Last night's tipple: 3.

Last night Vinomaker and I went out to celebrate his birthday, finally.  We had originally planned to go out to eat last Friday, but Vinomaker was feeling a bit poorly and we ended up having to cancel our plans.  After rescheduling, yesterday evening we headed off to Gran Eléctrica in downtown Napa.
Always on the lookout for something curious in the vino-department, a particular white wine on the restaurant's wine list caught my eye.  The Ruth Lewandowski, 2017 'Naomi' Gibson Ranch Grenache Gris seemed to fit my curious-criterion, so I went ahead and ordered it.  Our server brought out the bottle and proceeded to give a little speech.  "I think this is my favourite wine on our list.  It's made by a gay Mormon with fruit he buys from California and makes into wine in Utah.  The winemaker wanted to be a ski-bum instead, however, he decided to start a winery."  Thanks for the editorial, I think, but I usually prefer it when a server just gets wine into my glass.  Some people love to assign labels: I just love to be assigned a glass for my wine.
As I sipped the wine, it dawned on me that the vintner and proprietor of Ruth Lewandowski Wines, Evan Lewandowski, is most likely not a practising Mormon.  Unfined and unfiltered, the slightly cloudy, almost colourless Naomi was a truly eye-opening wine: it takes a gifted winemaker who is a wine-drinker to make a wine as interesting as this - I'm just saying.  Made from the grey clone of Grenache (similar concept to my Pinot grigio/gris vines), Lewandowski does indeed source his grapes from a vineyard in the McDowell Valley AVA, up north from Vinoland in Mendocino County.  The fermentation process is started in California, but then the partially fermented juice is trucked to Mr.  Lewandowski's Salt Lake City warehouse-winery.
Peachy, citrusy, floral, with a crazy vanilla-pineappley-vibe and diaphanous-salinity, my initial reaction to the lofty acidity was that it could possibly render the Naomi undrinkable.  But no, everything just magically slipped into focus on my palate.  (And it paired wonderfully with Gran Eléctrica's upscale Mexican cuisine, though the food wasn't nearly as exciting as the wine.)
A lovely wine with an entertaining story, a nice little find.

E Clampus Vitus.

Today, I wanted to write a post in celebration of a niece whose birthday it is.  (She's actually a leap-year baby, but y'know.)  Vino-niece, La Serenissima's oldest daughter, is a historian so I thought I'd do a quick Napa-history bit in her honour.  How do I possibly connect my niece, history, England, Utah and Napa together?  It could be tricky, but - with the help of an inconspicuous little plaque on the Silverado Trail, north of Yountville, against the fence of a Napa County corporation yard - I think I can pull it off.
I first spotted this modest plaque last year whilst I was stuck in traffic, but I wasn't able to photograph it until yesterday as I drove home from work on a deserted Silverado Trail.  Erected by E Clampus Vitus (ECV), Sam Brannan Chapter 1004, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of the heritage of the American West, the plaque marks the location in the Napa Valley of a World War II prisoner-of-war (POW) camp.  Apparently, the United States aided Great Britain with the detention of a surplus of POWs: Germans some of who, upon release, returned to Germany and then made their way back to eventually settle in the United States.
An interesting little history-factoid, or not?  ECV's motto is, improbably, Credo Quia Absurdum which, roughly translated from Latin, means "I believe it because it is absurd."  Titter, titter.
Happy birthday Vino-niece!

Where in the US of A is Vinogirl: 2016?

I recently decided that I didn't know nearly enough about the history of viticulture in the United States, so I have been making an effort to find books that will give me a better understanding of how American winegrape-growing arrived at where it is today.  Not just the genesis of grape growing in California (think Saint Junipero Serra), but in other states also. Thomas Pellechia's Over a Barrel was a fabulous introduction to the homegrown wine industry in New York's Finger Lakes.  Of course the winegrapes grown in the northern part of the state of New York were not the European winegrape-bearing Vitis vinifera that I am familiar with.  No, in the early days, the native grape species grown in vineyards around the Finger Lakes region for wine production were predominantly Vitis labrusca and Vitis rotundifolia.  I have tasted wines produced from these two American Vitis species (anybody remember my Wines of the World class?) and at best the wines produced from those grapes provided entertainment value only.
So where am I going with all of this?  Well, I am travelling at present visiting family members in the Beehive state - yes, I am in Utah once again (and have been since last Thursday).  But I could be forgiven for thinking I was actually in Pennsylvania as I spent some time today hanging out in an Amish store.  And it was in the Apple Creek Amish Market, in Provo, where I spotted some bottles of grape juice made from native American Vitis species.  Yes, an Amish store in this bastion of Mormonism.  But it's not wine, it is just juice made from V. rotundifolia, the Muscadine juice, and V. labrusca, the Concord juice - from Arkansas. Very convoluted. Just thought finding these two juices in an Amish shop was amusing (not amusing enough to buy, though).  Besides, I would have thought I'd have found some mead in the Beehive State.

