wow - a bright white

Summer in Texas is coming to its steamy climax and the Hill Country grapes are getting picked for the 2007 vintage. A soggy summer for sure so hats off big-time to Texas growers who had their hands full getting grapes picked and vineyard fungus managed. As the heat continues, stock up on some fun refreshing whites. Like this inzolia (that's the name of the grape) from Italy. Actually Sicily to be exact. A rich, viscous wine unlike the usual simple Italian white, this one works well to sip on the porch or enjoy with something creamy - brie or alfredo sauce. A pretty big white but not at all chardonnay-ee so no worries for those of you not crazy about chard. I picked this bottle (and 5 others) up at Vino Vino on Guadalupe - with the 15% discount it was about $17. Good stuff.

bottling the 06 chard

Sunday ended up being bottling day for our co-op 2006 Carneros chardonnay. The second of 3 chard batches for 06, this one is classic Cali with that creamy vanilla caramel thing going on. Yum! This was of course to be expected as this wine was fermented from its raw juice state in a small French oak barrel and stored in that same barrel to pickup some of those expensive and exotic flavors. Labels will get printed soon and then we will have a "label your own" get together, so watch your email for that...

wow - a working vacation

I am taking a brief break from vacation to dutifully post a wine of the week: I suggest that next time you are in Berkeley, CA and hungry for a bite of lunch you stop in and enjoy a glass of the house zinfandel at Chez Panisse - no kidding! We found ourselves in this situation after a little Berkeley shopping (Zac had to have some Birkenstocks from Berkeley) and got lucky with no reservations as they had a couple no-shows. Fabulous lunch of course and great fun to visit Alice Waters' hallowed shrine of the Slow Food Movement. The wine is made for Chez Panisse by Green and Red Vineyards and is a yummy balance between great zin fruit and a bit of earthy seriousness.

W.O.W. lamb and leganza

Hard to beat Spanish wines for fun, affordable food-friendly vinos. This week's wine of the week is a great example. Pulled recently from the shelf of the Austin HEB at 41st and Red River, this Condesa de Leganza, at almost nine years old, is one of the oldest reds you will find on a grocery store shelf. I am not sure if the winery held this 1998 Reserva wine back for that long or if it just got held up in the distributor's warehouse, but I suspect the former as it was not long ago that you could find the 1995 Reserva. Anyway, this 100% tempranillo from the La Mancha region of Spain is fabulous for a $14 wine and has all the marks of a Reserva Rioja at about half the price. Perfect with the braised lamb shank in the photo - btw, get the lamb (slow cooked to perfection and served with Mediterranean sides for the incredible price of 9 bucks) at Sarah's Mediterranean Market on Burnet at North Loop. If you like lamb, this is some of the best in town at ANY price - certainly a $25 entree at a good restaurant.

2007 wine planning

On behalf of you the co-op faithful, David P and I took up the grueling task of sitting down with our friends at the custom crush to plan for our 2007 wines. The focus yesterday was cabernet and with verasion starting in the California vineyards we need to get plans in order for the coming fall harvest. We are repeating Ink Grade cab for 07 and will make a few tweaks based on lessons learned in 06. Stay tuned for news of another cab we will do for 07 - in stealth mode now, but indications are it could be the biggest rockroom wine yet...

wow- another great Spanish chiller

With only a fraction of the land and population lil' old Spain cranks out as much wine as the U.S. of A. And hot as it is they love refreshing chillers. Well we Texans can relate, no? So try this Montecillo white (100% viura grapes) from the Rioja region in north-central Spain. Great with little "caprese nuggets" (tomato, basil, fresh mozzerella, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil) on chewy bread. With almost white-Burgundy complexity and a bright, elegant finish, this may be the best $7 wine you drink all summer. Except of course for that killer chard we made...

bubbly

Today our rockroom bubbly took a major step toward being uh,... bubbly. Now the base wine here is some of our '06 Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay that a few of us decided to make into our very own blanc de blancs. This was a lower alcohol, higher acidity batch than the stuff that went to bottle a couple weeks back (any of you drinking that yet?). As with champagne, the next step (the tirage), which happened today, was to mix in some sugar, some yeast, a dash of yeast nutrient blend to keep the yeast active and happy, and a little powdered bentonite (clay) to help settle the murk into a clump that can be "disgorged" later - like a year or so from now. So now we are learning about what makes bubbly - hey before you know it we will be sippin' it. And I have a feeling it is going to be tasty...

