2009 Donkey & Goat Four Thirteen

Wineries? In Berkeley?!

Let’s not get carried away.

Obviously, the wine I’m telling you about today is not from grapes grown in Berkeley, California. While I have not scoured the streets, alleyways, and head shops of the home not only of the great University of California Golden Bears football team, but also of aging hippies, I do know I have never found a vineyard in Berkeley.

And I know for sure, that wine grapes are not what’s growing in People’s Park.

That having been said, there are wineries in Berkeley. Oakland and San Francisco, as well. Small-batch, family-owned boutique wineries in Northern California have begun setting up shop in the Bay Area’s urban centers, and not just the fertile valleys of Napa and Sonoma counties.

Because they do not grow their own grapes (at least not on the estate!) but instead buy them from grapegrowers all over the state, what chance these winemakers have to set themselves apart is often in the blending.

2009 Donkey & Goat Four Thirteen

Which is why I was so excited to taste this, a Chateauneuf-du-Pape-style red blend from one of Berkeley’s best-named wineries, A Donkey & Goat Winery.

Seriously. Nailed the name.

So, what do we have here in Donkey & Goat’s 2009 Four Thirteen blend? 46% syrah, 33% grenache, 18% mourvedre, and 3% counoise, all from El Dorado County in the Sierra Foothills. Details and digits aside, we also have a very tasty wine.

The first thing you want to do after you pour yourself a glass of the Four Thirteen is take look. The wine is stunning. Blood red at the core— really vibrant— with ruby edges that are only slightly lighter.

On the nose, the heat shows off just a bit— never a good thing, but here, not enough to kill off the nose’s strong points. Blackberry, black pepper, leather, and notes of dark caramel. Rich, strong, weighty, meaty, and hefty. This wine is like Gerard Depardieu: it’s got a nose with gravitas.

The wine is medium bodied, and the finish is passable but could be longer. The nose is so awesomely bombastic that the palate could be a bit of letdown, were it not so damn tasty. Black fruits, earth and leather, and a hint of cassis round out this wine’s palate. I do wish it packed the punch hinted at by the nose, but I’m not going to complain.

Wine this good just doesn’t come around all that often. And in my experience, it never comes from Berkeley.

Bravo, Donkey & Goat. Bravo.

Price Point: $30

2008 Willamette Valley Vineyards Riesling

Sweet Oregonian Converts My Bitter Palate

I used to hate “sweet” wines.

I put “sweet” in quotation marks for a reason. I don’t mean to refer to dessert wines– in fact, Tawny Porto has long been something I have treasured.

No, I mean your Gewurztraminers, late harvest wines in general, and of course, most Rieslings that did not bear the “Dry” adjective stamped right on the label.

But, apparently, tastes change.

Many moons ago, I made a stink on Twitter by saying something along the lines of “Burgundy still kills it with pinot noir.” Not exactly a controversial statement, or so I thought. California– and more so, Oregon– wineries responded to me staking a claim to the pinot noir crown.

And Willamette Valley Vineyards decided to put their money where there mouth is. Or, perhaps more specifically, but certainly less poetically: to put their wine where my mouth is.

They sent along a couple selections of their pinot, suggesting I put their offerings through the Pepsi Challenge with the finest Burgs I can get my hands on. And I will. But as of this writing, I can’t really afford anything from Burgundy one would consider particularly “fine,” and so the eventual Oregon-vs.-France-by-way-of-my-little-condo-in-Walnut-Creek,-California Battle Royale de Pinot will have to wait.

In the meantime, WVV also decided to hand off a bottle or two of white. One of which, was this: their 2008 Riesling.

Notice it does not say 2008 Dry Riesling.

The label admonishes that “prime drinking time” is 2009-2011, and so, not wanting to let a good thing go bad, I popped the cork and took this wine for a spin just recently. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured it was now or never.

I’m glad it was now.

I’m still not sure I like “sweet” wines. But I know something I do like: balance. And this wine has it in abundance. There is sweetness here, enough of it to notice, but not enough of it to drown out other flavors (my normal complaint regarding excess RS). More than that, there is acidity up the wazoo. Plenty of acid, some weighty residual sugar, and a pleasant, crisp flavor profile all welcomed me when I first put glass to lips.

This isn’t a gush, though; there are issues I have here. The nose kicks off with a kind of unfortunate rubbery smell. Kind of a tire-meets-wet-road thing. It’s not huge, but it was impossible not to notice. The nose also plays around with more of what’s to come, tossing you a ripe, juicy green apple along with its more industrial component.

On the palate, luckily, any hint of the nose’s rubber is gone, out of town, non grata. Not there. A bit one-note, the wine pretty much sits around the green apple arena of flavors, but it is very crisp and refreshing.

The mouthfeel is a bit viscous, what I would call “medium-full” bodied. That sweetness is here, and attacks the front of your palate, the tip of your tongue and all those salivary glands you have up front there (trust me, there’s quite a few). As the wine passes through your mouth, just when you think you can’t take any more sweetness, the back nine are given a nice kick of acidity, almost enough to get you in the lymph nodes like A1 Steak Sauce.

The overall experience, then, is a pleasurable one: you’re left with a more lingering memory of the acidity than of the sweetness, and the whole time you’re tasting the most exhilaratingly crisp Granny Smith apple.

Tart, sweet, acidic, crisp, with a full-bodied feel. If you like your wines like you like your French cinema– complex, contradictory, packed with imagery, with just a hint of something that smells funny– you really ought to give the 2008 Willamette Valley Vineyards Riesling a shot. I’m glad I did.

2008 Willamette Valley Vineyards Riesling

2008 Willamette Valley Vineyards Riesling

2007 Ravenswood Barricia Single Vineyard Zinfandel

Single-Vineyard Zin Brings The Ruckus

I’ve had quite the personal history with Ravenswood. Their Vintners Blend Merlot was one of the first wines I ever drank regularly. It was quite good for its price1 and it was easy to find.

I have since had some hit-or-miss times with Ravenswood. I’ve come to find that while the “approachability” of their Vintners Blend wines was perfect for me at 21 years old, I need something with a little more personality these days.

2007 Ravenswood Barricia Single Vineyard Zinfandel

Enter the Ravesnwood Single Vineyard Zinfandels. There are quite a few of them, and I have actually had several. This one, the Barricia, is a big dog zin. No joke. It spends 20 months in 100% French oak, clocks in at 14.5% ABV, and is actually 76% zinfandel and 24% petite sirah.

The wine is a dark purple in the core of the glass, lightening to a bit of a garnet red on the edges. On the nose is some blackberry and dark cherry, but also a touch more heat than I like to see.2

The 2007 Ravenswood Barricia is medium bodied, with a long finish. The alcohol comes through, but not too hot. The wine is robust and full-flavored, with a touch of dark fruit, but more obviously, a smoky, meaty element.

The flavor profile would go excellently with grilled meats, but the relatively heavy body, long finish, and higher alcohol make it hard to recommend as a summer barbecuing wine. Still, robust, tasty, and all up in your face: if this is what you look for in a zinfandel, then look no further.

Price Point: $35

Footnotes

  1. Or, at least, so I thought. My palate, as underwhelming as it may be now, was downright infantile back then. ↩
  2. Smell. ↩