Hat tip to a current favorite

Since we've just recently passed the 5+ year mark since the last post and 6+ years since regular posting, I thought I should probably make a comment or two. No, definitely not firing up the blades of this again, though I have been turning to wine a bit more lately, since my allergies seem to tolerate it better next day. I had in mind, in the previous post, to update the blog sporadically, but found that once it more or less went on hiatus, that I didn't particularly miss doing it and had no interest in new posts to it. What was there had said all I had in mind to say...or so I thought.

There is one wine in particular that has come out relatively recently (sometime after the previous post on the blog here) that I found merited special commentary. I've had a lot of wonderful sakes, but this entry is from one of the big hitters, the bruisers over at Ménage A' Trois. This particular wine is called Dolce and is an absolute joy to drink. It is light, sweet, slightly effervescent, yet still retaining some of those wonderful red characteristics, just a pleasure through and through, in short, probably my current darling and definitely a favorite to go in the ranks of everything else. I've had enough of it that I wanted to make mention, as it is one of the few, the very few, to be sure, that I will happily indulge in straight from the bottle. It is lighter in alcohol content as well as probably their least expensive entry and while I'm still not really interested in doing an actual review of it, it does bear mentioning in these pages, if not a slight bit of gushing praise. 

Future of the HSC

It is oft said that all good things must come to an end, though it is probably also true for the bad and the mostly middle neutral ground things as well, and though the HSC is not ending, per se, it is coming to a change. This brings to mind another saying, that being that the only constant is change, but rather than fill this post up with lots and lots of other colloquial sayings, I’ll stop now…I think. I may think of another really good or appropriate one, so no absolute promises.

This series started as a companion series to the then-activity of my wife and myself of enjoying bottle(s) of wine whilst watching movies at night, kicking back and relaxing on the weekends, and was in mind to be a regular series on a website (along with various other writings of mine) she was creating. That particular website was not especially long-lived, but as I had not seen a lot of other blogs attempting to do what this one was – or other wine blogs in general, aside from some primarily focused on reviews – I decided to keep the train rolling with this one. I had intended to hard cap it at 50 wines and have some Q & A pieces along the way.

Fast forward to now and there are 60+ entries posted out of a total of 70-ish on the main list. Some of those others will not make it onto these postings because they are no longer produced, some because they are Chardonnays, which I do not drink regularly, and those entries that are there do not come in bottles with screw tops, which makes them kind of useless to keep around for cooking, and some that I’ve not been able to locate again. The main list itself has not been updated in nearly a year and that is generally due to cessation in actively pursuing it, a downturn that has been in place for a while and is largely due to a shift in my wife’s diet and interest in wine.

While I’m generally ol’ Irongut himself (also feel free to check out my hot sauce blog now, if you’re interested, or my many, many Yelp reviews), she is not and perhaps the tannins, perhaps some other element, were not getting along well with her system. This generally means she slowed on being a participant then eventually dropped out entirely, leaving it to me. As I’m not generally too much of a regular solo flying wine guy, that slowed the activity on this front to a crawl. She has since re-joined the activity, but part of the function of the list has been to get some reliables. Having quite a number of those, we also spent a lot of time simply enjoying various titles.

There is also the thought that I was meaning to stop this entirely at 50, as I thought the column had achieved to do already what it had set out to do (laid out in the first couple of posts). While I think there is value in having a ready list at hand, at least as a starting point, for the more budget conscious who want to get into the wine game and just get a good bottle for not a lot of green, if that can’t be done in a list of 50 names, there are bigger problems working than I can solve with this list. It is for that reason that I’m not going to pull it down or anything, but it also sort of slows the incentive to keep adding to it somewhat.

Most finally, more than a few titles on this list have gone over the $20 mark. While I’m not super-strict on that actual part of it, I feel if I extend it to $25, I might as well go $30 and if $30, then why not $40 and the escalation misses the point entirely of why I started this. $20 is a single bill and part of the reason that people kind of miss a lot of great wines is they get hung up on the crazy price points. To put it another way, if you’re just starting out and you throw in on an $80 bottle of something that turns out to be shit, where are you then going to go from there?

