Joseph Phelps 2008 Insignia, 2010 Sauvignon Blanc

When we last sat down with lead winemaker Damian Parker at the Phelps winery off Silverado Trail in the Napa Valley, we tasted a 2005, 2006, and 2007 vertical of the iconic Phelps Insignia, one of the best wines made in California today.  We recently had the opportunity to extend that vertical to 2008, and we’re happy to report that it is the best Insignia we’ve yet tasted.  It’s truly outstanding. Our tasting note on the 2008 Insignia and, also, the 2010 Sauvignon Blanc follow.

 Joseph Phelps 2008 Insignia Napa Valley ($200) 97+

The 2008 Insignia is a superb blend of 89% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Petit Verdot and 4% Merlot, all estate grown. This magnificent wine exhibits an opaque ruby purple color and aromas of ripe blackberry fruit, cedar, cigar box and herbs. Aged for 24 months in 100% new French oak, it is silky smooth in the mouth, beautifully balanced, and has firm round tannins for aging. All in all this wine it is the best Insignia we have tasted. For maximum enjoyment, hold off drinking this wine for a minimum of five years. 
 

Joseph Phelps 2010 Sauvignon Blanc Napa Valley ($32) 90

The 2010 Sauvignon Blanc exhibits ripe rich aromas of pear and melon with light toasted oak. Fermented with native yeast and aged for 7 months in new French oak, it reveals a creamy mouth feel with concentrated citrus fruit flavors, good acidity and a long satisfying finish. A rich tasting wine with an abundance of flavor.

Apaltagua: Good Value Carmenère from Apalta

With vineyards located in the special terroir of Apalta in the Colchagua Valley, the Apaltagua Winery produces good wines at remarkably low prices. Apalta is a semi-circle of hills bordered by the Tinguiririca River with vineyards dating back to the 19th century. Dry-farmed old vines are found on an old riverbed, while newer, drip-irrigated and very low yielding vines are found on the hillsides. This region produces some of Chile’s most expensive and highly sought-after wines. On our trip to Apalta a couple of years ago, we tasted iconic wines costing over $100 a bottle. All the more surprising then that Apaltagua manages to produce old vineyard wines at such low prices.

Apaltagua specializes in Carmenère, a grape like Malbec that originates in Bordeaux but performs much better in the New World than the Old. It is a sensitive grape that, if not ripened fully, has a high pyrazine content that gives an off-putting green, vegetative note. It is also a vigorous vine subject to coulure—poor fruit set after flowering—and low acidity. Growers like Apaltagua have managed to conquer the grapes’ challenges through appropriate site selection and canopy management. The care required to produce good quality Carmenère, including keeping yields low, means it’s unusual to find quality wines at low prices. Kudos to winemaker Benjamin Mei and superstar winemaking consultant Alvaro Espinoza for producing some of the better wine values coming out of Chile today.

Importer: Global Vineyard Importers, Berkeley, CA

Tasting Notes and Ratings

Apaltagua 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserva Colchagua ($11) 88
The 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon is a good choice to accompany grilled steak. It has good fruit and palate depth and nice firm tannins. Half the wine is aged in oak for about 6 months. An exceptional value.

Apaltagua 2011 Chardonnay Casablanca ($11) 87+
This unoaked Chardonnay is bright and fresh with crisp citrus showing on both the nose and palate. It’s unusually high in acidity for a Chardonnay, so it goes better with food than not. It would pair well with seafood or simply prepared chicken dishes.

Apaltagua 2011 Rosé Carmenère Central Valley ($11) 87
The 2011 Rosé has a light raspberry and floral rose perfume on both the nose and palate that is most attractive. There’s some residual sugar, but it’s accompanied by good balancing acidity. If you like your rosé with just a hint of sweetness, this one is for you.

Apaltagua 2010 Carmenère Reserva Colchagua ($11) 88
The Carmenère Reserva shows a rich, fresh fruit forward bouquet and palate of concentrated blueberry and Damascus plum. For the price, it’s unusually lush with good volume and length finishing with fine, firm tannins. Very good value.

