Got to taste some dandy wines yesterday with Stephen Sterling of Esterlina and Everett Ridge wineries, including a dandy little riesling from Everett Ridge and a tasty Esterlina Sonoma Mountain Syrah.

But the highlights were the smooth, berry-laden 2005 Esterlina Anderson Valley Pinot Noir, which had about as big a nose as a guy could want, and Everett Ridge’s Rockpile Reserve Zinfandel 2005, a  rich, lusty effort from a justifiably renowned source.

Aside from the flavor, what was most striking about the latter was its lightness, at least relative to the brawny Rockpile zins I’ve known and loved from Rosenblum, Carol Shelton and Seghesio. The blueberry and spice aspects were there in the Everett Ridge, but there was less fleshiness than I expected. 

Sterling confirmed that Everett Ridge is one of many wineries that have been tamping down the alcohol content a bit in their zins. The excellent wine blogger Alder Yarrow confirmed as much in his posting on the recent Zinfandel Advoicates and Producers (ZAP) confab in San Francisco.

The always-thorough Yarrow not only discusses this trend but rates about 150 wines from the ZAP fest. Well worth checking out, as are the Esterlina PN and Everett Ridge Roockpile Zin.

On a blustery night last week, my wife and I were transported to Provence. The occasion was a wine tasting at La Belle Vie, where the small bites were, of course, delectable and the Rhone wines perhaps even yummier.

Domaine de l’Espigouette offered up three rustic reds with soft edges and herbal notes, even a touch of rosemary (!). Most noteworthy was the Cotes du Rhone Villages Plan de Dieu 2005, an absolute steal at $20-$23.

Bois de Boursan’s red and white Chateauneuf-du-Papes each had mouth-filling (and fulfilling) arrays of flavor befitting the multiple grapes in these traditional blends. The wine of the night, and priced accordingly at $75-$84, was the Boursan’s CDP Cuvee des Felix Rouge, a profound effort with endless layers, one of the best Rhone wines I’ve ever tasted.

Two bonuses: The winemakers (Boursan’s Jean-Paul Versino and l’Espigouette’s Julien Latour) were both present and eminently charming. And the importer, Dan Farley of J et R Selections in Michigan, brought along some other tasty French wines, including an almost lush Pouilly-Fuisse from Thilbert Pere et Files Maconnais and an alternately steely and soft Chablis from Seguinot-Bordet.

Distributor Mark Bourget says the wines should be available at France 44, Solo Vino and Sutler’s.

I dropped a ball in this morning’s column on local stores’ websites. Actually, I dropped two. (I never was any good at juggling.)

First of all, Thomas Liquors does have a site that showcases some of its inventory and info on its sales and events, including a charity tasting Friday night.

And somehow, in transferring my store list from one document to another, France 44 fell by the wayside. A lamentable omission, made worse by the fact that this Minneapolis mainstay has one of the best sites in town: visually striking, easy to use, and a great gateway to the store’s vast selection and perhaps the most popular wine classes in town.

And be sure to check out those caricatures on the “Staff Selections” pages.

here  

I am not smart enough to be able to declare the new Artisan Vineyards website — brought to you by the local distributor the Wine Company (TWC) — a revolutionary, ground-breaking harbinger of the future of wine-shopping. But I can say that it’s really, really cool.

Affording Minnesotans a chance to click their way through a mountain of information and pick their way through hundreds of wines, this inspired brainchild of TWC poohbah Larry Colbeck debuted yesterday (Jan. 30).
 
Full disclosure: Larry is a friend, a man whose company I thoroughly enjoy and whose work I greatly admire. And I share his predilection toward smaller producers, the “little guys” stemming the tide of the conglomerates that threaten to engulf the industry.

“The ultimate goal for this site,” Larry said in an email earlier this week, “is to focus on … small, obscure, idiosyncratic vintners who have no avenue to America’s wine lovers.”

Certainly the site has a lot to offer wine lovers. It’s the kind of place where the ADD-inclined such as yours truly can get blissfully lost for hours: maps with info on wine regions, a vast Wine 101 primer, food-pairing tips on everything from meat loaf to morel mushrooms to manchego cheese, a glossary, vintage chart, etc. There’s also a fun blog by the rather crusty wine savant Marcus Mansavage.

Oh, and they sell wine, too. Lots of wine. More choices than somemany retail outlets offer. I can’t recall seeing 35 dessert wines in a store, for example.

