Cruzan Rummages Through the Spice Rack

Certain spirits are for sipping, what you reach for when you are relaxing or have something pleasurable to mull over. Pour me a Jack Daniels on the rocks during a long flight across the Atlantic when I'm leafing through my trip journal or a dollop of Cognac or Armagnac in a retro snifter while I'm at the bar listening to jazz piano after a pleasant, solo dinner or else when I'm reading the latest Vanity Fair in a stuffed chair on a wintry evening as the wind howls outside.

Now add Cruzan 9 spiced rum to make it a trilogy. Rum has always been an occasional drink for me, one that I certainly enjoy by itself or as the lead ingredient in a cocktail, but it isn't a regular on my iPod play list. But the other day, I received a promotional bottle of Cruzan spiced - No. 379 of the first 500 production run it says in the add-on label - and it blew me away. It's perhaps the smoothest full-scale (40% alcohol) flavored spirit I have tasted, and though it boasts nine "heirloom" spices, vanilla is its dominant aroma, both from the spice itself and the toasted wood. The other eight include cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, even a touch of juniper berry. It costs about $16 a bottle.

Although it's a serious drink, the nose immediately says "vanilla-bean ice cream." But I've resisted the temptation to buy some and try the combination. Mostly, I've just been sipping it neat, both at room temperature and chilled. I haven't wanted to weaken it with ice, but sooner or later, I suppose I'll have to try that as well.

It's also a pleasant morning drink - just a taste after some strong Italian-roast coffee, which is what I'm having now at 4:30 a.m. as I'm working on this posting. The day is already rosy, and it isn't even daylight.

Until next time....

Roger Morris

Friday Lineup: This Writer's Life

Carla Capalbo is a respected wine and food correspondent, commentator and photographer, and those of you read Decanter regularly probably recognize her byline on dispatches, especially from Italy. I've met up with her over the past year or so in Bordeaux and Greece and have come to enjoy her insights and to be amused by her camera unipod (a tripod minus two) that must give airport security fits when she shows up with it on her trips.

When we were together with other journalists in Macedonia in late June, Carla showed me her just-published book, Collio: Fine Wines and Foods from Italy's North-East, for which she did text and color photos. It is a beautiful book, whether you're reading page-by-page or just thumbing through for an overview. Collio is a lovely section of the world that produces some heavenly wines, especially whites, and Carla has done a great job of capturing the place, the people and the wines and food. It is published by Pallas Athene, and you won't have any problem finding it on the internet or ordering it though your local indie.

This is not her first wine and food book, and what makes Carla so good is that she takes the time to know a region, either camping out in it for weeks or visiting with frequency if she lives nearby.

Buy it, either for yourself or the wino who lives on the other side of your bed.

GO ON - PUT A BOTTLE TO MY HEAD!


I frequently try to tell people that wine writing and the travel it entails - especially those long second-class flights to vineyards inconveniently planted on the other side of the Atlantic or the 12-hour days in the tasting room and at the dinner table with nothing to do except drink, eat, ask questions and take notes - can be pure hell. No one believes me. "Can I carry your bags?" they ask. "How to I get your job?" they plead.

While I was away traveling to Paso Robles on a wine assignment recently, my friend and colleague John Lowman clipped the cartoon above from The New Yorker and slow-mailed it to me so I would see it on my return.

Need I say anything else?


Wine of the Week

2001 Montecillo Rioja Gran Riserva ($25). Maria Martinez was one of the first women in Europe to break the for-men-only cellar-door barrier and open it to a flood of female winemakers, and her experience shows off in this wonderly sophisticated Tempranillo. For people who don't have the storage room or the patience to age their own wines, this is the way you used to be able to buy reds - fully mature when you opened the bottle and ready to drink without being tired or dried out. This nine-year old new release has rounded red fruit, mellow, well-integrated oak, just a touch of tannins and food-loving acidity. It will keep for more years, but why not drink it now? A steal at $25.


Wines of Interest

2009 Vina Costeira Ribeiro ($15). A tangy, refreshing white from Spain's left coast with medium body and lots of citrus and floral notes and a touch of brioche in the finish. Very nice blend of indigenous grapes with Treixadura (70%) leading the way. (Note: Ribeiro D.O. is not to be confused with Ribera del Duero.)

2008 Blackstone Winemaker Select California Merlot ($11). Ripe, rich fruit with moderate oak and a touch of creaminess in the end. A harmonious wine, simple and not complex.
2008 Un4seen California Red Wine ($11). When I unscrewed this and took the first taste, I was hit with the sweet fruitiness of the kind of wine I don't drink. But the second sip showed good structure and a surprisingly fine spicy, satisfying finish. I drank some and came back the next day to finish the bottle. That said, Un4seen is really a wine for people who like a sweeter, fruitier table companion, but don't want a cloying finish. If you're climbing up or going down that sweet to dry ladder, this could be your wine. A blend of Zin, Malbec, PV and Merlot.