Apaltagua 2011 Malbec Reserva Maule Valley ($11) 87+
The 2011 Malbec Reserva is fruit forward showing flashy blackberry aromas and flavors and a friendly, flavorful palate finishing with firm tannins and a nice violet note. Made from estate fruit grown in the Maule Valley. This wine is quite similar to the 2010 wine we tasted earlier.

Apaltagua 2009 Envero Gran Reserva Colchagua ($15) 89
This Carmenère (93%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (7%) is made from an Apalta vineyard selection of 60+ year old vines. The wine shows red fruit, cedar and leafy aromas and flavors and fine, ripe tannins on the finish. Sees several months of oak aging. Another great value wine from Apaltagua.

Apaltagua 2008 Grial Carmenère Apalta Valley Colchagua ($75) 91
This is a rich and spicy wine with black pepper, ripe plum, and toasted oak on the nose. The wine is velvet-like on the palate and nicely structured with excellent balance and firm fine tannins on the finish. Definitely New World in style with its fruit forward and vanilla oak character, but it’s an elegant and nicely crafted wine. Made from 60 year old Apalta vineyards and aged in new oak for 12 months. More impressive than the 2007 vintage we tasted last year.

Book Review: The Finest Wines of Rioja and Northwest Spain.

This book is a part of the series of illustrated guides the University of California is publishing called Fine Wine Editions. The books follow an outline that will look familiar to the readers of the International Wine Review. The first part of the book looks at the history, geography, grape varieties, viticulture and winemaking of the region. The second part of the book profiles individual producers and their wines. And the third part of the book focuses on food and wine of the region. The book is a great travel guide for the wine tourist to this region of Spain.

Five sub-regions are covered in this book: Rioja, Navarra, Bierzo, Rías Baixas, and the Basque country. Since the IWR team has done extensive reports, and travels, in most of this area, the book brings back lots of memories. The maps and the photographs are beautifully done, but the real highlight of the volume is the winery and winemaker profiles. For Rioja, these profiles include CUNE, López de Heredia, Muga, Rioja Alta, Roda, Bilbaínas, Señorio de San Vicente, Sierra Cantabria, Artadi, Marqués de Riscal, Nuestra Señora de Remelluri, Remírez de Ganuza, Viñedos de Páganos, Marqués de Cáceres, Bodegas LAN, all wineries I’ve visited and know well and endorse as being worthy of special attention. Each winery writeup identifies what is unique and special about the winery and offers recommendations as to the best wines being produced.

The Rioja region receives the extensive attention it deserves. By comparison, the section on Navarra is relatively thin with no discussion of the colorful history and delightful towns (e.g., Pamplona) of the region, and while leading wineries like Chivite, Artazu, Inurrieta, and Castillo de Monjardín are profiled, other outstanding wineries like Finca Albret, Ochoa, Palacio de Otazu, Príncipe de Viana, Señorio de Arinzano, and Viña Mangaña are not. I wish the book did a bit more to inform the reader about some of the lesser known, but high quality, wineries of the region.

The sections on Bierzo, Rías Baixas, and the Basque country follow the same model as those on Rioja and Navarra. The book ends with a discussion of vintages and the outstanding restaurants of the region.

The Finest Wines of Rioja and Northwest Spain is written by three Spaniards—Jesús Barquín, Luís Gutiérrez, and Víctor de la Serna—with an intimate and extensive knowledge of the wines of Spain. Their expertise and familiarity with the subject of the book is very evident, and we strongly recommend this book to both real and virtual travelers to this part of Spain, especially Rioja.

Published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 2011.

Donald Winkler, Editor
International Wine Review
February 2012

The Great Kim Jong-Il’s Wine Cellar Revealed

The following report comes direct from Emile Joubert, correspondent for the incredibly veracious Wine Goggle, so we are 100% certain it’s true.

"Four cases of South African wine have been found in the cellar belonging to recently deceased North Korean despot Kim Jong-Il, a well-known lover of wine. According to family spokesman Long Dik-Tril the cellar of over 10 000 bottles is a living memory to a man whose love of wine and the wine culture were surpassed only by Kim Jong-Ils love of his people, especially those who survived the famine of recent years. The collection included cases of Mullineux Syrah 2008, Columnella 2007, Secateurs SMV 2009 and Allersverloren Port.

