Shannon Ridge Wrangler Red

2010
Lake County California
High Elevation Edition
Syrah, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, Mourvedre & Grenache

Vanilla, oak, pepper spice, & dark cherry flavors were the main flavor players in this medium bodied multi-varied blend. I was pretty happy about the blend layers. This wine is very good. I just don't know that I would pay $19 for it. Maybe $14. I was hoping for a longer finish and more depth. I would like to try it again with grilled steak and mushrooms. It is recommended  to serve with red meat and barbecued pork. I had it with Sweet Italian Chicken Sausage & Kale & Spinach Ravioli sauteed with garlic. I preferred it with the meal more than on its own.

Today I was driving in the beautiful sunshine with the sun roof completely open listening to Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" and thinking about the associations I have with almost every piece of music I hear. I can remember hearing this song for the very first time as it came on the radio and my brother and I were riding in the backseat of our old black Dodge Rambler going to get our Christmas tree. My mom was driving and my dad was riding shotgun which was unusual as he usually drove. This song came on and I just loved the beginning where Carly whispers: "Son of a Gun" before she begins singing. My mom told my dad about some couple they knew who was getting divorced and how the wife played this song for the husband and had told her husband how it reminded her of him. 

For quite awhile after that Christmas I would hear the song. It became my favorite that year. I remember telling my neighborhood friend about it and asking her if she knew it. She said: "Is that the song about the clouds in the coffee cup?" I said it was and she said: "I hate that song. It's so stupid. What does it even mean to have clouds in your coffee?" Mind you, we were both like 7 or 8 as we sat evaluating its meaning. I remember shrugging and thinking it was her loss that she didn't get it. What's funny is I knew at my young age that it was just a metaphor, but I didn't truly grasp it other than I figured it was adult speak for describing something deeper. I couldn't make my friend get it. Listening to it today, those memories came back and I smiled. Especially as, since growing up, I love getting to know meanings behind songs and reading autobiographies of artists, etc. 

Long before Adele wrote about her first love gone bad, or Taylor Swift hung John Mayer, Carly Simon wrote about her previous beau, Warren Beatty. In classic self-assured pride, Beatty reportedly thanked her for writing the song. Carly has said it was actually about a combination of men. The apricot scarf was reportedly for Nick Nolte. The cheating boyfriend was reportedly about Mick Jagger's preoccupation with David Bowie's wife. I just love how much she set the entertainment world abuzz with vain speculation with that piece of music! 

Anyway, I have always loved the lyrics, and the "clouds in the coffee" reference I interpret now as foreshadowing in an otherwise simple, happy life - like finding that the morning comfort of drinking warm, soul-filling coffee while sitting in the sun suddenly portrays the presence of clouds overhead as if providing warning to an unseen emotional storm dead set ahead. It's one of those awesome self-discovery items like poetry, open to great self-interpretation. 

You had me several years ago,

when I was still quite naive.

Well you said that we made such a pretty pair,

and that you would never leave.

But you gave away the things you loved,

and one of them was me . . .

I've had some dreams there were clouds in my coffee,

clouds in my coffee and . . .

You're so vain . . .

--Carly Simon (with, incidentally, Mick Jagger on backup!)

8.0 out of 10

$19 / 750 ml. bottle

14.5% alc. by vol.

The Reunion

2006
Mourvedre, Shiraz & Grenache Blend
Rutherglen, Victoria
Australia





Hints of cherry, herb, and vanilla encompass this Australian blend. Although good on its own, it moves up a few notches when paired with aged Gouda. It especially tasted fantastic with gemelli pasta, vegetable tapenade, and shredded Gouda.




