I need a moment to revel in this, people. Please, indulge me a moment, for I have met them, in person.

T-o-i-l-e-t   f-r-o-g-s…. As in, frogs that live in a toilet. Yes, seriously, and for realz, as the youngins say these days.

The toilet frogs moment comes courtesy of Alto de la Ballena (literally, “height of the whale [hills]”), a relatively small producer (about 55k bottles) with a relatively small vineyard area (about 20 hectares) in a relatively small country (Uruguay) who are making relatively excellent wines that are not yet available in the U.S. (though they are working on it; it’s a situation I sincerely hope changes after this, and not just because they showed me their toilet frogs).

The story begins in the Sierra de la Ballena, a stretch of hills that begin at a whale-watching peninsula near the seaside resort town of Punta de Este, a spot where the seafaring mammals stop during their August/September migration to Patagonia. Taking their name from the whales, the Sierra de la Ballena undulate to the north, about fifteen kilometers inland to the town of Maldonado, which is where Alvaro Lorenzo and his wife Paula Pivel decided to plant their vineyards in 2000/2001.

Lorenzo and Pivel were all alone on the steep, rocky, gravel, granite, limestone, and schist hills in Maldonado.

“At the time, no one was here,” Lorenzo told me when I visited the property as a guest of Wines of Uruguay; “we took the risk.”…

Turns out there was good drainage in them thar’ whale hills, as well as straight-line ocean breezes. The wines turned out better than they expected, so much so that they inspired newcomer Bodega Garzon’s choice for where to plant their vineyards, after consulting winemaker Alberto Antonini tasted them.

Lorenzo and Pivel planted quote a menagerie of grape varieties on their hilly slopes: Cabernet Franc, Tannat (“just because,” noted Lorenzo), Syrah, Viognier, Merlot (which he thinks is “the best for Uruguay; there is too much Merlot in the world… but it’s outstanding here”), but no Cabernet Sauvignon (“it starts to rain when Autumn is coming,” he told me, and so earlier ripening varieties fare best).

Alto de la Ballena’s take on how to tame the tannins of the rugh-and-ready Tannat was to blend it with the more fragrant Viognier. The blend was their unexpected stunner on the market; they expanded production due to its success. According to Pivel and Lorenzo, they press the Vognier, then co-ferment its skins with the Tannat, finally blending the Viognier juice back in to create the finished wine (“You get more control of the situation that way,” Paula mentioned).

Their tasting room area is still a lot more tree house than it is sexy tourist destination, but it’s functional and has stunning views of the area and their vineyards. Which is where the toilet frogs (!) come in…

They have frogs that live in the rim of their toilet, which is in a bathroom accessible from the outside. If you’re a guy, you won’t notice them until after you pee, since it’s the flushing that scares them out of their toilet-rim safe-haven, sending them scurrying about in a mad scramble to avoid being flushed completely down the toilet. Pivel told me that they’ve tred getting rid of the little buggers, and so far nothing’s worked, so they’ve decided that it’s more natural to let them hang out for the time being.

Okay, you’re right, we should’ve just stuck to the wines…

2012 Alto de la Ballena Cabernet Franc – Merlot Rosé (Uruguay)
Price: about $12
Rating: B

One of the most interesting rosés I’ve tasted this year. It’s quite dark, like the rosés favored in Spain, and full of red flowers, herbs, savory currants and a stony minerality (yeah, I know, I hate writing it, too). It’s pungent, structured, and with a demeanor that seems to match its dark shade. Call it rosé for the hard-core red wine lovers (I mean, just look at it!!!):

2009 Alto de la Ballena Reserva Cabernet Franc (Uruguay)
Price: about $25
Rating: B+

Dense, savory, red currants dancing on a black cherry laminate floor. Only the floor also has dried figs and bits of earth and exotic spices embedded in it. The disco lights do get a little hot, but the silky-feeling, tart-red-fruit leisure suit core keeps things cool enough (alright, alright, I’ll stop now).

