February 1, 2014 Winter Wine Festival and Cynthia and Ricardo’s
Wedding Celebration
We got up with renewed vigor today, after Suzette conquered the
impasse to connectivity to my blog yesterday. This
was to be a long day with lots of things to do.
We ate breakfast at 8:00 at the Taos Guesthouse. It was lovely Leslie’s famous baked egg and
green chili casserole, cranberry muffins made by Tim and a bit of fresh chopped
fruit salad. I called Davida and Josefo
to tell them we would see them at 9:30 at the Stage Coach Inn, where they were
staying, for breakfast. The Stage Coach Inn
is Taos’ oldest Hotel Motel and probably was a stagecoach Inn at some point in
time. It lies about ten miles outside of
Taos, on the southern end of town and dates back to the 20’s. Georgia O’Keefe stayed there in the summer of
1929 or 1930 when she spent her first summer in New Mexico. It is an old large rambling adobe structure,
like so many I remember from the 50’s of my youth; big lobby, big dining room,
big Swimming Pool area and huge bar, where lots of drinking took place.
The wait staff directed us to the much more functional
breakfast room with its low ceilings and two smaller rooms at the other end of
the lobby, where we waited for Davida and Josefo, who were staying at the Stage
Coach Inn. Suzette wisely, did not eat
anything, but I took a complimentary breakfast of French Toast, which was
lovely, along with Josefo and Davida.
We spent an hour eating and schmoozing and then took our leave and drove
to the Taos Ski Valley.
Even though seven inches of snow had fallen during the night, the roads were clear and we made good time arriving a half hour before our 12:00 seminar. We were able to sit at the front of the room near the lecture table. At 1:00 we returned and said hello to Becky and John Cook, who were sitting across from us and the Doug of Brick House Winery who was sitting beside us. The seminar as a vertical tasting of Chateau de Beaucastel’s Chateauneuf du Pape reds from 1998 to 2010. The panel included Andy Frankel, Vice President of Vineyard Brands under the legendary Robert Haas, the American importer, Joe Spellman, master sommelier, currently affiliated with Justin Vineyards, and Greg. The cost for the seminar was $75.00, which was a bargain for seven glasses of Beaucastel. The Perrin family owns Beaucastel and many other vineyards in the Southern Rhone Valley of France. We learned some really interesting things about wine and Beaucastel and tastings. For example when Joe made his opening remarks, he picked up the Coca Cola cup provided for spitting out wine after it is tasted and when he got through describing the set up of the paper and glasses, he said, "And this cup", and threw the cup over his shoulder. Which meant that no one was going to spit out any of this wine. Andy in his opening remarks said that Beaucastel always uses all of the 13 allowed varietals in Rhone in its wine every year, but the two main grapes used are 30% each of Syrah and Grenache, with about 10% each of Mouvedre and one other grape and lesser amounts of the others.
Even though seven inches of snow had fallen during the night, the roads were clear and we made good time arriving a half hour before our 12:00 seminar. We were able to sit at the front of the room near the lecture table. At 1:00 we returned and said hello to Becky and John Cook, who were sitting across from us and the Doug of Brick House Winery who was sitting beside us. The seminar as a vertical tasting of Chateau de Beaucastel’s Chateauneuf du Pape reds from 1998 to 2010. The panel included Andy Frankel, Vice President of Vineyard Brands under the legendary Robert Haas, the American importer, Joe Spellman, master sommelier, currently affiliated with Justin Vineyards, and Greg. The cost for the seminar was $75.00, which was a bargain for seven glasses of Beaucastel. The Perrin family owns Beaucastel and many other vineyards in the Southern Rhone Valley of France. We learned some really interesting things about wine and Beaucastel and tastings. For example when Joe made his opening remarks, he picked up the Coca Cola cup provided for spitting out wine after it is tasted and when he got through describing the set up of the paper and glasses, he said, "And this cup", and threw the cup over his shoulder. Which meant that no one was going to spit out any of this wine. Andy in his opening remarks said that Beaucastel always uses all of the 13 allowed varietals in Rhone in its wine every year, but the two main grapes used are 30% each of Syrah and Grenache, with about 10% each of Mouvedre and one other grape and lesser amounts of the others.
Here is some history on Robert Haas and Vineyard Brands and
his newest venture, which has been starting Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso
Robles, CA to make Rhone style wines.
The Tablas Creek Team
Tablas
Creek > Our Story >
The Tablas Creek Team
Meet the people of Tablas Creek
Vineyard and Winery.
Management
 |
Robert
Haas, Partner and Founder
Robert Haas has played a leading
role in the American wine industry for over half a century. After graduating
from Yale in 1950, he joined his father’s firm, M. Lehmann, Inc., a retailer
of fine wines and spirits in Manhattan. As a buyer for the company, Haas
traveled through the cellars of France, establishing a formidable reputation
as a wine taster while forging lifelong relationships with premier wine
producers.
In the mid-1960s he set out on his
own to import fine estate wines from Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Loire, Alsace
and the Rhône Valley, where he met the Perrins of Château
de Beaucastel and became the exclusive American importer for
Beaucastel. As his company Vineyard Brands grew, it introduced the American market
to brands such as La Vieille Ferme, Marqués de Cáceres, Santa Rita, Warre’s
Port, and Villa Maria. The company also served as a representative for newly
emerging California wineries including Chappellet, Freemark Abbey, Clos du
Val, Joseph Phelps, Rutherford Hill, Hanzell, Kistler, and Sonoma-Cutrer. He
founded the symposium "Focus on Chardonnay" in 1984 to promote
dialogue between producers in Burgundy and California.
