Three Wines, Three Continents

Three recently tasted wines of interest from three continents (I'm counting New Zealand as an adjunct to Australia):

2010 Nobilo Icon Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc (about $15). In general, my own personal taste doesn't drift to Sauvignons from New Zealand's southern island's northern tip. I find them pleasant, but generally having too much green fruit and acidity - and I've tasted other Nobilos in this category. But I truly love this wine because, without losing crisp acidity, is has dried tropical fruitiness, a lovely gamy and tangy nose and finish, plus a drinking-water-from-a-tin-can minerality. I'll take this one.

2009 Cecchi Bonizio Sangiovese di Maremma ($9). This is a pleaseant drinking wine, and it is worth the price. That being said, it comes across too much like an Aussie fruity Shiraz in the same price range or a California Central Coast Merlot. I taste very little Sangiovese character. Of course, great Super Tuscans have sprung from the hills bordering the Maremma plain, but pure Sangiovese seems to not flourish there unless it is on well-drained soil - and sometimes not even them.

2007 Va La Avondale "Cedar" (about $45). First, decant this wine before you go to table, not because it's massive, but because it blossoms with just a few minutes of fresh air. This is a delicious wine that is truly a food wine in the Va La style. Made from a blend of northern Italian grapes grown in a little estate vineyard along Pennsylvania's US 41, it is full of zingy fresh, lightly tart, cherry flavors, fresh oak well blended with a hint of vanilla, a little dark (not creamy) chocolate the more it breathes and tannins so well-integrated you barely know they are there. Although it will age, it makes great drinking now.

Until next time....

Roger Morris

Your Link or Mine? Recent Articles

Catching up on some recent postings, blogs, print articles:

Wine Enthusiast: In the current issue, a short piece on wine-bottle apps and how you can check all the vital stats on some wines by scanning labels with your smart phone.

iSante': Recently, I've had an article posted on the lives of winery chefs, featuring who and what's cooking at Jordan, Signorello and Robert Sinskey. On my blog at http://www.isantemagazine.com/, I've also covered spring rose' wines and recovered from Open that Bottle Night and thought about how we each have our own different preferences in how we taste and drink wines.

The Daily Meal: New articles on how foodies can start a 12-bottle wine cellar for under $200, about how we Americans will become the biggest wine-guzzling country in 2012, and about the 2009 vintage in Burgundy. At http://www.thedailymeal.com/.

Sommelier News: Just posted at http://www.internationalsommelier.com/: "The Riedels' Crystal Revolution," or how we learned to drink wine from the right glass(es).

Delaware Today: For all you First Staters, this is a new venue for me. I start my new column, "Into the Drink," with a look at the local cocktail scene where the belly meets the bar.

Until next time...

Roger Morris

Corvina: The Gentleman of Verona

I've always had a special fondness for the Corvina grape.

A gift of a Bolla three-pack was what drove me to buy my first wine book, and two of the three Veronese wines in the trio were, in theory, made in part with Corvina - Bardolino and Valpolicella. In the late 70s, I fell in love with Amarone about the time I was discovering late-harvest Zins from Amador County.

More locally, I have been drinking wines from the past 10 years from my neighborhood Pennsylvania winery, Va La Vineyards, that does an excellent job of growing northern Italian grapes and making fine wines from them. For a time, the owner/winemaker, Anthony Vietri, made a solo Corvina - probably the first and only such wine in the U.S. - but more recently he has been blending Corvina and Nebbiolo to make what might be consider a local IGT. It is quite delicious.

Which brings me to two wine samples I received recently. I was quite excited that one of them was actually labeled "Corvina" - the just-launched 2005 Cesari "Jema" Corvina made from a single vineyard from San Pietro in the Valpolicella Classico region. It is a big and very serious wine, but still with a lot of fresh fruit going into its sixth year. There is a pleasant meaty flavor to it, with moderate tannins, good acidity and a creme fraiche undertaste. It developed well in the glass over an hour of drinking, but lost none of its freshness. It's a keeper and worth the $45 price tag.

The other wine is the 2006 Allegrini Amarone ($90). Allegrini is well-known for it's well-structured Amarones, and this one certainly keeps the faith. At first, the flavors of dark cherries are very sophisticated and smooth, but it gradually develops much-more-complex, earthy tastes with lots of tannins, exotic spices and a few bars of dark chocolate. It's very drinkable now, but will really blossom over the next two-to-five years and last much longer than that. Like most Amarones, it has some other grapes to go along with Corvina (80%), including Rondinella (15) and Oseleta (5).