2010 Alto de la Ballena Reserva Tannat-Viognier (Uruguay)
Price: about $25
Rating: B+

For me, this blend (15% Viognier) was one of the first and one of my favorite Tannats tasted during en entire week spent tasting mostly Tannats in Uruguay. Plummy, floral, spicy, exotic, eccentric, energetic, dark, rocky, leathery, figgy, silky… It was made to make friends, but in doing so remains true to itself, and its roots (those of both place and grape).

2010 Alto de la Ballena “Cetus” Syrah (Uruguay)
Price: about $50
Rating: A-

Their tour-de-force, named after the eye of the whale. 1800 bottles made, and so far sold only in Uruguay (unfortunately for us). Where to begin… really, the only thing not going for it is the finish, which ends a tad sorter than I’d like; otherwise, this is a stunner. Raspberry, toast, smoked meat, spices, hints of gravel and iron; it’s lively, broad, peppery and about as pretty and compelling as a real-life close-up with that sea-mammals olfactory orb, lashes and all (not that I’d know).

Cheers!

I’ve got a long (in Internet time) history with the WBAs: I’ve been a winner, a criticizer, a judge, and an improvement-committee-member (yeah, I know, that last one does not quite roll mellifluously off the tongue, does it?). This year, I’m a finalist in the Best Overall Wine Blog category (thanks to the judges, and most especially to you for that!).

Please consider voting, as the recognition of hard work and efforts well-spent probably means a great deal to those who are among the finalists. Also, it’s the easiest way to fill your good karma quotient fit the day. And if you don’t vote, then the fleas of one thousand camels might infest your armpits [ editor's note: this may not actually be true ].

You’re under no obligation to vote for me, of course, unless you want Ron Washam to lose a bet in which he will publicly sing classic Journey hits while wearing a baby costume – seriously, I swear that’s our bet! [ editor's note: this may not actually be true ]. Whatever… look, just drink up and vote, okay? Following are the finalists in the Best Overall Wine Blog category:

• Hosemaster of Wine
• 1 Wine Dude
• Terroirist
• The UK Wine Show
• Steve Heimoff

Along with those mentioned above, there are some very interesting picks in the finalists across all of the various categories this year, and many of them are passionate and relatively new voices in the wine blogging crowd. Personally, I’m particularly pleased to also see academicwino.com, The Wine Curmudgeon, Hawk Wakawaka, Bigger Than Your Head, On The Wine Trail in Italy, Washington Wine Report, Jameson Fink, The Drunken Cyclist (despite his terrible taste in NFL franchises), and my Portuguese brother-from-another-mother Andre Rib also being recognized as finalists in various categories this year (though Andre’s listing was subsequently removed, for reasons not yet explained to me as of the time of this writing). If you aren’t familiar with them, go check them out.

Voting remains open through this Friday, May 24th, so… prevent bad karma flea-infestations and GO VOTE!

As for some personal thoughts on all of this WBA stuff (hey, it’s my blog after all)…

I’m happy and surprised to be a finalist again; even though it seems as if people expect 1WD to make the finalist cut in some way/shape/form during this annual wine blog love-fest (as one first time finalist told me earlier this week, “this is old hat to you!”), *I* don’t expect it every year. The lack of consistency in the WBAs year-to-year doesn’t help in terms of boosting one’s confidence, either (example: several of last year’s winners aren’t even represented in the 2013 finalists list… I mean, what kind of universe are we living in here, where Jamie Goode and Alder Yarrow don’t make the cut?!??).

I take chances with 1WD. I do shiz on here that would be considered certifiably, straight-jacket, get-the-meds-now, balls-on, bat-sh*t crazy just about anywhere else (especially in print). In other words, it’s my truest self in writing terms. Some days I’m amazed that anyone reads the stuff, which means I’m always (always!) grateful when they do.

