Tasting Room: Toad Hollow Vineyards

Today marks the start of a new Friday feature called Tasting Room. A complement to Friday's Winery Watches, these posts will include reports of current releases from a particular winery. In some cases they will be the current releases of a winery I've written a Winery Watch profile on in the past. Sometimes, they will cover wines made by negociants or folks who draw from a variety of vineyards all over California and the world. In other cases, I will have had the opportunity to taste a complete line-up of the wines and just want to get brief reviews out to you as quickly as possible. Enjoy!

If you find yourself in or near the town of Healdsburg, be sure to visit the friendly tasting room of Toad Hollow Vineyards. Toad Hollow was started by Todd Williams and Rodney Strong, two men with a passion for making world class wines at affordable prices. The wines that I tasted when I visited certainly lived up to that mandate. I've already reviewed a Toad Hollow wine for WBW #36, a delicious unoaked chardonnay. Today I want to share my other tasting notes from that visit. To find these Toad Hollow wines at a retailer near you, click on their interactive map for distributor and retailer contacts.

2004 Toad Hollow Cabernet Sauvignon Concinnity (purchased at the tasting room for around $17; no other merchant information available). A new world red blend made in an old world style. Rich red fruits lie underneath green herbal and pepper notes. Contains cabernet sauvignon, petite sirah, syrah, and cabernet franc. Limited production. Very drinkable. Will appeal to those who like a more restrained and less extracted cab, but find Bordeaux TOO green. Nicely balanced, nice finish. Good QPR.

2005 Toad Hollow Pinot Noir Goldie's Vines ($20 at the tasting room; under $25 at other merchants) Extremely good pinot noir made from Russian River Valley fruit. Abundant, bright red raspberry fruit is balanced out with toasted oak. There are dusty tannins and earthy notes to add to the complexity. Very good QPR.

2004 Toad Hollow Merlot Reserve Richard McDowell Vineyard ($18 at the tasting room; under $20 through other merchants) I loved this beautifully made merlot from Russian River Valley fruit. It is rich, robust, and fruity with a core of currant, clove, and caramel aromas and flavors. Accented by vanilla and toast, this wine will please any big red wine drinker. Not a wimpy merlot by any means. Excellent QPR.

N.V. Toad Hollow Erik's the Red (between $10 and $15 from most merchants) Paso Robles grapes go into this surprisingly good blend of 18 grapes. Priced perfectly to accompany your pizza, it is a smooth drinker, with nice acidity, and not at all mushy. Cab Franc provides interesting herbal aromas, zinfandel lends its blackberry fruit to the mix, and petite sirah's richness and body lend lushness to the blend. At the same time there is a definite softness to the wine (probably from its pinot noir, grenache, and dolcetto grapes) as well. Great house red candidate. Excellent QPR.

N.V. Toad Hollow Limoux Risqué (under $15) . Made with French grapes, this light and delicate sparkler is sweet and meant to go with dessert. This is a cake wine, with only 6% alc/vol and a nice balance of acidity to counteract the sweetness. Light lemon aromas and flavors, with lots of honeysuckle impression. Try it with coconut cake, angel food cake with berries. Very good QPR.

It is a sad, sad task for me to add to this post the news that one of Toad Hollow's founders, Todd Williams, passed away in Santa Rosa on August 14, 2007. Todd Williams was a great believer that everyone deserved to drink good wine, even those on a budget. He was also a believer in giving back to this community. Donations can be made in his memory to the Boys and Girls Club of Healdsburg, and to the Norma and Evert Person Heart Institute at the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. He will be missed.

Early Harvests a Sign of Climate Change?

A flurry of news reports the past few weeks have suggested that grape vines throughout the world are beginning to feel the effects of global warming. (image from ItalianVisits.com)

In France's Beaujolais region the harvest of gamay grapes began 2 weeks earlier than usual, something that veteran winemaker Georges Duboeuf remembers happening only a handful of times in his life. In 1947, 1976, 2000, 2003, and now in 2007 the harvest came in early. What he doesn't say is that three of those harvests have been within the last decade, which I find a bit alarming. Despite the early harvest, there are no plans to change the release date for beaujolais nouveau, which is still planned for the third Thursday in November.

In Sicily, the Veneto, and Lazio there are similarly early harvests this year, with grapes being picked as many as four weeks earlier than usual. This had led to problems securing workers for harvest, and to changes in long-established traditions like harvest festivals that typically take place in October--not September.

Harvests are always idiosyncratic and quirky, and 2007 will be no different. Bordeaux has been worrying about rain, not heat, for instance. And Napa has had few of the high temperature spikes that can lead to uneven ripening of the grapes. But this rise in temperatures across Europe does have viticulturalists worrying about the long-term effects this may have on wine production. Entirely new varieties may need to be planted to cope with the climate change. And the higher heat is producing fruitier wines which will only contribute to the trend towards "international" fruit forward styles. I don't know about you, but this is not a trend I applaud. I like wines to taste different, and to reflect the conditions under which the grapes were grown and made.

