Spring Mountain Vineyard is rich with history. After the sudden death of Tiburcio Parrott in the late 1800s, neither the house nor the 800 acres were used between 1896 and 1938.

Eventually the property was purchased by Mike Robbins in 1974. Robbins bought an old Victorian on St. Helena Highway near Deer Park Road and constructed a small winery which became Spring Mountain Vineyards. Soon Robbins outgrew this first location and discovered the wonderful Parrot estate.

After acquiring Parrott’s Miravalle estate, Robbins restored the Victorian residence and built a 17,000 square foot winery at the site of Tiburcio?s wine cave and small winery. Though his primary vineyard was in Rutherford on the Silverado Trail (now the site of Domaine Mumm), Robbins planted Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc in 1980 on the land around Miravalle. Robbins’ Spring Mountain Chardonnay became highly prized by connoisseurs and was a ?cult? wine of the late 1960?s and 1970?s.

Once the site for the former TV show, Falcon’s Crest, Spring Mountain lives on, now comprising four separate vineyards totaling 245 acres in 130 blocks. The Miravalle, Chateau Chevalier, Streblow (Alba), and Draper (La Perla) vineyards are beautifully terraced, rising up the hillside from 400′ to 1600′ in elevation creating several microclimates. The “main house,” an 8,000 square foot Victorian was built in 1885 by Tiburcio Parrott.
Featured during the aerial flyover in the opening credits of the TV show, the house is meticulously maintained both inside and out, and all of the original features of stained glass and molding have been kept.

Join us as we talk with Valli Ferrell, winemaker Jac Cole, and vineyard manager Ron Rosenbrand about the vineyards and this lovely estate.
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For more info on Spring Mountain Vineyard: www.springmountainvineyard.com

Sponsor: Bagged Wine: www.baggedwine.com

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Just thought I'd share a few of the keywords in searches that have lead viewers to The Wine Chicks:

Vomiting chicks

yuntrip

That's how I roll

Vin Diesel

italian hash

... and a disturbing number of image searches for Edie Brickell and Shaggy from Scooby Doo...

• Chambertin and Musigny are definitely a cut above Grand Echezeaux. Just more complex. This statement is probably heresy to some and completely obvious to others. Can't win.
  

• Comte de Vogue Musigny is variable and I'm not sure it's quite all there. Something to mull over given the high prices.

• On the other hand the 1990 Musigny is a butterfly finally coming out of it's 18 year cocoon. This will need another 7-10 years? - but it's a knockout.
  

• Armand Rosseau Chambertin. Amazing wine, year after year.
  

• Best white of the night '99 CM. Some people liked the '90 but to me that shouldn't be what a CM is about - a little too much flabbiness not enough acidity and minerality. The '96 was a close second - perhaps an off bottle but tonight at least the '99 won on the nose.
  

• Best red of the night was '90 Rosseau Chambertin. On the other hand I think in due time the '90 Musigny will be incredible and possibly better.
  

Continued from Part 1 on Darian Delights

But what did this family drink? On offer was the internationally exported Tsingtao beer from another famed coastal city, Qingdao. The spelling ?Tsingtao? is from the Wades-Giles system of representing the sounds of Chinese characters (now defunct); but some Chinese brands/institutions like to state their age by using the early 20th Century romanized spelling replaced by pinyin after 1949 and the foundation of the PRC (the pinyin is ?Qingdao?, pronounced ?ching-dow? for English speakers). There was also Chinese peach juice and the inescapable bai jiu, literally ?white alcohol?, a category of spirits distilled from sorghum or millet which can range in flavour from delicate aniseed to rotting garbage (I don?t know how they quite manage that or what kind of ?still? bai jiu is actually distilled in).

We?d brought a bag of gifts with us ? never go to a Chinese family without bringing something ? which included a bottle of 2007 Lo Tengo Torrontes from Norton (from importer ASC). Torrontes is an Argentinian, highly aromatic grape (a bit like a cross between Muscat and Gewurztraminer with an oily and slightly bitter aftertaste) which, in our experience, has appealed to Chinese wine drinkers. But the Chinese never open gifts in front of people and it would have been rude to suggest chilling it. So we got talking about wine instead, over beer, peach juice and bai jiu.

