Tensley 2008 Syrah

Wednesday night I decided to cook up a Bon Appetit Sunday Dinner recipe from the May 2010 issue. The dish was a feast of Salmon, Quinoa with Spring Vegetables and Black Beans.

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/menus/2010/05/grilled_salmon_for_4

I decided to indulge in the Tensley 2008 Syrah we all loved during the our wine tasting. First the cork broke when I went to open the bottle. I know that could have been my own error, but I had not had a drink yet! When I did indulge, the wine was heavy rather than fruity and well balanced. Though this dish would have been best paired with a chardonnay, I was craving to taste this Tensley again. My guests agreed that the wine did not have the combined floral and fruit notes we remembered from our tasting. In fact, the more I sipped, the more I thought of the cranky sommelier!

Photo is not the label we purchased but only photo I could find.

Costco Wines

While I usually visit Wine House to look for a specific wine for a specific occasion, I often browse the Costco wine section when I am at Costco shopping for other things. I've found that the Marina del Rey location actually has a decent and interesting selection at a range of values. Their selection rotates quite often, particularly with international producers, and there is always something new and interesting to try. Currently, there are three wines in particular that I've purchased multiple times (you can find them stacked in the boxes section to the right of the wines that are in the wooden crates).

1. 06 Bodega Norton Reserva Malbec from Argentina: this has been our winter staple, particularly for dinner parties where we go through multiple bottles. It is full-bodied, yet well-balanced and drinkable. It drinks well on its own or paired with a variety of hearty food, from steaks, to chili, to pizza, to pasta. At just over $12, it is a decent value for an everyday red.
2. 09 Crios Torrontes from Argentina. Torrontes is an Argentinian grape that I haven't really seen elsewhere. It has a nice perfume-y floral nose, like a viognier, and a very nice, interesting and rather intriguing taste. It has a relatively dry finish, despite the initial perfume. It pairs well with rich or heavily seasoned food, like Chinese food. I had it last week with macaroni and cheese and this week with whole roasted fish simply seasoned with garlic salt, zucchini and young garlic soup, and Japanese celery sauteed with chicken. A bottle is $11.89 at Costco. I've tried some Crios reds, including the malbec and syrah, and they never disappoint; they are all decent values around $12 as well. If you like viogniers and dry rieslings, you'll like the Torrontes.
   
3. 08 Sterling Sauvignon Blanc made with Organic Grapes from Mendocino: we tried this at the Spa Theme wine club at Jen's house. It tastes like a straightforward nice sauvignon blanc, crisp, refreshing, with just the right amount of fruit; very easy to pair with foods. We had it last night with homemade spinach and garlic pizza and rainbow chard, proscuitto and egg pizza (pictured below!) At $9.99 with organic grapes, it is another great value for an everyday wine.

March 2010 Meeting

On March 19, 2010, wine club was at Jen's house. The theme was organic / biodynamic wines paired with healthy food. Erica, Dee Dee, Ramona, Tracy and Jen sampled healthy appetizers including a veggie flatbread finger sandwich, green apple and walnut salad, raw veggies and hummus and hard cheeses. Most of us had not tried "healthy wines" (or at least remembered drinking a good healthy wine), but the wines that we sampled were surprisingly good, including:

1. Rare Earth Vintage 2006 Cabernet ($15 at Bevmo).
2. Sterling Organic Sauvignon Blanc 2008 ($10 at Costco).
3. Paso A Paso Tempranillo ($16 at Whole Foods).

All of the wines were made from organic grapes. It was a great night with some great friends!

Lazy Ox

Friday night I tried Lazy Ox, a new restaurant in Little Tokyo. I enjoyed Pig Ears, Sheep neck, Mussels, and more. The restaurant is unique in that it's philosophy is food and wine should not be intimidating. Though I mentioned more unusual dishes, this tapas style restaurant offers traditional fare too. The small plate motif allows you to try many dishes! I enjoyed two wines during this feast. Prior to dinner and with our appetizers, I was sipping pinot noir saintsbury gamet from 2008. This wine is fuller bodied and very fruit forward. We paid $13 for a glass and I believe the restaurant charges $40 for the bottle. As we enjoyed more food, we decided to go for a lighter wine. We then drank sangiovese rubicone from 2008. This wine was $27 and was a perfect complement to the meat ragu pasta we were indulging in. www.lazyoxcanteen.com.

Santa Barbara Continued...

