Hunting up great wine

John On Wine – Hunting up great wine
Originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal newspaper on  July 24, 2014

John Cesano of John On Wine

Can you imagine Jon Bonné, the wine editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, or Eric Asimov, the wine editor for the New York Times, sitting down to write a piece where they wonder in print which wine to use in a marinade for a jack rabbit their son shot in the head with an open sight 22 rifle and further, that while they were reaching for the wine, the rabbit was making a literal bloody mess of their kitchen as the skinning and gutting had not been done in the field?

The Ukiah Daily Journal wine column will always stand out as unique. We aren’t city folk, and this column will put an exclamation point on that. My son Charlie shot his first rabbit last night and brought the thing home, hoping I would help him dress it out. I used to hunt, but that was 35 years ago; I didn’t like gutting animals then, and I really didn’t want to do it last night. Charlie and his friend Jordan, with the help of YouTube videos for guidance, managed the task just fine.

I made a hasenpfeffer marinade, with a blend of 2008 V. Sattui Zinfandel, Black-Sears Vineyard, Howell Mountain, Napa Valley and 2013 Carol Shelton Wild Thing Rendezvous Rosé, Mendocino County (85% Mendocino County, Cox Vineyard, Ukiah, CCOF Certified Organically Grown; 15% Sonoma County, sustainably grown) wines. I also used red wine vinegar and a ton of herbs from the farm I work for.

Of course, I had to taste both wines. The 2008 V. Sattui Zinfandel was still big and bold as can be with dark black berry and earth notes, brambly fruit supported by wood. It was darn big, too big really. Great as a glass of wine by itself, but it was going to overpower the meat, so to soften the marinade a bit, I opened the 2013 Carol Shelton Wild Thing Rendezvous Rosé. This is such a delightful wine, sweet without being sugary, tart without being puckery, balanced bright succulent strawberry and watermelon fruit with a touch of citrus. The day’s temperature had been over 100 degrees, and the Carol Shelton Rosé was the better wine for summer season heat, while the V. Sattui Zin was more of a winter weight wine.

The rabbit meat will soak for four days and then the boys will cook it. Of course, I would never give the boys a taste of wine, so keep your letters to the editor about the perils of underage drinking to yourself, but if I were to let them taste a wine made to go with a wild hare, I think I would recommend the 2012 McFadden Old Vine Zinfandel. The McFadden Zin is cool climate grown, lower in alcohol, and brighter in fruit notes. A red wine, sweet tart candy noted – cherry, strawberry, and raspberry, with just a tickle of black pepper and herb in support of the fruit. Flavorful enough to go with wild rabbit, but light enough to not overpower it.

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On Friday, August 1, 2014, a group of respected wine writers will sit down to taste flight after flight of Mendocino County wines as judges for the 2014 Mendocino County Fair Wine Competition.

The competition is open to any wine made from Mendocino County grapes, even wineries from out of county may enter their Mendocino County wines. Wineries enter their wines in a spirit of friendly competition and winners get bragging rights for the following year.

The competition judging takes place in the morning and early afternoon, and the winners are announced at a fun dinner early the same evening.

Taste a delicious three course dinner prepared by the Mendocino College Culinary Arts program led by Chef Nicholas Petti of Mendo Bistro, while sampling award winning wines from the competition at the Mendocino County Fair Wine Competition Awards Ceremony and Dinner, open to the public, tickets are just $55 each. Again, the dinner and award ceremony are on Friday, August 1, 2014 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. with plenty of wine from the competition to enjoy.

This year’s dinner benefits the Mendocino College Foundation.

Last year, I sat at a table with Potter Valley folk, and Gracia Brown of Visit Mendocino. Each time any Potter Valley wine award was mentioned, Bronze to Gold, our table cheered wildly. The fun and comradery of the dinner highlight the cooperative nature of the county, even at what is supposed to be a competition.

For your tickets, hit the LINK.

