Common Questions About Port

How is Port Made?  Briefly, all Port starts out the same. Ripe grapes are harvested (mainly by hand), brought to the winery, crushed, and given a fast, hot fermentation to extract as much color and tannin as possible over three days or less. Then the young wine is decanted into a large vessel filled about half full with grape brandy to fortify the wine and stop fermentation. After that, the wine goes through different types of aging and blending depending on the style being made. Taylor Fladgate offers a great, in-depth description of Port production on their website.

How is Vintage Port Different from Other Ports?  Taylor Fladgate offers a great, in-depth, discussion of this topic here.  Briefly, though, Port can be broken down into two basic styles – bottle-aged and wood-aged. Wood-aged wines become Tawny Ports and can be bottled young and fresh or given 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years in barrel. They are typically orangey/tawny in color and have aromas and flavors of caramel, toasted nuts, and burnt sugar.

Bottle-aged Ports receive, at most, a short stay in barrel before going into bottle – sometimes this style is called “Vintage Style” Port. The wines are deeply colored purple or red, have lots of fruit, and feature firm tannins that deliver what the English call “grip.” “Ruby” Ports are the bottom of the quality pyramid here, followed by “Reserve” Ports – Graham’s Five Grapes is a famous example. Both Ruby and Reserve Ports are usually blends of wines from different vintages.

In good, not great, years, Port houses often make a wine called Late Bottled Vintage. This is usually a wine that has much of the concentration needed to make vintage Port, but has angular or hard tannins and/or lacks the stuffing needed in a top quality wines. LBV Ports are from a single vintage, but age in barrel for two to four years to soften and open before bottling. They are ready to drink on release, but can improve for a few years in cellar.

Vintage Port is the apex of Port quality, made only in the best years from the very best grapes a winery can get – usually it is less than two percent of an estate’s harvest. Unlike LBV, it spends only a few months in barrel and is bottled no more than 18 months from the vintage.

Do I Have to Age Vintage Port for Decades?  You certainly can age wines like these from a vintage like 2011 for many, many years. Warre’s 1970, Graham’s 1966, and Cockburn 1955 were all absolutely delicious when sampled last week! But changes in how grapes are being farmed and how the wine is made mean that you have a much wider window of enjoyment now than ever before.

Until about 20 years ago, you faced two main challenges in drinking Vintage Port young. First, the wine had a lot of brandy in it and that brandy often needed years to fully integrate into the finished wine. Opening a young Port meant getting a heady whiff of alcohol and a bit of searing heat as the wine went down your throat.

While your throat was burning, your mouth was puckering – because Port is always a deeply tannic wine and the young wine’s tannins were typically pretty fierce, rough, and drying. After a decade or so in cellar, the alcohol integrates and the tannins start to soften, giving you a more supple, elegant wine to enjoy after a fine meal.

Over the past 20 years, though, Port has gotten better in two key ways. First, Port makers have invested serious money and effort in understanding how brandy integrates with Port and how to buy brandies that fortify without sticking out and burning. Even as barrel samples, the young 2011 Ports tasted last week already showed fantastic integration of their alcohol, a process that will be largely complete by the time the wines arrive in the USA.

And Port houses have invested even more money in their vineyards, learning how to tend their vines to achieve full phenolic ripeness and softer, silkier, just plain more pleasing tannins than in the past. Yes, all of these young Ports have a LOT of tannin – but it’s so ripe and well developed that it coats your mouth like wet velvet or slides across your palate like fine silk, leaving the right grippy bite behind.

It would be a shame to drink all of your Vintage Port in the first few years of its life in bottle – but perhaps as much a shame to not enjoy a bottle or two at every stage of its long life!

How Long Can I Keep an Open Bottle of Vintage Port?  Longer than you think – certainly longer than I used to think! Young Vintage Port is a very robust wine, and while exposure to oxygen will start it on the road to oxidation and fading, the process can take quite a while. Left on a counter at room temperature, an open bottle of young Vintage Port will slowly open and evolve, losing some if its primary fruit but often releasing other interesting flavors in its place. You’ll probably notice some change on the second and third days and then accelerating changes through day five. At some point, the wine will start to taste a little flat – but a full week of good drinking isn’t out of the question.

