2001 Finca Allende Rioja

Last week I was reading a post about the 2001 Finca Allende Rioja on the message boards at erobertparker.com that stated this wine seemed to be fading. Multiple posters gave similar impressions, so knowing that I had a bottle, I decided to give it a go myself. Considering that I don't have optimum storage conditions in my passive cellar (room temperature, the horror!) I wondered how my bottle would be. The 2001 Allende got great reviews (90+ from Parker, Tanzer, etc) and had been very fairly priced around $22, but it didn't surprise me too much to hear it might not be a long-lived wine.

I was certainly intrigued then when I opened the bottle and the first pour offered a very nice nose of fruit. The first taste was almost a bit pruny, but the wine quickly settled down, offering a lot of nuanced fruit flavors without being too overdone. On the second night, the wine hadn't lost anything, if anything even offering a bit more on the palate with a hint of spice. Maybe there was some bottle variation, because this bottle was drinking superbly for me. I wish now I had more.

2004 Terralsole Rosso di Montalcino

From the fantastic 2004 vintage in Tuscany, Terralsole's Rosso di Montalcino is really a terrific wine. This winery has become a family favorite over the past couple of years, and that enthusiasm has only grown over the past few months beginning when we met the owner, Mario Bollag at VinItaly. My parents then visited the winery last month, where they were treated to a fantastic tasting and great hospitality.

Back to this wine - the 2004 Rosso di Montalcino could almost pass for a Brunello. It has plenty of fruit and complexity, but is more forward than a young Brunello would be. I had this wine with a veal chop one night, and with spaghetti another, and it went wonderfully with both - to me, one of the great virtues of the Rosso di Montalcino is how well it accompanies a good meal. It really is a wine made for drinking with food, and this one from Terralsole is one of the better ones I've had. The wine (along with most all the wines from Italy) is creeping up in price thanks to the weak dollar, but to me is still a great buy at $25 or so.

2005 Chapoutier Cotes du Rhone Belleruche

This 2005 Cotes du Rhone comes from what may be my favorite producer anywhere, M. Chapoutier. I may be a bit biased, having visited the winery a couple of times where I was treated to some incredibly memorable tastings (the 1995 Ermitage Le Pavillon is still the greatest wine I've ever tasted).

Unfortunately, I can't often drink their wonderful Hermitage and Cote-Roties, but the Cotes du Rhone shows what this winery is capable of at any level. The 2005 is very fresh, with a hint of spice. It's a fairly simple wine, but carries just enough body to work well with a wide ranges of dishes (I had it with grilled pork chops). The wine is 80% Grenache and 20% Syrah, and a very good value for about $12.

2006 Borsao Campo de Borja

You may recall I have previously posted an entry on the top cuvee from this winery, but this one is for their "standard" wine imported to the US. The 2006 Borsao continues a remarkable run for this winery and a wine that is still the greatest value on the market today in my opinion. Every time I open a bottle of Borsao, I am reminded of this when I get an immediate reward of a nice floral nose and a taste of lighter berries and spice.

Is this wine out of this world? No, but I love to fool people with it, as most everyone would expect this to be a $25-$30 bottle of wine. Maybe not world-class, but a very good bottle. That's when I shock everyone (and continue to remind myself) that this wine usually retails for about $7 (sometimes I still find it for $5.99). The latest vintage delivers once again, so if you are on a budget, I highly recommend this wine, because you will never find a better wine for the price.

2005 Zenato Ripassa

One of my favorite wines year in and year out is the Ripasso-styled Veronese wine from Zenato (Ripasso wines are Valpolicellas that are put through the Amarone racks after those grapes are dried). Having had several vintages, my initial though is that the 2005 Zenato Ripassa may be one of the best of the past few years. This wine is holding nothing back from the first pour - a great nose, and plenty of fruit right from the start. There's also plenty of stuffing here, with some tannins and complexity to suggest that this wine will hold up for a few years.

I always try to put at least one bottle from each good vintage away for a few years and have found that these wines can age well for 4-5 years with no problem. The 2005 should be no different, and in my opinion could even improve with a year or two of bottle aging. One caveat I will give - I drank this wine much more regularly when it was $16 or so, but over the past 2-3 years the price has jumped quite dramatically in most stores. It often now sells for $25 or more, a price point that I find hard to take. The 2005 vintage may be good enough to justify that price, but there are other good ripasso-styled wines for much less. If you can find this wine for under $20, then it's still a great value. I have been able to still find a couple of places that will sell it for this price, and that's when I make sure to pick up some.

Oh, and one other note to pass along from last week - I had another bottle of the 2004 Rubrato from Feudi di San Gregorio and it was consistent with my prior notes from June.

2006 La Posta Cocina Blend

Something very different for me on this entry - a wine from Argentina. For some reason, I've just never gotten into the wines of South America, but this was recommended to me one day in a shop as I looked for a bottle to round of a mixed half case. The 2006 La Posta Cocina Blend contains 60% Malbec, 20% Bonarda, and 20% Syrah. The wine exhibits the deep purple color I associate with Malbec (I've had a couple before, from both Argentina and Cahors), as well as the taste of dark fruit like plums that I recall from other Malbecs. It also had just a hint of the pepperiness that the Syrah would be expected to bring.

This wine was about $15, and that seems fairly priced, as it was a decent wine, but nothing that blew me away. Is it enough to get me started in exploring more of Argentina? Probably not, but I'll at least be more open to trying other bottles that are recommended to me. If I end up going to Argentina next year as I'm thinking of doing, perhaps then the wines of this country will become more popular with me.

