Wine Tasting 101

John Cesano of John On Wine

John On Wine – Wine Tasting 101

Originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal newspaper on Thursday, November 6, 2014; written by John Cesano

Wine tasting is daunting for some folks. If you have never gone to a winery tasting room, for a wine tasting, the uncertainty of what to expect, can be a little scary, even intimidating.

Beer is simple, you go to the corner store, grab an ice cold six-pack out of the cooler, pay for it, take it home, open a bottle, and drink it. No one is judging you. It is just beer in a bottle, and then in your belly. Food pairings are not much of a concern with beer; chips, nuts, pretzels will all do just fine.

If you watch Frasier and his brother Niles in reruns, then you might think wine is pretentious and that the little rituals might trip you up and make you look foolish. Put any such concerns out of your mind.

For the most part, wine – to me, and to many Italian Americans in northern California – is food. Wine is just one more ingredient, or dish, among many, in a larger meal, and wine should complement your food and make it taste better.

One of my favorite things about a Chef’s Wine Dinner at a good restaurant, like Crush or Patrona here in Ukiah, is that perhaps six wines will be poured and perhaps ten food dishes will be served, and you are afforded the opportunity to try sips of different wines with different foods to see what pairings work for you, a wonderfully playful experiment of trial and error, or better yet trial and delicious success, over an entire evening…well, that is a great way to be awakened to the wonder of food and wine pairings, surrounded by 70 other people having the same sensory overloading experience, oohs and ahhs, and, as the evening goes on, groans of delighted contentment, everywhere.

The next of these opportunities is next Wednesday, November 12, 2014, when Chef Jesse Elhardt and his team at Crush pair mushroom dishes with the wines of Cesar Toxqui Cellars, at what I consider the premier event of the entire 2014 Mendocino County Mushroom, Wine & Beer Festival. Surprising no one, I have my ticket already. Tickets are $65 in advance, or $75 at the door, and include food, wine, tax & tip.

Cesar Toxqui will have his Cesar Toxqui Cellars wines featured at the Chef’s Wine Dinner at Crush in Ukiah on Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Similarly, the premier event of the 2015 Mendocino County Crab, Wine & Beer Festival will be the McFadden Farm Winemaker Dinner at Crush on Wednesday, January 21, 2015. This dinner will be a crabapalooza, and as crab costs more than mushrooms, tickets are $75 in advance, and also includes food, wine, tax & tip. There will be no tickets at the door, as this event will sell out.

Contact Crush by calling (707) 463-0700 to make reservations for either of these two great opportunities to play with food and wine!

Visits to winery tasting rooms should be as much fun, or certainly more fun than they too often are, I’ll admit. If you are a novice, and want to feel comfortable, come and visit me at the McFadden Farm Stand & Tasting Room in Hopland. I’m in most every Tuesday through Friday from 10-5 each day, and my incredible team handles most of the other days. We’re the top rated tasting room in California by the San Francisco Chronicle, because we want you to enjoy yourself, because we give you an experience, and because we treat you with respect.

First things first, wine tasting should be complimentary. This isn’t liquid gold and rubies, it is fermented grape juice, and I am thrilled to do away with the pretension of Napa County for visitors to our humble tasting room. If you value your juice too greatly to pour a taste of it, or don’t know how to add the cost of samples to your cost of goods when setting prices, then Napa County is one county south, then another east. That said, while wine tasting is complimentary, tossing a bill or two in the jar is never frowned upon.

Next thing, and perhaps the most important thing to know: the dump bucket is your friend. I like to pour through all available wines, usually about a dozen, give or take, and if you try to drink a dozen pours then you will be drunk. I pour an ounce of wine in a nice big glass, and if you swirl the wine then you can break free some of the aroma molecules, and put your nose into the glass, and slowly sniff in all the smells. Then take a little sip, and see what flavors the wine has. The wine flavor will taper away, sometimes slowly, sometimes abruptly, and more flavor notes may be found here on the finish. Finally, dump the remaining wine from the glass into the bucket.

I let people experience the wine before I share the notes that the wines present to me. I also tell a little story about each wine, and put our wines in context by describing our farm, our growing choices, the winemaking styles, and much more. A visit with me can often last an hour, and involve a dozen wines, but a mere sip of each wine means less than an ounce consumed and critical judgment is still intact, so wine buying or wine club joining decisions are about the wine and not the result of alcohol making your decisions for you.