I've always thought whether and how much to let fruit ripen on the vine was a decision of the winemaker. Now we see that Mother Nature has a role in the decision process, too, and if global warming continues, we may all be in for a far fruitier future than we thought.

Post-Script, 8/31/07: The San Francisco Chronicle's Lynne Charr Bennett reported on the earlier harvests taking place all over California this morning, adding coverage on Lake County, Monterey, and San Luis Obispo along with other viticultural areas.

Wine Versatility

If you drink wine with dinner each night, there is a very good chance that you prize the versatility of your wine almost as much as you prize its high quality or its fair price. So many blockbuster wines are actually quite difficult to pair with food, and I personally find cabernet sauvignons a real challenge because their powerful flavors can so easily overwhelm everything else that you have on the table.

Enter sauvignon blanc. Like pinot noir, I find that sauvignon blanc is an acceptable pairing with most fish and poultry dishes, works alright with salad, can be a blockbuster with certain cheeses, and suits most people's palates. It is also fairly easy to find really good wines made with the varietal for under $20, like the 2005 Provenance Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc ($16.99, Beverages and More).

This was an outstanding sauvignon blanc that was far less tangy and grassy than those that you might have enjoyed from New Zealand and therefore was even easier to pair with food. While it was rounder and richer, it did not have a pronounced oak taste of a fume blanc, either. The wine was a beautiful pale gilt in color, which added to the enjoyment, and had muted aromas of lime, lemon and grapefruit. Flavor-wise, I detected peaches, lemon and also kiwi--a real fruit bowl that ran the gamut from tangy citrus, to tropical kiwi, to rich orchard fruits. One of the things I liked best about it was its silky texture and medium body, which gave the wine a really rich mouthfeel. I did a little research and discovered that this wine had seen time both inside a barrel and inside a stainless steel tank, which did a lot to explain both its roundness and its fruit-forwardness. Even though it was outstanding, this wine may cost you a bit more than you're used to in sauvignon blancs, so I consider it a very good QPR choice.

What to have with it? Chips and tomatillo salsa would work. So would chicken teriyaki and sushi. Poached salmon with dill and new potatoes--it would be great with that, too. Have fun figuring out what it doesn't go with! If you've discovered any sauvignon blanc howlers in the pairing department let me know--but I have yet to find one. (Though I've never had it with steak, and can't imagine myself trying THAT.)

A Rhone Reminder

One of the great things about being a wine blogger is you are always on the look out for new wines to write about, and new regions to explore. This year I've tried to focus on getting to known Spanish and Burgundian wines in order to expand my palate and wine knowledge. I've loved every minute of it. But, as Tyler Colman pointed out in his list of the pros and cons of wine blogging in Wine and Spirits magazine, the upside of exploration has a downside: you drink less of your favorite wines.

I just got a big reminder that I love Rhone wines. Whites, reds--doesn't matter. Bring them on. I love syrah, grenache, mourvedre, grenache blanc, roussanne, and marsanne. And I could go on and on about the Rhone blends that are so drinkable, and yet so complex at the same time. The Rhone has its expensive wines, to be sure, but it also has bargains and those bargains often come under a Cotes du Rhone label. These wines are grown in vineyards that fall outside of the more famous named appellations like Crozes Hermitage, Cote Rotie, and Chateauneuf du Pape. As a result, they are often less pricey than their better-known neighbors.

They often represent excellent QPR, too, like this 2005 Domaine les Grands Bois Cotes du Rhone Les Tres Soeurs ($9.95, Chronicle Wine Cellar; available from other merchants for between $10 and $15). Let me say off the bat that this was a lot of wine for under $10. A rich ruby color made the wine look as luscious as it tasted and I was eager to get my nose into the glass as soon as I had poured it. The wine was blended from 60% old vine grenache, 30% syrah, and 10% carignane, producing a wine that had abundant aromas of berries, herbs, and spice. These are the classic hallmarks that I associate with the grenache varietal. Berries and herbs continued through the flavors, with that distinctive brushy-dusty-herbal flavor that is known as garrigue and always reminds me of country lanes in the height of summer. Underneath it all was a Rhone funkiness of earth and leaves, and it ended with a mouthful of spice.

This was a really good, classic, and drinkable Rhone wine. It was the kind of wine that would go as perfectly with roast chicken as it would with chili or stew. And it was a reminder to me that sometimes you just need an old favorite to bring your day to a satisfying close.

Back to School

It's back to school time at Good Wine Under $20. Remember the smell of pencil lead and chalk, and the apple for the teacher? Well, it's not quite like that anymore! New laptop computers really shouldn't have any smell at all, it turns out. And no one has ever given me an apple. (image from Discovery School)

With all that's going on this time of year, it may be a few days before I get on a regular posting schedule, so thanks in advance for your patience and I'll see you back here as soon as I'm ready to meet my classes and have located the top of my desk.