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.

Louis Roederer Brut Premier Champagne

Roederer has always been a bit of a mystery to me. For the short time I’ve been drinking wine, I always found this particular product to be the rather weak link in the chain. For me, I’d rather have spent the same (often less) amount of money on their domestic tête de cuvée L’Ermitage or on a few bottles of the standard baseline domestic Roederer Anderson Valley Estate. As for the “US Government style budget minded” Cristal, I’ve only tried it at trade tastings or one particular high-end tasting put on by Whole Foods Duluth. To me, it is akin to viewing a butterfly in chrysalis.

This marks the third time I’ve sampled this Champagne. Last time was an older release that had been cellared for a few years, which makes quite a bit of difference as the toasty flavors were more pronounced. The previous time was at a Champagne tasting in December and this was good, but I wasn’t that impressed. Third time really is the charm. FULL DISCLOSURE: I received this as a sample.

The Roederer Brut Premier from last year was the only Champagne to make Wine Spectator’s Top 100 list. This is an interesting factoid because it was a NV bottling, which rarely make appearances on the annual list. You are usually more apt to find vintage Krug than NV Champagne.

For me, this was actually a bit more fruit driven than the domestic bottling from Anderson Valley. It was still lively and tart, without a lot of yeast or toastiness. I found a much stronger presence in the form of meyer lemon, granny smith apple, a touch of pink grapefruit and some spicy gingerbread notes in the finish. The youthful side of non-malolactic production gave this a real precise finish.

I thought this was much better than I remember in the past and for one of the big houses, I think a pretty solid offering. If you can find it for $40 or so, I’d give it my recommendation, especially if it is from a store that turns it quick. Once again, I really wish the Champagne houses would do something to let consumers know the age of the wine via a disgorgement date on the back label.

Happy weekend to all!

Segura Viudas Extra Dry Cava

It isn’t often that we drink extra dry sparkling wines. First off, there really aren’t that many out there, with the vast majority of producers going with the drier Brut dosage. Those who do use higher sugar content often don’t call the wine Extra Dry, as this term is very counter intuitive. Remember, Extra Dry is sweeter than Brut.

We bought this wine for $7.99 at Bullock’s, the only place I’ve ever seen this offering from Segura Viudas, a house we consume (when spending our own money) quite a bit of around here.

For a wine with a bit of extra sweetness to it, it was really quite good. I’m a bit funny about sugar in wine, preferring my sparkling wines to be drier and more in the Champagne taste profile, with lots of minerality in them. In still wines, I’m a fan of dessert wines, another category much maligned and ignored by most wine geeks. I guess I’m just a fan of the under appreciated.

With all the sparkling wines I’ve consumed this year, I think the extra sweetness was a welcome change, but I’d still recommend and drink this again. In other words, it wasn’t just the slight increase in sweetness that makes me like this wine. (Remember, context in wine consumption is paramount.) For those who say they don’t like sweet wines, I’m sorry you don’t enjoy them. Before dismissing them in general, you should at least give them a shot with the proper food or in a blind tasting. That way you can really be sure.

This particular wine was quite refreshing and the sugar seemed to act more as a rounding of the palate and brightening of the fruit, never straying into what I’d call a “syrup” mode as some wines are apt to do. The flavors were centered around apples, pear and a touch of stone fruit, with a slightly creamier texture than the Brut.

I think this is well suited for spicy cuisine, be it Pan-Asian or Southwestern in flavor. Overall, it is an above average wine and an outstanding QPR. This would make a spectacular offering for weddings, where most folks aren’t really into drinking sparkling wine. For $8, this is tough to beat.

Haiku
A slightly sweet wine
Like spicy sugared apples
A palate delight

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

Riondo Pink

So from what I’ve read, wine reviews are considered lame and boring amongst some wine bloggers. Or at least that was what I gathered from a few posts / tweets I saw during the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference this past weekend. I found it sort of ironic that some wine bloggers would take this opinion, but then also say who needs wine critics anymore? Personally, I like wine opinions. Anyways, I just found that to be a curious set of beliefs and will have to dwell on it more before I write an opinion post.

Well, reviews are the majority of what I do, so here is another one.

With the summer heat arriving earlier, we’ve been eating lighter and hence looking to drink lighter wines. Fortunately, sparkling fits the bill. The NV Riondo Pink ($12.99 at Whole Foods – 10.5% alcohol) from Italy is a wine we’ve enjoyed in the past, including a bad bottle earlier this year that I didn’t bother to write up because, well, it was faulty. This time the bottle was as we both remembered it, an easy to drink bottle of light red melon and strawberry fruit flavors. The mousse is lighter, as is the alcohol. This is what we’d call a frizzante wine, not fully sparkling.

A side note on this wine is that it used to be labeled as Prosecco, but that has since been removed and it is now just called Riondo Pink. From what I can tell, they’ve changed this to be made from 100% Raboso grapes, hence the change in the name. It is made in the same tank method, which allows for cost savings as it is obviously much cheaper to do the secondary fermentation in one large tank than in individual bottles. Typically, wines like this are bottled to order, as they are best drunk relatively fresh. This means you want to buy it from a store that has a regular turnover of the stuff. Again, labeling laws fail the consumer, as a bottled on date would really prove quite useful for sparkling wines made in this fashion.

Anyways, this is a repeat purchase and something I’d recommend to anyone who wants a nice fruity drink without being sweet, nor too dry. We paired this with assorted fruits and cheeses, as it is pretty light to take on anything too heavy. It was particularly good with strawberries.

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