The Spur 2008, Murrieta's Well

$17.99

I asked a local sommelier for something new and interesting in a red wine within the $15-20 range. One of the recommendations was The Spur from Murrieta’s Well in Livermore Valley, way out in the East Bay. Here are the basics, from the web site:

54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Petit Verdot, 10% Petite Sirah, 9% Cabernet Franc, 4% Malbec
Accolades
Silver, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, January 2011 (listed there at $24.99)
Silver Medal, International Wine and Spirit Competition, May 2011
This wine displays enticing aromas and flavors of blackberry and blueberry, with hints of chocolate, anise, graham, and toasted oak. Mature tannins and balanced acidity leads to a smooth, lingering finish.

I’m never able to express the details of flavor as most oenophiles do, and I sometimes am not in agreement with those I read. This wine is soft on the tannins and has a “medium acidity,” at least insofar as it has a medium degree of fruitiness. In spite of being more than half cabernet, it has distinct marmelade notes reminiscent of a malbec, which is only present at 4%. Berry flavors come in clearly, and the “hints of chocolate, anise, graham, and toasted oak” give it a rather non-cabernet quality, which was as appealing as it was puzzling.

Recommended

This is a great wine if you’re in the mood for something off the beaten path at a reasonable price point. I was pleased with it. Sandra found it enjoyable as well, even in direct comparison with a 2004 Reignac bordeaux.

In the past few years the pairing of chocolate and (usually red) wine has caught on like a fad. Surely by now most of you have tried it, and may even have some favorite specific combinations. Personally, I enjoy dark chocolate with something dark and rich like a cabernet or a full bodied merlot.
Recently, I had the opportunity to try out another tasty sweet along with some red wine. There is an old-fashioned mexican candy named Queso de Tuna, which means Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit Cheese. If you are puzzled about the spanish version, I should point out that tuna (the fish) is atún in spanish, whereas tuna (at least in areas where it thrives) refers to the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, also known as Nopal. I have been eating both the fruits and nopal salads for as long as I can remember. My parents would also occasionally buy Queso de Tuna at a mexican grocery near downtown Los Angeles, but these days it is rather difficult to find. My wife recently brought a couple of generous chunks from Mexico City, where you can often find it at La Dulceria de Celaya, the greatest candy store I have ever had the pleasure to visit. They don’t have it very often, though. Most of the times I used to go there, back when I lived in El DF, they were out of it. It is very much an old-style, pre-industrial confection, and in small town markets in Mexico you can often buy hand-made batches. It only vaguely resembles cheese, just insofar as it is a chunk of something relatively soft and you cut thin slices of it to eat. The taste and texture are not like cheese, it is more of a dry-ish fruit paste.

Queso de Tuna and H3

As I mentioned earlier, I got a bottle of Columbia Crest 2008 Horse Heaven Hills Merlot, on recommendation by a recent NPR spot featuring Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. I don’t know about the chocolate covered cherry notes he and Scott Simon spoke of, but the H3 definitely was a lush, deep wine, soft and not at all flowery. My wife was somewhat ambivalent, she was expecting something jammier.
The H3 has a depth that pairs very well with chocolate, as I tried it with one of Guittard’s darker bars (their factory is only a 20 minute or so drive from us, and every afternoon the entire area around it smells intensely of chocolate). If chocolate worked so well, what about Queso de Tuna? It was fantastic with the H3, coaxing out the juicy, jammy notes that are otherwise shy to come out in that wine. I thought it was a delicious combination.

Does It Play Well With Others?

I’ve since tried it with a few other wines. An Italian montepulciano (whose name I did not record, unfortunately) seemed to clash somewhat with the Queso de Tuna’s fruity notes. Beckmen Vinyards’ 2008 Cuvee Le Bec from the Santa Ynez Valley near Santa Barbara is an interesting and affordable blend of Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, and Counoise. It is on the fruity side although not intensely so. Once again, the Queso de Tuna played friendly with it and their fruit notes complemented each other quite well. I have also paired it with a few other wines, but I must apologize for not writing down their names to mention here. They were all in a price category similar to the H3 and the Cuvee Le Bec, which are both in the $15-20 range. My subjective conclusion is that Queso de Tuna pairs well with wines whose jamminess is more latent than forthright, and it will help the wine express fruit and berry notes that might otherwise remain in the background. This is somewhat different from pairing a wine with chocolate, where the chocolate’s ability to smooth out the tannins is where much of the fun resides, along with complementing intense berry notes.
In the end, I would very much recommend trying it if you ever get your hands on some Queso de Tuna. If nothing else, it will make for curious conversation later.

Not the Merlot!

The infamous scene in the film Sideways, in which the character Miles says “I am not drinking any [effin] Merlot!” left a lasting mark in the history of wine. Merlot had become extremely popular during the previous 20 years or so, probably because it is vibrant and fruity and easy to appreciate and enjoy. The market became saturated with it, and when that happens average quality tends to suffer. Not that there aren’t any fantastic Merlots out there, of course there are. Even Miles had a special place in his twisted heart for it, which is precisely why he scorned it so.

