Last Night's Tipple

I finished the bottle of 2006 Root:1 Cabernet Sauvignon last night, and it held up well after being open a day. I am really surprised by the rhubarb on the nose. That's not an aroma that I have experienced before, and it's really strange to find it in a beverage made from grapes. I like it, though. I agree with the assessment from yesterday: this wine is a bit thin and short, but it is interesting and tasty and well worth the $8 I paid for it.

The premise of the marketing schtick for this wine is that the ungrafted grapevines it is produced from produce grapes that have deeper flavor than grafted grapevines. This has been a common claim about grafted grapevines since their introduction began in the 1870s, and it's one of the principal reasons that grafted grapevines were illegal in Burgundy until 1887 despite the fact that phylloxera was devastating Burgundy vineyards to such an extent that the economic viability of winemaking there was in doubt. The only way to validate or falsify that assertion definitively would be to conduct a controlled experiment where both grafted and ungrafted vines of the same age and variety were planted in the same vineyard, which would allow us to compare the wines made from each and know that any differences between the two would likely be a result of whether the vines were grafted or ungrafted. Well, grafted and ungrafted vines don't generally exist in the same vineyard. There are regions (large parts of Chile and Argentina and some small parts of Australia) where vines are generally ungrafted, and there are regions where vines are not. The best evidence we have are evaluations of pre- and post-phylloxera wines from the same regions or vineyards, and those evaluations are pretty unanimous that the pre-phylloxera wines are better. Game, set, and match for ungrafted vines, right? Well, not really. The American rootstocks that were used for grafting carried American vine viruses with them, and these viruses were previously unknown in Europe. The spread like wildfire after the introduction of grafting, and it was many years before vinegrowers learned to combat them. So was it the grafting or was it the viruses that accounts for the decline in quality? Who knows.

Last Night's Tipple

Last night's wine (the 2006 Root:1 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Colchagua Valley in Chile) was an impulse buy at Costco, and I began to regret the purchase as soon as I haded over my credit card at the register. I'm not a bit fan of Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines (probably a result of a psychological need to be different), and I have not had very good experiences with Chilean wines (most of what I've tried has been green and thin and not very appealing). In the store, though, I was won over by the stylish packaging, the price ($8, if I recall correctly), and the marketing schtick. Namely, the grapes used to make this wine are from ungrafted vines. Since the phylloxera destroyed European vineyards in the second half of the 19th Century, most of the world's commercial vitis vinifera vines have been grafted. The grape-bearing part is vitis vinifera, but it has been grafted onto roots from non-vinifera North American grape species. North American non-vinifera grape varieties, you see, are immune to the ravages of phylloxera, and the discovery that this was so saved the European wine industry. But phylloxera hasn't reached every corner of the wine world, at least not yet. Specifically, most of South America has never been visited by it, and so grafting is not nearly as widespread in Chile and Argentina as it is in the rest of the world. Root:1's marketing claims that the lack of grafting makes their grapes have a more intense fruit and varietally authentic character. I'm more than a bit suspicious of that claim, but I had to try it. And so I bought a bottle.

Cabernet Sauvignon is famous for having a green streak. Given that one of its parents is the Cabernet Franc, which is about as vegetal as a red grape variety gets, this isn't particularly surprising. There is a good bit of green bell pepper on the nose, as befits a Cabernet Sauvignon wine. But there is also a very sharp and distinct rhubarb aroma. I like rhubarb. There is some decent red fruit on the palate, along with some olives. It's a bit thin and a bit short, but I still enjoyed it. It's better than most other Chilean wines that I have tried, and it offers good value for $8 a bottle. My impulses were good in this case.

Last Night's Tipple

Among wine snobs, Kendall-Jackson founder Jess Jackson is often regarded as the devil. Part of that is because he's famously prickly and litigious, but most of it is because of Kendall-Jackson Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay, which embodies virtually all of the characteristics that snobs detest about California Chardonnay. It's slightly off-dry, and it's a butter bomb. That is, time in oak barrels (plus full malolactic fermentation) imparts a toasty, buttery flavor to the wine that dominates it (along with coconuts and tropical fruits). It's very much an engineered wine. Jackson knew that American consumers preferred wines that were low-acid and off-dry (even though they didn't want to admit that the wines were off-dry), and that's what he produced. K-J Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay is, in its conception and execution, very much like Sutter Home White Zinfandel, only with more pretensions of sophistication.

Kendall-Jackson is a huge operation, and although the Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay is their most popular wine, they make many, many other ones. Our Christmas wine was the 2004 Grand Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. Despite the grandiose name, the Grand Reserve line is just K-J's second-level line (above Vintner's Reserve but below the Highland Estates and Stature lines), and I tried my best not to like it. I did not succeed. I couldn't detect much varietal character (which, for Cabernet Sauvignon, is a distinctive cedar aroma), but it did have good concentration and lots of fruit. It was pleasant, and it went well with the standing rib roast. I didn't know how much this wine went for until I looked it up just now (around $23 a bottle), and I don't think that it offers a particularly good value. However, it was enjoyable, if you can put aside your preconceived notions about Kendall-Jackson.