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UnCorked/December 2005 Gettin' Sideways     If you're one of the three people in North America who didn't see "Sideways", this will probably bounce off you like water off a tin shed, so be forewarned.   In "Sideways", Virginia Madsen's character delivers a wonderful soliloquy on wine - the now-ubiquitous "Wine is alive!" speech - that, along with the other great work in that movie, won her an Oscar nomination. Make no mistake, it was a great speech. As a former (again someday?) actor, I can tell you that careers are made of such stuff. My only problem with it, in fact - as a devoted Virginia Madsen fan - is that she started something that's still going on and which ranks right up there with the Great Chardonnay Scare of the 60s & 70s for sheer irrational staying power.   Pinot. Pinot Noir. The great and sole grape of Red Burgundy; the savior and raison d'etre of the Oregon wine industry; the Holy Grail of modern winemaking that has legions of otherwise-rational grown-ups chasing the most ephemeral of ghosts - that Perfect Bottle that Makes One See Stars. Nothing wrong with the goal. Every winemaker, regardless of the grape at hand, should be in search of that. With Pinot, however, that standard of perfection is so elusive that almost no one EVER reaches it.  Every year, the leading wine trade critics - Robert Parker, Steven Tanzer, Wine Spectator, et al - hand out modest fistfuls of 100 point ratings to stuff like German  Trockenbeerenauslese, Aussie Shiraz, Hungarian Tokay, Bordeaux, and California boutique Cabs. Rarely, rarely, does a Burgundy - and never yet an Oregon Pinot - rate even in the 98 point range, much less flirt with perfection. In the last seven years, according to the Wine Advocate, 17 Pinots scored in the 98+ range, with NO 100 point scores. In the past seven years, 72 Syrahs scored 98+, along with 27 Cabs. There are a lot of subjective reasons for this - such as the fact that the Oregon lovers think Burgundy is stinky crap and the Burgundy freaks think Oregon is Burgundy Wanna-Be crap - but the main reason for this is that Pinot Noir, for all it's virtues as a food wine and its complexity and earthiness, just isn't a very friendly grape.   My retail wine Guru once said, "The one thing you need to remember about Pinot is that, every time you open a bottle, there's something wrong with it." Pinot is a thin-skinned, finicky, easily-spoiled, hard-to-ripen grape that exhibits all sorts of disagreeable aromas and weird flavors. Sniff a Pinot, especially a Burgundy, and you're liable to find sweaty saddle, home permanent, beef blood, funky barnyard smells, stale hay, wet dog, mushrooms, or even manure. The good thing about such olfactory assaults is that the wines emitting them usually have beautiful intensity of flavor. The downside is that many of us will never know that because we're so grossed out by the smell. The tremendous upside of Pinot is that it's one of the world's most complex wines, sometimes displaying a dozen or more distinct flavors at first sip and even more after it's breathed a while.   But it is NOT friendly. Zillions of people, caught in the throes of Virginia's eloquent reading of the Wine Speech, ran right out and started buying Pinot the way they'd usually bought Merlot - and were hugely disappointed. As one woman told me in the shop, "The wine magazines all said this (Oregon Pinot Which Shall Remain Nameless) was wonderful. I thought it tasted like they'd added vinegar". Where Merlot is soft, smooth, rich - all those adjectives the casual wine buyer values - Pinot is frequently tangy, acidic, and biting. Where Merlot and Cab are dark, deep, and powerful, Pinot's virtues are all surface. It's not by any measure a rich wine and some of the most highly lauded will seem, to Cab and Merlot drinkers, pretty wimpy. It's a challenging wine, which is probably why so many wine weenies like it.   