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Oregon, Pinot Noir, Wine Reviews, Wine Videos | No Comments

I hated the ‘06 of this wine, but I can’t get enough of the ‘07. It smells like purple flowers with yellow stamens and a fuzzy, freshly sliced peach. It tastes like cranberries and cherries with a hint of strawberry seed. It’s colorful yet translucent like all good Pinot, and it feels electric in the mid-palate. The end lacks a blockbuster, 10 minute finish, but this is the very very low end of Pinot Noir.

For those of you that don’t know: PINOT NOIR IS EXPENSIVE… Why? The grapes and grape clusters are tiny so the winemaker gets very little juice to work with per acre so he/she has to charge a premium since their accountants are all yelling at them, “Why aren’t you going Merlot?!?!? We’re trying to make money here while you are trying to make art!” $15 for a pinot is *really* cheap. $15 for a cab can get you some pretty good stuff. In fact $20 for a Cab can create fantastic results. $20 for a Pinot only ensures that you *might* not fail.
Luckily, this Pinot lands everything but the knockout punch, and it tastes like a $23 bottle.

$15.99 at T.B. Ackerson 8.4/10

Biodynamic, Oregon, Pinot Noir, Wine Reviews | No Comments

Let us all note that:

1) anyone who “doesn’t like Merlot” is an idiot. Just plain and simple you are not allowed to hate Merlot if you like wine because, since Merlot is one of the most major grapes in Bordeaux, that would also mean that you hate Bordeaux…. which really just seems so stupid that a person would have a hard time taking anything else you say seriously.

2) Most “Merlots” of any serious quality in California will take advantage of the 75/25 rule… that is to be a “single grape” varietal wine in the US, a winemaker only has to use 75% of any single grape to label the wine as one grape. That leaves room for a million different classic Bordeaux BLENDS of grapes to hit the market labeled as “Merlot” in the US, leaving you none-the-wiser!

So, please, taste with an open mind. Michael Sullberg’s 2006 “Merlot” (who knows what’s in it) is pretty fantastic. a $9.99 wine that displays the red berries and cookie dough I so love in “Merlot” from the US. The body is medium. The acidity is just strong enough that it paired with the leg of lamb, potato, and a tomato roast I made this evening (Tuesdays = Sundays in the retail world so I had the day off to sit beside the oven writing wine reviews and waiting on a roast to heat evenly to medium rare… which is where I cook my pork, too! - another blog post about that coming soon!). From a $9.99 Merlot there is nothing else I could ask for… from a $20 wine, yes, i might want an earthy or gamey change of pace, but the greater point is that this was a truly likeable wine for under $10… even for a Philistine like myself who happens to love Bordeaux… and consequentially, Merlot.

$9.99 at T.B. Ackerson 7.4/10

California, Cheap Drinks, Merlot, New World, Wine Reviews | No Comments

Blackberry, violets, and plums - oh MY?! No, not so much. Think pungent, mold veins of blue cheese on the nose, deep red fruits (rotten apple peel it seems… or am I crazier than usual? probably) on the palate, and a brambled, brown finish… I love every bit of it.

This wine is so much better than I expected… and I expected a LOT from a bottle of USA red priced well over $20 even and I say EVEN at Trader Joe’s wine shop.

It is not an easy wine. It is a good wine. It is not a smooth wine. It is a frenetic wine. It is not a complex wine… but it is an interesting wine.

Of course maybe it was just my bottle that seemed to have been dunked in cooked, blue cheese, but probably not since it was a screw top. Let’s score this:

$24.99 at T.B. Ackerson 8.1/10

About Us, California, Merlot, Napa | No Comments

Vero is afflicted with the most basic problem of Pinot Noir under $40- it has a very short finish. Everything else about it is great. The nose smells like the skin of fennel and cherry licorice. The body is light, but flavorful, adding a rustic, vegetal sourness in the mid-palate which makes one excited not just to taste, but also to swallow. The acidity is strong but not painful. The finish though feels good, but does not last beyond a tiny couplet of raspberry and orange zest, two things that I would love to add to a zucchini bread.

In fact, Vero is very much the zucchini bread that my first girlfriend in grad school made for me. It
smells wonderful. It feels good in your mouth. Then after you swallow, you think, “whoa, you went really heavy on the zest. This relationship seemed like such a good idea before it started, and now that we’re three months in, I can’t figure out why you didn’t dump me for that drummer ‘friend’ of yours… are you trying to get me to break up with you based solely on zest overuse?” … yes, a stretch of a metaphor, but the point is that many people will like this wine, but could probably do a lot better.

Now watch me negate all of that with a phenomenal (relative to the metaphor) score!

$20.99 at T.B. Ackerson 8.0/10

edit: After about three hours of being open, I just went back to this for a tiny sip before putting the second half of the bottle to sleep with the Rabbit vacuum pump wine preserver, and I totally got watermelon on the nose… possibly watermelon leather, but definite watermelon. It doesn’t really add to the score, but it adds to me having a really great sniff of wine right before bed.

Old World, Pinot Noir, Red Burgundy, Wine Reviews | No Comments