Now Playing at a Newstand (or Computer Screen) Near You

My latest harvest of wine articles has some nice ones:

Drinks Business, the UK-based wine business publication, carries my case study of Michel Rolland's Mendoza wine collective, Clos de los Siete, in its August issue.

Drinks, the American consumer magazine, has my cover story on "Spain's Greatest Grape: The Many Faces of Tempranillo," in its fall issue.

And the August issue of Sommelier News, the online magazine at http://www.internationalsommelier.com/, features my piece on Sangiovese di Romagna, vying to become Italy's fourth great Sangiovese region.

Let me know if you would like to see a scanned copy of either the Clos de los Siete or Tempranillo articles.

Until next time...

Roger Morris

Rant in a Minor Key: Going Against the Green

For me, green is beginning to look a lot browner.

My dad believed in conservation - he was a union wage earner coming out of the Depression with four kids and a wife who was a week-night and weekend farmer because he had always been a farmer and because we needed the food. To dad two of the most dispicable words in the English language were scabs (the anti-union kind) and soil erosion. We caught hell if we tried to dam up the little stream that flowed by our house or cut play roads into the bare hillside.

I grew up as an environmentalist, which meant that I sometimes was at odds with the company I worked for - DuPont - but also sometimes defended them when I thought they were the victim of kneejerk criticisms of big business.

But I'm sick of green. Green is the new patriotism. Salute without even counting the stars in the flag. What set me off this time was seeing an ad about a Ford hybrid with its boast for how many miles a gallon it got in city driving. How much electricity does it take for recharging and how is that electricity manufactured? How much energy does it take to mine rare metals for the battery and what does it do to the environment? What is the total energy savings, if any? Tell me all that information in less-than-fine print, tell me all the tradeoffs, and I might seriously consider the ad's message.

The same with all our electronics. I love computers and my e-mail and my Blackberry and my blogging, but at what environmental cost? Electronics are far from being environmentally clean or even energy efficient from their birth to their final disposal. So spare me that puritan little note about considering whether I need to print out a message on (renewable and biodegradable and recyclable) paper if I want to retain something.

Yes, I do believe in some green causes. I believe absolutely that plastic bags are evil and not necessary because they last forever and are clogging up wire fences across the country and contaminating our oceans. They are the graffiti of packaging. When I need to carry something, I take along my own reusable bag in 90% of the cases. The other 10% is due to a faulty memory. Mostly, I love to carry things in my bare hands, sans baggage.

I was - am- a marketer of products and ideas. But I do get tired of so many false or unprovable green claims that I get daily from people touting their greener-than-green wine or food packaging, their tiny little carbon footprints, and their chastity-like sustainability. I delete most of these messages immediately without reading. And don't worry about me printing them out first.

Until next time...

Roger Morris

The Friday Lineup: Austin Hope's Terroir

One of the topics wine people often discuss is how certain grape varieties thrive in particular settings or terroirs and how, over time, the wines made from these grapes grow to reflect these respective terroirs.

This week, I spent a few days with Austin Hope, his family and his colleagues at Hope Family Wines in Paso Robles, and it gradually occured to me that wineries and the people who work there often reflect the terroir as surely as their wines. Those who know Austin, his crew, and his wines would probably agree that no person, no winery better reflects the spirit of California's Central Coast in general, and Paso Robles in particular, than do Austin and his multi-faceted winery.

I love the sophistication of the Medoc and Napa Valley, but I also enjoy the more-rural pace of the Central Coast. Things don't move any slower in the country - a tired myth - but things are more deliberate, and there are fewer distractions. Similarly, everything seems less ostentatious and more utilitarian.

Austin Hope and his family moved to Paso Robles in 1978 from the Central Valley to grow apples and grapes (the apples made a quick exit), and Austin started working in the vineyard when he was eight. Today, Hope Family Wines is a very large, though not huge enterprise. Many of us have drunk their Treana red and white for over a decade and their Liberty School everyday wines, especally the Cab, even longer - from the days when the Hopes were selling grapes to Caymus before they bought the brand outright.

In recent years, as Austin began to take over the day-to-day from his father, Chuck, the line and the marketing have expanded. First, there was the prestige Austin Hope varietals that have proven to be a steady brand. More recently, we have seen the introduction of the ground-breaking, multi-vintage Candor line and the relaunching of Westside Red.

