Cellar Notes
By Condé Cox
While Oregonians have (understandably) acquired a taste for high-quality pinot noir, our neighbors south of the border in California are a step ahead when it comes to the brawnier worlds of cabernet sauvignon and zinfandel.
One California winery, Ridge Vineyards, makes a fine assortment of wines that are widely distributed in Portland—and that are far more food-friendly than most California wines. One reason for this is that Ridge’s winemakers refuse to use harsh filters on their wines or to add fancy fruit-enhancement products (such as the concentrated unfermented grape juice that many California winemakers employ). The resulting wines avoid those artificially dark, monotonous flavors that too often afflict American/California varieties, and that instead delicately express the unique time and place of their origin. —Condé Cox
|
2007 Napa Valley 'York Creek' Zinfandel $30 An intensely concentrated wine made from vines on Spring Mountain, an east-facing hillside high above the valley floor. Flavors of brambly dark berries, with complex layers not usually found in zinfandel-based wines. |
2008 Sonomoa County 'Three Valleys' Zinfandel $22 Not as complex as the ‘York Creek’ and a little less intense, but nonetheless an outstanding and richly textured expression of the dark briar fruit flavors typical of old-vine zinfandel. |
2006 'Monte Bello' Cabernet Sauvignon $150 ‘Monte Bello’ is the flag-ship cabernet not only for Ridge Vineyards, but also for California and, actually, the whole country. The 2006 vintage is a concentrated expression of blackcurrant and blackberry flavors—this is a near-perfect wine for that once-in-a-decade meal with amazing length, fine balance, and layers of complexity. |
Published: November 2010
Add a Comment
We retain the right to remove comments containing personal attacks or excessive profanity, and comments unrelated to the editorial content.