The Stuff of Urban Legend

Merlot sales supposedly dropped as a result of the movie, although there were more conventional market dynamics at work as well. Reportedly, Pinot Noir sales increased more than Merlot sales dropped, allegedly because Miles praised Pinot throughout the film as a superior wine. It was just a case of movie goers confusing film fantasy with reality, and roughing up the hapless Merlot market in their path (or did they?). Naive wine drinkers suddenly believed Merlot was vulgar or otherwise undesirable, or so went the belief, and that Pinot Noir was the new reigning queen. Now, more than five years later, all is forgotten, and the recession is currently wreaking the most havoc by far on the industry.

Merlot is Still Merlot

It was little more than a tempest in a teapot, or rather in a wine glass. Nothing much has changed, except that a somewhat cut back production on Merlot might result in better wines for a while. Merlot is still a popular grape variety. It can be a bright, medium- to full-bodied, chocolatey, fruity, plummy wine with a higher than average sugar content, so it can end up with a higher than normal alcohol content. It is less tannic than a cabernet and this gives it a softer feel in the mouth. Nevertheless, Sideways is still tied to Merlot as a cultural meme even today, as this brief appearance of Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV) on NPR shows. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. After listening to Vaynerchuk on NPR, I went out and got myself a bottle of the Columbia Crest 2008 Horse Heaven Hills Merlot he recommended. Mmm, chocolate covered cherries! I can assure you I will enjoy it with neither guilt nor shame.

You drink red wine and later get a headache. If “later” means the morning after drinking a lot of wine, that is most likely a hangover, not a Red Wine Headache (RWH). RWH is different, with an onset often as short as 15 minutes or so. The headache may start before you are even finished sipping your first goblet!

Is it the Sulfites in the Wine?

Those who have been afflicted with RWH very often blame the sulfite content in wine, maybe because in the United States wine labels need to have the text “Contains Sulfites” on the label if the sulfite content is greater than 10 mg per liter, which is nearly always the case. The reason this conspicuous warning exists has nothing to do with headaches, but with a severe allergic reaction to sulfites shown by about 1% of the US population. Among asthma sufferers, the incidence is 5%. In any case, sulfites have never been found to cause RWH. White wines contain more sulfites than reds, by and large, and there is no White Wine Headache syndrome to speak of.

A Mix of Causes

To make a long story short, the cause(s) of RWH are not well known, and there is a notorious lack of funding for such research. There are a few candidate causes, such as prostaglandin release, sensitivity to the different tannins in red wines, and histamine intolerance. Histamine intolerance has been tested and no correlation between histamine content in wine and symptoms of intolerance were found. Aspirin and ibuprofen inhibit the relase of prostaglandins, and at least one researcher seems to have found that they can prevent RWH (H. Kaufman and D. Starr, Prevention of the Red Wine Headache (RWH); A Blind Controlled Study. In New Advances in Headache Research, 2nd edition, ed. F. Clifford Rose. Smith-Gordon, 1991; not available online, unfortunately). The evidence for tannins as a cause is somewhat murkier.

Do Your Homework

As with many things in life, if you suffer from RWH either occasionally or frequently, the only solution is to do some homework. Keep track of the labels, vintages, and wine varieties of the wine you drink and note whether you get RWH or not. Keep a little notebook somewhere or track it on your cell phone. Simple conclusion: stick with the wines that are safe for you.

Everybody talks about the good old days. Now they are right at your fingertips. You don’t even need to get out of your seat. Here are some wine books that are out of copyright, so you are free to download them, copy them, print them, give them away, sell them, use them in whole or in part in your own work, etc. Sounds crazy, right? Well it isn’t. That’s the way copyright is supposed to work, but that’s another story.

Free Wine Books

A good place to find free digital stuff is Archive.org, who have kindly aggregated an impressive collection of public domain sources. For all you wine buffs out there, here are some pre-warmed search results. Be sure to double-check and make sure that the works are indeed off copyright. You may also want to vary the search keywords, you may well find a few gems we’ve missed.

American Libraries

The American Libraries has close to a million and a half items available. Here are some of their wine books.

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg has a more modest twenty-thousand-some-odd items in their collection, along with this handful of wine related entries. They have a lot of other things, though.

Canadian Libraries

The Canadian Libraries collection has about two million free digital texts, but only a relative few on wine.

Universal Library

The Universal Library, sometimes called the Million Books Project, has surprisingly few wine texts.

Community Books

The Community Books collection has a variety of wine texts, although the search results aren’t exactly what you would expect.

Google ebookstore

The controversial Google ebookstore isn’t as free and easy as Archive.org, but they do have free wine-related texts available.

So there you have it. An odd assortment, but quite a bit more than you will probably ever be able to read through on your own. Many of the viticultural and oenological techniques you will find are probably obsolete, but you will most certainly find some pearls of knowledge and history if you look carefully.