The other wildly aggravating problem with Pinot is the two - or three, if you count the Californians - schools of Pinot. No other wine seems to evoke such declaratory venom. "What's the big deal about earthiness?" The Oregon folks mutter. "Why are you so hung up on fruit?" the Burgundians shoot back. And both of them say things about California Pinots that aren't all that printable. "Too BIG!" is the cleaned-up version and, for a fact, California Pinots are far more strapping, rich, warm, and approachable than either their NW or French cousins. Curiously, it was California Pinots that Virginia's character was talking about. What's also curious is that you can hang out on internet wine forums such as the ones I used to haunt and read the members' recommendations for Pinot...and most of them are for Californians. Yet, many of the ones advocating for their fave Siduri, Williams-Selyem, or Hobbs are the very people posting stuff about how California Pinots are "not typical", one of the worst epithets wine weenies can bestow.   None of this is to suggest that you shouldn't experiment with Pinot. Just because I don't have the gene doesn't mean you won't. The best way to do it, though, is to go to tastings with the spouse, a buddy, or alone and just taste everything. There are dozens of free tastings around this area every weekend and more on selected weekdays. The Pinot Frenzy being in full blow, you should encounter a lot of opportunities to taste CA, OR, and Burgundy. Make up your own mind. A really good Pinot is an experience. I've had the odd one that made me swoony with delight, even if I wouldn't drink it regularly.   Here are some good starter Pinots...bearing in mind that you could hand this list to a real Pinot freak and they'd probably hoot with derisive laughter.   Flynn Clos d'OR ($12) (Oregon) Castle Rock Carneros ($11) (Washington winery, CA fruit...yikes!) Mark West Sonoma ($18) (CA) Mark West Central Coast ($18) (CA) Elvenglade Yamhill County ($18) (Oregon) Saintsbury Garnet ($17.50) (CA) Sticks Yarra Valley ($13) (Wanna get really confused? This one is from AUSTRALIA! And, for my money, it's the best of the lot. Here's what Robert Parker had to say about it:  "It is almost impossible to find high quality Pinot Noir for under $35-40 a bottle, so Sticks’ 2003 Pinot Noir represents an exceptional bargain. Dark ruby-hued with a lovely perfume of damp earth, plums, cherries, and hints of blueberries as well as subtle oak, this medium-bodied Pinot offers an ethereal mouthfeel, little weight, but beautiful fruit, decent acidity, and sweet tannin.") Nepenthe Pinot Noir Charleston ($20) (Another Aussie, this one imported by    the becoming-legendary Peter Click, Seattle's answer to Marcel Guigal) St. Innocent Pinot Noir Oregon ($20)   Finally, this business of Pinot as the ultimate food wine. There is no argument possible against Pinot as a better all-around food wine than its darker, meatier cousins Cab, Merlot, Syrah, and Zin. The acidity and range of flavors in Pinot give it great flexibility for food pairings. The problem is that the vast majority of people who do enjoy wine with dinner now reflexively order Pinot with everything, just the way everybody used to order Chard with everything that wasn’t red meat or Italian with a red sauce. Both are due more to laziness amongst food writers and the ongoing effort among diners to appear wine-savvy than with the actual compatibility of the wines. Take salmon, for example. Pinot Noir works very nicely with salmon. For years, in every restaurant I ran, I kept a couple of price points of Pinot on the wine list for people to choose with salmon. Then, when I started actually tasting around and experimenting with a range of wines that would also pair with it, I found that Pinot was maybe my fifth best choice as a salmon match-up and I started actively promoting the better pairings. Italian Negroamaro was the wine I found to be the best match for salmon when it’s grilled or alder planked, while Valpolicella and Beaujolais both worked magically with pan-fried or poached. Several blended wines - other than Valpolicella - did better also, especially the less expensive Chiantis from the minor appellations, a flock of Spanish Tempranillo-based blends, and a bunch of Rhone Valley wines from the South of France. All this being said, if you like Pinot with your holiday feast, your choices are endless and they’re almost dead-bang assured to work just fine. If you want to try something different and maybe better, though, ask your local wine shop guy or feel free to email me for a few ideas. I hope you and your family have a great holiday season and I’ll be right back here with you in ’06!