Twisted words
Falsified assumptions
A master retreat

Silence
Mind games
A cracked heart

A friendship severed and bleeding out

8.0 out of 10 (8.5 out of 10 with the Oakvale Aged Gouda cheese pairing)
14.5% alc. by vol.
$20 / 750 ml. bottle

PHANTOM

2005
Bogle Vineyards
Petite Sirah, Old Vine Zinafandel & Old Vine Mourvedre Blend

The 2004 Phantom was one of my absolute favorites. I've been wanting to try the 2005 since October. On a whim, and hoping for a little uplift, I went right for purchasing it this evening. The clerk told me with boastful confidence that I'd made a wise choice. I told him I was extremely partial to the smokiness of the 2004. He told me I wouldn't be disappointed with the 2005. Well, unfortunately, I was. Although it had decent flavor, it had lost its fantastic individuality that the 2004 owned. It was a good wine, slightly peppery, a fairly good finish, but tasted a bit too much like any other, and no real smoky punch. The 2004 was a much better buy. Hopefully, you bought some and stashed it. Cause that's all folks.

8.0 out of 10
$21 / 750 ml. bottle
14.5% alc. by vol.
boglewinery.com

The Holy Trinity

This wine plus the following two wines reviewed, and all the other wines brought to us by The Bro to enjoy this Christmas, were all rated 90 or above by Wine Spectator.

2000

37% Grenache, 36% Shiraz, 27% Mourvedre

Barossa

Would love to drink again (and I will because I have another bottle!)

Please Note: I drank this wine with NO FOOD. It had also been several hours since eating. I'd had water and tea, but no food since lunch. I had another glass the following night right after dinner and its flavor was drowned out. I had it again the next night without food and loved it again. Interestingly enough, it is a recommended wine to have with a Moroccan Chicken recipe I have. I am going to try to make that in the near future and open a bottle to pair with the meal. I am interested to see what that does to the flavor of the wine (the chicken has plain yogurt and mint in it).

I like everything about this wine - the name, the design, the color, the smell, and the taste. Awesome. A beautiful dark, yet subdued purple color, the bouquet was sort of an herbed red meat with a hint of black cherry. The taste was an earthy thyme meets steak and Kalamata olives. The lasting finish wrapped up all scents and flavors nicely. As The Bro said "The taste hints that it's about to burst into this big sweet fruit bomb, but then it just subsides." But not without alot of other flavor - it stays more herb-like than sweet, but sort of teases you that it's about to explode in sweetness. The finish is packed with olive and earth.

Christmas night The Guy lined up (5) samples of wine for the Bro and I to taste but placed (6) bottles of wine in front of us for us to guess what was what. Only The Guy knew what was what. We had Fieldstone Reserve Red Table Wine, Belle Glos Pinot Noir, Cloudline Pinot Noir, Kendall Jackson Cabernet, The Holy Trinity and Turning Leaf Merlot. I did well but probably for all the wrong reasons. I got them all right except for the (2) Pinot Noirs which I had backwards. The Turning Leaf bottle was thrown in there to confuse us but was never poured. The first wine I tasted was the Fieldstone (I will be reviewing this wine in a few days) and it tasted weak so I knew it wasn't one of the big power horses. Not only that, but the color is a very light red and that's what I first noticed compared to all the others. I knew it by its color immediately. The Belle Glos I confused with the Cloudline which intrigued me because I really liked both of these wines but I thought I could pull out the Belle easily and that it was vastly different from the Cloudline but it wasn't (though the Belle is $45 and the Cloudline is $17!!!). The KJ I also picked out right away for the wrong reason - it was cold and it had been brought in earlier in the day as a gift for us from a very cold car which it had been in for quite some time. So I immediately tasted the coldness and knew. It was hard to concentrate on any flavor as a result. But The Holy Trinity made me smile the minute I tasted it!! I knew exactly which one it was. It's that unique.

The Burge Family writes the following on the back of the label:

The doctrine of "The Holy Trinity", being the union or coming together as 'one', symbolises the Burge family's migration to the Barossa Valley in the 1850's. The People (the Burge family), the Faith (The Holy Trinity Church, Lyndoch) and the Land (the vines), coming together as 'one', have created a tradition of winemaking in our family for over a century.

