The Corkdork - Wine and Food Musing

Unbelievable Value: the 2003 L'Oratoire St. Martin "Réserve des Seigneurs"

I had another astounding wine from Domaine de L'Oratoire St. Martin tonight, the 2003 Réserve des Seigneurs 2003 from Cairanne, Côtes du Rhône Villages. I have been buying this for several years and had quite a few bottles of the very lovely 2001, but this was my first of the 2003s that I put down upon release. I paid US$10.95 for this and it is a wine of great depth, far beyond its price.

As do a lot of the wineries in the Southern Rhône, L'Oratoire St. Martin make a variety of different releases and blends, this one is dominated by Mouvedre with a bit of Syrah in it. It's an earthy, un-filtered treat. When first opened, aromas of roses and violets arise from the glass, giving way eventually to more baking spice scents. In the mouth, it is big and chewy, but neither heavy with alcohol nor grippy tannins. They say in Chateauneuf du Pape that wines go to sleep between 7 and 9 years old, but the wines of the neighboring villages, like Cairanne, seem to do great in 6 to 8 years. This is drinking perfectly now and if you can find any, I would jump on it. Highly recommended.

The best things I have had this week No.1

I'm thinking I should do some shorter posts about the best things I've been able to taste or drink during the week. With friends over this weekend, we had a pretty lavish meal that I prepared and some good wines, one of which is even better today than it was on Sunday.

First up is the wine that has been open for 4 days, the Domaine des Baumard "Cuvée Ancienne" from the Coteaux du Layon. This is an esoteric white wine lover's dream. It consists of a blend of fifteen vintages of Chenin Blanc and according to the label, is never to be repeated. (Never say never...I would check back fifteen years from now!) I was serving homemade chicken liver mousse with black truffles and thought a nice sweet Loire wine would be a good foil for the earthy fattiness of the chicken livers. This wine is actually so earthy and full of sweet honey notes with a bit of pleasant bitterness, that in fact it was too big for the pate.
On its own, the Baumard Cuvée Ancinenne is a knockout though. Serve it with some rich sheep cheese or some milder liver like monkfish or fois gras, and you will have an awesome combination. It's rich and pretty sweet though, so it's not for the dry Chardonnay-only drinker.Recommended.

Instead, with the liver, my choice was the 2006 Belle Pente Riesling from Willamette Valley. The Bell Pente is a simpler wine, still with some sweet fruit to it, but it's super clean and a little lean. It has a lightly floral nose and explosive acidity to counter balance the touch of sweetness on the finish. Like the Coteau du Layon, it's light in alcohol which makes it a great way to start a meal. Recommended.

For the entrée, I made some grilled, marinated lamb (butterflied leg) and wanted some toothsome Syrah. I found a lovely wine that is drinking exceptionally well now, and I'm not sure for how much longer. It's the Rochecourbe Saint-Joseph 2001 from Domaine Alain Paret. Though I've since found some Parker numbers for this in the low 90s, in his seminal book on the Rhone Valley, Alain Paret barely gets a mention, only an address. This wine has a superb mid section to it, full and volupuous. The nose is of spicy cloves and blackberries and on the tongue, it's perfectly ripe and soft. I was surprised to read in the Wines of Northern Rhone, that Gérard Depardieu is part owner of this domaine now (largely due to M.Paret's fine Condrieu) and they get thousands of visitors now! Still, it's recommended.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #56: The Round-up

First of all, thanks needs to go out to all the participants.  I realize that this theme was a little tougher for people outside of metropolitan areas to participate in, and it pushed most of us out of our comfort zone. But, that's what is exciting about Wine Blogging Wednesday; it offers a chance to really explore the sections in the wine books we would normally skip over, or give us an opportunity to seek out something special. Here are results from our exploration of many Fine Kosher Wines from around the globe.

Debbie at Hudson Valley  Wine Goddess tried to visit her local Kosher winery, Kedem (part of the Royal Wine Corp.) in Marlboro, N.Y., but they were closed for Passover on Monday.  She picked up a 2002 Bordeaux (Entre Deux Mers) brought in by the Herzog Family.

Randy from The Wine Whore tried the Fortant Merlot 2005, imported by Skalli Family Wines, a Mevushal wine that got high bang-for-buck points.