Here’s another thing that is important to own: you are the boss of you, you are the ultimate judge of what you like and do not like. I pour Gold medal, Double Gold medal, Best of Class and Best of Show wines. I have wines that professional judges unanimously voted Gold, in competition after competition after competition. I pour great wines, AND YOU ARE FREE TO NOT LIKE THEM. Not everyone likes everything, and with 12 wines to pour, there is a great chance you’ll find one or two, or all 12, to like or not like.

As I pour, I do mention foods that each of the wines I pour pair well with, often sharing recipes, because a wine at first taste that was just good can be the best wine you’ve ever tasted when it accompanies   the right dish.

After running through all of my wines, with the nosing, sipping, and dumping, I always ask visitors if they would like to revisit any wines, because sometimes one sip just isn’t enough. I also like to recommend other wineries to visit based on what my visitors liked most, and perhaps a local place to eat between wine tasting visits.

I write about wine because I do not want anyone to be intimidated by it. I pour wine in much the same way. Nicely enough, there are many other incredibly friendly and fun folks pouring wine throughout Mendocino County, and every one of us would love to pour wine for you. We’re gentle with first-timers; if you haven’t been wine tasting yet, give it a try.

 

Wine blends, both European and local

John On Wine – Wine blends, both European and local

Originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal newspaper on Thursday, October 2, 2014

Recently, I received an email from David and Merry Jo Velasquez of Cannon Falls, MN; after visiting the tasting room where I work and finding this wine column, they visited France and suggested a column, “outlining the GSM grape varieties that make Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine so popular, and which winemakers are doing similar blends in Northern CA,” as well as exploring the “French law/custom [that] allows 13 grape varieties to be used in CdP wines…[and] other stringent requirements which were fascinating to learn about.” They also mentioned the “terroir” (the land, climate, the environment grape vines grow in) and sent some terrific photos.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape vineyard

Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a town in the Rhone wine region of southeastern France. Red varieties allowed are Cinsaut, Counoise, Grenache Noir, Mourvèdre, Muscardin, Piquepoul Noir, Syrah, Terret Noir, and Vaccarèse (Brun Argenté). White and pink varieties are Bourboulenc, Clairette Blanche, Clairette Rose, Grenache Blanc, Grenache Gris, Picardan, Piquepoul Blanc, Piquepoul Gris, and Roussanne. The 13 varieties historically mentioned by David and Merry Jo have expanded to 18, as today the Noir (black/red), Gris (grey), and Blanc (white) versions of individual grape varieties are considered separate.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape red grapes reaching maturity – note the rounded stones in the vineyard that the vines fight through

Famed for GSM (Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre) Rhone blends, some of my favorite wines tasted have come from Châteauneuf-du-Pape. By far, most of Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines are red, and most use Grenache as the base, or largest element, of their blends. Lighter in body, two things allow for wines of greater intensity:

First, yields are reduced with local laws prohibiting greater than 368 gallons to be produced per acre of fruit. By dropping fruit during the growing season, the remaining fruit receives greater vitality from the vine, and the result is greater flavor. Second, instead of holding the wines in oak barrels, and having the oak overpower the flavors of the grape, much of the wine is held in concrete containers, a neutral container that better protects against oxidation than oak during winemaking. Here, in northern California, there are a number of wineries using Rhone varietals who have purchased concrete ‘eggs’ to make their wine in.

Richly ripe white grapes from Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Blends done right are wines greater than the sum of their parts. Often Cabernet Sauvignon, a big firm wine, will have some Merlot blended in as the Merlot will soften the wine; and the reverse is true, an overly soft Merlot can benefit from the backbone a little Cabernet Sauvignon can offer to the blended wine’s structure.

Just as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are often blended together, so too are Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon, and Zinfandel and Carignane. There are many ‘classic’ blends, and they are classics because they work, the wines blended are often better than the wines held separate.

In California, as long as there is 75% or more of any single wine grape variety in the wine then that grape variety can be used on the label; in other words, the Zinfandel you buy at the store has at least 75% and up to a full 100% of Zinfandel in the bottle, but might contain some other wine grape varieties – up to 25% in total. There are many local wineries that make stellar blend wines, and do not bother with hitting 75% of any varietal, instead giving their blend wine a fanciful proprietary name like Black Quarto, Atrea Old Soul Red, or Campo de Stella.

In Europe, wines are named for the areas they come from, and a Châteauneuf-du-Pape red wine can be made from any of nine grape varieties and is most often a blend, while a red wine from Bordeaux will be made from a shorter list of grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carménère. Just as Châteauneuf-du-Pape has a protocol, part law and part tradition, for making wine, so too does Bordeaux, and nearly every other geographically identifiable wine area in Europe.

