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Three Best Wines of 2008. So Far.

We open dozens of wines a week; some for review, which are supplied by wineries, and never fewer than seven to 10 bottles each week, which I have personally bought for our cellar.

I believe that almost all reds profit from 4 to 8 years of cellaring; it calms the nerve of the wine, brings balance to the eventual tasting, and introduces mature flavors.

At the current rate, we’ve probably opened and tasted 25 cases of wine this year.

Despite this volume of wine opened to the halfway mark of 2008, only three bottles jumped out at me, tweaked my nose, painted my palate and screamed, “Pay attention, I am a Perfect wine.”

Drum roll please… the three best wines to the half-year point stand out like giants at a dwarf convention. The winners at the half-year are, in alphabetical order:

2006 Aterberry Maresh Pinot Noir, White Rose Vineyard.
I could write a sonnet, a book, an encyclopedia about my love for this extravagant, balanced, elegant, mature, brilliant Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley in Oregon. I learned about this wine at The Tasting Room, in Carleton, OR, during a May visit. I have opened many bottles in my home and every one gets a forehead-slapping, “I can’t believe how good this wine is” remark from Napa Valley winemakers, visitors, friends, and knowledgeable sommeliers for whom I pour it.
Available at The Tasting Room, Carleton, OR, at 503-852-6733.
Or speak with the young, talented winemaker Jim Arterberry Maresh, at 503-434-7689.

1997 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.
I have long respected Ed Sbragia’s work as wine director at Beringer and thought that his best-ever achievement (of many brilliant achievements) was his 2001 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet.
But the 1997 vintage, which we opened this week for out-of-town visitors from Canada and England, was, to my mind, perhaps the single most compelling wine of Ed’s that I have ever tasted and a top-tier winner so far this year; it is rich, rich, rich (did I forget to say rich?) in complexity, flavor, and texture.
To be blunt: it is a textbook-perfect wine at this age and stage of evolution.
You may have read reports in Wine Spectator that the 1997 Napa Valley Cabs are beyond their prime, dried up, finished, kaput. Forget that nonsense. I have opened more than a dozen different 1997 Napa Valley Cabs this year from many different producers and they have been spectacular. In essence, don’t believe what you read, unless, of course, you read it here.
But not a one of the dozen or so 1997 Napa Valley Cabs, which we opened this year, stroked my palate the way Ed’s 1997 Beringer Private Reserve Cab did. A 100-pointer any way you look at it.
The 1997 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet is occasionally available at www.winebid.com.

2001 Vieux Donjon, Chateauneuf du Pape
The only wine in my life of which I have drunk an entire case and rated every single bottle of the case a near-perfect wine was the 1990 Vieux Donjon. I LOVED THAT CASE.
I was apparently justified in my thinking about the 1990 Vieux Donjon; in a recent issue of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, he quoted sommelier Doug Mohr of Vidalia restaurant, in Washington D.C., who marveled that “the greatest wine he had ever tasted was the 1990 Vieux Donjon Chateauneuf du Pape.”
Gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.
For dinner this week, to complement Carol’s perfectly prepared pappardelle with veal ragout (a variation of a Mario Batali recipe, only she did it better!), I opened the 2001 Vieux Donjon, which offered a near-duplicate experience of the 1990 vintage. Here was a wine of exceptional length, extraordinary quality. This is a perfect wine, a brilliant wine, elegant, rich, balanced. A 100-pointer. There was nothing missing, no flaws, only gemstone brilliance, bright mature fruit, terroir, minerality, and a finish that Burgundian producers would kill to have.
The 2001 Vieux Donjon is long gone from retailer shelves, but look for the 2005 and 2006 vintages, which are helluva good. This is a wine that will improve with age; I like to drink my CDPs (Chateauneufs-du-Pape) with not less than seven or eight years on them.

Silenus: Once a wine sot… now a hot wine spot!

 
If you’re down a quart on wine mythology, Silenus was the teacher and companion of Dionysus, the God of Wine. According to legend, Silenus had a serious drinking problem; he consumed so much wine that he couldn’t stand, and had, in fact, to be carted around on a donkey. In other words, an early day rock star.

