I'm starting a new series of posts about what I'm buying in wine stores today --what catches my eye and why. 

First up is a wine that caught my eye at the Wine Club in San Francisco. I was shopping for value White Burgundy when I spotted a case of this. French Viognier for about $25.00. I wasn't familiar with this bottle, or the "Les Vins de Vienne" brand, but closer inspection of the label revealed a no-brainer. This is basically Condrieu, from an unclassified location from three of the top names in the Northern Rhone, Yves Cuilleron, Pierre Gaillard, and François Villard. I love Condrieu, but you generally can't touch one for less than $50.00. 

Les Vins de Vienne is a joint venture from these three excellent producers offering a large selection of Vin de Pays rhone wines, both reds and whites. This Viognier is from Seyssuel, just north of Condrieu. Looking forward to trying this. Please check out their amazing flash-based website. 

I have been thinking of new ways to use two of my favorites, Tanqueray Rangpur Gin and Domaine Canton ginger liqueur. Both are distinctive and unusual. Rangpur is a heavy-lime scented Gin and Canton is a spicy ginger-flavored liqueur from France.

The color of the Jitney Ride is much like a fresh gimlet, a foggy green. The Canton gives it a little ginger heat. Try this before your next Asian-inspired meal. 

The Jitney Ride (From the Cork Dork Wine Blog) makes one drink.

1/2 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice

1/2 oz. Domaine Canton liqueur

1-1/2 oz. Tanqueray Rangpur Gin

Fill a martini glass with ice while you build the drink. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add lime, then Canton, finally the Gin. Shake vigorously. Toss out the ice in the martini glass and strain cocktail into the martini glass. Garnish with a paper-thin lime slice. 

You may have had some of the excellent Pinots from Scott Paul Wines in Willamette Valley. But did you know that Scott Wright, the owner of Scott Paul is not just a Burgundy freak, but an importer of some of the best as well. The last time I was up to his place in Carlton, I picked up a bunch of nice Burgundies as well as a couple of different vintages of his "La Paulée" Pinot. I opened one of these 2004 Confuron's a couple years ago and it was not yet at its peak. Right now, it's drinking perfectly. Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron is on only 20 acres in Premeaux  and thier holdings consist of twelve appellations of the Côte de Nuits. Amongst these are the prestigious Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru, Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru, and Clos de Vougeot and Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grands Crus. Alain Meunier has an old-world love of the earth and is now farming organically as well as plowing by horse. 

The 2004 Jean-Jacques Confuron Chambolle-Musigny (not the 1er) is a great example of the philosophy of Confuron, powerful aromas and flavors without heaviness. The wine is a lovely light fresh red color. I would call it medium bodied with enough meat to it to give you a great mouthfeel without feeling big. The scents coming off this are another matter, especially after 1/2 hour in the glass. Earthy dried-cherries and fresh rasperries, along with mushroom and forest floor aromas pop out of the glass. The velvety texture has very fine tannins and a very long finish. Light on the palate, but great silky mouth feel. Recommended. Drinking well now, good for another 5 years at least in this same condition. 

Jack Stuart, one of the early Sangiovese producers, took issue with my too-off-the-cuff remarks about his first Sangiovese treatment when he was the winemaker at Silverado. There is such good infomation in this note, that with his permission, I'm posting his comments:

Thanks for your recent post that included comments about Benessere Sangiovese.  I mostly agree with your style preferences.  In fact, it’s not possible to make “syrupy” Sangiovese unless you add a lot of a sweet, rich wine to it.

And having tasted Biondi Santi Brunellos back to 1945 at Il Greppo some years back, those wines struck me as extraordinarily complex and perfumey, firmly structured, and ageworthy, but certainly not “big” in the unfortunate way some California winemakers are making their wines these days. 

My only quibble with the piece is your remark that the early Silverado Sangioveses got “the normal Cabernet treatment all the way...extracted, fussy, lots of pump-overs and punch downs to bring out more body and color.”  Absolutely not the case!  First of all, there’s no way to give Sangiovese “the Cabernet treatment”—it would be like trying to do that with Pinot Noir.  Our aim was to make a wine characteristic of the variety, unlike most of the mostly orange, herbaceous, thin, bitter, and overpriced Sangioveses that were being made here at the time.  We used very little new oak, aged much of the wine in upright oak tanks, and did everything we could to develop classic color, flavors, and aromas.  Power and weight were not our goals at all.  If you could taste the 1994, for example, you’d see what I mean. 

Our major project at Silverado was tuning the vineyard:  learning how to train and prune it, how much crop thinning to do, how much leaf pulling, how ripe to pick (balancing acid, pH, and sugar), which selections had the characteristics we were looking for, and simply waiting for the vines to mature and become more reliable.  By the late nineties John and I were getting most of what we wanted from the vines.  I know he has adapted cap management in recent years, and I agree that those are good steps.  I still taste the wines every year, and they are very good, though not as varietally distinct as I would like. 

