Wine & Dine

Paul Gregutt
Wine Adviser

Q. We would like to try some Washington syrah, but they seem so expensive. Can you recommend something good and affordable?
A. Syrahs in Washington are usually priced in the $25 to $40 range. This is a function of the cost of production. Syrah grapes are in demand, and wineries pay top dollar, especially for older vines from the best vineyards. Usually case quantities for any given syrah are quite small, so selling them at a premium price is a smart business decision. And in truth, syrahs from California and Australia of comparable quality are comparably priced.
That said, I am pleased to find that Ste. Michelle Wine Estates has released two different syrahs under the Columbia Crest label that are very modestly priced. They are labeled shiraz (the Australian name for syrah) for inscrutable marketing reasons, but are nonetheless true-to-varietal Washington syrahs. The 2004 Columbia Crest Two Vines Shiraz lists for $8 and can often be found for even less. It’s a solid effort, unbeatable for the price. The 2003 Columbia Crest Grand Estates Shiraz lists for $11 and is worth every bit of the extra dollars. Wild berries, graphite and spices light this one up. Both wines are widely available.
Paul Gregutt, author of “of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine Adviser
At my recent Taste Washington seminar, a half dozen small, start-up wineries - dubbed Tiny Titans - shared their stories. If there were a video series it might be called “Wines Gone Wild” or something like that. The truth is that starting a small winery is one of the most difficult business challenges that anyone could undertake. But when they succeed, the satisfaction that follows is commensurate with the obstacles overcome.
There are Tiny Titans in other aspects of the wine business as well. Perhaps the least known are the small, owner-operated distributors. They are the middle tier of the three-tier system mandated in Washington state. Distributors purchase wines from producers and importers, clear them (called posting) with the Washington State Liquor Control Board, and sell them to retailers - wine shops and grocery wine departments, restaurants and other properly licensed vendors.
In much of the country, the distribution of alcohol is controlled by a handful of huge companies. But here in Seattle, small distributors proliferate like spring mushrooms. The competition is intense. Most retailers require an appointment before they will even talk to a distributor. Just getting in the door is hard enough; but then you actually have to sell wine to someone who probably turns down nine out of every 10 bottles offered.
Among your competitors are many of this state’s boutique wineries, of which there are hundreds. They are legally allowed, and often encouraged, to bypass the three-tier system altogether and sell directly to both retailers and consumers.
The big wholesalers are here also, and they control the majority of the lucrative placements - the high volume brands that go into the chain store wine departments. And just in case you still think there’s a fighting chance to succeed, please note that the entire system is under review by the courts, as a result of an ongoing Costco lawsuit that questions many of the current regulations, which date back to the end of Prohibition.
Into such treacherous waters stepped Matt Mabus in 2003. Mabus certainly knew what he was up against. He had already established himself as a wine retailer, opening West Seattle Cellars (just north of the Morgan Junction) in 1995. A good wine shop from the start, West Seattle Cellars benefited from its prime location and the knowledgeable palate of its owner. Best of all, Mabus could call the shots on whom he saw and what he purchased. They came to him.
But in 2003, facing a self-proclaimed “mid-life crisis,” he started Cordon Selections. “Some people drive little red sports cars,” Mabus wryly confesses. “At Cordon we have the Red Car brand.”
It was a dream not so different from the dreams of wannabe winemakers, some of whom also started in wine sales.
“The concept,” Mabus continues, “is to bring in wines that have a ‘face’ to them. In other words, someone I can call up. I want to put good wines into good wine cellars - restaurants, wine shops and stewarded grocery stores only. We don’t sell to big box stores or most supermarkets. We want to be able to give our wineries the assurance that their wines will be given their due.”
Mabus and his business partner, Ken Avedisian, who joined Cordon last fall, are just completing the critical fifth year - a make or break time for any new business. And business is good. It supports a staff of 10 salespeople, and Cordon’s carefully chosen catalog now encompasses about 350 wineries. A small distributor is comparable, in many ways, to a small importer. The customer can see the influence of a certain palate at work. It can serve as a useful shortcut to sifting through the thousands and thousands of wines on the shelf. If you find, for example, that Cordon represents the type of wines that you enjoy, you can explore from there, by asking your retailer to suggest some of their other wines.
A good litmus test for me is always a look at which Washington wineries are in a given portfolio. At Cordon, the Washington contingent comprises about a third of the brands, and includes many of the wineries that have been profiled and praised in these pages - Balboa, Basel, Beresan, Bergevin Lane, Dunham, Dusted Valley, Fidélitas, Hightower, JM Cellars, Kyra, Long Shadows, Matthews, Waters and Wineglass Cellars.
Mabus calls Washington “the juggernaut that drives us, along with the Weygandt-Metzler portfolio.” That combination - a focused importer (in this instance one with a fine selection of French wines) and a dedicated distributor - is why Cordon has been able to compete, and grow, in such a crowded field.
“We are small, independent, and unaffiliated,” Mabus explains. “The Big Boys out there are so married to Big Brand portfolios that they can’t handle the independent mom-and-pop shops. We are here to get the handmade wines from the mom-and-pop wineries into the restaurants and wine shops owned by individuals. The reality is that this (wine) is an agricultural product that has to get to the market. It doesn’t happen by itself.”
Here are some of my favorites from the current Cordon catalog:

