29.8.07

Twisted Oak's %@#$!, in the white context

Am I being punished? The enduring lapsed/inner Catholic in my gut feels punished:
I wanted to tease & chide Twisted Oak about their Verd@#mt!, Roussane-based white Rhone blend after drinking down the first bottle, in the following terms:
--how can this sly oenological cabal hope to keep their rustic, 'wild and crazy guys' image going while making such elegant wines?
...I missed a bit of crispness, thought it was a bit too malo-ed out, man, the seductive buttery pear not standing up too well to some spicy dishes I paired it with--
I even thought up a kinky analogy:
This wine is like the Brando character in Last Tango in Paris, playing up the ugly American thing as he works out his grief-- but even as he growls, 'Get the butta!' at Maria Schneider, it's only a displaced, wounded sophisticate's impatient, emotion-filled rendering of tradition...
I'm being punished: when I opened the second bottle of the %@#$! stuff to reaffirm or correct these impressions, I got a dense, but somehow 'flat' whiff of oxidation, a woody sherry character in the palate. I'm somewhat out of my depth here: is this what 'corking' is like in a white wine?
Or is this something else? I thought oxidation would be a general batch process, can it happen on a bottle-by-bottle basis?

(Friday the 28, September to remember...)

I just bought & opened another bottle of Jean-Luc Colombo's 2001 'La Belle de Mai', a 100% Roussanne, appellation Saint Peray...
I'd written a teaser after my last bottle a while back, & while this iteration is in better shape than my last purchase-- which seemed to be fading to thin, disjointed tartness-- it still tends to vary from day-to-day & taste to taste. Colombo's been nicknamed the 'Michel Roland of the Rhone'--for his tendency to technological, overtly manipulative oenology, even if he does source some organically grown grapes (from 'old vines'!), as for this wine.
But to begin with, Roussanne is quite the testy, finicky grape-- so... I've joined Tim Elliot's Winecast group at Crushpad to learn all I can about crafting a Rousanne-based blend...Tim referred the group to a recommended listen to this taped seminar from this year's Hospice du Rhone event. The big 'aha!' moment for me was Jacques Perrin's warning that the 'shut down' period most wines have a tendency to experience at some point in their aging evolution is very marked & dramatic for the product of the Roussanne grape: five years...

All Tomorrow's Parties...



















(--are beyond reach, thrill & pleasure
mirage on the receding horizon
of intractably linear, sequential
timestreams, delusion skin-deep as yours...)

But yesterday's white wines, fresh or stale
trip on the tongue-- mingle & blend
& play, plash & pleach on the palate--
gurgle down my gullet, waft in repand afterglow,
retracing reflux horrors grown quaint & mild--

softer 'round the spicy repast, rendering the burning stew
dilute with swallowed summer swelter
but crisp again, if drowse in each renewal's sip
a-washes empty mouthfuls...

26.8.07

Sangiovese & other Italian varietals in Virginia & North Carolina

Having a hard time unspooling a grand narrative from last Summer's travels, travails, tastings & reconnections...
let me see if I can, however disjointedly, jot down some impressions, gratitudes, pointers--

Most importantly, I made it to three wineries on my Blue Ridge discovery loop:
Raffaldini Vineyards in North Carolina's Yadkin Valley, & Chateau Morrisette & Villa Appalaccia, about 70 miles Northeast as the crow files across the Virginia state line from Raffaldini, & one mile from each other on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Floyd County.

At Raffaldini, Paula Shores led me through the tasting & introduced me to her husband Andy, the winery's vineyard manager. Although Raffaldini emphasizes the family's deep historical roots dating to XIV century Mantua in Italy, the team il Padrone has assembled is very local, very rooted in the North Carolina Piedmont, which seems like a strong positive to me in developing wines with a sense of character & place.

Raffaldini has found some early success with Montepulciano, (One of possibly only three plantings of the varietal in all of North America. Appellation America seems to be short on information on who's growing it, but in Mendocino county, a hunch & a search led me to easily confirm it's Greg Graziano trying his hand at it.) --but their production is so limited their current bottling was already sold out by January of this year, mostly through subscription. Next vintage is scheduled to be released by Thanksgiving & I missed my cue to get down on my knees & beg for the possibility of tasting a barrel sample. Oh well. I've got some pride to let go of, still, to make it in this industry.