UnCorked/November 2005

“Let He Who Is Without Zin...”

 

 

 

Since opening VinElla, our little enterprise in Woodinville, I probably ought to have had many deep, penetrating revelations about wine and its place in society. I’m normally the sort of guy who sees the patterns of the universe and the grand metaphors of life in nine innings of baseball at Safeco Field. I’m a sensitive guy. I once cried at an episode of “Mork & Mindy”, so you know I should be waxing philosophical about now, with my daily immersion into the realities of Retail America.

 

So, here’s my Big Revelation:  Waaay too many people STILL think Zinfandel is a white wine.

 

People come in and say, “I’m havin’ chili and I need a wine that’ll go with it. Any ideas?” After first explaining that, if you’re eating chili, you really ought to be drinking iced tea or beer, I finally suggest a big Zinfandel; something with enough muscle to claw its way over and around the cumin and chili powder. A good 90% of the time, the response is, “No, I’m not a big white wine drinker.”

 

(Buncha expletives deleted)

 

Somewhere in the bowels of hell there is a demon awaiting the person who first looked into a vat of black, aromatic, inky Zinfandel and thought, “Hmmmm, wouldn’t that make a dandy sweet blush wine!” Zin has been grown in California for well over 100 years, making the potent, high-octane wines the Italian immigrants guzzled happily with the evening meal. The grape hung around through Prohibition, every fad under the sun, the white wine frenzy, even the Boutique Cabernet Boom and the Syrah Tsunami. It wasn’t all nostalgia, though. Zinfandel is just a very agreeable grape. It can make light, acidic food wines, elegant cellarable wines, and some of the biggest, whoppin’est, muscle wines on the planet. It’s our Numero Uno indigenous American varietal. Everything else we make wine from - discounting the odd Norton or Catawba bottling from nostalgia freaks in your Ohios and Missouris - came from France or Italy. Of course, even Zin didn’t really come from here, originally. It came to Italy from Croatia as Crljenak Kastelanski (no, I’m not pronouncing it for you), made its way through Italy as Primitivo, and surfaced, lo those many eons later, in California as “Zinfandel”, a word whose origins no one has so far been able to determine. I love Zin. Love it. Love the spiciness, the black pepper aromas, love the explosive size of it, love the way it grabs hold of foods that normally dismiss wine like a cranky stepchild and subdues them instantly. But the White Zin thing nearly killed it.

 

Factoid: ALL grape juice is clear, no matter what color the grape skins. It’s contact with the grape skins and the pressing thereof that gives reds their color and most of their flavor. Blush wines or roses are made by giving the clear-run juice varying amounts of time in contact with the skins, usually anywhere from overnight to maybe 36 hours. Zin berries, like 98% of all grapes, are very sweet, so it’s a simple matter of stopping fermentation just short of a dry wine stage and letting the skins kiss the wine and Voila!: White Zin. If you’re old enough, you drank it. I’ll admit it: I drank it and - hang onto something - I still get served it from time to time and rather enjoy it. It’s just the thing on a hot afternoon, sometimes. Let me be clear: it’s not the fact of White Zin that gets me. It’s that so many people got programmed by it. And I feel like a bothersome know-it-all when I explain this to them, which I feel absolutely compelled to do.

 

For those of you about to crack yet another precocious, feisty bottle of Pinot Noir for your Thanksgiving feast, let me put in a word for Zin. Pinot has become the knee-jerk food wine choice of nearly everybody these days, much the way this entire country used to reflexively reach for Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay for every meal from fish to pizza. Nothing at all wrong with Pinot with food. Lord Knows Pinot screams out for it, to plug those gaping holes in its flavor profile, but it is NOT always the best choice. If you do anything at all to your turkey other than oil it and stick it in the oven, Zin will probably be a far better alternative.

 

A lighter-bodied Zin like the amazing, consistent Pedroncelli “Mother Clone”, retailing for about , provides that nutty, buttery flesh and your seasoning with a delicious and beautifully complementary foil. “Mother Clone” is a lovely, jazzy wine that glides across your palate like a raindrop down a car hood, trailing fine flavors of raspberry pie, Kirsch, anise and dried cranberries in its wake. The finish is long and clean and crisp, with an acid level that’s uncharacteristic of CA wines. If you’re one of those people who thought Pedroncelli was just another supermarket glug wine, think again. 100 years of making wine teaches folks a thing or two.

