2005 Surfrider Red - reviewed by Kerri

The facts:

2005 Surfrider Red
Region: Malibu Newton Canyon, California
Variety: 73% Merlot, 26% Cabernet Sauvignon, 1% Petit Verdot
Aging: French oak, 18 months
Winemaker: Christian Roguenant



My take:
Upon first pour, the wine was rather red and smelled red-pink. A full glass looks purplish and smells a little jammy.

The first sip was rather surprising. I didn’t get that full, in your face, jammy sip of a California wine that I was expecting. On the contrary, it is more mellow than what I normally expect from a California wine. After reading about the wine and the winemaker at the Rosenthal Estate website, it's not that surprising. The winemaker lived in Burgundy for some time and the wine is aged only in French oak. (For reference, I make it a practice not to read anything about the wine before I taste and draft my review. I don't want to be biased or unduly influenced by what I read prior to writing my review.)

I’d call this one a good sipping wine.

I find it to be medium bodied with a nice mouth-feel. It’s not too dry (though it’s more so if you pull some air over it), but it’s also not very creamy. It’s somewhere in the middle. Very nicely balanced. The downside to this wine is fairly short and you’re not going to get a huge amount of complexity from it. Like I said..., a good sipping wine.

Price point:
$24-$29

Frankly, though I think this is a nice wine, it’s too short and not complex enough in my opinion to warrant that price tag. $15..., sure. $30...,nope. (We must have gotten this one through wine club or as a gift.) That being said, the label says, "For each bottle purchased, a donation is made to the Surfrider Foundation, a grassroots, non-profit, environmental organization that works to protect our oceans, waves, and beaches."

Hey wait, does that mean my wine tonight is tax deductible? ;)

2005 Surfrider Red

Surfrider!

Yes, you did indeed read correctly. I just had a wine called Surfrider. Normally, the mere name would knock it off my radar, and my wine fridge as I (a) have an aversion to wines with stupid names, and (b) an aversion to wines with stupid labels. However, that being said, every month I get two bottles of random wine in the mail, and apparently they have a better sense of humor than I do (or a love of variety...but hey...details right?), which would indicate how this whole affair came to be.

Sidebar – Note to wineries

Labels with funny pictures, or strange logos, or pictures of cats, or Studabakers with a surfboard coming out are unlikely to sway me into purchasing your wine. I don’t like surfing, I like California even less, and while I do adore kitties I suspect they would get in the way of my wine glass, and thus might detract from the drinking experience. Pro Tip: Include the grapes, their percentage and the amount of time your wine was in oak, the wines name, and your name. Nothing else is necessary.

That out of the way, Surfrider came to us by way of our wine club. It espouses to be a Californian Bordeaux wine (by varietal composition). The wine comes out in a rich red color, and a slightly fruity nose, and while I don’t normally get into this sort of thing, its chock full of cherry. It’s a good competent wine, and it’s well made, and very drinkable. The balance is nice and the tannin level is near perfect. It’s really just a bit one note for me. It’s pleasant, well mannered and tasty. It is also lacking in anything vaguely akin to soul. The wine is devoid of any personality or interest past being a delightful beverage.

Bottom line: It’s tasty, I’m going to drink it, and marvel at how well balanced it is, but for the $25 price I’m going for a Reserva Malbec, or Rhone wine.

2008 Carmen Carmenere

The facts:

2008 Carmen Carmenere
Region: Rapel Valley, Chile
Variety: 85% Carmenere, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon
Aging: Taken from www.carmen.com, "The bunches were crushed and cold macerated for 10 days at 3ºC to obtain colour and fruitiness. Alcoholic fermentation was made in stainless steel tanks between 26-28ºC. Malolactic fermentation occurred naturally in stainless steel tanks. 30% of the wine was aged in French and American oak barrels for a period of 6 months."

My take:

This wine had a red-black nose to me. I definitely got a sense of black pepper upon the first sniff or two. After opening up a bit, that black pepper transformed a bit to more of a green bell pepper.

Though I know we said we wouldn’t describe wine this way, it quite honestly made me think of strawberries, green bell pepper, and black pepper. It’s definitely on the spicy side, but not overbearingly so.

