Oeno Files

A big, "fruit bomb" type zinfandel (14.6% alcohol), but it also has a nice resin note to balance out the red fruit. The nose is generally red fruit with some nice acid; in fact, the acid makes this wine a nice accompaniment with food.

It has a nice round mouthfeel, and has some taste complexity from beginning through middle to end. But it does lack some complexity, and the abundant red fruit is hard to decompose into component fruit flavors. And even though it does have some acid and resin, it's not a particularly well balanced wine.

Here's what the winery has to say about the wine:

Playful blackberry with undertones of smoke and pepper greet one in the glass. Black cherry and jam are complemented by hints of violet and oak.

We couldn't distinguish among the blackberry, black cherry, and jam the way we would have liked, and the violet was too subtle for my (admittedly deficient) palate.

But it's a good wine at $14, from a winery in the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains (although these grapes are from nearby Lodi). We'd give it a B+, 88 points, which is pretty good value for money.

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.

Murphy Goode's Liar's Dice Zinfandel is a good, reliable, good-value-for-money zin (I think we paid $15.99). Typically it has nice cherry fruit, raspberry jam, and currant (as noted in their notes). We've never visited, but they are in the northern bend of the Russian River, north of Alexander Valley Road in Sonoma County, north of Healdsburg. One of the most delightful places in the world, and a good place to grow zinfandel.

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate has this to say about the 2004:

This is a juicy, exuberantly-styled Zin from the reliable Murphy-Goode Winery. A very good value, the 2004 Zinfandel Liar’s Dice (16,000 cases produced) possesses a conservative (for currant day Zinfandels) alcohol percentage of 14.5. Its deep ruby color is followed by big, juicy, extroverted aromas of black cherries, earth, underbrush, pepper, and Provencal spices. It possesses loads of character, a full-bodied palate, terrific fruit purity, and a lovely, savory texture. Drink it over the next 2-4 years. Score: 89.

Our bottle had a deep purple-red color, and the nose had tannin, cinnamon, pepper, and hints of eucalyptus-y spice. The fruit note on the nose was more generic, and a little bit raisiny.

The first taste was typical zin -- big, fruity (as noted in the Parker review), and not very acidic. It was also quite tannic, but the type of tannin that would oxidize off over time. Where our experience starts to diverge from Parker's is that we found the fruit not to be particularly lush, but to be more resin-y.

It softened and the fruit developed as it opened and we drank more of it; in particular, the cherry fruit developed. It was still more resin-y than I would be led to believe from the Parker review. With food the cherry fruit also dominated.

All in all, we thought that we had liked Liar's Dice better in past vintages. In particular I prefer a more lush and less resin-y zinfandel style, so the persistent resin notes in this vintage didn't rock my world. But it's still a good wine and good value for money.