Today, Silenus Vintners is one of the newest, sweetest, custom-crush facilities in Napa Valley, offering 18 small wineries a place to make their hedonistic blends as well as serve them to the public.

Silenus Vintners, located on the northern fringe of Napa town, operates a tasting room seven days a week, 10 to 4 pm, where visitors, on a by-appointment basis, can taste a dozen different wines, all handcrafted in small batches at the facility.

I like a lot about Silenus Vintners, including owner Bob Williamson and his dedicated wine team, which includes Scott Turnnidge, who runs the tasting room, and Brian Graham, winemaker for Williamson’s own label, Ideology.

If you are a resident of Napa Valley, you have likely driven by this winery numerous times without knowing that things have changed in the place previously called Koves-Newlan. Silenus Vintners is on Solano Ave., immediately south of Darm’s Lane, in the Oak Knoll District appellation.

If you are a visitor, first-timer or not, you might think about making an appointment to visit and taste through the wines made on this site. Some of them are spectacular and all of them represent significant value, of which wine drinkers can’t have too much in these tense economic times.

Silenus Vintners owner Bob Williamson

“In a way, we’re a mini-Napa Valley Wine Co.,” says owner Bob Williamson, explaining that his custom-crush facility operates like the big custom-crusher in the valley in Oakville, about nine miles north of Silenus Vintners.“

”And by mini, I mean teeny-tiny, mini-mini,” adds Williamson.

In total, clients at this facility collectively produce about 30,000 cases of wine annually, with the average production of any one label in the 300- to 400-case range.

You may recognize some of the brands produced and offered in the tasting room. I sold Brookdale and Ilsley Cabernets on my former website, ilovenapa.com, in 2003. These two brands are now produced, blended and bottled at Silenus Vintners, and they are as good now as they were then – compelling wines at very fair prices. I am extremely fond of these wines and their producers. Five years later, they are still making first-class, heads-up, must-have wines.

My wine buddy, Rob Fanucci, whom I help make Charter Oak Zinfandel and Charter Oak Petite Sirah, is moving production to Silenus Vintners for this coming harvest. Charter Oak will be the 18th winery to join this small-lot production house, supplying the only Napa Valley Zinfandel in the tasting room.

“I don’t think we can accommodate any more winemakers or labels,” says Williamson, aiming to cap enrolment at his facility. Williamson, who was formerly a land developer in Half Moon Bay, knows about building big, but he also knows when to stop building. And in the wine business, it appears to be now.

Scott Turnnidge fills the large tasting room at Silenus Vintners with warmth and knowledge, both which he has by the barrelful.

In the tasting room, Scott Turnnidge, part-Scot, part-Englishman, part-Irishman, is an affable host. He pours wines with gusto and knowledge and fills the room with welcoming laughter. It’s evident, too, that he knows way more about wine than he does about spelling; just ask to see the misspelled tattoo on his left forearm. Blimey!

Brian Graham, winemaker of Ideology, the Blondie Chardonnays and also his own wines under the Ramian and “Jack” labels.

I asked Brian Graham, who is Bob Williamson’s winemaker and who also produces a wine for himself called Ramian, about his winemaking philosophy.

“I believe in hands-off winemaking. Conduct your due diligence in the vineyard and at harvest, then let the wine speak for itself in barrel. I believe in extended barrel aging to soften tannins,” explains Graham.

I participated in a mini-tasting in the elegant Silenus Vintners’ tasting room and have these highlights to share:

2007 Robert Williamson Family Blondie Chardonnay and
2006 Robert Williamson Family Blondie Gone Wild Chardonnay.
Williamson has created a pair of wines to introduce tasting room visitors to the winemaking practice called malolactic fermentation. This is a common practice in which some white wines, like Chardonnay, may be put through a secondary fermentation, converting bright malic acid into buttery lactic acid, which is rich in dairy, and often butterscotch, notes.