Here at Benessere, I’m using fewer barrels, NO American oak, trying French and Hungarian puncheons, and also using the seasoned uprights that have been here for years.  We’ve got six different clones of SG, with different growth habit, berry size, crop loads, ripening and so on.  It gives me a lot of tools to work with.  As for fermentation, cap management and extraction, I’m trying to achieve red color and suppleness (not “richness” or “bigness”), along with varietal flavor and aroma, without the drying, edgy tannins Sangioveses often have when they’re young.  That means destemming but not crushing, good sorting for leaves, stems and jacks, gentle punchdowns or fewer pumpovers, and pressing lightly.  We press SG only to 0.2 bar, so all the wine is free-run.

 My blends are usually 90 to 95 percent Sangiovese, with the rest Zinfandel or Cabernet or both.  Might throw in a percent of Petite Sirah for color.  Any bottling that has only 75 percent of is likely to lose its varietal character.  The Luna you refer to may have gotten its cedar and green olive characteristics from Merlot.

I went out last weekend with an amazing winemaker from Boca in Piemonte and I was trying to explain to him why I spent a recent day in the Napa Valley tasting nothing but California Sangiovese. I was met with a blank stare as if I was from Mars. Yes, I like Brunello as much as the next guy, but there are times where I simply crave the lighter weight, scent and juicyness of Napa Sangiovese for simple drinking with food. Italian Sangiovese, I feel like I wait forever for. It's a sublime wine when it's perfect, but most young Italian Sangioveses leave me wanting to leave them alone for another 5 years. Napa Sangiovese brings me instant gratification. 

The first thing I love is the body. Most vintners seem to have a pretty light touch with Sangiovese and don't try to push it to the heights ripeness and alcohold, and the body doesn't usually push past medium - rarely syrupy. With a simple pasta dish with a tomato-based sauce, the fruitiness in the wine balances the acid in the sauce. There is often a touch of the herbal which in some wines are considered flaws, but can also accentuate food. 

This was kind of a last minute tour, so I could only visit Luna, Benessere, Flora Springs, and  Silverado. I did manage, because it was a Monday, to hang out with Jonathan Emmerich, winemaker at Silverado for a nice tasting. Gino Camozzi at Flora Springs and Jo Dayoan at Benessere were also very helpful in my Sangio-quest.

It's at Benessere where my cravings begin. I was first turned on to their wines through the great Black Glass Zinfandel, grown in soil with obsidian popping out of it. Their Cal-Itals are now being made by Jack Stuart, who was the winemaker at Silverado for 20+ years. It has only been 2 since he took over, so I was unable to taste any of his finished wines, but I have high hopes, as I have always loved the Benessere Sangioveses and their Super Tuscan blend, Phenomenon. These wines once again did not disappoint, and I brought back several for my stash.

The best wine of the day undoubtedly went to the 1997 Luna Reserve Sangiovese which was graciously opened by the folks at Luna. They only had 8 left after the one we opened and they are available for $75 at the winery. This was the first vintage of reserve at Luna and is showing well with leather, cedar, and green olive overtones. I also really enjoyed the 2009 Reserve Sangiovese, with its white pepper, currant, and lavender scents. At $40 it's a treat that is worthwhile. Even the 2008 Sangiovese with 75% Sangiovese, 20% Merlot, and 5% Petite Sirah was tasty and this is a very affordable wine, easily available at Safeway. A great bargain. (As is their Pinot Grigio).

 My visit with Jonathan at Silverado shed some light on how the techniques for making Sangiovese in Napa have evolved over the years, from the mid-80s when Jack Stuart and the Millers (owners of Silverado) first went to Tuscany and decided to plant Sangiovese back home in Napa. Back then, it was the normal Cabernet treatment all the way...extracted, fussy, lots of pump-overs and punch downs to bring out more body and color. Now, at least at Silverado (and I taste this in others as well) the treatment is much more gentle, with careful in-frequent pump-overs and super-light pressings. Oak treatment is in a combination of normal 60 gal. barrels and large 500 ltr. barrels to give gentle oakiness. The 2007 Sangiovese is estate grown and is delicious. Their Super-Tuscan-style wine is called Fantasia and is a great example Napa Cal-Ital blending. It's 60/40 Sangiovese/Cabernet and it does have a real Cab character to it, but don't hold that against it. It's a lovely wine and recommended if you're looking for something different than your average Cab.

Flora Springs has massive holdings, at 650 acres, but only makes about 400 cases of Sangiovese, mostly going to their wine-club members and tasting room visitors. It's 20090 is juicy, classic, light-bodied Sangiovese with a good hit of acid. Lots of cranberry flavors to it. Their Poggio Del Papa is their Super-Tuscan blend of 60/20/20 Sangiovese/Cab/Merlot. Another nice blend, and I brought one of those back for my collection as well.

Tonight I opened the Venge 2009 Sangiovese from the Penny Lane Vineyard in Oakville. This wine has a slightly bigger body than most of the other Sangioveses I tasted, and more than a small hint herbacousness. It was an excellent foil for a Hunter's Style Chicken. I found this and many of the producers below's wares at Dean and Deluca in St. Helena - right next door to Flora Springs, of course. Dean and Deluca has an excellent wine selection and the prices are just fine. When you run out of time, as I did, it's a quick stop to pick up some awesome wines you can't find near home. 