Bai jiu is fairly evil in more than one respect. Although the northern Chinese like to drink it with seafood and just about anything, its very name has clouded the existence of white wine. Red wine is popularly known as hong jiu (literally ?red alcohol?), but its correct, full name is hong putao jiu (?red grape alcohol?). Because the Chinese know bai jiu as ?white alcohol? and red wine as hong jiu, many are unaware that white wine, whose correct name is bai putao jiu (?white grape alcohol?), even exists. And, as we discovered in trying to find a wine shop in downtown Dalian, not everyone even knows that the lauded hong jiu ? the short-hand for red wine ? is made from grapes. Asking for a local shop selling putao jiu (wine in general), one security guard assured us there was nothing like that in the area, but there was a shop selling hong jiu! When Fongyee qualified ?hong putao jiu?, the guard looked even more perplexed. But there?s nothing in the phrase hong jiu that mentions grapes, of course.

Over the prawn soup, we talked about wine. Many Chinese, although they buy Chinese wines for patriotic reasons, are suspicious of the bigger brands: Great Wall, Changyu, Dynasty etc.

Their suspicions were not allayed when we revealed the big brands blend Chinese wine with imported must (whenever another country, say Spain or Chile, has a surplus); but they were interested in Grace Vineyard and Dragon Seal as producers using exclusively Chinese grapes. The older generation like their beer and bai jiu and find wine?s acidity and the tannins in red wine to be a bit unpleasant; although many older Chinese feel they should be drinking red wine for health reasons. The younger generation ? in this case Fongyee?s 34 year-old cousin who works in real-estate and her husband, a tennis instructor ? does drink wine, but there is not much of a wine-bar scene in Dalian, outside the five-star hotels.

We knew already about Dalian-based French importer DCT Wines, run by Frederic Choux. In addition, we found an intriguing wine-bar and shop called AP Wines in a local shopping mall.

The Dalian owner spoke English and explained the wines he was importing directly. It took a while to realize that the name AP came from Australian producer, Andrew Peace, whose wines dominated the shop?s selection. All in all these looked pretty pricey by Beijing standards (e.g. well over 300RMB for a generic Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon) and the place had only been open a year, so perhaps business was tough. The owner didn?t let on, but was on the ball, offering a glass of 2006 Master Peace Shiraz, Andrew Peace which he apologized was a bit cold to drink as it had been stored in the fridge (at least they were trying to preserve opened bottles somehow).

AP Wines did have a few wines from France and Germany besides the Andrew Peace range. But we thought we?d shake things up a bit with our Chinese relatives by purchasing a tetra-pak, one-litre bottle of non-vintage Andrew Peace Chardonnay for next day?s feast.

I say shake things because in a young wine market like China?s traditional packaging, cork closures and red wines generally reign supreme, even although most Chinese palates prefer lighter reds with generally low tannins (e.g. from wines made from grapes like Gamay or Pinot Noir) or whites with some residual sugar. So we?d deliberately chosen a wine under cork as a gift, albeit the plastic cork of the above Lo Tengo Torrontes before arriving in Dalian. Now, here we were a) bringing white wine to the table, b) choosing a wine in a one-litre format not standard 75 cl bottle and c) purchasing something in less than ?classy? packaging. We could ?keep face? doing this only because of our professional work and knowledge of international wines. As a result everyone in the family tried the Aussie Chardonnay and ostensibly liked it. But it was Fongyee?s younger cousins who actually drank most of the tetra-pak, saying how well the wine went with the beautiful Dalian clams on offer.

So let?s explode a few myths and report on what we learned or confirmed: it is not correct to say the Chinese struggle to drink alcohol, even wine, or are blind to trying new things (we hear a lot of importers here who insist the Chinese will only try certain types of wine ? ignore them. It?s more a matter of education all round). The only Chinese who don?t drink much tend to be Cantonese. They lack alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme that processes alcohol ? hence the pink-in-the-face routine after half a glass. These ?wine drinkers? should try Moscato d?Asti or another low-alcohol wine with decent residual sugar and pleasant, easy-to-like aromas. Northern Chinese drink like the Russians and Koreans: don?t take them on, particularly with bai jiu. The older generation are unlikely to be great wine buyers, unless they are highly affluent. It?s China younger drinkers who are coming to Western brands in all forms. Where wine may have the edge, though, is that it is perceived to be healthier than spirits. White wine may not be well-known, but younger drinkers will try just about anything and choosing and drinking international wines has social cachet.

