'cross the wide Missouri

Shenandoah 2009 Zinfandel “Special Reserve” (California) – 14.5%. Kinda dull, rote, zin-by-numbers…except that it’s flatter than that, bringing charred paper and an air of complete, Kristen Stewart-like indifference to its mission. (11/11)

Pokerville? I don't even know'erville!

Karly 2009 Zinfandel Pokerville (Amador County) – 14.5%...and yes, the name means what you think; it was apparently the name of the town of Plymouth at one point during the gold rush years, and for the immediately obvious reason to anyone who thinks about leisure-time activities for a bunch of men who’ve spent weeks scratching for little more than riches and mosquitoes. (It’s kind of a shame they changed it.) Bursty fruit, as if the half-wild, half-cultivated berries are being crushed as the wine’s sipped. Or, rather, guzzled. This isn’t a sipping wine. Fruity fun. (11/11)

For he's a jolly verdelho

Tyrrell’s 2010 Verdelho (Hunter Valley) – Juicy, green, balanced, fun. I don’t think it’s meant to be any more formal than that, so it doesn’t really need more verbiage. (9/11)

Galactica

Donaldson Family "Pegasus Bay" 2007 Riesling (Waipara) – Sweet lime and grapefruit, and getting just ever so slightly nervy, which is a quality that this solid, reliable wine doesn’t achieve all that often. I don’t know if it’s just a stage or a vintage effect, but this is suddenly more interesting than it was earlier this year. There’s more here, but it’s mostly hidden in a textural monoculture right now, and time will be required to tease out those nuances. (9/11)

Arboreal Ken

Ken Forrester 2009 Chenin Blanc (Stellenbosch) – Of all the chenins I tasted in South Africa (and I tasted a lot), this was the most exciting. Not in this exact form or vintage, but in the form of an older bottle pulled as an apology for their being out of the sought-after botrytized version from this same winery. The excitement came because in a few short years the wine had veered sharply in a Loire-ward direction, developing wax, quinine, and chalk notes that I hadn’t seen in anyone else’s chenins. Now, to be fair, I didn’t taste many more with any age whatsoever, but as the two dominant methods of chenin blanc production in the country are fresh-’n’-fruity-’n’-cheap or “seriously” oaked (a terrible idea, I might add, though Ken Forrester’s “FMC” version is the least offensive of the offensive lot), I certainly don’t expect to see it very often. That said, after I tasted and liked the aged version, I realized I hadn’t paid much attention to its younger form.

So here it is, and I’ve encountered it a lot since that visit to Stellenbosch. I wouldn’t say it’s clear that there’s a bright and complex future for the wine from its initial notions, but one can at least see how that future develops. There’s a restraint and subtlety to the wine not often found in the area’s chenin blancs (or white wines in general), a fine structure, and – I think this is where the key difference lies – a gravelly texture to the wine that I think heralds the organoleptic minerality to come. It’s very appealing in its youth, but I think youthful guzzling is what the same winery’s “Petit” bottling is for. Put this one away for a while. I think you won’t regret it, if past performance is any indicator. (8/11)

I Felton itch

Felton Road 2007 Pinot Noir (Central Otago) – I don’t know if the expanding range of single-site pinots being produced at Felton Road are changing the nature of the basic wine or not, but it seems a little simpler than I remember. Simpler, but fuller, so there’s a tradeoff in both good and less good ways. Here is the more familiar plum, beet, orange peel of the Central Otago, without the poise that the entire range used to show, but with more generosity. It’s quite tasty, whatever the circumstances of its birth. (8/11)

The middle of the back

Mittelbach 2010 Zweigelt Rosé (Lower Austria) – Rose petal, tart wild strawberry not entirely free of greenness, blushing hues and tones. And yet, icy despite the blush. Simple, with stirrings of prettiness. (7/11)

Cylons

Costières & Soleil “Sélectionné par Laurence Féraud” 2009 Vin de Table “Plan Pégau” (Rhône) – Even more structured and manly than usual, which makes me wonder if the non-Rhône-traditional grape component of this wine has been upped. Dusty, a bit tarry, and hazy with blackened fruit. The ideal match might be mastodon. (7/11)

The Forrester for the treeser

Ken Forrester “Petit” 2009 Chenin Blanc (Stellenbosch) – Sunfruit, sweet white peach, smooth-textured and round. Such a pretty little wine, ideal for crowds (especially crowds on a budget). (7/11)

