Wine & Words

 When I first started in the wine business (almost 8 years ago) I decided that we were going to carry a comprehensive selection of wines from all around the world, that aren’t available in local grocery stores, and that are good quality for the price at which we sell them. Of course, I read all the reviews and points ratings and “professional” recommendations, but I often found them confusing, heavily weighted toward big advertising spenders (e.g. Wine Spectator) or the style of the taster (e.g. Robert Parker). So I just went on my way, trying to develop some substance behind the “James the Wine Guy” moniker. It’s very gratifying, then, when I find validation from the experts…that they agree with my choices.
 
I always look forward to the end of the year when the big magazines do their “Best of…” listings. I never find any of our wines in the “Best Cellar Selections” and rarely in the “Editors Choice.” But I always comb through the “Best Buys.” That’s where I find Wine & Words selections. Last year I got very excited when the Finca Luzon (Jumilla, Spain) was on the cover of the Wine Enthusiast magazine as the #1 Best Buy of 2008! That’s a lovely wine that I “discovered” a couple of years ago. It’s nice to be right occasionally.
 
The Wine Enthusiast “100 Best Buys of 2009” are out now, and there are 10 wines on the list that we carry or have had in the past. Not too bad for a small shop. This week I’m featuring several of those wines. Two of them are new to us – we’ve carried other wines from that vineyard, but not the one that was on the list. Two are wines we’ve sold a lot of and are pleased the “experts” have discovered them.
 
One of the problems of featuring the “Best Buys” at the end of the year is that by the time the listing comes out, that year’s vintage may be all gone. In that case, I’ve brought in the new vintage. These are wines that are designed to be consistent year after year, and I’d be mighty surprised if the current vintage isn’t just as good as last year’s.
 
Wine Enthusiast Best Buys of 2009 - #3 (92 pts)
Pacific Rim 2008 Organic Riesling (ColumbiaValley (WA)
Regular Price $14.95

Made with organic grapes, this hits just 10.5% alcohol and 3.8% residual sugar. Honey, jasmine and tea notes take the off-dry style to a refined level, with the sweetness perfectly proportionate to the acid. – Wine Enthusiast

This is one of the new ones. We’ve carried (and featured) the Pacific Rim Dry Riesling and the Pacific Rim Chenin Blanc, both to much customer acclaim. I think this Organic Riesling will also find a very enthusiastic following.
 
Riesling has sometimes been a tough sell at Wine & Words because people say “it’s too sweet.” I put that down to Blue Nun and Zeller Schwartze Katz Liebfraumilch that are mass-produced, semi-sweet and not very good (you can still get them in the grocery store). The truth is that the wines contained little, if any, Riesling and were composed primarily of high yielding, less distinctive grapes like Sylvaner and Müller-Thurgau. This gave Riesling, one of the noblest white wine grapes, a bad name on this side of the pond. That’s a shame. When done well, with the right balance of acidity and sweetness, Riesling can make one of the best wines for pairing with food of all sorts.
 
The folks at Pacific Rim Winery in Richland, Washington are fanatics about Riesling. There’s everything you ever wanted to know in their Riesling Rules Book available in its entirety on their website. The fanaticism pays off in this superb “Best Buy” at an extraordinary price. I’ll let them tell you about it:
 

 99.2% of all components for our Riesling are organic. We even use native — not commercial — yeast to best present the natural character of our vineyard. We use no pesticides and every element within our sustainably-farmed vineyard is native to the vineyard…For all our wines, we exclusively use stainless steel tanks to preserve the complex character of the Riesling grape. No oak barrels or malolactic fermentation are used in our winemaking.

 
That’s a lot of winemaking for under $15!
 
Wine Enthusiast Best Buys of 2009 - #23 (90 pts)
Four Sisters 2008 Sauvignon Blanc (Victoria, Australia)
Regular Price $11.95
 We reviewed an earlier vintage of this wine in August 2008 as part of a newsletter I called “In the Good Old Summertime.” But it’s not just for summer. It’s also a great food wine.
 
New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is the leading imported wine in Australia, so the Ozzies have gotten busy to produce a competitive domestic product for their domestic and export markets. Here winemaker Trevor Mast brings out the best from his ripe Grampian region Sauvignon Blanc grapes. It’s not over-the-top with grassy herbaceousness like the Kiwi version. Instead, it has a soft richness, to my taste almost like a Chenin Blanc with mouthwatering citrus flavors and a limey Sauvignon Blanc finish.
 