Rancho Sisquoc Winery

Koehler Winery

Stolpman Tasting Room

Tensley Tasting Room

Brander Vineyards

Lincourt Vineyards

D'Alfonso-Curran Tasting Room
Lunch at Chef's Touch, Solvang

Beckmen's Cuvee Le Bec

While we didn't actually taste Beckmen's wine during the last trip, I thought I would still review the 07 Cuvee Le Bec that I had with dinner over the last two evenings. The Cuvee Le Bec is a blend of mostly Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre ("GSM"), similar to France's (much more expensive) Chateauneuf du Papes and Australia's nice GSMs. The wine was paired with whole fresh citrus garlic fish, quinoa salad with roasted beets, avocados, almonds, raisins, roasted curried kabocha squash and broccoli, young garlic shoots sauteed with Chinese sausage, butternut squash soup, and a kale and ricotta salata salad. I thought it was only ok; the wine did not have the fun liveliness that I usually associate with GSMs; it was a little dark, heavy and not very fruitforward. While it didn't combat the flavors of the food (which was quite heavily seasoned), it also did not enhance the food. I remember liking the wine a lot more when I tasted it at the vineyard about a year ago (but it was also at the end of a long tasting day).

Tasting Rooms in Oakland?

Today's WSJ has an interesting article, "Vintners Gravitate Toward Urban Crush."
Wineries Crop Up in Oakland and Other Cities as Oenophile Entrepreneurs Spurn Pricey Napa; Trucking In the Grapes

OAKLAND—The brochure for Jeff Cohn's wines feature pictures of the idyllic vineyards where his grapes come from, complete with glistening fruit, wooden posts and perfectly arranged rock piles.
The wine itself is made in a former Oakland sweatshop overlooking Interstate 880.
Mr. Cohn's JC Cellars shares these less-than-pastoral confines with another winery, Dashe Cellars. Both moved into the 16,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakland four years ago, and since then have equipped it with giant fermentation tanks, hundreds of oak barrels and a tasting room where visitors can sample wines.
Far from the bucolic vineyards in Napa and Sonoma 50 miles to the north, JC and Dashe are part of a growing scene of East Bay wineries. Drawn by the ability to pursue their dream careers in the wine industry while still living in an urban environment, a growing number of vintners have opened up shop in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville in the last several years. Wineries here range from JC and Dashe, which distribute their wines nationally, to start-ups launched by self-taught amateurs. The East Bay Vintners Alliance now counts 21 wineries, up from 11 in 2006, operating seven tasting rooms.
"The grapes don't care where they're made into wine," says Steve Shaffer, who this month opened a tasting room at his Jack London-district Oakland winery, Urban Legend.
Going urban is a cheaper way to break into the wine industry. Buying a vineyard isn't practical for many winemakers. In addition to the cost of the land—"insanely expensive," says Michael Dashe of Dashe Cellars—it takes several years before newly planted vines produce usable fruit. In the East Bay's wineries, winemakers buy grapes from all over Northern California.
Cities like Oakland are helping to promote the cottage industry. Mr. Shaffer's 2,500-square-foot winery is on Fourth Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, in an area where the city is encouraging redevelopment. Oakland officials gave him $50 a square foot in grants and helped him secure the permits to operate a commercial winery. The city gives Dashe rebates on taxes it pays on the equipment it buys.
The wineries are "great branding for the city," says Margot Prado, a business-development specialist for Oakland. Many food- and beverage-related businesses have moved into Oakland recently, she adds, and the city is trying to turn their presence into an attraction.
The sprouting of such wineries is, in a way, a return to yesteryear. While grapes always have come from rural vineyards, most of the wine sold in the U.S. before Prohibition in the 1920s was aged and blended in warehouses around San Francisco, says James Lapsley, who teaches wine history at University of California, Davis. The vineyard-centric wine culture so familiar now evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when baby boomers started buying more expensive wine and image became important to sales, he says.
In the East Bay, by contrast, the winemaking process usually starts with a truck to pick up the grapes. The winemakers crush, ferment and age their wine in their wineries, then use a mobile service to bottle their wines. With a mobile service, a bottling truck arrives early in the morning and winemakers run a large hose to it from their vats. Bottled and labeled wines come out the other end.
Profiting from these ventures is no sure thing. Mr. Shaffer, a 53-year-old former telecommunications consultant, started making wine in his bathtub five years ago and decided to turn professional in the fall of 2008. While he says he always dreamed of owning a vineyard "somewhere in the foothills," he decided that warehouse space in Oakland was more practical. He spent about $200,000 on his lease and equipment, and lost about $50,000 last year. He produces 700 cases of Barbera, Sauvignon Blanc and Teroldego, and figures he won't break even until he can make and sell around 2,500 cases a year. "Basically, I'm betting my retirement on this," he says.
It is possible to succeed as an urban winery. Rosenblum Cellars has been making Zinfandel in Alameda since 1978. Production has grown from 400 cases a year then to 120,000 today. In 2008, Rosenblum was acquired for $105 million by beverage giant Diageo PLC.
Meanwhile, Messrs. Dashe and Cohn both worked at other wineries for years and leased space from Rosenblum before setting out on their own. They produce 10,000 and 6,000 cases a year, respectively. Mr. Dashe says it took about five years to turn a profit. He has made enough money from his winery to support his family comfortably for some time. Many of the wines from these makers have received ratings of 90 and higher out of 100 from majorcritics.
Mike Millet, wine buyer for Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, recently toured several East Bay wineries. He has stocked JC Cellars, Dashe and Urbano in the past, and decided this month to buy three cases of Mr. Shaffer's Sauvignon Blanc. He says he has tasted a few East Bay wines that he wasn't enthusiastic about, but at Urban Legend "the price is good for the quality of the wine in the bottle."
Mr. Millet says he doesn't pay much attention to the fact that these wines are made in an urban environment. "It's just different," he says.