 

Same goes for Jerry Garcia Zin Sonoma, also about . Yeah, that Jerry Garcia, the dearly departed who, contrary to the band’s name, stubbornly refuses to be completely Dead. He’s selling neckties, artwork, mouse pads, zillions of records, and now wine. And the wine is Fine.  It’s a pretty, aromatic, endearingly clumsy wine, like a big ol’ St. Bernard puppy in a bottle. It explodes with flavor but stays fairly modest in size, which might be a drawback for a sipper but works great in a food wine. In fact, it’s one of the very best pork chop wines I’ve ever tasted, no matter how they’re prepared. That blast of blackberry on the front of palate is perfect for pork and even ham.

 

A lot less clumsy, if not quite as explosive is the Greg Norman Lake County Zin. Yep, that Greg Norman.  This Lake County is one of the most elegant, finely-knit, balanced Zins I’ve tasted in quite a while. It definitely delivers great black fruit and spice flavors but delivers them with a gentle love tap, rather than the uppercut you get from the Garcia. It has enough muscle to stand up to roast beef or lamb but enough restraint to cozy up to your Cajun, Italian, or Southwestern seasoned turkey just fine. It runs around .

 

Maybe the best of this bunch is yet another in a long line of Good Ideas from the estimable Jedediah Tecumseh Steele of Steele Wines. His Writer’s Block Lake County Zin is brilliant; berry-rich, deep, impossibly fragrant and an absolute sensual delight on the palate, like having a silk scarf pulled across your tongue. It’s almost impossible not to like it and it’s almost too flavorful and distinctive to waste on pairing up with food. This is a Sipper, folks; the kind of wine you sit down with before a roaring fire and drink just for the pure ol’ hedonistic heck of it. At around , it’s complex, perfectly balanced, elegant and earthy all at once, with a great label and notes to boot.

 

Also worth your dinner table are the Easton Amador County Zin, a stone whopper with muscle enough for even Indian food, let alone Cajun; Rosenblum’s always-reliable Vintner’s Cuvee; Renwood Old Vines Zin, which is now on deep discount as the catalog changes distributors. This is a genuine 20 buck wine that you can get right now for about ! Last but not at all least is the Bogle Old Vines Zin which, amongst the Wine Weenie Nation, is a Zin everybody drinks and raves about, year after year.

 

Any of these will make a wonderful change from your reflex Pinot this Thanksgiving and, I’m betting, will become one of your party/dinner/relaxing wines of choice for 2006.

 

UnCorked/October 2005

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“The Spanish Vinquisition”

 

 

Hey, I wrote that title. Don’t go blaming anyone at the SVR for it. I knew it was awful when I wrote it but I got tickled and left it. I’m perfectly willing to occasionally make a fool of myself for your reading enjoyment.

 

For those of us who were Monty Python fans, the title will have a little more resonance. The exact joke goes, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” It seemed appropriate for this column because, for certain, nobody expects what they find when they start looking into Spain, on any level.

 

Culturally, as well as in wine terms, Spain is sort of a mess. And, by the same token, it’s kinda wonderful. The same lack of suffocating governmental regulation - or even basic organization - that makes the Spanish wine trade resemble twelve winos trying to catch a greased pig also makes Spain’s wines the most amazing, unfettered, imaginative, startling juice on the planet. The ports of the country are gushing a seemingly endless stream of brilliant, cheap, occasionally spectacular bottlings at prices that sound like they might have been read off an invoice left over from 1977. The fact that they’re such staunch trade partners with us holds down the extreme tariff bite that some other countries’ goods carry, so I routinely get bottles of, for an example, Old Vine Grenache - from 70 year old plants! - that winds up, after my markup, sitting on the shelf at 7.99. I go to the winery’s website, fully expecting to find grainy pictures of two scruffy dorks standing around an old oil drum, only to find pictures of some grand castle-like edifice that has been a winery since the Crusades and whose owner is Warren Buffet-level flush. You know how international trade works: that bottle of wine has been stepped on maybe five times before it gets to me and I add another shoe-print before you, the end-user even get a sniff. And I price it at eight bucks. What could it have sold for out the door of the winery? 50 cents? Buck an’ a quarter?