An incomplete list of Sangiovese producers and thier links:

Luna
Benessere

Flora Springs
Sliverado
Bravante

Altamura
Andretti
Silverado
Villa Ragazzi
Abiousness
Falcor
Shafer (No longer producing Sangiovese, but look for older vintages)

I get a lot of Chardonnay samples. Most of them are a lot less than the retail $25.00 that this wine is asking, but most of them are not my cup of tea. As you know, gentle reader, I try to praise not scorn in this blog, so I only try to put up things I like. This wine is one of them and I feel it is a great value. It was also sent to me as a press sample.

Landmark is no newcomer to the wine world. It's been producing good Sonoma wine up in Kenwood for the last 38 years. It was founded by Damaris Deere Ford, great-great granddaughter of John Deere in 1974. I like the whole cluster/natural fermentation process this wine went though.  

The Overlook is a beautiful, pleasantly rich Sonoma Chardonnay that right now is showing pretty acid-forward and a pinch woody, but I'm sure this is structured enough to mellow out its angularity. The flavor model is like a lemony Santa Barbara Chardonnay blended with a rich Russian River Chardonnay.  It has little hints of tangerine peel, and white peach, balanced with a nice acid hit. I opened this while I am cooking dinner, and I may just leave the bottle of Puligny-Montrachet I have chilling in the 'fridge where it is tonight and drink this instead!...Recommended. 

What was the spark that inspired me to start the Corkdork Blog? 

I come from a wine obsessed family. My late father amassed a small, but high quality cellar starting back in 1978 and so began the family tradition of wine talk at the table. For us, a special meal needed something special to drink, and even after having a modest cellar going, my father was always able to pull out something appropriate to rise to the occasion.

Once I was out on my own, I usually found I had Champagne tastes on a beer budget, and good wine was hard to find in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, where after pressing your nose to the window, squinting to read labels, the local wine merchant passed the bottle to you through bullet-proof glass. But then I moved to San Francisco. Here I gave myself a $3.00 a bottle limit and at that time, I was able to get crazy treasures for 3 bucks --Stag's Leap Petite Syrah and Ch. St. Jean Chardonnay, for instance.

I could find, by trail and error, something decent to go with dinner, but when I went out and faced a huge wine list, I found I could only fall back on the familiar or the splurge wines I knew growing up. Then I attended my first big tasting, ZAP, the annual mega-Zinfandel festival. It was 1997 and they were pouring the 1995 vintage for the most part, and barrel pours of the 1996s. This was the first time I had an opportunity to taste a single varietal, treated in a staggering array of ways, with distinct profiles of the classic regions. Every wine from every neighborhood seemed a little different and I found an affordable way to start collecting, learning about the mysteries of terroir, and training my palate. I could stray away from the "3-Rs" (Ridge, Ravenswood, and Rosenblum) and find little producers that created something different, something that smacked of thier little patch of the earth. 

And I made friends. I found I could make fast friends with winemakers. I was thrilled to have other people to share my wine talk with, other than my family. A bonus for my table-talk-fatigued spouse as well. My brother, my friends and I, would share our favorite finds from ZAP and share them by email and sync them to our first-gen Palm Pilots so we had our lists when we went shopping. 

Fast-forward to 2005 and the rise of the blogosphere. When I saw that you didn't need to have a Masters of Wine to write about wine, it dawned on me that a blog could be my special place to remember the bottles I love, the dishes I want to share, and a public place to put my favorites from big tastings like ZAP. 

So, tonight, I pulled out a nice little Zin. 

2006 Ottimino Zinfandel, Rancho Bello Vineyard

The Rancho Bello Vineyard is just north of the Green Valley AVA, which is near Sebastapol and Occidental. There, the grapes are both  ripened by sun and stressed from lack of water - a good combination for Zinfandel. On nose, it has tinges of nutmeg and cinnamon spices with boysenberry/blackberry fruits that rise from the glass, like a beautiful black fruit cobbler. It's a full-bodied wine and has all the ripeness of a Russian River Valley Zinfandel, without being stewed or prune-y. Winemaker William Knuttel has a great touch with Zin, which can be a crazy uneven ripening beast --so much so that Ottimino is devoted exclusively to Zinfandel. This wine is a steal and offers a clean, classic Zin experience for under $30 a bottle. Recommended. 

2008 was a tense year for growers in Napa. Low yields due to cold temps and shatter. But after the weather started cooperating, it allowed growers to get nice ripeness on the berries that were left. 

Winemaker, Cameron Parry at Chateau Montelena has started to work with bringing in smaller batches of fruit, starting with this vineyard. This new practice should help on uneven ripening years and bring a "small winery" feel to the wines. 

This is a young wine, to be sure, but it's drinking nicely now. What Cameron calls "barrel spice" is pretty forward now, but in 4 or 5 years this should integrate nicely. I like the burnt sugar overtones, mixed with red fruits. This is not a massive, chewy wine, which is one reason I like it. The body is not terribly dense and viscous. I get a touch of meaty tang from the small bit of Cab Franc in there, which I like. SRP is $49/ street prince is around $35.00 and that's a great price for a well made wine like this. 

This was a press sample.