Merlot is typically thought of as plush, but only softly tannic, in comparison to Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2007 from Rubicon Estate isn’t 100% Merlot though, and it’s not softly tannic. Whereas a a few drops of Syrah helped the wine achieve its depth of color, a more generous portion of Cabernet Sauvignon contributed, among other things, a substantial amount of dusty Rutherford tannins. Full-bodied and creamy, even opulent, the wine needed those tannins to avoid being syrupy. The tannins also provide a strong framework for the deeply layered flavors of dark cocoa and chocolate, plum, concentrated black fruit, kirsch and mulberry.

Rubicon’s 2007 Merlot is very good. Its strength and luxurious texture limit the foods with which it will pair well though. Braised meat is the way to go. Fork-tender short ribs or lamb shank with a velvety sauce would work, as would beef cheeks. Drink now through 2020. Highly recommended.

2007 Rubicon Estate Merlot, Rutherford, Napa Valley
Rating: Highly Recommended
Drink: Now through 2020

Retail Price: $46
Blend: 91% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Syrah

Aging: 14 months - 70% French oak, 30% American (30% new)

Alcohol: 14.5%

Closure: Cork

The wine echoes the traditional winemaking techniques and its loyalty to terroir. The Darcie Kent Vineyards Merlot is dark ruby in the glass with prominent aromas of black cherry, coffee and dark chocolate against a subtle background of earth and spice. The body is medium plus with grainy tannins providing good structure. There is more black cherry, coffee and dark chocolate on the palate, along with briary blackberry, kirsch and a hint of smoke.

With alcohol under 14%, fruit that is tasty but not exuberant, and tannins that are just a bit rustic, the 2006 Darcie Kent Merlot will go well with the range of foods normally associated with good Merlot. Grilled leg of lamb would be a great, but a juicy burger will work very well too. Drink now through 2016. Highly recommended.

2006 Darcie Kent Vineyards Merlot, Crown Block, Livermore Valley
Rating: Highly Recommended
Drink: Now through 2016

Retail Price: $35
Blend: Merlot

Aging: 18 months, 100% French oak
Alcohol: 13.9%

Closure: Cork

The Rubicon Merlot was purchased for the review. The Darcie Kent was received as a winery sample.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it! Icons for popular sharing services are at the right above and also below.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check outour comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2010 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.

In a comment on one of my articles, Steve McIntosh from Winethropology asks an excellent question:

“... A distributor hands you a glass of something red. You taste it, you shrug, you like it. You give it a "Recommended" rating. That night you head out for dinner. You spot something different on the list and you go for it. $50. You taste it, you shrug, you like it, but Jesus H. Christ, you're not too thrilled that you just paid $50 for it. Does it still get the same rating it [would have if a] distributor handed it to you?”

This is something I've often debated with friends who rate wines that they try. They have their own rating systems and some include value within their rating. The rating is expressed as a single number, a quantity of stars or checkmarks, etc. In contrast, I believe that price should be totally divorced from ratings, though the price should be noted along with key factors such as alcohol percentage.

Here's why I believe this:
First, the quality of a wine is not affected by price, even though one's perception of the quality may be. The wine is the wine. I rate wine's based upon what is in the glass and nothing else. My ratings, "recommended, highly recommended, very highly recommended, highest recommendation" indicate only levels of quality.

Second, value is not a constant. It varies from person to person due to differing levels of disposable income, frugality, etc. It even changes over time for an individual. Did you lose your job? Did you just find out the kids need braces? Perhaps the Yankees just signed you to a very lucrative multi-year contract. Or perhaps you need a wine for a very special dinner — a wine that needs to be of the finest quality but also packaged in a great bottle with a famous name. My readers come from all walks of life and every day presents us with new situations.

Finally, price is not constant either. I might think that a wine is very good, but not worth it's $75 retail price point. If I downgrade that wine accordingly, it is only the rating that will be remembered. You may then choose not to buy it in some half-off sale though you should actually be grabbing a full case. On the other hand, if I bump up the rating for a $12 wine from recommended to highly recommended simply because it's so inexpensive relative to its level of quality, then someone who pays $36 for it in a restaurant may be very disappointed.

