Wine Shop Review - Jack Cellars

Jack Cellars is the nearest true wine shop to my home. I've lived in my current place for nearly a year, and have driven past Jack Cellars many times and have intended to stop in. Today I finally made a trip to check them out. This is my new favorite wine store!

The owner, Jack Ewer, is very friendly and quickly makes you feel welcome. I am going to a wine party tonight, and told him that I was looking for something interesting to take as my contribution. He suggested Barrister Rough Justice. I only picked up one bottle, so I won't be doing a true review. Given the nature of this particular party, I may not get to sample it myself.

The store has a fairly broad selection of wines. Jack Cellars carries a good representation of both local wines and wines from around the world and in all price ranges. Overall the prices seem to be very reasonable. I noticed that he's charging ~$5 less for Sokol Blosser Evolution than it normally runs at my local grocery stores. Jack is very knowledgeable about the wines he carries and seems very committed to making sure the customer is happy with the wine they select.

Jack has owned the store since December 17, 2007, so he just celebrated his first anniversary. He has a lot of innovative and fun ideas for events at the store. Now that I've finally made it in to Jack Cellars, I expect to become a regular visitor.

Jack Cellars is located at 8016 15th Avenue NE Seattle, WA 98115. As of this writing they are open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:30 - 7:30. I highly recommend you check them out.

Wine Shop Review: Central Market

Tonight I went to Central Market in Shoreline. Now, it's rare that I review a grocer as a wine shop. Few meet up to the standard of carrying an interesting selection of wines at reasonable prices. But Central Market is one of those rare exceptions. They have a wider wine selection than many wine shops, and their prices are very competitive. They carry a wide selection of wines from all regions of the US and the world.

What really sold me on the wine shop at Central Market is that they carry the 2006 Sokol Blosser Dundee Hills Pinot Noir (most stores in Seattle only carry Meditrina and Evolution). They also carry a handful of offerings from Syncline (though they are missing Mourvedre).

I will be utilizing them a lot in my search for decent wines at a decent price. Central Market could keep me reviewing wines for many years!

Lo Duca Lambrusco Reggiano

The Winery: Lo Duca
The Wine: Lambrusco Reggiano
The Price: $11.99 at Casa e Cucina Francesca

I bought this wine on a recent antiquing trip through Snohomish. I wasn't in the market for wine on this particular trip, but having purchased no antiques, and having been warmly greeted and Casa e Cucina Francesca I couldn't resist. The owner was very friendly and had a very good knowledge of Italian wines. I selected two, this one and a white wine that I will be reviewing soon.

This particular wine is fizzy. Apparently fizzy wine is very common in Italy, particularly from the smaller, local wineries. The Italian term for this is frizzante. Not to be confused with "bubbly" wine like Champagne, this wine is fizzy.

There is no vintage listed anywhere on the bottle. I guess one year is as good as the next.

In the glass, this wine looks like a Merlot or Syrah. The wine is deep red, and as it sits in the glass a ring of fine bubbles collects around the glass.

The wine has aromas of berries, cherries and sweet grass.

The wine is sweeter than most reds. It has flavors of sweet cherry and berry jam. The fizz adds a fun touch to the wine.

If you have any taste at all for sweet-ish wines, I highly recommend giving this a try!

Campo Viejo 2001 Gran Reserva Rioja

The Winery: Campo Viejo
The Wine: 2001 Gran Reserva Rioja
The Price: $16.44 at Safeway marked down from $23.49.

Campo Viejo has done a nice job of creating a website that gives a lot of information about their winery. I really appreciate that. They've put a lot of thought into their website. My only real complaint is that it was difficult to find, and it was down when I finally did find it.

If you read my review of Marqués de Cáceres 2001 Reserva Rioja you'll recall that the wines of Spain are named for the region rather than the varietal. The Rioja region is in norther Spain, and wines tend to be stronger and have a higher content of tannins. The Gran Reserva designation signifies the barrel aging time. A wine labeled Crianza will be a younger wine, Reserva will have been aged longer than a Crianza, and a Gran Reserva will have been barrel aged the longest. The Campo Viejo Gran Reserva is aged in oak for 24 months, followed by 36 months of bottle aging.

This wine is deep red in color and has aromas of cherry, prune, blackberry and oak. It has flavors of berry and cherry with a bit of a bite on the finish. This wine is good now, but it could really use another couple of years of aging. I like it enough that I intend on picking up a few more bottles while it's still on sale.

Sokol Bosser 2006 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir

The Winery: Sokol Blosser
The Wine: 2006 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir
The Price: $38 online

The 2006 Pinot Noir is a deep red color. It has a very rich smell, with aromas of cherry, blackberry and raspberry.

As I've come to expect from Sokol Blosser, this is quite a nice Pinot Noir. It has cherry and berry flavors. It is a very well balanced and delicious Pinot Noir. It is very good now, and I think that aging it for a few years will only improve it. The Hugh Johnson Pocket Wine Book calls 2006 a Wine of the Century year for wines of the Pacific Northwest. Sokol Blosser certainly made the most of the harvest.

Deru Wine Decanter

My birthday was last week. My good friends Tom and Katie gave me this very cool wine decanter.

I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to go about reviewing it. I think I'm going to find a wine that I'm familiar with (perhaps a Sokol Blosser Meditrina) and sample both directly from the bottle and decanted.

