The Wine Closet Blog

It’s become tradition that my family no longer cooks Christmas dinner and instead we all pitch in and make all kinds of pupu’s throughout the day.  We discontinued making Christmas dinner over 5 years ago because we would snack all day and not be hungry for the dinner we worked all day preparing so we decided we’d just snack all day instead.  This has turned out quite well as we get to try lots of different foods throughout the day.  The delectables served this year were hot artichoke dip and sourdough bread, crudites with greek dipping sauce, crab cakes, civiche, cheesey biscuit puffs, Alabama pulled pork sandwiches w/ white BBQ sauce and everyone’s favorite, Vietnamese spring rolls with a ginger soy dipping sauce and a peanut dipping sauce.  This last one took 5 of us to put together and every year we say we’ll never do them again, but we always end up making them anyway.  Of course we also have lots of cookies. 

Along with all the great food, we also had quite a bit of good wine.  We were provided with some samples of Jalama Vineyards wine from winemaker Mark Cargasacchi which we proceeded to share with our family.  The Pinot Gris was crisp and citrusy with some nice minerality, it had just a touch of bitterness on the finish which probably would have been softened by a bit more fruit.  The Pinot Noir was very light colored, almost see-through, light to medium-bodied with flavors of blueberries, herbs and earth.  The El Kapitan is a full bodied red blend with aromas of dark cherries, coffee and spice – we had this with last night’s dinner of ravioli with puttanesca sauce that matched the spiciness of the wine quite well.

We also opened a bottle of Villa Creek’s “Avenger” which is a blend of Syrah, Mourvedre and Grenache – a full-bodied wine with loads of blackberry fruits.  A very concentrated and structured wine that’s terrific now, but also has some backbone to put away for a bit as well.  Robert Parker gave this ’05 vintage 93 points www.erobertparker.com

My father shared his JC Cellars ’04 Iron Hill Zinfandel which I think is a classic Zinfandel that’s not overly jammy, but has layers of dark fruits and spice well balanced with soft tannins and a long finish.  We then had a Ridge ’04 Zinfandel from the Ponzo Vineyard  from the Russian River Valley.  Parker rated this 91 points.  I thoroughly enjoyed this Zin from the cooler growing area of Northern California – a noticable difference from the overdone, hot Zins made by so many along the Central Coast these days, but still loaded with black fruits, vanilla and cassis flavors and a velvety long finish.

Basically, these are the words Rob was quietly whispering to me while we were at a party in Encinitas this past weekend.  The story unfolds like this…

We’re celebrating my brother-in-law’s 38th birthday at the same time as his brother’s Xmas party at his home in Encinitas with a small gathering of local friends and co-workers.  Most everyone brought some kind of wine or another, most were not to our taste, such as the large format bottle of Barefoot Merlot – my god, who actually drinks that stuff?  Anyway, Rob was checking out the wine selection from new arrivals when he came across a bottle that looked somewhat familiar – I say somewhat because I think we’ve seen one of these in our lifetime – not actually been able to drink it though.  He grabbed the bottle (still corked) and brought it over to me and asked — is this really a bottle of 1998 Screaming Eagle?  Holy crap!  This was my response and I immediately went to www.wine-searcher.com to check it out.  Wow, anywhere from $1,700 for an Auction all the way to $3,400 for this bottle I was now holding in my hands – very carefully I might add.

Of course our first intention was to pop the cork and drink up, but thought we should probably check with the partier who actually brought the bottle first to make sure they realized what they brought.  Sure enough, he had no clue…said he’s not much of a wine connoisseur and wasn’t sure what to bring from the small selection of mostly French wines and then this one he received as a gift from “Dr. Dre” (rap singer) for some computer work he did for him.  He selected the Screaming Eagle www.screamingeagle.com because it wasn’t an import.  When we informed him of the value, he promptly took the bottle home and brought a nice bottle of Champagne instead.  Can’t say I blame him.