I couple the bat-sh*t craziness with an insatiable urge to tweak, and an unhealthy defiance of convention. The minute that something appears formulaic to me, and even when my own version of bat-sh*t crazy starts to feel formulaic to me, I pilot the ship in a slightly different direction, ripping off those whose literature has inspired me…, er, incorporating different writing influences, and basically doing everything that I possibly can to make 1WD feel like nothing else that’s out there. I haven’t always gotten that right, and I’ve ruffled a few (okay, more than a few) feathers along the way, and the ship is a lot larger now and the damn thing doesn’t turn with quite the nimble radius it once had.

And so in a lot of ways, my gratitude towards all of you out there grows larger every year (if you can make it to my house, I can express that gratitude via sharing enough wine samples to pickle all of us several times over).

So… Thank you for staying bat-sh*t crazy with me. Trust me when I tell you that no industry is as wonderful – or as bat-sh*t crazy! – as wine. As nuts as we are, they need us, for the good of the land and the realm…

Cheers!

5 Producers to Watch in Lodi
I’ve been meaning to do something on this for well over a year now, so I’m happy to be able to give these winemakers some additional publicity as I really dig what they’re doing. I’m also hoping to make this a sort of regular series highlighting producers that I like but who haven’t received long-form features here on 1WD. Stay tuned…

Wine Recommendations for Beer Lovers
Beer (and wine) maven Ashley Routson and I worked on this one for *weeks*, and so I was really excited to be able to finally publish this wine-for-beer-lovers recommendation approach. I’m also really happy with the recommendations themselves, and the explanations that she chose, all of which show why Ashley kicks so much ass in the drinks world. If you don’t learn something new about beer, wine, and food pairings when reading this, then you probably aren’t paying enough attention (or you’re already a master sommelier… or both).

An Introduction to Uruguay wine
Because I did more than just eat and drink when I was down there… just not a whole lot more…; note that I would’ve liked to have included more stats on the country and its wine scene, but the Uruguayans, bless their hearts, didn’t get the additional material I’d requested back to me in time.

Book Review: Pairing with the Masters
My take on Master Chef Ken Arnone’s and MW Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan’s recent (and very technical) hardcover collaboration about food and wine pairing.

The Dos and Don’ts about Wine and Water
Look, just do yourself a favor and do NOT read this… Seriously, dude, you will never, ever look at a glass of water sitting on the same table as your vino the same way again without possibly going into an apoplectic fit about what type of water it is and from whence it came… you’ve been warned!

Cheers!

• 10 Tendril White Label Pinot Noir (Willamette Valley): Inching its way towards spicy awesomeness, should really bloom in 5 or 6 years $48 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 10 Euclid Sierra Foothills Syrah (Sierra Foothills): Not afraid of exploring the feminine side underneath the manly, smoky exterior. $40 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 09 Z'ivo Pinot Noir (Eola-Amity Hills): Juicy wild cherry, slathering itself in spices as it admires its own sexy-thang-ness. $40 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 11 Cloudburst Chardonnay (Margaret River): Like plugging into the Death Star's power generator, if made of lemon curd & stone fruit $150 A- >>find this wine<<
• 11 Altos Las Hormigas Terroir Malbec (Uco Valley): Argentina's silkiness + France's peppery spice and flowers = our crowd-pleaser. $17 B >>find this wine<<
• 11 Altos Las Hormigas Reserva Malbec (Mendoza): A well-lit view of a peppery, chalky and deep dig into their mysterious bit of earth. $30 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 08 Nieto Senetiner Cadus Finca Villa Blanca Malbec (Mendoza): From 100 yr old vines, this gaucho has far to ride & ain't in a hurry. $NA A- >>find this wine<<
• 11 Nieto Senetiner Malbec (Mendoza): High volume, high on the oak, but high on the quality, age-ability, likeability & nods to France $12 B >>find this wine<<
• 12 Nieto Senetiner Don Nicanor Chardonnay Viognier (Mendoza): Starts with honeydew, fnishes with grapefruit, cleans up along the way. $20 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 06 O Fournier Syrah Cabernet (Uco Valley): Kind of like artisanal Spanish tailoring on some high-end South American threads. $95 A- >>find this wine<<
• 06 O Fournier Alfa Crux Red (Uco Valley): Savory, herbal, meaty Malbec meal served up on stylish and elegant earthen dishware. $48 A- >>find this wine<<
• 11 O Fournier Urban Uco Torrontes (Cafayate): Floral, pithy, rich, structured, and coming to the rescue of your wine spending account $10 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 09 O Fournier B Crux Red (Mendoza): Leatehr-clad dark and light berries, duking it out over a span of austere, flower-laden territory $27 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 12 O Fournier Urban Uco Malbec Tempranillo (Uco Valley): Sweet, plummy, and a little forward, but underestimate it & you'll regret it. $12 B >>find this wine<<
• 11 O Fournier B Crux Sauvignon Blanc (Uco Valley): Melons & hay; also, about as sexy and heady as a passionate roll in that hay. $19 B+ >>find this wine<<