I preferred the 2007 non-malo’d Chardonnay. It has a bright, appealing taste and would be ideal with seafood. It retails for $29. I scored it 89 points.
The 2006 Blondie, fermented with wild yeasts, is less exciting, doesn’t have a memorable taste profile, or anything to make it stand out in a crowd of Chards. $35. I scored it 89 points.

The reds are coming

2006 Ideology Cabernet Sauvignon, Oak Knoll District.
Williamson also produces a Cabernet, which is packaged to look like a $75 wine, and nearly drinks like one, too, but which only costs $36. One of the best Cabernet values in the Napa Valley, this is a gorgeous wine with rich, almost opulent, tannins and striking ripe red fruit flavors. 91 points

2005 Ramian Chapter 5.
I love Brian Graham’s sense of humor, as well as his sense of winemaking. His own label, Ramian, is organized chronologically. “Wine is like a story – every vintage is a different chapter,” he likes to say. Hence, this vintage is Chapter 5, his fifth vintage. Scott Turnnidge, in the tasting room, likes to joke – “What’s he going to call his eleventh vintage? Chapter 11?”
We’ll worry about that vintage when we come to it. For now, I’ll plead the Fifth; it is a lovely wine, harmonious, balanced, totally approachable but with evident age-ability. There is a sweet middle palate and a lively floral finish. The wine is 91 percent Cab, with odd bits of Merlot, Cab Franc and Malbec thrown in for good measure. And good taste. 92 points. $54.

 

2004 Brookdale Cabernet Sauvignon.
I have a soft spot for this wine, having sold it on my former website in the early 2000s. It was a winner then and is still a winner today. Big hugs to Kristi Seitz, who continues to manage this label so well after the tragic death of her husband, Mike, whom we all admired. This is a gorgeous, approachable wine filled with raspberries and at the core, a discernible coffee, cocoa note. This is a put-me-down-for-a-case wine, especially given the price, $45. An easy 92 point wine.

2004 Ilslsey Cabernet Sauvignon, Stags Leap District.
What a great story, what a great wine! Brothers David and Ernie make this sensational wine in Stag’s Leap District. Their property abuts Shafer; some 90 percent of the fruit they grow actually is sold to Shafer for its Hillside Select label. It gets even better: brother David is the vineyard manager for Shafer! So who knows better what to do with the magnificent fruit they grow, much of which winds up in one of the most compelling, perfectly made wines in America, Shafer Hillside Select? (That was a trick question. The answer is NO ONE!)
So here’s your chance to have a wine that is only infinitesimally less in texture and length than the $225 Shafer Hillside Select Cabernet… for $55 a bottle! You want great wine and great value? This is it. 94 points.

2004 Gridley Cabernet Franc.
How is it that I haven’t seen or tasted this stunning wine before? Andy and wife Susan Gridley crush Cab Franc here that was grown on a parcel between St. Helena and Calistoga. The wine has a rich, deep smoky scent, there’s almost “blue” on the nose. On the palate, there are bright plum flavors, dark rich ripe fruits; exceptional extraction and deep flavor penetration. Fewer than 300 cases. Hurry, hurry. $45. 91 points.

No wine story is complete without a shot of the most important, influential member of the team and in the case of Silenus Vintners, it’s 11-year-old Hannah, who is as sweet-as-a-Sauternes.

If you’re visiting Napa Valley and hire a limo to take you around to different wineries, just be careful how you pronounce your intended destination. With a Midwestern accent, or deep southern drawl, your driver may hear you say “Salinas,” when you tell him to head to Silenus. In which case, you’ll find yourself traveling 146 miles south to Salinas, the lettuce capital of America and the hometown of one of America’s best-ever writers, John Steinbeck!

Silenus (and NOT Salinas!) Vintners is located at 5225 Solano Ave., Napa.
By appointment, seven days a week, 10 to 4 pm. 707-299-3930.

California may be on fire – but thankfully, the 05 Rutherford Cabs are not!

Winewriters gathered at Rubicon today to attend the annual Rutherford Dust Society tasting.

