If You Look Hard Enough You Can See the Wine

Practically everything related to the making of wine is anticipatory. The grapes are picked and crushed and fermenting and you anticipate what the wines will taste like. You have a favorite wine in the cellar awaiting that special meal or special someone and you hope that the wine will match the picture you have of it in your head.

This time of year, if you look hard enough you can see the next wines. We are a way off for Bordeaux varieties, but the Sangiovese in the Home Ranch vineyard is just beginning Veraison, that time when grapes turn color, skins get softer, and the growing of fruit is moving toward the end point (ripeness and balance between sugar and acid) having overcome the hump of its incipience.

In about 60 days, assuming the weather cooperates, we should be harvesting Sangiovese and anticipating the next great vintage of Vincere.

Greatest Meal Ever

As I've written many time before, the best glass of wine I have ever had is inextricably tied to the people with whom I was sharing it. Same goes for the best meal. And when I can share the best food I have had in a very long time with one of my kids, the "special-ness" of the occasion increases exponentially.

On our family vacation in Las Vegas last week, my son, Aidan, and I ate at Bar Charlie on our second-to-last night. Bar Charlie is owned by Charlie Trotter and is a smaller venue inside Restaurant Charlie. The Bar specializes in kaiseki style of Japanese cuisine, think Asian tapas...small plates of exquisitely prepared food, mostly fish, some raw.

Aidan works Saturdays in the La Rochelle tasting room and is a big fan of sushi...Kawa Sushi in Livermore is one of our frequent haunts. I promised Aidan we'd devote a night in Vegas to the pursuit of raw fish and I'd heard good things about Bar Charlie.

I can't speak highly enough of the level of service and the deliciousness of the meal. We splurged and had the 14-course meal. I also had the beverage pairing accompanying each dish.

To simply list the dishes would do a disservice to the greatness of it all, but here are a few highlights:

Hawaiian Big Eye Tuna with Umeboshi and Seawater - (Aidan's favorite) a raw preparation of tuna, one section of which was wrapped around a cake of Umeboshi (a salted Japanese plum).

Tasmanian Ocean Trout with Pearled Barley & Miso - each part of the trout was used from the skin (cooked as a chip and put into Trout ice cream...really delicious!) to the roe.

Diver Sea Scallop with Chocolate & Bloomsdale Spinach - (my favorite) puree of Spinach sauce, Coffee oil (unbelievable!), and chocolate ganache cut into strips brought out the sweetness of the perfectly cooked scallop.

I admire any company that sets very high standards and that works hard to meet them. Restaurant Charlie certainly fits into this category. There's a graciousness and elegance to the way they approach food and service that is both testament to their philosophy as well as an inspiration to those of us who want to be able to provide the seemless, unparalleled, Extraordinary Experience to all who visit us.

2008 Wine X - Step 2

I described in an earlier post the first step in the process of creating our flagship wine - Wine X - a blend of the 5 classic grapes from Bordeaux. Continuing in that vein, below is a bit more about how the other grapes get incorporated into the Cabernet Sauvignon base.

Over the last several weeks, I systematically went through each lot of wine making notes regarding the aromatic and gustatory qualities of each barrel then assigning a grade and a possible disposition for each barrel. If it was of great enough quality, perhaps it might make the SVS (Single Vineyard Series) level or even the PCC (Premiere Cabernet Collection). And if it was truly special, it might be destined for Wine X level.

After tasting through 118 barrels of the five varieties, I narrowed down the contenders to just a couple per variety. On Friday, I siphoned 375ml samples of each of the varieties (if there were multiple contending barrels for a variety, part of each such barrel went into the sample). After making notes on the wines, including a sample of the base Cabernet Sauvignon I created in Step 1, I went about blending the five samples together.

I am looking for greatness in this wine. I am looking for a wine with power, elegance, complexity of aroma and flavor, and an over-arching structure that holds all the pieces together and that will allow for age. In short, Wine X is supposed to be the greatest red wine from Livermore.

The first sample I made was in the same percentages as in the first Wine X. Then I made samples on either side, a bit more Cabernet Sauvignon and a little less CS. With each blend, I am trying to home in on just that one wine that expresses all of the grapes - the rusticity and mid-palate heft of Malbec, the color and tannin of Petit Verdot, the wistful aromatics of Cabernet Franc and a hint of her acidity - but does so in a unified way.

Generally, I make a series of samples, 5-7 or so, and let them sit for a while before I taste them for the first time. You want to give the wines a chance to sort things out some before you attach an impression to early.

So far, the wine that made the most favorable impression, the one that has the most power, grace, and ageability, contained 80% CS, 10% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot, 3% Malbec, and 2% Merlot. This, of course, is not necessarily where the the final blend will reside.

Now that I have a firmer idea about the percentages, I go back to determine what those percentages mean in terms of needed gallons of each wine to make the number of cases I want to produce. When I know that, I will remake the blends with only the best barrel or two (depending upon the gallons needed) from each lot. I will remake a series of blends with different percentages of CS again and determine my favorite. Then the process gets really interesting... More in Step 3.

Groovy Boobies Prevail

Each year our Tasting Room Team splits up into smaller groups to compete with each other to make a blend for release at the Livermore Valley Harvest Festival. Proceeds from each of the wines we have made (this year marks our fourth) have gone to support breast cancer research. last year's label is on the right.

