Wine Review: 2009 Gramercy Cellars Syrah

16 01 2012

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’d think this would be a no-brainer for me.  I pump the tires of Washington wine so hard that you’d think I was born in Tacoma.  (I wasn’t.)  In particular, I love what Washington State does to my favourite red grape of all:  Syrah.  Add in a top notch critically-acclaimed producer and it’s a recipe for a killer review, right?  At the end of the day, that’s definitely where it ended up, but it took a little while for it to get there.

Still just a baby, but clearly on the road to BIG things. Cellar if you can resist.

But let’s back up.  This is another bottle from the wine lineup of Washington’s Gramercy Cellars brought into the province by Highlander Wine & Spirits, cousin to the Third Man GSM blend that I glowingly reviewed back in mid-December.  In case you don’t feel like clicking on the link, here’s the Gramercy story in a nutshell:  young NYC Master Sommelier phenom with high-powered resto-job leaves it all behind to pursue his passion and grow Syrah in Walla Walla.  Gramercy makes other wines too (I still have a Cab and a Tempranillo downstairs waiting to be opened, and the Third Man is mainly Grenache), but Syrah is their heart and their focus.  Did I mention that tonight’s bottle is a Syrah?  And did I mention that Syrah’s my favourite?

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Wine Review: 2009 Gramercy Cellars “The Third Man” GSM

17 12 2011

I’ve wanted to try a bottle of Gramercy for over a year.  Last fall I bought Wine & Spirits Magazine’s annual Top 100 issue listing their hundred best wineries in the world for 2010, and there for the first time I read about a Washington producer called Gramercy Cellars, started by Greg Harrington, a Master Sommelier (the youngest to earn the title in the US) who quit his prestigious position as wine director for a group of NYC restaurants in order to move to Washington State and start making Syrah, despite no prior winemaking experience and no connection to the Pacific Northwest.  He was inspired by a chance tasting of Walla Walla wines that he attended, moved by their balance and sense of place to such a degree that he was motivated to drop everything and start a new life.  Gramercy Cellars was born in 2005, and within five years it was officially considered a force on the American wine scene; in addition to the top 100 honour in Wine & Spirits in 2010 (a distinction repeated in 2011) and other awards, Gramercy was named Best New Winery by Food & Wine Magazine in 2010 and promptly celebrated, uh, well, like this:

Since all you have to say to get my vinous attention is “Washington” and “Syrah” in the same sentence, I’ve been waiting and hoping to see a bottle of Gramercy around Calgary somewhere, but until very recently it simply wasn’t available.  So imagine my surprise when one of my go-to wine shops, Highlander Wine & Spirits, announced last month that they had arranged the provincial exclusive to carry Gramercy wines and were making a number of them available for immediate sale…it felt like some kind of strange karmic reward.  This particular bottle was an XMas gift from my friend Elliot (thank you!!), but needless to say I also stocked up on some of Gramercy’s varietal Syrah to enjoy at a later date.

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Wine Review: 2009 Tanins Syrah Chardonnay

19 10 2011

Syrah. And Chardonnay. Just because. You know you secretly want to try it.

I’m sorry, what?

That wasn’t a typo.  Tonight’s wine is ACTUALLY a blend of Syrah and Chardonnay.  It may not surprise you to learn that this is the first time I’ve ever had that blatantly crazy combo of grapes together.  It would not surprise me to learn that LSD was involved in the producer’s blending decisions.  But here we are.  Obviously taking their cue from the long-standing Northern Rhone tradition of blending in a touch of white Viognier with red Syrah, French producer Tanins (sic?) has put together another red-white mashup, only casting the world’s most well-known white grape in the usual Viognier role.  It’s a strange choice:  Viognier is added to Rhone reds because it is intensely aromatic and thus adds pizzazz and complexity to the blend’s nose.  Chardonnay is the exact opposite, a generally neutral varietal without any strong aromas to call its own.  I have no idea what motivated its selection, and this bottle has turned out to be nearly impossible to research electronically, so I’ll just have to take the plunge in the dark.  Morbid curiosity, prepare to be satisfied. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2009 Laughing Stock Syrah

28 09 2011

View from the parking lot: I could get used to looking at this every day.