WOW summer chiller

Captured on film - one of our own rockroom faithful chilling wine with ice?? Well climbing Texas temperatures drive us all to desperate measures now and then, so don't be too shocked by this wine of the week photo. The wine is our own co-op pinot gris (or grigio if you prefer) that we bottled last week. A nice refreshing wine with light citrus and melon aromas and flavors, a clean finish and a moderate alchohol level, it is best served really chilly. So if ice works for ya then go for it! Another trick is a quick visit to the freezer, but don't forget about it - I have a couple times only to return to a winesicle or (worse) an exploded winesicle. And remember, this wine was not cold stabilized so a couple days in the fridgey will precipitate out a little sediment of harmless potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar).

bottling some coop juice

Bottling went well today and we have some 2006 wines ready and waiting. The pinot gris is a light wine with floral and melon aromas and simple clean flavors. The sauv blanc packs a bit more flavor and tends to citrus like grapefruit and lime with hints of passionfruit and great acidity that should help is play nicely with food. Worked fine for me with some greek dolmas for dinner! Now what can I say about the WhiZ? Beautiful bright pink with hints of cherry and strawberry this is a nice light quaffer. Plenty of flavor and acidity softened with about 1% residual sugar. Finally, the Santa Lucia Highlands chardonnay went to bottle with big, rich flavors - the usual apple and pear are in there but with a dose of pineapple and a really long lingering finish. This wine had a brief time in French oak barrel (Radoux medium toast) and it certainly picked up some nice caramel hints.

The pinot gris, sauvignon blanc and WhiZ are ready to drink and will be great summertime chillers. The chard is yummy now but will benefit from at least a few months resting in the bottle to allow some of the complex flavors to integrate. In fact, I expect that this wine will do well with even more age on it. Having said that all these wines have pretty low levels of sulfites and were only lightly filtered so don't expect to leave them in a hot pantry for a year or two. Also, none were cold stablized (c'mon - click the link and read about it!) so they will do best just chilled an hour or two in the fridge right before opening. If you stick em down in the deep celler of your Scottish castle or subject them to several days of fridge temps you should expect to see some tartrate crystals form at the bottom of the bottle. No worries - harmless stuff (cream of tartar) so just pour carefully to avoid that little bit of sediment. And enjoy! - These are the first of our 2006 handmade wines and they turned out really nice!

w.o.w. - a so-weeet little wine that's not so sweet

I once read somewhere that riesling is the "red wine of white wines". Seemed goofy at the time which is probably why I really don't remember why the analogy was made. Now years (and many rieslings) later, I will speculate that it is because riesling, like most reds and unlike most whites, gets much better with some age. For some reason good riesling, while always easy to toss back young, can start life relatively simple - even boring? But given some time riesling develops complexity and the bright acidity helps preserve its freshness and make it a great partner for food. That goes for dry (mostly non-German) as well as sweet (mostly German) rieslings. So this summer treat yourself to some riesling, like this week's wine-of-the-week Jacob's Creek Reserve dry riesling from Australia ($14), and be sure to buy extras to age a little. Most are not expensive and you will enjoy them in a year or two (or more) when you rediscover them in your collection. I enjoyed this 2002 with Fathers Day gyoza and sushi at Maru and I have had it hanging around now for at least 2 years. I have one more '02 - maybe next Fathers Day?

w.o.w. - fizzy chiller for summer

Summer wine just does not get much more fun that Vinho Verde from Portugal. Slightly fizzy, crisp, dry and clean with hints of citrus and apple this Famega vinho verde is a classic. Less than $6 a bottle (and a pretty blue-tinted bottle it is) you can even call this your sensible wine - only 9% alcohol, low calorie and inexpensive. I plucked it off the grocery store shelf. It went great with tilapia fish tacos - the citrus worked well with the fish and the bright acidity and clean flavor washed down Tex-Mex spice just fine. Don't be surprised if you see another vinho verde wine of the week - they are irresistable.