I took a picture of this bottle in front of a picture handed down to me from my grandmother who told me it is (a very old) photo of the dirt road that led to one of my ancestor's houses in Australia. They left Scotland with the intent of coming to the United States but settled first in Australia for awhile.

9.5 out of 10

$27.99 / 750 bottle

13.9% alc. by vol.

Phantom 2004 Sirah Zinfandel Blend

54% Petite Sirah
43% Old Vine Zinfandel
3% Mourvedre
California - V.2004

Will most definitely drink again.

Supposedly, this wine is only found in retail stores once a year - just in time for Halloween. Then it's gone again and hard to get your hands on. I got the last bottle in the store I was at. They have more on order but it's not due in for a couple more weeks.

I was beginning to think 2007 was going to end without my tasting a most excellent wine. That's when the "phantom" came in. Awesome. Deep, deep ruby color. The bouquet was heavy smokey fruit - not sweet. While there was almost a burst of fruit flavor initially, it quickly became dry and smokey followed by an outstanding mineral and earth finish.

I preferred this wine on it's own. The night we had it we had a light leftover and salad menu so I didn't try to pair. It is recommended to serve with a hearty winter dish. The Guy and I consumed the bottle and tonight, as I write, I long for more. I keep going back to smell the empty bottle.

In the name of freedom or politics?
Famlies split, long enough.
Lives affected, changed, taken.
Abandoned tractor sits, finish now rough,
bearing the sign of so much foresaken.

9.0 out of 10
$19.99 / 750 ml bottle (but have seen on-line for $16)
14.8% alc. by vol.
http://www.boglewinery.com/

the turk

2004
Barossa Valley
South Australia

Will drink again - the Barossa Valley entices me every time.

This is an awesome blend of 54% shiraz, 26% mourvedre, 12% grenache, 8% cabernet. This wine is on the drier, spicier side for my usual likes, but the berry in it comes through equally as well - very nice balance. A deep purple-claret in color, its bouquet was of smoked turkey or grilled chicken salad but I could smell the "heat" as well. It was a well-balanced taste of dry, spicy, sweet berry and heat right from the first mouthfeel. A very nice finish completes it - the flavor lasts and does not change into anything else. Interestingly, it's very stable from start to finish. If you like it from the beginning, you'll like it at the end. I drank it alone (no food).

This may be a really "Duh" revelation, but it dawned on me tonight that I get as much pleasure in wine as I do in cooking (and eating) because both indulge all five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. I love to see the color that presents in the glass, the sound of the cork being pulled and the even better sound of the wine being poured, each wine's unique bouquet, the feel of it flooding the tongue and traveling to the back of the mouth and throat, and finally, its taste. Thinking about the senses involved reminded me of a website I've mentioned before in my other blog and I thought I'd share some of it here with you.

The following is taken from Wendy Dubit's website http://www.thesensesbureau.com/ :

"Sense of Smell

Smell is perhaps our most primitive and powerful sense -- readily committed to and triggered by memory, cross-linked with other senses and feelings, evocative, contextual and able to transport one in time and space.

Like primary colors, aromas can be broken down into basic categories which, when combined, yield up the rich symphony that is wine. U.C. Davis’ Wine Aroma Wheel (note: look under "Wine and Grapes" when entering this link) categorizes fruit aromas as citrus (grapefruit, lemon), berry (blackberry, raspberry, strawberry and black currant), tree (cherry, apricot, peach, apple), tropical (pineapple, melon, banana), dried (jam, raisin, prune, fig) and other. Likewise, vegetative aromas can be fresh (stemmy, grassy, green, eucalyptus, mint), canned (asparagus, olive, artichoke), and dried (hay/straw, tea, tobacco). Other categories include nutty, caramelized, woody, earthy, chemical, pungent, floral, spicy.

Smell (often called “aromas” for wine components and “bouquet” for the whole blend) is so much the predominant sense in winetasting that some chemists have called wine “a tasteless liquid that is deeply fragrant.”

