Wine Wanderers #4

French Hill Calaveras County 2006 Zinfandel

It's Better Where (and When) It's Warmer

The Zinfandel grape is hot. It's one of the most popular varietals grown in the US (10% of all of the combined California Vineyards grow Zinfandel, and is grown in 15 states, including Washington, Illinois, Arizona, Ohio, Nevada and Massachussetts), trailing only behind the colossal Cabernet Sauvignon and the celebrity Chardonnay. If Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay are the king and queen of the wine realm, it could be said that Zinfandel is the joker - a kind of wild card wine that could be paired with almost any food, and one with the most personality. It can be brooding or plucky, burly or supple, jammy or intense. Typically, though, it's rich and bold: a swaggering braggart of a wine that is characterized by a bigger body and nuanced by a pot pourri of spices in its finish: and the spices are as diverse as what you can find at your local supermarket spice rack.

In warmer climes, the Zinfandel grape really makes the scene. This last weekend, I had the opportunity to work on the winery at Avio Vineyards in Amador County. Amador is one of the hottest regions in California, which cues a good Zinfandel to take the stage (the heat evokes the sweetness in the grape and enhances the spices). The winery owner asked me to turn on the irrigation system of the Zinfandel field. I turned the spigot, and heard the water rush through the plastic/rubber pipes, the release holes emitting a chorus of hundreds of small, high-pitched alien squeals. It sounded like the grapes themselves were filling up to the capacity of their skins, nearly at exploding point. Later, I was busy labelling, foiling and boxing bottles of their 2006 Sangiovese. I had hoped to have had a quick nip of the Zinfandel at the end of the day, but the tasting room was shuttered for the evening, and so I wandered off into downtown Sutter Creek, ready to quaff my thirst for a meaty, hearty glass of wine.

The following day, DeAnne and I made for the hills (namely, Mokolumne Hill in the adjacent Calaveras County) to savor the succulent sauces of our one of our favorite wineries, French Hill. She (smartly) purchased a bottle of their Alicante Bouschet (more on this wine in subsequent issues). I tasted their 2006 Calaveras County Zin. Perhaps it was a touch of heatstroke, but at the time of purchase I was impressed by its flavor: wonderfully redolent of oak, nicely tannic, swelling with berry flavors, and peppery enough for me to make the move and purchase a bottle.
We headed, then, through Murphy's, and then down back to the Bay Area, entering the Livermore Valley in order to catch the Niles Canyon Wine Train. We boarded in Sunol, CA (just shy of the Livermore Valley AVA) and sat in an open air compartment, eagerly awaiting the 5 wine and cheese pairings. The Niles Wine train rattles along a stretch of track between Sunol and Niles Canyon, closer to Fremont, CA. The train wended through a small golden valley studded with the deep, dark emerald of oak trees. We paired an Elliston Sparkling wine with special brie, a 2007 Eckert Viognier with Taleggio, a 2006 Page Mill Livermore Valley Cab with a cheddar, a 2006 Wood Family Madden (yes, John Madden) vineyard Syrah with aged Jack, and finally, a Westover Vineyards Petit Syrah port with a Blue Danish (cheese). The hot sun brought out the soothing scents of the oak trees around us. That, combined with the wine, had our senses doing cartwheels. As the night grew cooler, we opted to head back home and open the 2006 Zin we had just purchased at French Hill, hoping to have the same sensual experience. Sadly, that was not the case.

We promptly decanted the bottle in our back yard. As this was occuring, a slate-colored marine layer blocked out our afternoon sun, and a sharp wind blew out of the west. It was all too damn ominous. We opened the bottle, and let the inky wine flow into our glasses. Upon tasting, we realized that the notes of cherry and oak had disappeared, it had become increasingly jammy (which is more typical of a coastal Zin), and the wine had lost its spice. The smoky aftertaste, characteristic in most Zins that we like, had vanished as well. We attempted to salvage the bottle by bringing it back indoors - but at this point it was too late: the Zin was at the mercy of the extreme temperature change. The whole of the weekend had literally evaporated in the empty aftertaste of the wine. It's typical to store a Zinfandel at around 58-61 degrees. But this Zin suffered the change as well as a Miami local tries to acclimate to a blizzard in Buffalo. Some wines should just remain in warmer climes - this one is one of them.