Meritage (rhymes with heritage, it is an American wine, not French, so please do not force a French mispronunciation) is a wine made outside of Bordeaux using the grapes used in Bordeaux, where an individual grape variety does not meet the minimum percentage threshold allowing the wine to receive a grape variety name. Starting as a California only association of blended wines, Meritage wines expanded first to the United States, and then internationally.

In all of the United States, there is only one geographically identifiable area that makes wines from an agreed upon list of grapes, and following an agreed upon production protocol, following the European model, but is by agreement among the participating wineries and not under force of law, and that unique in America area is Mendocino County, and the wines are Coro Mendocino.

A Quintet of Coro Mendocino Wines

Coro is Italian for Chorus and, just as a chorus should be a harmonious blending of voices, Coro wines should be a harmonious blending of grape varieties. Every Coro Mendocino starts with Zinfandel, Mendocino County’s most planted grape, and must contain no less than 40% and no more than 70% Zinfandel. Of note is that there is not enough Zinfandel, 75% minimum, to label the wine as a Zinfandel. The supporting ‘blend’ grapes include Syrah, Petite Sirah, Carignane, Sangiovese, Grenache, Dolcetto, Charbono, Barbera, Primitivo, plus up to 10% “free play” where an individual participating Coro Mendocino winery can allow their signature style to shine through, with an Anderson Valley winery blending in some Pinot Noir or inland Mendocino winery blending in some Cabernet Sauvignon as an example. None of the supporting blend grapes is to exceed the percentage of Zinfandel in the finished wine.

Coro Mendocino wines also adhere to winemaking protocols, with wine chemistry limits and oak and bottle aging spelled out for participants. Perhaps the most unique aspect of the Coro Mendocino program is that each winery puts their wines through a rigorous quality assurance regimen; first the wines are blind tasted several times as barrel samples by all the participating wineries with constructive criticism offered up for each wine in an effort to produce the very best wines possible, and then the wines go through a pass/fail, Coro/No-Coro, blind tasting before they may carry the Coro Mendocino label.

Each Coro within a vintage, winery to winery, is different, just as each Coro within a winery, vintage to vintage, is different, and yet there is a thread that ties all Coro Mendocino wines together, in much the same way that all wines from Châteauneuf-du-Pape or Bordeaux are tied together, but with an assurance of quality.

Barra, Brutocao, Clos du Bois, Fetzer, Golden, McFadden, Parducci, and Testa each made a Coro in the most recently released vintage, 2011, and the wines can be tasted and purchased at each individual winery’s tasting room, or all can be purchased at SIP! Mendocino in Hopland. The best of the Coro from each vintage, produced from organically grown grapes, is also available at the Ukiah co-op and on Patrona restaurant’s wine list in Ukiah.

 

January is busting out all over

John Cesano of John On Wine

John On Wine ­ – January is busting out all over.

Originally published in the Ukiah Daily Journal on January 9, 2014 by John Cesano

 

I know the saying is “June is busting out all over,” and I love June, but we’re in January and there are lots of events this month, so here goes:

Patrona Restaurant & Lounge, located at 130 West Standley in Ukiah, is a wine-friendly restaurant that I am finally getting around to mentioning. In their own words, “we serve refreshing lunches and inspired dinners using the freshest Mendocino sourced ingredients. We have a huge Mendocino wine list and a full bar serving the cocktails of your dreams!”

Having eaten there a dozen times in the last six months, I can attest that they have delicious food, a terrific wine list and possibly the best cocktails in Ukiah. I’m a wine guy, but I love stopping in after work to sample whatever brilliantly conceived special cocktail is being offered that day.

Patrona is pairing Roederer Estate wine maker Arnaud Weyrich with Patrona chef Craig Strattman for a very special Crab and Wine Dinner starting at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 18.

The working menu, subject to change, features a crab eggroll in sesame aioli and Roederer Brut; poached crab, green apple and avocado in a saffron curry and 2012 Carpe Diem Chardonnay; chicken and crab with a Winter Pin Nut Pistou and 2004 Roederer Estate L’Ermitage (Wine Enthusiast magazine’s #1 wine of 2013!); pork belly with crab or mushroom pastry in a crab sauce and 2011 Carpe Diem Pinot Noir; and a Crepe and Roederer Estate Sparkling Rose.