Ernie Bock

Dr. Fischer 2008 Ockfener Bockstein Riesling 01 09 (Saar) – Incredibly dull. There’s an initial tinge of reduction, but when that passes – which it does fairly easily – there’s just nothing aside from riesling generalities and Germanic assumptions. Perhaps a bad bottle? I’ve had few outstanding wines from this house, of late, but I’ve rarely had one that was just so void. (7/11)

Nier or far

GA Schneider 2007 Niersteiner Riesling 03 08 (Rheinhessen) – Premature encreamulation. Short and gasaholic. And…scene. (7/11)

Rabbit-proof wine

Rabbit Ranch 2007 Pinot Noir (Central Otago) – Powerfully-concentrated neutron fruit, jammy and over-polished. Just too much. Those who insist that “wine is all about fruit, because grapes are fruit” will find all the mindless onanism here that they could ever want. (7/11)

Renny

Petaluma 2006 Riesling Hanlin Hill (Clare Valley) – A little reduced, but this dissipates after a reasonable amount of time, lifting the haze over limestone and green grapefruit. Sharp and very – perhaps overly – present, with an acid tongue (in more than one sense of the phrase). Good, if unduly biting. (6/11)

I'm Nashik of Araby

Sula 2010 Chenin Blanc (Nashik) – I’ve watched this particular bottling over seven vintages now, which is kinda fun to say about an Indian wine. Interestingly, while it has gotten cleaner over the years, it has not necessarily gotten better, which might indicate that it’s coming up against some sort of externally-imposed limit. Maybe vine age, maybe terroir, maybe something else. It’s still a bright, light-fruited quaff, still tastes less like chenin (either the Loire style or the fruit-blast South African style) than something more innocuous, still has just-bright-enough acidity, and still goes pretty much nowhere on the finish. In other words, its primary quality remains a delight at drinking a pleasant wine from India. (3/11)

Taking leave of

Sainsbury’s Cabernet Sauvignon (Valle Central) – Why the language switch for the appellation between this and the sauvignon blanc, I don’t know. I’m sure some focus group, somewhere, knows the answer. Sweet green pepper, synthetic and sticky fruit. I rarely think the cabernets are ideal candidates for cellar-dwelling price points, and sauvignon even less so than franc. This wine demonstrates why. An underripe festival of pyrazines would be one thing, but to add the sticky, plastic sugar element just to make things “more palatable” is triply wretched. No bargain at any cost. (3/11)

Marching in

Sainsbury’s Sauvignon Blanc (Central Valley) – A whole orchard full of grapefruit, lemon, lime, with just a hint of pith and bitterness. Good flavor for the money. (3/11)

Ride UPS

Mount Brown 2010 Sauvignon Blanc (Waipara) – Mineral-driven, which is to the good, with little tropicality and also no overt pyrazines. Unfortunately, lacking either and not having aught other than some rocks in their place, it’s wan. There could, and should, be more. I suppose I’d be kinder were this made from a less aggressive grape, but while I adore mineral qualities in my sauvignon blanc, it’s a grape that I think should bring some of its own expressiveness to the mix. Here, it doesn’t. (2/11)

Sometimes, it's just a malbec

Cigar Box 2009 Malbec “Reserve” (Argentina) – The name doesn’t really ,ie, in that there’s a healthy whack of tobacco herein. But mostly, it’s about opacity for the sake of opacity, rather than in service of/consort with other elements. Big, big, big. (2/11)

Tenrazan to date my daughter

Igarashi Syuzo “Tenrazan” Junmai Daiginjyo Sake (Japan) – 500 ml. “Medium-dry” says the bottle, and it certainly is, but as is somewhat typical (at least in my limited experience with sake) there’s as much of a textural feeling of sweetness from the alcohol as there is from any residual sugar. What’s nice here is that the alcohol, so often an incessant bagpipe drone in sake, is completely integrated and well-balanced; you’ll know it not by the taste, but by the headache the next morning. So, what else? White peaches and syrup-infused pears, and rather a lot of both. Almost overwhelmingly fruity, in fact. There’s also…well, this is a little on the obscure and dated side, but a long while ago there was a sugar-substitute (made from ever-beloved saccharine) that came in the form of a clear liquid. This tastes like that. And I suspect it’s not lost on anyone, whether or not they’ve tried the long-forgotten product of which I’m speaking, that to make this comparison isn’t exactly a compliment. I want to like this more than I do, due to its supple form, but I feel like I’m drinking a simulacrum of sweetened fruit. (11/10)

Expensive balls

Karl Joh. Molitor 2008 Hattenheimer Riesling Spätlese 0013 09 (Rheingau) – Heavy, sticky (this feels far sweeter than it probably is), ponderous, dull. Really uninteresting. (10/10)