 

Case in point: of the 2,000 or so wines we tasted prior to opening the shop, three stood out in my memory as wines that were exactly what we’re all about. One was a Cab from Walla Walla. The other two were Spanish and the best of the three was one of those.

 

Alvaro Palacios, in the 1990s, did as much as anyone other than Alejandro Fernandes to put Spain’s “serious” wines on the map, especially in his development of the Priorato region, now the country’s hottest wine appellation. His upper-tier wines, Finca Dofi and L’Ermita set new standards for big reds that combine power with undeniable grace. They also paved the way for Spanish reds to break out of the - straitjacket to which consumers’ assumptions had traditionally consigned them. Palacios boldly dared to charge what his wines would command if they wore a Napa Valley label...and got it. The quality was impossible to miss and the wines were just simply delicious by any standard. In 1988, bored with the traditions of Rioja, Alvaro moved to Priorato to start his experiments there. In 2000, however, with his father gravely ill, Alvaro was persuaded to move home to run the family’s estates. His father had planted, many years before, 250 acres of chalky, south-facing hillsides with Grenache and Tempranillo and Alvaro immediately realized their potential. The wine is named for the estate, Palacios Remondo, and his father’s old vineyard, “La Montesa”.

 

La Montesa - I don’t know any other way to say it - is a hell of a wine. It offers as much complexity as any wine I’ve ever tasted, especially as it breathes and evolves after opening. It’s spicy, graceful, viscous and mouth-coating, generous, perfumed beyond belief, substantial, and crammed with blackberry, black cherry, cassis, raspberry, spices in almost maddening profusion, and a fabulous spruce-like note that rides atop the whole stew. If God came to me in a shaft of golden light and said, “You may only drink one wine for the rest of your life!”...well, I’d pitch a fit but then my very short list would have to include this one. So, guess the price. Consider that wildly hyperbolic statement I just made, the description of the wine’s character, its pedigree...Now. ? ? ?

 

$15.99.

 

Yep, and I have it on special for $14.99. And it’s hardly the only Spaniard like that out there. In my stock, there’s the Xavier Clua “El Sola d’en Pol” Terra Alta, a wine that’s every bit as much of a mouthful to drink as it is to say. It’s definitely in a league with the Montesa, if a rung or so down the ladder. It’s just as spicy, complex, and rich but is completely unoaked. With flavors like that, you’d never notice. The balance is dazzling and the fruit is almost too much of a good thing. And it’s about twelve bucks! Clua is one of Spain’s hottest young winemakers; a guy whose picture on his website looks as if he may have had it shot while lubing his car in the parking lot of the Tacoma Dome before a tractor pull. Just proves you never judge a book...yadda, yadda, yadda, etc. Xavier’s talent is clearly immense and his family’s roots in the trade go back four generations. No less astonishing are the wines from a large cooperative in Campo de Borgia, Bodegas Aragonesas. Their Don Ramon Tinto “Barrica” and “Crucillon” make a mockery out of the umpteen $30 bottles of table red spewing out of California. They’re not complex and not profound. Just great, versatile table reds that pair up with a bewildering variety of foods, work just fine as sippers, and show explosive red and black fruit flavors in fine, smooth structures. The Crucillon is eight bucks and the Don Ramon is nine.

 

Getting a picture? I have a list of these beauties I’ve compiled over five or six years that goes on for a couple of single-spaced pages. Hijos de Antonio Barcelo “Penescal”, Coto de Hayas “Duque de Sevilla”, Martinez-Bujanda “Finca Antigua” Cab and Tempranillo, Marques de Grinon “Durius” Tempranillo, Rene Barbier (yep, same one) Selecion Especiale “Long Maceration” Cabernet,  Falset-Marca “Etim”, Vina Alarba Old Vines Grenache, Abadia Retuerta “Rivola”, Miguel Torres “Sangre de Toro”, Onix Priorato, Mas Igneus “Barranc dels Closos” Priorato, Bodegas Nekeas “El Chapparal”...and that’s not to mention some of the lushest whites and sparklings found anywhere in the world.