The texture was ever so slightly chewy and slightly dry. I’d call it full-bodied.

When all is said and done, I don’t really have too much to say about this wine. It isn’t great, but it isn’t bad either. We drank it before, during, and after having a steak dinner and it held up to marinated, grilled rib eye. But for me, that green pepper flavor didn’t seem to pair well with the steak. I liked the wine better without food. That being said, it’s not velvety enough for my tastes and I get no sense of the brown that I tend to prefer, so it’s not something I’d purchase again.

Price point: $12-$13

2008 Carmen Carmenere

Its not a bad wine, and likely I will finish the bottle (that probably more about me liking to drink wine and less about this one), but here is my one sentence review:

If I saw it on a menu, I’d pick something else.

It’s not particularly notable; it doesn’t really stand out in any particular category. If there is anything I did notice it’s the green pepper aspects that really seem to overpower this particular wine. With each sip I am amazed at how “green” tasting this robust purple wine is. You get pepper in the nose, and green pepper on the taste buds with a nice long finish, which while pleasant, is also not particularly remarkable.

The bottom line, it’s a well crafted wine, smooth and balanced. I just don’t think its appeals to my leanings. I recognize the quality in it, but it’s just not my thing.

2007 Trivento Amado Sur - reviewed by Kerri

And we’re back!

Apologies for the radio silence on the blog. With the holidays and then some health issues, reviewing wine has proven a bit difficult in the last several weeks. Now that the second blizzard of the 2009-2010 winter season has hit our area, we’re happy to be snowed in with a bottle of wine, heat, and our laptops.

I picked up this wine from a local grocery store, so presumably it’s readily available in the states. I’ve actually purchased this wine a couple of times (Jonathan loves it, as I’m sure you’ll see from his review), but I have yet to drink it. I wanted to review this one in particular because Jonathan loves a Malbec and I’m notorious for hating them. So, with that as an intro, here’s my take.



My take:

There is quite a bit of intense fragrance on the nose. It smells purple-red to me. That in and of itself is a bit surprising to me, but I’ll get into that more in a moment.

A few swirl and sips later, I’d say it tastes dark purple and has most of its intensity and complexity in the middle. There is a nice subtle, yet mildly spicy quality in the middle. The finish is medium – not long, but not short either.

I’d say it’s medium bodied. And it’s not particularly dry, but it’s not velvety either. It’s too astringent to be velvety. A more velvety texture would likely develop with time, given the blend of grapes.

I’d call this one a good sipping wine, if you like the purple, maybe purple-black, end of the flavor spectrum. What I find most surprising is what it lacks. It lacks that gray ashiness that I usually get from Malbecs. Must be tempered by the Syrah and Bonarda.

The Bonarda is a grape with which I’m unfamiliar. A quick search online reveals that it is widely grown in Argentina and is the same grape as Italy’s Dolce Nero, or Sweet Black. That would certainly explain the darkness that I get from this wine. Similarly, the Syrah is undoubtedly moderating some of the Malbec’s gray and bringing it more to the red side.

In taking the photograph of the wine, I saw the Wine Spectator sticker on the label. Apparently the Wine Spectator gave it 89 points. All things considered, I'd expect this one to age well.

The facts:

2007 Trivento Amado Sur
Region: Mendoza, Argentina
Variety: 72% Malbec, 16% Bonarda, 12% Syrah

Price point: $13

2007 Trivento Amado Sur

I love this wine…. A lot.

Granted, that is somewhat of a spoiler, and by somewhat, I mean a complete one. But I figured I would go ahead and proclaim my undying devotion to it upfront.

See….I have had this wine before. Specifically, this would be my third bottle. Kerri bought the first bottle in a random batch of wines to review, and due to its Malbecness, it got ganked from the wine fridge one Friday night when she wasn’t looking. Well…it’s not like I had to sneak past an armed guard for it. Kerri typically isn’t a huge fan of the Malbec, but I do so adore them. So when its Friday night, and I raid the fridge she’s usually more than happy to let me be the guinea pig for it. And, of course, when I raved about it she went out and bought another bottle so we could review that one.

