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Solid QPR kosher Syrah wines and 2007 Herzog One Over XII Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Without any attempt on my side we enjoyed a Syrah weekend, along with a unique Cabernet Sauvignon from Herzog. This past weekend we were invited to the home of some very good friends of ours, ER and HK, ER of the baking culinary fame! Well this meal was culinary all the way, roast beef, perfectly cooked chicken and great side dishes to boot! OH! I cannot forget that split pea soup, which was quite lovely as well.
We brought two Syrah like wines and another guest brought a Syrah wine, while yet another guest brought the new and limited 2007 Herzog Napa Cab 7. Sorry, I have no pictures, though most of the wines are well-known wines, other than the special Herzog Cabernet. The wine is called: 2007 Herzog One Over XII Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, and Vivino has an image of it, which is displayed to the left. The wine has a great story, a bunch of barrels from the 2007 Herzog Napa Cab, which we tasted, was left in a barrel for 55 or so months. So, one would think it would be an oak bomb, but it is not overpowering, though friends of mine disagree. The thing that is really lovely about the wine is its caressing and insane tannins and the mineral that jumps up and slaps you across the face! Like I say in the notes – this wine is polarizing and to me that is what good wine is all about! This bottle is limited and available only at the Herzog Winery’s wine bar.
Thanks so MUCH to ER and HK for hosting us and putting up with me! We love hanging with you guys! The wine notes follow below:
2010 Tabor Shiraz, Adama, Terra Rosa – Score: B+
The nose explodes with awesome blueberry, plum, currant, cherry, with loads of dirt and licorice. The mouth on this medium plus bodied wine is nice and spicy with good concentration of date, sweet blue and red fruit, nice candied raspberry, sweet cedar, with good integrated tannin, and good extraction. The finish is long and spicy with garrigue, bramble, fig, date, chocolate, light leather, and animal notes. This is a wine that is a hair under the QPR line, though if pressed it could well join the ranks. A great Israeli “supermarket” option for sure. Read the rest of this entry
More wines from this past weekend…
Well what can I say the theme continues with even more wines that I had the chance to taste this past weekend. There were some real winners and some very solid wines, without a dud in the bunch, including nothing short of heaven in a bottle, more on that in the notes below.
For now, I will leave you with a plethora of wines that I hope you can find in the your area and enjoy much like I did this past weekend with my family! Loved the food, tons of Sephardi food with many a treat!
The wines notes follow below:
2009 Tzuba Pinot Noir – Score: B+
Tasting this twice the wine showed a continuous expression of almost pure cherry, with Chica cherry cola, cherry, oak, ripe raspberry, bramble, toast, and espresso. The mouth on this medium bodied wine is ripe and tart with good acid, rich currant, medicinal cherry, nice spicy cedar, and nice integrated mouth coating tannin. The finish is long and spicy, with roasted herb, oriental spice, cherry candy, and cloves.
2007 Katlav Wadi Katlav – Score: A-
This is Katlav’s flagship wine and is a blend of 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, and 15% Petite Verdot. This wine starts of very closed and all you smell is crazy deep mineral, almost intense graphite and sulfur, quite nice but not its true self. The wine needs decanting, so go ahead and decant and fear not, unless you wish to wait a year or so more. Once it opens the wine screams with blackberry, black plum, cassis, and rich mineral, almost sulfur in its extreme, along with date and nice spice. The mouth on this medium to full bodied wine is rich with nice sweet black fruit, ripe red fruit, sweet raspberry, nice vanilla, and sweet cedar along with mouth coating tannin that lingers long. The mouth is rich, round, and sweet, showing the impact of being in oak for 24 months, but while it does not lack in acid, it lacks the zip that could make this a killer wine. The finish is long with sweet tobacco, black fruit, licorice, cassis, and spice along with mounds of sweet milk chocolate, and rich cinnamon and cloves. The wine is throwing sediment so beware if you decant. Read the rest of this entry
Dalton Alma Bordeuax Blend and sulfite free Four Gates Merlot
This past week my wife had a hunkering for risotto and the recipe is so simple that after gathering the required ingredients, I was more than happy to oblige. The risotto recipe that I used was from my blog posting in March of last year, however, in this case I roasted both the sweet potatoes and the mushrooms in the oven.
