2008 Rocca Bello Negroamaro - reviewed by Kerri

The facts:
2008 Rocca Bello Negroamaro
Region: Puglia, Italy
Variety: Negroamaro

We picked this up one day at a local liquor store because we’ve had negroamaros a few times before and Jonathan has liked them. That, and we were looking for a slightly less expensive wine to review. (I’m not sure how we routinely choose bottles that are around $13.99, but that seems to be our resting point these days.)




My take:

It smells dark red and young (i.e., I could smell the alcohol), but I guess you’d expect that since this is a 2008. I’d say it’s medium to full bodied and complex enough for the price point. (It’s not a $30 wine in an $11 bottle. Nor is it a $7 wine in an $11 bottle. It seems right on the money for $11, maybe a tad more complex than you’d expect at that price.)

When just sipping...
Most of the flavor is up front, comes across as dark purple, the middle seemed a bit weak for me, the finish is longer than I expected at the price point, and it’s on the dry side.

Pulling some air over it is when the wine really expresses itself. The flavors are more balanced through the beginning and middle. It tastes dark red to purple up front and then the taste buds perk up a bit in the middle, where you get more of the complexity, and the finish is even longer with a bit of spiciness to it.

I wish I could write sonnets about it, but it’s just not doing it for me tonight for some reason. It makes me want to have some cheese. Perhaps as a sipping wine, I find it a bit too big? Not mellow enough? Not sure. I suspect it would age well and if I weren’t full from Thanksgiving leftovers, I would definitely be tempted to break out some manchego and give it another try.

Okay, so let 5 minutes pass and pick this up again. As soon as I wrote that perhaps food would add to my enjoyment of the wine, I felt guilty for not giving it that chance. So, I broke out some cheese.

I do enjoy the wine more with the cheese. As I said, I think it’s just a tad too big for my tastes to be a sipping wine. In the interest of full disclosure..., the wine bottle itself says it’s “perfect with red meats, pizza and all Mediterranean spiced dishes.”

Price point:

It was $10.99 in DC.

2008 Rocca Bella Negroamaro

A darkly enticing aroma. I wrote that just as a note to myself just by way of a note to begin the writing process. I was going to embellish it some and string it into a long metaphor, involving candle lit swanky bars with muted electronic down-tempo playing, with fez wearing fashionistas smoking clove cigarettes, but that seemed a bit much, so we will just have to settle for using it as the wine blog equivalent of “it was a dark and stormy night”.

So my love of the Negroamaro started at Proof on either our second or third visit there. They had one by the glass and I was absolutely smitten by it. This leads me to the greatest and worst thing about Proof. Their wine list is constantly changing, and its not uncommon to have a different line up on two visits in the same month. Alas the next time we went, literally three weeks later, my new love was gone a dim memory in the backlighting of their glass bar.

Unfortunately, as it is not a particularly common grape, the odds of running into one are somewhat akin to a chance encounter with either the Loch Ness monster or an Australian wine worth drinking. If you see one on a menu, I highly recommend stopping what ever you are doing and ordering a glass, a bottle, or better yet a nebakanezer immediately.

So, I started with the aroma, and I think I will pick back up there. As mentioned it has a somewhat dark aroma, with an air of cherry and earthiness to it. Much like tawny port, this would be a wine that I am content to swirl in a glass and living in the luxuriousness that is the nose of this divine beverage.

The color would be a deep dark rich red, and with less than half a glass in me, I feel compelled to go to the garage, get a ladder, climb up to the roof and proclaim my love for this wine loudly for all to hear. Alas, drinking and ladders don’t go together, nor would my neighbors take kindly to a crazy man shouting about wine from the top of his house. That being said, you could probably label me as a fan.

Opened up, and in the glass this wine becomes increasingly expressive. Starting with what would be best described as the most fleeting of gently sour notes, giving way to an enveloping array of subtle, yet strong flavors. I would speak of them individually, but to do so would less their entirety. Suffice to say cherries are involved in a way that legitimizes that much maligned fruit (I should note, I don’t think cherries are actually much maligned, it just sounded good, and I don’t tend to like them.) and the finish is a long drawn out affair that serves to slow down consumption and to draw out the enjoyment of this wine.

I’m not sure what the availability is like in general, but we picked this one up at our corner liquor store (one that isn’t known for its wine selection) and I know I will be heading back up their to take their remaining stock.