“The Leader made a love of collecting and enjoying wine from all over the world, including France, Spain, Australia and especially of South Africa,” Long Dik-Tril said via Skype. Dik-Tril said that Jong-Il’s skill as a wine-taster matched his prowess on the golf course where the Leader once hit 11 holes-in-one during his first ever round of golf.

“He was amazing – our beloved Leader could detect cork taint in a wine bottle before the bottle was opened,” Dik-Tril said. “On tasting a wine he could tell how many grapes each bunch had that was used to make that specific bottle and it took sniff from the glass to determine what the maiden name of the winemaker’s mother was. He also made a loving habit of translating each year’s Platter Wine Guide into Korean, Mandarin and Urdu.”

Among the Kim Jong-Il cellar collection are wines from Romanée-Conti, Margeaux, Petrus, Vega Sicilia and Calon-Ségur, as well as the aforementioned Swartland wines. “The Leader sent a small contingent of Koreans disguised as hairy gay surfers to the revolution in South Africa’s Swartland this year hoping to find some southern revolution brothers to bond with and to possibly kick some imperialist capitalist butt,” says Dik-Tril.

“There was a little bit of revolution in the Swartland – some goose-stepping, a few shouts of ‘comrades’ and much brotherly hugs coupled with Stalinesque projective vomiting. But when we saw it was not the real thing but a wine party where no-one was going to die, our Korean brothers partied along and bought some wine back for Leader Jong-Il. He loved it, and ordered more. Actually, before his death the Leader ordered a thousand workers to build a replica of a place called Porseleinberg outside the coastal Korean city of Wonson. The night before our Leader died he sipped low-yield bushvine Chenin Blanc and had his sommelier executed because he’d missed the latest order for Eben Sadie’s Ou Wingerdreeks.”

According to Dik-Tril the deceased Leader’s cellar will be kept intact as an honour to North Korea’s greatest wine expert."

Book Review: Gerald Asher’s A Carafe of Red

Gerald Asher is one of the 20th century’s great wine writers. Born in Britain, he worked in the wine trade in London and New York for over thirty years. He is also the author of several wine books and many articles for Decanter and other magazines. Beginning in 1972 and for many years thereafter, he wrote the “Wine Journal” column for Gourmet magazine. A Carafe of Red reprints many of his most erudite and entertaining articles written for Gourmet. The result is a book that’s part travelogue, part history, and part viticulture and winemaking, all woven together with Asher’s enlightened personal commentary.

While some of the articles in A Carafe of Red were written as long as thirty years ago, there is a timeless quality to them. Asher is a scholar of wine who delves into the history and culture that lies behind the wine, whether it’s the origin of California’s Cabernet Sauvignon vines, the invention of Champagne (and, no, it wasn’t Dom Perignon), or how the innocent anticipation of the vintage’s first, fresh wines became the marketing phenomenon known as Beaujolais Nouveau.

Reading these articles, one is struck by how little is new in the world of wine. Judicious oaking is all the rage these days, with vintners bragging about reducing the amount of time their wines spend in new oak, but Asher was writing about this twenty years ago. He also writes about the tendency to create smaller and smaller parcels for vineyard designated wines, more for commercial than gustatory ends.

One thing that is new, according to Asher, is today’s sometimes overly fastidious pairing of food and wine, something gastronomic writers of the past, even Brillat-Savarin, never wrote about. He has his own recommendations for serving a special wine: “A special wine, no matter how defined, will be appreciated all the more if a preceding bottle establishes criteria for it......Use the first wine as a curtain raiser, to set the mood and establish a standard that will then be gloriously excelled by the special wine of the evening.”

Asher’s vast experience as a writer and wine importer gives his articles, and the book, a vision and perspective few wine writers can match. His article on organic and biodynamic wines covers the globe, from Australia to California, Burgundy and the Loire. Other articles, like that on Chardonnay, go into considerable depth in a particular region (in this case, California). And articles like the one on pairing wine and food and the one on Champagne reveal the fascinating history of wine. Taken all together, A Carafe of Red is an entertaining and enlightening read.