The 2006 French Hill Zinfandel retails for about $18.00 per bottle. This is a perfect wine to sit and sip on a porch in nice, warm weather. If you're going to open it up in colder climes, but a sweater on it.

Wine Wanderers #3

Elliston 2005 Pinot Blanc

The Mutant of Sunol

There is a little winery ocated on a 3-acre parcel just a couple of miles shy of the sleepy little town of Sunol, located west of the Livermore Valley AVA. An elegant, though somewhat austere, 3-story, 17-room, 18th-century neo-Romanesque manse is situated at the top of the estate, a few meters from the entrance gate. This is the Elliston Estate, a graceful structure complete with portico and columns, and built with walls from 32-inch sandtone. The Estate was completed in 1890 by Samuel Ellis, who became San Francisco's chief of police in the late Victorian era (note that this was the first successful police department, replacing the earlier vigilante squads that were maintaining "law and order" in post-Gold-Rush San Francisco). Later, the Estate became a sanitarium, but then was purchased by the Awtrey family in the late 1960s and restored to its original state in the 1990s. Elliston Winery now creates a mutant.

The mutant in question isn't a slobbering Quasimodo-esque monstrosity from a shlocky 1950s movie that goes terrorizing a local village, nor is it something you'd see from the pages of Marvel Comics. It's the Pinot Blanc Grape: somewhat of a rogue varietal that sometimes grows as a kind of ugly duckling amidst the Pinot Noir or Pinot Gris varietals. It resembles the Chardonnay Grape, but lacks the flavor qualities. Elliston's mutation grows and glows on the nearby Buttner family estate.

Pinot Noir can be genetically unstable, and, can occasionally bear a cane of white fruit amidst the black ones. Pinot Blancs were used in the creation of Burgundy and Champagne blends though today, they are not widely used as such. The Pinot Blanc is now popular in the Alsace region of France, in the Baden viticultural region of Germany, in Northern Italy, and in California.

What distinguishes the Pinot Blanc from the Chardonnay is its tangier, nuttier flavor. We uncorked a bottle of the 2005 Elliston Pinot Blanc during an especially sweltering late afternoon, last week. DeAnne was recovering from a fever-ridden night. Tired of the countless cups of Jasmine tea and the numerous glasses of orange juice she had been emptying down her gullet through the earlier part of the day, we decided on a lighter-bodied, sweeter wine - one that had a little tang to it. The Pinot Blanc was perfect. The wine is almost completely translucent, resembling yellow-tinted water. The sight belied the taste, however: the fragrant bouquet contained strong elements of oak, honey and vanilla. The tart apricot and apple tickled our noses and tongues. When the wine warmed it, the taste mutated a bit more to the temperature, growing into something, bigger, bolder,and smokier.

We paired the Pinot Blanc first, with a mild Brie. Strangely, the cheese brought actually sweetened the wine (a pleasant surprise), and wiped out the tartness. Then we paired it with a Gruyere. We assumed the strong Gruyere would crush the lighter characteristics of the Pinot. The combination, however, was a very pleasant sweetness - a kind of subtle fruit and sugar combo that resembled candied fruit (and pleasant, too, because obviously, DeAnne's head cold was subsiding).

But the strangest part was that the candied fruit flavor lingered for some moments after, and it was almost as if our taste was affecting our sense of smell, because everything breath we drew seemed sweet. We double-checked our mouths to make sure they suddenly hadn't mutated into snake tongues.

Nope. Sweet.

Elliston 2005 Pinot Blanc retails for $12-$13. Elliston Produces a small harvest every year, so it's hard to find unless you visit the winery. The next new release is their 2006 Pinot Blanc -which will be released later this year.