To Reserve or Not to Reserve? And What's the Difference Anyway?

In your wanderings down supermarket aisles and through wine stores, you may have come across wines labeled "Reserve" or bearing the name of a vineyard and wondered what the designations were all about. What does it mean to be a "reserve" wine? A vineyard wine? And what difference--if any--does it make to the taste? Or the price tag?

If you are confused about what "Reserve" means there is a good reason for it: there is no standard or regulated use of the term. In its purest sense, it was once used by winemakers to specially mark wines they felt were superior. Today, it can be used to indicate the wines have been reserved in the winery for an extra year or two, that they received special oak treatment, that the grapes used in the wine were from a select portion of those harvested, or some combination. It can also be used purely as a marketing term, because who wouldn't want a special wine?

Wines with vineyard designations are regulated, however, and if you see the name of a vineyard on a bottle it means that 95% of the grapes used in the wine must come from that vineyard. Vineyards vary tremendously in terms of soil, climate, and exposure and all of these variables can alter the taste of your wine. Sometimes, a winemaker feels that the grapes grown in a particular patch exhibit special characteristics, and they decide to keep that fruit separate to accentuate the unique qualities of the grapes.

Recently I had a chance to taste three wines made from the same maker, from the same grape, and all from grapes grown in the same county (although different parts of that county). One was the standard bottling, one was a vineyard designate, and one was a reserve bottling. All three were excellent--but had distinctively different taste. Here's my take on them.

2009 Rodney Strong Chardonnay Sonoma County (suggested retail $13.50; available in the market for $8-$15). A clean and crisp Chardonnay, with apple and lemon aromas and flavors accented by richer pineapple and creamy vanilla notes. A portion of the juice was fermented in barrels, the rest in a tank, which helps to explain both the vanilla notes (the oak) and the crispness (from the stainless steel tanks). Flavorful, well-balanced and food friendly. Very good QPR.

2009 Rodney Strong Chardonnay Chalk Hill (suggested retail ; available in the market for $13-$21) This wine was made from grapes grown in an estate vineyard in the Russian River Valley. A distinctive, classy Chardonnay with apple and toasted oak aromas followed by apple flavors. Layers of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg make the wine spicy, but the apple flavors remain strong and keep the wine fresh as do the underlying mineral notes. The aftertaste is nicely spicy, too, in part from the time the juice spent in both new and seasoned French oak barrels. Very good QPR.

2008 Rodney Strong Chardonnay Reserve Russian River Valley (suggested retail $35; available in the market for $24-$35). This wine was one year older than the others I tasted (even though it is a recent release) and tasted and smelled far richer with its apple and toasted coconut aromas. Full, creamy baked apple and sour cream flavors were followed up with a rich, spicy aftertaste. The Rodney Strong website explains that the wine was made in their "small lot winemaking facility," and that the juice was fermented in French oak barrels. Though this wine cost significantly more, it was an excellent value of the rich, oaky style of California Chardonnay. Very good QPR.

When faced with a decision of whether to choose a standard, vineyard designate, or reserve bottling, remember this: it's all about the taste and what you find affordable. In this case, the higher priced wines were richer-tasting, in large part because of their contact time with expensive oak barrels. However, sometimes what you want is a crisp Chardonnay. In that case, you'd be far happier with the Sonoma County bottling! As for me, my palate was most pleased with the Chalk Hill example.

As for food pairings, any of these wines would provide you with a pleasant Chardonnay to pair with your late summer/early fall dinners of grilled or roasted chicken, butternut squash ravioli, or grilled halibut.

Full Disclosure: I received samples of these wines for possible review.

My Gold Standard in Zinfandel

If you drink a lot of wine, you probably have a few that serve as your "benchmark bottles." These are the wines that set the standard against which you judge similar wines from other producers, other vintages, or even use to compare grape varieties across the globe.

When it comes to Zinfandel, my benchmark bottling--the one that sets the gold standard for me--has been Dry Creek Vineyard's Heritage Zinfandel (suggested retail $17; available for $12-$20). Year in and year out the folks at Dry Creek Vineyard produce a wine that is balanced between fruit and spice. Even better, they don't overdo the alcohol and as a result I can have more than one glass if I want to without regretting it the next morning. If you want to know more about Dry Creek Vineyard and the people behind the wine, check out their blog, Wilma's Wine World.

Like previous vintages of this wine, the 2006 Dry Creek Vineyard's Heritage Zinfandel represents excellent QPR. The wine is predominantly Zinfandel (88%) with some Petite Sirah blended in (12%). It has a rich, dark color and abundant blackberry aromas. The blackberry fruit carries forward into the flavors, where there are also layers of black pepper and baking spices. The wine's overall impression is rich and spicy, but not heavy thanks to the bright fruit at the core.