More than 350 wild fires are burning out of control in California this month, but we still find things to distract ourselves.

Take the 05 vintage of Rutherford Cabernet, for example, revealed today at the annual Rutherford Dust Society Tasting, a media/trade event held at Rubicon (formerly Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery), hosted by local growers and wine makers.

“For the most part, the 05 Cabs are classically structured, and tightly focused,” says Quintessa winemaker Charles Thomas.

These are not the hot, fruit bombs that Napa Valley wines were starting to become, virtual parodies of Australian Shiraz, with high levels of extraction, high levels of alcohol, enough wood to build a barn.

 “The 05 Cabs are tightly wound and have really desirable structure. They remind me of the 92, 94 and 03 Cabs,” summarizes Garen Staglin of Staglin Family Vineyards.

In short, the 05 Cabernet Sauvignons, tasted blind today, and all from the AVA (American Viticultural Area) of Rutherford are well made, well structured wines. They are not opulent, not fleshy, like their 04 counterparts tasted at this event last year. The 05s are tighter, less flashy, less powerful. Some had an herbaceous quality, some had green olive top notes, others exhibited salty, black licorice flavors.

Hey! It’s a tough job – but someone has to taste all these wines so that YOU will know what to single out for your cellar!

Generally, this is one of my favorite wine-tasting events of the valley, giving me a chance to taste a large collection of local wines in one sitting. Unlike my colleagues who attend, I choose to taste blind, fearing that labels might influence my judgment, if I saw them.

Of 27 wines tasted blind, I rated six with 91 or better points (out of 100). The least expensive of these top-tier wines retails for $45 and at the upper end there is one which retails for $225.

One thing I usually find at this annual tasting is that price is not always a perfect indicator of quality. Almost every year, I blindly identify a $40-$50 wine that scores as many points as a triple-digit-dollar wine. And this year was no exception.

Specifically: I scored the 2005 Rutherford Grove Estate Cabernet 91 points, which is exactly what I scored the 2005 Peju Rutherford H.B. Vineyard Cabernet. Rutherford Grove costs $45, Peju retails for $225.

One of my favorite sommeliers in the Bay-area, Christie Dufault, who is wine director at the precise and elegant neighborhood restaurant Quince, in San Francisco, was invited to today’s testing. She had a sweet way of referring to the wines of Rutherford, which is where I happen to live.

Christie Dufault, wine director, Quince restaurant, San Francisco

“I always think of Rutherford as the aristocracy of Napa Valley wines. I have tasted and enjoyed them for 15 years. They are generally restrained wines with an evident texture – which other appellations in Napa Valley just don’t achieve.”

Thanks for the good word, Christie!

For the record, lest readers think Rutherford is some HUGE appellation, here’s the skinny: Rutherford, which lies at the epicenter of Napa Valley, has a reputation that far exceeds its geographic footprint.

Rutherford, only six square miles in size and planted with barely 3,300 acres of vines, produces less than one-quarter-of-one-percent (that’s .25 percent!) of all the wine produced in America. By comparison, Disney World in Orlando, FLA, at 47 acres, is nearly eight times bigger!

Speaking about the herbaceous flavors in the 05 Rutherford Cabs, Joel Aiken, director of winemaking at Beaulieu Vineyard, says, “I think the Cabernets from Rutherford – in a classic vintage – should show some restrained herbaceous character – or what we call ‘Rutherford Dust.’ If you have too many herb flavors, you taste green bell peppers, which is one extreme; at the other end, without some restrained herb notes, all you have are plump fruit flavors. The essence of a Rutherford Cabernet is a subtle, restrained herbaceous note between these two extremes.”

To my way of thinking, many of the wines poured today exhibited too many of these “herbaceous notes.” I rated some of the wines in the 85 to 89 point range, owing to over-the-top, herbed notes. Where’s the subtlety in that?

