Tag Archives: California

Cline Los Carneros Syrah 2006 Carneros

July 8, 2009 Jim/VINEgeek 5 Comments

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I opened another bottle from Cline last night. My stock of everyday wines has gotten low, so I’m raiding my nicer bottles. I have four vintages of this wine in my cellar. It was a stand-out for me on my last visit to the winery a few years back and I’ve been saving my club shipments of this wine ever since. I thought maybe I’d arrange a vertical tasting or something. But I wanted a nice bottle to go with my wife’s awesome eggplant parmesan, so I picked the current vintage (the 2006), saving the others for that hypothetical vertical and assuming I could replace the 2006 more easily.

So how was it? Let’s see…

Producer: Cline Cellars

Grapes: 100% Syrah

Appellation: Carneros (AVA, California) – from the Sonoma side of this AVA, which straddles the southern ends of the Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley AVAs.

Vineyard: Estate hillside vineyards with shallow clay and loam soils. Classic Carneros climate of foggy mornings, warm afternoons and cool evenings due to nearby San Pablo Bay. Photos here and here.

Aging: 12 months in French oak (30% new) with dark toast

Alcohol: 14.5%

Price: $28

My tasting notes: Near opaque color, with a muddy garnet at the rim. On the nose, I get plenty of vanilla oakiness and an interesting pine aroma that reminds me of Christmas. There is some red fruit, but it does not smell highly extracted, which is promising. In the mouth, it’s lovely. Plummy fruit with mineral and leather notes accented with very appealing oak. It has great weight and mouthfeel, smooth but with a bit of tannic grip. And it carries the alcohol much more gracefully than the Bridgehead Zin from last night. Really delicious stuff.

Assessment/score: I really like this. I’ve had a few vintages now and it has always impressed me. Highly recommended. A-

Free association: Not sure why exactly. Sleek but comfortable. Elegant. Smooth wood.

Price: Over 20 bucks, Tasting Notes

Cline Bridgehead Zinfandel 2006 Contra Costa County

July 5, 2009 Jim/VINEgeek 1 Comment

Cline_Bridgehead06_withgrill Yesterday was Independence Day (I wish people still called it that instead of “The Fourth”) and so that means I, like millions of others, BBQed. Pork shoulder smoked for 5 hours with a mix of Jack Daniels oak chips (made from used aging barrels) and applewood. Pulled the pork into tender shreds and put on a bun and dressed with sauce and coleslaw on top, Memphis-style.

It’s become cliche in wine circles, but BBQ and Independence Day means Zinfandel. While not a truly native grape varietal, nowhere else is Zinfandel as important, or historic — some of the oldest vines in America are Zinfandel. And I love the stuff. My second wine epiphany was a bottle of Bannister Zinfandel from the Rochioli vineyard (mid-90s vintage) that I had at Bistro Ralph in Healdsburg. That bottle made Zinfandel my favorite varietal and I’d say Zin has been the most common varietal in my wine history ever since.

Cline is also near and dear to my heart. On my first trip to wine country (the same trip where I had the Bannister), Cline was our first stop of the first day. Though I was still fairly new to wine, I was already geeking out. I was a proud disciple of the ABC crowd (anything but Chardonnay) and was avoiding Merlot well before Paul Giamatti told me to. So Cline was perfect for me. They focus on Rhone varietals and Zinfandels from old vines vineyards (geek heaven). I joined their club after that first visit and have been a regular drinker of their wines ever since.

Bridgehead is one of three single-vineyard Zins they produce, all from the Contra Costa County appellation east of San Francisco. While the county is generally very hot, these vineyard sites are cooled at night by the adjacent San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. These are some of the oldest vineyards in California up to 120 years old.

Producer: Cline Cellars

Grapes: 100% Zinfandel

Appellation: Contra Costa County (AVA, California)


Note the very sandy soil in the photo below. It apparently keeps the phylloxera louse at bay. It also forces the vines to send roots very deep in the soil for nutrients. Many winemakers claim this leads to a greater sense of terroir in the wines.

Vineyard: Bridgehead vineyard; sandy soils, head-trained and dry-farmed

Aging: 11 months in oak (new & used, medium dark toast)

Alcohol: 14.5%

Price: I believe this bottle retails for around $28. (I got it through the winery club.)

My tasting notes: Deep color. Strong chocolate aroma, more like a tootsie roll than actual chocolate. Also some mint. Sweet berry fruit in there as well. The alcohol is strong in the nose (a bit like paint thinner). Very extracted blackberry flavors on the palate with sweet tobacco and minerality. Good tannins and pleasant mouthfeel. While there are some interesting aromas and flavors in here, it somehow comes across a bit simplistic.

Assessment/Score: I think this could use some more time in bottle to maybe dial back the extracted fruit and let the other notes meld into something more nuanced. I didn’t enjoy this as much as the 2003, which wasn’t exactly nuanced, but had more “deliciousness”. BBQ may not have been the best match for this particular Zin. A thick, peppery steak probably better. I’d certainly drink this again, but won’t be stocking up. B-

Free association:

Price: 16-20 bucks, Tasting Notes

Kenwood Jack London Vineyard Zinfandel 2006

June 28, 2009 Jim/VINEgeek Leave a comment

Kenwood JackLondon Zin bottle I’ve really liked this wine in the past and saw it for a good price recently and picked it up. I’m always intrigued by single vineyard Zins (though I don’t think these are particularly old vines). Let’s see what this vintage is like.

Producer: Kenwood Vineyards

Grapes: 100% Zinfandel

Appellation: Sonoma Valley

Vineyard: Jack London Vineyard (on Sonoma Mountain with southeasterly exposure, red volcanic soil)

Aging: 18 months in French and American oak

Alcohol: 14.5%

Price: I think I paid around $18

Production: 6,335 cases

My tasting notes: Right off the bat I’m noticing that the color is rather thin for a Zin. Hmm. Not what I expected. On the nose, I get sweet pipe tobacco accenting the red fruit cherry/berry aromas. I’m smelling the alcohol a bit too, which is worrying. In the mouth it feels pretty plush, which isn’t what I expected after seeing the color. Flavors are red fruit, like in the nose, but with an appealing note of fruit skin — like cherry or plum, or even peach maybe. There is a meatiness coming through as well.

Score: All in all, I enjoyed this wine. It took some time to open up — the second glass was much better than the first — but it came through in the end. Not a stop-the-presses value, but a nice bottle. B/B-

Free association: Amy Winehouse (thin and high in alcohol)

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Packaging: It’s a pretty cool-looking bottle. There is no paper label; the image and text is printed right on the bottle. The big wolf-head apparently was Jack London’s bookplate logo for many of his books, including the middle-school classic Call of the Wild. Also on the back there is a cool quote from Jack London writing about this very vineyard land in 1913:

“I ride over my beautiful ranch. Between my legs is a beautiful horse. The air is wine. The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain, wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smolders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive…”

Jack London Vineyards (Photo by Lance and Erin via Flickr)

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