In Carmelo, about three hours drive from the bustling city of Montevideo in Uruguay, along the river that divides the country from Argentina, there exists the picturesque hamlet of Narbona, the kind of place with such  overwhelming quantities of irony that it causes story-relating fingers like mine to nearly freeze at the keyboard.

Where to begin?

It’s probably best to start with Winemaker Maria Valeria Chiola. Female winemakers aren’t exactly the norm in the relatively conservative sphere of Uruguayan winemaking, but the ironic (or maybe just surprising?) thing is not her sex, but the fact that twenty-eight year old Chiola is, at such a young age, making some of the best wine that I tasted during my travels there. And she has almost no sense whatsoever of what a powerful example she could be for the promotion of wine in Uruguay abroad, mostly because the cult of winemaker personality that dominates the fine wine media in the U.S. is pretty much non-existent in that small country (another irony).

Chiola has some pedigree, of course: her father has a winery in Canelones and she’s worked at Miner (among other places). She claims winemaking duties fall exclusively to her, an intern, and infrequent consultation with Michel Rolland (Rolland himself meets with her only twice per year). She suggested that there is healthy tension between the winemaking styles she’s after and the styles that are being pushed by the Rolland consultants.

Whatever is going on between tenderfoot winemaker and veteran consultant, much of that tension seems to be working in the wines’ favor. More on that in a minute or two, after we visit some of the other ironies dripping from the Narbona story…

Frenchman Juan de Narbona founded the first winery on the property in 1920, growing primarily Pinot Noir and Tannat; he was a quarry-man who supplied stones that helped to build Buenos Aires across the river, and built the stately Narbona house on the property in 1909. In the 1950s, the property entered into a state of disrepair and abandonment, until it got on the radar of Argentine hotelier and developer Eduardo ‘Pacha’ Canton in the 1990s.

Pacha fell in love with the place, and decided to restore it to its former glory (the site is now partially a National Historical Monument in Uruguay). He established a restaurant, inn and most recently a new winery – one that is aesthetically pleasing but, with relatively narrow, old-timey, bi-level staircases leading down from an open center into the barrel room, it seems one of the more poorly-designed and difficult to work designs I’ve yet encountered in a modern winery (ironically, wine quality seems unaffected).

If he’d known what it would take to get the place back on its feet, Pacha might not have bothered to start; renovations took almost exactly 100 years from when the house was first built, most of the work finishing by 2009. Narbona now makes 60,000 bottles of wine a year, exporting around 80%, much of the production being the value brand Porto Carmelo. The land is also a working farm, producing cheese, milk and other food products.