The Dalian wine-lists we saw ? in our hotel and a few restaurants ? were dominated by the more significant importers here, particularly ASC and Torres China. But the wine scene is very young. However, there?s certainly a fair bit of cash knocking around this popular Chinese city with massive building developments and the predictable run of black S-Class Mercedes ducking between scooters and vehicles of all other descriptions.

On our final day, we visited a local Buddhist temple and monastery. From a distance, this countryside retreat could have dated from the Ming or Qing Dynasties. But as we came up close, it looked newer and newer, in fact, very new! (Not that this necessarily meant it was new. Beijing?s Ming Dynasty Forbidden City is, for example, under constant restoration and re-painting). But this place was genuinely young. A group of wealthy Buddhists had built the entire thing from scratch as recently as 2004. As we thought about this massive undertaking, we wondered if the Chinese Buddhists in question ? generally, more laid back than their Japanese Zen or Lamaist Tibetan counterparts ? were also buying wine for their festivals and holidays. Judging by the SUVs and luxury cars lining the car-park of this working temple, many of these Chinese Buddhists could certainly afford to buy wine and perhaps a few of them are.

Cheers,

Edward Ragg

Edward Ragg & Fongyee Walker write for us from Beijing, and you can get more information on their website, Dragon Phoenix Fine Wine Consulting

All content protected by a Creative Commons License2005-2008. Catavino.net.

• Part 1- Dalian Delights: Seafood and the Wine Scene off China?s North-East Coast
• Cork, Cork, and More Cork
• Catalan Cork Law
• 2+1 Iberian Wine Survey - Andrew Barrow of Spitton.biz
• Port’s Popularity in the UK

Pulpit Rock Brink Family Pinotage 2006

This is a monster. Powerful nose, powerful palate and powerful dark ruby colour. Which I like at times but something is not quite in balance here. There is a pungent, smoky quality that is burning my senses and I'm picking up too much sulpher which I believe I'm sensitive to. Some black fruit coming through, nice firm tannins and a bitter finish.

Well it has been a few weeks since my last entry and although I could tell you all about   the Rhône and Burgundy en primeur campaigns, the New Wave Spanish wines I've    been trying, or the South African Reds to match the last entry of South African Whites that my father has been religiously clicking on to, only to discover nothing of what his daughter has been up to in the Big Smoke, I won't.

I am very tempted to tell you about having to pay an Australian, let's say friend, in wine for a lost - no, thoroughly thrashed - bet over the Ashes (this was his first return to England since that sorry episode). A fairly painful experience for both wallet and liver BUT let's move on to the future.

Wine Relief is upon us www.rednoseday.com/partners/wine-relief/ and there are several different bottles widely available to buy from which retailers are donating some of the profit to      Comic Relief. How easy is it to open a bottle of wine and make a difference?

For my part I have been enthusiastically working my way through the offerings and on March 3rd, this Saturday in fact, I will be a guest panellist on the Virtual Wine online tasting of the 6 best on offer. The team at Virtual Wine have also studiously tasted and deliberated to come up with the finalists which will be tasted by a select (!) panel live from 7.30 pm.

The idea is that you at home can order the taster packs of 6 wines from Virtual Wine (10% still going to Comic Relief) or buy them from the various retailers, and taste the wines at the same time. You can then send belligerent, loving or simply drunken messages to us via email and your concerns will be addressed immediately. What a laugh...

So get some friends round, you must have some, put on some nibbles and sharpen your tongues. Take a look here www.virtualwine.co.uk to download instructions and tasting notes.

These people like wine and have a laugh with it, their contribution to the cork vs screwcap debate was to race bottles down river to see which was fastest, the loser then wrestled the winner to the ground in an unscripted, but thrilling, finale.

Thanks for the 94 comments sharing your favorite season for maximum wine enjoyment! I’m glad that the idea of changing your wine consumption with the seasons resonates so well with you since that’s the subject of my next book, A Year of Wine: Perfect Pairings, Great Buys, and What to Sip for Each Season, due out very soon from Simon Spotlight Entertainment, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

I assigned each commenter a number and generated three winners at random.org, the site that fills all my random integer needs. Three winners were selected to win a signed copy of A Year of Wine and they are:

Jim Boyce in Beijing, Wendy in Brazil, and Aletta in I’m not sure where!