Tasting these two wines at the same time made me reflect that, yes, life is good, as well as making a note to myself to check the air fare to Verona.

Until next time...

Roger Morris

QUICK HITS: It's nice to be writing again for Colman Andrews, my editor for years at Saveur, at http://www.thedailymeal.com/. My first post for them was last week on the "new" 155-year-old Taylor Fladgate "Scion" Port, which I also covered for http://www.isantemagazine.com/. Also check out this month's issue of Sommelier Journal for my seven-page article on the Alentejo region of Portugal.

The Back Label: Each Day Is Valentine's Day

Fonseca Bin No. 27: It's the chocolate, cupid!

Few wines go as well with chocolate as Fonseca Bin No. 27, especially if the chocolate comes from New York City's Jacques Torres (www.mrchocolate.com) and if Torres has sweetened his choc pot with a little of the Bin. I've never been a great believer of cooking with the same wine that is being served with the meal - I don't think so! - as that means you're either wasting classic wine in a reduction sauce or else you're drinking crappy wine. An exception is chocolate wine truffles, and many wineries now sell in their tasting rooms truffles made from their primo reds.

What works so well with Bin No. 27 (about$20) is that is tastes a bit like a chocolate truffle - a dollop of red and black berry essence wrapped in a cocoa powder-like coating. Take a bite of a chewy Torres sweetie and a sip of Fonseca together, and it's difficult to see where the taste of one leaves off and the other begins.


Wild Oak Shows Its Staying Power

Most California Chardonnay have lousy longevity - no Viagra is those drip systems - but I pulled this bottle of 2005 St. Francis Wild Oak Sonoma County Chardonnay out of my cellar, where it had been put away by mistake, and I was pleased with how much better it is that when I first tasted it. It's almost six years old now, and the bottle age has developed and made richer its tropical fruits, and those stray oxygen molecules have baked a nice little loaf of brioche flavors.

It makes me want to go back underground and see what else I might have mislaid.


King George's Pinot Noir: Speech! Speech!

OK, so George Bursick isn't a king, though he wouldn't mind being the king of California Pinot Noir. It's been interesting to see the improvement of J Vineyards' Pinots since Bursick has taken over, and the 2008 J Russian River Pinot Noir ($35) is a case in point. It's J's basic Pinot, and it's particularly appealing because it's one of those wines that excite the gastric juices and makes the brain in the stomach start checking the refrigerator.

It also tastes good - tight black cherry flavors, a fair amount of minerality, touches of cola, anda dusting of dried herbs. In fact, it speaks for itself.

Until next time....

Roger Morris

Follow my new blog weekly on www.isantemagazine.com.

Mondavi's Cru Classe' Fume Blanc

When I first started hanging out in the Napa Valley in the late 1970s, visiting Robert Mondavi and his winery was like going to the fountainhead. There were perhaps a dozen or so fascinating winemakers at the time who were great people to taste and talk with, but the Mondavi Winery was special because Robert and his people encouraged experimentation, debate (sometimes quite heated) and interplay with other winemakers. Even vintners who thought they made better wine appreciated the fact that the Mondavis were always available if there was a need and that the publicity Robert garnered brightened the spotlight on all the other Napa wineries.

I also remember when Robert started to popularize the term "Fume Blanc" instead of Sauvignon Blanc. In those days when Chardonnay was queen, I personally had my doubts if the American palate would appreciate the more vegetal tastes of Sauvignon. I should not have worried. I also remember the discussions about To Kalon vineyard ("how do you spell that, Robert?") and how special he considered it.

All this comes to mind after drinking a bottle at dinner the other night of the 2007 Robert Mondavi I Block Fume Blanc from the To Kalon vineyard, a 100 percent varietal available only through the winery at $75. Just 208 cases were made. I love to be stunned by a great white, and this one did just that as it progressed through three layers. First, a melody of tropical and stone fruits - peach, mango, apricot skin, mellow tangerine juice - followed by a layer of brioche and subtle smokiness, then finished off with a minerally display of limestone and tart citrus out of a tin cup. The wine is full on the palate (14.7% alcohol) yet has great closing acidity.

In her notes, director of winemaking Genevieve Janssens, says To Kalon is "what I consider the first growth of Napa Valley." I would agree with her, although I would add the word "among," for the valley does have other vineyards worthy of that appellation.