Not open to the public, but fun for the judges who come the day before the competition, there will be a tasting of Coro Mendocino wines hosted by Golden Vineyards in Hopland, and then a six course wine pairing dinner featuring wines of McFadden Farm and Seebass Family Wines plus the overwhelming bounty of fresh, organic, heirloom, and artisanal ingredients provided by Mendocino County’s best protein and produce growers, hosted by Seebass on Old River Road near Talmage

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Speaking of Seebass Family Wines, they recently opened a new tasting room in the Anderson Valley on Hwy 128.

Owners Michelle Myrenne Willoughby and husband Scott Willoughby run things, and their current releases include Chardonnay, Syrah, Merlot, and a Rosé of Grenache, called Fantasie. Look for an Old Vine Zinfandel this August 2014, and new 2013 vintage Chardonnay wines too.

Open 11-5 daily, the tasting room is in the heart of Boonville, right across the street from the Boonville Hotel; visit if you are in the area. This may be Anderson Valley’s only spot without Pinot Noir!

•••

EDITED TO ADD: Okay, a few more words for this online posting that didn’t appear in this week’s newspaper column…first I want to let you know that I made a change for this post and used a hyperlink to the Mendo Wine Comp Dinner Ticket page, where the newspaper piece had a web address as hyperlinks do not work in print ink.

Also, one more mention for this weekend’s Second Annual Anderson Valley Barrel Tasting Weekend event. $20 gets you a glass and wristband, with wonderful barrel tastings, Pinot Noir a major focus for most participating wineries, throughout the Anderson Valley and beyond…Yorkville Highland wineries will also be participating, making this more of a Highway 128 Barrel Tasting weekend (BT128). Online ticket sales have closed. You may purchase tickets at any one of the participating wineries during the event. Payment by cash or check is most appreciated to join the Saturday, July 26 and Sunday, July 27 fun. I will be attending this event as a guest of the Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association, and I am grateful for the invitation.

 

Friends don’t let friends Vacu-Vin

One of my wine industry jobs was with the Wine Appreciation Guild, one of the industry’s largest publishers of wine books and a one stop distributor of both wine books and accessories. My job was to sell wine books and wine accessories to wineries for their tasting rooms, to wine shops, and to other specialty merchants in 42 California counties.

http://www.wineappreciation.com

There are many people here on the interwebs that know about wine, and I’ll carve my own niche by writing from the heart about wine as a means to an end, a beverage to be enjoyed with family and friends, as opposed to the end itself. I am not the guy to read if you are looking for a review of the nearly unattainable, released in three bottle maximum allotment to people on THE LIST only, cult Napa Cab or Russian River Valley Pinot. I love wine, know wine, can share my knowledge; but I am a regular guy.

In addition to telling you about a wine in context, who I shared it with, the food we ate with it, I can also tell you about a good wine book or wine gadget. Go with what you know, I wrote recently, and I will. Out of the thousands of wine writers inhabiting the web, I have unique knowledge. Hopefully, my writing will find an audience thirsty for what I am pouring.

Vacu-Vin. There is no wine preservation system more ubiquitous. Gwyneth Paltrow told Oprah that it is a “must-have” in her kitchen. Every frau and pretentious wine poser in the country has one. Sales of the devices number in the tens of millions.

For the one or two of you who are unfamiliar with Vacu-Vin, here’s what the manufacturers say

http://www.vacuvin.com/Vacuum_Wine_Saver_286_270_267.html

“The Wine Saver is a vacuum pump, which extracts the air from the opened bottle and re-seals it with a re-usable rubber stopper. Place the re-usable stopper in the bottle and extract the air from the bottle using the Wine Saver pump. A “click” sound tells you when you have reached the optimum vacuum level. The vacuum slows down the oxidation process which makes it possible to enjoy your wine again at a later date. The question “how often do I have to pump?” is a thing of the past. The unique and patented vacuum indicator will emit a “click” sound when the correct vacuum is reached.”