Indeed, much of what we consider flavor (up to 80% or more) is aroma/bouquet as sensed and articulated by our olfactory. Based on bouquet alone, many tasters can identify a wine’s grape variety, origin/terroir, vintage and aging (including the type of oak and degree of char/toast.)

Powerful though it is, we become quickly inured to smell. Which is why, so often, tasters will revisit the wines in a flight twice or more -- swirling to release aromas, inhaling deeply, and continuing to breathe in the bouquet even during the tasting process.

Sense of Taste

Taste, our most life-sustaining sense, comes in four or five basic flavors -- sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and the more recently identified umami (savory). But, as with primary colors and basic aromas, a seemingly unlimited range opens to us from there.

Most tastes are a combination of sweet (as found in some white and most dessert wines), sour (a lively acidity present in many whites and some reds), salty (seldom found in wine), bitter (often a result of tannin) and umami (ripe, peak, pungent). Often, flavors can cancel each other out (as in the case of salt inhibiting bitter) or enhance each other (as in the case of salt accentuating sweetness).

Though tongue maps usually place our perceptors of sweet at the tip of the tongue, bitter at the back and sour at the sides, in truth, our taste buds are less specialized and more broadly distributed. In tasting, it is important to let wine roll over and linger on the tongue, be aerated by breath and give forth its first, middle and lasting impressions (although much of what factors into these impressions will be aroma and mouthfeel). "


Children safely asleep in bed,
I set to work on clearing my head.
Another day has flown past,
yet another week has been cast.
I light a candle and watch it's flame,
thankful for so much I can't explain.
I no longer think of what might lurk,
I live for now and partake in 'the turk'.

8.25 out of 10
$16.99 / 750 ml
15% alc. by vol. (yikes! no wonder why I'm feeling so warm and fuzzy)
Turkey Flat Vineyards
http://www.turkeyflat.com/

********* the Guy Weighs in *********

The Turk

Smells like dirty socks. I don’t know what it is about this wine. I was excited about it from my first impression. The name "the Turk" a common football reference – albeit not a good one if you’re a player. Apparently the wine takes some of its characteristics from the football reference. While I’m on it . . . Was it dirty socks or locker room smell? That’s the question flipped back and forth in my mind as I smelled this wine.

OK, so the nose of this wine stinks. It’s not just different, it’s untoward. Thankfully, I’m willing to go past a bad smelling wine to see what’s inside. It’s my adventurous side – at least that’s what I’ve always told the ladies. *shrugs shoulders*

As I sat there typing up my notes on my other job – the football one – I sipped on "the Turk". Berries... that’s what I smell. (side note: Heroes is a good show. I watched season one on the Internet and recommend it to all. If you can’t make it’s normal timeslot, watch it online with headphones on a decent monitor. Well worth it. Of course, I have an affinity for cheerleaders who save the world, Samurai swords and the super natural... at least in my TV shows but not my wines.)

Back to the wine.

You drink the Turk and you feel the warmth as it rolls down your throat and it inches toward your belly. Left behind though is a slightly chalky taste. It’s earthy smell fills your mouth. The wine is smooth, but leaves behind a residue like dust on the hood of your car in the desert. You know it’s there, but you can’t be bothered to wash it off because your mind is on other things.
Once you get past the initial smell, this wine is actually a decent wine. It’s not overpowering with it’s berry flavor, or it’s tannins (as many wine snobs describe it). It’s full-bodied, with a solid finish. It doesn’t disappear after the first glass, and isn’t too strong to cause you to stop drinking it after the second. I liked the wine because many times you purchase something in this price range and it’s forgettable. This wine was anything BUT that.

As the Gal described, this wine has 15% alchohol so it hits you if you’re not used to that kind of concentration. Sometimes that level can burn when you drink it, this wine doesn’t. It’s powerful, but controlled.

If you can find a smoother wine with less nose, then get it, but you won’t go wrong with this one.