Les Blog

I tried to think of something witty to write about Rodrigo y Gabriela, somehow tying them to wine in some tangential way as a flimsy excuse to blog about them in these vinous pages.

But what the hell. I can’t remember the last time a performance made my jaw drop like this one. Buskers from Mexico City by way of Dublin, Rodrigo and Gabriela squeeze every last sound out of two acoustic guitars: lyrical picados, thunderous rasgueados, pulsing, primial cajónista percussion. It’s like flamenco crossed with ranchera crossed with raw rock ‘n roll. Check out their blistering performance on Letterman, or check out the video they’ve got posted on their site. They’re playing the Portland Zoo series August 31st.

See you there, vato!

[UPDATE: quick review of the concert in the comments] 

We have a blend for the Peugeot: 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, and 30% Cabernet Franc. And we’re going to make as much of it as we can.

We tasted this winning blend from the trials last weekend against a Cab Sauv-dominated blend of 70% CS, 15% M, and 15% CF, but we unanimously agreed that the Cab-centric blend lacked the depth, nose, complexity and pleasure of the 40/30/30 blend. That blend, by contrast, had a fantastic, berry-bramble nose (largely courtesy of the Franc), great sustain of flavor throughout the taste, and a wonderful, fresh and long finish. Good weight, but still young: a few more months in barrel – and maybe one more racking – will probably give this baby the weight it needs to take it to the stratosphere.

So we’ll put all the Cab Sauv into this blend, squirreling away 2 barrels’ worth until the spring, bottling the remainder as an early release with the balance of the Franc and Merlot. For those, James had the excellent idea of blending a little bit of the Merlot into the Franc, and after a few trials, we settled a on 7% Merlot addition – added weight and smoothness while keeping the spotlight firmly on the Franc.

The blends firmly in hand, we racked the Cab Sauv and the Merlot, but left the Franc alone – it tasted pretty drinkable as is, so we opted to keep it fresh.

[ Mike live-blogging our blending trials, Saturday. – Ziraud ]

Cab Sav Solo: Unimpressive, oakey beast

Merlot Solo: Varietally correct with a flavor slump in the middle

Cab Franc Solo: Intriguing acids and nose, impressive possibilities

[ all blend recipes Cab Sauv / Merlot / Cab Franc – Z ]

50/30/20: aboriginal, not meaty enough, war, oaky, ripe? but somehow… lifeless.

40/30/30: the mix to beat, oak subdued and the structure enhanced

30/40/30: nose like previous but too hot, candy-like, flabby

40/35/25: boring, candy dandy, not much nose, life savers

45/30/25: pretty good, big upfront, no middle, surprisingly long tail, no nose, many (but certainly not all) liked this one

40/25/35: meh

42/30/28: more sack, no more drop-off in the middle, sweet pillowy nose, nice finish, bacon

[ 2 favorites blended and then served back to tasters blind -Z ]

A: Nice but no cigar

B: Stronger acids, tannins, flavor depths

Ta-da! A = 42/30/28, B = 40/30/30, so 40/30/30 is da winner and still champion!

and it’s got lots of sac(k)!

[Pics below the fold -Z]
Continued …

Like all right-thinking people long accustomed to the sulfurous taste of failure followed by the sweet, sweet ambrosia of success, Les Garagistes are fans of — believe in, identify with — the Boston Red Sox. The confluence of ferment and postseason makes October the most glorious month, and many of our fall sessions are accompanied by the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd playing on a laptop in a corner of the winery. I for one will never forget, late that wondrous night, sitting at Matt’s and watching David Ortiz plunk a Paul Quantrill pitch into the Yankees bullpen to win Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, the conclusion of which was not only the most crushing upset in the annals of sport but also one of the greatest events in human history.

That said, I’m not sure that Longball Vineyards is a great idea. Setting aside the pairing of wine with the national pastime, a dubious proposition especially since the demise of the Montreal Expos signalled the end of major-league baseball in French — ‘lanceurs staring into home plate, frappeurs swinging for the fences and voltigeurs tracking down fly balls at la piste d’avertissement‘ — the choice of varietals is problematic.