The Wine Appreciation Guild carried them, and everyone I worked with wanted them to sell in their stores.

I had a problem. The Vacu-Vin doesn’t work:

http://www.winelife.com/pdf/lab-report-26292-vacu-vin-test.pdf

“The “Vacu-Vin” device as submitted was evaluated to determine efficacy in reduction of oxidative spoilage in opened wines. Using the protocol described above, the “Vacu-Vin” device was found to have no measurable effect in reduction of oxidative spoilage.”

-Gordon Burns, ETS Laboratories, 1204 Church Street, St. Helena, CA 94574

http://www.winespectator.com/magazine/show/id/6257

Vacu-vin doesn’t work, It never has.

Sensorily, to me anyway, the Vacu-vin was a shuck. You could track the deterioration in each sample. Indeed, just recorking the wine worked equally as well – or as badly.

The [Wall Street] Journal asked Professor David Roe of the Portland State University chemistry department to test the gizmo…At best he achieved a vacuum of somewhat less than 70 percent…In just 90 minutes, he reported, the vacuum pressure diminished by 15 percent.

I asked Professor Roe to repeat his test with a newly purchased (newer, ‘improved’, model) Vacu-Vin. The results? “The pump is more efficient, but no more effective,” he reports. “The vacuum is the same, around 70 to 75 percent. And the leak rate is the same: After two hours you lose 25 percent of the vacuum. Overnight – 12 hours – the vacuum is totally gone.”

-Matt Kramer, “A Giant Sucking Sound…And That’s All”

http://www.consumerreports.org December 2006

What to do with leftover wine? Just put a cork in it

UNNECESSARY EQUIPMENT There’s no clear need for Vacu-Vin Vacuum Wine Saver and other wine-preservation systems, our tests suggest.

A lot of people turn to wine-preservation systems that seek to retard or stop oxidation, the chemical process that degrades wine. If you’re among those who swear by such systems, we have surprising news, based on our tests of four widely known brands: No system beat simply recorking the bottle and sticking it in the fridge.

Getting the air out…The Vacu-Vin Vacuum Wine Saver, $10, uses rubber stoppers (two are provided) with a pump that sucks out air.

We tested three varietals with the systems on three different occasions for three different periods of time. For comparison, we also stoppered one bottle with its own cork. After all the bottles spent time in our wine cellar, expert wine consultants compared their contents in blind taste tests with freshly opened bottles.

If our trained experts, with nearly 60 years in the business, couldn’t discern among wine storage systems, most consumers probably can’t, either. So just go ahead and cork it (you can turn the cork over if it’s easier to get in). But try not to wait more than a week or so to drink the wine, and sooner is better.

I would tell the buyers for the winery tasting rooms, the wine shops, and the kitchen stores that the Vacu-Vin doesn’t work – but it didn’t stop most of them, because you, the home customer, wanted to buy and use these things.

You don’t see good restaurants using Vacu-Vins to preserve their wines poured by the glass. You don’t see good wineries using Vacu-Vins in between the wine tastes they poor in their tasting rooms. NY Times wine guru Eric Asimov doesn’t pump air out of wine bottles, he doesn’t believe it does much of anything.

http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/when-age-is-measured-in-days/

When I see a wine bar using a Vacu-Vin, I won’t drink any but the first glass from a bottle.

Here’s the deal: when you open a wine and let it breathe, you are letting tannins dissipate, alcohol flush burn off, and fruit come forward. You’ll find that the hot, harsh, and closed Cabernet at opening becomes a smooth delicious beverage with blackberry and currant notes with a little time. Oxygen is wine’s friend initially.

While I am prepping food for dinner, I usually open a bottle, or more than one bottle if cooking for friends, pour a little of each in a separate wine glass, so I can repeatedly swirl and sniff each. I am looking for the wine to open and become perfect. At that point, I recork the bottle so I can just open, pour, and seal all the way through the meal. I know the last glass will be as good as the first. Every glass perfect.