In reality, many of the finest wines in the world are lousy values to most of us. But they are worth the price to some. The same is true for the “best” cars, clothing, fountain pens, etc. Differences in price between the excellent and the truly astounding, or even between good and very good, are often substantially greater than the actual qualitative difference. Price tends to increase logarithmically rather than in equal increments. These huge price jumps may be because of the extremes to which producers must go to get create the nth degree of quality, it may be because of very limited production, or simply because the market will bear astronomic prices for the very best of anything. There are people for whom price truly is no object.

One of the most obvious disconnects between wine price and quality is the gap between wines that have been rated 89 by Robert Parker or Wine Spectator vs. those rated 90. For whatever reason, 90 has become a magic number and prices for those wines tend to be much higher than that one extra point for quality justifies. As a result, there are some tremendous values to be had in 88 and 89 point wines.

In short, it is very difficult to dictate what is or is not a good value for someone else. To load my wine ratings with assumptions of value will make the ratings less, rather than more, useful. I rate wines based on their quality. I list the retail price and the alcohol percentage. Occasionally I find a wine that is much, much better qualitatively than other wines of its type and price. If so, I make a separate note indicating exactly that (as I did yesterday in my review of the 2006 Alpen Cellars Pinot Noir). It is then up to the readers to consider the text and ratings in my reviews, assess the prices for the wines in their locale and make their own decisions with respect to value.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it! Icons for popular sharing services are at the right above and also below.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check outour comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2010 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.

There seems to be another brouhaha brewing about whether or not wine writers should accept free wine samples and what effect said samples have on the subsequent reviews. Some argue that receiving free samples biases the reviewer. In an article entitled “Why You Shouldn’t Trust Wine Writers,” Winethropology states “that anyone reviewing something they did not shell out their hard-earned shekels for is going to be less demanding and more generous.” Tom Johnson of Louisville Juice, the site that brought this topic to my eyes today, does not accept free wines for review. Still, he is less concerned about bottles of wine here and there than the whole wine country lifestyle issue where one does lunches, visits wineries, gets to know proprietors, etc. That is prudent and a more valid concern. He also contributed a lot of interesting points about the world of political reportage about which he knows a great deal.

Clearly, a reviewer of any product who is in some way biased may not write an even-handed review. Whether this bias is due to a free sample or because the winemaker’s wife is the reviewers’ childrens’ math teacher, writing a review which is not genuine is a bad thing. That is why I, and most responsible reviewers of wine, do their evaluations based on blind tastings. You cannot be biased if you don’t know which wine you’re tasting.

Those reviewers who think they are unbiased because they paid for their samples are kidding themselves. They are biased by knowing the price point of the wine, seeing the label on the bottle, having experienced the wine in the past or having read someone else’s review. And, except for a small handful of people, reviewing wines is not a well-paying gig. Very few reviewers could afford to buy the number of bottles necessary to put together blind flights of six wines on a regular basis so as to provide a usefully large compendium of reviews for their readers.

Frankly, I don’t understand why this issue keeps coming up for wine. Aside from Consumer Reports, very few reviewers of products pay for all of the items they review. Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael didn’t pay for all the movies they saw. Computer magazines typically receive their samples from manufacturers for free. Video games and CDs are sent to reviewers by the pallet. Why are wine writers more corruptible than anyone else?

I would argue that the careful wine writers’ reviews might be less biased. You can’t review a CD without figuring out who the artist is. You can’t review a car without seeing the car. But I can have someone pour five wines in a glass while I’m out of the room and then come in, taste them, write notes and score them without knowing whose wines they are.

Part of this new uprising seems to have been spurred by Winethropology having asked some questions of wine writers at a trade event. The first question was “Which of these wines do you like?” The second was “Which of these wines would you spend your own money on?” Winethropology reports that the second question got some dirty looks and uncomfortable silences. The article implies this is because writers say good things about wines just because they got them for free – or because they want to continue getting them for free.