Don Winkler
Editor, International Wine Review

Sequana of Sonoma: New Pinot Noir Releases

Sequana is a boutique winery in Sonoma County that specializes in handcrafted Pinot Noir. It sources its grapes from single vineyards located in Russian River and the Santa Lucia Highlands. The winemaker is James MacPhail.



Sequana 2009 Pinot Noir Russian River Valley ($38) 91
Lovely medium ruby color, this wine shows beautiful dark cherry fruit, red plum, and toasted oak. It’s elegant on the nose and silky smooth in the mouth with soft round tannins and excellent acidity

Sequana 2009 Pinot Noir Dutton Ranch Green Valley of Russian River Valley ($40) 92+
The Pinot Noir Dutton Ranch is an elegant cool climate Pinot Noir. It exhibits aromas of sweet cherry fruit and toast and a velvet smooth mouth feel that is ripe and fruit forward. The wine shows excellence balance, soft round tannins, and good acidity on the finish.

Sequana 2009 Pinot Noir Sarmento Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands ($32) 91
Medium ruby in color, the Sequana Pinot Noir Sarmento Vineyard shows fresh and flavorful dark cherry with sweet oak on the nose and lush palate. The grapes come from two separate 10-year old vineyard blocks, each with different clones.

Sequana 2009 Pinot Noir Sundawg Ridge Vineyard Green Valley of Russian River Valley ($50) 91
The Pinot Noir Sundawg Ridge Vineyard is an elegant wine that offers a medium dark ruby hue and rich aromas of spicy dark cherry fruit and toast. It is beautifully sculpted with a lovely soft and silky texture, concentrated black cherry fruit, ripe tannins and a long finish. Crafted from Pommard, 115, and Calera Pinot Noir clones.

Rocca di Montegrossi New Releases

Rocca di Montegrossi is an old estate in the Chianti Classico region. The estate, which is located just south of Gaole in Chianti, consists of 100 hectares of which 20 are planted in vine, 20 in olive groves that surround the vineyard, and the remainder in woodlands. The estate is situated at 340-350 meters above sea level with calcareous loam soils. Owner Marco Ricasoli-Findolfi serves as winemaker with the support of consulting enologist Attilio Pagli and also oversees all vineyard operations. We last tasted these wines for our Report # 15 The Wines of Chianti Classico. Since that time the estate has been converted to organic viticulture.

The wines of Rocca di Monegrossi are among the finest produced in Chianti Classico. They exhibit rich and pure fruit flavors with interesting nuances of loam and toast. Aged in fine Allier oak, they reveal refinement and elegance on the palate with excellent balance and structure. While drinkable now, these wines will improve with further aging. The 2007 vintage was also one of the finest in Tuscany in recent years.


Rocca di Montegrossi 2009 Chianti Classico Tuscany ($27) 90
The 2009 Chianti Classico lets the Sangiovese dark red cherry fruit shine through. It has a smooth palate with firm tannins and loam earth notes and finishes medium long with the flavorful, lingering fresh cherry flavors. It’s a blend of 90% Sangiovese, 5% Canaiolo and 5% Colorino aged 12 months in Allier oak.

Rocca di Montegrossi 2007 Geremia IGT Tuscany ($45) 93+
The Geremia has always been one of our favorite Tuscan wines. The 2007 vintage has a gorgeous nose of dark red fruit and hints of cloves and cocoa. It’s layered and deeply flavored of rich fruit, chocolate, and toasted oak and finishes with good length. A blend of 65% Merlot and 35% Cabernet Sauvignon aged 24 months in barriques, predominantly new for the Cabernet and mostly used for the Merlot.

Rocca di Montegrossi 2007 Vigneto San Marcellino Tuscany ($50) 92
The Vigneto reveals dark earth, minerals and black and red fruit on the nose and palate. It’s a delicious, serious, well-structured wine with a very long finish showing accents of bright red fruit. A young wine with still gripping tannins, the Vigneto has the stuffing to age beautifully. It’s a blend of 95% Sangiovese and 5% Pugnitello aged 24 months in oak.

Mike Potashnik and Don Winkler
December 2011