Stephenson Cellars Cabernet
We tasted this at the Cedar River Wine Fest in Renton, around the middle of July, and were knocked silly. We’ve tasted, literally, hundreds of Cabs this year and this was one of only three that hit every one of the right notes: great Cab aromas with that hallmark hint of lanolin and clay dirt, amazing flavors of cassis, blackberry, black cherry, graphite, coffee, leather, figs, plums, blueberry, and a dozen other hinted tastes that pop up as it breathes. In a Napa Valley bottle, this would fetch $75 a pop and people would think it was a bargain. Dave, the winemaker, was kind enough to drive this over from Walla Walla personally and we appreciate it because opening the shop without it just wouldn’t have been as much fun!
Peter Lehmann
Barossa Cab
Robert Parker in the Wine Advocate calls this Cab “the equal of a very good Pomerol, with graceful structure, gobs of juicy fruit, and a lazy, lingering finish”. It is NOT the typical over-the-top Aussie fruit bomb. Its background flavors are seamlessly integrated into the whole but distinct and lasting: Beautiful blackberry, cherry, damson, thyme, raspberry pie, chocolate and coffee flavors are nicely framed with notes of Mission fig, grilled bread and a hint of eucalyptus. I once poured this into a Caymus Napa Cab bottle and slipped it into a tasting. Everyone sipped and smiled and talked about how Caymus just never makes a bad wine. I just smiled.
Maryhill Gewurztraminer
We had this for the first time a couple of months ago at a tasting held by Click Distributors over in South Seattle. There were about 100 wines there but this was one of maybe five that we couldn’t get out of our heads. It’s not one of those prissy Alsatian or German Gewurzes that lean toward restraint and elegance. This is flat-out, unashamedly tasty: pineapple, grapefruit, litchi, pear cider, peaches, butter, mint, orange rind...the flavors go on and on. It’s just the tiniest bit sweet, mellow, a bit spicy, and graceful in the manner of an NFL linebacker. This, with our special Nivole, is one of the most compulsively drinkable things we’ve come across and a GREAT value!
Fort Walla Walla Cellars Syrah
We tasted this at the Cedar River Wine Fest and both of us - especially Judye - were blown away. What a Syrah! Wine Spectator Magazine gave it 91 points in the November ’04 edition and it’s grown up a bit since then. It’s almost syrupy; dense, rich and beautifully concentrated. For all the power, though, it has a very graceful structure with firm but unobtrusive tannins, a sweet minerality, food-friendly acidity but no tartness, and the promise of even greater things with a couple years’ cellaring. This is big and beautiful the way Lauren Jackson is and it scores every bit as consistently.
Molnar Blaise
Napa Chardonnay
As Matt Kramer observed in Wine Spectator, “Really, admit it: don’t all Chardonnays sorta taste the same, these days?” Amen. So, when you get one that doesn’t, it’s a real eye-opener. At Click Distributors’ warehouse tasting last July, Peter Kazmer Molnar was standing there at a table by himself, three wines before him, looking very GQ-ish and not at all like the typical, rumpled vintner. My impulse was not to take him seriously - until I tasted the wines. We’re featuring two of the three and would have run the Cab, too, if Click hadn’t sold every drop ONE day after the tasting. This is a mouthful, creamy, pear-scented, buttery, stuffed with flavors like melon, fig, caramel, yellow apples, and citrus fruits. If, unlike me, you still like Chard, THIS is one you cannot miss!
Palacios Remondo
“La Montesa”
I’ve tasted - and this is no exaggeration - over 2000 wines to put together our opening stock. Out of all that, this is the most memorable thing that ever sat in my mouth. I love Spain, anyway, and this reminds me why. What a freakin’ amazing wine! I don’t even know where to begin: more clean, pure fruit than the Pike Place Market, with volleys of dark berries playing off a mocha/lanolin/leather/toast overlay. It’s jazzy, bright, rich, extracted, impeccably made, and as purely satisfying as any wine I’ve tasted in five years. AND, it has that other beautiful Spanish characteristic: it’s almost laughably cheap for the quality. In a Napa bottle, this would be $45, easy. For you, hey, sixteen bills. Wow!
Writer’s Block
Lake County Zin
One of the things I wanted for this shop was a really great selection of Zins. I love Zin. Love it. Love the black pepper, the explosive flavors, the spice, the depth, the food-friendly, user-friendly style of it. I tasted a blue million and this was one of the three best - at a third of the price of the other two. This stuff is sex in a bottle; silky, fruity, sufficiently complex, and one of only five wines we stock that produced that rarest thing of all in us - taking that first sip and saying, “Mmmmmm...” It’s made by Jed Steele of Steele Wines and shows every bit of his fine, reliable hand in its structure, style, packaging - and price. It’s a memorable wine, one that you’ll drink again and again, especially at this price!
Taz Santa Barbara County Merlot
My feelings about Merlot, at least for my own consumption, are best summed up by Miles Raymond in “Sideways”. I needn’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that Merlot has fallen victim to a creeping sameness for a few years, now, and I just lost interest. One sip of this puppy and all that changed. Holy Moly, what a wine! I don’t care what they call it, it’s a whopping, balanced, beautiful, perfectly-realized bottle of juice that, at 20 bucks, ain’t exactly cheap, until you start tasting the $50-$75 California Merlots and realize that the Taz is just flat better; better in varietal character, better fruit, better made. Better. If you’re a Merlot fan at all, you owe yourself this one.