2006 Massolino Barbera d'Alba

I tasted several 2006 Barberas at Vinitaly in April and came away impressed with the vintage as a whole, with the wines offering a lot of fresh fruit flavors and a bit of elegance not often found in wines at this level. Recently, these 2006's have begun to appear at local retailers, so I was definitely interested in buying.

The 2006 Massolino Barbera was just what I was looking for - something that's a bit lighter than many of the bigger Syrah and Grenache-based wines I've been drinking so much of lately. Like the Barberas I tasted at Vinitaly, Massolino's delivered with plenty of fruit but didn't overwhelm the palate. Instead, it offered just that hint of elegance and freshness of the vintage. For the price (about $18 I believe), it's a perfect summertime red for me, and once I'll be drinking again soon.

While Massolino is certainly regarded as a good producer, I'll also be looking out for 2006 Barberas from other producers as I think the vintage as a whole has produced many good wines. Hopefully this also bodes well for the 2006 vintage of Barbaresco and Barolo (though the dollar will need to do some improvement over the next few years if I'm going to be able to afford any of those wines).

2005 Domaine de le Janasse Cotes du Rhone-Villages Terre d'Argile

Domaine de la Janasse has become one of the top producers of wine in the Southern Rhone, and it's not just their Chateauneuf du Papes that have made that reputation. Janasse's 2005 Terre d'Argile Cotes du Rhone-Villages is one of the best examples of the appellation that I have ever had. It's a bit pricier than a lot of Cotes du Rhone-Villages (about $24), but it's worth it. You could easily put this wine in a lineup with good mid-range Chateauneuf du Papes and find it difficult to pick out.

The wine is a blend of the three main grapes of the Rhone - Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre, in fairly equal proportions. This blend allows for some of the best elements of each to show itself - the cherry flavors and earthiness of the Grenache, the brooding structure from the Mourvedre, and the darker fruit from the Syrah. Anyone who wants a great expression of the Southern Rhone without having to pay the increasingly higher prices of the Chateauneuf du Papes should seek this wine out. It's definitely one I love to drink when I can.

1999 Abadia Retuerta Seleccion Especial

Last Sunday I decided I should open up a good Spanish wine in honor of the country's triumph at Euro 2008, and the choice was Abadia Retuerta's Seleccion Especial. This wine is from the Castilla y Leon region of Spain, just outside the Ribera del Duero DO. The wine is made from mainly Tempranillo, with some Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. I actually bought this a few years back for just $20, and for a wine of this age, wasn't sure how much life it would still have. I was quite surprised then to find that there was plenty of flavor right from the start, and very little fading 2 nights later when the bottle was finished.

I was really quite stunned by how good the wine was, and wish now I had more. I've had this winery's low-end offering, Rivola, on numerous occasions and found it to be a nice everyday wine, but this certainly was much more. I highly recommend searching for the most recent vintages of this wine, especially if the price is still so reasonable. It's a great example of the sort of quality available from Spain these days at a very reasonable price.

2005 Turley Pesenti Vineyard Zinfandel

The weekend before the 4th I went out to dinner with a group of friends and decided to bring along a bottle of Turley (usually a good choice for BYOB since its extremely rare to find restaurants with Turley on their list). The 2005 Turley Pesenti was one that I had 2 bottles of, so I figured I could check in on it and still have one left for the future, and it did not disappoint. The 2005's aren't considered a great Zinfandel vintage, and this was not the most powerful of Turleys, but it still possessed plenty of fruit and muscle. It's that very fruit-forward style that makes Turleys a fun choice to taste with novice wine drinkers - they are almost always amazed at the power that the wine brings. Of course, the wines aren't the easiest to get, so it's tough to recommend them to people since they won't find them on retailer shelves. My hope is that they can at least turn people on to what Zinfandel can be, and maybe they will check out something from Ridge or Biale or another top-notch producer that is easier to find.

2002 Thorne-Clarke Shotfire Ridge Cuvee

Over the weekend, I finally drank the last remaining bottle from the first case of wine I ever bought, the 2002 Shotfire Ridge Cuvee from Thorne-Clarke. This wine was one of those Robert Parker stunners a few years back - a sub-$15 wine that earned a ridiculously high score (93 or 94 points I think). After finding one bottle and enjoying it, I immediately went for a case purchase when I was able to locate it in Charlottesville (the '02 vintage never made it to Atlanta, only future years). This wine has changed its blend over the years, and '02 was really a very Bordeaux-like wine with no Shiraz component, instead blending Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Petit Verdot. I decided to work through the case slowly to see how the wine evolved, and managed to actually see it through a dumb phase before a somewhat well-aged wine came back around about a year ago.

This final bottle came about 5 months after my previous tasting, and the wine was about as I remembered - no longer an Aussie fruit bomb, it had softened up and had some more nuanced flavors. Unfortunately to me, the Cabernet Sauvignon really had dominated the other components at this juncture, and that's not really a great high point for me. Overall, the wine had become just a decent older Cab, nothing more. It's a good wine, one that I'd give 87-88 points, but certainly not the high flyer it was originally rated years ago.

What I'll remember most about this wine was the evolution I got to experience in having so much of it so that I could really track and see how it aged. It's the first time I was really able to do that, and for that reason, this was a great wine experience for me.