I really love the shape of the decanter. The shape is really cool and was designed to provide a huge surface area to aerate the wine.

If you're unfamiliar with the use of decanters, there is a a nice little introduction here.

I did decant tonight's wine as the first trial of the decanter. My initial impression is that is easy to use and it looks very classy. The spout is wide enough to allow for easy filling without dripping.

Look for a more in-depth review soon.

Eugene Wine Cellars B-Squared 2005 Pinot Noir

The Winery: Eugene Wine Cellars - B-Squared
The Wine: 2005 Pinot Noir
The Price: $18.99 at Haggen

This is a wine I picked up on a recent trip to Oregon. I bought it mostly because of the name. Because of my initials, my sister used to call me B-squared. So I had to buy the wine.

The wine has a natural cork stopper, always a plus for me.

The wine is a deep ruby color and has aromas of cherry and blackberry with a hint of oak.

The wine has predominantly cherry and berry flavors. The initial taste is good, but the wine unfortunately has a bitter finish. It's not a terrible wine, but the finish definitely detracts from the experience.

Book Review: Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2009

The Book: Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book 2009: 32nd Edition

The Price: $10.17 at Amazon.com

This is a great little book. It has a lot of good information in it, and it's very conveniently sized.

Since there's a lot of good about this book, I'll start with what I don't like.

First of all, the dust jacket gets in the way. The book has a chart inside the front cover that gives a snapshot of various wine vintages. The dust jacket covers them.

The book is fairly comprehensive, but it omits wineries from the midwest. There may not be a lot of wineries that are any good in the midwest, but I don't think they should be dismissed out of hand.

Okay, that was it for my complaints.

Now on to the good.

I like the size of the book. It will easily fit into a coat pocket or a purse. Lacking either of those, the book is small enough to be easily carried with you to the wine shop.

The book covers an amazing number of wineries given its small size. Granted, each winery only gets a couple of lines, but the information it gives is straightforward and useful.

The book is intelligently laid out. It is organized by country (and region, where needed). It also has indexing on the spine to delineate the country/region.

I did a little bit of spot checking to compare the book's impressions of wineries with my own observations. Of course, I had to start with Sokol Blosser. Johnson says, "superb wines throughout with an esp outstanding Pinot N..." Good to know he agrees with me. Oh, and he gave them 3-4 stars. I next looked at Viu Manent, which I recently reviewed. Johnson gave them 1-2 stars, which pretty much sums up my feelings for them.

I won't bore you with further details, but I found Johnson to concur with my assessment of every winery I looked at. That's either good for me, or bad for Johnson. Either way, I will be using this book as I shop for wines.

Besides providing information on wineries, the book also has a convenient section on wine/food pairings. This alone is worth the purchase price.

Whether you're a wine aficionado or a neophyte, I highly recommend this book.

Shop Review: Wine Cellar (Portland)

I was in Portland for Christmas. While there, I took a trip to The Wine Cellar.

The Wine Cellar is kind of out of the way, and is located in the back of a little strip mall. The location kind of dooms the shop. It's not going to pick up much foot traffic. People will only go there if they are actively looking for the shop.

Their selection leaves a lot to be desired. They do not carry a very broad variety of wines. Since they are located in Oregon I expected them to carry an abundance of Oregon wines. They really don't seem to carry a much wider selection of wines than Fred Meyer or Haggen. Sadly, none of the three stores carried any Sokol Blosser wines beyond Meditrina or Evolution, both of which I can find in my local stores in Seattle.

The store is rather spare. They rely heavily on wire racks and folding tables to display their wines. They don't seem to have a lot of any single wine on hand.

On the plus side, I hear that the owner, Erin Palmer, hosts phenomenal classes and is a ton of fun. Unfortunately, she was not working the day I visited the store (if she drops me a line, I will gladly give her a chance to state her case and correct anything I may have missed or misstated about her shop).

The prices in the wine shop did not strike me as being exceptionally attractive. Between the limited selection, the location and the lack of compelling prices I have a difficult time seeing any reason to select this shop over a well-stocked grocery store.

Again, Erin, if you see this review please drop me a line. I am a huge supporter of independent wine sellers, and would love to give you a chance to give your side of the story.

R Wines 2007 Bitch Grenache

The Winery: R Wines
The Wine: 2007 Bitch Grenache
The Price: $11.99 at The Wine Seller

This is another wine from my Thanksgiving Weekend trip to Port Townsend. I bought it solely for the name. After nearly a week of unseasonably cold weather and snow, reviewing Bitch just seemed a cathartic outlet.

Bitch is imported from Australia. I could not get a good photo of the back of the bottle, but it says, "Bitch, bitch, bitch...and bitch some more." A total of 76 occurrences of "bitch" on the back label. Fits my mood about the weather quite nicely.

The wine is a medium intensity red color. Lighter than a Merlot or Pinot Noir.

The wine has aromas of plums and vanilla with a slight hint of cinnamon.

This is a fairly light, fruity wine. It has cherry and berry flavors with a pepper finish. It's not a great wine, but it's drinkable. I see it as more of a novelty wine than a wine you'd buy to drink. And at $11.99 it's priced right for your favorite mother-in-law or ex-girlfriend. :-)