Rolling Stones’ Forty Licks Merlot
The 2007 Merlot captures the attitude of Mendocino County’s style. Aromas of black cherry, with hints of mint are followed by rich flavors of plum, black cherry, brown sugar, cinnamon, and cedar. This dry red wine is a fine match for herb-roasted chicken, grilled beef or smoky chili.

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Cabernet Sauvignon

This 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon is made from the premium Mendocino County fruit which features aromas of black currant/cherry with a plush structure and wounded tannins.

Woodstock Music & Art Fair
This 2008 Chardonnay features an aroma of enjoyable eclectic mixture of pears, minerals, and tropical bananas. On the palate, this wine has the tastes of rich pears, bananas, and citrus flavors with a tropical fruit finish.

Swirl ‘n’ sniff
To get the most out of your wine sniffing, you swirl the wine in the glass first. Don’t even think about swirling your wine if your glass is more than half full — you’ll end up sloshing it everywhere.

Here’s a closer look at how to swirl and sniff your wine:
1. Keep your glass on the table and rotate it three or four times so that the wine swirls around inside the glass and mixes with air.

As you swirl, the aromatic compounds in the wine vaporize so that you can smell them. Wine has so many of these compounds that whatever scent you detect probably isn’t a figment of your imagination.

2. Quickly bring the glass to your nose, stick your nose right into the airspace of the glass where the aromas are captured, and smell the wine.

Try different techniques of sniffing. Some people like to take short, quick sniffs, while others like to inhale a deep whiff of the wine’s smell. Keeping your mouth open a bit while you inhale can help you perceive aromas. (Some people even hold one nostril closed and smell with the other.)

3. Free-associate — think of what the aroma brings to mind.
Is the aroma fruity, woodsy, fresh, cooked, intense, light? Your nose tires quickly, but it recovers quickly, too. Wait just a moment and try again. Listen to your friends’ comments and try to find the same things they find in the smell.

The point behind this whole ritual of swirling and sniffing is that what you smell should be pleasurable, maybe even fascinating, and that you should have fun in the process.

We took my mother-in-law to the market late Saturday night before heading downtown for dinner and window shopping.

As usually, Tyler was there behind the bar ready to serve up the latest offerings in wine along with a sample of cheeses to go with the wine.

Besides taking care of us, Tyler was also staffing the checkout station and doing a fine job. My mother-in-law had a great time sampling wines on the sweeter end of the spectrum and ended up taking a few bottles back to St. Louis with here.

It’s fun trying new wines and among the newest are the wines being produced by Missouri State University at its Mountain Grove campus.

I’ve been to the school’s operation and it’s a modern, up-to-date operation that produces some great Missouri wine’s including a Norton port that’s a killer. Rich and deep, it’s a wonderful creation by the people at MSU.

That wine, along with a number of other varietals are now available at Diamond Ridge and I hope you stop by soon to look over the MSU line along with all the other wines we carry.

Hope to see you at Thursday’s wine club meeting. Be sure to RSVP by calling or going to the Diamond Ridge Facebook page.

See you Thursday.

Last week, I dropped in on the Diamond Ridge Market a sampled a few new wines that Tyler has out. They were very good and could be on the list of samples we try at out May 21 meeting.

One of the best was the Carneros Creek 2005 Reserve Pinot Noir. This wine is the result of careful selections of our best lots of Pinot Noir, with judicious use of French oak.

Ruby in color, the wine shows a fusion of ripe red cherry and spice aromas, with subtle hints of crème brulee in the background. A lush, velvety texture up front leads to concentrated cherry and blackberry flavors, with hints of vanilla, caramel and cedar in the finish.

The wine shows fine-grained tannins, with enough acidity to keep the fruit lively and add length to the palate. Sixteen months in barrel has created a sense of integration and harmony in the wine, which, while drinking nicely now, will continue to evolve for three or so years to come.

