Laura’s List: Most Exciting Wines of 2011

It’s that time of year again; we all know the drill.  It’s inevitable.  It’s predictable. 

No, I’m not talking about the holidays.  I’m talking about the annual lists of the best wines of the prior twelve months.  All the wine magazines carry them.  Lots of regular-interest magazines carry them.  Some newspapers and television programs even come up with them.  So, I thought, why shouldn’t I?

So, I did.  I’ve assembled a list of my “Top 10 Wines of 2011.”  But this isn’t just a list of the best 10 wines I’ve had this year.  You see, wines are a little like books to me – just because something is well-done from a technical perspective doesn’t necessarily make it interesting or enjoyable to me.  Just as I recognize that Great Expectations is a classic novel, I can also say that it’s boring and far too long.  Similarly, while I recognize that Veuve Clicquot is a well-made champagne, I can also say that it’s boringly predictable and far too expensive for what you get. 

All this is to say that my list is about enjoyment, not about rankings.  The following are not the absolute best wines I’ve tasted this year, but they are all very good, and they all stand out for some special reason. 

For reader benefit (and to add a little hint of suspense) this list begins with my tenth favorite wine of the year and counts down to the best wine I tasted this year, so be sure to read all the way to the end.

This Thanksgiving, Drink What You Like!

“Thanksgiving isn’t about the wine.”  That’s what I recently found myself telling a friend who had asked me what I was serving with Thanksgiving dinner this year.

As someone who selects her wine in a restaurant and then chooses food to accompany that wine, the concept of a meal at which wine is not the center is unthinkable. 

Except that I do think it.  You see, I’ve spent many years anxiously searching for the “perfect” Thanksgiving wine.  As I’ve written here before, it’s not an easy task.  There are so many flavors on the table at once, many of which are difficult to match individually.  Put them all together, and you have a food and wine pairing nightmare.  The task is even more stressful because the day is so special.  As a host, you want to choose a wine that is worthy of your beloved family and your honored guests.

Misunderstood: The Case for German Wine

October puts us all in the mood for a good Oktoberfest, hoisting full steins of good German beer accompanied by sausages and other German goodies.  It’s always a fun time, but it also raises an interesting question, as to why Germany, a land with a history of winemaking, always seems to be in the back seat among the world’s winemakers.

A similar question was posed by our new German exchange student, who moved in with us last month and noticed my obsession with wine. 

“Are German wines really any good, or do we just say that because we make them?” he asked. 

“Yes, there are some outstanding German wines,” I responded.

“Why don’t you have any?” he asked.  Good question.  And he didn’t like the answer.

Northern Exposure

Life is Much too Short to Drink Bad Wine” -- anonymous

I’ve written before about how Oregon produces lots of really good wines – at really high prices.  That’s great—for tourism and for boosting Oregon’s economy.  But that isn’t so great for those of us trying to stay within a wine budget.  Increasingly, the twin desire for quality and reasonable price is forcing us to look farther afield—to California and Washington.

I’ve written about California wines quite a bit in the past, but I recently realized that while I’ve been writing about Californians, I’ve been drinking Washington wines.  It wasn’t really a conscious decision; it’s just that I’ve discovered so many new, affordable, delicious favorites recently that all seem to hail from Washington.

That probably isn’t an accident.  Washington has been coming on recently as a wine region.  Relatively young as wine regions go (large plantings of high-quality grapes began in the 1960s), Washington started producing some world-class wines in the 1980s and 1990s.  But it was not until the early 2000s that Washington wines were really made in quantities large enough to be distributed widely outside the state.  In 1996, only 34,000 tons of grapes were harvested in Washington.  By 2001, that number was 100,000 tons.

As the industry has grown—along with its national reputation—so has the knowledge of the growers and makers, who, through experimentation, have determined which locations are the best places to plant various varietals (types of grapes) and which viticulture (growing/farming of grapes) and viniculture (winemaking) techniques will work best on each grape. 

All that experimentation has already paid off beautifully for those of us who love variety, quality and economy in our wine!

But I Thought All Wine Got Better with Age?

Today’s story is one of tragedy and grieving.  Of regret and longing for what could have been.  It’s about the treasured bottle of wine kept too long.  You may well recognize yourself in the story.

Not long ago, a friend asked me to go through her wine “collection”, which was really an assortment of bottles she had picked up on impulse when grocery shopping or that various guests had brought to her house over the years.  She had about 30 bottles, some of which she had possessed for almost 10 years.  She wanted me to look at them all and then tell her which were ready to drink and what food she should match with them.

I had to give her the bad news:  Only about five of her bottles were still in their prime.  Another eight to 10 were on their way down, but still drinkable – immediately!  The rest of the bottles were likely pretty bad.  And so began the grieving process: 

Here Come Da' Judge!