Come on down! As for the rest of you, click through and check out the book’s page on Amazon and see what the blurbs have to say from wine importer and author Kermit Lynch, wine authors David Lynch and Eric Arnold, and starting right fielder for the New York Yankees, Bobby Abreu. Who knows, maybe you’ll want to preorder now? At their discounted price of $16 and change for this hardback book, it’s less than a mere glass of wine at many NYC wine bars!

There's something really cool about seeing a young winery start to hit its stride. I've only seen a few newborn calves and foals in their first moments after birth as they learn to use their spindly legs, but it's hard not to feel a sense of pride when after a few minutes, they go galloping around in circles.

I was first introduced to Gargiulo Vineyards at a wine bar in San Francisco a couple of years ago. I just happened to stop by for a drink, and April Gargiulo was on hand, pouring what was then her family's second release to a hip crowd of San Francisco wine lovers. At the time, I wasn't blown away by the wines -- they were somewhat awkward, and didn't fully hang together -- but April seemed very serious about what they were doing. It was also clear that the family had made a serious investment in their vineyards in the heart of Oakville, so I've been keeping tabs on the winery over the last few years, and watched them go from their awkward first steps in the market to where they are now, a consistently excellent producer.

Gargiulo Vineyards was started in 1992 when Jeff Gargiulo and his wife Valerie purchased a 40 acre vineyard in Oakville called Money Road Ranch. Like many of the new vineyards owners in Napa, the Gargiulos come to their new occupation by way of a lifelong dream. Jeff has worked in the agricultural business his whole life, but always thought that one day he might have an opportunity to merge his own love of wine with his work on the business side of agriculture. It was only a matter of time before the right property came along, and suddenly the Gargiulos were in the vineyard business.

The first task of that new occupation was the replanting and re-engineering of the vineyard, with new rootstocks and planting grids and trellis systems, a process which took three years. The resulting vineyard is mostly Merlot, with smaller amounts of Cabernet, Sangiovese, and Pinot Grigio.

The vines weren't ready for prime time for another four years, and for the first couple of years after that, the Gargiulos sold their fruit to local producers while they fine tuned their operations. In that time the family purchased another piece of property at Oakville crossroads, sandwiched in between Rudd and Screaming Eagle. Needless to say, it's a prime piece of real estate, and one of the few south-facing sloped vineyards in the Oakville appellation. The Gargiulo's named this vineyard OVX, and planted it with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Petite Verdot.

In 2000 the family felt ready to produce their own wines from the Money Road Ranch vineyard, and have slowly ramped up production, as they build their own winery facility which is due to open this fall. Starting in 2004, the family also began harvesting and bottling wine from the OVX vineyard, the potential of which is perhaps best captured in this bottle of wine.

Made up of 86% Cabernet Sauvignon; 5% Merlot, 5 % Cabernet Franc, 4% Petite Verdot, the wine can legally be called a Cabernet, and is indeed labeled as such, but it drinks more like the Bordeaux-style blend that it is. This is the inaugural vintage for this particular single vineyard bottling, which looks to be slated to become the winery's flagship wine. Only 250 cases will be made each year.

Named after a favorite jazz chord, the wine is made by the estate's winemaker Kristof Anderson who has been with Gargiulo since 2003. Kristof's resume includes stints as winemaker at Lewis Cellars, Del Dotto, and at Saddleback Cellars.

The G Major Seven Study is made from the best blocks of each grape variety in the family's OVX vineyard. The entire vineyard is farmed with deficit irrigation and a combination of sustainable soil management practices and organic farming, and these blocks yield approximately two and a half tons of fruit per acre. The wine spends 19 months in French oak (90% new) before bottling.

This is the finest wine I have tasted from Gargiulo, but based on this single bottle, I expect to taste many more.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as a press sample

Tasting Notes:
Inky garnet in the glass, this wine has a nose of cherry, tobacco, and earth aromas singed with a hint of burnt vanilla. In the mouth it is smooth, full, and rich with spicy sandalwood and cherry flavors that are propped up by deeper notes of wet dirt and tobacco. Faint faint tannins dance at the periphery of the palate as the wine finishes long and as beautiful as its namesake.