And, at all levels, I continue to be impressed with the high standards of winemaking at Robert Mondavi at To Kalon and elsewhere. It is a worthy keeper of the cru.

Until next time...

Roger Morris

Table with a View - The Bayard House

First in a series of postings on restaurants from around the world offering spectacular, or at least interesting, views.

The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal first opened its gates to seagoing traffic between the Chesapeake Bay to its west and the Delaware Bay to its east in 1829 - a span of 14 miles across the states of Maryland and Delaware. In the 181 years since, it has been widened and deepened, changed ownerships, and transformed from a canal with locks to the sea-level passage that it is today. It serves as a shorcut for all sorts of seagoing vessels - some quite monstrous in size - traveling between the port of Baltimore at one end and the ports of Wilmington and Philadelphia at the other. Like the Mason-Dixon line, which parallels it a few miles north, the canal has served as a division line as well - in this case between the more-industrial, more-populated northern Delaware and the more-rural, much-flatter southern Delaware, known affectionately by the northerners as "Slower Delaware."

There are no major cities along the canal's route, but there is one fascinating small town - Chesapeake City in Maryland. Chesapeake City is the southern terminus for the region's thoroughbred farms - another duPont family outpost - but it mainly today serves as an historic village with historical registry homes, a few shops and galleries, and a place to have lunch or dinner and watch the ships go by. The canal splits the town, but the halves are conveniently connected by a high-rise, two-lane bridge along Maryland 213, the access route for Pennsylvanians who want to spend summer weekends along the Eastern Shore.

Years ago, shortly after we moved to Delaware and later a few miles away to Pennsylvania, we used to enjoy dining in the Maxwell's Plum atmosphere of Schaefer's Canal House on the northern side of the canal. Ships going through the canal must do so under the guidance of special pilots who know the channel and how not to run over pleasure boats with their drunken owners during the summer months. The pilots at the western end board and debark the seafaring ships just west of where Schaefers is located. Back then, the owner of the restaurant would dim the lights as a ship was passing by the large glass windows and tell us the name of the vessel, its port of registry, and what it was carrying, at least legally. I thoroughly enjoyed the showmanship.

Although the Canal House building is still there and subject to re-openings and rumors of re-openings, we have since transferred our dining allegiance to the Bayard House on the southern side of the canal, generally for lunch once or twice a year. The building that houses the restaurant itself dates back to the 1780s and was thus already a half-century old when the canal first connected the east and west coasts of the ghastly named Delmarva Peninsula. We went back to the Bayard in early January for the crab soup and other regional delicacies, including a damn fine Bloody Mary rimmed in Old Bay seasoning.

Depending on the season and geo-economic trends, we may or may not see a ship passing by our windows during the hour of dining. Even if not, there are ducks to amuse us, pleasure boats in the summer bearing bikinis large and small, and the coming in and going out of the tides - not as dramatic as Fundy, but seriously roiling around nonetheless. One cold winter, there was a massive floe of broken ice churning back and forth as the tides were in the midest of a shift.

But just as often as not, there is a ship, such as the one in the photos above, chugging from Maryland to the left while nearing Delaware to the right. This boat was at about eye-level (the restaurant is on the second floor, and the building sits up about another floor above canal level. But we have seen very tall cargo ships go buy, and we crane our necks up at them as they sweep by our table. Similarly, the top of a cargo ship approaching from the east can be seen for a few minutes before it rounds a slight bend in the waterway and the bottom comes into view.

This time, we had bagged our ship - although we didn't know its provenance or cargo - while we were still on our Bloody, and thus were free to enjoy our food while keeping an eye out for another ship that might pass in the day.

Until next time....

Roger Morris

This Writer's Life: 2010 Edition

Above: Wine tasting of Chianti Collio Fiorentini in Florence, September 2010.

Yesterday I received a PDF of an article of mine, "Emilia Romagna Rising," that has just been published in the December 15 edition of Sommelier Journal, my first assignment for that magazine. From a writer's standpoint, the article has all the elements that give satisfaction to being a member of the craft and the culmination of a process that began when I visited the region for the first time in February earlier this year. In the months since that visit, I have written about segments of the trip for other publications. But working with my editor at Sommelier Journal was an experience of being a magazine correspondent at its best - plenty of space to write both descriptive passages to give the reader a feel of the place while also providing the nuts and bolts of the grape varieties, types of wines and the interlocking appellations. I was also able to call in samples from various importers and distributors to write detailed tasting notes.