And then another Friday came, and I absconded with that bottle too. (well…it might have been a Tuesday, but that is neither here nor there…)

More determined than ever to review this wine, she hit the store and returned with two bottles, knowing that if she let me near the fridge without supervision, one of them was likely to meet an untimely demise.

A round about way to get here certainly, but I for one enjoy the recanting of the story almost as much as my participation in it. I suppose, in this particular case I can say with just as much enjoyment, by way of said third bottle, and the review that seems to be going on right about now (or would rather, if I stopped telling stories and started being more descriptive….)

The Amado Sur is just simply fantastic. The bottle has this little “89” sticker, which is probably about 10 too low the way that I see it. Typically Malbecs run big bold and jammy, this one…not so much. If I were blindfolded and asked where this wine was from I would probably say France, and I would call it a Grenache and Syrah blend. Yes my friends, this Malbec is, in fact, that subtle. It is gentle and soft on the palette, and when drunk you can almost feel the flavors gently massaging your taste buds.

The flavor is slightly sweet, and slightly dark. I find it to be well balanced with a large amount of nuance, and little in terms of bold defining characteristics. And this is why I am on my third bottle (research of course). With each glass I feel like I am chasing the most elusive of definitions, needing to understand the breadth of what is going on in this wine. And with each glass I am sucked further into the rabbit hole, willingly and joyfully compelled to examine it further and to philosophize more deeply about its nature.

If I had to find fault with this wine, it would be the nose. I find it a bit sharp, a bit heavy on the alcohol. That aside, this one is a must buy for fans of Grenache and for fans of the Malbec. To date, this wine stands as the most sophisticated Malbec I have had yet, and I am heartened knowing there is another bottle sitting in my fridge.

2004 TheBlend of Poggiotondo

I’m going to dispense with my usual lead in, and get right down to business with this one. A blizzard was bearing down on us and Kerri was kind enough to pick up a random wine for us to review. Now here is the thing about random, you really have an equal choice of getting a good wine, or a bad wine. Fate wasn’t on our side with this one.

It’s a blend (40% Sangiovese, 30% Merlot, 30% Syrah), and normally when I think of blends, I imagine layers of flavor deftly woven together. In this wine blend was probably closer to the flavors you used to get as a child, when you went into 7-11 and filled you cup from equal portions of the various fountain soda taps. There are a lot of flavors in this wine ranging from the passably acceptable to “why in gods name am I drinking this”.

The nose, is equally as interesting (in the way that a twelve car pile up on the freeway is interesting) with a heavy level of alcohol mixed in with black cherry or currants.

What really killed it for us was the taste. It starts fairly fruity, and quite frankly turns to ash in your mouth. After less than a glass, I’m packing it in and putting this one down the drain.

Sometimes a $10 wine, isn’t even worth that much, this is one of those times.

2004 The Blend of Poggiotondo

Well, as you may have heard, the eastern seaboard of the US got hit with a pretty big snow storm this weekend. And while most people were at the grocery store on Friday night picking up bread, milk, eggs, and toilet paper – you know, because you never know if you might be snowed in for a day and your family of say 12 is going to eat up all of the bread and eggs, drink all the milk, and use up all of the toilet paper in the known universe in those 24 hours (oh no! we might starve and be forced to drink water, eat ketchup, and use paper in the bathroom) – I had my priorities in order and stopped at the liquor store to get gin and wine!

I know that some folks drink wine every day and as such, purchasing wines that are around the $15 price point can be a bit spendy, so I sought out a wine around the $10 mark to review. That’s how we ended up with this....

The facts:

2004 The Blend of Poggiotondo
Region: Tuscany, Italy
Variety: 40% Sangiovese, 30% Merlot, 30% Syrah

This is where I’d normally provide a photograph of the wine. In this particular case, I’m going to refrain from that practice lest you see this wine in a store, recall the photograph from our blog, and purchase it because you can’t recall what we said about it, but you know you’ve seen it before. Read on and you’ll see why.

My take:

When you first pour the wine into your glass, it smells purple, with the slightest bit of chalky pink candy. Seriously. Not necessarily a bad thing. But, it quickly turns to something strange – I’d say gray becomes the predominant color. And it tastes exactly the same way. It’s purple, gray, and chalky. When Jonathan and I were talking about the wine, trying to figure out what it was all about, I specifically said, “it tastes like gravel and ash in a liquid mouthful.”