If I opened the wine, let it breathe, and then ignored it, the fruit would follow the tannins, and perfect would become sad. Oxygen, so important to a wine at opening, becomes wine’s enemy afterward. Leaving a wine open ruins wine over time.

Pumping the air out of a bottle of wine with a Vacu-Vin strips the wine of aroma and bouquet. Each time it is used it ruins the wine. To me, a couple of seconds is like hours of damage.

The Vacu-Vin doesn’t even create a complete vacuum. As tested, fully 25-30% of the air, and oxygen, remains inside the bottle – before the Vacu-Vin fails and all of the air, and oxygen, returns. To me, the worst think about the Vacu-Vin is that consumers are fooled into a false sense of preservation security and don’t seek another, effective, method to save the aroma, bouquet, and flavors of a bottle of wine in between glasses.

Matt Kramer and the Wall Street Journal engaged a University science department professor who measured the Vacu-Vin’s fail using drills and tubes and meters, all very high tech. Similar high tech methods were used by Gordon Burns of ETS Laboratories and the testers at Consumer Reports.

Look, I know that if you are into wine, you have one of these gadgets at home. Want to see it fail before your own eyes? Fill an empty wine bottle half way with mini marshmallows, use the Vacu-Vin as directed, sucking some of the air out of the bottle, creating a partial vacuum at best. As you pump, the marshmallows will swell until they fill the available space inside the bottle. You will see that, as the Vacu-Vin seal leaks and fresh air goes back into the bottle, the marshmallows shrink. You can watch the level of the marshmallows fall from bottle fill to half bottle as the Vacu-Vin fail is total.

While at the Wine Appreciation Guild, the owner Elliot Mackey, knowing my feelings about the Vacu-Vin, put me in a surprise direct face-to-face meeting with one of the company’s representatives. I felt a bit awkward, but presented him with much of the evidence I have laid out here for you. The representative assured me that he had heard these charges before and had a “wealth of anecdotal evidence” to counter it.

Just because a non critical taster, perhaps an actress appearing on Oprah, thinks that her Vacu-Vin is doing something beneficial, and allows that incorrect assumption to color expectations at tasting her old wine, self deluding herself that the wine is well preserved – just because there are tens of millions of people who got suckered, don’t know it, and think this junk works – well, so what? A wealth of anecdotal evidence does not counter evidence of Vacu-Vin’s complete lack of efficacy, nor does it counter Vacu-Vin’s fail in blind tastings performed by sommeliers and other wine professionals.

I am a believer in never presenting a problem without a possible solution. I’ve created a problem by telling the truth as I see it. There are tens of millions of people ruining their wine, thinking they are saving their wine’s quality. I know I won’t reach quite that number of readers, but for the few who do find their way to my blog, I’ll tell you how I keep wines delicious in between glasses.

I recork the bottles. Believing it matters, I use a decoratively topped, denser than normal, non-porous Corker instead of the old porous cork. If I am going to keep the wine for more than a couple of days, I pair a blast of Private Preserve (nitrogen/argon/inert gasses in a can) and the Corker and have experienced solid longer term storage.

http://thecorker.com

http://www.privatepreserve.com

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Oil and Vinegar preservation:

For the foodies out there who have made it this far through a wine entry, I use the Private Preserve/Corker combo on my specialty oils and vinegars for the kitchen and have eliminated the oil goes rancid and vinegar goes musty equivalent of wine goes yucky.

Oh, and if you have pour spouts in your oil and vinegar, or wine, you are just letting it breathe and go bad. So unless you are Gordon Ramsey and go through multiple bottles of oil/vinegar/wine in the kitchen each night, throw away the spouts, they are as ridiculously bad as a Vacu-Vin.

Just saying’.

DISCLOSURE: I have sold Corkers in art and craft shows, I do not now. I am very experienced with their efficacy. I worked for the Wine Appreciation Guild over seven years ago, I do not now. I have not worked with Gordon Ramsey, but am willing to accept a free meal from him.