On my trip to the Okanagan earlier this month, one of the things I was most looking forward to was my visit to Laughing Stock Vineyards, producer of my favourite Canadian red wine of all time and restorer of my faith in (at least some of) my homeland’s wine industry.  We made the trek out to Naramata, located just northeast of Penticton along the shoreline of Lake Okanagan, on a gorgeous late summer day and I was lucky enough to meet LS owner/vineyard manager Cynthia Enns and get a guided tour of the property, which sits on a west-facing slope with an incredible view overlooking the Lake.  I was even luckier that the tasting room still had some of the 2009 Laughing Stock Syrah in stock, which I’d been dying to try, partly because LS had made me think that good Canadian reds were an actual possibility, partly because I generally just love Syrah, and partly because I had never seen this particular wine anywhere in Alberta, giving me (in my head, anyway) a chance at a provincial exclusive.  I bought a couple bottles to take home, and tonight was the first taste trial.  Since the last Canadian Syrah I had before this one smelled and tasted like tomato soup, this had nowhere to go but up. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2009 Jeannine Boutin Crozes-Hermitage “Les Hauts Granites”

22 08 2011

Just ignore the Baby Rainforest Bouncer in the background.

After pounding out 1500+ words about five German Rieslings in my last post, I’m going to try to be a little (OK, a lot) more concise tonight.  While Riesling has always been my favourite white grape, my current favourite red has got to be Syrah, a full-bodied, powerful grape capable of many different expressions and often melding fruity and savoury notes in a way that no other varietal can.  Most of the Syrahs that have found their way onto PnP so far have been New World examples, mainly from Washington State or California with the occasional Aussie Shiraz (same grape, different name) thrown in.  Tonight, however, I’m going back to the grape’s roots in the northern Rhone Valley in France, Syrah’s ancestral homeland and (maybe moreso 20 years ago than now, but still) home to its most famous and expensive bottlings.  Some of the most lauded and pricy Syrah in the world is grown in a small appellation called Hermitage, a single hill hovering over the Rhone River containing barely over 300 acres of vines.  If I worked five of my current jobs, I could drink Hermitage every now and then.  Instead, I’m settling for its little brother, Crozes-Hermitage, a much larger region spanning the flatlands surrounding Hermitage Hill on the Rhone’s east bank.  A Crozes may not light your world on fire like an Hermitage can, but it won’t cost you $400 either…this one was a shade over $30. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2005 Andrew Rich “Les Vignes En Face” Syrah

4 07 2011

What a difference a day makes.  I first cracked this wine last night and was sort of ambivalent about it, despite the fact that it represented my current ideal red wine region and grape (Washington State Syrah); as a result, I was fully gearing up to write a “nice try, but…” 85-86 point review tonight.  But then I had the rest of the bottle tonight and everything changed:  the rough and rustic edges had softened, the fruit was better balanced, and every component of the bottle was suddenly in harmony.  How cool is wine, that 24 hours in the fridge can make that transformative a difference?

Ridiculous name, but give it time...it'll grow on you.

Let’s back up.  I was tremendously excited to try this wine because it was simultaneously recommended to me by both my favourite Calgary wine shops (Ferocious Grape and Highlander Wine & Spirits) and because it was a good-quality Washington State Syrah for under $30, not a common combination.  The grapes for Les Vignes En Face came from two of the better Syrah vineyards in all of Washington, Ciel du Cheval (the vineyard that spawned my poor cork-ruined Andrew Will wine a few weeks ago) and Klipsun.  Even better, it was a 2005, so it had already had some time to settle down in the bottle before making its way into my greedy hands.  The only downside was its unfortunately pretentious faux-French name, which as far as I can tell roughly translates to “The Vines In Front” (note to producers:  if you’re not in France, don’t name your wines French names), but questionable nomenclature notwithstanding, I still had high hopes. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2006 Therapy Vineyards Superego

1 07 2011

A+ label art -- even cooler up close, AND appropriate Canada Day colouring.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!  I would have been remiss if I didn’t focus on a wine from my home and native land tonight, but that proved to be more of a challenge than I thought, as my cellar’s currently a little thin on the Canada front — out of the 90-odd bottles that I keep stored in an army of wine fridges in my basement, only two of them are from Canada.  One of them is a $15 Niagara Cabernet Sauvignon that I’m a little scared to open, and the other one is this bottle.  Fearing the patriotic retribution that might ensue if I rated a cheap Canadian wine 65 points on Canada Day, I instead went with this bottle, the 2006 Superego from Therapy Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley.  You may know Therapy from their ink-blot labels and punny wine names (Freudian Sip white blend, Pink Freud rosé, etc.); the Superego is their top red bottling, made from top quality grapes using stringent processes to be Therapy’s flagship wine.  As you can see in the picture to the left, it comes in an absolutely spectacular-looking bottle that rivals Chile’s Montes Folly Syrah as my favourite wine label art of all time.  I got this particular bottle from a fellow wine lover and a Therapy devotee (thanks Allison!) and have been holding it for the right occasion.  Happy 144th, Canada — tonight I pop and pour for you! Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2007 Edward Sellers Syrah

23 06 2011

Better than a fancier, more expensive version of itself -- awesome!