“It was critical to watch your crop in 2005,” recalls Charles Thomas of Quintessa. “You had to actively manage your crop. We had a lot of rain in the spring, which caused vines to grow rapidly. If you didn’t cut back this vigor, you were left with herbaceous wines,” he concludes, which goes a long way to explaining why I found so many “green,” or “herbaceous” wines in today’s tasting.

The top-scoring wines in the blind tasting

2005 Quintessa. Another stellar performance from this winery, which produced one of my Top Favorite Rutherford Cabs at last year’s blind tasting of 2004 wines. A tightly structured Cab, which I labeled blindly, “a typical Rutherford Cabernet on the nose and on the palate. An extremely well structured wine with a bulls-eye focus.” 93 points. $135.

2005 Scarecrow. A recent newcomer to the wine scene, Scarecrow is grown on a parcel of 60+-year-old vines, which are adjacent to Rubicon, formerly known as the J.J. Cohn plot.
Cohn, a movie mogul, had a significant role in the production of The Wizard of Oz. Hence the brand positioning for the vines planted on his estate.
The winemaker today is Celia Masyczek, who is one of my favorite winemakers in Napa Valley. I still treasure the 1996 Staglin Family Vineyards Cabernet, which she crafted. I love almost everything she breathes life in to and it is not a coincidence that I ranked her wine blindly, out of 27, so highly. It’s just further proof that her wines speak to me and that she is the IT girl when it comes to making Classic Rutherford Cabs. This one has a richness of texture not evident in many of the wines tasted today, a richness of flavor, splendid elevated fruit flavors, many of them ripe, black compelling fruits. 93 points. $100.

2005 Rubicon Estate. Wow, they’ve crafted another gorgeous wine here, just as they did in 2004. Good rich, ripe fruit, really well structured, a solid wine, an elegant wine. Has a superb profile, missing in many of today’s offerings; this one has an evident attack, a great middle palate and a superb finish. According to the tasting notes, will be released in September. 92 points. $145.

2005 Beaulieu Vineyard, Georges de La Tour Private Reserve. There’s lots of this stunning wine to go around, 12,600 cases, in fact. The name suggests it might be more rare than it is, but the good news is, there is a sufficiency of supply to satisfy the masses. A really great effort by Joel Aiken and his wine team, easily putting him back in the driver’s seat of one of the appellation’s top wines. Really tasty, ripe, pure fruit. Rich in texture, too. I loved the black fruit scents, the olives that were suggested in the middle palate and the ripe fruits on the finish. Trends to blackcurrant in overall taste impression, which is exactly what you want your Cab to present. Not vanilla, not wood, not cherry pie. And none of that is present here – just honest, well made, blackcurrant-oriented Cabernet. Will be released in September. 91 points. $115.

2005 Peju Rutherford H.B. Vineyard Cabernet. Lots of ripe red fruits on the nose, suggesting a pleasurable experience will follow. And it does. Lovely ripe fruit on the early palate, a lovely lively profile follows and then the total package goes into overdrive after you swallow. Sounds like a racing car. Costs like one, too. To be released in February, 2009. Only 358 cases made. 91 points. $225.

2005 William Harrison Rutherford Red. First time I recall tasting William Harrison’s wine at this annual event. It certainly wasn’t present last year. In the blind tasting, I found this a delicious wine with a tight nose, suggesting ripe black fruit. On the palate, very elegant, suitably supple, not a word I used with many of the wines in today’s tasting. A solid performance. 91 points, $80.

2005 Rutherford Grove Estate Cabernet. Blackcurrants and Bordeaux scents waft from the glass, mixed with a bit too much vanilla. But on the palate, the wine jumps into line with a harmony of fruit flavors, blackcurrant, ripe red fruits, a hint of cedar, and the tell-tale note scribbled into the margin of my pad: “very appealing.” First time I recall seeing this wine in the annual tasting. The release date has not been determined. 91 points. Hold on to your hats – only $45.

Napaman.com readers interested in learning more about Rutherford wines, or who wish to get on the appellation's mailing list should contact infor@rutherforddust.org.

This map is available for purchase through the Rutherford Dust Society; contact info@rutherforddust.org