• Dunham 2006 Four Legged White, $20. This companion wine to Dunham’s popular Three Legged Red showcases a different dog and different grapes. Though the bottle is labeled simply as white, it is actually a Lewis vineyard Riesling, with a splash of chardonnay in the blend. Succulent with sweet fruit, buoyed by fresh acids, it’s a fine springtime sipper.
• Dusted Valley Vintners 2005 Viognier, $20. Spicy and packed with mixed citrus peel, tangerine, white peach, stone fruit, mineral and licorice. This should be a champion alongside spiced-up Thai and southeast Asian cuisine.
• Ch. Mourgues du Gres 2006 “Les Galets Rosés,” $14. This fresh, ripe rosé, from the Costieres de Nimes appellation, brings clean cranberry/strawberry flavors, bracing acid and a nice lift to the finish. It’s two-thirds syrah, and due to arrive in about a week.
• Balboa 2005 The Cat’s Meow Red Wine, $19. The blend is two-thirds cabernet sauvignon, most of the rest malbec. It was made to be sold in the winery tasting room, but a little bit has trickled into Seattle via Cordon. A clear, tangy, red fruit-laden style, with some nice flesh on its tart, acid-driven bones.
• Basel Cellars 2004 Claret, $20. Sharp flavors of bright raspberry and strawberry; lively, assertive, with acidic fruit and floral aromatics.
• Zolo 2004 Malbec, $10. A nice Argentine malbec, with leather, blackberry, black cherry, mineral and licorice. Plenty of complexity, fruit and persistence. There is also a Zolo reserve (untasted).

Pick of the week
2005 Cotes du Rhone, $10. It’s hard to resist a tangy young southern French red such as this, loaded with flavors of tart blackberry, cassis and espresso, and dusted with Provencal herb. Great for grilled foods. (Distributor: Cordon)

Paul Gregutt, author of “of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine Adviser

Q. I have a bottle of Champagne that was purchased around 1948. On the label, it says:
White Seal Moet & Chandon
Champagne Epernay-France
Brut Product of France
I can’t seem to find the year it was bottled (I’m guessing around 1948 or earlier). It has a trademark, and it looks like the trademark was registered April 19, 1887. I was wondering if you might be able to tell me if this wine has any value. And if it were opened, would it be worth drinking?
A. That is one mighty old bottle of Champagne. I am not sure about the White Seal name - perhaps a precursor to the White Star cuvée we have today? If it has no vintage date on it, you may assume that it is a blend of many vintages. If this bottle is as old as you say, the conditions under which it has been stored will be critical to determining its drinkability. British wine authority and author Michael Broadbent explains that over time the carbon dioxide bubbles tend to come out of solution and form a reservoir in the neck of the bottle. You can see this as the fill level descends down the neck. The lower the fill, the more the wine has lost its fizz. If the cork has completely failed, the gas has escaped and the wine will be flat and probably oxidized as well. Expect, writes Broadbent, “a grubby, beery endtaste.” Not what you are hoping for, I’m sure! On the other hand, if storage conditions were optimal, and the cork has held up to the passage of time, your Champagne may well resemble an old white Burgundy, with perhaps a hint of honey and length on the palate. I do not know what this bottle’s value might be, other than as a curiosity, but it would certainly be an interesting drink and I would suggest you give it a try.

Paul Gregutt, author of “of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine Adviser

I do my best to suppress the wine writer’s natural impulse to delve into wine minutiae - the technical details of vat and vineyard, bud and barrel, but once in awhile I must unloose the inner wine geek.

In this instance, the opportunity to quickly summarize an emerging wine region and its most important wines is too good to pass up.

Seattle was the first stop (earlier this month) on an eight-city showcase organized by New Zealand Winegrowers, and the event should serve as a template to any organization hoping to promote its region’s wines. In particular, the amount of useful information that was assembled for this tour made it a brilliant and pleasurable learning experience.
Although these are trade events, consumers who want to dig into the nuts and bolts of New Zealand wines should visit New Zealand Wines online, where much of this same background material is available.

I have spoken with many American winemakers who have visited and/or worked in New Zealand, and the reports are always the same - spectacular scenery, unspoiled and unique, and winemakers with a fervent desire to make their wines in a style that sets them apart from the rest of the world.