I like doing these pieces and I’m very big on the spirit of experimentalism. I definitely like digging in and trying new stuff, be it foods, restaurants, hot sauces, beers, whiskeys, liquors, kombuchas or wines, but the thought of slugging down a bottle of something less than desirable because I can’t stand to waste it is somewhat of a joykill and tempers things, naturally, and also why this is not a review column (though if someone out there somewhere wants to pay me to do that, I will start a new column and go up and down the aisles, reviewing every selection). There is also the fact that I have fully caught up and everything I was able to find and write a piece for has now been posted. Without further additions, it would be hard to write/post further pieces, of course.

So, bottom line, updates will be coming a lot slower to this column (even more seldom than the every other month it's been for the last year and change), but it’s not going away. I hope you have enjoyed what you’ve seen so far and found it to be of use. I thank you all for reading.

Issue LXIII: Field Recordings Fiction Edition

 Field Recordings Fiction [Blend] Edition

It is the very end of 2018 as I write this. I always try to write these in advance, for posting at a later time and this is the first in a very long time. Indeed, I got curious and looked and it has been over a full calendar year since I added a new wine to the HSC list. Part of that is because I was enjoying various entries on the list, but mostly it was because the list is fairly narrow and specific and I’d gone through many, many entries that could have conceivably fit and found many of them wanting. Obviously, that changes today.

I had never heard of Field Recordings, which almost sounds like music should be involved somehow. I checked and it does not appear to be the case, at least that I can find. Naturally, being a writer and all, I was drawn to the very austere labeling, which largely just features the word “Fiction.” The pull, in fact, was so strong that out of a case lot of various entries to try, I could not bring myself to wait and tried it first...

Clearly, my penchant for Blends can tend to dominate and perhaps I’ve long passed the point of diminishing returns, but when I am rewarded, such as with this one, the majesty remains fully intact. Here, we have a blend of 7 different wines, with the majority being Zinfandel, followed next by Syrah. The other big, bold baddy, Cabernet Sauvignon, is present in there as well, so this thing comes packing a punch. It is evidently sourced from multiple vineyards, so the intent seems to be a best of all possible worlds thing and I’d say they came pretty close.

This is a very accessible wine, outstanding right out of the gate and, dare I say it, even refreshing. The taste is an exquisite balance of those large tannin-heavy hitters, along with enough astringency to cut it just enough to make it a delight. It is unquestionably a dark wine, of course, but doesn’t drink like anything heavy. It is far from light, but does retain a nice smoothness throughout. I got strong berry, with just a light dash, here and there, of cherry cola, as there did seem to be a bit of effervescence to this.

All in all, this is definitely my favorite wine of 2018 and for the price point, this is an outstanding value. This, then, make it a Standard.

Cumulative List of Wines Posted, Circa 2018

Running list of wines posted here, in what is basically a re-post of the Table Of Contents for this blog, now current through 2018.

Of note, this is the 5th year I’ve been doing this and as I write this, I have a single wine left to post.

As usual, there is no weighting here, so this is chronological order only.