2006 Chateau Lamothe de Haux

The facts:

2006 Chateau Lamothe de Haux
Region: Premieres Cotes de Bordeaux, France
Variety: 60% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Cabernet Franc


(Disclosure: I cheated and did not take a photograph of our wine bottle; I grabbed this image from the internet. Rest assured that the bottle we have is 2006, not 2005.)

My take:

I was excited to try this wine – I love a good Bordeaux blend and the color was beautiful – a nice red-brown. The nose was light, which seemed perfect to go with pork tenderloin. That’s as far as my optimistic notes are going to go.

I think I finally had what I would consider a full-bodied wine. This wine feels quite thick and viscous in the mouth. I personally didn’t care for the texture. The taste is very light up front, a bit more brown in the middle, and you get some complexity in the finish, if you pull a good amount of air over the wine. However, if you’re just sipping this wine, it’s completely nondescript. It’s very short, with little complexity or flavor. After the first glass and making some notes about it, I found myself completely uninterested in drinking more.

Don't get me wrong..., I didn’t dislike the wine, but I didn’t like it all that much either. I will say, drinking it with dinner did lengthen the wine somewhat, but I still found it thin in flavor (not texture). Luckily, dinner did not disappoint. For any food network aficionados, I made Paula Dean's apple stuffed pork tenderloin. Now that I can recommend. It was easy and delicious!

Price point:
Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps the Chateau Lamothe de Haux Blanc is better and/or more well-known than the Rouge. We got the red through our wine club and an internet search reveals lots of places selling the white, but I couldn’t find the red.

2006 Chateau Lamothe de Haux Bordeaux Rouge

So sometimes, a wine needs to open up a bit before you truly can enjoy it. You know that kind of wine? This one isn’t it. Now, that’s not to say that a little air, a little warmth, a little time hasn’t effected it, they did, and unfortunately it made it suck a bit more than it did when I tried at a 55 degrees.

So I am going to do two reviews. It’s like a twofer for you my beloved readers.

Review 1. Wine straight out of the wine fridge and a mellow 55 degrees (Yes I am aware that’s too cold, but the thermostat on the fridge doesn’t work, and they are expensive, so unless you are going to send me a big fat check for a new one, that’s the temperature this wine is getting reviewed at).

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It was like a non-wine really, a grape colored slightly alcoholic starter wine for those who are afraid of flavor. Hardly any nose to speak of, with a watery semi-grape smell. The color was decent, on the red side of thing (as opposed to the purple). I think the tap water I was drinking actually had more flavor then it did.

Review 2. 35-40 minutes later after dinner.

It was like things went from bad to worse, excepting, of course, that it wasn’t really bad before hand, just kind of “meh”. So, I guess that’s from meh to bad then, or is that from meh to worse? Details.... Once opened up it moved from no nose, to a decided aroma of wet leaves. Not wet leaves in that “gee isn’t fall great” kind of way, but more like in that “what’s that smell” kind of way. The flavor went from “upfront, short and unremarkable” to a slow lingering tannic assault that besmirches the good name of all of the wines that have gone before it.

Fine…..maybe that last sentence was pure literary hyperbole so that I can flex my previously declared universal poetic license, but suffice to say the wine just isn’t really that good. In fact, if you ever decide to try this wine, maybe have a shot of tequila or three first, I suspect it will heighten the enjoyment immensely.

2005 Concannon Limited Reserve Petite Sirah

The facts:

2005 Concannon Limited Release Petite Sirah
Region: Central Coast, California
Winemaker: Adam Richardson
Variety: Petite Sirah



This wine is one of our regular stand-bys. We almost always have it on hand and drink it pretty often. We first tasted it at the DC International Wine & Food Festival a couple of years ago. We wandered by a table that was tasting wines from Big House and Concannon. The guy who was pouring the wine told us the Big House wines are more popular, but we liked the Concannon Limited Release Petite Sirah better than the Big House wines. And yes, that is a mouthful (no pun intended). I’m saying “Limited Release Petite Sirah” deliberately because the Concannon winery makes more than one petite sirah. The Limited Release one is the only one we’ve tried, but they also produce a Reserve Petite Sirah and a Heritage Petite Sirah. I’m also deliberately spelling it the way they spell it – makes it easier for you to find online, should you be searching for it.

At the time, when we first tasted it, neither of us could believe there was actually a California wine that we enjoyed. Now, that could have had something to do with the amount of wine we had already consumed that day, so when we saw it at the grocery store (yes folks, even Safeway carries it), we decided to give it another try. And we were pleasantly surprised once again. So we tend to keep it on hand. I’d call it a good sipping wine – not one that requires or demands food.

