TN: A birthday week's worth of wines

For her birthday, Jean wanted to take a week's vacation in a rented house on the Eastern Shore of Lake Michigan, a three hour trip from our house. Since we cooked all but one night, we took along a few wines from home. What follows is a compendium of notes on those wines:

1997 Storybook Mountain "Eastern Exposures" Zinfandel (14.3% ABV) nose: pencil lead, raspberry palate: restrained, structured, deep raspberry fruit, clean finish

What a refreshing Zin! This wine had no shortage of fruit, yet was never heavy or over the top. The alcohol level also reflects that restraint. The 5-10% Viognier isn't at all apparent, but might add something to the nose. Storybook Mtn is one of the 3-4 producers of Zin I think most highly of. It was a great choice to accompany a hastily broiled rack of lamb for our first dinner.

1999 Saintsbury Reserve Pinot Noir (Carneros) nose: pure, red fruit, smoke, minerals palate: velvety smooth, plush, solidly fruity, medium body, good acidity

Again, a solid winner from a favorite producer. This was classic Pinot Noir in every respect. It had plenty of depth without any danger of being overextracted. I didn't get the alcohol level, but I'd guess that it was 13-14%. Just lovely, and a great match with the mesquite-smoked chicken made on their gas grill.

1999 Ravenswood Barricia Zinfandel nose: tart berry fruit, briery, pepper palate: jammy berry fruit, a bit soft, pepper and tar

Although this was classic Zin in its flavors, it was just outclassed by the Storybook Mtn. Still, it was a great paean to the Ravenwood Zins of old, and a decent accompaniment to the hickory-smoked, spice rubbed "Western" ribs, again made experimentally on their gas grill (digression: we have a smoker at home that uses charcoal or wood, so adjusting to a high tech gas grill took some doing -- could I get indirect heat by not igniting the back burner? What temperature setting corresponds to slow smoking? Amazingly, what I did worked fairly well)

2003 "The Crossings" Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough nose: initally, a bit of iodine/seaweed, followed by tropical fruit and gooseberry palate: good acidity, citrus fruit, a hint of oxidation, tropical fruit

This wine was from a screwcapped bottle, and purchased recently at our local fine wine exporium as I was curious about its aging, and I recalled Dale's positive reviews on it. As a an experiment, I wanted to see how well it had aged under screwcap, and the answer was "pretty damn well." Even Jean, who really hates oxidative notes in white wine, liked this one and it went very well with the pan-fried walleye (pike perch IIRC for the Euro crowd) we had for dinner.

2006 Babich Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc nose: floral, tropical fruit, minerals, grapefruit palate: pretty close to the nose, more emphasis on the grapefruit

Yes, I've written about this before. It's still yummy. It's just got more going on in the nose than 90% of the Marlborough SBs that I taste. Really nice and very good QPR at $12-13.

2006 Drylands Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc nose: grapefruit and minerals palate: simple, grapefruit, good acidity

After the Babich, this was a bit of a letdown. Perfectly adequate, but unexeciting. It went well enough with the shrimp cocktail that began Jean's birthday dinner. (Second digression: you'd think that since we were staying on the shore of one of the Great Lakes that there'd be a fair supply of fish in the local stores -- wrongo! In an otherwise decent supermarket, all the fish was frozen seafood, most of it breaded and fried. We had to drive 20 miles to get the walleye and the shrimp, purchased locally, were frozen pre-cooked shrimp from Thailand)

1989 Ch. Montrose St. Estephe nose: dark plummy fruit, pencil lead, slightly herbal palate: medium-full body, modest acidity, quite primary, dark fruit, fine grained tannins

Jean served this wine blind to me and I was asked to guess year, grape, region. My guess was a California Cabernet from '94-'95. Not too close, but in retrospect not a bad characterization of this wine. It didn't show much that really screamed "Bordeaux" and even after several hours open it was still mostly about fruit with little secondary development. Quite nice, but not what I look for in Bordeaux as a rule.

2005 Joseph Drouhin St. Veran nose: minerals, pineapple, a hint of oak palate: medium body, crisp, pineapple, good acidity

I bought this to see what a good producer like Drouhin could do in a good year like '05 in a region like St. Veran. This is Chardonnay from the Beaujolais region, and as such is a cheap and potentially good white Burgundy. In this case, I was quite pleased. It had some of the character I look for in Chablis, without the lemony fruit that I usually find there. It was a bit rounder than Chablis but that might reflect year as much as region. Very nice for $13 and a decent match to my thrown-together linguine with white clam sauce for our final dinner.

All in all, a good bunch of wines (4 red, 4 white, 4 from the cellar, 4 from the store) and a fun week. Of the lot, my two favorites were probably the Storybook Mountain Zin and the Drouhin St. Veran, but all the wines were a pleasure to drink.

Mark Lipton