2005 Laetitia Brut Coquard

FULL DISCLOSURE: I received this as a sample from the winery.

In the whole of the United States, there are only two wooden basket Coquard presses present. Both of them are owned and operated by Laetitia in the Arroyo Grande Valley, a sub-appellation of the larger and better known Central Coast AVA.

What does that mean to you, the person who really just wants to drink good wine? It means the fine folks at Laetitia take pride in using “old world” equipment that may cost a bit more to operate, but is worth it to them when it comes to quality in the bottle.

This is the second offering from Laetitia I’ve had the pleasure to sample. I don’t think this wine is available except to club members, who pay $28 for it. $35 is the winery price. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any Laetitia sparkling in this market, though I do know the still wines are distributed here.

For a wine of 4 1/2 years old, this was quite the young buck. I found it to be full of mouth watering acidity and quite refreshing to drink, without a lot of toasted character as one might expect from a vintage bubbly. This is one that can age, though I’m not convinced it will necessarily improve with advanced aging.

A very tangy wine that needs food to tame the acidity, unless you just dig the feeling of enamel peel. We had this with cheese, bread and assorted fruits, so make sure to serve something rich and creamy like brie. Overall, it was good, but based on the price point, I think you can do better with other offerings. Perhaps the acidity will keep this alive long enough to take on some more developed and nuanced character, but for now it is just a young buck that needs to be broken.

Until next time, live well, love much and drink great wine…with friends…because wine is social.

Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut

For those who know me, you are familiar with my affinity for this particular bubbly. I’ve posted about it before and have never been disappointed by this wine. For the under $20 price point, it may be the best value in domestic sparkling wine. Mumm Napa is the only other contender for my personal palate. I’ve paid $17.99 for it, but I did receive this particular bottle as a free sample, so take everything I say about it with a grain of salt. Actually, you should do that anyways.

One of the reasons I really like the Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut has to do with the terroir, which is fancy French for a “sense of place” for lack of a lengthy explanation. If you want to know more, just do like the rest of the planet and Google it. The other reason is the actual process of making the wine. Once again, it reinforces my belief in the wine being the greatest of all man-Nature collaborations.

Most California sparklers are produced with riper grapes, which makes sense since that is what California produces more of than anything else. I find the Roederer Estate Brut to be less fruity than your typical Cali bubbly, part of which is due to the region where the grapes are grown. Based on my looking up the location of the tasting room and guesstimating how far inland the tasting room is (I don’t know where the vineyards are), I’d guess they benefit from cooling effects of the Pacific. While the temperatures may get warm, the evenings bring cooler temperatures and allow for plenty of acidity to be retained. Combine this with the fact they use little to no malolactic fermentation and you’ve got a wine in my sparkling wheelhouse. Laser like in focus and on the austere side, this is a Champagne drinker’s style of bubbly.

If you want more fruit flavors or something “softer” and “friendlier”, check out many of the other California sparklers or get some Prosecco.

Technical stuff

• Alcohol – 12%
• pH – 2.95 (that is low and low = higher acidity = tart = good for food)
• Residual sugar – 1.2%
• Only cuvee (first pressing) juice is used.
• Aged for a minimum of two years (15 months is the minimum in Champagne for NV wine) on the lees.
• Some oak aged reserve wines are added, but I don’t know what percentage.

This is the sort of wine you want to pair with oysters, fried food or something a little sweet like sushi. The high acidity will cut right through the fattiness of anything fried and I imagine a fried oyster po-boy and this sandwich would sing like the Captain and Tennille. (Insert your favorite duo if you don’t like the selection which popped into my head. My parents watched that show a lot.) The flavors are primarily tart white and green fruit, with hints of spice and toast.

I still find this to be my preferred domestic bubbly, but can see where some palates would find this much too austere for their enjoyment. Your mileage will vary.

Until next time, live well, love much, drink great wine.

UPDATE: (3 hours post publication)

So, Ed McCarthy, author of Champagne for Dummies and co-author of other books with his wife, made the following Tweet regarding this particular post. While it isn’t a comment, I found it cool.

Click photo for link to actual page on Twitter

Mumm Napa Brut Reserve

While I have sung the praises of the Mumm sparkling rosé a few times, both here and on social sites like Twitter, I’ve not yet really explored all the other great samples the winery provided me. So, to get this belaboring point out of the way and in the interest of FULL DISCLOSURE, this wine was a sample.

Once again, the summer meal of cheese, fruit and bread made an appearance. This time, we had mango, strawberries, white grapes, havarti, boursin, seafood salad (from Publix) and a freshly sliced soft baguette. I didn’t freeze the wine this time, so no cool ice capsule photo like I had with the 2002 Rotari Flavio.

I don’t have an exact price, but the tech sheet from the PR folks said it was a suggested retail of $30. You may find it lower and make sure it is the pictured bottled, with the words Mumm Napa very prominent on the label. The Brut Prestige looks similar in that it too is a black bottle, but it should retail closer to $15 (maybe as low as $13 if you look) from what I’ve seen. I’ve not tasted, but do have a sample of the Brut Prestige that I’m looking forward to trying in the near future.

While not the top of the line, this does represent a significant step up in the Mumm Napa line up. They pick by hand and only use the first press juice, standards brought over from the motherland France. The blend is 60% Pinot Noir, 40% Chardonnay, which surprised me since I found the flavors to be more Chardonnay driven. The dosage is 11 g/L, putting it in the middle of the Brut range, which runs 6 – 15 g/L in Champagne. No sign of sweetness here, though you definitely get the sunshine pouring through the palate.