 

If you’ve heard some of that old baloney about Spanish wines being “weird” or “watery”, what you’re hearing is echoes of the 60’s, when Spain’s wine trade really was in the dumper. If you’ve just never tried them, go into any wine shop and ask your intrepid steward. Every wine geek will have half a dozen pet favorites. As Robert Parker wrote, back in ’03, “Spain is the world’s greatest vinicultural miracle waiting to happen”. Someday, demand will catch up with supply and then most of these wonderful bargains will probably disappear. Drink some NOW. You will NOT be sorry!

 

World’s Best Girlfriend’s Wine Words Of The Month:

 

Maceration: Stirring or punching down grapes and yeasts in the fermenting tank. The longer the maceration, theoretically, the richer the wine. This is related to...

 

“On The Lees”: No, not a Joseph Conrad novel. This refers to the practice of letting the wine age with the spent yeasts and grape sediment still in the barrel. It is supposed to increase the depth and complexity of the wine.

 

 

Uncorked/September 2005 "Q.P.R."     "I only drink (Silver Oak)(Leonetti)(Caymus)(Mouton Rothschild)(etc., etc.). You pay less for your wine, you just get less wine."     Boy, if I had a nickle for every time someone has said that to me over the past ten years...well, I'd have enough to buy one of those wines.   Friends, if you never believe another word underneath my name, believe what you are about to read:   THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN THE PRICE OF A BOTTLE OF WINE AND ITS QUALITY. PERIOD.   Now, please don't infer that mentioning those wines in the opening quote means I think they're not worth your bucks. They are, if you're flush and inclined. But, while these wines have certainly earned their lofty reputations, they've simply been surpassed by other wines in the marketplace. Leonetti, of course, was the original premium Washington wine and their quality was undeniable. At the time their rep was evolving, though, the state had about a dozen working wineries. Leonetti has not declined one whit in terms of what's in the bottle. It's just that there are now THREE HUNDRED wineries in WA state and, at this level of activity, the old "Even a Blind Pig Finds an Acorn Now and Then" principle kicks in. Silver Oak, likewise, has simply been swamped by the literal deluge of premium California Cabernet; the Screaming Eagles, Harlans, Bryants, Shafers, Dunns, and Araujos.   This fact wouldn't be relevant at all but for the realities of business: both Leonetti and Silver Oak have seen their prices climb steadily. Good news for them, right? Well, maybe. The downside of increased grosses is that you get stuck at the current price level or even stuck with the need for periodic price increases. In a commodity as subjective as wine, perception is reality. If Leonetti doesn't raise their prices or they remain steady, it seems to indicate a decline of confidence in their wine's value. Actually dropping prices to compete with upstarts like Dunham, Matthews, Betz, Baer, Walla Walla Vintners, L'Ecole, etc., etc. is tantamount to admitting that you've lost it. So, you get Washington's first hundred-dollar wines, in a state where the standard hasn't quite reached fifty. High prices equals decreasing sales as there are simply fewer of Bill Gates than there are of Steve Body.   It's hard for me, carrying my Wine-Seller Guy secret decoder ring, to recommend a $100 bottle of Leonetti when there are bottles of Dunham, DeLille, Austin Robaire, Kennedy Shah, Stephenson, and a dozen more sitting on my shelf at half the price...or less. I can sell  you three and three-quarter bottles of Sandhill Cab for the price of a Leonetti.  For the price of a Mouton Rothschild, I can sell you a CASE of Bob Betz's dazzling "Pere de Famile" and give you your change in Stephenson Cabs. And there is a fair chance that, tasting it side by side with the Mouton,  you'd choose the Betz, anyway.   