July 15th, 2010

Gladly Taken Prisoner

2008 The Prisoner

Orin Swift Cellars is new.

I don’t mean “new” like they were just formed yesterday, or this is their first vintage, or even that you probably haven’t heard of them. They weren’t, the first release of The Prisoner was the 2003 vintage, and it’s entirely likely that you have.

What I mean is that they’re nouveau. They’re young, and vibrant, and current, and modern. Exciting and interesting, doing things and saying things.

Winery honcho/winemaker/jefe Dave Phinney likes him some zinfandel. The first wine he released under the Orin Swift Cellars name was the 2003 Prisoner, a zinfandel-based blend of some incredible Napa juice. The latest vintage is no different.

The 2008 Prisoner is 46% zinfandel, 26% cabernet sauvignon, 15% syrah, 10% petite sirah, 2% charbono, and 1% grenache. The main players, in my opinion, are the first three, and before you read on you should probably try to think, for a second, what a zinfandel/cab sauv/syrah blend might be like.

Ready?

If your first thought was “big,” you get a gold friggin’ star.

Luckily for me, and everyone else who’s had the fortune of drinking the 2008 Prisoner, “big” is not the only appropriate descriptor here. Fruit-forward, balanced, acidic, earthy all work as well. So, the notes, then?

The wine is dark as night in the core of the glass, and lightens to a bright ruby red at the edges. The nose is lush with sweet cherries and darker, richer blackberries, plus a hint of tobacco or cigar box aromas. It smells rich. It smells like it’s not about to fuck around.

The Prisoner is a full-bodied wine that really coats your mouth. Here is an actual note I wrote in my notebook:

Tannin structure out the ass

This, I assure you, should be translated as “lots of structure.” The tannins aren’t rough or overpowering, though. Raspberry and cherry do a little dance, make a little love, and get down with a nicely-balanced earthiness and acidity that just makes itself known on the mid-palate. The lingering finish of cherries keeps you coming back for more.

I say god damn, this is some tasty wine.

The Prisoner has gained a cult following, and it is deserved. This latest vintage is a great example of California red blends done well, and for around $30 a bottle it won’t take your pocketbook captive.

Verdict: A

2008 The Prisoner

2008 The Prisoner

Tags: 2008, A, cabernet sauvignon, charbono, grenache, Napa Valley, Orin Swift Cellars, petite sirah, syrah, zinfandel

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May 19th, 2010

“Wine Is Not Made… Wine Is Grown”

2006 Quivira Anderson Ranch Zinfandel

I haven’t bought in to the whole organic/biodynamic thing in wine yet. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not some ecologically laissez-faire industrialist monster looking for any excuse to burn coal and club baby seals, but wine needs to taste good.

I’ve tried a few attempts at the organic/biodynamic thing (quick sidenote: I don’t want to offend anyone by conflating the two terms, but it seems to me that the latter is a subset of the former. However, since the former is so much more well-known as a term, I will continue to use them in this slashy manner. Carrying on…) and I’ve been less than impressed.

Until I stumbled upon a little winery in Dry Creek Valley I’d (no surprise here, really) never heard of.

Quivira's solar-panel-topped tasting room

Quivira's solar-panel-topped tasting room

Quivira Vineyards and Winery is a total hippie new-agey type place. Fortunately I’m actually pretty down with that in general, as long as your juice brings it. And theirs does, especially our topic of discussion today: the 2006 Anderson Ranch Zinfandel. There’s all kinds of great info on this wine on their website, but I’m here to tell you the most important part: what’s it taste like?

Unlike the baked zins of Lodi and California’s central valley, the zins of Dry Creek Valley always come off a bit subtler, more refined. No escaping that here, so don’t expect to get your ass handed to you by overpowering spice. There’s a smoothness to the big sound, here—more Michael McDonald, less Don Henley, if that makes any sense to you.

In the glass, the wine is a solid dark ruby throughout, with very little change retreating to the edges. The nose features dark chocolate, raspberry, and a bit of a bitter espresso note. You kinda have to dig the bitter (Ed note: I do.) to dig that, but it’s nice.

The 2006 Anderson Ranch is full-bodied, with lots of notes of black pepper and dark spices, tasting a lot like a spice rack smells. But there’s also a pretty sick chocolate note in there, nothing to sniff at (though, certainly, something to sniff).