Take one not quite ripe pear, soak it with lemon, lime and just a smidge of white grapefruit juices, then serve it in a bakery that has just closed for the day, where the aromas are drifting away and not smack you in the face fresh in the morning. That is what this wine tastes like, with vibrant acidity and full-bodied texture fused together in a surprising manner. Vibrant enough to serve at the beginning of the meal, but I wouldn’t be afraid to pair this with salmon either. An above average wine that borders on the outstanding, it just didn’t quite have the complexity to get that next level, especially in this price range.

For $30, you can buy entry level Champagne or you can buy this. This is a good choice for a little splurge that will surely impress.

Haiku
Hand picking the grapes
Then pressing them so gently
Makes this fine bubbly

On another note, I’ve entered a contest to win a two week wine making apprenticeship in Chile under the tutelage of Casa Lapostolle winemaker Andrea Leon. I am asking you to go click on this link and vote for me. I am on page 3 as I write this, but could be on page 4 or later depending on the number of new entries.

If I can get enough votes, I’ll appear on the most popular page. Right now, the leader has 43 votes. So, if you like my Tweet, vote for me. If you like someone else better, vote for them. Someone needs your help to make their dream come true. Cheers!

Sparkling...wine...in...oh the horror...a can

Back to back bad wine reviews, what is the world coming to!

With my wife out of town over the holiday weekend, I didn’t want to pop anything good. I still had a few leftovers from the last time she was traveling, things I’d bought I knew she wouldn’t care if she missed. I only got to one and after that, I just didn’t have the desire to subject myself to anything more. An Andre filled weekend would not have been a good thing.

This offering from the Coppola folks is as you can see, sparkling wine in a can. Yes, there is a bottle version, but what fun would that be? Some places sell it by the can (for $3.99), some sell it in hexagonal packages of 4. At least I only had to buy one can of this stuff.

I ate this with a grilled ham-n-cheese, which was made with multi-grain bread and a thin spread of raspberry jelly. Perhaps all the sugar from the sandwich was too much for this sweet wine and it just sent my palate into diabetic fits. I did try the wine first by itself, which wasn’t really all that much of an improvement over having it with the sandwich.

A blend of pinot blanc, sauvignon blanc and muscat, this wine was on the sweeter side, with a generous amount of pear and peach flavors, but sort of like those you get out of a can, not fresh from the grocery store / farmers’ market / garden. I don’t know if it was the can, but aluminum isn’t as inert as glass, so if this sat for a long time (I’ve had it for 3 months) at the store, it could have just been old product that was over due for consumption.

If the cuisine had been spicy, perhaps it would have worked better, but the artificial syrup flavor I got just killed it all. I took two sips with the sandwich and then tossed the rest. Perhaps they should put an “enjoy by” date on the can. I don’t know if I could enjoy it, but I could see where folks who like a sweet drink might get pleasure out of this. I have to say, the can factor in terms of carrying it around has a certain appeal, though I think tetra-paks probably work better for this niche application of taking wine somewhere where glass is forbidden or just inconvenient.

I’d be happy to never drink this again.Your mileage may vary (and if it does or you know someone who likes this, please leave a comment / tell me about it).

Cheers,
Kevin

Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut

Sometimes, you just find a wine that you don’t care for, but everyone else seems to like. I mean, everyone.

This is the first actual bottle of the Gloria Ferrer Sonoma County Brut we’ve actually consumed and yes, FULL DISCLOSURE: It was a press sample. All other occasions of sampling this were just that, sample pours at tastings. Each time, the desire to purchase was never ignited, even with other people touting how much they liked it and the persistently good ratings from multiple professional reviewers.

Gloria Ferrer is owned by the Ferrer family, who also happen to own Segura Viudas, a very popular bubbly brand in this house. The Brut Reserva and Aria are both Cavas that we’ve enjoyed many, many times. I’d venture to say they are our top two consumed sparkling wines. They are good and both under $10, hence the constant enjoyment.

This is why it has always puzzled me as to why I don’t dig on the California stuff. As I first mentioned, it gets rave reviews from many trusted sources and in 2009, the release was granted a spot on the Top 100 list from Wine Spectator that publication which shall not be named. (Just having a bit of Harry fun.)

So, we popped this open last night and had it with a favorite summer time meal, one of fruit, cheese, bread and cookies. I will also say that it had been a long, rather trying day of travel and we were eating late. I tell you this because, as I’ve always said, the enjoyment (or lack thereof) of wine has much to do with context of consumption.

The wine was well made enough, but it just didn’t seem to suit me. It could have been the tart acidity in the green grapes, though we’ve had those before with other bubblies and had no such undue lack of pleasure. Maybe it was just the mood of the day, which wasn’t the best as we all wrestled with exhaustion and having a child on board with food poisoning. I will spare you the details, but you can imagine how difficult it would be as a parent to be in such a situation.

Overall, it just seemed a mediocre blend of tart green and citrus fruit flavors, lacking any real complexity or interest. We didn’t finish the bottle and I did keep searching for what makes everyone else rave about this wine. I think you’ll see this in the local market for about $15. While I personally don’t care for it and would pick up other wines for the same or just slightly more money, I don’t think most people would be disappointed in this wine. Again, I’m in the minority when it comes to evaluating this wine, so I’ll keep trying it at every opportunity (that doesn’t involve me buying it) to see if I can find it or if everyone else just thinks the emperor’s new clothes are just dandy. I’m pretty sure that is NOT the case.

Cheers!

P.S. For those who follow me on Twitter, I tweeted last week that Kilikanoon wines would no longer be available in Georgia. This was a bad piece of information that I have seen been corrected on and have apologized for on Twitter. I just wanted to put it here since this is the more permanent record and is is seen by my regular subscribers.

Question: Do you have a wine that you don’t care for, but everyone else seems to? Tell me about here via comments or on Twitter.