Category Archives: Tasting Notes

A Fine Agenais Rose

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“There’s nothing pretentious about this wine; it’s straightforward,
well-made, and boy, do I like the price.”

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I’ve been on the prowl for anything from Mary Taylor since I first tried three of her wines in February. I love her concept of importing “the kind of honest, authentic wines that the Europeans have been enjoying for centuries,” and those I’ve tasted have been much to my liking.

But, I’d only managed to track down one other specimen, the very nice 2020 Mary Taylor Pierre Vidal Costières de Nimes, until now. Then, yesterday, I stopped in the Westborn Market in Berkley specifically to find something new and interesting, and there this sat stacked and waiting for me. It’s the first Agenais I can recall seeing around here, and it’s dry rosé, so it was an easy choice for this taster.
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Tawse Up

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“…you won’t go wrong with anything that has the name Tawse on the label.”

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As previously reported, we’re big fans of Tawse Wine and Spirits, located in Vineland, Ontario, in Niagara wine country. In our experience, their wines range from very good to excellent, and we make a point of paying a visit every time we’re in the neighborhood. Many of the wines are most age worthy, as these two clearly show.

When Alan Kerr aka Canadian Zinfan visited a few weeks ago, I suggested that he bring along something that we could open along with an 11-year old Pinot Noir we’d been saving for several years, and he upped the ante with a 13-year old from his cellar. As I said, we’ve been fans of this producer for some time, but still, I wasn’t prepared for just how good these two were.
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Two Fresh Bubblies

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“This ain’t no weak-ass shit.”

There are two sparkling wines worthy of note that have become available in the last few weeks at our friendly neighborhood Costco. The first is from our own Michigan bubbly specialists, Mawby. As previously reported, these folks are celebrating the winery’s 50th Anniversary, and they have made a special cuveé in that regard. I’m a big Mawby fan, so as soon as I saw this, I picked one up and brought it right home.
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Two Tablas Creek Whites

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“These are both wonderful white wines, but for quite different reasons…”

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Tablas Creek Vineyard has been on my very short list of favorite California wineries for almost two decades. This storied collaboration between the Perrin family (Famille Perrin, Chateau de Beaucastel) and the Hass family (Robert Haas was the founder of the Perrin’s American importer, Vineyard Brands) has been at the forefront of the West Coast Rhone movement for even longer. Not only were all of their vines propagated from cuttings taken from Chateau Beaucastel, their nursery has also provided cuttings for many other California Rhone producers. Vineyard farming practices are heavily rooted in organic and Biodynamic principles, and just about everything else that goes on at Tablas Creek is intended to lighten their carbon footprint. There is so much to admire about this forward looking operation, but in the end, the wines are what Tablas Creek is all about, and the wines are very, very good.

The Esprit de Tablas line is Tablas Creek’s flagship range, and these two wines had been cellared comfortably for at least the last few years. That’s not a bad thing, because they are built to age, and could have easily spent more time evolving. Still, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to open them, and a visit from our old Gang of Pour accomplice Alan Kerr aka Canadian Zinfan last week provided the perfect excuse to pull those corks. We were hosted by our friends Shar Douglas and Ken Hebenstreit, who provided a nice Mediterranean-Lebanese spread to enjoy with the wines.
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Old Vine Pinot Noir

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“Get it while it lasts, because it probably won’t be around for long.”

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So, I found another good Pinot Noir at our friendly neighborhood Costco last week. (Remember, you don’t need a membership to buy alcohol there.) I had been eyeing it for a few weeks, and although I knew next to nothing about the producer, I figured it was worth buying and trying. This turns out to be a good choice more often than not, as was the case on this occasion.