Local stores are still in the loop, by the way. Customers have three options: use a locator at the site to find a retailer carrying a particular wine, have the wine sent to a their favorite store or have it delivered to their home (with a chosen store still etting its “cut”).

Colbeck has spent the last several months explaining to retailers how the system works, and assuring them that they are not being undermined.

So it’s win-win-win-win. For the wineries, the distributor, the stores and most of all the wine-loving consumer.

There’s more, but I gotta run. There’s a certain Savennieres at the site that I’m afraid they’re gonna run out of soon.

A  few questions have come in about the Wine of the Week (WOTW) that runs with the weekly column in the Taste section. Seems like a good time to share some thoughts on that:

*Most of the correspondence has been about where to find the recommended wine. Each week, I track down and call the local distributor, seeking assurance that the wine is widely distributed. No wine — not even Yellow Tail — is in every single store, but it’s important that any WOTW be in more than a handful of stores.

Some newspapers list a couple of major stores where a wine can be found, and believe me, they hear from other merchants carrying that wine. Our previous wine columnist listed the distributor’s phone number, but that didn’t find favor with readers or distributors. There seems to be no approach that combines fairness with optimum utility, but I’m open to suggestions …

*The WOTWs so far have been fairly monolithic, all wines, and mostly in the $12-$20 range. A lot more variety is ahead, both in terms of price points and the Liquid Asset itself; I’ll be writing about beer and booze from time to time, and that week’s pick will likely be from that field.

Two other FYIs: The aim is that most weeks, the WOTW will have a connection to the story alongside it. And in the core paper, I’m writing for a more general audience. Here at the blog, there will be more looks at higher-end and esoteric stuff. 

*I gave a lot of thought to the organization. In my experience, most folks find tasting notes that proffer a half-dozen elements in the bouquet and 5-10 more on the palate to be numbing and, for lack of a better word, dumbing (i.e., making the reader feel inadequate). I’ve also found that wine consumers are generally very interested in food pairings and almost always love to learn a little bit about the winery.

So I came up with a more (pardon the expression) holistic approach, including three categories: Experience (what the wine smells and tastes like), Setting (what to pair with it, and where to best enjoy it — at a picnic, by the fireplace, as an aperitif, etc.) and Backstory (some nuggets I dig up about the places and people from whence it came).

*Americans love numbers, but in the wine world, ratings are useful only to a point (pun intended). Profound wines deserve the highest ratings, but most of us get just as excited when we discover a yummy $8 or $15 wine that we can enjoy on a more regular basis. A lot of people smarter than me have tried to come up with a system that combines quality and price point to place a tangible number on a wine, to little good effect. 

The WOTWs, then, are wines that I recommend as not only worthwhile but also very good values for the price, whatever that may be.

If there’s anything that does a better job of bringing people together than wine, I’d love to hear about it. Two recent gatherings really brought that home.

On both nights, there were three couples, and wine was a focus but not the be-all/end-all of the proceedings. Our companions were folks who love wine but don’t take it, or themselves, too seriously. But there were stark differences in the quality of the wines.

Last Saturday’s soiree at a (blessedly) nearby friend’s home began with a varietal I’d never had before, a roter veltliner from Weingut Eichinger, a jolting balance of fruit and sundry elements of the terroir from which it sprung. Dinner included a juicy, bracing white Rhone blend from Chateau Beaucastel, a spot-on match with some superb scallops; four 1970 or ’71 Bordeaux reds that were still showing a lot of life, especially the Ducru Beaucaillou, paired with a fantabulous Paula Wolfert-inspired lamb dish; and a lush Arietta H Block Hudson Vineyard cab franc-merlot blend with a splendid mixed-berry pie.

Sublime, every last morsel and sip. And the company was just as hearty and fun and multi-faceted as the food and wine, the delightful conversation never devolving into deconstructing these world-class wines to death.

The same tone pervaded last night’s dinner at our home, although what we consumed was more Modern Café than the La Belle Vie-like repast a few nights earlier. We prepared a simple salad and a yummy stomach-coating soup while “testing” a half-dozen under-$20 cabernets that I had received as tasting samples. There was nothing remotely profound about the juice, although we quite enjoyed two efforts from Piattelli Vineyards in Argentina and another from Australia’s Peter Lehmann winery.

It was another night filled with laughter and lively conversation and a lusty appreciation for the “good things” in life. Topped off by the realization that the best things in life, on both occasions, were not in front of us but rather seated around the table, sharing in this bounty.