Red wine is grape wine made from grapes with skins that have a reddish, violet, or even bluish color. The intense colors in red wines come from the pigments in the grape skins. The grape pulp, where the juice comes from, is generally not red but is either almost colorless, yellowish, or even greenish, just like the juice from grapes destined to produce white wine. Sometimes these grapes are processed in such a way as to minimize contact between the skins and the juice as the grapes are pressed, producing white or rosé wines with more delicate colors. White Zinfandel and Champagne are examples of that technique. By and large, though, red grapes are used to make red wine by allowing the juice to macerate with the colored skins and leech out the pigment and other flavor components. Red wines come in a spectrum of colors from ruby red to garnet, from elegantly pale to inky dark.

Wine Structure

One of the major components that comes out of the skins, as well as from stems and seeds (“pips”) is tannin. Tannin is actually a family of chemical compounds that provide a variety of astringent sensations on the tongue and palate, mainly in the middle-rear of the tongue, that are variously described as grip, firmness, or dryness. Black tea also contains tannins, which produce similar taste sensations. These can be modulated by adding milk to the tea, which softens the tannins’ effects in the mouth. Cheese can have the same effect on strongly tannic wines, softening their effects as well. Oak wood also contains its own kinds of tannin, and aging wines in oak can add yet another spectrum of tannic effects to the wine. Different grape varieties have different amounts and types of tannins, and the growing conditions during any given growing season will also change the mix, causing a nearly infinite variety of tannic effects in the wines.
Tannin is one of the four components of a wine that make up its structure: acidity, alcohol content, sweetness, and tannin. These are primarily perceived on the tongue and palate, as compared with a wine’s flavors and aromas which are sensed very strongly in the nose as well. The structure of a wine provides a sensation of silkiness, chewiness, thickness, thinness, velvetiness and other sensations of texture on the tongue. The infinite variability of wine structure, even in wines made with the same grape variety but in different regions, vineyards, or even grapes from different parts of the same vineyard is what makes every red wine unique. Lots of acidity and tannin makes a wine firm or crisp, as opposed to soft or smooth when they are less dominant. Acidity and tannin are different, however. Acidity seems juicier and makes one’s mouth water a bit after the wine is gone. Tannin feels rougher, and leaves a sensation of dryness. There is a mouth feel wheel available that describes many of these sensations.
Often the terms light-, medium-, or full-bodied are used to describe a wine. These are hazy terms, but most people intuitively understand them when they taste a wine. Full-bodied wines are intensely aromatic and flavorful, seemingly filling one’s mouth with weight. Light-bodied wines are more diaphanous and delicate, flowing across the palate much more gently.

Wine Aroma

Here is where oenology provides us with a rich and baffling array of terms that try to describe the limitless subtlety of aroma and flavor, the components which are perceived by the nose at least as much as the palate if not more. Here are some of the main families of aroma:
Floral Terpene, Linalool, Jasmine, Rose, Violet, Geranium
Spicy Cinnamon, Cloves, Black Pepper, Licorice/Anise, Mint
Fruity Citrus (Grapefruit, Lemon, Orange), Berry (Blackberry, Raspberry, Strawberry, Blackcurrant), Tree Fruit (Cherry, Apricot, Peach, Pear, Apple), Tropical Fruit (Pineapple, Melon, Banana), Estery (Artificial Fruit), Dried Fruit (Strawberry Jam, Raisin, Prune, Fig), Labrusca (Methyl Anthranilate)
Vegetative Fresh (Stemmy, Grass/Cut, Green Bell Pepper, Eucalyptus), Dried (Hay/Straw, Tea), Canned/Cooked (Green Beans, Asparagus, Green Olive, Black Olive, Artichoke)
Earthy Earthy (Dusty, Mushroom, Concrete, Earthy), Moldy (Musty, Moldy cooperage, Moldy cork)
Chemical Petroleum (Tar, Plastic, Kerosene, Diesel), Sulfur (Rubbery, Hydrogen sulfide, Mercaptan, Onion, Garlic, Skunk, Cabbage, Burnt Match, Wet Wool/Wet Dog), Papery (Filter Pad, Wet Cardboard, Wet Paper), Pungent (Ethyl Acetate, Acetic Acid, Ethanol, Sulfur Dioxide ), Other (Fishy, Soapy, Sorbate, Fusel alcohol)
Oxidized Oxidized (Acetaldehyde)
Wood Phenolic (Phenol, Vanilla), Resinous (Pine, Cedar, Oak)
Caramelized Caramel (Honey, Butterscotch, Buttery, Soy Sauce, Chocolate, Molasses), Burned (Burnt Toast, Smoky)
Microbiological Yeasty (Flor-Yeast, Leesy), Lactic (Sauerkraut, Butyric Acid, Sweaty, Lactic acid), Other (Horsy)
These categories make up the aroma wheel that describes them.

This barely scratches the surface. If you are a wine newbie and want a crash course, here are some good places to start: