August 12th and 13th – Food, Fun, and Wine
Glen-A-Palooza and Food by K-Seas Winghouse
Also buy 3 out of 4 wines from this week’s tasting for 10% off your purchase!
Wine #1 – Markham Sauvignon Blanc
Winemaker’s Notes – C
itrus zest and fresh pineapple grab your attention while white peach and wet stone add structural support to the abundant aromas in our 2015 Sauvignon Blanc. Honeyed apricots, pear and citrus fruit flavors come together in a juicy sip. The crisp, citrus acidity is well-balanced and makes this wine easy to pair with anything! Cuban pork mojo served with black beans and tostones would bring the feel of vacation as well as a perfect pairing.
Kevin’s Notes: As a wine buyer for a wholesaler in Atlanta I was responsible for managing and buying Markham wines for our sales force. It was and still is an incredible winery. The most difficult part of managing this winery was trying to keep the Sauvignon Blanc in our inventory. Typically, after 6 months the winery would run out of as its taste profile lends itself to so many consumers and restaurants. This is truly one of California’s best Sauvignon Blanc’s! – Cooper’s Price $14.99
Wine #2 – Souverain North Coast Chardonnay
The history of Souverain begins with our founder, J. Leland Stewart, who was born in California in 1905. Stewart’s mother came from the Leland family (founders of Stanford University), while his father was a businessman from Scotland. A man of the people, J. Leland was never comfortable with the pretension of the name ‘Leland’ and all that came with it. So he simply called himself Lee.
Lee was a trendsetter, opting to grow grapes rather than the predominant crop of the day—prunes. He became an advocate of clean winemaking practices and was among the first in California to concentrate on single-varietal, estate-style wines. He was among the first in California to concentrate on single-varietal, estate wines; introducing Petit Sirah as a varietal, and taking a page from the French by insisting that Chardonnay be fermented in oak rather than stainless steel.
Tasting Notes: This storied wine is a celebrated Chardonnay. Inviting aromas of roasted pears, lemon citrus and subtle baking spice meet elegant layers of pineapple, lemon-lime, oak and creme brulee flavors. The full-bodied Chardonnay offers a lush texture and balanced acidity. The wine has a lengthy, flavorful finish. Cooper’s Price $11.99
Wine #3 – Division Villages Willamette, OR Pinot Noir
Division Winemaking Company is Portland, Oregon based urban winery founded in 2010 by Kate Norris and Thomas Monroe. Inspired by the wineries of Loire, Beaujolais, Burgundy, and the Northern Rhône in France (where they first learned winemaking and viticulture). Division crafts approachable and balanced wines through minimal manipulation. Tom and Kate have a passion to work with well-farmed, terroir-expressive vineyards, many of which are organic and/or biodynamic, celebrating the varietals the winemakers loves to drink.. Division Winemaking Company represents a new generation of winemakers that are looking beyond the status quo to create unique styles of wine, with a purpose, a story and without barriers.
Important to know!!! – Carbonic maceration/fermentation is a winemaking technique, often associated with the French wine region of Beaujolais, in which whole grapes are fermented in a carbon dioxide rich environment prior to crushing. Conventional alcoholic fermentation involves crushing the grapes to free the juice and pulp from the skin with yeast serving to convert sugar into ethanol. Carbonic maceration ferments most of the juice while it is still inside the grape, although grapes at the bottom of the vessel are crushed by gravity and undergo conventional fermentation. The resulting wine is fruity with very low tannins. It is ready to drink!
Division Villages carbonic fermentation occurs in sealed concrete vats for about 25 days and aged in concrete vat. The portion from the whole-cluster fermented Johan Vineyard was added at this point.. 250 cases produced. Cooper’s Price $19.99
Wine #4 – Old Vine Red IX
Bedrock Wine Co. was founded in 2007 by Morgan Twain-Peterson in a 550 square-foot, former chicken coop with 8 foot ceilings and no fermentation space. After six years of Bedrock being a one-man-show, Morgan was able to talk his best friend, Chris Cottrell, into moving to California from New York to join him. They now happily have a little more space to move around in but share the same objectives that guided the winery at the start. Today, Bedrock Winery is recognize as on the greatest red zinfandel wine producers in the U.S.
The Wine: 46% Zinfandel, 40% Grenache, 5% Alicante, 5% Petite Sirah, 4% Sangiovese. Sourced from several old vine vineyards throughout Sonoma County. Fermented using native yeasts in stainless steel. Aged in a combination of 85% stainless steel and 15% French oak.
The base for Shebang! comes 100+ year old vines from the Bedrock Vineyard.
Wine Critic Robert Parker: “This is becoming one of the hottest red wine values in California. Made by Bedrock Winery’s Morgan Twain-Peterson. This killer offering admirably demonstrates what field blends of Mediterranean varietals and old vines can achieve in California. Drink this beauty over the next 1-3 years.”
Cooper’s Price $14.99
