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Back on the … with Palisade Red
GUNNISON – Back on the road…
Thursday night in Gunnison, one of the most beautiful towns in the state.
Plum Creek Cellars winemaker Jenne Baldwin-Eaton calls this Bordeaux-style blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc her red table wine. It’s a lovely wine, even when the table is no more than a concrete road barrier next to the Taylor River north of Gunnison.
The early June weather is perfect, there is a bit of snow in the high country for a scenic backdrop and it’s too early for the mosquitoes.
And they do get world-class skeeters here, with all the flood irrigation drenching the fields.
Locals get a hoo-hah about saying small children and dogs have been carried away.
It’s Day (well, let’s see, what day is it? oh, yes, 6) that’s it, Day 6 of Colorado Wine Week 2013 and not coincidentally also Day 6 of the Colorado Wine Week Challenge.
Well, my challenge, anyway, which is for you to open and share a Colorado wine everyday or night or both this week.
Sharing is a good idea, or you’ll possibly wind up with a fridge full of open bottles, standing there, corks just waiting to be popped and shared.
Tonight, my Wine Challenge wine is the Plum Creek Cellars 2009 Palisade Colorado Table Wine, a medium-bodied red with soft tannins and plenty of dark red fruit, with just a hint of spice.
Plum Creek prides itself on always being 100-percent Colorado grapes, and most of these grapes were grown in the Grand Valley AVA with the rest coming from the West Elks AVA.
It’s a blend of merlot (42 percent); Cabernet Sauvignon (42) and Cabernet Franc (16). Sometimes in the past the blend has included syrah or zinfandel but this version is the three Bordeaux grapes.
I may have the Cab Sauv and Cab Franc mixed up but I know the wine is mostly merlot. I left my notes at home, so if it’s wrong, I’ll fix the ratio when I get back Sunday. (I’d send you to the Plum Creek website, but it’s hopelessly out of date.)
According to Plum Creek winemaker Jenne Baldwin-Eaton, 2009 was notable because it was the last of the great vintages.
“It was nearly perfect – long, even temperatures, with great ripening of all our grapes,” she said last week. “All the vintages since then have been, well, trying.”
Which means too hot, too cold, too short, too long, or all of the above.
What’s also remarkable about 2009 that it stayed warm well into October, so long into October that Jenne was picking grapes for a Late-Harvest Sauvignon Blanc (that’s for later this week) at the end of October and into early November.
But then the door slammed shut.
A deep, deep freeze, with temperatures in the valley hitting 22 below zero, swept into western Colorado Dec. 9-10, and within a week grape growers were reporting losing 75 percent and more of their vines, I mean froze smack to the ground.
Obviously, there weren’t many grapes available in 2010. That 2010 vintage was so small, one winemaker friend made his whole year’s production in a 7.5-gallon carboy.
And there’s talk this year, after the hard freeze last January and the late freeze April 17-18 (20 degrees), may be short, also. We’ll hear more about that as the season goes on, but there is a lot of open space in the grape vines this summer.
Tomorrow night (Friday) is the Governor’s Cup Award presentation at Metro State University, so I’ll be drinking award-winning wines for the wine challenge. Oh, to celebrate and drink interesting wines.
Summer arrives with a blast
After last month’s initial blast of 100-degree days, the summer has settled into a routine of hot days and sultry warm evenings, perfect for entertaining outside.
However, summer entertaining can pose a challenge for wine drinkers finding themselves choosing between heavy-bodied reds and over-simplified white wines.
The Canyon Wind Cellars 47-Ten Grand Valley Rosé, a 100-percent Merlot dry rosé named for the elevation (4,710 feet above sea level) of the vineyards in which the grapes grow.
Oddly, many wine drinkers have a pre-conceived bias against rosés, even when it’s someone who hasn’t tasted one since the Beatles were together.
“I think the last one I had was in a funny-shaped bottle way back in college,” said a guest recently, her hands outlining the unforgettable shape of Lancer’s Rosé, which did double duty as a wine-bottle slash candleholder for many a college student when Nixon still was president.
Sadly, it’s easy to dismiss pink wine. Say “rosé” and most Americans think of something cheap, the sweet “blush” wines such as Lancer’s or Sutter Home’s white Zinfandel.
But there are many reasons to enjoy rosés, as fellow wine writer Jeff Siegel, aka The Wine Curmudgeon, noted recently in his annual rosé review.
“I especially pondered that question (of why American’s don’t do much rosé) preparing for this post, the blog’s fifth annual rose extravaganza,” Siegel wrote. “And I can’t come up with a good reason. Rose is cheap. It’s better made than ever before. It’s food friendly. You can put an ice cube in it. What more do you need from a wine?”
A bit of pink-wine history is supplied by David White, founder and editor of the Terroirist.com.
In a recent column, White explained that way back in 1975, Sutter Home winemaker Bob Trinchero had some of his white Zinfandel get “stuck” during fermentation, meaning the yeast died before all the sugar had converted into alcohol.
Rather than add more yeast, Trinchero let the wine sit for two weeks, White said.
When Trinchero revisited the wine, he knew it would be a hit, and Sutter Home’s modern-day white Zinfandel was born. As White and others have seen, countless imitators soon would follow.
But popularity does not mean great wine. White Zinfandels and similar “blush” wines usually are too sweet, more like strawberry Kool-Aid with an alcohol kick.
True rosés, particularly those from France and Spain, are bone dry, multi-layered and refreshing. And those layers of complexity make the wines as food friendly as any wines.
There are several ways to make a rosé wine, but the two most common are leaving grape skins in the fermenting juice just long enough to add some color (remember all grapes give white juice) and the process called bleeding (“saigneé”), where the light-colored wine is siphoned off the freshly crushed grapes.
The main flavors are strawberry, cranberry, watermelon and raspberry although you might find a kiss of red flowers, some spice and even a hint of minerality.
They aren’t all pink. Rose´s range from a light salmon to a medium red. And most alcohol levels can be 13 percent or less, which means a glass or two won’t have you falling asleep by the pool.
Americans slowly are coming around to rosés, in part, I think, because Americans are traveling to countries where good rosés are common.
– Chateau Pesquie “Les Terrasses” — $13, well-balanced, dry, medium-bodied with raspberry and red cherry flavors.
– Plum Creek Cellars Palisade Rosé — $9, semi-sweet, notes of ripe strawberries, watermelon and red cherry.
– Canyon Wind Cellars 47-Ten Rosé — $14, dry, medium-bodied, notes of strawberry, cranberry and pineapple, 14.6 percent alcohol.
– Chateau Sainte Eulalie Minervois — $15, dry, made in the saigneé method, hints of strawberries, raspberries and spice, 13.5 percent alcohol.
Wine Openers 