01) Martini & Rossi Asti
02) Navarro Correas Colección Privada [Malbec]
03) Concannon Crimson & Clover [Blend]
04) Fat Bastard Chardonnay
05) Penfold Koonunga Hill Shiraz-Cabernet
06) Bouchard Chardonnay
07) Colosi Sicilia Rosso [Nero d'Avola]
08) Terredora DiPaolo Aglianico
09) Marqués de Cáceres Crianza Rioja [Blend]
10) A By Acacia Pinot Noir
11) Dark Horse Big Red Blend
12) Columbia Crest Grand Estate Merlot
13) Apothic Red [Blend]
14) Penfold Koonunga Hill Shiraz
15) Sean Minor Pinot Noir Carneros
16) Castello Del Poggio Moscato
17) Atrea Old Soul Red [Blend]
18) Meiomi Pinot Noir
19) Montebuena Rioja [Tempranillo]
20) Sean Minor Cabernet Sauvignon
21) Peralillo Arenal Carmenere
22) Zantho St. Laurent
23) Clean Slate Riesling
24) Gloria Reynolds Tinto Real [Blend]
25) Prunotto Fiulot Barbera D’Asti
26) Menage A Trois [Blend]
27) Fantini Farnese Montepulciano D'Abruzzo
28) Rosenblum Vintner’s Cuvée XXXVI [Zinfandel]
29) Sean Minor Sauvignon Blanc
30) Michael David Sixth Sense Syrah
31) Borja Borsao Tinto Seleccion [Garnacha]
32) 19 Crimes [Blend]
33) Fat Bastard Cabernet Sauvignon
34) Tait Ball-Buster [Blend]
35) Bouchard Pinot Noir
36) Francis Ford Coppola Claret [Blend]
37) Chaucer's Mead
38) Bogle Essential Red [Blend]
39) Terra-Bossa Shiraz
40) Juan Gil 12 Meses [Monastrell]
41) Terra del Nero d'Avola
42) Waterbrook Melange Red 
43) E. Guigal Côtes du Rhône Rouge [Blend]
44) Château Damase Bordeaux Supérieur [Merlot]
45) Château Tour d'Auron Bordeaux Supérieur [Blend]
46) Delas Côtes du Rhône Saint-Esprit [Blend]
47) Carnivor Cabernet Sauvignon
48) Chateau Giscours Petite Sirene [Blend]
49) Château Recougne Bordeaux Supérieur [Blend]
50) Menage A Trois Midnight [Blend]
51) Toasted Head Untamed Red [Blend]
52) Alexander Valley Sin Zin [Zinfandel]
53) Cupcake Black Forest [Blend]
54) Big Red Monster [Blend]
55) Menage A Trois Silk [Blend]
56) Ergo Rioja [Blend]
57) Pizzella Malbec 
58) Neil Ellis Pinotage
59) Ramon Bilbao Limited [Tempranillo]
60) Moonstone Asian Pear Sake
61) Columbia Composition [Blend]
62 Ferrari-Carano Siena [Blend]

Issue LXII: Ferrari-Carano Siena Edition

Ferrari-Carano Siena [Blend]

When most of us think Ferrari, we think of exotic Italian sports cars, hyper cars capable of obscene speeds that mustachioed men with dark hair ramble around Hawaii in, but this case, it’s well applied to both the various estates making up this winery and the wines themselves, which take aim squarely at the higher end, perhaps echoing the cars. As to the story goes, Don Carano, who founded the vineyard with his wife Rhonda, meant it to be for his Italian grandmother, who had the same surname, but the extra nod to the sports car maker from the same country certainly didn’t hurt and was probably intentional, considering both the Caranos were strong in advertising and marketing backgrounds. It’s an interesting side note, if nothing else, but irrelevant compared to what’s in the actual bottles.

Long have I eyed those bottles on the racks, passing them by time and again because they fell too far over the HSC’s $20 upper limit. At times, I will blow by that if there is a wine I really want to try, but too often it has just been me paying more without a commensurate increase in quality and in those cases, I would have been better served to fall back to my standard bearer, the Dark Horse Big Red Blend. Also, I try to restrict my purchases to the list criteria (see first post). The HSC is not solely for fun, after all, but is meant to be practical as well. So, much joy and zero hesitation when I found it on SPA, which put it just below the upper limit for the HSC pricing entry point.

The wine did not, in any way, disappoint. While it was perhaps not everything I would have wanted it to be, it is, to my knowledge, the first to contain the Sangiovese. In this blend, we also see Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon & Petite Sirah to round things out. The taste is a bit difficult to describe easily, so you may want to get a couple bottles to more come to terms with it. This applies if you change years, as this is a bit of an inconsistent wine, with variations from year to year, following the grapes. Ferrari-Carano refers to it as a “chameleon”, clever of them, but I doubt anything less than top notch would be allowed to be stocked with their label on it, so no fears there.

The bottle I had was very easy sipping, but additionally rather complex and I kept trying to pin down a lot of the tasting notes. Certainly somewhat fruity, but not in at all a sugary way, with elements of chocolate, cherry and the darker berries having a presence, but some additional elements, such as perhaps a nutmeg or cola in there as well. It is very smooth and elegant in the mouth, refined, with a strong depth and one of the better finishes of almost anything else on the list.