Apologies in advance for the short-form review, but I haven’t gotten to the computer until now and I’m heading out of town tomorrow for the weekend, so faced with the Sophie’s Choice of not posting at all for almost a week or posting a lame point form review, I went with lameness over absenteeism.  This Syrah from the Paso Robles region (which is between San Jose and LA in southwest California) is mainly interesting because it’s the cheaper, less fancy, less package-focused (screwcap here vs. cork on the other bottle) version of the Edward Sellers “Le Thief”, which I reviewed way back in the infancy of PnP.  Granted, the Le Thief was a Syrah-based blend, and this is pure Syrah, but I got the impression that the Le Thief, pretentious name and all, was set up as a higher-end offering, while this Syrah was more the base model.  All of this is only important because I think this Syrah is a way better wine.  Condensed review…go! Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2007 Amavi Cellars Syrah

17 06 2011

Yes, I drank the whole bottle before remembering to take a picture. Shoot me.

This is a Pop & Pour first:  a review of a wine that has been previously featured on this site, just in a different vintage.  I have very fond memories of the 2005 Amavi Syrah from Walla Walla Valley in Washington State, which bears the eternal distinction of being PnP’s first 90+ point wine (92 points) and which delivered layer after layer of complex, savoury, intriguing goodness when I had it back in March.  Skip forward two harvests and you get to tonight’s wine, Amavi’s 2007 rendition of the same Syrah from the same region, which I’ve been eagerly awaiting to compare to its predecessor ever since I bought the bottle.  The ’07 had big shoes to fill (I still vividly remember the ’05 three months later), but it definitely delivered, albeit in a very different way than I expected. Read the rest of this entry »


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Poll: Vote On the Next PnP Wine!

20 05 2011

So I’m still sick, making this currently the most wine-free wine blog on the Internet.  Since I can’t DRINK wine right now, I’m doing the next best thing, which is THINKING about drinking wine, and to pump up the anticipation for my triumphant return to vino I thought I’d get your input about what bottle I should crack on that illustrious occasion.  I have picked four wines that have been tangentially featured or mentioned in previous PnP posts, and now it’s up to you to decide which one will get top billing in my next review…whichever one gets the most votes by the time my illness goes away (hopefully sometime this weekend if there’s any justice in this world) will be the lucky winner.  Without further ado, the very first Pop & Pour Wine Poll:

Here’s a little additional info about each of the four contenders and their PnP history:

  1. 2008 Mercer Estates Dead Canyon Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon:  I reviewed Mercer’s $30ish Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington State at the end of March (see the review here) and liked it (88 points), but to me it actually didn’t live up to Mercer’s own significantly cheaper $20ish Dead Canyon Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon.  I’ve had the DCR multiple times before (I tend to pounce on wine that good for that price), but I’ve never written it up on the blog…yet.
  2. 2007 Amavi Cellars Syrah:  I had the 2005 vintage of this wine in mid-March and absolutely adored it (see the review here) — I gave it 92 points at the time, and in retrospect I might even want to bump that up another point.  It was everything higher-end Syrah should be:  fruity, meaty, savoury, long, lingering and endlessly complex.  I’ve now obtained the 2007 version of Amavi’s Syrah and am dying to see if it lives up to its predecessor.
  3. 2008 Enzo Boglietti Dolcetto d’Alba:  I TRIED to review this wine once before, back in mid-April, but it only took a sniff and a sip to force me to change plans and write about how to detect corked wine instead — yecch.  I saved my ruined bottle, and the Ferocious Grape was good enough to take it back and give me a replacement, no questions asked.  I now sort of feel like I owe Enzo a mulligan and have been waiting for the right time for a take two on his Dolcetto.
  4. 2009 Loosen Dr. L Riesling:  When I reviewed Charles Smith’s Kung Fu Girl Riesling in early April, I suggested that the only entry-level (sub-$20) Riesling that I’ve had that could go toe to toe with KFG was Loosen’s Dr. L, which is available at Superstores everywhere for around $15.  At some point I will do a Dr. L vs. KFG head to head taste-off, but I figure I owe Dr. Loosen a starring role in a review first.
There you have it — I await your votes!  I will readily admit that I have hesitated putting up any kind of poll on PnP before in fear that the ultimate results would end up being 2 votes to 1 or something equally embarrassing, so I am counting on you to keep this blog from looking third-rate…make it seem second-rate at least.  Please vote, and please pass this on to anyone else who might want to weigh in!  If you want any more info on the contending wines, leave a comment and I will answer ASAP.  Cheers!