It has won all sorts of awards and medals. Among them: 93 points Wine Spectator – 4 Star Gold (unanimous judges decision) – 2008 Orange County Fair Wine Competition, Gold – 2008 Pacific Rim Wine Comp, Gold – 2008 Riverside International Wine Comp, Gold – 2007 California State Fair Wine Comp, Silver – 2008 West Coast Wine Competition, Solver – 2007 Riverside International Wine Comp, Silver – 2007 Los Angeles County Fair, Silver – 2007 San Francisco International, Bronze – 2008 Los Angeles International, Bronze – 2008 San Diego International.

So, stop by and sample a bit of the wine and take a bottle home. See you on the 21st! Be sure to call for a reservation!

2007 R Wines Roogle Red, SE Austrailia

The Roogle Red is composed of 50% Shiraz, 30% Merlot, and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. It was aged in seasoned French and American oak for 12 months. Dark ruby-colored, it offers attractive aromas of cedar, cassis, blueberry, and plum. Plush and fruit-driven on the palate, this is a ripe, tasty wine for casual quaffing with burgers and pizza.

Wines Big “R” Cabernet, Barossa Valley

The wine, from 45-year-old vines deep with the Barossa Valley, displays a deep crimson red color and a complex nose mixing ripe plum, tobacco and spearmint. The extended maturation in oak shows soft cedar oak notes on the palate combined with black currant fruit and classic ripe Cabernet characters.

2006 R Wines Green Lion Merlot, NAPA CA

This is 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon for structure. It has aromas of raspberry, light chocolate and spice with flavors of soft fruit. This is one Merlot that is very well balanced.

2006 R Wines Red Lion Cabernet, CA

Is a Rich, Classic Cabernet with a tight, reserved bouquet that slowly opens to ripe black cherries with a wink of spice. A lingering finish with distinct black currant notes. It is a blend of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Syrah & 2% Petite Syrah.

]]> http://www.pfiwestern.com/magazine/2009/04/07/big-reds-have-big-taste/feed/ 0 http://www.pfiwestern.com/magazine/2009/04/07/roogle-shiraz/ http://www.pfiwestern.com/magazine/2009/04/07/roogle-shiraz/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:50:06 +0000 Steve http://www.pfiwestern.com/magazine/?p=1259 2007 R Wines Roogle Shiraz, SE Australia

This wine was a big hit at the last Diamond Ridge Wine Club meeting. It got a lot of thumbs up from the folks. The wine aged for 12 months in seasoned French and American oak. It is purple-colored and offers up a big whiff of cedar, blueberry, blackberry, and chocolate aromas. Full-bodied, ripe and sweet, it has a great color for the glass and should offer plenty of what people are looking for in a full-bodied wine.

Decanting is all about allowing the wine to breathe. Air getting across a good surface area of a wine can bring out its aromas. You want that wine to be giving off aromas! If it’s not releasing flavors into the air, it’s going to taste like strange water. You can usually let the wine sit in the decanter for 1/2 to 1 hour before you drink it. You’ll see how its flavor changes over the evening as you drink.

There is of course a point at which the air causes more damage than good. If you let the wine sit out for say 8 hours, it will warm up to your ambient room temperature which in modern times is 70F or more, which is awful for wine flavor. When the French talked of Room Temperature in the 1800s, they meant in the 50s! Also, wine + air = vinegar.

Lamb Pops

2-3 pounds of boneless lamb butterflied (ask your butcher to do this)
½ cup Dijon mustard
½ cup red wine (preferably the same wine you will be serving with the meal)
¼ cup soy sauce
4 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons dried rosemary

Mix the ingredients together and rub on the meat. Refrigerate 2-4 hours. Take out of refrigerator 30 minutes before grilling.
Preheat gas grill to 350-400 degrees.
Cook on one side for five minutes. Turn and grill other side for five minutes. Continue cooking until meat reaches an internal temp of at least 145 degrees (medium rare) or 160 (medium).
Remove from heat; let meat sit for 30 minutes. Cut into bite-sized pieces.