On the contrary, I believe that the questions caused discomfort because they were personal questions and did not call on the reviewers to act as reviewers. A reviewer puts aside “what they like.” Their job is to provide an unbiased evaluation of the quality of a wine. Is it well made? What are it’s aromas, flavors and texture? Is it representative of it’s region and constituent grapes?

You don’t ask the sommelier to find you a wine he likes. You want him to characterize wines and guide you in finding something you will like. The same is true for reviewers. Furthermore, if a reviewer answers the question, he is then inviting future suggestions of bias. “Of course he gave that wine a high score, he likes wines that such and such.”

The question of what the reviewer would pay for is also inappropriate. Had the question been, “which wines here present especially good values?,” then there might have been some quick and useful answers. On the other hand, asking what they would buy is essentially asking “how much money do you make?”

The whole discussion at Winethropology may have been an exercise in getting people exercised since the writer admitted early in the article that they themselves receive about 60% of their wine samples for free. I do agree with their assertion that “casual bloggers are undervalued.” However, I don’t think that value lies in them being less biased because they paid for their wine. I think it’s because of the unique and refreshing perspectives they may offer, the energy of their blogs,  and the personal experiences they share.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it! Icons for popular sharing services are at the right above and also below.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check outour comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2010 NorCal Wine. All rights reserved.

Back in April, I wrote an article after having received some 50ml bottles of wine as tasting samples from Trefethen Family Vineyards. Trefethen is one of many wineries trying out Lilliputian bottles as samplers in order to increase the number of people they send samples to while keeping costs in check.

At the time I received the samples, I didn’t have any of the same wine in standard bottles. Since the small bottles said “Best Enjoyed before September 2010,” I elected to leave them unopened until I could compare them head to head against 750ml samples. Happily, I recently received some full-sized bottles from Trefethen.

For this test, my intent was not to evaluate the Trefethen Double T Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon against other similar wines as I normally would. (I’ll do that as well, but for subsequent articles.) Rather, I simply wanted to determine how similar the wine in the small bottles was to that in the standard bottles. That is really the key factor in determining whether or not the small bottles can succeed as samplers.

The Tasting Room, Inc. "T.A.S.T.E. technology" sample packaging process for Trefethen involves opening 3 liter bottles supplied by the winery and moving the wine from those bottles into the tiny ones which are then sealed. All of this is done in an environment which is intended to be anaerobic. There is always some oxygen in the neck of a regular wine bottle, but the T.A.S.T.E. process is supposed to prevent any additional oxygen from affecting the wine.

Still, there are variables that could lead to differences between the samples. First, there is the process itself. Does it work as advertised? Second, there is the difference in closures. The standard bottles I tested have been sealed with cork since their initial bottling whereas the small sampler wine started under cork but have been sealed with screwcap since February. Next is the size of the bottles themselves. It has been proved scientifically that wine ages more slowly in larger bottles. This is primarily because the ratio of air to wine within the bottles increases as bottle size decreases. Therefore, the affect of that captured air on the wine is greater in small bottles. The effect is more pronounced if the small bottles are sealed with something that is not entirely air-tight, such as cork. The T.A.S.T.E. samples from Trefethen use screwcap. They are also glass bottles, so there’s no concern about the premature aging that would occur with plastic bottles.

The final variable is that the sampler wine came from 3 liter bottles, rather than 750ml. The 2008 Trefethen Double T Chardonnay was bottled in August 2009 and the samplers were made in February 2010. So, the sampler wine spent roughly 7 months in double magnum then about 4 months in the small bottle. The 2007 Trefethen Cabernet Sauvignon Double T was bottled in April, 2009 and the samplers created in February 2010.