So here’s my take:

The wine smells dark red, maybe a little purple, with just a bit of the stringent alcohol scent/sensation. Upon sipping, it’s spicy and more complex than I’d expect from a wine in this price range and I think it has a rather long finish. It's on the dry side and I might call this one full-bodied.

As an aside, I’d love to have someone in the industry give me a light-bodied, medium-bodied, and full-bodied wine one after the other so I can feel the difference. Maybe then I'd actually get it. I had an experience like that at the International Wine Expo some years ago, when a pourer perfectly demonstrated for me what oak smells and tastes like. Ever since then I've been able to smell oak on a wine and now I know that I dislike oak aging of white wines – especially American oak. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program....

Drinking the LRPS (that’s the texting shorthand for Limited Release Petite Sirah, heheh) with Italian food (red sauce) made it taste a bit more on the purple side than red and made it less dry; kind of mellowed (dulled?) it out a bit. It definitely seems less complex and less spicy after the red sauce.

Price point:
$10 - $14 per bottle

2005 Concannon Limited Reserve Petite Syrah

So I have a dirty little secret. It weighs on me heavily at times, and today is the day that I free myself from its crushing weight. Given that, I think perhaps its best to just put it out there before I go on.

Our house/table wine is Californian and I love it dearly.

Yes…yes… I know it may come as a shock, and I can certainly understand why it does. I spend more time talking shit about Californian wines than I do writing sonnets about French ones. And while I am sure this admission will bring jeers, this wine is certainly worth enduring the mockery that comes from my love affair with a left coast wine. That being said, we ran into this wine as the DC International Wine Expo a couple of years ago, and to this date I don’t think any wine we have had at a large venue tasting has had such a a lasting impact on me. It’s the Concannon Limited Release Petite Syrah, and I think its wonderful.

There I said it. Its like a weight has been lifted from me.

The gentleman who was pouring it was pushing the distributing wine group's Big House series of jail themed wines (true story….) and mentioned that the Concannon was the lesser known “off brand” (As a slight tangent, I cant think of anything that makes less sense than jail themed wines other than say….a Wookie on Endor, but hey, they do silly things out in Cali so who am I to judge). As you would expect the big house wines sucked being single note, huge and jammy as is the coin that Californian wines typically trade in. It was this off brand however that really did capture my attention, and I dare say undying devotion. The moniker off brand does this wine a great disservice, but hey, that’s how it was presented.

First and foremost it’s a Petite Syrah. For those of you not in the wine industry, a Petite Syrah is basically like a Syrah (or Shiraz) that doesn’t suck….or maybe I am just editorializing a tad. Regardless, the wine is a rich red tending more towards the purple, and the nose is fruity and light. The flavor is where it shines for me. I find it incredibly soft on the palette, so much so, in fact, that you can fill your mouth with wine holding it there without a hint of tannins or alcohol, simply meditating on the soothing blend of soft complexity. With air pulled across said mouthful, again we are treated to a dizzyingly complex array of flavors and aromas without the least hint of overbearing tannins. The complexity, the softness, and ease with which this wine goes about it's busniss all belie its modest price tag, and are what make it shine in otherwise crowded wine racks.

For the record I am well aware that I am swooning over a $13 wine. Did I mention the price? While not a dollar twice (but granting, that the reaction is indeed satisfaction) the Concannon is a steal. It’s widely available, and infinitely drinkable, and for those nights that you want a glass (or three) of wine and don’t feel like getting into something new you cant beat it. It’s also widely available, finding its home in most reputable wine shops, as well as grocery stores.

I love it, and don’t think I have had more bottles of any single wine other than this one. Which makes sense, because if I had the same number of bottles of $30 bottles of wine, I would need to force Kerri to get a second job. To summarize, you are unlikely to find a wine of the complexity and character in this price range. And if by some miracle you did manage to make that happen, it’s likely that you would be telling me about it when you showed me your pictures of the Loch Ness Monster, Leprechauns and Big foot.

Run out to buy a bottle or six now.

2007 Il Cuore Rosso Classico

The facts:

2007 Il Cuore Rosso Classico
Region: Mendocino, California
Winemaker: Dennis Patton
Variety: 51% Syrah, 26% Zinfandel, 12% Sangiovese, 6% Carignane, 5% Merlot
Aging: “Modest oak barrel” aging according to their website

This wine is all about mixed messages for me. The label leads me to be skeptical.