Hope is a complex and very likable guy who still has a touch of shy boyishness about him. Although he loves farming and winemaking, he is also a shrewd at business planning, something his father admits was not his first love. Hope understands tradition, but he doesn't get mired down in it. He enjoys thinking radical thoughts - such as betting on multi-vintage wines at higher price and quality levels rather than just sticking to the handcuffs of straight vintages - and acting on many of these thoughts. The people whom he has gathered around him - winemakers JC Diefendorfer and Soren Christenson and grower relations head Kristen Lane - reflect his spirit and intellectual restlessness. It was refreshing not to hear this week the routine, if well-meaning, cliches that often go with winemaking. And there is also some good ol' boy in Hope. He likes cars and bars and hunting as well as the next guy.

Of course, there are the wines. There is a preference for Cabernet and the Rhone varietals - what grows well here - especially at the high levels. If there is a house style, it is fruitiness up front, full body on the palate, and a lean finish with food-loving acidity. Fortunately, I got to taste the wines with a lot of good food provided by Thomas Hill Organics, Il Cortile, Artisan, and Bistro Laurent. You may not find many designer clothing stores in downtown Paso, but you certainly can eat well.

Over the next few weeks and months, I will be writing more about Hope Family Wines, and I will let you know as those articles start to appear as the grape are harvested, the leaves turn, and the snow flies. In the meantime, search out some of the newer Hope wines such as Candor and Westside Red and even Austin Hope wines if you haven't tried them.

When I returned from California, a friend had sent me a Hamilton cartoon that showed a sophisticated woman and a laid-back man chatting across a table with a bottle of wine. She asks him as he looks rather smug, "Do wine writers suffer and all that?" Sometimes, when you're stuck at Charles de Gaulle or it's past midnight in Spain and you haven't ordered the first course or on those long bus rides back to the hotel, we do suffer - a little. But this week, being a wine writer in Paso Robles and hanging out with the Hope folks was pure pleasure.

For wine pricing and location, go to www.wine-searcher.com.

Until next time....

Roger Morris

The Friday Lineup: Ends of the Spectrum

Wine of the Week

2007 Sequoia Grove Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($35). There are certain wines that bring a smile to your face when you pull the cork and smell the bottle, a welcoming aroma like coming through the front door on a cold day at dinner time. This is one of them. It may not be an outstanding wine, but it is certainly a very good one, especially at this price - a full-bodied Napa Cab that is not too oaky, too tannic, nor too fruit-forward. Instead, it has a lovely berry and cassis nose with flavors of tart blackberries, dark chocolate, mushrooms, forest floor and mellow oak. It is also somewhat lean and minerally, only mildly tannic and is, perhaps at this stage, a little too tight. The finish and aftertaste are a surprise - touches of raspberry cream and violets. Well structured and a delicious food wine.


Wines of Interest

2008 Ajello Sicily Nero d'Avola ($12). True to the Nero's taste profile, this is a big, unapoletically assertive wine with dark fruit flavors, mouthfuls of tannin and a pleasant bitterness around the edges. Don't try to explain it - like it or hate it for what it is, the wine equivalent of a burly Islay Scotch. Sip it, savor it with some spicy salumi. Let the afternoon pass away.

2009 Thomas Henry Borden Ranch Verdelho ($12). I had this wine a few days after the Nero d'Alba, and I thought they represented the A and the Z of wine drinking. Although both state 14% alcohol on the label, the Verdelho - how many of those do you see from California? - is a pouf by comparison, a little pond of lemon meringue and sugar floating in the middle of your palate. Drink it, and it immediately disappears. A nice amusement while you're waiting around the kitchen with guests before leaving for dinner.

2005 Undone Rheinhessen Pinot Noir ($13). German Pinots are still a bit of a wonder to us, and few to date have gone beyond the novelty state. This is a very simple one - unoaked - with rooty, cola flavors. Light-body, easy drinking at an attractive price.

2007 Waterstone Napa Merlot ($18). This is a Southwest Airlines kind of no-frills wine. Plump, smooth, plummy fruit with light oak and mild tannins.

Prices approximate. For availability, go to http://www.wine-searcher.com/

Until next time...

Roger Morris

Friday Lineup: Riesling Matches

Rieslings have been collecting for some time in my wine samples bin, so I tasted 18 of them this week in one swell foop. Of these, I thought 11 were quite enjoyable, six not worth noting, and one, a classic German one, was so over-sulphured it never really blew off.

Some of the ones from the West Coast not noted were quite dull and clumsy, and it seems as if they were there simply because someone said, "We need a Riesling in our product line."


Wines of the Week

2009 Johannishof "V" Rheingau Johannisberg Riesling Kabinett ($24). Lovely floral aromas with gamy edges - apricot and peaches melded into a balsamic-like flavors. It's one of those instances where an interesting flavor or aroma gets near the edge, but doesn't go over it. Would be fine with Alsatian dishes.