Each team had samples of Zinfandel, Grenache, Syrah, Mourverdre, and Petite Syrah to work with. The wine had to contain at least 3 grapes, couldn't be more than 50% of any one grape, and had to be at least 16% of each grape included.

Team Groovy Boobies (Janice Fisher, Jessica Fisher, and Sharyn Bell) combined 16% Grenache, 30% Syrah, 34% Mourvedre, and 20% Zinfandel to narrowly defeat a blend made by Team X.

Their wine was wonderfully rich, with black fruit aromatics and flavors, silky mid-palate, and significant finishing tannins. Approximately, 150 cases of the wine will be released on September 6th. If you want a terrific wine and to support a great cause look for this wine (it will be named shortly) in our store in September.

Tasting Note: 2007 Mourvedre

We will be releasing Sommaro, a Mourvedre blend to members of our Collector's Circle wine club in July. This wine is our third such blend of Rhone varieties.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Jennifer Fazio, our Director of Operations and Cheese Monger to the Stars, and Cindy Turchino, our Tasting Room Manager, to taste and talk about the last two vintages of Mourvedre.

Mourvedre is not a well-known variety in America. It appears in Southern French blends and more recently in GSM (Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre) blends from Australia. I think Mourvedre is one of those quintessentially "just drink it, it goes great with food kind of wines."

There is a rusticity, and leathery texture (more prominent in Stairway our 2006 release than in '07) to go along with dark plum fruit, wild strawberry notes, and nice tannin. Jennifer commented on the dramatic black pepper-quality in the nose ("a snootful of pepper" were her exact words). "You'll think it's white," she said to me, "but it's black pepper." Just for the record...it is white pepper! Cindy got "hints of fresh cut herbs on the nose" and a "smooth flow of blackberries from the tip of [her] tongue through mid palate and a finish that is velvety soft."

Surprisingly, for our resident white wine and Pinot Noir gal, Jennifer, described the structure of the Sommaro as having only a "hint of tannin on the finish." I think the wine is more tannic than that...though the '06 is significantly more tannic and acidic than the the rounder '07. Cindy thought the tannins "make a nice showing but don't overpower the palate."

The 2006 Mourvedre (Stairway) is showing very pretty integration of fruit and wood. The delineated fruit of youth (plum, strawberry) is now an amalgam of silky black fruit aromas and flavors. The punch of acid and tannin that made the wine a potentially long-term ager is still significantly present. This quality, I think, allows for some neat food pairing options.

As far as '07 and food go, Cindy recommends a pecan crusted Rack of Lamb and roasted Rosemary Red Potatoes (that does sound good); Jennifer's thoughts turned to cheese. The picture to the right shows some of the cheeses we tried with the wine (Lenora, Jasper Hill Winnemere, Grayson, and Tomme de Montagne from 9 o' clock to 6 o' clock). I think this wine would go with meaty fish, chicken with lentils, BBQ ribs, sausages, charcuterie, just about anything.

Let us know what you think of the Mourvedre when it comes out, or any of our other wines.

2008 Wine X - Step 1

I took the first step, yesterday, in creating the second vintage of our new flagship wine...Wine X (I am waiting on the trademark office for approval before we announce the real name of the wine...I think it is much more meaningful if not as dramatic as its stand-in).

My vision for this wine is simple...it is meant to be the greatest red wine from the Livermore Valley.

I look at it as the wine my father and I sought to create when we first started Steven Kent Winery and the wine prior generations of the Mirassou family didn't make; hopefully, you will find it a testament to the Livermore Valley's world-class quality, to a wine mission 155 years in the making, and to one hell of a great wine.

You'll learn much more about Wine X over the next several months. The 2007 vintage will be released in October 2010, and the one I am working on now will follow the next year.

The First Child Still Shines

One of my biggest regrets in the wine business was not realizing how important our new Steven Kent history was going to be to our company. You probably know that my family is the oldest winemaking family in the country, having made wine continuously since 1854. And while this history means a great deal to me, it is necessarily distant as my involvement in creating it was minimal.

Not so with Steven Kent. My dad and I started the brand with an idea that the Livermore Valley could grow world class Cabernet, and we set about to prove it. I still am...and hopefully will for many years.

We spent about a year tasting our 1996 Cabernet from barrel frequently, trying to determine if that particular wine was good enough to launch not only the brand, but our winemaking philosophy, and our Mission. We decided, finally, that it was. That wine was inky dark, had great dark fruit and chocolate and wood notes, and was very well received by our first customers. It was so well received, in fact, that nearly every bottle was sold. And that is where the regret comes in.

We didn't keep enough of it in our Library so that we could see how the wine progresses over a very long time-frame.

I had the opportunity to taste the 1996 again a few days ago as part of an auction lot that we donated. The wine was still youthful: showing somewhat more dark cherry notes than I remember, but still having that great mid-palate structure, tannins on the finish, and indescribable notes that 10 years in bottle bring.

Everything is terrific with the 1996; it has many more years of life ahead of it, it tastes wonderfully now; it warms the emotional cockles of my heart. Oh, one bad thing...we don't have enough of it left.