Apart from the Montepulciano, the core of the winery's current efforts seem to focus on Sangiovese, and these wines, at least, I had the chance to taste: both bottlings (same vintage for both, 2005, but an extended oak program for the 'Riserva') had subtle but sensuous & well-delineated floral characteristics in the nose-- jasmine tea with some rose notes. In the midpalate, though, they seemed to thin out into an ethereal, somewhat short finish that led me to buy bottles of their bigger, six-grape Bella Misto blend & Vermentino instead. I've ended up feeling a little sorry I didn't get the Sangios-- the Bella's complex blend seems to need more time to integrate. The pour from the bottle I bought, once opened, changed character wildly in the glass over the course of a few days-- sometimes earthier, sometimes a bit tart & acidic-- possibly suffering from 'bottle shock', only recently having been transferred from its 'élévage' in neutral oak? (--a point that was made very strongly to me: no new oak at this winery!) As for the Vermentino, its refreshing but light, lemon zest & citron notes made me wish I'd saved it to pair with some seafood after I got back home.
...See, somewhat impulsively, I decided to make both bottles (along with a bottle of Laurel Glen's special Chévere bottling) part of my 'agri-tourist's' contribution to Maverick Farms' kitchen...this is a project I found a pleasure to support with a couple of shamefully short stints of work. I would urge any & all who have the opportunity to spend one of the most educational, if not the most absolutely enlightening weekend, as far as agricultural economic reality goes, in this setting. Go for a meditative retreat from urban life in Raleigh, go for an experience to share with your family, just go!


A further, posibly more serious, wine-geeky reason I'm deeply sorry I couldn't better time my return drive by Raffaldini so that I could pick up samples of their Sangiovese is that Villa Appalaccia up in Floyd makes a Sangiovese, closer in principle to the traditional Chianti model, co-fermented with 10% Trebbiano & Malvasia (--how much of each??)--that seems on first impression, to this humble nose & palate, something like the flip side of Raffaldini's in character:
the nose was a little oaky at first, cedar box mostly, so that I would guess they're using American oak. Sangiovese varietal 'typicity'-- the expected rose & jasmine tea notes-- are subsumed under a fairly intense herbaceous character that meshes well with the oak as the wine opens up. The midpalate & finish were, if subtle, somewhat more 'grounded' than the Raffaldini efforts-- silky, but long & lingering.

At the risk of changing topics in an abrupt transition to close this posting, I feel I owe a long-overdue, public thank you to Rhonda Muskat, who singlehandedly manages the Villa Appalaccia tasting room when owners Susanne & Stephen are away-- as was the case when I dropped by-- & was extremely generous in turning back from loading an order she had stopped in to pack, on a day when the winery is closed in any case, to give me a full tasting & a star salesperson's attention to ensure I didn't leave empty handed! I hope to write about their wines, & the possibly premature topic of a 'Blue Ridge terroir' at greater length soon. Thank you, again-- to Paula, & to Rhonda, so very much!

Huella de Ceniza

oculta se revela
fuente de sombra

rebelde se somete
al orgullo tentado

concreto se abstrae
del templo abandonado

alumno nos muestra
por insignia un botón

maestro aprende joyas
de leal duda ruda

dura escuela de los años:
huella de ceniza en el viento

12.8.07

If one image is worth a long, strange trip...



...having such a hard time writing a concise but complete narrative of the rest of my trip, focusing on the wineries I visited...
--maybe I could just write lengthy captions for the photos I took?




9.8.07

Drafting Trains

Words on my feet
walk on their memberings:

Clashing work & leisure classes
balance six-foot stacks
of pizza delivery boxes

I miss every city block
and winding dirt road
I once struggled down

4.8.07

Early Fall Cycle

by the swelling brook
one bend away from heaven
cricket heart pounds


sea-seeking brook
flows back from deva heaven
to cricket calls


whispering brook-
your meadow cricket wonders
-am I awake?


earth-spring brook
drinks each heavenly raindrop
cricket hides to sing


leaping, dipping brook
carves heaven out of summer
by cricket's sharp song


by the spraying brook
one boulder short of heaven
cricket song wanes


deep earth-bed brook
turns heaven down each day
to hum cricket songs


round the dreaming brook
summer's short heaven washes--
cricket, sing a wake