I've been missing North Carolina, and so we had our Zinfandel with a time-saving take on Carolina-style BBQ: pulled chicken sandwiches with coleslaw. For those who don't know, not all BBQ sauce is tomato-based. This one is vinegar-based, with red peppers and other spices. You shred a store-bought roast chicken into the cooked sauce, pile it on a bun with some coleslaw, and you're as close to North Carolina as you can get without a plane ticket and a BBQ pit. Only a Zinfandel like this one could stand up to that vinegar without clashing, and the blackberry fruit was a nice foil to the spiciness of the sauce.

This vintage confirmed what I already knew. When it comes to Zinfandel, I've got my benchmark and it's from Dry Creek Vineyards.

Full disclosure: I received this wine as a sample.

The Way Zins Were: the 2004 Dry Creek Vineyard Heritage Zinfandel

I was reminded recently, when listening again to the first episode of Tim Elliott's great new Unfiltered podcasts, a roundtable format that he's introduced with guests from the blogosphere and the wine business, that I used to love zinfandels. If you check my posts from the last few months, though, you will see I don't drink much zin these days. Why? Too much alcohol, too much jammy fruit, and too much extraction. Not to mention too much headache the next morning. The guys on the podcast were lamenting the same changes, and remembering the old style zins with real nostalgia.

Is anyone making a zin like they used to be, I wondered? One that was round and yet peppery, fruity but with a brambly edge. And, one that doesn't knock you over with its power. So I went to the store in search of a lower alcohol zinfandel that might remind me of the wines I drank through the 90s. After turning around what seemed like every zin on the shelf, I found one that came in at just 13.5% alc/vol.

The 2004 Dry Creek Vineyard Heritage Zinfandel ($15 direct from the winery; check Wine Zap for lots of other merchants who are selling it for $11-$18) reminded me of the way zins were. An old-school Zin, with only 13.5% alch/vol, this is a subtle, smooth wine with textbook zin characteristics. Blended from 84% Zinfandel and 16% Petite Sirah grapes, it is dark, inky purple in color. Potent aromas of spice and blackberry come from the glass before you take your first sip. These aromas are followed up by blackberry, huckleberry at first taste, then waves of woody, brushy flavors and freshly cracked pepper. This wine had bright acidity and a long, juicy finish. Not a jam pot in sight! This was the kind of wine that made me love zinfandel, and I haven't had one like it for years. It represented excellent QPR, especially if this is the style of zinfandel you long for and rarely find these days.

With my zinfandel I had a simply grilled steak; a salad made with baby lettuces, red beets, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and olive oil; and some toasted baguette with goat cheese. Beef and zinfandel are a natural pairing, and the beets picked up the woody flavors in the zinfandel.

I'll be on the lookout for more zinfandels like this, and perhaps continue to scan the shelves for zins with lower alcohol to see if that is a consistent clue that helps me to find the brambly, peppery wines that remind me of the way zins were.

Back to the 60s with a Smokin' Sauvignon Blanc

Chateau St. Jean wines are available everywhere--at least in LA. In the supermarkets, CostPlus, and of course in every pallets section of every Costco in the greater metro area. I recently picked up a bottle of their 2004 Fume Blanc from Sonoma County, and it turned out to be a good QPR wine with a 60s, retro feel to it.

What, you might ask, is fume blanc? It's actually a term unique to America, coined in 1968 by the legendary Napa winemaker Robert Mondavi, to describe a dry, oaked sauvignon blanc. Modeled after the Loire's Pouilly-Fume, the fume blanc wines were intended to be smoky, inflected with the taste of minerals, and elegant. They are a far, far cry from the New Zealand style sauvignon blancs popular today, with their tangy, grassy, and citrus flavors and aromas. Back in the 60s, though, this was as trendy as could be when it came to sauvignon blanc.

The 2004 Chateau St. Jean Fume Blanc from Sonoma County ($7.49, Costco) is pale straw in color. It has aromas of smoke and citrus, which are followed by round flavors of melons, citrus, pear, and oak. This wine was a little disjointed--the flavors didn't evolve smoothly, one into each other but seemed at times to almost fight for dominance. Initially, the smoke won out, and if you're going to try this you might want to open it a bit before you drink it and let some of the smoke blow off. As the wine sat in the glass, the melon and pear flavors began to move to the foreground. This wine might overwhelm delicate food, and I would recommend thinking of pairings that might work well with chardonnay, rather than sauvignon blanc if you want to serve this wine with dinner.

I thought the wine would be perfect with a salad, so we had it with a suitably retro, only-in-California fusion salad of hotly contested origin--the Chinese chicken salad--updated by the folks at Sunset magazine to include more vegetables (asparagus and avocado). It was good with the wine, and I suspect that the wine would do equally well with other retro favorites (like chicken tetrazzini), or even a simple (and timeless) roasted chicken.

Having this wine was another good reminder about wine trends and fashions. Soon the New Zealand style sauvignons will have to make way for something else--wonder what that will be? This is one of the true joys of being a wine enthusiast: no two bottles are the same, and the world of choices is always changing and evolving.