Yeah, not a fan. And I say this knowing full well that I do not like a gray wine. However, I know what a good gray wine tastes like – there is a gray characteristic to a lot of malbecs that Jonathan likes that I simply don’t care for. This is not that same gray. This is a bad gray, at least in my oh so humble opinion.

Other qualities, just in case you want more info – it’s dry, medium bodied, a little spicy, and there’s still some purple (somewhere between grape and currant) in there, despite the ashy flavor.

This is not one I’ll be buying again. In fact, I’m not even going to drink a full glass.

Price point: We bought locally for $10.99, but an internet search revealed bottles for as little as $8.27.

2007 Canneto Rossa Di Montepulciano

Frankly, I was a bit stumped about how to start talking about this wine. It’s good, certainly serviceable, but the lead in… the hook was escaping me.

I was sitting on the couch, sipping the wine, contemplating that special moment when the wine first tickles your nervous system. That first gentle warm flirtation of sensation that lets you know you have reached that slightly altered state. I had been discussing the wine (and my difficulty in describing it) with Kerri, when I blurted “I don’t like being punched in the mouth with fruit, but I do like something to chew on”.

Now, out of context, it might sound a bit strange, and as you have come for answers, I intend to provide them. The Canneto is long on finish, and what starts as a nominal experience when first sipped, lingers and gathers steam as the wine slides down the back of the throat. What starts as a gentle earthy caress of flavor, rolls into a significant finish robust, hearty and even a bit jammy. That gets me to the description of my above quote. By and large, I tend to not be fond of overly fruity wines, and certainly not any wine that gets described as “fruit forward”. This particular wine has the strength and body of that type of wine, but without the cheapness that comes from leading with a mouthful of jam. It has all of the elegance and passion that comes from a full host of flavor, but the sophistication to tease you up front, and then draw out the enjoyment over long finish.

Overall, I like this wine. I think the nose is interesting, and the flavor more so. I tend to favor wines that open up and reward persistence and exploration, and this fits that mold handily. The Canneto delivers well as a sipping wine, and for pairings, I would lean probably more to the winery's suggestions of more rustic (and less heavily spiced) foods. This is going to go in the buy it if you see it category.

2007 Canneto Rosso di Montepulciano - Reviewed by Kerri

The facts:

2007 Canneto Rosso di Montepulciano
Region: Montepulciano, Italy
Variety: 90% Sangiovese grosso, 10% Canaiolo nero, Mammolo, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot
Aging: 18 months in French oak




My take:

This one smells pinkish purple. I hate to say it, but upon swirling and taking a sniff, it brings to mind strawberries. Seriously.

This is an odd wine. It took a while and several tastes to really figure out what to say about it. First, I’ll say it’s a rather simple wine that moves through the flavor profile quickly. When a bit cold from the wine fridge, it's light, both in taste and feel, up front. After letting it open up some, it's a little chewier in texture and a bit more intense on flavor. That being said, you get most of the flavor in the middle and on the finish. Here’s the thing.... It’s jammy at the end. And I mean grape jelly jammy. It’s a strange finish.

For me, the wine is nothing special, but it’s not bad either. I preferred it earlier, when it was a bit on the cold side. Now that it's had some time to open up, it's a bit too purpley and chewy for my taste. Originally I wrote that I think it makes a good sipping wine. It does not, however, go well with spicy red sauce! After eating pasta for dinner, I had to cleanse my palette to enjoy this wine. Trying it immediately after the red sauce was not good – a bit dank and astringent all at the same time.

So all in all, I’d say this one is medium bodied, pink to purple with a bit of earthiness to it (that’s the sweet dankness), rather simple, and slightly dry.

We got this wine through wine club and after going through the swirl, sniff, taste routine and typing up my notes, I read the tasting notes from wine club. They say it’s "earthy, flamboyant, juicy, and highly scented." I don’t know if I’d go as far as flamboyant, but other than that, their tasting notes seem spot on to me.

Price point:
$12 - $14