Category Archives: 2010

Jan 06 2013
4 Comments
2010, 2011, Food and Wine Pairings, Oregon, Portugal, USA

2010 Caiu a Noite Vinho Verde and 2011 King Estate Acrobat Pinot Gris

2010 Caiu a Noite and 2011 Acrobat Oregon Pinot Gris

2010 Caiu a Noite and 2011 Acrobat Oregon Pinot Gris

We were invited for at dinner party on our last Saturday evening in Alaska before flying back to Ann Arbor. The hosts had told us to bring wine and sent us a menu for dinner: broccoli, roasted lemon-herb chicken, mashed lentils with caramelized onions and balsamic vinegar. In my opinion, this dinner was screaming out for white wines. I guess a Côtes du Rhône would have worked fine as well, but with the lemon chicken I just felt safer with whites.

We headed over to the liquor store and I was thinking something along the lines of a Burgundy chardonnay. We kept checking the pretty decent wine selection when Nina had the idea to bring a vinho verde to start with. We couldn’t see any, so we asked the lady in the store who promptly sent us to the Chile wine section because Portugal was somewhere in South America…ah, well. I finally spotted a vinho verde, the 2010 Caiu a Noite. I had never seen that wine before, but it was $6.99 and since a bottle of vinho verde has yet to disappoint me, we picked it up.

With some uneasiness and the very limited selection of Burgundy whites I was convinced by Nina that we might want to look into pinot gris. I complained that I am not the person who brings pinot gris to a dinner party (I am not the fondest supporter of that grape). I saw some Oregon pinot gris and I decided that that might be a route to take. I have never had Oregon pinot gris before, so it was an experiment. The 2011 King Estate Acrobat seemed about right, and cost around $10.

Both wines turned out to be very good (as did dinner!). The 2010 Caiu a Noite Vinho Verde still had some bubbling going on, which I did not expect given that it is a 2010 vintage and vinho verde is usually meant to be drunk young. It had a great nose of fresh apple and citrus and in the glass showed these same apple aromas, a very slight sweetness backed up by a nice acidity. It was a really good vinho verde, probably one of the best I have had (better than the Trader Joe’s Vinho Verde Espiral, I think, because it was more rounded and less wild). I highly recommend this wine if you get a chance to try it.

The 2011 King Estate Acrobat Oregon Pinot Gris poured in a very light yellow color. The nose was a bit perfumy, but somewhat subdued. Not very expressive at first. On the palate the wine was beautiful. It had a nice body to it, was dry and showed some interesting fruit aromas of pear and apple. It had a nice length to it and was just incredibly smooth and wonderful to drink. I enjoyed it tremendously, and I loved that there are always wines out to positively surprise me. It also paired well with dinner. I have to try more Oregon wines, from what I hear this is a wine region that is producing wines that I will like. I am very excited about that prospect.

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Jan 02 2013
10 Comments
2008, 2010, California, Chianti, Italy, USA

2008 Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva and 2010 Fetzer Shaly Loam Gewürztraminer

2008 Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva and 2010 Fetzer Shaly Loam Gewürztraminer

2008 Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva and 2010 Fetzer Shaly Loam Gewürztraminer

Happy New Year! I trust you all made it safely into 2013.

We’ve been going through quite a number of wines here up north, but there weren’t many exciting wines among them. There were some that I had already written about and they did not seem very different  so I felt no need to write about them. Last night though we did have two interesting wines. My mother in law had made a bean and ham soup and we had this bottle of Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva around that I thought might be worth trying.

Banfi is one of the biggest wineries in Italy. I initially learned about them by trying the Rosso and Brunello di Montalcino which I both liked quite a bit. Over the years, they have expanded and now produce a host of wines from different regions in Italy. I am not very impressed with their cheaper wines (the Col di Sasso, for example, is just rather bitter and unpleasant). I had not had a chance to try their chianti classico riserva until last night. The wine aged two years in Slavonian oak and an additional 6 months in the bottle. It is the 2008 harvest and has 13% ABV. The wine is made with Sangiovese, Canaiolo Nero and Cabernet Sauvignon. It was not decanted and drunk straight after opening.

It poured in a lighter red color with slight browning on the edges. On the nose it had prominent cherry and berry aromas. On the palate, I got light bodied wine with a good level of complexity. Several layers of aromas, among them cherry, blueberry and some vanilla worked nicely together. The wine had hardly any noticeable acidity, good tannins and ended in a quite long finish. It was really tasty. I am not sure it worked well with the soup, the flavors did not really complement each other and made the wine too vegetable for my taste. But on its own, I enjoyed it a lot. I am a sucker for good chianti and this one worked for me.