WOW - rockroom bottles a sequel...

So often the sequel just does not live up to the original, but every now and then along comes Aliens, The Wrath of Khan or The Two Towers to disprove that rule of thumb. Now our premier "professional grade" wine was/is really good stuff - the 2005 pinot noir from Anderson Valley's Hein Vineyard. As follow-up, yesterday I was in San Fran for the bottling of the sequel: 2005 Santa Barbara syrah from White Hawk Vineyard. Big, complex syrah loaded with fruit and bright acidity - this is no jammy shiraz! (not that there's anything wrong with shiraz, mind you!). Not necessarily better than the pinot but, like a good sequel, great fun all on its own. Watch for formal announcements in the future and a chance to purchase this bad boy. cheers!

wow - big flavors for memorial day

Big steak , big wines. Ribeyes off the grill are full of bold flavors and yummy marbling. To stand up to all that flavor a bold wine is in order, and firm tannins help 'cleanse the palate' between juicy bites of fattier cuts of beef. Both Siduri's Van Der Kamp Vineyard pinot noir (2002) and rockroom's Mendocino zinfandel (2005) were up to the challenge. Of course a nice cabernet is the go-to in situations like this, but these alternative did just fine for us.

w.o.w. - more burgundian than burgundy ?

This week Kala hosted (hostessed?) a cozy wedding shower wine tasting in honor of one of our own co-op charter member (congrats Julie H!) and in the mix was a real beauty of a chardonnay. Not to take away from the beauty of the shower attendees, of course, (whew) but this 2005 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars "Karia" chardonnay was put up against a 2002 Chassagne-Montrachet white burgundy and emerged the clear fave. And not because this crowd was seeking a California butter-bomb cocktail chard. In fact, the Karia had brighter lemony acidity and all the mineral flavors of a good white burgundy but also had elements of tropical fruit with a long, soft finish. No harsh finish, no alcohol heat and NO big buttery vanilla-laden oak flavors to mask more subtle elements. A charming wine at about $30 that is pretty widely available at well stocked wine shops (our bottle came from the new Austin Spec's North). Terrific with steamed artichoke hearts dipped in aioli (as in the photo).

2005 Rhone blend(s)

For co-op folks making the 2005 Rhone Blend - it is now bottled, labeled and ready to go! Now strictly speaking, a "Rhone Blend" is made exclusively from varietals typical to the Rhone River region of southern France. For reds this would mean primarly grenache and syrah. When we made our blend in 2005 we also included some petite sirah which, DNA testing has proven, is a cross of syrah and a lesser known rhone varietal called peloursin. So petite sirah is Rhone too and we threw a little in our mix. However, when tasting through various blends on the way to coming up with our final wines to bottle, we tried one combo that included a bit of unoaked 2005 zinfandel (certainly not a Rhone varietal) - it was really nice! The bright fruit of the zin complemented the grenache-oriented aromas and filled a flat spot in the mid-palate flavor. Not sure what to call this blend, I just went with Red #1. So here is what we ended up with and what is going in each case of "Rhone Blend" for 2005:

Grenache (2 btls): We made a small batch of just grenache for blending purposes and with a chunk of that we decided to make a Chateuneuf du Pape style blend: 80% grenache, 15% syrah, 5% petite sirah.

GSPS (2 btls): This was our primary blend: 50% grenache, 38% syrah and 12% petite sirah blended as crushed grapes, fermented, pressed and aged together (some in oak and some in stainless steel).

Red #1 (8 btls): Mostly Rhone (41/31/8% of grenache, syrah & petite sirah) but with a bit of zinfandel (20%, not 10% as the label designer (me) typo-ed on the label) this is a well-rounded table red with enough acidity to play nicely with food but enough flavor to sip on its own.

So there is the lineup - next time you are by the rockroom be sure to pick up your wine!

w.o.w. - bloody good! bloody cheap!

