Classic Club - Sixth Allocation
This month, we feature two wines from one of my favorite wineries - Handley Cellars, a deep Tempranillo-based Toro from Spain, and a great Lake County Cabernet blend.
 Milla Handley has been crafting wines under the Handley Cellars label in the Anderson Valley since 1982. Since that time, she has garnered a national reputation for balanced, well-made, and well priced wines that reflect the terroir of the Anderson Valley.
The grapes for Handley Cellars Estate Chardonnay comes from a small block on the winery property, all organically farmed. It offers aromas of fresh pear and apple compote with a hint of nutmeg. Clean and bright flavors of ripe apple are nuanced by lemon cream and vanilla. This wine is nicely balanced with a graceful texture and lasting finish. Fermented in 20% new oak barrels and puncheons, stirred on the lees for creaminess and a lengthy finish. This is a wine with great acidity and aging potential.
Handley Cellars Mendocino Pinot Noir is a blend of 30% Potter Valley fruit, an inland valley that characteristically produces Pinot Noir with mid-palate texture, soft tannins and red fruit flavors. The remaining 70% was sourced from various Anderson Valley vineyards - Handley Estate, Helluva, Pratt, and Day Ranch. This Mendocino County Pinot Noir is a fruit-forward, multi-layered wine. It shows aromas of blackberry and dark plum, with a bit of blueberry, cinnamon, and vanilla. A smooth texture carries the flavor into a long finish.
Read more...
Fifth Allocation - Classic
This month, we present three staff and store favorites and introduce a wine that we hope will become one as well.
 First off is Walter Hansel Sauvignon Blanc. Walter Hansel was a lifelong wine enthusiast who had the vision to plant his estate's original 250 vines in 1978. Today, Stephen, Walter's son, has taken up where his father left off, pursuing his vision of producing world-class wines from the Russian River Valley. At Walter Hansel Winery, the emphasis is on low yields (a miniscule range from 1.5 to 2.7 tons/acre) for greater complexity. All of Steve's fruit is hand-harvested, and it is re-examined again at the winery. Hansel makes an average of 9 total passes through each vineyard. Each pass is time consuming and expensive but Stephen feels the vine rewards him with more concentrated flavors.
The winery uses only natural yeast during fermentation. Fining and filtration are minimal. Stephen decided to produce Sauvignon Blanc mainly to bridge the gap between Chardonnay releases. The grapes come from a source less than a mile from the Hansel vineyard in the Russian River Valley. 100% stainless steel fermented with no malolactic fermentation. It was cold stabilized only to 46 degrees to maintain racy acidity.
Read more...
|
April '10 Classic
 Bassermann- Jordan Riesling Trocken The older I get, the more I love Rielsing. I've repeated this mantra since I attended a large German tasting in 2003. This month's white selection - a Trocken (German for dry) single vineyard Riesling is a classic example of traditional Rieslings. It's plump, with peach, nectarine, lemon and grapefruit notes. Score: 89 Wine Spectator.
Read more...
Classic Club March
I am starting to sound like a broken record, but all four of this month's wines are worthy of your attention - there's two organic wines from New Zealand, a wonderful red blend from Portugal, and a Cabernet made by an Oakland Hills resident (who used to be an Alamedan).
First off is Bel Echo Sauvignon Blanc, an organically farmed SB made in the Sancerre style by Clos Henri - owned by the internationally recognized winemaking family of Henri Bourgeois of Sancerre, France. For ten generations, the family has crafted premium quality Sauvignon blanc and Pinot noir wines and in 2000 chose 200 acres of native Marlborough pastures to continue their passion abroad. This is a rich, creamy Sauvignon Blanc with gooseberry, mineral, and bready yeast lees flavors. Quite complex wine with a great texture and lingering finish.
Bel Echo Pinot Noir expresses generous delicate plum and cherry aromas, with a hint of cinnamon and clove on the nose with pleasant flinty notes. Supple and harmonious, with very good depth to black plum, gravel and lively wild berry flavors. Mineral, fruit and herb notes integrate gracefully, with judicious oak and lithe tannins.
Quinta do Coa is an organically farmed Portuguese red wine blend. The heat and sub-Saharan nature of the Coa Valley and Douro Superior in general would easily lead one to expect the reds from Quinta do Coa to be huge fruit bombs, but this is rarely the case. In fact, even in a warm vintage like this, the wine has an elegance and welcome restraint to it. Very finely grained fruit and wood tannins provide the structure for a lovely purity of fruit character – mulberries and cherries, and good length. A blend of Touriga National, Tinta Roriz, & Touriga Franca.
Tudal Family Winery 50/50 - John Tudal is the son of Bay Farm truck farmers who bought some land in Napa in the seventies and planted grapes. Over the years they have made well-priced and well balanced wines. 50/50 is so named because half the fruit comes from the estate vineyard in Napa, while the other half comes from a vineyard in Geyserville (Alesander Valley). Black-red in color, dry, medium full-bodied with fresh acidity. Dusty-lively with red and black cherry berry fruit along with minerally-gravelly earth, subtle oak. Very long finish; delicious, elegant, lively.
Read more...
|
I don't know what it is about the wines of Jean Vullien of the Savoie region in France; they are all amazingly made, organically farmed and tasty wines. Jean Vullien Chardonnay is no exception: crisp and clean, with a nice apple-citrus finish, made from 35 year old vines. 
