Snooth Highlights "Football Wines"

As we head into the 2nd weekend of NFL regular season play, I was delighted to catch up on my wine reading and find this Snooth article.  As an aside, if you haven't checked out Snooth, you should.  It's a great resource and community for fellow Winos.

It's titled 7 Wines for Football Season, but the topic is actually wine labels created by players and coaches.

I had no idea that Mike Ditka, Joe Montana, and Dick Vermeil were all crafting wines these days.  The Montana label (Montegia) is, per the article, created in partnership with Beringer and sold primarily for charity auction.  That's one on the list I'd really like to find!

That's a Mouthful!

The name, I mean.  Tonight we are enjoying Domaine La Florane A Fleur de Pampre Visan 2007.  Most of those words make some sense to me (I did take high school French, after all), but one's a mystery: pampre.

Pam´pre

n.

1.

(Sculp.) An ornament, composed of vine leaves and bunches of grapes, used for decorating spiral columns.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.

There's your word of the day!

It's entirely a mistake that we have this wine, actually, and a delightful mistake it was.  We had ordered this wine through a wine shop:

http://www.domainelaflorane.com/domfloraneen.html (80% grenache, 20% syrah)

but when it arrived, it was actually a sibling from the same winery, http://www.domainelaflorane.com/afpen.html (90% grenache, 10% syrah)

The nose is remarkable, and a bit unlike a typical grenache.  I am getting cherry, dust, earth, and a hint of saddle leather.  It's slightly less interesting on the palette. Lightly acidic, fruity, a little smokiness from the syrah, some mineral.  We paired it with a spinach and portabello pizza and it was perfect.  One of those unusually good pairings where a "pretty good" wine became "excellent" when matched with the food.  It was as though the wine actually expanded when matched with the mushrooms and cheese.

I do think this is a "drink now" selection.  A pity, since I have several more bottles.  I think I know what I'll be bringing to your house if you invite me to a dinner party in the next few months.

2006 Liberty School Cabernet, Paso Robles

Let me start with the disclaimer that I have a head cold.  This is how I ended up drinking the Liberty School in the first place.  A regular feature on restaurant wine lists, it retails in the $10 range and is very popular.  In fact, it's my dad's favorite "everyday" wine.  I didn't want to splurge on a wine I might not be able to taste, but we were having a steak and cabernet sauvignon seemed in order. 

This wine really held up.  Even to someone with a cold, this wine came off as rich, elegant, and velvety.  I have NO idea what it smelled like, sadly, but my husband said it had a nice, dark cherry aroma. We were both sad to see the bottle end.

Anyway, since I have a head cold, take my tasting notes for what they're worth - but at $10, you can try it for yourself without much risk.  As for me, I'll be getting a few more bottles for cold and flu season.

2006 Madigan Montepulciano

I have two of these and just opened the first.  I bought it without tasting it first, which I try to avoid, but it came on a strong recommendation from my friendly Wine Man, David Maggard.  It's rare to find a California Montepulciano.  Word is that the vines were grafted from a winery in Tuscany.   It's always fun to see what happens when you take an Old World varietal and plunk it down in Napa. Usually, the wines are big and intense, and this one is no exception.  It WILL be excellent.  Big, dusky, a hint of cherry.  Right now, though, it's really, really tightly closed, even after decanting.  It turned out to be enjoyable with a pasta in a strongly flavored sauce with Italian sausage, but I am going to put a sticky note on the 2nd bottle that says "Open in 2015".  Be advised.

I'm BACK!

That's right, the Wino has returned!  After a couple of years of pregnancy, new baby haze, and general chaos, life is finally settling back into a routine and the Wino Files begin again. 

My first musing to offer...

Randall Graham of Bonny Doon, one of my favorite eclectic winemakers and a pioneer of California Rhone-style wine, makes an absolutely amazing, big mourvedre called Old Telegram. 

Winemaker notes from Bonny Doon:

This is an amazingly concentrated wine, un vrai monstre. We are so pleased to be back in the Telegram business again, having just inked a long-term contract with our friends, the Del Barbas of Oakley and environs. This wine made entirely from very old (100 yr.) mourvedre.

The extra time on the vine has given the wine an extremely complex, aromatic profile and a modicum of finesse, its outsized physique notwithstanding.

I have enjoyed this wine repeatedly, as it was on the menu at one of our favorite restaurants.  We loved the wine so much, we would actually go to Jaspers JUST for the purpose of having that wine with our dinner.

Recently, my husband's step-father shared with me a wonderful Chateauneuf du Pape (around 15% mourvedre) from... Domaine du Vieux Telegraphe.  

Old Telegram, inspired by Vieux Telegraphe?  I'd love to know.  Alas, since moving away from California, the odds of my getting a chance to ask the winemaker are quite slim.  Anyone out there have an insight?

Thus run the musings of the Wino Files.