Where in the US of A is Vinogirl?

This morning I seem to have woken up in Utah.  I know this because there is a massive mountain outside my hotel window. 
I'm excited to visit the local state owned liquor store in Springville and have a gander at the wine selection.  And holiday with all my family members, of course.

Foxy lady.

Cue Jimi Hendrix!  It's week 14 of my Wines of the World class. This evening there were 30 wines to try from 12 states in the good, old US of A. The usual American grape-suspects where in tonight's vinous line-up; Concord (Vitis labrusca), Norton (Vitis aestivalis) and Scuppernong (Vitis rotundifolia).  Thrown into the fray were some more readily recognisable Vitis vinifera cultivars; Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Merlot.  Also represented were some French-American hybrid direct producers, bred for their hardiness and disease resistance; Chardonel, Vidal blanc and Chambourcin.
Grapevine cultivation has a rather long, and often disastrous, history in North America.  Exploring Vikings, upon landing on the American mainland, circa 1000 AD, named it Vinland for the grapevines they discovered growing there in abundance.  Some seven centuries later, England was convinced that the New World could become one, giant vineyard:  In 1657, King James I decreed that  all settlers must raise grapes.  However, the native grapes of America made poor tasting wine, so what was a thirsty colonial to do?  Then along came oenophile Thomas Jefferson.  Hoping that wine would become the everyday drink of Americans - in part to counter the ever growing consumption of that evil, reprobate spirit, whiskey - Jefferson planted, and replanted, European winegrape varieties at his plantation inVirginia, Monticello. Unfortunately for Tom, each vineyard replant died within a few years from a mysterious, but as it turned out native, disease.  Cue phylloxera!
So on to this evening's offerings.  The wines of the USA were astounding, but not in a particularly good way.  The foxy character, associated with Vitis labrusca, was evident in a few wines tonight.  It has variously been described as smelling like fox urine, or as having a cosmetic-perfumey quality. Dr. Krebs informed the class that the foxy component was most likely the smell of a female fox in heat - lovely!  Best white wine? Best red? It's tough.  From Pennsylvania, the Blue Mountain Winery, 2011 Riesling was drinkable, but not very varietal like. From Missouri, the Augusta Winery, 2011, Norton had great color extraction and nice acid, but that's about all I can say about it.
The silliest wines of the night were two pineapple wines from Hawaii. The most odoriferous wines were two Muscadines out of Florida - no one in the class could come up with a single descriptor for either of these Sunshine State wines.
I did get to taste two wines from Utah. I was interested in these two wines because of my familial connection to this particular state.  Castle Creek Winery is located near Moab, on the Colorado River, a part of the world more famous for it's National Parks than it's wine. Their white wine offering with the proprietal name of Uintah blanc, made from a blend of Muscat grapes and thus displaying a slight linalool character, was at least drinkable. Their red, a thin, vegetal mess of a Merlot, was not!
What a night.  Most students were stunned, or at least their palates were. The wines of the USA almost had me wishing for the wines of Eastern Europe!
Next...

A controlled state.

In further answer to Thud's question, in the comment section of my last post, there are a lot of things that are indeed normal in Utah - food, toasty weather and loving family members.  However, in some ways Utah-normal is very different from the California-normal that I have become accustomed to by living in the Golden State for so many years.  One of the biggest differences for me, and one which I consider to be grossly abnormal, is the existence of state run liquor stores.
Alcohol beverage control states, commonly known just as control states, are states that exert a state monopoly over the wholesaling and/or retailing of some or all alcoholic beverages.  Utah, along with seventeen other states, is a control state.  As an adult, a wine lover and an Englishwoman having restricted access to all things alcoholic is anathema to me.  Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that there are some walks of life that government should not meddle with.  Ergo, the informed decision by a consenting adult to consume alcohol should not be of concern to any legislature, state or federal.  But let's face it, the USA's attitude to alcohol on the whole is very different from the norm that I grew up with in England - the land of the free is after all  the country that visited the Volstead Act upon it's hapless citizens.
From the Utah state government's point of view, is there a better way to collect profit and taxes from exercising a monopoly over the sale of alcohol?  I don't think so.  Cha ching!  As it turned out, I was more than happy to fork over some tax revenue to the state of Utah.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the particular state run liquor store that I visited, in Springville, had an impressive variety of domestic and foreign wines to choose from and I exited the premises with two Italian whites.  If for some reason I found myself residing in Utah, I would probably be fairly satisfied with the rather decent assortment of wines available to me.  The prices were normal and in the end it didn't matter who ran the store.
Now, don't get me started on the national 21 year old minimum drinking age...

Where in the world is Vinogirl?



I'm in Utah. 

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