Hoo Doo Red

We had a couple bottles of Longoria Wine's Hoo Doo Red with dinner at the wine country cottage Saturday night. It is a very easy to drink blend of syrah, tempranillo, merlot and malbec. It is very drinkable now, and paired well with pizza, salad, lemon bars, ants on a log and "i never." At $16 dollars a bottle, it is a relatively good value for Santa Barbara wines which were generally over $20, particularly red wines. Unfortunately, we were unable to visit Longoria's lovely tasting room and garden in Los Olivos as it closes relatively early at 4:30pm (for future reference).

May 2010 Meeting

Mark your calendars...May's meeting will be on Friday, May 21st at Carrie B's place. The theme will be good wines under $7 dollars. Carrie will be preparing everday food to go with our everyday wines.

Santa Barbara Wine Country Trip

at Foxen Vineyards

(Starting from top, L-R: Denise, Michelle, Jen, Erica, Janelle, Carrie, Ramona, Sunny, Karina, Dee Dee)

On April 17-18, the wine clubbers and friends drove north to wine country just north of Santa Barbara to do some wine tastings at vineyards and tastings rooms. We visited all the various regions of Santa Barbara wine country, including the Foxen Canyon vineyards, the tasting rooms of Los Olivos, the Ballard Canyon / Alamo Pintado vineyards, the tastings rooms of Solvang and the Route 246 / Santa Rosa Road vineyards. We had a great time; the weather was beautiful and sunny, we tasted a good variety (and quantity) of wines, picnicked and ate lots of good food at vineyards and back at the cottage in Los Alamos.

Vineyards / Tasting Rooms visited in order:
Saturday:
Tres Hermanas
Rancho Sisquoc, where we had a little Bay Cities picnic at the tables around the winery
Foxen Winery, a cute rustic shack overlooking the hills of Foxen Canyon
Koehler Winery, a beautiful winery with ostriches (or emus) and sheep
Stolpman Tasting Room in Los Olivos (free thanks to Dee Dee!)
Tensley Tasting Room, where we met the winemaker, Joey Tensley, and tasted some of the best syrahs of the trip, including a syrah rose and the WS 95 point 08 Colson Canyon syrah (although most of us preferred the WS 91 point 08 Tierra Alta syrah)
Olive Oil Tasting Room

Sunday:
Brander Vineyards
Lincourt Vineyards, a pretty house in the middle of sauvignon blanc and merlot vines on Alamo Pintado. Nice Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay
D'alfonso Curran, a tasting room in the Danish town of Solvang with unique white wines and a lovely pinot noir under the Badge label
Foley Wines, a beautiful winery in the midst of a huge vineyard on Highway 24

Foxen Tasting

Walking around Los Olivos

Olive Oil Tasting

Vineyards at the cottage in Los Alamos

Outside of Beckman, which we didn't taste at

Lincourt tasting

Solvang

D'alfonso Curran

Bin 73 visit

Back in March, a couple of the wine clubbers (Michelle, Dee Dee, Colleen, Erica) met up at Bin 73, a newly opened cute little wine bar just off the beach in Venice. Bin 73 serves a variety of reasonably priced, mostly European wines, by the pour, glass or bottle. The bartender was pretty cute and the small plates were also a nice match for lots of wine consumption.

Bin 73
14 Washington Boulevard
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292
(310) 827-6209

The Story

Back in the summer of 2009, a couple of Venice girlfriends decided to start a wine club, which they named the Westside Wine Club ("WWC"), as all the members live in the westside of Los Angeles. Once a month, the club gets together at a girl's house, with the location rotating every month. The host chooses the theme and prepares food for the group, and each girl brings a bottle of wine in accordance with the theme. Then, they all get together for an entertaining evening of wine, food, and conversation. Previous hosts and themes:

August 2009: Dee Dee's house, ? theme
September 2009: Sunny's house, wines with a funny name
October 2009: Karina's house, favorite wines from around the world, paired with food from the same countries
November 2009: Jen's house, spanish tapas
December 2009: Erica's house, blind red wine tastings
January 2010: Colleen's house, french bistro theme
February 2010: Karina's house, surprise birthday party!
March 2010: Jen's house, spa theme - organic / biodynamic wines paired with healthy food
April 2010: Santa Barbara wine tasting trip