October 2, 2019

Review: Tenuta Santomé Raboso Riserva 2011

Grape(s): Raboso Piave

Region: Veneto, Italy

Winery: Tenuta Santomé

Style: Full-bodied, aged, red

Tasting Notes: Bourbon soaked cherry, leather, tobacco, fig, date, toffee, caramel

Pairing Suggestions: This is a wine you want to be at the center of your gathering, not competing for attention against an expensive steak, although they would pair nicely. For me, I’d serve this with a nice big charcuterie and cheese board, something that will provoke thought and conversation around the wine, which should enhance everyone’s enjoyment.

TL/DR: It tastes like Ron Burgundy’s apartment.

I haven’t really updated much in the past couple of months and, yeah, I’ve been busy at work, but the truth is I was kind of burning out on the whole blogging thing. For the most of the past year I’ve really been pushing myself in my free time to try new wines and write about them, but, let’s face it, not every wine is really so remarkable that I can spend a couple hours contemplating it and finding something meaningful to say. I didn’t like the idea that I was posting content just to post content.

It’s important to have a drive to constantly create, but if what you’re creating isn’t good, what’s the point? I wanted to be inspired, to remember what it was about wine that made me love it in the first place.

By chance, one of our reps was touring through the city with an Italian winemaker, showing him around and tasting out his wines. I wasn’t initially in the meeting, but was called in toward the end to try a few things. My interest was low, we weren’t really looking for new wines at that moment, but I was polite and tried what was offered. None of it was bad, but our selection is small and we just didn’t need a new Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio. Finally I was handed a glass made from a local grape, something I’d never heard of before, exactly the kind of thing I’m usually scouring the city to find, my interest was suddenly piqued.

The wine was Tenuta Santomé Raboso Riserva 2011. Raboso, in this case, refers to Raboso Piave, a notoriously astringent grape that has a reputation for being difficult to work with. When consumed young, wines produced from this grape are aggressively tannic, which helps to explain the name, Raboso, which literally means “angry” or “pissed off.” Like many angry youths, Raboso mellows as it matures to become more sophisticated and complex in it’s later years.

In this case the wine is developed in batches, spending the first 3 years in barrel, some maturing in French oak and others in Chestnut, before being blended together and aged in bottle for a further 2 years. The winemaker considers the it ready for consumption after 5 years and releases it for sale.

It’s rare to have the opportunity to drink aged wine in today’s market, unless you’re willing to invest time or spend some money. Every bottle of wine comes with some risk (cork taint, oxidation, etc), but the more money you spend, the greater the risk involved. This is one of the most exciting things about Tenuta Santomé’s wine for me, the producer has taken the lion’s share of the risk in creating this magnificent wine by aging it before release, all we have to do is enjoy it.

As wine ages it loses those bright fruit flavors to develop more rich flavors like toffee, tobacco, mahogany, leather-bound books, bourbon-soaked cherry; basically it tastes like Ron Burgundy’s apartment. If you’ve never had the opportunity to experience an aged wine, this is one worth seeking out.

As I said before, we weren’t looking for a wine when the winemaker came to visit, there really wasn’t even room on our list, but when you stumble across a wine like this, you don’t let it escape. We made room.

I don’t like buying the same bottle twice; once I’ve tried something I like to move on and look for new things, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t consider taking a bottle of this home. For me, it represents everything good about wine; it’s the reason we place importance on it, why we drink it. This is a wine Bacchus would have served at one of those ancient Roman rave/ orgies. It’s also a metaphor for life, showing us that the fire of youth can become something greater with age, and a reminder that we should seize the opportunity to enjoy what we have while we have it.

Review
June 11, 2019

Wine Diary: Writer’s Block and the Paradox of Inspiration

I’ve been staring at a blank screen for nearly three weeks, trying to figure out how I want to talk about this wine. Writer’s block may be a tired cliché in television or movies, but that doesn’t make it any less real. I know from past experience there’s not an epiphany around the corner that’s going to make all my jumbled ideas fall in place. No, I have to work through this the hard way. It isn’t about some lack of inspiration, but crippling self-doubt, the unshakable belief that whatever I say is irrelevant and it’s only a matter of time before everyone sees me as the useless hack I really am. That’s not the kind of thing that gets fixed by some casual acquaintance unwittingly offering sage advice in the form of a new perspective, but rather self-reflection and the confrontation of uncomfortable truths. Sometimes you just have to step away, clear your head, sit back down at the keyboard, and try again. The grand irony here is we’re not talking about some would-be best seller, I’m just reviewing a wine.

One of the things I’ve learned in my short time blogging is that the act of generating content can be inconvenient. For example, if I buy a bottle of wine to bring home, I can’t just open it and start drinking. Oh, no! It must be documented for further musings on my website in the future. Sometimes the thought of setting up the lights and crawling around on the floor for half an hour to take photos is unappealing at best. Maybe you really aren’t into it that night, so you phone in the photos and take quick, vague, notes. Hell, maybe it was 11:30pm, and you just wanted to enjoy a glass of wine after work. Fast forward to four months later, when you’re trying to articulate your thoughts, and you suddenly discover that perpetually lazy past version of yourself has screwed you over yet again.

C’est la vie.