The former winery building is now a museum celebrating the winemaking of the previous time and the property on which it was founded. The ironic part (you knew that was coming) is that nearly everything at Narbona is made to look old, so that (apart from the obvious modern conveniences) it’s nearly impossible to discern what’s original and what isn’t without a guide to point it all out. If it wasn’t for the occasional ringing of cell phones, upon stepping into the restaurant on the bucolic property one might be forgiven for thinking he’d actually been transported back to about 1918.

Also ironically, the vineyard plantings mimic those that might have been in use in the early 1900s, despite the fact that they make viticulture more difficult. They planted using the lyra vine training system, mainly because that’s what the neighbors (long-standing producer Irurtia, where Narbona’s wines were made until the new digs could support production of the 2012 vintage) did. According to the soft-spoken Chiola, it’s now a constant struggle for quality versus quantity of fruit (though it’s working). The plantings are mostly on calcareous soils, not unlike the Narbona former seabed quarry (see inset pics of fossil evidence from the property), on a small amount of land that abuts the property and pushes out to the Rio de la Plata river plate.

So… to recap… we have an historic property now reborn making modern wines in an environment that’s made to look old, with an aging consultant providing advice that may or may not be fully followed by a much younger winemaker who seems to have little sense of her own innate talent.

For me, this is the wine equivalent of The Cask of Amontillado in terms of irony volume, and I mean actual irony and not the fake “irony” in the Alanis Morissette tune Ironic (which technically has no irony in it whatsoever, it’s merely a list of things that suck when they happen to you though none of them are actually ironic… except, perhaps, the title, but I’m not sure that was the game that she was playing when she wrote the tune… okay, whatever…).

Oh, they also have a dog named Wilson, though I found nothing ironic in his behavior… so far. He was actually much more of a straight-shooter-style character.

Anyway…

Narbona makes a few whites and a rosé, but I’m going to focus on the three reds that most stuck with my memory when I tasted them with Chiola (I was a guest of Wines of Uruguay for the trip, and stayed one night in Narbona’s wine lodge, in the non-ironically-titled Tannat Room):

2011 Narbona Pinot Noir (Uruguay)
Price: about $40
Rating: B+

For all of its red berry jamminess (which you might expect from the interior of Uruguay), this is a vibrant Pinot (which you might not expect). There are hints of citrus and tea leaf, which for this dude are the calling cards of the Pinots that I most enjoy drinking. While it is abundantly fruity (svelte PN lovers beware!), there’s good structure on the bones here with those tea-like tannins holding things up, like sturdy poles for a fruit-roll-up tent.

2011 Narbona Luz de Luna Tannat (Uruguay)
Price: about $100
Rating: A-

This wine wants to put a hair on your chest; like, an entire hair shirt. It’s the more Rolland-esque style wine of the Narbona bunch, I thought. Meaty, concentrated, very dark, very tight at first, densely-packed and demanding. It’s also very young at this point, though hints of interesting green and dried herbs begin peeking through after a few minutes in the glass, along with spice, leather and tobacco notes. For the reticence on the nose, it makes a grand, sweeping-away-of-the-curtains-and-steeping-into-the-spotlight-diva-style entry on the palate, going broad and grippy into a long finish. You will need to like it big, if you do, you will really like it.

2010 Narbona Tannat Roble (Uruguay)
Price: about $60
Rating: A-

From seventeen year old vines comes this single-parcel-sourced, tight and savory beauty. It’s got bitter dark chocolate, concentrated black fruits, dark leather, coffee, dried herbs, and… a fierce gaze into the blackest parts of your soul. It plays a bit of a switch on you on the palate, where it shows off the fresher side of Tannat’s acids, red fruits storming in to vanquish your attackers and carry the day on to victory, followed by a clean-up crew of darker plums and grippy tannins. I enjoyed this wine so much that the following day after tasting it, I more-or-less demanded that we drive out to see the plot in the vineyard, acacia thorns whipping themselves at my head as I ducked and weaved while riding standing in the back of Narbona’s small ATV. The crueler irony here is that the wine is probably not all that easy to find stateside…

Cheers!