This is a wine with a great package, from the screw cap to the label portrait of Trevor Mast’s four daughters. And the price…wow! Always a pleasure to offer a 90 point wine on our “$12 and under” shelf.
 
Wine Enthusiast Best Buys of 2009 - #63 (90 pts)
Milbrandt Vineyards 2007 Traditions Cabernet Sauvignon (Columbia Valley, Washington) Regular Price $17.15
We go to the bottom half of the list of 100 for this Cab from Milbrandt Vineyards. It’s still got 90 points, but its higher price pushed it lower on the list. It was the  2006 that got the “Best Buy” nod, but it’s all gone now. I think this new vintage will be just as good. This is another new wine for us, but we reviewed the Milbrandt Traditions Riesling 2006 in July 2008 as part of our “All American” lineup. That’s because the Milbrandt family story is so typically American.
 
Eastern Washington is widely recognized as one of the country's best regions for Cabernet Sauvignon. At first glance, it’s not your typical wine country. It’s a remote, windswept, high desert dotted with sagebrush and tumbleweeds. But the Milbrandt family has been farming there since the mid-1950s and believed the region’s moderate temperatures, low rainfall and sandy soils were ideal for grapes. Today, they farm 13 distinct estate vineyard sites totaling nearly 1600 acres.
The parents of winemaking brothers Jerry and Butch Milbrandt grew up on farms in Minnesota and Nebraska. They moved to Oregon during the dust bowl days and, after marrying in 1942, their dad bought a tractor in Portland and drove it the 135 miles over the Cascade Mountains in winter to begin farming near Madras, Oregon. Here the brothers pick up the story:

Butch: I remember it as barren and desolate. Mostly sagebrush and sand. No roads ran past our farm in the first year. As we worked the land and loosened the soil, the wind would create dust storms and make it impossible to see for periods of time. It was a struggle to hold the land and nurture a crop.

Jerry: Dad and Mom paid $40 an acre for their 160 acres. They had saved half of the money and borrowed the balance from Grandpa. Upon arriving we staked out our homestead and planted a border of trees for definition, shade and protection. We lived in an army surplus trailer and tent for the first winter before building a concrete block home.

Butch: Fast forward to a blustery day in April of 1997. Jerry and I were sitting in the pick-up, contemplating our future. Neither of us were professionally satisfied at the time. We both had experience in agriculture, real estate, wholesale and retail. We were both interested in wine. Eastern Washington was emerging as a premier wine growing region. Getting into the grape-growing business seemed like the perfect solution.

 
This Traditions Cab is a Bordeaux-style blend of 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Petit Verdot, 5% Merlot, 1% Malbec. In awarding the wine 90 points, the editors at Wine Enthusiast wrote:
 

Here is another great value from the Milbrandt brothers, based upon their impeccable vineyard sources (they own 1,600 acres, mostly in the Wahluke Slope AVA). Dense and dark, ripe and compact, this Cab/Merlot/Petit Verdot blend brings plenty of macho and muscle, layers of black fruits, black smoke, black tea and black olives. Get the idea? It’s a beautiful effort, and really shines at this price point.

 
 
Excelsior Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 (Robertson, South Africa)
Everyday low price $9.95
For our last selection, we turn from the Wine Enthusiast Best Buys to those of Robert Parker in his advertising-free Wine Advocate. Parker gave the 2007 Excelsior Cab 86 points, and wrote of the Excelsior winery:
 

“The Excelsior Estate represents another of those South African instances where one wonders how the wines can possibly be well-made, distinctively-packaged, exported to the States, and still sell for a mere ten dollars.”

– Robert Parker's Wine Advocate  8/31/08

 
I reviewed the Excelsior Chardonnay just a couple of months ago in my “Cape Classics and Frenzy” blog. I told how the scenic Robertson Valley is renowned for its wines of connoisseur quality, radiant roses and thoroughbred horses. In fact, the valley in the Western Cape Province that encompasses the town of Robertson is known as “the valley of wine and roses.” Eleven co-operatives, fourteen estates and half a dozen private producers, in and around Robertson, have made this one of the foremost wine-making regions in South Africa.
 
Excelsior is the top selling South African Cabernet Sauvignon in the USA. The 2007 is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon with just the right amount of oak and other winemaking tricks to make it respectable. It’s not a thoroughbred, rather more like a well-behaved work horse…reliable and approachable. We’re proud to make Excelsior Cabernet a work horse of our “$12 and Under” shelf, a wine you’ll return to again and again.