Wednesday's Wines: Carlisle, Matthiasson and Sandlands

California is the United States' wine country and rightly so. So many good wines come from The Golden State. But in the past few decades many California wine regions are turning into something of a monoculture where one or two cultivars dominate. These "noble" varieties are now what could also be called the international varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Merlot and Pinot Noir. The varieties and styles of yesteryear have been mostly forgotten.

However, there are a few producers looking to break the mold of the big, bold, fruit-forward style of California wine. Last week I wrote about love trying interesting cultivars and they can definitely be found in The Golden State. This past week, I opened three such wines from producers of the so-called "New California" wave. It just so happened that all three were made from unusual (for CA) white grape cultivars.

Wednesday's Wines: Matthiasson Red Wine and Cabot Klamath Cuvee

A few weeks ago, I wrote about red blends as a growing wine category. I personally find blends often make more complete and complex wines than varietal wines. Aroma, flavor or texture characteristics that may be missing from a single variety can be filled by another grape. It is amazing to see that as little as 1% of a variety blended in truly can completely transform a wine. Blending is also a useful tool for a winemaker to create as good of a wine as he or she can each year. Weather conditions in back-to-back vintages can treat cultivars quite differently, so by playing with the cépage (percentage of each variety of grapes in the composition of a blended wine) can adjust the characteristics of the finished wine.

I find that many wineries take two different approaches to blends. The first is to make the blend their grand vin - top wine. The best lots are used to build the best wine possible. Often with this approach, the same cultivars are used to create the blend. The cépage may change - or it may stay exactly the same - but the building blocks generally are the same each year. Perhaps certain vineyards, or blocks, are selected for the vintage characteristics each provide. What is "leftover" after the blend is finalized can then be sold as varietal wine or different blend (or off in bulk anonymously).

The second approach is to create a blend after all the varietal, single-vineyard, and premium blends have been finalized. This approach can be perfect for creating great value wines - if the winemaker still takes care in making sure the blend works. All too often, simply throwing all the "leftover" wine together doesn't produce a high-quality wine. Today's wines are examples of both these approaches, and both are beautiful wines in their own right.

Dr. Oldman on the Wine Writers Symposium

I was in Napa Valley two weeks ago for Premiere Napa Valley, but I was unable to attend the Wine Writers Symposium. Others have written a few accounts of what transpired during the workshops and sessions at the secluded Meadowood Napa Valley resort and spa. With not being there, I find it interesting to hear about the fun and informative events attended by a whole host of wine writers. I think it is pretty cool that simple bloggers, or people new to the world of wine writing, can hang out with established writers from Food & Wine, Wine Advocate and Wine Enthusiast as well as columnists from the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Wall Street Journal. My extern, Dr. Harry Oldman, was disappointed that I was not going to chime in on an event that I did not attend, so he asked if he could. I know I shouldn't let him post anymore, but he can be very persuasive...

Marketing myopia in the wine world

This morning, my good pal Steve Heimoff published a blog post about how wineries can get famous. He raised some interesting points about the changes that have taken place in mass communication between the present and 1994 when the movie Disclosure "made Pahlmeyer a star." Obviously, he discussed the rise of social media, but concluded that a critic's score was the "best way to get huge notice by the public."

Hooked on a Feelin' ... (1800 words on authenticity and Matthiasson wines)

Authenticity is one of the words buzzing its way around the tiny little realm that we call the wine industry. The term even made its way into a Huffington Post story yesterday about common food terms that have lost all meaning. In our little world, one camp (producers, consumers and writers) clamors for authentic wines, while the other (more producers, consumers and writers) bemoans the abstract idea of a wine's authenticity. The whole argument over "authenticity," as it concerns wine, is really over the definition of what is "authentic."

Well, I'll dip my toes into the water on this subject. Authentic wines are wines of undisputed origin and wines (and producers) worthy of trust. Authentic wines can be made in small quantities by an individual or, albeit more difficult, in an industrial setting by a team of enologists in a lab. Authentic wines can be single-vineyard, single-clone wines or blends of unlikely varieties. To me, the idea of an authentic wine is tied to the relationship between the consumer and the producer. This is where trust in the origin of the wine comes into play. I find it easier to have a connection with people, but as my buddy Joe Roberts so eloquently put it (I'm sensing a Pulitzer...) consumers can have a "relationship with a f*cking bag of candy." Proponents of authentic wines want to feel connected to a wine's origin, whether that be the soil, the grower or the producer. They want to know everything they possibly can about how, and perhaps more importantly why, a wine was created.

The most interesting, imaginative and intelligent wine publication...

There are lots of wine publications floating around, both in paper and digital formats. Decanter, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and Wine Advocate are probably considered the most influential and most dominant wine glossies aimed at consumers. Though they all contain articles about people, places and various lifestyle topics, their raison d'être is reviewing wine and distilling the wine down to a numerical shorthand (all now use the 100-point system) that supposedly corresponds to quality. The editors may claim that the score is secondary to the actual review, but those periodicals are most cited by consumers and retailers in connection with just the ratings, often times with the actual arbiter of the score detached from his or her decree.