|
| |
|
Wine of the Week |
|
Martin talks about wine on alternative
Fridays on
Irish radio station News Talk 106 - 108FM at about 3.20pm on the
Moncrieff show. He usually tastes two or three wines and details will
appear here. Previous wines of the week can be viewed in the archive.
You can listen
live to News Talk 106 FM via their web page. |
|
|
|
Wines with WOW Factor - 9th Novemebr 2007 |
Are you bored with your usual wine? Do you crave the something a little different this weekend. Well we’ll be discussing wines with a little WOW factor on the Moncreiff show on News Talk 106-108FM this afternoon (9/11/07) from about 3.30pm when we look at the wines of Washington (WOW) state.
Wine lovers are always on the lookout for the next big thing. It’s great fun to discover new regions, wines and producers before they make it big and put their prices up in much the same way as it’s fun to discover a new band and see them in a small venue before they get to play stadium gigs.
One such region, which perhaps fits that bill is Washington State in the Pacific North-West of America. I can’t claim to have tasted many wines from there but what I have tried is encouraging. The first wines were produced there in the sixties but they only got going really in the 1980s and until now have rarely given much thought to the small and distant Irish market. But that has changed recently with the appointment of Dale Gatcum to promote their wines here. He has already helped some producers find importers and secured listings in many independent off licences as well as the Next Door group.
It reminds me in some ways of New Zealand, not so much of wine styles as the fact that it is a relatively small and new region close by a much bigger older player. NZ has Oz as a neighbour and they have California. Neither will ever be really set up feed the mass market but they can supply top quality niche interesting wines well worth your attention.
Washington produces about half as much wine as NZ and its leading varietals are merlot, cabernet and syrah for the reds and chardonnay, riesling, sauvignon blanc and pinot gris for the whites. As for climate it’s at 46 N as is Bordeaux and the Northern Rhone Valley and so daylight hours are similar to those regions. A bif factor though in its ‘terroir is the Cascade mountains. The main region of Colombia Valley is to the east of that range and so they are in a rain shadow making it very dry. Temperatures also vary between hot days and cool nights. All of which allied to a little careful irrigation is a pretty potent mix for producing quality wines in my experience. Indeed their promotional body has registered the logo ‘the perfect climate for wine’.
So what are the wines like? Styles, if you can generalise are somewhere between France and Australia, which is to say a little riper and fruitier than France and more restrained and less in your face than Australia or even Chile and better natural acidities. Not a bad place to be at all, I’d say.
The main area is Colombia Valley but it has a host of sub regions or AVAs as that are known including the wonderfully named Walla Walla Valley which you would assume was Australian if you saw it on a label. It also has the evocatively and very American named regions of Rattlesnack Hills and Horse Heaven Hills.
I tried a selection of wines recently and we’ll look at three of them on the show.
First is Snoqualmie Naked Riesling 2006, €16.99 or sometimes less, a medium dry style showing a lot of classic varietal aromas such as lemon and orange zest and a little honey and rated 88/100. The sweetness level makes it a good choice for oriental foods but I’d like to see a drier version. Find it in Lilac Wines Fairview, On the Vine Dalkey, Florries in Tramore and World Wine wines of Waterford.
€10.99 is about as cheap as it gets at the moment from Washington and that is what you can expect to pay for
Columbia Crest Shiraz 2003, available from most Next Door Off-Licences, which is the second wine tasted. As it the regions style it’s more restrained than its Australian counterparts but still has some attractive cherry ann mocha fruit flavours.
The wonderfully named Walla Walla Valley is home to the L’Ecole 41 winery who produce some really elegant finely crafted Merlot.
L’Ecole 41 Merlot 2004, €35, is a cracker of a wine. Give it a little air and it opens and softens and has plenty of varietal plum, currant and cherry like character but a finesse with its silky tannins that is rarely found outside a good vintage in Bordeaux and almost never in California or Australia and it rates 90/100. Sadly the locals know it’s good and it’s in demand so the price is €35, but it certainly compares well to most St Émilions or Pomerols at that price.
A couple of others that I enjoyed but not tasted on the show are St Michelle Dry Riesling 2006, €16.99 (91/100) a classy dry style with a streak of lime and honey through it in a sort of fuller flavoured version of Clare Rieslings.
Also worth trying but unlikely to be cheap was CMS 2005 by Hedges, a cabernet, merlot and syrah blend. Again it’s an elegant but well flavoured red, which seems the region’s hallmark (90/100).
More info available at www.washingtonwine.org
|
| |
|