If I see this again on SPA, I will definitely re-stock, but if it’s not on SPA, it is cost-prohibitive to this list, so it is then SPA only. I would, of course, drink it again without hesitation, SPA or not, but in keeping with the guidelines, this is more a factor of necessity. This definitely feels splurge-y, without a high splurge cost attached and if your leaning is more towards wine enthusiast, this is definitely one not to miss if you haven’t yet experienced it.

Issue LXI: Columbia Composition Edition

Columbia Composition [Blend]

This one is danger, in some respects. Let’s examine those. Firstly, it passes the Marissa Ross test quite handily. This is definitely one of the few reds that could be considered “open & chug”. While it does much better with a touch of air time, it is silky smooth right out of the gate. I’ve had much lighter wines that were considerably less smooth than this and it really is quite amazing for a red. There is little to no bite to this, which I found especially interesting. Taste is also spectacular. The blend is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah, so some big, bold bruisers of grapes, with the Syrah, one of my favorites, doing most of the heavy lifting here. The Cabernet is the largest percentage, but it definitely tastes and feels a bit smoother than the Cabs tend to be. There are also elements of Malbec and Petit Verdot to round things out. This entry is clearly meant to show the artistry of blending, which is done to great effect here. Varied vintages are also utilized.

The vast majority of the HSC List is from California. I don’t think it is more than everything else put together (as of this writing, there are 61 wines total on the list, 27 of which are from CA), but it is by far the single-biggest region represented on this list. It is in no danger of being surpassed, but it often overshadows another stellar U.S. entry and that of Washington, which has a lot to offer. Seeing more and more entries like this will definitely do much to get the name out there, I think, though, of course, quite a few people are already in the know.

While I wouldn’t put this quite at my overall favorite, I loved it from the first sip, right out of the gate and my appreciation has only grown since then. It is clearly a Standard, as I have bought it repeatedly, regardless of being on SPA or not (I honestly have not noticed) and the price is moderate enough that I will happily do so. This is also one of those few wines I would suggest to people who are unsure or don’t think the like either wines or reds. Very accessible.

Issue LX: Moonstone Asian Pear Sake Edition

Moonstone Asian Pear Sake

Going away from the reds and more traditional grape wines for a bit, we have this delightful entries. Sake is one of my most favorite comfort wines and I will happily knock through it, nice and warm (never actually hot) nearly anytime, including summer, even if the sake isn’t all that great. It is the first thing I reach for when I’m ill and if there is a wine that transcends the HSC list in general, it is this type, as I loved it from the jump and have never stopped. It is one my wife (see earliest posts of this blog) does not seem to have any great fondness for, so it operates largely outside of the list.

Sake, with fermented rice as the base, has its own distinct character and variations, much like the appellations of the other wines here. This particular one is very light and fruity and could function well as a dessert wine. To my regret, a number of the liquor stores around don’t stock it and it’s one I have to be somewhat careful not to buy large amounts of, as I will happily consume it and keep going. The Momokawa (another excellent sake) is the base for the Moonstones and this one, to me, adds just enough of a light splash of Pear for it to be named that, but is definitely harder leaning towards sake rather than a fruity drink. 

Moonstone is clearly intending this to be closer to a dessert wine, perhaps thinking more wine cooler, with the ad description: “Imagine reaching up and picking a perfectly ripe pear off the tree, chilling it down and enjoying it simple and clean.” This description, incidentally, is somewhat false and really stretching, best case. This definitely does hit the Asian pear notes, though, which are much more subtle and lighter than the regular Bartlett pears, for instance. Light, refreshing and very satisfying, definitely one of my all-around favorites…somewhat dangerously so, though I suspect if I actually just went for it with a bottle, I probably would tire of the taste somewhat quickly.

As with all non-red wines, the usual rating scale does not apply here. I will say that this, like a number of sakes available, is very moderately priced, usually between $ 12 - $14 a bottle for this one. Unquestionably, well worth that.