I go to wine tastings and watch guys haul out a case of some wine they made in their bathroom, while watching Oprah and balancing their checkbooks, that is so incredibly graceful, sumptuous, complex, and drinkable that I have to restrain myself from squinting at the guy and going, "YOU made THIS?" Most people haven't heard of Dave Stephenson, Stevens Winery, Baer, and maybe 70% of the other boutique operations popping up like dandelions all over the NW, but these are where the next wave of truly profound wines are coming from. There are similar tales for every region of the globe. For about $30, you can drink Woodhouse Cellars'  sublime Kennedy Shah Cab, Stevens' "Big Easy", Austin Robaire's Columbia Valley Cab. For about $15, you can drink the aforementioned Allegrini "Palazzo della Torre", Mitolo "Jester" Shiraz, Edge Cabernet, Allende Rioja, and the astounding Descendientes de Alvaro Palacios "La Montesa", which makes me all squirmy just thinking about it. For ten bucks, you can drink a list of wines as long as my spongy, matronly arms that will stand up to comparisons with bottles costing three times as much.   In Wine-Weenie World, the relationship between quality and bucks is called "QPR", short for "Quality to Price Ratio". In winespeak, a nice wine that doesn't cost much is said to have good QPR. It doesn't have to be cheap. Most WWs agree that DeLille wines have great QPR because, at about $50, they'd fetch more than twice that if they were wearing a Napa Valley label. Here is a short list of some especially good QPR wines I've encountered over the past few months of frenzied wine tasting:   Fort Walla Walla Cellars Syrah Nota Bene "Misceli" Laurel Glen "Reds" (as always) Seghesio Old Vine Zin Bogle Old Vine Zin Goldwater "New Dog" New Zealand Sauv Blanc Greg Norman California Zin and Petit Sirah Finca El Portillo Cabernet (Argentina) Penalalon Sauv Blanc (Chile) Crucillon Tinto (Spain) Xavier "Clua" Emporada-Costa Brava (Spain) Seghesio "La Villa" Barolo '98 (near $50 but worth a lot more, if any wine is)   On another subject - if you'll allow me a personal aside - it's not exactly a secret that my peeps and I are opening a wine shop in Woodinville. I haven't mentioned it here because...well, it's too much like grabbing some free advertising. But what it's done is cause me to stop and think, in the midst of profound fatigue, of what it is that made me love wine in the first place. That's an important thing to remember because, trust me, trying to make this happen is like running through loose beach sand in clown shoes.   I was standing in the middle of the shop the other day, tasting a sample of an obscure Spanish red. I was at that stage of tiredness that makes your face and ears feel warm and cuts your mind loose to wander down alleyways that our normal, over-amped senses seldom travel. I began to consider how that wine got to my unfinished checkout counter. I could see those nearly-vertical vineyards of Northern Spain, swaddled in red dust and air the consistency of honey. I saw the vigneron plopping down with his pickers on an upturned grape flat, swabbing the sweat off his brow, laughing at jokes that aren't really that funny because this is The Time, the Payoff, the Show. The grapes lay sweating around them, piled hip-deep in their crates and weeping their impossibly sweet juices, perfuming the air with that pungent, tactile scent that combines clean earth with sweat, herbs, and ripe fruit in a cloud that is as intoxicating in its own way as the wine will be later. The moment is ripe with a peculiar romance, with the feeling of community that comes from shared labor, passion, and dedication. Even as I think of it, I know that this is all my little pipe dream. Guys who pick grapes in Spain are doing back-breaking work for minimum wage, just like here. But the fact remains that somebody's heart went into making this little bottle of Grenache and Tempranillo, in exactly the same proportion and degree that is expended to make Mouton Rothschild, Caymus, or Leonetti, and now it rests there on the table before me, delivering that elusive sense of discovery that remains the thing I loved first and most about wine. If wine can be profound, this is what makes it so; the simple, implausible fact that grape juice can be persuaded to transform itself into something that engages every one of our senses, conjures up rich memories and associations, makes us childlike again in our sense of wonder, and enhances out our dining, fellowship, entertaining, and intellect.    If you just drink a glass of wine without thinking of all this, that will work just fine but there is a total experience, a continuum of dreams, senses, sex, passion, and discovery, that you can access anytime you're willing to slow down and consider what's in your glass. I urge you to try it. It's in that place that you'll completely get that the price tag means nothing.