Erika from StrumErika.com already had a favorite Kosher wine, Domaine du Castel 2005, but found another to try from the same area near Jersalem in the Judean Hills, Katlav, Wadi Katlav 2005. Worth the splurge? Read her blog and find out!

Ezekiel at A Flowery Song Ezekiel compared the normal supermarket fare, Manischewitz Concord Grape to something a bit finer, The Tishbi Cabernet-Petite Sirah 2007.

Sonadora at Wanna Be Wino would easily recommend the 2005 Galil Mountain Yiron from Galilee.

Michelle & Kevin at My Wine Education  had some samples on hand from Yarden and they opened the 2006 Galil Mountain Barbera from Gallilee.

Rob at Wine Post had the 2006 Galil Mountain Barbera from Gallilee too but had a different take on it.

Lowell from the PSychos' Path, a Petite Sirah focused blog, found one  that fit the bill, the 2005 Carmel Winery Appellation Petite Sirah from the Judean Hills.

Joe from I Wine Dude went the extra mile and tried two very different Kosher wines and has an awesome photo on the site!

Allison at A Glass After Work really took the Kosher theme and ran with it finding four wines, including a Chateauneuf du-Pape and a Prosecco.

Kori at Wine Peeps found a couple she wasn't crazy about, but found the event interesting none-the-less.

Kevin from Under The Grape Tree found some Kosher Pinotage from South Africa - check it out on his blog.

Liza at BrixChicks got a good pick, the 2007 Sion Creek White from Galilee.

John at Anything Wine found another Fortant pick, this time a Cabernet Sauvignon and his blog shows some of the required kosher marks to look for on your next bottle of Kosher wine.

Frank at Drink What You Like is in Australia and had a tough time finding something kosher until he landed on the Teal Lake 2007 Shiraz. Check out his notes.

Tom at Ithacork also took the plunge and tried some of the supermarket standards and some Herzog to compare and contrast. He even gives a little science lesson and de-mystifies the Jancis term, "Foxy".

Rémy from The Wine Case found a Spanish Kosher wine with some unusual grapes. Check it out.

Our humble founder, Lenn of Lenndevours, always the over-achiever, tasted six Kosher wines. His favorite was the 2006 Tzora Vineyards Givat Hachalukim Cabernet Sauvignon.

David from McDuff's Food & Wine Trail got to explore a lot of Kosher wines at a modern Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia, Zahav which has a large selection of Israeli wines, most of them Kosher. Check out his in-depth report.

Both Alder from Vinography and myself from the Corkdork got the royal treatment from Jeff Morgan, who makes very expressive and maybe the most expensive Kosher wines in Napa called The Covenant.

In analyzing all these blogs, what I'm left with is that with some exceptions, most Kosher wineries have some growing to do. While almost everyone that participated had some level of surprise in how sophisticated some of these wines could be, ultimately there were almost equal amounts of mediocre wines and wines with good marks. On the positive note, there were only five that were considered really sub-par. I was pleased that there was such a variety of countries represented: France, Australia, Spain, South Africa, Israel, Italy, and the U.S., with a surprising amount of Israeli wines --the distribution of Israeli wines is far wider than I imagined. 

Wine Blogging Wednesday #56: Fine Kosher Wine: Red C and Covenant Wines

It's WBW time again, and I'm pleased to be hosting this month's theme, Fine Kosher Wines. As I said in my original theme announcement, Jeff Morgan & Les Rudd's Covenant Cabernets from Napa opened my eyes to the fact that Kosher wines could be made exceptionally well in the right hands. And after meeting tasting through the wines with Jeff Morgan, Brian McGonigle of Indy Wines, and Alder from Vinography,  I gained a whole new level of appreciation for anyone that can make superior wine under the constraints of the very fundamentals of Kosher winemaking. In some ways it's like making wine with both hands tied behind your back. Because the acts of picking, crushing, bottling, adjustments, etc., have to be undertaken by a Sabbath observant Jew, someone like Jeff, who is Jewish but isn't as strict as he would need to be to qualify his wines as Kosher, can do very little hands-on winemaking. Fortunately, he has both David Ramey as lead consultant and Jonathan Hajdu (who's observant) as associate winemaker. Jonathan was a cellermaster at Herzog, where the first few years of the Covenant wines were vintified.