Hyland Estates is located in Oregon’s McMinnville AVA, with roughly 185 acres of vineyards. The first vines were planted in 1971, and have expanded to include Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Chardonnay, Müller Thurgau and Pinot Noir clones that include Wädenswil, Pommard, Dijon 115 and Coury. There is more background information here for those inclined to explore more thoroughly, but for our purposes, let’s focus on the wine itself.
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No Loose Cannonau

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“It’s a wine that tastes more Spanish or Sicilian than mainland “Italian” to me…”

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I’ve been a fan of this wine for several years, but this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to review it. Cannonau is a native variety on the Italian island of Sardinia, and Sella & Mosca is “foremost wine producer” there, according to their importer. I’ve gotten acquainted with it while enjoying it several times at Trattoria Da Luigi in downtown Royal Oak. It serves well as a good alternative to better-known wines from Tuscany and the Piedmont, and it’s reasonably priced. I recently decided to bring one home, spend some time with it and to find out what the current model has to offer.
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Dry Rose x 3

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“…these are all good variations on the dry rosé theme that deliver solid QPR…”

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I’ve been seeing a lot of ads in the last few weeks telling me that, with the weather warming, we’re now into dry rosé season. I’m not about to quibble with this commonly-held perception, despite the fact that we drink the stuff all year around at our house. If it’s “dry rosé season,” there should be more selections to sample, right? We may have our favorites, but we like to explore the varieties of the dry rosé experience from around the globe, and it seems like there are more good selections to choose from all the time.

Here are just the three latest examples that have crossed our paths. They are all worthy of your consideration.
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Two Serious Cotes-du-Rhones

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“The decanter is your friend.”

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We love a good Côtes du Rhône. They have been our go-to everyday reds for more than two decades, consistently offering solid QPR (quality-price-ratio) that few domestic wines have been able to match, now or then.

I’m a firm believer in giving any good young Côtes du Rhône red some air. You can’t hurt it by decanting it 30 minutes before pouring, so why not? They’ll usually open up that much sooner than if glasses had been poured straight from the bottle.

This one is a perfect example. I got it at Plum Market a few months ago. It exceeds my usual $10-20 QPR range, but in this case, it’s damn well worth it. According to the Weygandt Wines site, Le Poutet is “culled from (Charvin’s) holdings just outside his Châteauneuf-du-Pape vineyards. Le Poutet is so good that it often outperforms the top bottlings of lesser Châteauneuf producers.” I would not disagree, based on what’s in this bottle.
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Oldies But Goodies from Left Foot Charley

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“I’m not a ratings guy, so I don’t do numbers, but I will say this
about these two beauties; every sip is a pleasure.”

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I’ve followed Left Foot Charley Winery since the very beginning. I enjoy pretty much everything owner-winemaker Bryan Ulbrich and company makes, and I even had the great pleasure of performing my music on both the LFC patio and in the tasting room on a number occasions, before the pandemic and arthritis slowed me down. I love these people, not only for the wines and ciders they make, but for everything they do for the Traverse City community.

During another swing through the cellar last week, I found these two oldest of LFC’s offerings still down there. Since the 2011 Left Foot Charley Cadia I reviewed in February was so good, I had to pull some more corks and find out what these had to offer, starting with some Pinot Blanc.

I was sorry to hear of the passing of Island View Vineyard owner Werner Kuehnis. I only met Werner a few times, but he was a beloved fixture at the facility, and the original “silent partner” at LFC. His vineyard on Old Mission Peninsula has consistently produced exceptional fruit for the best Michigan Pinot Blancs I’ve had to date. After the brutal winter of 2013-14, yields were so low that LFC had to tap additional vineyard sources in order to make and bottle the 2014 and 2015 vintages.
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Two Michigan Sparklers

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“I love the intensity, and must confess; when I might have stopped at two glasses, I had a third, and found it just as satisfying as the first.”

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While not exactly a “hot bed” of sparkling wine production, there has been more and more good bubbly coming out of Michigan for quite a while now. One need look no further than the dean of Michigan sparkling wine producers, Larry Mawby, whose L. Mawby winery, rebranded simply as Mawby in 2019, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. Larry has stepped back from leadership, promoting longtime team members Michael and Peter Laing to head up the operations.

The Laing brothers also have their own label, bigLITTLE, which they describe as “Big wines from our Little Leelanau Peninsula.” They source their grapes from their parents’ ten-acre vineyard in Lake Leelanau, and while they make several still wines, it’s the Tire Swing Brut that first caught this bubblehead’s attention back in 2015. So, when I found a current bottling at Ferndale’s Western Market recently, it was an easy choice to try again, and a rewarding one at that.
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