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Roving Wine Review(s): Saturday Night Tasting

8 05 2011

There was no PnP post last night, because instead of pounding something out on my keyboard for the blog, I was out doing “field research”.  It started at Brava Bistro on 17th Avenue (try the potato and honey flatbread!), ultimately ended up at a friend’s place downtown, and was the kind of research where no notes are taken, many glasses are emptied, and the recollection of wines past is not quite as sharp as expected the next day.  That said, we had enough interesting and incredible wines that I would be remiss not to pass along at least something about what we enjoyed.  The night’s wines were cracked in this order (Editor’s Note:  I am not counting the half bottle of Hello Kitty sparkling Italian rosé [don’t ask] that worked its way into the lineup at the end of the night and was, to put it kindly, an utter abomination): Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: Habla No. 4 (2006)

3 04 2011

The future in a bottle.

I promised to open something worthwhile tonight, so here goes.  I got this bottle of Habla No. 4 for Christmas in 2009 (thanks Josh!) and have been patiently waiting to open it on a special occasion — well, 72 hours without a PnP wine review sounds like occasion enough to me!  Habla’s wines are exclusively carried in Calgary by Kensington Wine Market, and this one retails for around $75 CDN…WAY out of my usual price range, but that’s what Christmas is for, right?  All of Habla’s wines, including the No. 4, come from vineyards located near the town of Trujillo in the Extremadura province of Spain, which is located west and slightly south of Madrid.  If you’re wondering what formal Spanish wine region this falls into, well, it doesn’t:  this area is basically off the grid as far as winemaking goes. Read the rest of this entry »


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Roving Wine Review: 2007 Gaja Promis @ Alloy

22 03 2011

If you haven't been to Alloy, go. Now.

I had an Important Business Dinner last night that took me to Alloy restaurant just off Macleod Trail on 42nd Ave. S.E…. my favourite restaurant in the city, and as it turns out, even better on somebody else’s tab.  There was remarkable food (I had a short rib appetizer with a roasted pepper and fenugreek chutney that should be illegal) and witty conversation, but most importantly, there was wine.  I was lazy and didn’t take contemporaneous notes, but this is the second time I’ve had the bottle we ordered, and it left enough of an impression that this review should still be fairly accurate.

The wine in question was the 2007 “Promis” from Gaja, made from grapes grown in the Ca’Marcanda vineyard in Tuscany.  Both the producer and the style of wine are rife with history. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Calgary Wine Life, Wine Reviews

Wine Review: 2005 Amavi Cellars Syrah

17 03 2011

You had me at "Syrah".

This.  Wine.  Is.  AWESOME.

I promised a winner from Washington in my next review, and I have delivered and then some.  There are lots of good wines out there, but to me a great wine is one that keeps you coming back to the glass for each new sip or sniff wondering what you’re going to find next.  Great wines have depth, complexity and an interest factor, something compelling that latches onto you and won’t let go.  This wine is great. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2006 Edward Sellers “Le Thief”

13 03 2011

If I wanted this much booze, I'd spend less and buy vodka.

Yet another well-made, well-intentioned California wine done in by an overabundance of alcohol.  I think I’m putting a personal embargo in place effective right now on any wine over 15%, because it seems like once a wine crosses that threshold, everything but the booze level just doesn’t keep up.  It’s a shame too, because some of the elements of this wine were quite impressive.

The “Le Thief” (don’t blame me for the butchered French…Le Voleur?) is a Syrah, Grenache and Mourvedre blend from Paso Robles, California produced in very low quantities:  less than 800 cases total (or less than 10,000 bottles) made.  I got it from The Ferocious Grape on 8th St & 10th Ave SW, one of my favourite wine shops in the city due mainly to its friendly, helpful, knowledgeable yet laid-back staff (and also due to the fact that its vault-worthy wines are in an actual [sort of] vault).  FG just started bringing in Edward Sellers’ wines, which are not widely found in Alberta. Read the rest of this entry »


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