The ‘CaberKnuckle’ should clearly be Pinot Noir. Tim Wakefield’s signature pitch is the knuckleball, la balle papillon, which makes a slow, lovely and unpredictable dance to the catcher’s mitt. As Willie Stargell said, ‘Throwing a knuckleball for a strike is like throwing a butterfly with hiccups across the street into your neighbor’s mailbox.’ You don’t know how it’s turned out until it’s crossed the plate (or not), and anyone who’s made Pinot Noir knows what that’s like. As for the Schilling Schardonnay, one need only point out that the bloody sock, the holy relic of the 2004 miracle, was red.

‘Manny Being Merlot’? Maybe. Red Sox fans’ exasperated expression over Ramirez’ unreliability has lost its freshness, but Merlot can be great, and Manny is indeed one of les plus grands frappeurs de nos jours. Plus, the drapery of his oversized uniforms suggests Merlot’s softer side. And given what we know of Manny from this recent New Yorker profile,

Ramirez’s appearance—he styles his hair in dreadlocks, wears a uniform cut for a sumo wrestler, and smiles broadly and indiscriminately—hints at this extracurricular flakiness, and even gives off a whiff of pothead.(In 2002, he requested that the song “Good Times,” by Styles P, be played over the Fenway Park P.A. system before one of his at-bats, and unsuspecting fans were treated to lyrics such as “Every day I need a ounce and a half…take a blunt, just to ease the pain…I get high, high, high.”)

this may well be what Bob Marley had in mind when he sang ‘Red, Red Wine.’

What does Oregon taste like? After last night, I’d have to say “a 1999 Cristom Reserve.”

Simply incredible: Handsome brickiness to the rim, like a little gray at the temples. Lovely deep ripe cherry scent, wearing a thin but elegant veil of oak. Still lively and optimistic, but with a tinge of worldliness hard-won in the cellar. Silky. Dark cherry, raspberry, and ripe plum flavors that have the depth of a well — you drop in a penny and it seems to fall forever. And when it sounds bottom, that gently reverberating echo you hear is the oak and acid, somehow defining the structure with no physical presence at all. Most bewitching of all, the hard, cinnamon taste of (I’m guessing) ripe pinot stems, evoking the character of the plant, the site, the hillside in late harvest, sun-baked, orange and russet.

It’s the taste of a decade past, that 1999 harvest that came out of nowhere and seemed to last forever. Complete and beautiful, an archetype of Oregon pinot: a little wild and brambly, but pure, authentic fruit. Transcendent. Like and old friend; like Oregon.

James and I did an article on Steve Doerner, Cristom’s soft-spoken but incredibly talented winemaker, nearly a decade ago. One of his predilections is adding whole clusters to the fermenter, something you don’t do casually because unripe stems can highjack a wine and send it into the vegetable patch. But late in the season, if grapes are still hanging, the stems dessicate to a rich, warm brown and their flavor turns toward cinnamon.

I can’t say for sure, but it sure tastes like whole clusters must have played a role in this wine, and that’s in part what makes it so complex and evocative. The harvest in 1999 was long enough that Steve would indeed have had ripe stems at his disposal, and the resulting wine has those distinctive spice notes.

In short, stunning. 106 points, you Calipalate critic bastards. Continued …

At last. A penetrating, behind (and I mean behind) the scenes look into what they’re really doing at all those fancy wine tastings. 

(To check this out, you’ll need the Flash plug-in, available for free here. Thanks to Amy W for the link!) 

Virtually all professional winemakers finish the tops of their wine bottles with some kind of capsule — and while we are as unprofessional as they come, we’ve mostly done the same. Whether it’s composed of wax, lead, tin, or plastic, the capsule is thought to help protect the cork from microbial intrusion, but also to betray any evidence of tampering. A swig-safety cap, if you will.

But what if that seal — whose function is to keep the wine safe — is itself unsafe? That’s what I wondered when I discovered that the capsules we’d been using (and most of the industry uses) are made from PVC, a material targeted by scores of watchdog agencies for its dire environmental impact.

So I did some research, and the surprisingly terrifying results spurred me into a little R&D about how to finish our treasured bottles differently. This gripping journey of revelation and redemption awaits you below the fold… Continued …