For the second week in a row your wallet/pocketbook/finance manager/sugar daddy is going to be very pleased with the wine-of-the-week. The Torres Family of eastern Spain (ya know, Catalunya, Barcelona, funny language roughly resembling spanish...) cranks out a range of good wines - white, pink, red - all nice. As we roll into summer I thought you might like to try their 2005 Sangre de Toro ("blood of the bull"), a light red that pairs easily with many foods (pictured here with Jessie's stir-fried berries over Blue Bell homemade vanilla). This dry fruit-filled red is a blend of garnacha and carenena - so maybe think French Cote du Rhone. Tannins are very subtle and there is no noticeable oak making this a nice quaffer - try it with grilled salmon, a salami sandwich, spaghetti or a nice duck confit. At $7 a bottle you will not be disappointed.

w.o.w. - cheap, easy and lots of passion

I could make some comparison between my preference for women and sauvignon blanc but that may offend someone so I won't go there. Instead I will just tell you about this $9 bottle of wine that is the wine-of-the-week. If you have been wondering when the w.o.w. will be something really easy to find and inexpensive, here it is - Monkey Bay sauvignon blanc (2006) from Marlborough, New Zealand. Great with seafood and lighter fare (even sushi as pictured here, although my preference would have been a Kirin Ichiban). What is fun about this wine, like many Marlborough sauv blancs is that it is LOADED with the standard sauv blanc aromas and flavors: fresh cut grass, grapefruit, gooseberry, lime and passionfruit, passionfruit, passionfruit. I promise you, if you have any of these items laying around the house, in the lawnmower bag or growing in the ship's hold, take a deep whiff and then try this wine - you will see the comparison. Now some would say there is just too much of all of the above, like drinking Jolly Ranchers or something. Maybe so, but nothing will educate the palate on these classic sauvignon blanc flavors like the stuff from Kiwi-land. Then you can move on to a nice, subtle, complex French Sancerre... or maybe even that rockroom Napa sauv blanc lurking in the background.

w.o.w. - Hannibal Lecter recommends...

Readers of Silence of the Lambs might have gotten their introduction to Amarone from that book, but did anyone run out and buy one? I know- you didn't have any fava beans around the house anyway, so why bother. Well here is your chance - this 2001 Amarone from Zenato is a classic - deep color and rich flavors of chocolate covered cherries, raisins and licorice. Really, really big red wine to pair with a full-flavored meal. We took advantage of a recent cool spell to match this wine with some yummy curried beef. Outta sight. Look to spend about 50 bucks on this wine at Spec's in Austin or Houston. Also Cova in Houston is featuring it - ask for Danny and he will be glad to pop one open for you.

w.o.w. - shine on

Spent Saturday hangin out in San Francisco with the gang at the winery and got some great info on status of the 06 wines and what is coming up for 07. After all the learnin' we were ready for some practical exposure so we popped some shiners (ya know - unlabeled bottles) of 05 syrah and 06 sauv blanc. So wait, you say, why are those wines of the week? I mean, where are we supposed to get shiners of new wine????? Well the rockroom of course! Stay tuned as we have some barrel samples of 06 wine ready for tastin...

w.o.w. - cheap date

This week we offer some relief from the pricey and unavailable. Not that there is anything wrong with being pricey and unavailable, after all those are qualities that many work hard to achieve. We just don't like such qualities in others. People or wine really. Or maybe we want others to think that we think pricey and unavailable is just dandy and our kind of thing as long as we can get the pricey and unavailable quite easily at a steep discount. So let's act like this lovely Spanish white wine from Oro Penedes Hill is just that. After all, it is an exotic blend of Muscat, Xarel-lo, Macebo and Parellada grapes from the Penedes region (an area near Barcelona mostly known for bubbly called "cava" made from these same grapes). Certainly not boring with its interesting muscat-driven muskyness. In fact, Central Market in Austin has Chilean muscat grapes on the shelf (see photo above) and they are some of the tastiest grapes you will ever find. Nice with this wine as you will really get what muscat is all about. And not sweet by the way, like an Italian moscato or Texas muscat canelli. No, this wine is dry but loaded with floral and fruit aromas a flavors. And only about $10. I found it at HEB in Hyde Park. Pricey and unavailable around the corner. At a steep discount.