As Managing Partner of Tablas
Creek since its foundation in 1989, Haas has consistently spoken in favor of
organic viticulture, minimum-intervention winemaking and wines of terroir and
sophistication. He has spoken on wine and winemaking topics at festivals
around the country, including the New York Wine Experience, the Boston Wine Expo, Society of Wine
Educators annual meeting, Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta, Hospice du Rhône, Central Coast Wine Classic
and many others.
Haas is one of four American
members of the Académie
Internationale du Vin. In recognition of his contributions to the
international wine community as an importer, a vintner, and an advocate for
quality, he was elected as the AIV president in 2000. He manages Tablas
Creek with his son Jason.
|
 |
Jason
Haas, Partner and General Manager
Jason Haas, the son of Tablas
Creek Vineyard founder and renowned importer Robert Haas, learned the wine business
at an early age, accompanying his family on yearly European wine-buying trips
and spending two summers working at Château de Beaucastel.
After obtaining a Master’s Degree
in Archaeology from Cornell and spending a four-year stint managing a tech
company in Washington, DC, Jason moved to California to join Tablas Creek in
April of 2002. In addition to managing Tablas Creek's operations, he is
active in Tablas Creek's winemaking and directs the vineyard’s local and
national marketing efforts. He is also the principal author of the Tablas Creek blog, which won the Wine Blog Award for Best Winery Blog in
2008 and 2011.
In addition to his work at Tablas
Creek, he has served on the board of directors of the Paso Robles Wine Country
Alliance, the Rhone
Rangers, and the Family
Winemakers of California. He speaks regularly on topics including winery
marketing and management, Rhône varietals, organic farming, and the Paso
Robles region.
|
- See more
at: http://www.tablascreek.com/story/staff#sthash.3n4YCCUG.dpuf
Soon it became
apparent that the room was full of serious wine folks. For example, the Cooks, sitting across the
table, had contributed the 1998 from their cellar. Gregg had contributed the 200 and 2001 from
his. I guess Vineyard Brands contributed the rest of the seven vintages, 1998,
2000, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
The seven glasses of wine were poured and sitting on a sheet of paper
with circles printed for each year, so you could pick one up and taste it and
replace it in its year circle, so you did not get confused. Just like the Reidel stemware tasting the day before, this was an
interactive tasting with opinions and comments coming from all parts of the
room. Byron Wahl was in attendance and asked about a
bacteria common to aged wines. He asked
if the slight mustiness in one of the years was due to the bacterium. Andy was quick to say that when the bacteria is present it usually is evident
immediately in the wine, no matter how young and this mustiness is due to age
in his opinion because that complexity developed over years and was not evident
immediately after the wine was bottled. Every aspect of every year’s vintage was discussed
and considered and commented on by the panel and many of the attendants. In a little over an hour we had tasted and
discussed all seven vintages. I loved
the 2000 best. It had the most united
flavor and luscious complexity of tannins and fruit to my taste. Becky
Cook sitting across from me said the 1981 was her favorite vintage of
Beaucastel, so I asked her which of the seven was her favorite and was
surprised when she replied that she liked the 2000. She and John were lawyers that seem to have
exchanged the practice of law for travel and wine tasting.
After the tasting we returned to
Albuquerque, arriving at around 4:00 p.m. We took showers and rested and at 7:00 p.m. we
grabbed a bottle of Gruet 1997 Gilbert Vintage Reserve champagne and the bottle
of
Louis
Bouillot Perle d'Aurore Rose
750ml
91
|
Beverage Dynamics
|
Elegant, Cherry, Medium-bodied
Burgundy, France- A sophisticated rose made using the Champagne
method from Pinot Noir grapes. Pale rose in color with a medium-body and fine
bubbles. The bouquet and palate feature cherry and strawberry notes with a dry
creamy finish. Superb with Salmon, Shrimp and Lobster.
Crémant de Bourgogne Rose (Total Wine $17.99) and drove to Cynthia
and Ricardo’s house. The house soon
became packed with about fifty or sixty people, most brought food and wine or
beer. We talked to Steve, who made the
best item of the night; a freshly made chocolate truffle with a smooth shiny
shell of dark chocolate covering a luscious fondant of white chocolate and
reduced blood orange with a texture somewhere between a liquid and a nougat. I ate four of those and stayed up most of the
night, perhaps because I also ate ½ of a slice of the Flying Star chocolate
mousse cake and a few other chocolate creations.
The furniture in the
dining room and living room had been removed.
Terry’s trio played music in the dining room and many people danced and listened
to the live music. There were lots of
Breaking Bad folks in attendance. At one
point in the evening every one came outside and surrounded the fire pit and sang
“Happy Birthday” to Andy, the Mill Supervisor for Breaking Bad, who was in
charge of set construction. I said
hello to Ricardo’s sister and few other folks and Dick and Nora from Maine were
in town, traveling to California to spend time with their children, which was
probably the impetus for the evening’s celebration, because Dick had married
Cynthia and Ricardo in Maine last September and were among their oldest friends
in Maine.
I enjoyed a freshly made dolma and several other dishes,
such as Dick’s spicy sautéed shrimps and Cynthia’s now famous warm artichoke heart
spread.
I could not eat or drink much, but we did try the Crémant
and found it to be a little heavily Pinot Noir flavored and to have a slightly bitter
flavor on the back of the palette. I
guess after seven silky smooth glasses of Beaucastel, small imperfections may
have stood out more glaringly. Of
course, everything is relative.
Beaucastel costs well past $100.00 per bottle and is ranked No. 8 in the
world and the Crémant costs $18.99 and probably is not rated.
Finally, after a lot of wonderful food and music, we left at
around 10:30 p.m. We learned the next
day that the party went to 2:00 am.
It is days like this that remind me that I have a blessed
life, with lots of great wine, food and friends.
Bon Appétit
No comments:
Post a Comment