In the end, I suppose I could just skip this bottle. Take a pass and move on, hoping for better results in the future, but the truth is, I really enjoyed this one. I want to talk about it. I’ve been looking forward to it. So, let’s cut the shit; all the pissing and moaning, anxiety, self-doubt, the time I got embarrassed because someone saw me do something stupid, the time I said something that hurt someone’s feelings, the daily dissatisfaction I have with whatever aspect of my life, basically, all the mental clutter that is for some reason in the way, and brush it aside so we can focus on what’s important: the wine.

Back in February we were hosting multiple tastings, bored with our existing wine, list we wanted to bring it to life with an infusion of new ideas. This is one of the wines we were considering around that time. In the end, it didn’t make the cut, but it did provide me with the opportunity to sample my first Vermentino, a grape I was completely unfamiliar with. If you’ve anything I’ve ever written, you know I love Alsatian wines, and this new wine shares a lot of those same characteristics, crisp and mineral, with a high, palate-cleansing, acidity. It was like falling in love with someone who looks a lot like an ex, without all the messy emotional trauma that follows.

Sardegna is the second largest island in the Mediterranean, sitting just across the Tyrrhenian Sea from Italy. In reading about grapes it’s not uncommon to find references to Sardegna, or the neighboring French island of Corse, as both names frequently come up, especially around disputed claims of origin for particular grape varieties. This, however, is the first time I’ve had a wine from either place.

Olianas is a young winery, tracing their origins back to the beginning of the century. Their Vermintino di Sardegna 2017 had a lovely array of flavors, like lychee, bell pepper, wet stone, and honeysuckle. It was crisp and refreshing, the kind of bottle that mysteriously disappears before you’re ready to be finished with it. More than any of the other wines we sampled, this stuck in my memory. After one encounter, I swore I was going to explore this grape, and region, further. There will be a second bottle, and probably a third. In other words, if you’re planning to pick up one, you might as well buy two.

If there were any truth to the portrayal of writer’s block on film and television, this wine would be the cure, not the cause. We’re half way through the year, I’ve tried a lot of wine, and very few of those have managed to lodge themselves so firmly in my poor hack brain as this one. It is without a doubt, an inspiring wine, but inspiration doesn’t finish projects, it begins them.

Wine Diary
Querceto Chianti Classico red wine sangiovese
December 5, 2018

Wine Diary: Querceto Chianti Classico 2016

There’s something Americans find romantic about Tuscany. Seriously, just say the word and watch their eyes roll back in their skulls as waves of micro-orgasms penetrate the hidden corners of their mind. It doesn’t matter if you’re describing the place itself or can of chunky soup, there’s just something about the idea of Tuscany that satisfies the imagination like no other place can. We just find it romantic and I think the Italians know that, otherwise how could you explain something like this, a bottle of Chianti Classico with a unicorn on the label? I mean, c’mon, there’s already a castle overlooking the vineyard, at a certain point it’s not even fair; just take our money, please, we’d be honored for you to have it.

Querceto Chianti Classico red wine sangiovese

Querceto Chianti Classico is a blend of 92% Sangiovese with the remaining 8% consisting of Canaiolo, Colorino, and Mammolo e Ciliegiolo, if you’ve never heard of those last three, don’t worry, they’re not grapes you’re likely to find outside of Chianti. The wine spends six months in wood (I assume oak, but that was not specified on their website) and then aged in the bottle for a further two months before being released to consumers. They offer several different Chianti Classico labels, as well as other wines, and even olive oil.

Querceto Chianti Classico red wine sangiovese

Like I said before, there’s a castle overlooking the vineyard, they offer tours of the vineyard, cellar, and castle. There’s also rooms available to rent, should you want to spend your vacation there. Personally, I’ve never been to Tuscany, but if I was going this looks exactly like the kind of place I would want to go to get away from everything. Just look at the photos and you understand why people get that dreamy look in their eye at the mere mention of the region.

Querceto Chianti Classico red wine sangiovese

As for the wine, it was good. I’m not always a fan of Chianti, Classico or otherwise, but I enjoyed this. It was surprisingly tannic for such a light wine, so it paired well with my steak, but may not have performed so well with a lighter pasta dish. It was well-balanced, with good acidity, red fruit and spice flavors. All in all, I would recommend it.

Italian wine is kind of intimidating for me, it’s not something I’ve explored much and it’s a deep rabbit hole to fall into. We sell a few Iabels at work and I’ve delved in a little for the Chopping Block’s blog, I actually wrote a post exploring the differences between Chianti and Chianti Classico at the beginning of last year, but there’s so much more for me to learn about that county. I know that when I finally decide to take it on it’s going to require a lot more focus and energy than other areas, simply because there are so many new grapes and every region has its own unique personality; it’s just overwhelming. That’s really it, I know its going to demand so much of my attention that I’m afraid I’m going to miss out on something else. I’m not usually a fan of New Year’s resolutions, but this might be mine for 2019, to drink and learn more about Italian wine.

Querceto Chianti Classico red wine sangiovese

However, that’s all in the future. For the moment, I think the real takeaway, the moral lesson that needs to be understood here is, that if you find a bottle of wine with a unicorn on it, you should buy it.

Wine Diary