I have a hard time taking wine seriously, when it has kitschy things on the label (like the hearts, cats, etc.). But this is a blend of Syrah, Zin, Sangiovese, Carignane (for some reason in California, they add an E on the end), and Merlot. I usually like a red blend, so that led me to be hopeful.

My take:

It looks purple in the glass and upon seeing it, we both remarked, “Well this is a California wine.” It smells purpley-black to me.

The wine is big up front and a bit of spicy in the middle, but more so if you’ve pulled air over it. If you’re just sipping it, the middle kind of falls flat. It has a rather long finish (maybe 10 to 15 seconds) – longer than I’d like, actually because I’m not a huge fan of the taste.

It tastes the same way it smells – purpley-black; almost like dull blackberries, as if they were not tart or sweet, but bland. Because it's a California wine, I expected a more intense flavor, but didn’t really get it. And then the finish is a bit gray.

I’d call it medium bodied and not dry.

Now, all that being said, I went and read up on the wine after tasting and describing it. Turns out Il Cuore is Italian for “the heart” and is a tribute to the Italian immigrants who first planted grape vines in Northern California. Sheds a bit of light on the label, which was designed by Dan Rizzie, a cubist artist. All that is well and good, but it doesn’t make me like the wine any better. It’s just not my style. (I did mention at the outset of this endeavor that I’m biased toward old world style wines.)

If you like California-style wines, you might enjoy this. I read other reviews that indicated this embodies a Northern California wine.

Price point:
$10 - $13 per bottle

2007 Il Cuore Rosso Classico

They say packaging is important, that it can draw you in and make you want to purchase or try a product. Or…. if you are me, it also has the possibility to make you completely discount a product and write it off entirely. Meet my friend Il Cuore. They decided to jazz up their label and put hearts all over the bottle. I'd say I'm not sure why, but the sheet we got with wine club went into detail about it, and its a bunch of crap that some clod in marketing wrote to try and justify it...or they are just chumps. True story. We aren’t talking about just one heart here, there are no less than 5 hearts on the bottle, the foil is even emblazoned with a heart. Awwww…. how precious. Gee…. maybe the hearts will prompt me to pick it for a romantic occasion OR maybe they will warm my black heart and get me all sentimental. Or more likely they will give me yet another reason to talk shit about Californian wines and reinforce my theory that they are, by and large, so devoid of character that they need to resort to clever packaging to ever have a chance of leaving the shelf when there are French, Spanish, or Italian wines in stock.

Ok…I feel better now. Or not. Hearts people…. Seriously? Why not just put a kitten on there? Or an Alien! With Lasers! And a robot. Now, that my friend, is a wine I would buy just because of the label! I should note I did, in fact, once buy a wine called Nostradamus, because A. It came in a clay jug, and B. It's named Nostradamus, and who isn’t going to buy an Eastern European wine named after the premier soothsayer of our time. I’m not sure that’s a good thing to admit but it’s neither here nor there.

On the plus side it’s a blend, weighing in with a good 51% Syrah 26% Zinfandel and 12% Sangiovese. Now I likes me some blends, and if anything can save a Cali wine, its going to be mixing some grapes together. And it works here for the most part.

Poured, the wine splashes into the glass with a warm purple-red hue. Its rich and dark and when swirled clings longingly to the side of the glass. The nose comes off a bit grapey for me but surprisingly low on the alcohol aroma. I wouldn’t call the aroma particularly complex, one good sniff and swirl and you can pretty much get its full measure.

Time to taste.

Gut reaction:
The wine deserves a better label. It doesn’t really suck badly enough to be festooned with brick brack and a cubist doily for a label. I found the syrah to give it a nice soft base on the pallet with the zinfandel punching it up and providing some wow factor (I’d note, that wow factor for me is typically unnecessary and generally what I dislike about Californian wines, I prefer them subtle). I don’t quite know what the Sangiovese is adding, but I found the wine to be balanced and there was no flavor or aroma that was glaringly out of place. It’s smooth, medium bodied and drinkable. Ultimately, the wine ends up being a bit jammy for my tastes, but if you tend to like the offerings of our Western coast, then you might want to give this one a try.

And one of these days, if you all behave and eat your vegetables like you are supposed to, I will let you in on my dirty little secret and tell you about the Californian wine I adore.

2007 Onix Classic

Ok ok… So when I said I got dragged out a while back for a “good” Australian wine that wasn’t exactly accurate. Truth be told, I was lured out to New Heights with the promise of two interesting wines. The first being the aforementioned Cat amongst the pigeons, and the second, being the topic of this particular missive.