My editor was adroit in getting the most out of me as a writer - occasional fact-checking questions, the "can you give me two more sentences of explanation here?" queries, a request for another sidebar, contact information for photo sources and a very light editing pencil. Not a single thing on her part that didn't make the article better. And yesterday, the gratifying result - 7 pages filled with photos (some mine), beautifully laid out, an article that I believe will be interesting and informative to readers. Moreover, the PDF is something that I can send to my sources - a non-fiction writer's greatest strength - and say, "Thank you; this is what I had in mind when we talked in February or some time in between, and I hope you understand that you were an important part of it."

Fortunately, I have at least another 10 or so other editors who are delightful professionals for whom I love to write. Some of us barely talk or trade e-mails once the assignment is made, a sign that I take as a positive one, until I submit the article, usually a few days early. Then, something like, "The piece looks good, I'll edit it later, send me an invoice. Do you have photos?" And then it's published a few weeks or a couple of months later. Of course, other editors prefer a more collaborative process. With one editor, I know that I need to write fast before the assignment is yet again modified. I enjoy their diversity.

I tell people that while what I do is hard work (it's difficult to get sympathy as a traveling wine writer), but it really is what I wanted to do in my 20s - either be on a magazine staff or be an in-demand freelancer. Instead, I decided to take the more lucrative route of working in corporation marketing, which wasn't a bad life. Now, for the past dozen years, I have gradually built a life as a writer-at-large at the same time I have consulted in the healthcare area. Of course, I had written an article here, an article there since college - including stints some years ago as wine columnist for the late Washington Star and for the startup USA Today - but I got back into writing seriously in 1998 as a wine columnist for The NewsJournal in Wilmington, Delaware. Then, in 2000, I wrote my first article for Colman Andrews at Saveur, and things gradually grew from there.

The year 2010 has been another solid one. First, there were the 10 or so wine trips - a great source of ideas and content: three to California, two to Bordeaux, one each to Emilia Romagna, the Loire Valley, Greece, Florence and Portugal. Two or three times a month, I catch an Amtrak to New York City for an interview or a tasting, ocassionally three in the same day. I also value the input of 15 or so public relations executives who provide ideas, information, insider updates on what is happening where, contacts and often very good advice.

This year has also been a good one for hooking up with new editors and new publications. I have had first assignments, some already published, some waiting for 2011, from Sommelier Journal, Writer's Digest, USA Today magazines, Book Page, Sante' and iSante', Plaisirs de Vivre in Canada, Delaware Today and Bentley in the UK. And I continue writing for, and pitching new ideas to, such reliable publications as Wine Enthusiast and winemag.com, Beverage Media, Robb Report, Intermezzo, Drinks Business (UK) and Drinks (US), Sommelier News, PA Wine & Spirits Quarterly, The Hunt, Signature Brandywine, Caviar Affair and others. Unfortunately, a couple of publications have ceased publication this year, and I quit writing a regular column for The NewsJournal after a dozen years due to another sign of the times, the shrinking "editorial hole."

During 2010, by my count, I had 67 magazine articles published in print or online, sometimes both. Among the highlights, in addition to the Emilia Romagna piece, have been a 10-page spread on "A Day in the Life of a Chateau" and a one-page Q&A with Michel Rolland for Wine Enthusiast; a Champagne "cheat sheet" for winemag.com; "Greece is the Word" for iSante' and a profile of the hardest restaurant table in the U.S. - Talula's Table - for Sante'; profiles of Riccardo Illy for Drinks Business, the Antinori sisters for La Vie Claire, and sporting car driver and wine glass master Maximilian Riedel for Bentley; pieces on sweet wines makeover and American sparkling wines among others for Beverage Media; monthly contributions to Sommelier News, including a fun piece on Chateau Palmer night at Christie's; an assortment of regional, mainly non-wine articles for The Hunt and Signature Brandywine, and a review of Bourdain's latest kitchen-tell tome for Book Page.

2011? It's starting our very well - 40 assignments, 26 of them already written. And to be successful in this business, you have to love pitching article ideas to current and future editors. I have three or four out there getting a full look from exciting new (for me) magazines. My fingers are crossed, which may have accounted for some of the typos and errors above.

So thanks to everyone - sources, PR folks, importers and distributors and especially to the winemakers and winery owners who love to tell me about what they do - and let me taste some of it.

Until next time...

Roger Morris