If you refrigerate the wine between servings, the time frame gets longer. Open a bottle, enjoy some on night one and then put it in the fridge at the end of the evening. Come back to it in a week – it will have evolved some, but still be full of fruit and vigor. The following week, less fruit but maybe some really interesting tar and earthiness. And, in week three, probably less compelling than at first … but still very tasty and fun!

Of course, the older the wine, the faster it will evolve with air, but in general, wines aged 20 years or less will hold up well even after they’ve been open a while.

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Have more questions? Send us an email or give us a call and we’ll do our best to help you out!

One Sip At A Time – Old World vs. New World Reds

This month, our One Sip At A Time class focused on red wines, but with an added twist.  You have probably heard sommeliers and retailers like us go on and on about ‘Old World’ character or something being from the ‘New World,’ but what the heck does that actually mean?  Last Thursday, we spent the evening answering that question.

France, Italy, Spain, and the rest of Western Europe make up the Old World, according to most people, while the New World is basically everywhere else: the United States, Argentina, New Zealand, and, more recently, countries whose wine industries are still in their infancy like India and Canada.

To understand the influence climate and winemaking styles have on red wines, we tasted the same varietals or similar blends side by side, with the Old World example first and the New World second.

We started with Jean Michel Guillon’s 2011 Bourgogne Rouge, a classic example of Old World Pinot Noir, with its higher acidity and longer maceration with the grape skins, giving the wine a bit more tannin.  The Calera Pinot Noir that came after was much more lush and fruit forward, and a bit lighter in color and tannin.  Both delicious, balanced wines, but clearly very different!

Next we moved on to Bordeaux varietals.  The 2010 Ch Ducasse Graves Rouge served as a much more mineral, austere counterpoint to the smooth, lavishly oaked The Teacher from Thurston Wolfe in Washington State.  While the Graves would shine with food, The Teacher was pretty darn delicious all by itself!

For Rhone blends, we chose two benchmark producers.  For our Old World example, we had Guigal’s 2009 Cotes du Rhone blend, a meatier, more Syrah-heavy style.  Then it was on to Paso Robles, for Tablas Creek’s Patelin du Tablas Rouge.  Owned by the Perrin family of Ch de Beaucastel fame, the Tablas Rouge shows just how much influence climate and terroir has over the finished wine, since the winemaking method and even the cuttings used to plant the vineyards, are all from the Rhone Valley in France.

Our final pair we tasted blind, and it was a very surprising set of wines indeed.  Almost everyone was fooled by the Guild 6 Rhone-style blend, assuming that because of its lighter body and higher acidity it was from the Old World, rather than Washington State, where it’s from.  And If You See Kay, a full-throttle fruit-bomb from Lazio in Italy, was a dead-ringer for a California red blend.

So while terroir and tradition usually have a big influence over the style of a wine, where there’s a will, there’s a way!  Thanks to everyone who attended our One Sip At A Time class for May – your participation and questions are what make these classes so much fun.

Roaming the Rhone With Philippe Plantevin

As much fun as classes that feature ‘special,’ high-end wines are, ones like last Thursday’s evening with Philippe Plantevin can be even more fun.  Why?  Because they offer you a chance to stock up on the kind of wine you can pull out on a Wednesday night guilt-free, or open several bottles of at a dinner party without wincing.

Even better is the fact that Philippe’s wines offer so much character, flavor, and concentration despite their modest prices.  Many of those who attended last week took advantage of this special evening and stocked their cellars, and luckily we have enough of most of what we served to let you do the same.

We started the evening the way we think every evening from about April 15 through September should start: with rose!  Though Philppe Plantevin’s wines have been staples in the store for many years, the rose was new to everyone, and now it’s definitely being added to the ‘buy every year’ list.  Just slightly fuller than a Provencal rose, but  not quite as rich as a Tavel, it sits in a perfect, balanced middle ground.

Then it was onto the 2011 Cotes du Rhone Blanc, this year with even more Viognier character, but still plenty of snap on the finish.  This wine is remarkable not only for its delicious tropical fruit flavors now, but because it ages amazingly considering its modest price point.