  Another major factor in making Kosher wine is the Jewish holiday schedule or the sun down of the friday Sabbath, that can interrupt the process. Careful planning has to take place ahead of time so that all the observant pickers and cellar workers are available when the grapes are ripe and all the grapes are crushed before sun down on Friday. For instance, in the 2004 harvest period, when other Napa growers were picking, there were three holidays that needed to be worked around. Thu. 16 September 2004 was  Rosh HaShanah, Sat. 25 September 2004  was Yom Kippur and many people in Napa were still picking on Thu. 30 September 2004 which was Sukkot. Take out 4 friday nights and Saturdays too, and you have very few full days in September to work. Jeff told us that there were crushes that started very early in the morning and finished just as the sun was setting!

Because these wines are non-Mevushal, (i.e., not boiled or pasteurized) once a non-observant Jew, or a lowly gentile like me pours the wines, they are no longer Kosher. Wine bottles can be handled and transported by non-observers, but can't be opened or poured by them.

On to the wines. I do hope everyone got a better handle on what makes a Kosher wine Kosher, and I'm anxious to read everyone's findings. I know a few bloggers were planning to visit other Kosher wineries (that in itself posed a challenge as the were closed for Passover, of course, once it started on the 7th).

Covenant Wines

2006 Red C
This has a gentler oaking than the Covenant wines below due to using recycled barrels from the regular Covenant bottlings. Though not as chewy as the grander bottlings,but lots of blueberry, licorice, and mushroom/forest floor scents are present. Fruit-forward on the palate to balance some of the heat from the alcohol.

2006 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
Nice bit of cherry pie , mint, and cola to the nose. Boysenberry flavors, licorice, and menthol on the palate with pretty, soft tannins.

2005 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
Much spicier nose with fine grained tannins. This had a larger yield and the wine is more herbal tinged than any of the other vintages.

2004 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
My favorite of the vintages we tried, partly because it is nicely matured at this point and is drinking well. Lots of blue fruit on the nose, with a pleasant bit of menthol and herbs. Great balance between the fruit and oak. Recommended.

2003 Covenant Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa
There were huge spikes of heat in 2003 (as well as in 2007) and the heat added to the richness and darker tannins in this one. Quite floral on the nose, like lily, with mushroom/umami flavors.

Also watch out for the 2008, which we tried in barrel, it was very rich and has good potential.

Thanks again to Lenn, Tim, and all you participants out there in the 'sphere. Check back this weekend for the wrap-up!

WBW Update: More Kosher Wine

We're just a couple of weeks away from the next Wine Blogging Wednesday, which I'm hosting, featuring Fine Kosher Wines. You can find the original announcement here.

For those in the East Bay, near San Francisco, you'll be very pleased with the selection of Kosher wines in Market Hall at Paul Marcus Wines. They had some wines from the Golan Heights in Israel and even a nice looking Provencal red from Bandol. Worth a trip if you're still looking for a good Kosher bottle. Tell them the Corkdork sent you and it's for WBW!

Bargain Italian White: Remo Farina 2006 Bianco de Custoza

After having dinner with Mary Ewing-Mulligan and Ed McCarthy a couple of weeks ago, I thought I should read one of their books cover-to-cover and I picked the right one...Italian Wine for Dummies,  a true insider's guide to Italian wine. Ed and Mary  go to Italy at least twice a year and in this excellent book give anyone who is interested in Italian wine something to think about.  For me, the first thing is reading about Italian whites. I'm constantly surprised by the quality level and value of whites from Piedmont, Tuscany, Aldo Adige, and Northeastern Italy, home to Bianco de Custoza. 

An Italian wine label like this one takes some careful study. At first glance, you may think that Remo Farina is either the region or the grape varietal if you don't know that Bianco de Custoza is actually a D.O.C. region and named for a little town around Lago di Garda (Lake Garda). The grapes used are usually Trebbiano Toscano, Garganega, and Tocai Friulano. For this bottling, the rundown is: Garganega, Trebbiano Toscano, Fernanda, Riesling Italico, Chardonnay and Sauvignon (blanc).

Remo Farina 2006 Bianco de Custoza

The scent on this wine is all about wet river stones (though less stony than than a cinqueterre or falanghina), banana peel, and apples. In the mouth, a touch of Chardonnay rounds it out. This has both good frutiness and minerality to be an excellent all-around Italian white for food. I served this with Pasta Con Branzino (Sea Bass) with tomatoes and capers. Great value and recommended.