Home Food & Wine Wine Report from the Fort Quiz: Get four right and you are an honorary wine wiz!

Quiz: Get four right and you are an honorary wine wiz!

Written by Fred McMillin, Northside Wine Editor

Saturday, 30 April 2005

Try to match the following names with the descriptions that follow: • President George Washington • Robert Mondavi • The Queen of Sheba • Napoleon • Dom Perignon, father of champagne • Andre Tchelistcheff, California's greatest enologist The Descriptions • Fighting Communists in a snowstorm, I was hit by machine gun fire and left for dead. • I drank fermented honey, not fermented grape juice. • I was a member of the rugby team at Stanford University. • A German general's horse ate my vineyard. • I loved Burgundy reds but sadly had to switch to Bordeaux reds in my last years. • I saw two Spanish monks using corks in their water bottles and decided corks should be tried to stopper wine bottles. The Answers • Washington – General's horse • Mondavi – Rugby • Queen – Honey • Napoleon – Could not obtain Burgundy wine when in exile on a British island. • Perignon – Corks. • Andre – Left for dead. Good Losers! I was chatting with grape guru and author Bob Thompson at a San Francisco wine tasting. As we were rating the wines, he said he often found the wine that finished second was a better, more balanced bottle than the winner. A winning chardonnay would have an explosion of clove and vanilla, a winning Zinfandel might be a purple powerhouse with a rare 16 percent alcohol. They are attention-getters, but lack enduring charm, and are difficult to pair with food. So here are some of our recent GOOD LOSERS. 5th Gallo of Sonoma 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon, $13 4th Lake Sonoma Dry Creek 2002 Zinfandel, $20 3rd Edna Valley Vineyard 2003 Pinot Noir, $16 2nd Chateau La Paws 2002 Mourvedre by Rosenblum, $11 1st Sterling Napa Valley 2001 Reserve Merlot, $65 Remembering California’s First Wine Father Junipero Serra’s Spanish friars made California’s first wine some two centuries ago at Mission San Juan Capistrano, using the Mission grape. Yet when I visited the historic site, I found the Capistrano museum had no Mission wine or Mission vines. So, for their display cases I gave them three bottles of wine made from the Mission grape. (I had paid the Story Winery to make it for me to use in my classes.) Then I spoke with Lee Sobon (Sobon Estate Winery) and he kindly sent Mission vines. They are now growing where it all started. One might say, Mission accomplished! The Joy of (Wine) Booking ... Will Chile Match California Someday? The similarities between Chile and California are fascinating. For example, just as Spanish friars made California’s first wine from the Mission grape (above), so did the Spanish friars make Chile’s first wine from the Mission grape. More fundamentally, let’s look at the terroir similarities, such as ... * Their vineyards grow roughly in the same latitude, north and south ... 30 to 38 degrees. *As we travel east from the Pacific Ocean coastline, in both countries we first encounter low north-south mountain ranges. Further inland, each has a massive mountain range, the Sierra Nevada in the north and the Andes in the south. *Both coasts are washed by a cold ocean current, producing lower vineyard temperatures that chardonnay and pinot noir love. The Humboldt Current flows to Chile from the South Pole; a current from Alaska has a similar effect on the Golden State. All of this comes from a fine new book, Chilean Wine, the Heritage, by Rodrigo Alvarado, Chile’s top wine writer and wine historian. His delightful odyssey starts 70 million years ago and brings you right up to the present. Published by San Francisco’s own Wine Appreciation Guild, phone (800) 231-9463. Epilogue Here are the best Chilean wines we’ve tasted in our Fort classes recently. 4th Carmenere Baron Philippe de Rothschild 3rd Merlot Errazuriz 2nd Chardonnay Baron Philippe de Rothschild 1st Cabernet Dallas Conte (Beringer Blass) Sauvignon Taste the Wines of ... 20 TOP WINEMAKERS On Saturday, May 14th, our Ft. Mason class will study and taste great wines from great winemakers. Past winners of these TOP TWENTY blasts included Mike Grgich, Bernard Portet (Clos du Val) and Joel Aiken (Beaulieu). To enroll, phone (415) 561-1860. Napa Valley’s Peju Province is No More! But wait ... those fine wines are being produced as always. However, “Province” has been dropped from the name, so from now on just look for PEJU on the wine shelves. King of the Hill The California Crush – Comparing the tons of wine grapes crushed in 2004 with 2003, the two largest increases were 30,000 tons more merlot and 21,000 more pinot grigio. So I checked our recent Fort results and found the best grigio and merlot in their price range were both produced by the Chalk Hill Winery. Also, in a recent Wine Spectator interview, one of the three best wineries mentioned was Chalk Hill! Definitely worth trying a bottle from this Sonoma leader. And a Final Wine Smile... 1937, Tacoma, Washington – As the 14-year-old editor of the Mason Middleschool Monthly Pathfinder, circulation = 200, I would rely on my friend, Dick Hunt, for tips and quips. Today, he and wife Jackie (gourmet-level cook) live in the upscale community of Palm Springs. He says the wine shops have plenty of $100 bottles, but that Palm Springs’ reputation of affluence is exaggerated. He even knows of three homes that do not have their own golf course.

Last Updated ( Sunday, 26 November 2006 )