New Zealand is described in the winegrowers’ literature as a “nation of islands (that) benefits from the temperature modulating effect of the sea.” It is the land of Frodo _ a countrywhere dense, native forests and snow-capped mountains tumble down into a rugged, spectacular coastline. Its wine-growing regions span a length of 1,000 miles (north to south). Its vineyards are set in a range of climates and soils that are the rough equal of northern California on up to the Willamette Valley.

New Zealand’s winemaking history is quite recent. The first experimental sauvignon blanc was planted in the early 1970s. Commercial harvests began in 1980. The Marlborough region, on the northeastern edge of the southern island, quickly established itself as the best place for sauvignon blanc. Much credit goes to the Cloudy Bay winery, founded in 1985 by David Hohnen of Cape Mentelle (they will be profiled in a May column on Western Australia).

Both wineries are now owned by Louis Vuitton Moadiët Hennessy, and Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc is still the premiere brand in the country. But it is really just the tip of the quality iceberg. The growth of the New Zealand wine industry throughout the last two decades has been propelled by its overall success with sauvignon blanc, which now represents 72 percent of the country’s wine xports. A quarter of these xports come into the United States, and I was amazed at the variety and overall quality of the more than 30 sauvignon blancs being poured.

The Marlborough style, which is undeniably the varietal benchmark, is described as “pungently aromatic and explosively flavored, its zesty character redolent of green bell pepper and gooseberry with tropical fruit overtones.’” Some of those descriptors may not immediately ring your bell, but they are reasonably accurate when describing the full range of these wines. They come from soils old and young, from riverbed rock to old glacial moraine, loess and clay. With rare (and not necessarily admirable) exceptions, they are cold-fermented in stainless steel, to optimize freshness and fruit flavor.

This also enhances the crisp, sometimes razor-sharp minerality of the wines. Marlborough’s sub-regions (Rapaura District and Awatere Valley) have their own fine-tuned nuances, and sauvignon blancs from other parts of the country can also be quite good. But as I wound my way through the tasting, it was the Marlborough wines, time and again, that scored the highest.

Prices range from around $10 on up to the mid-$20s, and quality generally follows the curve. The cheaper wines are most likely to bring up capsicum (bell pepper or green bean) flavors; while the most expensive have more richly varied aromas and layering of fruits, from green berry to citrus (lime and grapefruit) to light tropical, often underscored with that marvelous, bracing minerality. In the mid-range (around $16-19) you will find some of the overall best values.

These are seafood wines, but also well-suited to poultry or veal, lighter pastas (cappellini with halibut cheeks, shiitake mushrooms and leeks was my own successful experiment) and pan-Pacific cuisines. About 90 percent are sealed with a screwcap, and though controversy continues to surround the cork vs. screwcap debate, it does make them virtually taint-proof.

I would certainly encourage you to explore New Zealand’s other aromatic white wines - Riesling, gewadiürztraminer and pinot gris; its seductive pinot noirs, every bit the equal of California and Oregon’s best; and the increasingly impressive merlot, cabernet and syrah blends. But your initial foray into the pleasures of New Zealand wines absolutely must begin with sauvignon blanc, especially at this time of the year.

Listed (in ascending order by price) is a case of my top-scoring New Zealand
sauvignon blancs, all from the most recent vintage, and a bonus Pick of the Week. Distributors have been indicated where known.

• Nobilo 2006 “Regional Collection” Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $12. Citrus, green apple and tart melon.
• Matua Valley 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $13. Tart, racy, bright, high acid, lively wine. Distributor: Young’s-Columbia.
• Babich 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $14. Creamy, leesy and spicy. Distributor: Young’s-Columbia.
• Saint Clair “Vicar’s Choice” 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $15. Grapefruit and lime, with texture and length. Distributor: A&B Imports.
• Whitehaven 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $17. Layered, snappy, with modest hints of green pea and herb. Distributor: Odom.
• Wairau River 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $19. Intense, sharp, edgy, layered with mixed fruits and herbs. Distributor: Odom.
• Goldwater 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $19. Spicy, elegant style with grapefruity citrus.
• Brancott Reserve 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $19. Very fresh, strongly mineral. Distributor: Young’s-Columbia.
• Te Kairanga 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Martinborough), $19. Grassy, herbal, textural. Distributor: A&B Imports.
• Vavasour 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $19. Creamy, light, well-balanced.
• Nobilo 2006 “Icon” Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $22. Notes of quinine, grapefruit and citrus rind - exceptional length.
• Saint Clair “Pioneer Block 7” 2006 Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough), $27. Best of show. Lime, rock, tropical fruits, plenty of depth and detail. Distributor: A&B Imports.

Paul Gregutt, author of “of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.