Today on Serious Grape: California Cabernet for Every Budget

Today on Serious Grape I take on California Cabernets --from a budget perspective. (picture from hahnfamilywines)

I love Cabernet from my home state, but they can be prohibitively expensive, hard to find, or both. What I can find in the wine stores and supermarkets is often blah and boring.

Recently I tasted through a wide variety of Cabernet Sauvignons. Click over to Serious Grape, my weekly column on Serious Eats, to see what I thought were the best in the $10 and under category, the $10-$15 category, the $15-$20 category, and the $20-$25 category.

No matter what your budgetary ceiling, if you love Cabernet from California I've got a recommendation for you.

March Book Club: Adventures on the Wine Route

This March, why not take a mini-vacation along France's viticultural byways?

If this sounds good to you, please join the March Wine Book Club as we read wine merchant extraordinaire Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France (North Point Press, $18; available from Amazon.com for $12.44)

The reason I picked this classic wine book for March's assignment is because most wine lovers have no idea how the wine on the shelves of their local stores actually arrives there. When living in northern California, I was fortunate to be able to buy wine off of Kermit Lynch's shelves in Berkeley. His taste for great wine meant that what was in his store was intriguing and exciting. This book explains that this level of quality was no accident--it was the result of his travels around France.

This book is one part travel tale and one part wine diary. The rest is filled in with wonderful character sketches and Kermit Lynch's sense of humor and whimsy. I think you'll enjoy it.

If you want to participate, please read the book and post your reactions to it on your blog or other website by Wednesday, March 25 at 5 pm. Send me a link via email or in the comments to this post or my review later this month. I'll post a roundup as usual on the last Thursday, March 26.

Happy wine trails!

An Italian Native from Monferrato

As I mentioned in yesterday's announcement post, Italy's Piedmont region is blessed with a number of indigenous grapes that produce distinctive wines.

This month, I'm beginning my journey into Piedmont with a blended red wine that was brought into the US by wine impresario Randall Grahm back when Bonny Doon expanded (briefly) into the negociant and importer biz. Since this wine was bottled and sold, Grahm has abandoned this venture to focus on biodynamic winemaking--which is too bad, because this wine represented very good QPR. And I'm not the only blogger to think so. Check out the reaction from Taster A at the blog Smells Like Grape.


The 2005 Bonny Doon Monferrato Rosso Piemontese Blend was an interesting wine that, though a bit tight and flat at first, opened up nicely over the course of the evening. It was blended from 70% Ruche, an indigenous Piedmont grape, 20% Barbera and 10% Syrah. Even when first opened, there were heady aromas of white flowers and plums, and these deepened and got more complex and less overtly perfumey as time passed. The flavors reminded me of pomegranate and cherries, and there was a juicy, spicy aftertaste. This wine has lots of acidity from the combination of Ruche and Barbera, which makes it an excellent and adaptable food wine.

We had the wine with a simple, rustic, and flavorful pasta dish: spaghetti with garlicky marsala mushrooms. The garlic was beautiful with the wine's acidity, and the bright fruit flavors in this wine were a nice counterpoint to the earthiness of the mushrooms. I was a bit worried the Marsala and the Ruche would not be a happy partnership, but it was just fine. (If you don't have Ruche, this recipe would be great with another variety from the Piedmont: Nebbiolo)

I got this from the Bonny Doon Wine Club over two years ago, in February of 2007, for $15.30. You can't get it any more--at least not as far as I can tell. However, this wine was actually made by Luca Ferraris, a well-known winemaker from the region and you can find their Ruche for between $18 and $25. Based on the tasting notes on CellarTracker the wine has evolved quite nicely during the two years it has been in my cellar. So if you do go ahead and get some of Ferraris's Ruche, you may want to give it 3-4 years after the vintage date to develop the fruit flavors to go with the upfront aromatics.