We tried two vintages side by side of the juicy, entry-level Cotes-du-Rhone – first the 2009, then the 2010.  The 2009 had really benefitted from its time in bottle, but the 2010 showed plenty of concentration and potential – since there isn’t much of the 2009, it’s a good time to stock up on the 2010!

The 2009 Visan was a real surprise for its concentration and savory depth.  Visan is a part of the southern Rhone that we don’t often see bottled on its own in the US.  Because of its higher elevation, it usually goes into blends.  So, Philippe is especially proud of this bottling, and we could taste why!

Next we tasted two older wines side by side.  First was the 2007 La Daurelle, the only wine from the estate that sees any time in barrel.  Reminiscent of a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but at a fraction of the cost, it’s a wonderful example of a mature southern Rhone blend.  The 2006 Cairanne, though it doesn’t see any oak at all, was extremely impressive for its briny, savory, mineral depth.

Thanks to Olivier Daubresse of Vinifrance Imports, and most of all to Philippe Plantevin for a wonderful, fun, educational evening of delicious wines.

What We’re Tasting: A Surprising Re-Visit

When we’ve had a wine in the store for awhile, we try to check in on it every once in awhile, and see where it is in its evolution.  When Olivier Daubresse was here this past Saturday with Philippe Plantevin, towards the end of the afternoon we decided to revisit another of his Southern Rhone producers, Chateau Husson.  We opened the 2009 Les Saumades, an almost all-Grenache bottling.  When it first arrived in the store, it was a delicious, but very fruit-forward style of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.  Pretty and accessible, but maybe not as complex as some of the other Chateauneuf-du-Papes we carry.

Now, it is all grown-up!  Les Saumades is much grippier, earthier, with much more savory, black olive-scented depth.  That gorgeous fruit is still there, but there is so much more going on – we couldn’t believe it!  As Doug and I swirled and sipped and our eyes widened, Olivier just looked at us with a knowing smirk, as though he knew this would happen all along, and he was just waiting for us to figure it out.  Spending decades tasting through France will do that for you!

This is why buying a half-case or case of the same wine is a great way to learn about how wine ages, and at what stage you personally like to drink it.  Every year or so you can revisit it, and see how it’s doing.  It may be better or worse than the last time you had it, but you’ll always learn something.

And sometimes, you’ll get a wonderful surprise, just like we did!

An Incredible Evening of Burgundy at 2941

Each year, we organize a pull-out-all-the-stops Burgundy dinner to celebrate one or more of the very special producers we work with.  This year, for the first time, we had it at 2941 to feature the wines of Domaine Thibert and Lamy Pillot, and a memorable night it was!

Wines from one of the Macon’s best, Domaine Thibert, kicked off the evening.  With a series of delectable passed hors d’oeuvres, we enjoyed the 2011 Vielles Vignes.  It struck just the right balance between richness and freshness – the perfect aperitif wine.  It was tough to pick a favorite pre-dinner snack, but the zucchini fritters won out by a narrow margin.  Zucchini and mint are both excellent partners to this wine – something to keep in mind at the farmers’ market this weekend!

With a beautiful piece of poached salmon, we had two different vintages of Dom Thibert Pouilly Fuisse Les Champs: 2007 and 2010.  The 2007 was all unctuous richness, while the 2010 was showing only a fraction of its true potential.  While the 2010 was great against the dense salmon, the 2007 was what really had everyone talking.  One to drink now, and one to cellar – a perfect pair!

With crispy crab wrapped in pastry and delicately scented with vanilla, we moved onto the wines of Lamy-Pillot.  Dueling Chassagne-Montrachets complemented this course: the 2011 Pot Bois, and the 2010 1er Cru Caillerets.  Both wines had the richness and power to stand up to the crab and vanilla flavors, where many wines would have turned thin and acrid.

Squab with some delicious gnocchi, perfectly crisped, was served with the final two wines, a pair of reds from Lamy-Pillot.  The 2009 St. Aubin Rouge had the chalky minerality and toothsome tannins that remind you that some Pinot Noirs really can pair with steak!  The Chassagne-Montrachet Rouge Clos St. Jean 2009 showed off the fleshy ripeness of the 2009 vintage in a flattering, elegant way.  Full of dark, sappy fruit, this wine defied the reputation that Chassagne rouge has for sometimes being a bit thin or lacking in fruit.

