The New York Times ran a disturbing article on Buckfast Tonic Wine, an appalling-sounding brew of fermented grapes, sugar, and caffeine that’s being blamed for a national crisis of highly-wired inebriation in Scotland. The government is considering controlling the vile substance, but local fans are responding with protests to the theme of “Don’t Ban Buckie!”
 
If you’ve tasted “Loopy Juice” (as they say in Glasgow) let me know if you were seized by intent to vandalize. And click here for the thoughts about my alcoholic WASP heritage that this story inspired:
 
I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of alcohol in my cultural heritage, in part because I had to do a “cultural sharing” for a class I’m taking, and when I sat down to think of things that symbolized my WASP (with the Anglo-Saxon part being mainly Scottish) background, the first thing that came to mind was a martini glass, since everyone in both my father’s and mother’s extended families broke every day at 5:00 pm, and occasionally at lunch, for gin cocktails. My mother’s family called it Happy Hour, but I’ve heard other WASPs call it Arsenic Hour. The happy part of this tradition is the laughter, the group solidarity, and the end-of-the-good-protestant-workday it brought about. The poisonous part is the alcoholism it fostered in many of my father’s family, especially. (My great uncle Fred, for example, drank himself to death in his early thirties.)
 
I also brought a bottle of wine to my cultural sharing, because I think in many ways my love of wine has been (among other things of course) a way for me to “manage” my alcoholic inheritance. I come from a long line of big Presbyterian drinkers, and I will indulge in the occasional cocktail. But I prefer wine. That’s because with wine, drinking isn’t (for me at least) about getting drunk; it’s about having something delicious to imbibe with food. It’s about gathering friends around the table. It’s an intellectual exercise for me, because I like to learn, think, and write about wine.
 
The exception to this rule about wine may be Buckie. I can’t see any reason anyone would drink this foul potion except to get potted. Your thoughts, whether you’re WASP or not?

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.

The best bottle of our whole trip to Paris was a 2005 Rouquetaillade La Grange — and I am ashamed to say that I didn’t order it. In fact, my poor traveling companions had got so disgusted with my selections that on day four my dear friend Mark (and thank goodness he is still my dear friend after all those liquid disappointments) spotted a bottle of red on a neighboring table, determined that the French people who were drinking it were enjoying it, and told the waiter we wanted one of those.
 
Mark was embarrassed, but I was wholly impressed. First, I was so relieved he had taken the slack reins from my hands and steered us in a new wine direction. Second, I was staring at the wine list of this great bistro we default to every time we’re in Paris, mostly because of its excellent calves liver, paralyzed. I’d been ordering wines all week based on familiarity and recognition — so, Bordeaux from wineries I know — and time after time we’d been disappointed. The wines tasted thin and young. I even ordered a Haut Marbuzet from a vintage I’d collected and sampled from my own cellar, but for some reason it tasted like a shadow of this wine I know and love. So clearly my strategy wasn’t working.
 
Out came the Rouquetaillade La Grange. The waiter opened and poured … and it was delicious. Balanced, with good fruit but also that dry, earthy taste that comes from cabernet blends made in Bordeaux’s cool, almost seaside locale. It seemed somehow more vivid and satisfying than all the lifeless reds that had preceeded it on our trip. It was also half the price.
 
Then, the next day (because all my traveling companions had to leave on early flights) I found myself having lunch alone at a wine bar in the Buci market. I tried a variation of Mark’s wine-selection strategy, which was to order a glass of something cheap and completely unfamiliar. It turned out to be a cru Beaujolais and went beautifully with my pate.
 
So here’s the theory I came away with.

I haven’t written since July, but I have a good excuse: on July 19 my mother — who, although she was not a connoisseur, loved wine and helped trigger my development as a student of wine — was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. As a result I’ve spent the last five plus months fighting, caretaking, squeezing out every drop of meaning from every moment, grieving (she died on November 11), and not writing. Or at least not writing about wine.
 
Though we did, of course, drink some in her twilight hours. My mother loved chardonnay: the bigger, the butterier, the better. Normally she’d have something merely quaffable, at least to her, for lunch. (I have no idea what to do with the 1.5 liter bottles of Glen Ellen “Reserve” I cleaned out of her pantry. And I hate to think what the non-reserve tastes like, or if it even exists.) But considering the circumstances I convinced her to help empty my cellar of all my Kistler chardonnays.
 
I know some wine snobs are horrified by Kistler’s full-throttle versions of this varietal, but I have a lot of respect for their commitment to single-vineyard bottlings, that is, to wines that try – even in the midst of all the ripe fruit flavors that can come from this grape plus California’s warm climate – to express the individuality of place. Kistler’s chardonnays are not subtle. But they are always different from one vineyard to the next. And especially to Mom they were always memorable, always a “wow” wine.
 