Amateur winemakers, put your wine to the test.  Laura has agreed to judge the winemaking competition at the Crook County Fair this summer in Prineville, Oregon, August 10-13. The judging will be based on fidelity to the varietal from which the wine is made and the overall balance of the wine.  Download entry forms at the Crook County Fair website.

That'll Be The Day

The Cynthiana wine grape may be one of several native
species that could lead to a Central Oregon wine industry.

I’m getting rather tired of the laughs.  I’m referring to the response I get from most of my friends when I suggest that we’ll have a successful wine industry in Central Oregon in the not-too-distant future.

The problem, of course, is obvious to anyone who lives here and knows anything about agriculture – our weather.  In the winter, our temperatures routinely dip below zero.  And in the summer, we’ve been known to get frost in July.  As one of my friends (a farmer, I might add) put it:  “We get 89 frost-free days.  Too bad they’re not consecutive.”  We have huge swings in temperatures – sometimes in the same 24-hour period. 

These conditions make it difficult to grow anything, let alone something as temperamental as fine grapes. 

Most well-known fine wine is made from the Vitis Vinifera species of grapes that are native to parts of Europe, Asia and the Mediterranean region.  These are the grapes that have been used to make wine for thousands of years, and they include all the household names, including cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir, syrah, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and Riesling. 

They make wonderful wines,

Will Cabernet Go with My Feta?

I knew the day would eventually come when I would have to write about pairing wine with cheese.

Odd that I’ve been dreading it, don’t you think?  After all, doesn’t everybody know that wine goes with cheese like gravy with mashed potatoes or butter with popcorn?

Well, actually, that’s a myth.  The truth is cheeses are pretty particular as to which wines they pair with.  You cannot simply buy a bunch of types of cheese and serve them with an assortment of wine—unless you’re a glutton for culinary disaster. Pairing wine with cheese takes planning, thought, skill and a bit of good luck.

Think about it this way:  what are the basic rules I’ve been hammering on in this column:

• Drink red wine with meat
• Drink white wine with fish;
• Match textures;
• Pair sweet with spice;
• Don’t drink a “big” wine with a delicate food
• Don’t drink delicate wines with “big” food; and
• Try high acid wines with creamy sauces. 

But none of these rules really work for cheese. 

Oregon Pinot: Amazing And Now Affordable

"God made Cabernet.  The Devil made Pinot Noir"

I recently began teaching a community learning class at the local community college.  The course is an introduction to wine appreciation and involves the tasting, analysis and scoring of about a dozen wines.  Because it is an introductory class, I try to focus on the basics of wine tasting and the “big name” grapes.  Thus, we taste the obligatory cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot, pinot noir, syrah and sauvignon blanc. 

In selecting the wines, I try to give the students as broad an experience as possible by choosing bottles from a variety of regions.  But I also have to stick within a fairly tight budget.  For most of the varietals, this is relatively easy.  I’ve written before about the ease of finding affordable California cabernet and merlot or cheap-but-good syrah from Australia (usually called Shiraz).  But, as I’ve also written here before, pinot noir has traditionally been a tricky one. 

One of the greatest winemakers to ever live, Russian immigrant Andre Tchelistcheff, summed it up succinctly in speaking about the difficulties of making wine from the pinot noir grape:  “God made Cabernet.  The Devil made Pinot Noir.”

A Real Valentine’s Treat

I’m one of those stereotypical women who thinks there’s no point in dessert unless the highlight is chocolate.  Seriously, why waste the calories if it’s not really, really good? And how can dessert be really, really good without chocolate?

Fortunately for me, my two culinary loves, chocolate and wine, are quite compatible.  In fact, after my last wine class, one of the most instructive comments on my evaluation form was in answer to the question “what would you recommend to improve this class?”  Someone responded to that question by stating:  “More chocolate!”

And that got me thinking:  As we approach Valentine’s Day, what better way to celebrate the holiday of love then to give your sweetie his or her favorite chocolate with a bottle of wine specially chosen to complement it?

Not Your Parents' Chianti

Pairing wine with food is a bit of a sport to me.  Since successful pairing is just as much an art as a science, there’s a healthy dose of educated guesswork involved.  Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail – sometimes spectacularly.  But with each pairing, I get a little better. 

This year’s New Year’s Eve dinner presented one of the more difficult challenges I’ve faced in the wine arena.  Our evening’s theme was based upon a meal that was served in 1882.  My job was to pair each dish with a suitable wine.  It actually seemed pretty easy until my husband reminded me that I needed to stay true to the theme – the wines needed to be of the type that would have been widely available in 1882.  There went all my familiar California and Oregon friends!

The most difficult dish was a medium rare steak.  The obvious choice is a young-ish California cabernet sauvignon.  I can think of a half dozen terrific ones right off hand that I can buy locally for under $20.  But the wine industry in California was in its infancy in 1882, and I’m virtually certain that there was no export business in wine from California at that time.  So, what’s a gal to do?