The dinner, food and wine, will run $75 per person. For more information, or to secure your spot, call Patrona at (707) 462-9181.

On a related note, Patrona is making Monday a little more magical with a special wine 50 percent discount on all bottles of wine. You can look over your menu, choose the perfect bottle to pair with your food, enjoy the wine at half off, and take any unpoured wine home for later enjoyment.

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Second Saturday in Hopland will take place on Jan. 11th. This January edition of Second Saturday sees several tasting room managers featuring the crab dishes that will be paired with wine over the following two weeks. Visit Ray’s Station, McFadden Vineyard, McNab Ridge, Cesar Toxqui Cellars, Graziano Family of Wines, Milano Winery, Naughty Boy, and Rivino tasting rooms to sample delicious complimentary appetizers and wine pairings. Don’t forget to stock up on local wines at the very affordable Hopland-wide January Case Sale event.

The Mendocino County Crab, Wine & Beer Fest is January 17-26 this year. More than 40 winery tasting rooms throughout Mendocino County, with roughly half along or near Highway 101 and the other half along Highway 128, will be celebrating January’s bounty of the county: Dungeness Crab.

Enjoy the most delectable crab creations, from crab and corn chowder at Milano Family Winery to crab mac and cheese at McFadden in Hopland, and crab and Pennyroyal Farm Laychee Wontons at Navarro to Blini with creamy Crab at Yorkville Cellars along Highway 128. Most of the winery tasting room crab dishes will be served on the weekends, but the many restaurants of Mendocino County, whether inland or on the coast, will be serving up special crab-centric menus during the event, and the biggest event of the festival falls on my birthday (a coincidence, I’m fairly sure) with the 15th annual Crab Cake Cook Off & Wine Competition taking part on Saturday, January 25 from noon-3 p.m.

For more information about everything Crab this month, go to VisitMendocino.com/crabfestival

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Barrel Tasting 101, runs Saturday, Jan. 18 and Sunday, Jan. 19, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day, during the Crab, Wine & Beer Festival, and stretches from Hopland to Calpella and Ukiah to Redwood Valley.

The $10 price includes one commemorative wine glass. Each tasting room will be offering crab themed pairings.

Participating winery tasting rooms include: Barra of Mendocino, Brutocao Cellars, Campovida, Cesar Toxqui Cellars, Frey Vineyards, Graziano Family of Wines, Jaxon Keys Winery & Distillery, Jeriko Estate, McFadden Farm Stand & Tasting Room, McNab Ridge Winery, Milano Family Winery, Naughty Boy Vineyards, Nelson Family Vineyards, Parducci Wine Cellars, Ray’s Station, Rivino, Saracina, Seebass Vineyards, Simaine Cellars, and Testa Vineyards.

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Check out Zinfandel Advocates & Producers’ (ZAP) ­ The Zinfandel Experience on Wednesday, Jan. 22 through Saturday, Jan. 25 at various spots in the bay area. If you love Zinfandel, this is your event!

The event kicks off for trade and media at Rockwall in Alameda on Wednesday when Tim Fish moderates a panel that includes Morgan Twain Peterson of Bedrock, Tegan Passalacqua of Turley, and Mike Officer of Carlisle; three Zinfandel powerhouses.

My two favorite events from the past fall on Thursday at The Presidio and Friday at the Four Seasons, both in San Francisco. Thursday features Epicuria, an evening tasting of food from top restaurants and caterers paired with Zinfandel from some of California’s best producers, is an amazing event. Friday’s panel tasting, Flights, is enjoyable for the sit down, off the cuff comments offered by Zinfandel luminaries on a Zin-centric topic, with flights of Zinfandel poured to illustrate points.

Friday evening is the big and fancy event, the Winemaker’s Dinner and Auction at the Four Seasons. Everyone who has attended raves about this event. I have not attended…yet. There is a small chance, space permitting, that I may be able to attend this year.

Saturday is the big day, with the giant Grand Tasting, which has been changed into smaller educational tasting tracks this year: Sensory Tasting, Reserve & Barrel Tasting, and Terroir Tasting. All three events within an event take place at The Presidio. For more information, or to grab tickets to these very limited space events, visit Zinfandel.org.

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January offers many great events, and you’ll see me at a number of them. I know we need rain, and that means the winter cold that comes with it, but this January I find myself wishing I was surrounded by June. I love June’s warmth, and the perfect combination for me, not for farmers but for me, would be to enjoy a little June in January. Cheers!