Click here for some more of the comfort wines we drank during Mom’s last days:
 
In November I also broke out a a bottle of 1996 Chateau St. Jean “Cinq Cepages,” which won Wine of the Year from Wine Spectator magazine in 1999. When Mom found out that I was disguising myself in a different outfit every day and driving out to the winery for my one-bottle-per-person-per-lifetime allocation, she was amazed (and maybe a little alarmed) at my obsessiveness. But when she found herself in the vicinity of the winery at a retreat for her church women’s group, she rounded up 12 ladies, gave them $28 each (oh, those were the days; this year’s vintage costs $80 a bottle), had them buy Cinq Cepages, and gave me a case of the precious stuff for my birthday.
 
In general, though, my mom’s taste in wine ran toward the big, the clumsy, and the cheap. That’s okay, because that didn’t prevent her from enjoying and appreciating a truly great wine. In fact, I was with her on the fatal night I was bitten by the fine wine bug. Newly engaged, my wife and I took Mom out for dinner to a fancy steak house Mother’s Day in 1998. I was still at the stage where navigating a wine list was like playing pin the tail on the donkey. Mom told us we were not to spend a hundred dollars on bottle of wine. But I asked for the Groth Reserve 1994 – a great year in Napa and I think the last vintage of this wine made for Groth by their brilliant cellarmaster Nils Venge.
 
We told her it was not $100, and because it was $115 technically we were not committing the unforgivable sin of lying to one’s mother. It blew us all away: I don’t think any of us had realized how many different smells and flavors could come forth from a beverage. We all had an “aha” moment over how delicious wine is with food. My life changed that night in part because of the role that bottle of wine played in bringing these three women together: me, my original love, and the love of my life.
 
And even though Mom didn’t drink good wine – or even palatable in my mind – very often, she opened my eyes to its possibilities. Just the fact that she drank a glass of wine every day with lunch helped instill in me the assumption (very un-American at that time) that wine was a part of everyday life, part of sitting down at a meal with others, part of stimulating conversation. Even though my father had a problem with his drinking, because of mom I never thought of wine as a sinful, shameful, or dangerous. When I was approaching drinking age and started to ask if I too could shed the childish ways of soda pop, she (carefully, I’m sure, because of my father) gave me wine. And even though her favorite was the Glen Ellen, so she didn’t have much ground to stand on, she looked at me in horror when I said I wanted her to buy me white Riunite, a sweet, slightly effervescent, low-octane white from Italy that was being marketed on TV at the time with the jingle, “Riunite on ice. That’s nice.” I didn’t care; I loved it. And although it took me years to graduate in to something less silly, the seed was sown.
 
Mom was the sower.

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.

 
With the exception of an occasional mimosa — and only when the sparkler destined for adulteration isn’t one of my favorites — I’ve never been much of a wine-cocktail drinker. Oh, and then there’s the sangría we serve every year at our Fourth of July pool party (again, made with zinfandel of a quality that wouldn’t highly recommend itself for savoring alone).
 
That’s because wine, to me, already represents a finished work of art. In my opinion, the ultimate mixologist is the winemaker: she worked hard to source the best ingredients, blend at the perfect levels, and serve in a pretty package. Why would I want to muck up her creation by throwing soda pop at it?
 
But I surprised myself last night not only by serving “Late Harvest Wine and Campari Cocktails” before a dinner party, but by improving the recipe with a stealth ingredient. For my recipe, click here:
 
The surprise deviation from the recipe was a bottle of Moscato d’Asti I had in the fridge. This off-dry, slightly effervescent sweetheart of a deal (the Tintero “Sori Gramella” cost me $9) had all the residual sugar needed to replace the late harvest riesling called for by the recipe. Plus, its fizz made this refreshing drink even more thirst quenching.
 
3-1/2 cups Moscato d’Asti
2-1/2 cups OJ
1 cup Campari
 
Mix, chill, and serve over ice in a tall glass. Cheers!

Used to be that when one heard “Rhône,” one thought, “red.” That’s because 90 percent of the wine that comes from France’s Rhône River valley — and all the really famous stuff, like Côte Rotie — is indeed red. Châteauneuf du Pape, although it can come “blanc,” is hardly ever seen in stores or on wine lists as such, and most people would be hard-pressed to name one grape variety that’s used to make a white Rhône.
 
The other reason whites from the Rhône are so underappreciated is because, for a long time, they deserved it. A red winemaker’s afterthought, they suffered from all kinds of horrible-sounding blunders including volatile acidity, oxidation, or just plain old funky flavors.
 
All of that has changed. Partly thanks to new winemaking technology like stainless steel tanks, winemakers in the South of France are making crisper, more balanced, delicious, and fragrant white wines. More importantly perhaps, American drinkers are increasingly fanatical about grapes native to the Rhône such as syrah, mourvedre, and viognier (“anything,” as the so-called Rhône Rangers put it, “but chardonnay”), and more people are looking to the original whites of the Rhône — Condrieu, Châteauneuf du Pape blanc, Côtes du Rhône blanc — to escape the ennui induced by having to order one, more, glass, of, pinot grigio, please … zzzzz.
 