Issue LIX: Ramon Bilbao Limited Edition

Ramon Bilbao Limited [Tempranillo] 

This is an interesting entry, as I’ve had the wines of this label over the course of a few different years, so perhaps this could be several reviews in one. I don’t generally note the years, but here, it may be bear noting as they are not always very similar. It is indeed different every time, but never in the least unpleasant and usually one of my better pick-ups. Due to the smaller quantities involved, it is frequently not available, so when I see it, usually I’ll grab a bottle or more. 

It is no small task to vary your small batch wine from year to year and still come up with outstanding results, so a huge tip of the hat to these guys for doing it. This is also fermented in oak barrels, rather than vats, then matured in oak, then after that in bottles before being released, so this is not, in any way, any sort of production wine. That it falls on this list at all is something of a marvel to me, actually.

The wines of this line tend to be on the darker side, a trait I admire immensely. The years I’ve had this have been rich and lush and generally fruity, though with a good solid amount of tannin that is assertive initially but smooths out rather quickly. This one could pass the vaunted Marissa Ross test, for instance. It naturally does better with air and can bit a touch pungent out of the gate, though not overbearingly so. There are indeed some universals and those traits, along with the Tempranillo grape, are generally common amidst the various varietal years.

The flavor profile, though, tends to be notably different. 2013, for example, was very full and very rich, lush, delightful, tasty and quite pleasing and satisfying to the palate. It is noted as intended to “go with anything”, which I think it probably would. We never use wine to accompany food, but it was a great chill out and relax drink, an exceptional “sipping companion”, as it were. The 2011, on the other hand, was considerably more complex, with several notes happening all at once. The 2013 was far smoother, with perhaps hints of other flavors, but with precious little of the earlier busyness, what you would call more “straight ahead.” Both of them were wonderful and I’d be well happy to have a bottle of either.

As you may have surmised from where this is going, this is definitely a Standard. If I see it, I get it, SPA or not be damned and I definitely encourage you to do the same. Truly one of the greats.

Issue LVIII: Neil Ellis Pinotage Edition

Neil Ellis Pinotage

Part of the beauty of this series, for me, anyway, is that I am able to be motivated to really reach out and be exposed to such a great collective of worldly wines and learn a great deal about varietals whose existence I was not previously aware. In this case, we travel to South Africa and a varietal of Pinot Noir, which you no doubt guessed already and a grape called Cinsaut, which had another name in the region, Hermitage, hence the new name for the new cross-bred varietal.

Pinotage, however, is a very volatile grape and it is one that takes a great deal of care and tweaking to make palatable, sort of like the exquisite massaging one would need to do to juggle liquid nitroglycerine, for example. I may be overstating it, but historical records have not been kind to some of the end result. In this case, though, we have a nice and smoky flavor, along with a touch of both astringency and effervescence, which I found endlessly delightful. The flavor seems modest but allow it to linger and you find a deep well of power hidden beneath the surface. This is a very complex wine and expect some of the darker berry fruits, perhaps with a dash of plum and very slight cherry for flavoring notes, along with that smoke and a bit of leather as well.

Mouth feel is where things really get intriguing, both with the slight carbonated aspect (it is not, however, an actual carbonated wine, such as a real sparkling white or champagne. By no means should that be read into this, it is very slight and utterly pleasant, a brilliant and refreshing change of pace) as well as the wine skirting the edge between being light and have some solid mouth feel. Tannins are definitely present, but quite far from assertive. Altogether, this is one of the more pleasant wines I’ve experience and puts South Africa back on the radar for me, having been off of it for quite some time after several wines from that regions striking me as misfires.

At the price point, this is a great bargain. I don’t anticipate you would keep all the wonderful characteristics cellaring it (and I can’t imagine what hoops that would require one to jump through) and I don’t do any of that, in any case, so this is much more immediate. I have not seen this on SPA, but again, I don’t usually wander into this region in the store, so it may be and I’ve just not noticed. It is one of my new favorites, though, so it is beyond a Mixed…therefore South Africa puts itself on the HSC list with a bang…coming in as a Standard.