Food Pairing:
This wine would be a great accompaniment to this venison daube with cumin and coriander.

Overall Score: between 9 and 9.5

How Much?: $125

This wine is generally sold to mailing list members and a few select retailers. It is available for purchase on the Internet.

I like to drink port after dinner, but when I can't afford it, a nice substitute is Madeira.

Meerea Park have been through a (pardon the pun) purple patch recently, especially with their red wines. The 2003, 2004 and 2005 vintages were very good to exceptional and the 2006 vintage of “The Aunts” Shiraz is no exception. There is one big difference this year, your favorite Aunts now come dressed in a bright red frock.

A clean and modern hunter nose of cherry, dusty earth, aniseed and hints of clove and nutmeg. Medium bodied with a solid backbone of fine tannin, blackberry fruit, balancing acidity and a goodly dollop of spicy oak. Good length, needs time.

I suspect the score will increase somewhat as the wine ages, this particular bottle was enjoyed very soon after the wine was released a couple of months ago, however I was very slack in writing up the tasting note. As a little side note, we now have more bottles of The Aunts Shiraz in the cellar from various vintages than any other label.

Score: 91/100
Price: $26
Closure: Screwcap
Alcohol: 13.5%
Other Opinions: Meerea Park
Would I buy this wine again?
Yes, quickly becoming a mainstay in our cellar.

Image via Wikipedia

OK, so there’s alot of hub-bub about that the Wine Spectator expose that happened by blogger Robin Goldstein.  And first let me say a couple things.  Bloggers are extraordinarily important to the world and this is just the latest example of some good citizen journalism.  Bravo to Robin for the work on setting up this sting.  Nice, ethical, and well executed.

As a marketing professional for a decade and a half I’ll say this though - what did you think the award was?  Wine Spectator is a “for profit” private entity that has what, 100 employees?  I’ve dealt with many many awards for the rediculous number of products and companies I’ve launched and I’ll tell you this, whenever there is a for-profit entity involved then you’re going to pay-to-play.  And if you pay-to-play then you’re probably getting an award!  There are several technology related firms that have pay for entry, then I win the award, then they call me back and pitch me Ad space, and then tell me to be involved in the award ceremony I have the great opportunity to present my product/company at a high profile industry show…for yet another fee.

update: On side note for the history books.  In the late 1990s, what I call “Bubble Days” of tech, pay-to-play got ridiculous.  There were analyst firms that would take EQUITY in a startup and then write a positive report.  Subsequently, these firms would go public and thanks to the Tech Bubble some people got very rich for their “award” or “positive outlook”…nuts…

This Wine Spectator debacle is nothing new or unexpected.  They’re leveraging their brand, which has the power today to make a $20 wine into a $100 wine overnight, to make more money.  What is unexpected is the fact that they were complete IDIOTS about it and obviously do zero vetting not a very thorough job vetting applicants.  Dumb dumb dumb.  But I’m not surprised the award is the way it is.  Not at all actually.  Maybe thats part of the marketer’s secret code or something but thats how these things go.  If this didn’t happen (the dumb non-vetting move being exposed), who wouldn’t pay $250 for this “Excellence” award, hence “profit” opportunity.  Look, even now, if you have a real restaurant whats to stop you from fudging the wine list?  The sting was a totally fake place, but what stops you from doing this again?  Pay-to-play, thats how it works.  Its a revenue generator for the company, thats all.

Now, I do want to point out something in stark contrast.  The “American Wine Blogger Awards“.  Whenever they come around everyone gets in Tom Wark’s grill about “who are you to judge me” and “what makes you think this award is valid at all”, and so on.  I mean he gets HEAVY criticism.  Well guess what - its decided on by people submitting nominations, then the finalists are chosen by a panel and voted on by the people again.  Oh yeah, and it FREE.  In fact, when I offered to sponsor the AWBAs Tom turned that down.  So even though its not perfect I view it kind of like how I view the American Democracy - its not perfect and sometimes its not fair (just look at my tax bill every f’in year), but its about the best you’re gonna get!

Cheers!

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