Back to the Alps in March: Italy's Piedmont

Last month, David McDuff of McDuff's Food and Wine Trail led 52 wine bloggers on a tasting tour of Piedmont. This month, GWU$20 picks up where Wine Blogging Wednesday left off as we turn our attention to this legendary Italian wine region. (photo by Giorgio Montersino)

Italy's Piedmont shares borders with France and Switzerland along the formidable natural boundary of the Alps. Tough growing conditions lead to small yields--even though this is Italy's largest (and one of its most productive) regions. The Piedmont's sparkling wine from Asti, for example, is second only to Champagne in terms of overall sparkling wine production.

If the Piedmont region conjures up only images of high-quality, high-priced, hearty reds like Barolo and Barbaresco, you will be pleased to know that they make affordable wines there, too. Many of them are made with native grapes like Arneis, Cortese, Erbaluce, Barbera, Grignolino, and Ruche. Nebbiolo is the region's most famous and prestigious grape, but even GWU$20 readers can sometimes find bottlings that fit their budget. I'll be dipping into these native grapes to find some good values and to expand my knowledge of Italy's hidden treasures. (picture by kuspoletto)

Of course there is great food to be had in the Piedmont, too, and much of it tends to be rich and hearty. Many of the region's dishes include rice, which is grown here. Risottos, fondutas (the Italian version of fondue), truffles, and cheese are some of the hallmark tastes of the Piedmont. I always have great plans to cook regional food to go along with my wine, but I don't always manage it. Still, I've got some recipes pulled out of Lynn Rossetto Kasper's inspiring cookbook, The Italian Country Table, that I am eager to try including a balsamic-roasted chicken with potatoes and a soothing chickpea soup. (photo by Cebete)

I picked up plenty of tips from last month's Wine Blogging Wednesday, but if you have anything to add--from wines to try to insights into what inspires you about wines from the Piedmont--please leave them in the comments below. I'll have my first review of a red wine from the region tomorrow.

Open That Bottle Night Report: Scholium Wine

Saturday was the 10th annual Open That Bottle Night. Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, the wine critics from The Wall Street Journal began the event because so many people have wine in their house that they think is too "special" to drink. The result? When something finally happens that constitutes a "special" occasion, the wine is over the hill and can't be enjoyed anymore.

Open That Bottle Night gives you the permission to say "today is the day" and pull the cork on that expensive, rare, or sentimentally significant bottle.

As you might imagine, the bottles I hang on to are the ones that cost me more than $20. After a disaster or two I no longer set aside "special occasion" bottles, but I do tend to be reluctant to open something outside my normal price range.

So I opened up a bottle of Scholium Wine, the project to push the wine envelope started up by former philosophy professor Abe Schooner. (photo of Abe Schooner taken by fellow blogger Dale Cruse, from the blog Drinks Are On Me) I'm on their mailing list, and get a chance twice a year to buy Abe's wine. One reason I like Scholium is because it's out-of-the-box wine making. Usually, I'm a correct varietal characteristics maniac, and want my Cabernet Sauvignon to taste like it's supposed to. With Scholium I make an exception. Nothing Abe does with grapes fits a textbook description and his wines are a wine-drinking adventure as a result. And I'm not alone in thinking so. Other wine bloggers enjoy the challenges associated with opening up a Scholium wine and abandoning their preconceived notions of what wine should be. Check out RJ's post on Scholium at RJ's Wine Blog for an example, or Richard the Passionate Foodie's experience meeting Abe.

That spirit of adventure was certainly part of the 2007 Scholium Project "The Prince In His Caves" Farina Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc ($45 through the mailing list; you can get other vintages for between $45 and $49 from these merchants). I just adored this wine, but all the while I had to abandon my idea of what Sauvignon Blanc was "supposed" to be. It opened up to a cloudy orange-yellow that resembled flat beer. Initially, there was a strong aroma of pink grapefruit juice concentrate. I got some rock salt, too. The flavors were thick grapefruit juice and guava nectar at first, then there were honeyed notes as it opened up, and minerality and citrus pith as it warmed. I kept thinking that this was a wine that they would recognized in the Middle Ages, which (from the descriptions I've read) was mostly thick and mostly cloudy.

I'm glad that I took the opportunity to open this wine now, because I have another bottle of it and I will save it for a night when all I ask for is a non-boring wine. This is most definitely NOT boring, and reminded me of what Open That Bottle Night is all about: wine is meant for drinking. So just do it.