So we actually had the Onix a while back, and never really got around to reviewing it. Sadly my notes on the original tasting were lost when I decided to erase the notes on my blackberry to make room for directions for a thousand mile ride in the rain (of course at the time I didn’t know it was going to rain, but that’s neither here nor there). That being said, I couldn’t in all good conscience review the wine without trying it again. That gets us to snag #1.

Snag #1 New Heights has Gin….lots of it. We went back, I tried it again and got derailed by cocktails. Win some; lose some…that’s my motto, and hell who isn’t willing to try a third time. And this, dear reader, is where we ran into snag #2.

Snag #2 nobody carries it. Now if my gin soaked memories served me correctly, it was pretty good and I want to take a crack at it while at the keyboard so that I could transcribe its loveliness into prose so I would just pop down to the store and grab a bottle and review it again (in the name of science of course). The problem with that being, we couldn’t really find it anywhere locally. That is, of course, until Kerri’s brother completely randomly found it and bought it for her as a thank you gift for babysitting.

So bottle in fridge, it was time for a reckoning. Well…a reckoning less in the OK Corral kind of way and more in a, hey let's have some wine!

So it’s a Garnacha and Carinena blend, which in my book would bode well. Pulling it out of the fridge and pouring a glass brings you a wine that is surprisingly purple, and I wasn’t really ready for that. Swirling it around in proper hoity toity fashion gives off a somewhat fruitier nose than I was I was expecting. Color me unimpressed. Right about then I was wondering what I saw in it the first two times that had me coming back for thirds. I needed to think about this and take its full measure in, there had to have been something to it but I wasn’t getting it from a sippy sip.

After pouring a glass and relaxing, letting it open up if you will, I am now in firm belief that my wine fridge is just too cold. It was free, and the temp knob doesn’t really work, and I am thinking 55 is just too cold (its stuck there). So warmed up and opened up, here is what I thought (Yes I know it took 500 words to get to the wine, but honestly its more entertaining this way and you didn’t really have anything better to do).

It's old world, first and foremost. That fruit sensation and nose declines greatly once it opens up, and I am sure if I were a true wine snob, I might actually describe it as blossoming, but since I’m not, I won't. The fact remains however that this wine does well with some time and some air. So much so, that I now recall why I am having it for the third time. Why you say? Simply put, this wine doesn’t suck. I am going to put it on my list of wines that everyone should try at least once. I wont say go out and buy a case, but seriously think about having a romp through the hills of Priorat (yes its hilly there, and yes I did look that up just to make that joke work). Beyond that, I’d like to see this wine again in say 5 or so years (or maybe find a bottle from say 2000-2004) I suspect with a little age, it might go from “ok” to love in a bottle.

We had it with no pairings any time we drank it, but I can see it with a big chunk of Manchego and a pile of Chorizo.

2007 Onix Classic by Vinicola del Priorat - Reviewed by Kerri

And we're back. Apologies for the radio silence on our end. You know how it is at the end of summer: trips to take, things to do. But, we knuckled down and drank some more wine - just for you. ;)

The facts:

2007 Onix Classic by Vinicola del Priorat
Region: Priorat, Spain
Variety: 50% Garnacha (aka Grenache), 50% Carinena (aka Carignan)
Aging: Stainless steel

My take:

This is a wine that I originally tried at New Heights restaurant back in March. We tried to find it locally at a few different wine stores and had some trouble, but then as luck would have it, my brother and sister-in-law actually found it (without knowing I’d been looking for it) at a Whole Foods in Virginia. Excellent - thanks guys! Time to go in for a second try. (Or is it a third by now?)

The nose is a bit dark red-purple. The taste comes across the same – dark red; plummy even. I get a bit of spice and complexity in the middle and a somewhat dry finish, though I wouldn’t call this a dry wine. It feels like a medium-bodied wine to me – not super light, but not super heavy either.

This is a 2007 and I find myself wondering if it would age well. I can kind of taste the earthy brown in it, but get more of an alcohol-like taste to it that I suspect might go away if it were another couple of years old. (And incidentally, that alcohol-like taste actually mellows out a bit as the wine opens up. I like the wine better after it's had some time in the glass to open up.)

Bottom line – it’s okay. I don’t love it, but I’d certainly have it again if I were to come across it. And as I said, I’m really curious as to what it might taste like after aging another 2 or 3 years. Right now, I’d call it a general sipping wine.

Price point: $13 - $17