Oeno Files

We had dinner Friday night at Graze, a new restaurant that serve small plates and has a pretty cool decor. The food was very good, ranging from salad to monkfish to lamb, so we wanted a versatile wine that would stand up to bigger dishes but not overpower the more delicate ones.

We chose Meditrina 2004 from the Sokol-Blosser winery in Oregon. Part of the story:

Everyone knows about Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and intoxication. Who knew there was also Meditrina, Roman goddess of wine and health! We couldn't believe that thousands of years ago the Romans had enough savvy to connect wine and health and name a goddess to oversee the two. What happened? Overshadowed for too long by Bacchus's flamboyance, Meditrina deserves to take her rightful place in the wine world. We decided to help her get there by creating a heart healthy red wine in her honor.

Meditrina is a blend of pinot noir (S-B's signature grape), syrah, and just a touch of zinfandel. Its garnet color reflects those varietals. Its nose was very strange; it started with a buttery, almost chardonnay tone (and the friend dining with us also got some mown grass notes on the nose), but then after it opened up for about 10 minutes it developed a more traditional pinot noir nose (dry, fruity, not much alcohol, some floral notes, low tannin). Later, especially with food, the nose had some of the typical peppery syrah stuff going on too.

Similarly, the taste changed and reflected either pinot noir or syrah features. In general the flavors were well-balanced. It was a very dry wine but not overly tannic.

Depending on what you ate with it, you could pull out more or less of the characteristics of each varietal; the lamb pulled out the syrah, the monkfish the pinot noir. This feature made this a really good wine for sharing at a restaurant where you are ordering a variety of dishes.

It was $38 at the restaurant, but is $16 on their web site. I'd give it a B+/87-88 rating.

What else could I think but, "I hope I like it." My wife had bought a case of a Shiraz-Viognier blend based solely on the enthusiastic description in an email from a salesperson at a local wine shop.

Ruddy shiraz blended with the floral viognier?

What??

I was happy to discover that the store had a bottle of the Black Chook available for tasting when we went to pick the case up. The wine was paid for, but at least I'd know what I was taking home.

Wow, was it nice. Tonight, opening the first bottle of the case for dinner (Spice painted salmon and some ginger-sesame broccoli) it was even better. The first three flavor notes that came to my mind when initially tasting were cherry, oak, and black currant. After a while a got of sort of buried floral character that I dubbed "flowers in the cellar." The wine mellowed a bit with the food and was pleasant all evening.

Later I tracked down more information from the U.S. importer's website. Notes there suggested that the 5% viognier adds "a wonderful apricot perfume." Okay, let's call those flowers in the cellar "apricot blossoms."

Good stuff, and we have eleven more to go....

Another trip to our favorite wine store turned up this inexpensive gem, Château Jouclary Cabardès 2005. Lots of fruitiness without being jammy or sweet, very approachable, good with steak. Cabardes require a blending of wines, and the wine shows it by being very even in flavor and a smooth finish. The wine retails at just under $10 at the store.

I couldn't find a Château Jouclary website, but this French wine site had the background on Cabardès: "the only French appellation to associate 40% minimum of atlantic grape varieties (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Franc, Cot and Fer Servadou) with 40% minimum of mediterranean grape varieties (Syrah and Grenache), completion of blends possible with 20% of Cot and Fer Servadou."

I believe the wine distributor told us this wine was predominently Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Syrah, but we tasted six wines and I could be mixing things up a bit. (This U.S. wine distributor, turned up via google, mentions Merlot, Grenache and Syrah.)