Doing Napa the Right Way

Hello enophiles. After a prolonged break in blogging, I'm finally back to do some wine reviews. Tonight I wanted to talk a little about the trip we took to Napa back in July and highlight one of our favorite wineries from the visit. First off, I have to say, if you're going to Napa you have to do a bed and breakfast and you really should stay in the northernmost town - Calistoga. And if you're choosing a bed and breakfast in Calistoga you have to choose Chateau De Vie. The place is simply serene and the hosts are incredible, not to mention the fabulous breakfasts. Another benefit of the B&B - they can recommend some great small wineries! When we go to Napa we really feel the way to have the best experience is to seek out the smaller guys and just skip the crowded big labels. With this in mind, we were able to find several again this year. One of our new favorites (although the winery is certainly not new) is Vincent Arroyo. Vincent has been making wine in the Napa Valley for over 20 years and he's done a great job of keeping quantity small and quality high. We stopped by, tried several and left with about 6 different bottles. Tonight I wanted to review his 2006 Petite Sirah.

The winerey primarily sells on a "futures" basis meaning you can sign up to have wines delivered to you when they are released and most "sell out" via this method so are never really available for sale through the tasting room. Fortunately we were able to get a bottle of this Petite Sirah while we were there. It's certainly a bold, full bodied wine. With lots of color and great texture, it has an intense nose that to me displays herbal spices and pepper - think almost clove like. Taste wise, I think this wine would probably be even better a few years from now. There is a lot of wonderful P. Sirah flavor here, but also still heavy on tannins. This wine will age nicely. At $32 a bottle it's actually a very good buy for a big Napa red like this, but given the wonderful size of the winery (only 8000 cases total) you won't find it in a store near you. Check out his website linked above and treat yourself to one of these and some of his other great wines. Enjoy.

KinKead Ridge 2008 Viognier - An Excellent Break in a Stressed Life

Well, it's been an exhausting week or so around here, and it's nice to relax a bit and just write about something that really put a smile on my face tonight - a 2008 Kinkead Ridge Viognier/Roussanne blend. Before I get into the wine, I'll just make a note to thank all those who have wished my father well over the last week. He has been in the hospital since last Wednesday, and we're still not totally in the clear, but hopefully things are looking upward. There's an interesting story between he and my love of wine that I'll have to blog about sometime soon.

Anyway, on to the wine...this is a white from one of my favorite Ohio River Valley wineries that we picked up last weekend, and wow do I love it! I know Ron and Nancy out at Kinkead Ridge are very excited about this wine and after tasting it I understand why. This wine is SO refreshing and flavorful all at the same time - it made a wonderful pairing with our cajun shrimp and pasta alfredo tonight! It's a 57% Viognier, 43% Roussanne blend and I detect a bit of honeysuckle on the nose in addition to the fruit forward aromas. In your mouth the wine has just a tinge of tingliness and I actually noticed a bit of spice, almost like ginger or something, again, in addition to the very flavorful fruit notes like orange and pear.

I've always been a big fan or Ron's red wines such as his 2006 Revelation Red and before that the 2005 Syrah, but this white may actually be my favorite wine he has produced. The wine runs $15.95 a bottle and is well worth that. For a list of where to find Kinkead Ridge wines, click here. If you're in the Southern Ohio area, I would really encourage you to visit Kinkead Ridge on a Saturday afternoon and check out all they have to offer. For me, tonight's glass offered a nice relaxing break from some of the stress I've had the past week or so. Tentative plans are to head to Napa next week, so I should have plenty to blog about soon. Happy tasting all, hope you enjoy the first miracle!

A Wine with a Witty Name

Wow, has it been a long time since I blogged about wine!! It's amazing how finding 15 minutes to talk about something you love seems to become so difficult as our daily lives begin to overwhelm us. Here's a toast to hoping we are all always able to slow down and enjoy the things that truly make life enjoyable.

Well, to get back into things, tonight I tried a wine with a really witty name - Goats Do Roam! Of course playing off the French region, this wine actually comes from South Africa. They make a Red, White and a Rose, tonight we had the white. It was a very nice and refreshing wine for a warm summer evening. We've had some long days at work, so just ordered a pizza and opened a bottle for dinner this evening. The nose had hints of pear and in the mouth it created a nice tingly sensation and tasted of apple and pear. I think the cost was below $10 which so many of the good South African wines are currently, so I would consider it a very good buy. We have a bottle of the Goats Do Roam Red which we'll try at a later date, I'll let you know how that one goes. Hope you have all been enjoying the first miracle!

Pedroncelli 2006 Pinot Noir

Another post from vacation at the North Carolina shore. Tonight my wife and I had a kid free night to visit probably the nicest restaurant on Oak Island - Island Way. We were both in the mood for a Pinot Noir so I chose a medium priced one from the Russian River Valley in Sonoma - a Pedroncelli 2006 Pinot Noir. I'm not sure what this would retail for in a store, but the restaurant was offering it for $35 so I'm guessing a retail of around $20. To be honest until tonight I had yet to find a Pinot Noir from CA that I really liked - I'm just too much in love with Oregon Pinot's right now to find the CA ones that much to my liking. However, the menu notes on this one said "soft and velvety" which sounded good to me. The notes were right - this wine was a perfect Pinot Noir. Maybe it just complimented my oysters and seared tuna perfectly, but I loved this wine. There was a bitter of pepper on the nose, then in the mouth it was exactly as advertised, soft and velvety with a slightly spicy finish. I must admit, a California Pinot Noir I really really like. Again, I haven't seen this in a store before, but if you do I would encourage you to pick up a bottle. If you do, let me know what you think, and what you pay for it if you don't mind! Enjoy the first miracle.

