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UPCOMING EVENTS
JUG SHOP
OTHER LOCAL EVENTS
1982 Bordeaux Tasting & Dinner
Fri. Oct. 15th
Westin St. Francis
San Francisco
847.295.8696
Click for info.
4th Annual A Taste
For Life
Benefits the A.D.A.
Sat. Oct. 16th
City Club of S.F.
Click for info.
Ornellaia Dinner @ Rubicon
Tues. Oct. 19th
415.434.4100
More info.
Robert M. Parker, Jr.
25th Anniversary Celebration
Hosted by the C.I.A.
Oct. 22nd & 23rd
Email for info.
415.775.0698
Rhone Rangers: Education & Food Pairing led by Rebecca Chapa
Sun. Oct. 24th
Indigo Restaurant
415.673.9353
Email for info
Oregon's Willakenzie Estate
Winemaker Dinner
Mon. Oct. 25th
The Village Pub
Woodside, CA
650.851.6844
Click for info.
Barolo Vertical Dinner
Mon. Oct. 25th
Incanto Restaurant
415.641.4500
Click for info.
2nd Annual Cult Wines Classic!
Fri. Oct. 29th
Ritz-Carlton, S.F.
415.806.4625
Click for info.
Pinot on the River Festival
Oct. 29th-31st
Retreat Resort & Spa
Guerneville, CA
707.869.2706
More info.
Bay Area Wine Project:
2001 American Syrah
Wed. Nov. 10th
Fort Mason, S.F.
415.883.7299
Click for info.
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This week's edition of our newsletter is written by a special friend of the Jug Shop, Tony Poer. A man
very passionate about wine and the wine industry, Tony's C.V. includes experience as one-time wine buyer and
ex-partner at the now defunct Hayes & Vine Wine Bar, an icon establishment in the San Francisco wine scene. Tony left Hayes &
Vine prior to its closing to start his own venture, PoerWine Consulting based in St. Helena. He is now making his mark as a marketing consultant to the wine industry and
free-lance wine journalist. While we miss him greatly, we're very excited
for his new venture and felt compelled to share his unique perspective with
our customers.
Carignane: Oft Maligned But Sometimes Sublime
One thing’s for sure: if you like “old vine” wines, reach for carignane.
None has been planted in California for at least 40 years. - Carl Sutton
Poor misunderstood and maligned carignane! France’s most widely planted red
grape variety is also her least respected and certainly one of the most
dissed in The Oxford Companion to Wine, as well as in today's Wine
section of the Chronicle (by the same author, no less). The editors sum up their feelings
about this ubiquitous Languedoc vine with an admonishment: “Let some
interesting old carignane vines be treasured, but let it not be planted.”
Seems they left out the exclamation point.
Fortunately, a small number of growers in California treat their old
carignane vines as the treasures they are, to the benefit of winemakers like
Carl Sutton, owner of Sutton Cellars in Glen Ellen.
Sutton has produced old vine carignane, first from Sonoma and then from
Lodi, since founding his artisanal label in 1996. In his first five
vintages, he released single-vineyard bottlings from the 87 year-old Cuneo
Saini property in Dry Creek Valley. These were dense, jammy, forward-fruity
wines, with no flaws except that they might have resembled zinfandel more
closely than carignane. After discontinuing the Dry Creek program, Sutton
went searching for a new – and old – carignane source. He found it in the Rauser family’s 95 year-old vineyard in the San Joaquin River Delta, within
the Lodi appellation. With the Rauser wines, he’s managed to hit the elusive
carignane marks of bright acidity, spicy-gamey fruit, and saturated color.
To me, they taste as barbera might if it were planted in Spanish soil; they
have barbera’s firm acidity, along with an earthy, baked fruit
characteristic that accompanies many traditional Riojas. Though they carry
California-strength, 13% alcohol, these wines have more in common with the
Mediterranean and seem to have moved closer stylistically to the rustic,
sunny wines of the Coteaux du Languedoc and to Cariñena in north east Spain,
the region that gives the grape its Spanish name.
Self-effacingly, Sutton describes his carignane as “pizza and burger wine.”
But the 2001 Rauser Ranch is a complex wine, especially considering the
$12.99 price tag, and it’s delicious with
food. Just the thing for pizza topped with wild boar, or for
burgers made with venison. Whatever’s on the menu,
Sutton would probably want to come over for dinner
to talk you through his wines and share his (borderline obsessive) thoughts
about the grape. “I have a fantastic dream about carignane,” he told me
recently. “I think it's a scene in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and
the character is up late watching a war movie and it starts playing in
reverse. The bombs unexplode, fly back up into the planes which fly back to
the bases, are unloaded of their munitions and unbuilt.
“I like to dream that the same will happen for carignane,” he muses. “All
the insipid, over-cropped merlot vines will shrink back to little plants,
get unplanted, and all of these big Caterpillar bulldozers will drive
backwards through the vineyards, and 90 year-old Carignane vines will spring
back to life in their wake.” I’m getting nervous at this point. He asks, “Is
that a little too weird?”
Frankly, yes, it is. But we’re living in weird times, so Carl Sutton and his
carignane might just be the winemaker and wine for the current zeitgeist.
2001 Sutton Cellars Carignane Rauser Ranch (Lodi) $12.99
Buy it now!
Tony can be contacted by email at
tony@poerwine.com.
Be on the look-out for his website, currently under construction.
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