Reviews of wines and spirits for the curious drinker.
Proper Twelve Irish Apple Whiskey
Proper No. Twelve Irish Whiskey is a brand founded by Mixed Martial Arts Champion Conor McGregor under his Eire Born Spirits company in September 2018. It has in just under five short years become one of the most successful whiskey brands in the world.
Beaulieu Vineyard Georges De Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
Beaulieu Vineyard is one of California’s oldest and most celebrated wineries. It was established by Georges de Latour and his wife Fernande in 1900, and is situated in the Rutherford AVA in Napa Valley.
De Latour was born October 20, 1856, in Bordeaux, France. At the age of twenty-six, he immigrated to San Francisco, where he was employed as a chemist from 1884 to 1888, later settling in San Jose in the early 1890s. He ran a cream of tartar business there for use in baking powder. After neighbors complained of the smell from his factory, he and his wife moved to Healdsburg in Sonoma County, before finally settling in Napa, where the De Latours Initially purchased four acres (1.6 ha) of land. Legend has it that when Fernande first saw the property she exclaimed, “Quel beau lieu!” which translates to English as “What a beautiful place!” And so the place was named.
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Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz 2018
Until Yellow Tail precipitated the boom in “critter wines” in 2000, it can be argued that Penfolds was just about synonymous with Australian wine in the U.S. The label is ubiquitous here, in both grocery stores and fine wine shops. Prices range from about $12 per bottle for the Koonunga Hill Shiraz-Cabernet, to $700 for the legendary Grange, and everything in between. (That $700 is doubly amazing, because just five or six years ago Grange was “only” about $200.) The selections are mostly reds plus a few whites and even a tawny Port.
Orin Swift Cellars was a relative newcomer on the California wine scene, having been established in 1998, but not by “Orin Swift,” as I had long assumed. Rather, it was by the now iconic, and iconoclastic, winemaker David Phinney. Orin is Phinney’s father’s middle name and Swift is his mother’s maiden name.
Ambonnay, one of the top five Grand Crus in Champagne, is located in the heart of the Côte des Noirs, on the southern slopes of the Montagne de Reims. Its hillsides are renowned for the richness of their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, the two essential Champagne grapes.
Ridge Lytton Springs Red Blend 2019
Ridge Vineyards is actually two distinct wineries, the original and more prestigious one is south of San Francisco and east of San Jose, and the other in Sonoma county is just north of Healdsburg.
Waypoint Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon
I couldn’t find anything about this wine. Their website is nonexistent, and there is even a totally different Waypoint line from Napa now on the market. Too bad, because this wine was really good. Pick up a few bottles if you stumble across them.
This Cabernet is the correct dark red color, with just a tinge of brick; it is seven years old, after all. The nose opens with dark, rich fruit. On the palate, there is a full mouthfeel, with flavors of blackberry, baked plum, dark cocoa, and tart red currant. The well-structured tannins, oak backbone, and just-so acidity offer great balance, making for a really appealing glass of Cabernet. ABV is a robust 15.4%.
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Rémy Martin is one of the world’s oldest and best known cognac brands, with selections that range, at my local liquor store at least, from the $13 St. Remy French brandy to the $9000 Rémy Martin Louis XIII Time Collection: City of Lights – 1900. (I have tried one of these, but not both.)
Asbach (formerly Asbach Uralt), one of Germany’s oldest and best known brandies, celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2017.
Chalk Hill Estate Red 2018
One fine spring day in 1972, attorney, private pilot, and wine aficionado Fred Fruth was piloting his plane over the Russian River Valley area. Down below, he hoped he saw what he had been searching for: a property that had the climate and soils to grow first-class wine grapes. Furth and his second wife, Peggy, purchased the land, named the estate Chalk Hill, and started producing wine about a decade later. They gradually planted more than 270 acres of vines. Years later, Furth said, “I have always been interested in wine because my grandfather had vineyards. I’m actually more interested in the working-the-soil aspect, but I have many very talented people in the winery who know how to produce a world-class wine. When I bought this property, I was told it was too hilly to be a vineyard, but I simply planted the grapes in rows going uphill. People said you can’t do that, but I’d seen it done in Germany so I knew it would work.” After a rich and varied life, Furth died in 2018 at the age of 84.
Lawyer Bill Foley acquired Chalk Hill in 2010. Although Foley is titled as “vintner,” I doubt he sees the interior of the winery very often. He is a vintner in the broader sense of “someone who sells wine.” He also owns the National Hockey League’s Vegas Golden Knights, is the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors for Fidelity National Financial Inc., is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for Fidelity National Information Services, Inc., and owns fifteen other wineries.
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First, let’s talk about brandy vs. Cognac. Brandy is a liquor distilled from wine and aged in wood. (Brandy can be made from fruits other than grapes as well, but that’s a story for another time.) Cognac is brandy that specifically comes from the town of Cognac and the delimited surrounding areas in western France. (The one which has the most favorable soil and geographical conditions is Grande Champagne.) So, all Cognacs are brandy, but not all brandies are Cognac. For more detail on brandy and Cognac, click here.
Clase Azul Reposado
As you can see, Clase Azul tequilas come in some of the most distinctive bottles out there, made in the mountainous Mexican town of Santa Maria Canchesda, population 1,750. There, the 180 or so employees, 80% of whom are women who grew up in poverty and with little, if any, formal schooling, decorate each bottle by hand. The entire production process takes about two weeks. And the cap isn’t chrome-plated plastic. Oh no. It is metal, that drinkers will often strike to produce a little ring after the pour. “You may have heard people talk about ‘ringing the bell’ on their Clase Azul bottle, which was actually discovered quite by accident” mentions Brand Experience Specialist Saskia Iha. “In order to use a more sustainable material, we redesigned the cap which happened to make a ringing sound when tapped just the right way. We now consider this sound the ‘unleashing’ of the magic inside the bottle.” Whatevs.
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Bondar Winery
McLaren Vale is a wine region in south Australia about 20 miles from “Australia’s Wine City,” Adelaide. Vines were first planted here in 1838, but things didn’t really get going until about 40 years later. By the turn of the twentieth century, McLaren Vale was established as one of Australia’s premier wine regions, a position it holds until this day, with over 80 wineries and 13,000 acres under vine. This coastal zone sits between the Mount Lofty Ranges and the tempering sea. The growing season is long and warm, and features good air drainage to prevent frosts.
Dom Pérignon Champagne 2010
There’s sparkling wine. There’s Champagne. And then, as far as I’m concerned, there is Dom Pérignon.
Scheid Family Wines got their start in 1972 when Al Scheid first purchased property in Monterey County and wine grape growing there was in its infancy. Scheid was drawn to the region for what he considered its untapped potential, for making money as well as farming. Scheid was running his own investment company at the time. A graduate of Harvard Business School and an investment banker, he realized that vineyards could make an excellent tax shelter, with their usual heavy investment on the front end and no income until at least five years later. Originally named Monterey Farming Corporation, the enterprise he founded was a limited partnership; the tax laws at that time allowed investors to offset losses in one business against regular income from another one elsewhere. And even before one acre was planted, Scheid, shrewd operator that he was, had found a customer for 100% of the grape production he anticipated (although, I’m guessing, not allowing revenue to outpace expenses, for a few years at least).