A light  (mercifully!) goat cheese panna cotta finished the evening, but we couldn’t leave before Olivier and Daniel Cadot of Lamy-Pillot led us all in a traditional Burgundian song.

Thanks to the hard work of sommelier Jonathan Schuyler and chef Bertrand Chemel of 2941 for their impeccable food and service, to Olivier Daubresse for bringing Christophe Thibert of Domaine Thibert and Daniel Cadot of Lamy-Pillot to us for this special evening, and to Lauren Rittermann for her gorgeous photos.

Digging Deeper: Rosé

This weekend’s rosé festival got us thinking about the history of our favorite seasonal wine.  It’s such a fun style that it’s easy to just gulp away without much thought (not that we discourage this, by the way), but the story of rosé is actually pretty interesting!

One of our favorite things about the beginning of rosé season is admiring its many different shades of pink.  Grape varietal accounts for some of this, but a lot of the color variation comes from the winemaking method used.  There are three main methods.  In the Skin contact method, the juice sits with the skins of the red grapes for 1-3 days before it’s pressed and the skins are removed, is usually used when the grapes are only being used for rosé.  In the saignée method (From the French “to bleed”), pale pink juice is ‘bled’ from the grapes before they go into tanks.  This method produces both rosé, and makes a more concentrated, darker red wine from the remaining juice.  The third method is blending, which is pretty self-explanatory: a small amount of red wine is blended into white wine to give it a pink color.  Most wine regions don’t allow this practice, but it is allowed in Champagne.  Here are a few other fun facts to help you think pink!

Ancient Roots.  Though rosé, especially dry rosé, is relatively new in terms of popularity here in the US, it’s actually one of the more ancient styles of wine.  Back before more powerful presses were created and grapes were stomped by foot (or hand), the resulting wines were pretty light, and looked more like what we think of as a rosé color.  Even after better presses were invented, in Ancient Greece and Rome, lighter wines were considered more desirable.  Bordeaux’s wines done in this style were especially prized, while darker, more robust wines were considered coarse and inferior.

A Happy Accident.  We all know about the White Zinfandel craze – but whose bright idea was it?  Like chocolate chip cookies, White Zin was invented by accident.  In 1975 Sutter Home’s Bob Trinchero had been making a White Zinfandel that really did look and taste almost like a white wine.  One year, while making this still “blanc de noirs,” if you will, he had a stuck fermentation that he just couldn’t fix.  He set the wine aside, and upon tasting it later, decided to sell it, even though it was sweeter and pinker than he intended.

This cellar disaster took off in a big way, and White Zinfandel and the various off-dry ‘blush’ styles it inspired are still popular, although not as popular as they once were.  As much as we like to roll our eyes at White Zinfandel, its popularity did get a lot of people drinking wine who might not have otherwise tried it, and at least some of those people probably ended up being wine lovers and graduating to more classic styles.  The White Zinfandel craze also preserved old, bush-trained Zinfandel vines that date back to the 19th century and would have otherwise been ripped up to plant Cabernet or Merlot.

The Classic.  Ah, Provence.  Just the name makes you want to hop on a plane and turn your life into a passage from a Peter Mayle novel in which the most strenuous part of your day is throwing on a linen blazer to head down to the local cafe on your scooter and enjoy a glass of pale pink, crisp, refreshing Provençal rosé.  These fantasies always involve linen and designer sunglasses in my mind…

Wine was first made in France in Provence, and today over 75 percent of its output is rosé.  Most is made under the Cotes de Provence AOC, and the approved grapes for making this classic style are Cinsault, Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah, and a local variety called Tibouren.  Rosé can be made either in the saignée method or by merely pressing whole grapes to make an extremely light, salmon-colored wine.  Provençal roses tend to be very light pink compared to roses from other regions, and have a wonderful combination of fairly full body and crisp, refreshing acids.  Sometime it’s best not to mess with the classics!