My fellow blogger Rachel blogged about this wine here.

After dinner, we opened a couple of jars of fruit mustards and had them with different cheeses, one of Nina and my favorite pastimes. I rummaged through the wine collection at my in laws and found the 2010 Fetzer Shaly Loam Gewürztraminer which I threw into the freezer to bring it down to drinking temperature. I am not very familiar with Fetzer winery, a big California producer. I do like a good Gewürztraminer, which I also think should be more on the sweet end to bring out all these marvelous fruit aromas. It is difficult to achieve a good Gewürztraminer though, because the grape easily produces overbearing wines.

This one poured in a clear yellow color. The nose was exciting: lychee, gooseberry, papaya, and all sorts of other tropical fruit. It also had a rather alcoholic nose (when I checked, it had 12% ABV, quite a bit for a white wine). On the palate, it was very sweet, on the heavier side of light bodied and combined the aromas I found in the nose in a sugary fashion. The alcohol was prominent and I was not fond to find such a sweet white wine with such a high alcohol level (I know, I am a German riesling snob). It just did not work. The alcohol destroyed potential delicacy, but the sugar also hurt the fruit in the wine. It is hard to wrap my head around it. It just seemed a bit all over the place, without really showing what the grape is capable of. That was kind of sad…that said, it was finished easily.

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Dec 20 2012
3 Comments
2010, Chianti, Italy

2010 Badia a Coltibuono Cetamura Chianti DOCG

2010 Badia a Coltibuono Cetamura Chianti DOCG

2010 Badia a Coltibuono Cetamura Chianti DOCG

Ever since I visited Badia a Coltibuono in the fall of 2005 I have been quite enchanted by the location and therefore been interested in the winery. It is located in a gorgeous old building up on a hill, a former monastery. According to the website, the monastery dates back to the 11th century. After Napoleon took over (remember what I wrote about the same issue regarding Vereinigte Hospitien?), the monastery was closed and sold off. In 1846, the great grandfather of the current owner bought the property.

The winery is run by Emanuela Stuchhi Prinetti and her three brothers. But the owner being female is not the only reason for it being well known. Lorenza de’ Medici, a rather famous cookbook author, started a cooking school on the winery’s premises in 1980 which made it well known in English speaking countries.

The winery now has everything that any big, international producer has: accomodations, classes, organic farming etc. etc. In a way, that is one of the problems with the winery, too. To me, it has lost some of its appeal due to this commercialization, but I guess it’s what comes with growing bigger. They now produce 400,000 bottles from 70 ha.

I have had Coltibuono’s chianti and the chianti riserva in the past. I remember not being very fond of their standard chianti, just too unexpressive and expensive for the quality, but the chianti riserva I remember as being nice. Their flagship is the “Cultus Boni”, which I have not had. These are all made according to organic farming principles.

The wine that we had the other night, the Cetamura, is from their commercial line of wines called Coltibuono Selections, where they buy grapes and produce wines. This line makes 600,000 bottles a year. You can find their information on the wine here. They produced 270,000 bottles of it, it is made of sangiovese and canaiolo grapes and the wine had 12.5% ABV. For Ann Arborites: I bought that wine at Plum Market and paid $11, which is too much, I’d say.

The wine poured in a lighter shade ruby red. The nose was really pretty: intense cherry and raspberry aromas, distinctly jammy. I had not had such a nice nose in a red wine in a bit. On the palate, the wine felt velvety and was light to medium bodied. It was fruity upfront with quite some acidity. From there, it went a bit downhill. The middle section of the taste was alright, but the finish was short and abrupt, and there was not much staying on in taste except for slight bitter notes and acidity. We had it with a classic ragù pasta, but it also did not work overly well with that.

I decided to give the wine some time. After ninety minutes, the wine had mellowed out a bit. The finish now showed eucalypti and licorice. The acidity was still too prominent for my taste, but the aromas came around. When I had some of it the following night, the acidity was no real problem anymore and the wine still showed some nice red fruit, but was overall done.

All in all: It is not what I knew from their standard line up, which is definitely above this one in quality. The acidity made me less likely to buy another bottle of this wine, because it did throw the wine off balance. If you end up buying it (or already have and now want to find out more about the wine) I recommend decanting it. If you ever get a chance, go visit the place. It is gorgeous. And try the chianti riserva.

Bottom label

Bottom label

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