The roasted sweet potatoes really does change the flavor profile of the risotto and the roasted mushrooms bring out a further meaty and earthy flavor than just the risotto alone. That comes from the famous umami savory taste which is backed by the Glutamates. The combination of roasted flavors and the Glutamate packed mushrooms – adds a totally different dimension in flavor to plain risotto. Normally, the way to fill out the boring and plain flavored risotto rice (arborio rice) – is to finish the dish with cream, cheese, and/or pesto, along with some nice condiment or flavor addition like mushrooms or asparagus. However, because we do not eat milk and meat together and I want to enjoy my risotto with chicken, we cannot finish the dish with cheese or cream. So that leaves us with finding other ways to pump up the flavor volume with non-dairy ingredients.
Of course when it comes to chicken, I love my wife’s lemon rosemary roasted chicken, because the recipe calls for slow and low cooking which makes for tangy and “fall off the bone” moist perfect chicken. Normally I use the chicken sauce on rice and quinoa, but with risotto, I leave the sauce for another time.
To pair with this chicken I continued my Pinot Noir adventure and opened a lovely bottle of the 2009 Galil Mountain Winery Pinot Noir – which I liked a lot and wrote up in the previous posting on QPR.
We also were invited to the Rabbi’s house and I brought a bottle of the 2009 Dalton Alma Bordeaux blend. Dalton now releases three different Alma blends. One is the white blend, which does not excite me that much, along with two red blends. One is the one I enjoyed this week, a Bordeaux blend of 64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 27% Merlot, and 9% Cabernet Franc – showing its deep French roots – with crazy graphite, green notes, while also showing with pride its own terroir and climate – with lovely ripe and black fruit. The wine is a true expression of French grapes in a Mediterranean climate – Bravo Dalton! The other blend is a SMV blend of 82% Syrah 12% Mourvedre and 6% Viognier. Each of these red blends used wines that were fermented individually for 12 months in French Oak and then blended and aged an additional two months in oak before bottling. Read the rest of this entry
2010 Dalton Alma White Blend and Lemon Rosemary Roasted Chicken
This past week I was waffling on which white wine to open to pair with my wife’s awesome lemon and rosemary roasted chicken, which has become comfort and easy to make food for the both of us. I do go through my own mood swings in relationship to chicken and poultry, but this week I was on and truly enjoyed it as always. Along with the chicken we also enjoyed some fresh green salad and a blend of brown/red/black rice. Given the menu I wanted a solid white wine that could keep up with the chicken and rice. I was looking at opening the Dalton Viognier or the Dalton Alma, and since I had more of the Alma I opened one for the weekend.
The Haruni Family started the Dalton Winery in 1995, in the Napa Valley of Israel in the Upper Galilee. Within the massive Upper Galilee, a few areas are starting to gather fame, such as the vineyard from which Dalton sources its grapes — Kerem Ben Zimra, Yarden’s El-Rom, Ortal, and Katzrin vineyards, and Gailil Winery’s Yiron vineyard. The vineyard and winery are located minutes from each other, which is usually a great benefit to the winemaker and winery, as the winery can truly source and crush the grapes when they have reached optimal maturity. However, when there is a war going on, and that war is in your backyard, you wish you were miles away. In July and August of the year 2006, Lebanon and Israel were engaged in a bloody battle. It raged on for 34 days, before a cease fire was declared. With the winery and vineyard overlooking Mount Hermon, almost spitting distance from the Lebanese border, the winery was in the direct line of fire.
Dalton was the hardest hit amongst the Galilee wineries, but was still able to source and crush all of its grapes within a week of the cease fire. The actual damage was not nearly as bad as the winery’s inability to prune and manage its vineyard, which caused some of the vineyards (the Chardonnay especially) to fall victim to disease and hungry wildlife. However, the winery was blessed with a bountiful harvest that easily made up for the war’s collateral damage.
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