2009 Craggy Range "Fletcher Family" Marlborough Riesling ($20). Pleasant oily Riesling aromas blended in with orange peel smells and tastes. Mildly assertive. Stony, minerally, metallic under pinnings.

2009 Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt "Josephofer" Riesling Kabinett ($30). Clean aromas with delicious, ripe fruit - apricot and plum peel - but with a tart finish. Excellent structure. A lean, piano-wire Riesling that nevertheless has appealing fruitiness.

2008 Mercer Yakima Valley Riesling ($15). Nice and elegant, with a balance between full and lean styles. Petroleum aromas, metallic and minerally, with apricot and orange notes throughout. A nice drinking wine, with or without food.


Wines of Interest

2009 Villa Sacher "Rheingraf" Rheinhessen Dry Riesling ($14). Excellent mouth feel - luscious and velvety - with muted fruit, floral and dry herbal, forest-floor flavors. A savory wine that is long on the palate.

2009 Macari Finger Lakes Riesling ($30). Lots of petroleum in the lovely nose. Lean, minerally, slate-like with tart apple skins. Lightly tannic - a pleasantly assertive wine that would stand up to tuna steaks and sushi.

2009 Liebfrauenstift Rheinhessen Dry Riesling ($14). Very delicate, but well-balanced with light nectar flavors. A good sipping wine.

2008 Liebfrauenstift Rheinhessen Riesling Trocken ($14). Again, lightish with flavors high on the palate of peach peel, minerals, slate. Quite nice.

2008 Blackstone Monterey County Riesling ($12). A good, basic "peaches and plums" Riesling. Not elegant, but-well integrated fruit. Full without being dull.

2007 Firestone Central Coast Riesling ($12). Petroleum notes. Fairly big with lots of apricots and peaches, but with a touch of taffy. Far from classic, but a good larger-style Riesling.

2009 Pacific Rim Columbia Valley Sweet Riesling ($10). Better than in its drier styles. Clove aromas with almost creamy, floral peaches. Well-balanced acidity.

Prices are approximate. For more-precise pricing and availability, check out:

http://www.wine-searcher.com/.

Until next time...

Roger Morris

Locavoracious: The Produce Road to Strasburg

The best produce road in the region, perhaps in America, this time of year is the 20-mile stretch of Route 896 between Russellville, where 896 and Route 10 intersect at a four-way stop, and Strasburg, Pennsylvania, on the outskirts of Lancaster. This is uncommercialized Amish and Mennonite country, and the first-time traveler will be fascinated by the large farms that have no electric lines leading to the houses and barns, by horse-drawn farm instruments lumbering through the fields and hay meadows, and by roadside signs in hot weather that read "water for horses." And horses do travel this road constantly, pulling small carriages of one to four people going from one farm to the next or to commercial shops on the Strasburg Road.

This is farming country with huge, rolling fields of corn and tobacco - still a large local crop, witness the number of tobacco barns with their strips of siding that open to let the bundled leaves dry after harvesting - as well as vegetable gardens for fresh food for the table in the summer and canned produce for the rough winters. And as a summer cash crop to sell to tourists or locals passing through.

Last week, we drove to Lancaster to do some outlet shopping as well as buy fresh produce for the weekend. It seemed that every quarter mile there was another small farm stand, often manned by young girls in long, traditional skirts or young boys with straw hats and black trousers held up by braces. For foodies, the signs shouted out temptations: Fresh blackberries, corn, tomatoes by the bushels, locally made root beer, brown, free-range hen eggs, onions, squashes, cucumbers, melons and old-fashioned flowers for the table.

We limited ourselves to juicy blackberries to make a cobbler, tomatoes for pasta sauce and gazpacho, and some root beer for a hot afternoon.

The next day, I felt like getting in the car and doing it all again.


Stopping for a fresh milkshake. Another locavoracious favorite is Woodside Farm Creamery in North Star, near Hockessin, in Delaware. How many places can you stop for fresh ice cream and see the brown and white cows - Guernseys, if my childhood memories serve me right - that produced it grazing in the field above the ice cream stand?

I stopped by the other day for a milkshake, and the shop was like a scene from Norman Rockwell. Perhaps a dozen children were running about outside while their minders lolled around picnic tables under the shade trees. As I was trying to decide my flavor, the kids were running in asking for samples of bacon ice cream served by the young women behind the counter on bite-sized plastic spoons.

Clearly, the combination of bits of real bacon blended into ice cream was too much for some of the young explorers. One young lad got a disgusted look on his face and ran out when his bite was offered. I was not tempted either. I left drinking a cookies-and-cream.

Until next time...

Roger Morris

For wine pricing and location, check

http://www.wine-searcher.com/