What’s Your Style?  Whether you’re a fan of a classic Provençal style rose, a fuller, fruitier Spanish, or something in between, rosé goes with just about anything.  Lighter styles will taste almost like a white wine at first, but can be deceptively full-bodied, making them a great partner to a wide variety of foods.  Darker rosés, like the ones often made from Garnacha in Spain, will have more red fruit flavors, and can be very ripe, so that they almost taste sweet for a moment before they finish crisp and dry.  Wines like this are great with barbecue and other pork dishes.  Most importantly, rose is almost always good by itself on a sunny day, making it the perfect partner to spring and summer!

An Evening With Shane Finley

“It takes a lot of beer to make great wine”

When I moved to Napa Valley in 2010 to learn about wine, I stumbled into a great part-time job at a St. Helena wine shop. Just as we do here at Chain Bridge Cellars, we gave free tastings Friday afternoons, but they were a little different. Because we had winemakers for neighbors, they poured for us, and as the newest and least experienced employee, I usually got the glassware and wine ready for the tasting.

Early on, a coworker asked me to run to the nearby Safeway to pick up beer. “For the winemaker – he likes Trumer or another nice, crisp Pilsner,” he said. Now, Jeff had a good sense of humor, so at first I thought he was having a little fun with me.  “Really?” I asked. “For the … winemaker?”

“Of course!” he said, looking at me as though I was even more clueless than he had originally thought. Turns out the saying “it takes a lot of beer to make great wine” exists for a reason, and I always kept the fridge stocked for tasting days. Every winemaker had their favorites, but they all wanted something crisp and unpretentious to sip while pouring and schmoozing, even (especially, actually) the ones making $100+ Cabernet.

Shane Finley is no different. When he almost sheepishly asked if he could have a beer as we were cleaning up from the tasting at the end of the night, it took me right back to those Friday night tastings in St. Helena.

A name like Kosta Browne usually gets everyone’s attention, but there is more to Shane Finley than a few famous names on his resume (or his love of beer!). Like many of us in the wine industry, he is a refugee from a much more mainstream career – in his case as an insurance agent. In his mid-20s, having caught the wine bug, he quit his job in Manhattan to be a harvest intern and learn how to make wine. That he did, working harvests in California with Copain winery as well as at Domaine Pierre Gaillard in the Northern Rhone. When he agreed to come to our store to lead a tasting for the second year in a row, we were thrilled, and we were even more thrilled with how beautifully the wines showed.

We started the evening with a splash of his Grenache Blanc, an unusual grape for California, but part of a growing movement we’re seeing there towards alternatives to the usual Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs. From Vermentino to Trousseau Gris, we’re thrilled with all this variety, and are excited that wines like this are finally making it out of the state! Shane’s Grenache Blanc has the high-toned, lemony snap of a great Picpoul de Pinet, but with much more ripeness and sophistication.

Then it was on to the Ma Fille Rose, named for Shane’s daughter. Refreshing and fun to drink, this is the kind of wine that gets guzzled first at parties, no matter what other impressive bottles are available.

Though his current day job at Lynmar has him making lots of Pinot Noir, he only makes one, The Charm, under his own label. The name is a nod to his Irish heritage, and a charming, ripe, unctuous Pinot it is.

Dueling Syrahs ended our tasting, both showing a different side of Shane’s approach to this classic and sometimes unappreciated grape.  His time in the Rhone inspired him to work with it, and his “The Villain” and Jemrose Syrahs were remarkably different.

The differences between the two inspired quite a bit of discussion! The Villain showed the dark-fruited side of Syrah, and the delicious, liquorice-like flavors it can develop when fully ripe. The Jemrose Syrah showed a much earthier, grippier profile, and for many was the wine of the night. Grown in a cool area of Sonoma County, this Syrah was made with 100% whole-cluster fermentation, while the Villain only saw a portion. The additional contact with stems gave the wine fine, mouthwatering tannins that cried out for a piece of grilled lamb or steak. The cheese and charcuterie we had was delicious as usual, but for this wine, it didn’t cut it!

Thanks to Shane and the folks at Nice Legs for a wonderful, relaxed evening. We hope he decides to come back next year!

–Diane