For my test, I had the wines poured for me so that I could taste them blind. The entire contents of the small bottles were poured into glasses. Then, an equal amount of the wine from regular bottles was poured, ensuring that the fill level looked identical in all of the glasses. I took standard tasting notes for each glass and then revisited each wine as needed to review any differences I might have perceived. I also had a second taster on hand to take some quick sniffs and tastes. And, since I had two T.A.S.T.E. samplers of each wine, I was able to conduct the whole test twice.

Trefethen refers to their 2008 Double T Chardonnay as “casual and lively.” It is 100% Chardonnay with all of the fruit taken from the estate vineyard. It spent four months in French oak and sells for $17. When initially opened, the color of the wines was virtually the same, though the small bottle sample was a tiny bit more pale. I found a bigger difference on the nose though.

The small bottle sample was both more intensely aromatic and much more tropical. Pineapple was particularly prominent. As the wine sat in the glass over a period of ten to fifteen minutes, the pineapple receded and the fruit flavors became lighter and rounder. Eventually it’s aromas of fresh and canned stone fruit matched those of the wine from the standard bottle. Both wines showed moderate amounts of oak influence with aromas and flavors of vanilla, spice and oak. The oak-derived flavors were identical in both wines from the outset, though the early pineapple in the T.A.S.T.E. sample dominated the oak rather than sharing the limelight as did the stonefruit. My findings on this wine were consistent when I re-tested with the second small bottle.

To me, the differences I experienced between the small samplers and the 750ml bottle say more about the rate of development of white wine when exposed to small amounts of oxygen than it does about the T.A.S.T.E. process specifically. White wines sealed with screw cap have consistently been found to retain the youthful fruitiness longer than those under cork. The time the sampler Chardonnay spent in double magnum could be considered to have been closer to screwcap storage than 750ml with cork storage, since the air to wine ratio was so low. The rapid effect of oxygen on the wine was also demonstrated by how quickly the fresh tropical aromas disappeared once the wine was in the glass. [In the same vein, I recorked the 750ml bottle, without vacuum or gas, and let it sit on the counter overnight. The next morning, it was very obviously darker due to oxidation.] Personally, I found the fresh tropical version of the wine engaging and would love to see the Double T Chardonnay bottled under screwcap.

The 2007 Trefethen Cabernet Sauvignon Double T is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot all from the Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley. The wine spent fourteen months in a combination of French and American oak barrels. The retail price is $25. The wine from the two different bottles looked identical in my glass. The were bright ruby leaning toward violet purple with a dark core that faded gradually to the rim.

The nose, flavors and texture of the two wines were virtually identical. Berries, black cherry and plum fruit were complimented by vanilla, chocolate, spice and oak. The first T.A.S.T.E. sample exhibited a trace of spiced deli meat and smoke on the nose that was not present in the 750ml sample. However, the second T.A.S.T.E. sample did not and was identical to the 750.

While my tests were not exhaustive, they do give me a good degree of confidence that the T.A.S.T.E. samplers can provide wine that is very nearly identical to the red wines sold in regular bottles.. For whites, that isn’t necessarily the case upon initial opening. In my view, consumers (or reviewers) need to determine whether or not the retail wine is under cork or screwcap and how long the wine is aged in bottle at the winery. If the wine is sold under screwcap, open the sampler and taste right away. If under cork, pour the wine and pay close attention to how it changes over time. Unfortunately, it will be difficult for consumers to know the size of the bottle from which the samplers were filled and that can be a considerable source of variation. I would encourage wineries to fill samplers of white wine from 750ml bottle to eliminate this issue.

The wines reviewed in this article were provided by the winery at no cost to me.

If you enjoyed this article, please share it! Icons for popular sharing services are at the right above and also below.

Follow NorCalWine on Twitter for breaking wine news, information on events and more. Become a fan and join the NorCal Wine community on Facebook. Also check outour comprehensive Northern California winery listings. They are very useful for planning a tasting trip or just getting in touch with a winery.

This article is original to NorCalWine.com. Copyright 2010 NorCal Wine. The vineyard panorama photograph was provided by Trefethen Family Vineyards. All rights reserved.