At the Diamond Ridge Market, many of the wines are divided by country. Here are a few and the types of wines you’ll find there.

From Italian, there’s the classic Chianti and Sangiovese.

Chianti is the name of Italy’s most popular and widely available red wines. Chianti is a dry red wine, made from the Sangiovese grape that only improves when consumed with food. It can range from light to full-bodied and displays aromas and flavors of cherry, often roses and violets mingle with fairly high acidity.

Sangiovese is fruity, with moderate to high natural acidity and generally a medium-body ranging from firm and elegant to assertive and robust and a finish that can tend towards bitterness. The aroma is generally not as assertive and easily identifiable as Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, but can have a strawberry, blueberry, faintly floral, violet or plumy character.

All Italian foods, beef, chicken and tomato-based sauces over noodles go well with these wines

From Germany, there’s Gewürztraminer, which is a cousin of Riesling. Gewürztraminer wines have a distinctive, pronounced bouquet and flavor. The German word , means “spiced,” and these wines are known for their CRISP, SPICY attributes. They’re highly fragrant, with flavor characteristics of litchis, roses (or flowers in general), and spices such as cloves and nutmeg.

Dornfelder is a popular red German wine. It is a wine that’s far deeper in color than is typical of German reds. Dornfelder-based wines can have intense blackberry and sour cherry aromas, with a refreshingly tart palate and soft tannic structure. Some producers have also seen the potential for creating age worthy wines, focusing less on its youthful fruit character, and more on the grape’s structural harmony.

From Argentina, Malbec is the most emblematic Argentinean wine is made of this variety. Its primary aromas resemble ripe prunes and sometimes mint, while in the mouth it is softly meaty and rounded. Malbec is “the red wine” to pair with roasted beef, stews, pasta with tomato sauce and cheese, game meats and hard cheeses.

From South Eastern Australian comes from fantastic wines. Roogle Red is 50% Shiraz, 30% Merlot, and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, and it is aged in seasoned French and American oak for 12 months. Roogle Red is medium-full bodied, with dark but not super-ripe fruit, and healthy tannins and acid. This wine is from R Wines (of Dan Philips and Chris Ringland), which includes labels such as 3 Rings, Roogle, Evil, and Bitch.

So, next time you stop in Diamond Ridge, do a little world wine tour. It will be worth the trip.

I’ve finally figured out that the wine club members love reds so five of the six we offered them were reds, everything from Dornfelder to a deep Shiraz.

We also started introducing members to Missouri’s red wines, not the ones that could pass for Kool-Aid, but those that are dry and rich like some of the California wines.

We opened Adam Puchta’s Legacy red wine, a semi-dry red that is close to an Italian Sangiovese. Some members didn’t care for it but others liked it quite a bit.

The hit of the night was the Roogle Shiraz. It was deep and rich with a great inky color and lots of wonderful tastes for the palate. Members left the meeting with a few bottles tucked under their arms.

All in all, I think everyone enjoyed the tasting and they’re anxious for the next meeting, which is scheduled for April 23 at 6 p.m. at the market. Please call to make a reservation.

I also served Lamb Pops at the meeting and handed out the recipe. It’s quick and easy and fun to eat. Here’s the recipe:

Lamb pops

2-3 pounds boneless lamb (available at Harter House)
1 cup of the red wine you plan to serve with the meal
¼ cup Dijon mustard
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix mustard, soy sauce, rosemary together until smooth. Butterfly the pieces of lamb that are more than an inch thick. Pour over meat and marinate in refrigerator for 3-4 hours or longer. Remove from refrigerator about 30 minutes before grilling. Pour wine over meat and let meat get to room temperature, Grill on medium heat until temperature reaches 160 degrees. When finished cut into 1-inch cubes or 2-inch strips. Skewer on toothpicks. Serve with Greek yogurt or dressing.

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