The Ladies Tasting Society popped the cork on a pile of white Rhônes, with divided results:
 
Some ladies were delighted with how different the wines tasted from the whites we’re used to: these tasters noted floral aromas, flavors of apricots and tropical fruit, minerals, and a pleasant waxy feeling on the palate, especially with the wines that were made with marsanne in the blend. But a couple of us were expecting an even more dramatic departure. We ended up being disappointed, mainly, with the high level of oak treatment some of the wines had clearly received. One of us complained that overall, the wines lacked “typicity,” that is, the characteristic flavors lent by the grapes they were made from or the regions they came from. “This could be a California chardonnay,” said one lady of the Guigal Condrieu 2005 ($52), “it’s jacked up on so much oak, I can’t tell what’s lying underneath.”
 
Interestingly, we all agreed that the more inexpensive, “every day” examples were the most delicious. Perhaps this is because for $7.99 — the price of our much-loved Perrin Côtes du Rhône Réserve 2007 — the winemaker can’t afford to be throwing brand new oak barrels at it. Also, these less pricey blancs are intended to be drunk young and fresh, and sure enough we tended to unite behind bottles from the 2007 vintage (which is also happens to be a very highly rated one by the critics).
 
In the end, we didn’t see any reason to discontinue this growing interest in the whites of the Rhône, despite our minority crankiness. So be brave and go with a Côtes du Rhône blanc the next time you’re in the store — especially if it’s cheap. It’s not often I have the pleasure of giving that advice.
 
Best of Tasting
Le Vieux Donjon, Châteauneuf du Pape Blanc 2006 ($42) ***
Sweet jasmine and honeysuckle aromatics, followed by a rich, though balanced, palate full of apricot, melon, and citrus flavors. Some mineral notes. “The most restrained,” said one lady appreciatively; “complexity without flabbiness,” said another. A blend of grenache blanc, clairette, and roussanne.
 
Best Value
Domaine de la Bécassone Côtes du Rhône Blanc 2008 ($13.99) **1/2
This domaine (owned by the quality Châteauneuf du Pape producer André Brunel) makes only white wine, which is very unusual for the region. The focus pays off: loads of pear and apricot flavors are draped over a mouthwatering, racy frame. “Young, almost effervescent!” said one lady. One of us knocked it for a short finish, but what the hey. Roussane, grenache blanc, and clairette.
 
Perrin, Côtes du Rhône Blanc Réserve 2007 ($9)
“Crazy fruity!” enthused one lady. Indeed, this yummy quaffer was very memorable for its vivid, fresh flavors of peach, melon, flint, and lemon. Some of us detected a little wax on the mouthfeel, so characteristic of marsanne. Altogether, we pronounced it delicious, typical, and (when we discovered the price) buyable by the case. 50 percent grenache blanc, 20 percent viognier, the rest marsanne and roussanne.
 
Château Grande Cassagne, Costières de Nîmes Blanc 2007 ($12) **1/2
Okay, Nîmes isn’t technically in the Rhône. But it’s close. And we were so seduced by this golden-colored, lavender-scented nectar, we were happy it was on the table. Because of its richness, some of us thought it was a viognier from Condrieu, but no, the soft mouthfeel and notes of vanilla are worn well by this roussanne-marsanne blend.
 
Domaine Belle, Crozes-Hermitage “Les Terres Blanches” 2006 ($30) ** 
This light-to-medium bodied, fresh white pleased everyone more for what it was not (overly oaked, too rich) than what it was (a delicately apricot and melon flavored, pleasant wine). Again, some nice minerality and a tiny bit of vanilla spice. Marsanne and roussanne.
 
F&D Brunier Châteauneuf du Pape Blanc “Telegramme” 2007 ($40) **
The second wine of the famous Vieux Télégraphe, this straw-colored wine turned out to have big, vibrant middle palate full of apricot and melon flavors. Lots of vanilla and oak on the nose and finish, though; perhaps a little time will calm that down. 40 percent roussanne, 30 grenache blanc, 20 bourboulenc, and 10 percent picpoul.
 
Paul Jaboulet Aîné, Crozes-Hermitage Blanc “Mule Blanche” 2005 ($20) *1/2
Crozes-Hermitage comes from the northern end of the Rhône, and is like the little sister to the big, rare, expensive Hermitage blanc. Emphasis on “little” with this example from Jaboulet Aîné: “reserved nose, apples, lemony, crisper, with a juicy mouthfeel,” read my notes, but not enough to sink our teeth into. I should note that I opened a bottle of this same wine in preparation for the tasting, and it was oxidized.
 
Guigal, Condrieu 2005 ($52) *1/2
It pains me to write this tasting note. Guigal is one of my favorite producers in the Rhône; we’ve visited the brothers Guigal’s château; and the most exquisite bottle of wine I’ve ever tasted was the 1990 Guigal Côte Rotie La Landonne. But this Condrieu was so oaky, creamy, and jammed with vanilla and nutmeg flavors I felt like I was drinking a shake. I got none of the peach and apricot flavors I expect from viognier, and none of the structure I associate with French wines. Viscous finish.

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