A SUPER Deal on a Napa Merlot

It's been a while since my last post, probably because of how busy I've been with running a marathon and planning for vacation. My family and I are on vacation this week at Oak Island, NC. It's a great place, imagine Myrtle Beach with about 10 people for every mile of beach. So here's the interesting wine story related to our vacation at Oak Island. On our first night here we went to the local (small) Food Lion to stock up on some goods for the week. In the wine section I noticed a sign that said Weekly Wine Special - St. Clement 2005 Merlot $7.99. I could hardly believe it! When we were in Napa last summer my wife and I visited St. Clement winery on recommendation from a friend at work. It's a beautiful small winery that sits on a hill, and I could clearly remember that NONE of their wines were much less than $30 a bottle. So even though I couldn't remember their Merlot that well we agreed to buy 1 bottle to see how we liked it then come back for more if it really were as good as we expected. Well the wine is terrific. Very dark with a deep cherry nose; very soft in the mouth with hints of chocolate and berries. So next we looked it up on their website to confirm what we thought - the wine retails for $28 a bottle. This wine was $20/bottle off - needless to say we headed right back to the Food Lion to buy them out. There were 7 bottles left out and I talked to their wine guy to see if they had anymore. Unfortunately he explained that each week their distributor brings one wine to put on special and whatever they have is out on display. Funny enough I've never seen St. Clement in a store, but come to a small Island about as far away from Napa as you can get in the U.S. and there it was for 75% off. Oh well, we've got 7 bottles of this terrific bargain to bring home!

EOS Estate Chardonnay

First off, thanks to an old friend for the last post on a good value wine from Spain, Mr. Tyler Haney. Funny how life works, we were great friends 15 years ago, then as everyone knows, life sends you off in your own different directions. Back at that time neither of us had even had a glass of wine, today thanks to social media we've reconnected and realized we are both passionate about it. I hope to continue seeing posts from Tyler on here increasing the amount of wines we can cover.

As for me, tonight I had a nice valued Chardonnay from EOS Estate. I first tried EOS Chardonnay several months ago at one of the favored shopping sites in Cincinnati - Jungle Jim's. They had a rep there giving out samples, and we bought a few bottles at the time. Since then we were finally able to find it in a nearby Kroger and got some more. At around $13.50 a bottle it's a very reasonably priced Chardonnay and once you try it I believe you realize it's well worth that price and more. My own personal notes on this one: a nose of toffee and earthy tones with a pallet of apricot, apple and buttery oak. We had this tonight with bacon wrapped shrimp, salad and a bread dip of tomatos and feta cheese and the wine was a perfect compliment. It made me really look forward to summer and wish our weather would finally turn that way. I hope you'll try the EOS, as always let me know what you think if you do.

Value from Spain

I, like most wine lovers, can recall the bottle that pushed me over the line from being a casual wine drinker to being a complete wine enthusiast - the '03 Rosenblum Cellars Rockpile Road Zinfandel. At the time I knew very little about wine; I only knew that, for some reason, this wine was different. As soon as I got home from dinner with my wife that evening, I ordered an entire case. A few months later, Wine Spectator agreed with me by ranking this wine #3 on its list of the Top 100 wines of 2005. And so it began...

Sometimes, I'm really amazed at what wine can do. Maybe it's just enhancing that filet mignon you grilled to perfection on a warm spring evening. Or maybe it brings back memories of sitting in a beautiful piazza, leisurely people-watching until the siesta is over. Or maybe, as in this case, it helps old friends reconnect. Regardless, wine is just as much about moments in time as it is about crushed grapes.

But let's be honest. Most of us don't have the time or the means to travel to Florence all that often or to open a bottle of '82 Bordeaux every night. So what do we do on those nights when we're just sitting on the couch after a long day? That's when we need the value wines to fill the gaps. And, as many people have learned over the last few years, Spain is a great place to look for value.

Enter last night's wine - the '06 Panarroz Jumilla, a blend of grenache, syrah, and mourvedre. At $8 per bottle (or less) this wine definitely fits the bill for value. Upon pouring the first glass, I was immediately impressed with the huge nose of plum, with some cedar and blackberry hints as well. On the palette, this wine started with pure sour cherry, followed by more plum, cedar smoke and some black pepper. The long finish was quite pleasing as well. Although I was drinking this wine while watching some basketball and stringing a tennis racket, it struck me that the Panarroz would make an even better food wine.

While this blend would definitely please the Chat du Pape fan on a budget, I would recommend this wine to anyone as a good, solid everyday-drinking wine. Additionally, if you're looking to expand your palette from American or Australian wines, the '06 Panarroz Jumilla would be a great place to start.