Kazmer Blaise
Pinot Noir Carneros
Like their Chard we’re also featuring for our opening, Kazmer Blaise - two young upstarts from the famous oenology school at UC-Davis - have plopped this fat, elegant, succulent Pinot on us, right out of the blue. Unless you knew to google them, you’d never hear a peep about this silky stuff for all the Pinot Noir noise coming out of Oregon. And that would be a real shame. This is unabashedly Californian; big, spicy, and far too rich to win the approval of the Oregon or Burgundy Pinot-weenies but it comes up graceful, generous, aromatic as a South Georgia high school prom, and complex as a Rubik’s Cube. I freely admit that I don’t really get what all the fuss is about with Pinot Noir (as my own wine guru once said, “The thing about any bottle of Pinot is that there’s always something wrong with it.”) but this wine’s quality is so flippin’ obvious that it would please the most casual Merlot-Head and the most discerning CA Pinot connoisseur. If you loved “Sideways” and want to know what Virginia Madsen’s character was talking about, try this one.
Seghesio
“La Villa” Barolo 1998
It’s all I can do to keep my hands off this wine...What can I say? It’s pretty much perfect. On the night of my fiftieth birthday, I had the ’97 of this - still one of the best wines I’ve ever put in my face - and this one got higher scores from the Wine Advocate and Wine Spectator. It’s got grace, balance, polish, sophistication, fruit for miles, minerals, herbs, warmth, the obvious care and passion of the winemaker...Ah, Heck, I’m getting’ all misty. I’m not kidding: I am getting misty, because one day this wine will all be gone. I hope you decide to buy some because our greatest joy in running this place is when people discover a wine and come back all wide-eyed and breathless, saying, “Oh, my Gosh, I never knew...” It’s that kinda wine. If I wanted to cheapen it with my dime-store adjectives, I’d say cassis, grilled bread, anise, burnt sugar, cloves, creme de cacao, cafe au lait...But it’s all, ultimately, just blather. Some wines make you feel the way you feel watching Ichiro nail some over-anxious base runner trying to stretch out a single; the way you feel when you haven’t heard B.B. King in a while and he’s suddenly on the radio; the way you feel standing in Kerry Park at sunset; the way you feel watching an Orca roll just below you on the ferry. Some wines are beverages and some wines are Experiences. That’s this.
Mionetto “Sergio” Prosecco Brut
This is our favorite sparkling wine, period. If you’ve ever had a Prosecco, chances are, unless you’re a dedicated Italian wine lover, it was either the Zardetto or the Bisol. Both of those are nice wines but neither is anything like this stuff. Unlike most Prosecco, which is a little rough around the edges, Sergio is graceful as the Joffrey Ballet. It’s got tiny, persistent bubbles, delicate but definite flavors, toasty yeast notes, crisp food-loving acidity, and a lively, refreshing character that makes it perfect for dinner with friends. With this package and at under a bottle, it’s also the perfect wedding bubbly. We used it as the sparkling at Judye’s daughter’s wedding in September of ’04 and people LOVED it. (It has the added benefit of not being well-enough known that your guests will have seen it on the grocery store shelves a zillion times.) This is what Prosecco is capable of. Don’t wait for a special occasion - create one with this amazing wine.
Terre di Sole
Nero d’Avola
Sicily, for many decades, was known as the cradle of Mediterranean trash wine. The native grapes were sorta insipid and bland and the natives drank them mainly because that’s what was at hand. The Sicilian elite drank Barolos, Barbarescos, Brunellos...in short, what rich people drank in the rest of the region. In the late 80’s, that started to change. Modern winemaking came to Sicily, new grapes were planted, quality climbed sharply. That brings us to this; a strapping, jazzy mouthful of the sort of in-your-face fruit you used to be able to find only from California and Australia. This is a quick breather that opens up like a morning glory as you work on the bottle, growing new flavors by the hour. At this price, it could become your house wine and I’m betting you’d like it enough to consider that. It has no rough edges, flavors for days, and enough possibilities as a food wine that I’m thinking it would pair up with your Thanksgiving turkey and hamburgers just fine. Really good juice at a great price!
Michele Chiarlo “Nivole” Moscato d’Asti
I first had this little gem about seven years ago, at a wine tasting group I helped start on Bainbridge Island. I was frantically searching for a wine to go with lemon mousse, back in ’02, when I found it again. This is the most refreshing, light, clean, fresh wine you’ll ever taste. It’s low in alcohol (about 6% most vintages) so you can drink a bit more of it and you’ll want to. It was smashing with that lemon mousse and goes equally well with salads, cakes, shrimp, or all by itself. It’s what the Italians call “frizante” or slightly sparkling, which means it just tickles your tongue instead of scouring it. And the flavors! Lemon, orange, honeysuckle, apricot, melon, a touch of lime. I’m serious: you WILL be back for more. So get two and invite a friend.
Taurino “Notarpanaro”
This wine is so close to my heart that writing this feels like talking about an old friend. This was one of the first wines I ever just fell flat in love with and was the first I ever collected. The ’93 of this was such a chewy, juicy, dense, inky masterpiece that I ran around until ’00 gathering up stray bottles that were shoved to the back of wine shop shelves. It is just as good today, even though its spiritual father, the good Doctor Cosimo Taurino, head of the clan and long-time winemaker, died in 2000. His wife and kids run things now but they’ve held to Dad’s devotion to doing Notarpanaro right: keeping it in the cask and bottle until it’s ready to go. This was Cosimo’s baby - even moreso than his pricey, stupendous “Patriglione”- and it just never disappoints. It’s black as a jilted lover’s heart, deep, a little mysterious, rustic as an old gate, and soaked with black cherry, blackberry, spice, and tar notes. They’ve held firm on the price for years and it’s started copping 90+ scores from the wine gurus. It’s a great, happy country-boy of a wine and I’m betting you’ll love it, too.