All in all, this is exactly what I like in zinfandel, and I can highly recommend it. Hopefully, it bodes well for my personal experience in the years to come with organic/biodynamic wine.

Verdict: A-

Tags: 2006, A-, Dry Creek Valley, Quivira Vineyards and Winery, zinfandel

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January 28th, 2010

Odd Blends Do Not Always Work

NV Steven Kent Insieme Red Blend

I’m always down for interesting, different blends. Steven Kent Winery tosses its hat in this particular ring with the Insieme. The Insieme I tasted was non-vintage: some of the grapes were harvested in 2006, and some in 2007. It’s a blend of 34% mourvedre, 30% syrah, 20% zinfandel, and 16% grenache. It’s also 15% ABV, so you better be in the mood for the alcohol.

For me, that alcohol level was kind of a turn-off. It made the nose of the wine smell like rubber and alcohol. It wasn’t disgusting, it wasn’t completely off-putting, but I could tell that the alcohol content of the wine (which I guessed at at the time, didn’t know the exact amount until later) was overpowering other notes on the nose.

The only fruit note I noticed on the palate was kind of a sour cherry, or perhaps black cherry. The wine was very tight, and rough and tannic. I’d like to say it was simply youth, and the wine needs to be laid down for 5-10 years. However, it’s my (as of yet still undereducated) understanding that higher-ABV wines do not cellar well, which leaves me at a bit of a conundrum. I suppose at $30 for the bottle of Insieme, I could buy some, lay it down myself, and try it again in 2016 or so.

But I’d rather spend my money on more enjoyable wine.

Verdict: C+

Tags: C+, grenache, Livermore Valley, mourvedre, Steven Kent Winery, syrah, zinfandel

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January 4th, 2010

Made Up Names Can Make For Great Wines

2007 Tamas Estates Andiamo

The woman at Tamas Estates’ tasting room was very frank.

“Andiamo isn’t a varietal or style. We made up the word.”

Why? It has to do with certain California wine label laws that state when a winery can (and when they cannot) list a grape varietal on a wine’s label. Seventy-five percent of a wine’s content must be of the stated varietal, assuming there is one at all.

Tamas’ “Andiamo” is 50% Zinfandel, 47% Sangiovese, and 3% Petite Sirah. So while it isn’t 75% any one grape (and hence, has a made-up name) it is 100% delectable.

As a friend likes to put it, “that’s some good juice.”

The nose on the Andiamo is very earthy and rich, it smells like an orchard in the summer, you can almost smell tree bark in there (oh yeah… the wine is fermented in oak barrels, isn’t it?). There’s also a hint of warm spice, like nutmeg or cardamom or something similar.

On the palate, the wine is rich and lustrous. Notes of coffee and chocolate mix with a very dark and hearty raspberry note. The wine feels like drinking velvet.

This is not to say it’s anything like, for instance, Porto or Madeira. It’s not thick or sticky feeling, or really all that sweet. But the flavors are big and bold and quite impressive. Recommended.

Verdict: B+

Tags: 2007, B+, Livermore Valley, petite sirah, sangiovese, Tamas Estates, zinfandel

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December 23rd, 2009

A Fruit Bomb From Livermore

2007 Tamas Estates Zinfandel Riserva

I’ve reviewed a couple wines from Tamas already (barbera and sangiovese) and really liked them both. So when the gang headed out to do our big tasting day in the Livermore Valley, we had to put Tamas on our itinerary. I’m glad we did, as a couple of the wines that we tasted that day topped my list along with the Merrillie Chardonnay from Steven Kent.

This wasn’t one of them.

Not that it was an awful wine. Everything from Tamas was decent-to-excellent. But this was not for me at all.

On the nose is cherry. Very heavy cherry. So much cherry, I wondered if someone had dropped a cough drop in my glass, but no, just the zin.

The palate is no different. Huge huge cherry-centered fruit flavor. Seriously, this wine is like drinking a box of Juicy Juice. To be fair, my compatriots did not, as a whole, agree with me, and many of them liked it. But no one raved. Even if you like fruit bombs, the one-note character of this wine is still off-putting.

For the first time, I cannot recommend a Tamas wine. The Riserva is not one of their “touring” wines, as they call them, so it is not available in stores nationwide. Which is fine by me.

Verdict: C-

Tags: 2007, C-, Livermore Valley, Tamas Estates, zinfandel

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