and earth and spice flavors intact.
 
A final, related addendum to the rule: if a wine you expect to be good tastes bad, try decanting. Often, strange aromas and flavors can “blow off” in a decanter. Again, this may be especially true of wines of foreign origin, such as the Grand Classique from South Africa that got me started on all this. You can bet that (even though the Grand Classique is cheap, young, not French, but as it turns out delicious) I’m going to decant the weird stuff right out of my next bottle before I take a sip.

“Weird.” That’s what I thought when I first tasted Glen Carlou’s 2005 Grand Classique, a Bordeaux-style red blend from South Africa. It displayed such strong notes of game, doused campfire, and rusty iron, it made me think of an old farm. So I had a glass, vacuum-stopped the bottle, then revisted the next day — and a much less rustic wine had emerged. Still a purple-black wine and totally opaque, but with a decent nose of black cherry, brambles, and only pleasant little reminders of what was, yesterday, an overwhelming smokiness and minerality. Pure, vivid flavors of black cherry liqueur, a mouth-coating velvety feel, and a decent finish all added up to a delicious red wine to be had for $15. Just be sure to decant.

I’m still scratching my head over the 2005 Orin Swift “Papillon” we ordered at Elway’s Steak House in Denver — and almost rejected because the bottle is so repulsive! It would have been the first time I’d sent a wine back because the label made my stomach turn.

Good thing we tamped down our revulsion, because out of this beastly bottle out came a beautiful purple liquid, glittering with ruby highlights. A decent nose with fruit and cedar was followed by an absolutely delicious drink, bursting with blueberry, licorice, and blackberry flavors, with nice vanilla and some sweet oak in the background. The Papillon is definitely a big, ripe, Napa cabernet blend, but it’s not over the top. I was struck, actually, at how sleek and balanced it tasted, considering all that fruit and glycerin. It was silky, vivid, and even a tad juicy in the mouth, not jammy. We went home and promptly ordered a case.

But why the filthy fingers with dirt-encrusted nails and prison tattoos? Clearly the winemaker at Orin Swift, a young guy named Dave Phinney, has some interest in the theme of incarceration, since his Zinfandel blend is called “The Prisoner.” The Internet is divided on whether “Papillon” is a reference to the Steve McQueen movie; but everyone agrees that the Greg Norman photo would be more appealing on a gallery wall. All I can say is that Phinney must have a lot of confidence in this wine (which retails at about $55) to top it off with this image — and he’s 100 percent justified.

A bottle of 2001 Cornas from August Clape got me wondering recently about a thing called bottle variation. You see, the Cornas was a show stopper. My notes read: “Mouth-watering aromas of green olives and black fruit. A huge syrah, rich, maybe a little monolithic, but with loads of ripe plum and distinct olive and grilled meat characteristics. The clear favorite at the table, where we enjoyed it with homemade pasta and red sauce with sausage.”

Problem is, I’ve had a bunch of this wine (I originally bought a case) and I don’t remember loving it. To find out why, perhaps, click here for .

First I theorized I drank the other bottles too early. Cornas, a 100 percent syrah made in the northern Rhone in France, is a very traditionally-made, sometimes hard and tannic wine that famously requires lots of bottle aging.

But then I looked at my fellow tasters’ notes on cellartracker.com and was amazed to see how deeply disappointed half were, versus how passionately enamored the other half read. Same wine, same vintage! “Red, flat, and boring,” said one. (How uninspired do you have to be, to say only “red” when summing up a red wine? Plus, in Cornas, red is the only wine they make!) On the other side, tasters confessed they’d unequivocably fallen in love.

Now I’m thinking that my 2001 Clape Cornas is the victim of bottle variation, which happens when some samples from the same wine simply turn out better than others. Bottle variation isn’t something that lots of people run into, especially casual drinkers, because most wine is made in large quantities and at pretty modern facilities that have a lot of control over their overall quantity. But some wines, especially artisanal ones like my Cornas — August Clape makes only about two thousand cases annually from a mere 10 acres — can show marked differences between individual bottles. Some of the production might have been fermented in older, funkier wooden vats; some grapes might have been picked riper than others; some vats might have gone into bottle later than others, etc. And although Clape blends the final wine after fermenting and aging each vineyard lot separately, the individuality of some of the original batches might still shine through.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to my next Clape Cornas, just to see if I’m depressed or elated by it. I’ll let you know.