Don's Gillette's Wine Blog
Musings from our store's resident wine guru
Don has over thirty years experience in the wine industry. For the last eighteen years his attention has been focused on the growing local industry. Don has a large following of customers who search out his opinions (never in short supply!) on new releases and on what's currently most distinctive on our shelves. Others seek his insights on wineries and trends that are still under the radar. Read Don's full bio...
Email Don directly with your wine-related questions.
Not an Accident -- Part One
Each fall, San Francisco hotels are packed from late August through much of October. The streets are even busier, as the locals tend to stick around too. It is not an accident.
This year, the first weekend of October offered the following entertainment choices: Fleet Week (the chance to board a naval vessel and chat with its crew); the Blue Angels (a three-day aerial display); the grape harvest (Napa, Sonoma, Santa Cruz and other spots are easy day-trips); the Columbus Day Parade; and various outdoor festivities designed to exploit the typically spectacular Fall weather.
"What to do/where to go" is a conscious decision here in the Fall, as one will always have to miss some other available entertainment. Working Saturday, October 6th, I chose to spend Friday and Sunday at the Not Strictly Bluegrass Festival. This annual treasure, offering about 40 world-class acts, is a free three-day series of concerts held in the acoustically perfect meadows of Golden Gate Park. During the Sunday concert, the temperature was seventy-three degrees, under a perfect blue sky.
Wednesday found me, along with co-worker James Butler and my friend, Pattie, driving to Napa Valley and particularly toward Joseph Phelps Winery. Phelps has released their 2004 Insignia, which can only be sampled at the winery. '04 produced the smallest quantity of this bottling in recent memory and stores are being offered almost none to sell.
I wanted to use the wine in our next "High Rollers Cab Club" package in order to spread the supply around (assuming its quality was up to its advance notices), but our allocation was to be less than twenty percent of last years, so we had been calling-in favors, trying to assemble enough to make the Club box possible.
A Bubble-induced Attitude Adjustment
We stopped on the way, at Domaine Carneros, for an attitude adjustment. This is a popular first stop for everyone I know. Sipping sparkling wine and nibbling fruit and fine cheeses in the clear morning air, as Red Tail hawks soar above the vineyards, will always improve the outlook.
Their new wines are lovely too, with the upcoming "2001 Le Reve" a standout. The 2003 Brut was long and very tasty. The best news is that their wonderful and notably under-priced "Late Disgourged" bottling, thus far available exclusively from the winery, will be given to retailers next year.
Psychologically prepared, we headed thirty minutes north to Joseph Phelps, to find out how good the Insignia was. Later, we stood under the winery eaves and chatted about the upcoming baseball playoffs and watched a gentle rain while sipping through the Phelps lineup and working to maintain our amiable mood. We were startled out of our reverie however, when the Insignia, with its gorgeous ruby color, was poured.
The wine hit me in three stages. The aroma, after just a moment of youthful reserve, surged forth as a deep and perfectly focused cascade of darkly sweet cherries, Cassis, Mr. Lincoln roses, violets and vanilla cream. There was no reserve at all to the flavors, an explosion of red plum, red raspberry, sweet red cherry and red rose, seamlessly joined to luxuriously rich undercurrents of vanilla, baking spice, roasted grain and earth. The finish was wonderfully fruity, polished and supple, and seemed to linger for minutes.
Even more unexpected, after the dramatically up-front fruit, was the wines "grip." This wine, for all its enormous early appeal, has a tannic spine that suggests years of further improvement.
I have sold every Insignia, since the 1974. There have been many famous ones, and some truly great ones, but I believe that the most consistently fruity and delicious was the 1994. Those who own some of that wine know that the 1994 was spectacular the week it was released and is great at this moment, with never a weak bottle in-between. Believe it or not, the 2004 would, at this point, appear to be its clone.
Part two next week, in which we re-taste a wine of near Insignia quality, at a quarter of its price...