Loving Monterey Pinots

Ok, I’ve officially decided: I love Central California Pinot Noirs, specifically Monterey County Pinots. As you know, we belong to the Taste of Monterey Wine Private Reserve Wine Club and love it. We get quarterly shipments of 3 bottles of wine and often, if not every time, the shipments include a Pinot Noir. We have loved every single one we’ve gotten from them. They are so big and full, both fruity but with a hint of cedar/tobacco. They are so big, in fact, I didn’t even guess that one was a Pinot during a recent at home blind tasting.

In my defense, I wasn’t expecting he’d break out a $40 bottle so Pinot wasn’t even a thought in my mind. However, we both need to quit trying to cheat and figure out what our options are based on what we’re having, what wines we’ve had and what price point we’d likely break out. We end up talking ourselves into a small select amount of choices and picking from there, instead of doing what we should be doing in our blind tasting….which is deciding based on the wine characteristics.

That being said, I didn’t think the wine was a Pinot – it just seemed too full. But, when it was revealed it was a Monterey Country Pinot…well it made sense. They all have so much more body and layers than a lot of Napa Pinots I’ve had, and a lot more warm spice and dark fruit characteristics than the Oregon Pinots I have had. Honestly, they remind me a lot of the wines we had in Gevrey Chambertin.

Anyway, this particular wine was the Chateau Christina Black Mountain Pinot Noir, but others that we’ve had and loved are Pelerin St. Vincents, Michaud, La Rochelle Classic Clones, among others. If you’ve been disappointed by Napa Pinots in the past, pick up something from Monterey….you’ll like it, particularly if you get something in the $30-45 range.

Mirassou pairing dinner

Last week I was invited to an event hosted by Mirassou winery, which has been around for 150+ years. The event was at Mia Rosa, a restaurant north of The Hill. They traveled around the country, visiting 5 different restaurants to come up with a wine pairing cookbook (some recipes posted online here) and invited various media/bloggers to the events. Evidently my blog and “association” with the St. Louis Wine Club made me a good candidate for an invite; luckily Mr. Lush was able to come as well. The attendance was smaller than I anticipated-only 8 plus the winemaker and marketing person. What else surprised me was that the other attendees were more “foodies” than “winos”. However, I was totally ok with this, because it allowed me to sit directly across from the winemaker, David Mirassou, and I pretty much had him all to myself to ask questions about the wine!

We started off with the Pinot Grigio. Normally I’m not a big fan of Pinot Grigio (or Sauv Blancs), but it wasn’t as acidic as others might be. Then we had the Sauv Blanc, paired with a garlic tomato flatbread. The Sauv Blanc was perfect with the flatbread, but I didn’t love it (or the Pinot Grigio) as much on their own. The wines were fine – although neither were the highly grassy acidic profile I expected, they just aren’t my preferred style of wine. Then we moved on to the Chardonnay with gorgonzola polenta fries. Oh, lovely Chard, it was so welcome after the other two! Now, for my non Chard lovers out there, only about 5-7% of the wine sees oak- the rest is all stainless steel fermented. This leaves a crisper, but still round in body Chardonnay. Its not a butter oak bomb, but it has a nice round mouthfeel. I didn’t love the polenta fries, nor did I love the pairing as much as the other, but I liked the wine a lot.

Then we had probably our favorite course of the evening – a smoked scallop Carpaccio drizzled with basil oil paired with the Pinot Noir. Oh….my…gosh. The dish was so good, the smoked fish went perfect with the Pinot.

We also had a warm beet spinach salad with goat cheese with a Merlot and veal madallions on garlic mash with the Cabernet, finishing off with a chocolate puff with the Reisling. It was a lot of food and a lot of wine!

I’ll leave it up to the “foodies” to really evaluate the food – almost everything paired wonderfully with the wine, but honestly other than the scallops I wasn’t crazy about anything I had and I won’t be rushing back to the restaurant. What about the wine you ask? Well, Mirassou makes their wine to be consistent year after year, so the grapes come from all over the state. The good news is that if you liked it last year, you can feel confident you’ll like this year’s vintage as well. The bad news is while there’s no bad year, there’s no great year either. But, in the spectrum of the wine world, I like to have some stable choices in addition to those stellar vintages, and its not like I have one winery I drink from exclusively, so I think that’s ok. I prefer a bit more oak and body in my Cabernets and Merlots, and the Mirassou ones are a bit soft – he uses almost exclusively not new oak. However, that’s just personal taste – once again the good news is you can buy it today and drink it tonight and not have to lay it down. Mr. Lush and I really liked the Chardonnay and liked the Pinot as well – we were lucky enough to each get a signed bottle of Pinot in our “media kits” and we’ll certainly have to have it with something smoky because it was pretty fruit forward. I also liked the Riesling, and will probably pick that up to pair with something spicy.

All in all, it was a great time and it was wonderful meeting the winemaker:

Quick rant

I’ve gotta rant about a few things…

1) Multiple magazine subscription renewal notices. Really? My subscription expires in February and I need an “urgent” renewal notice in September? I don’t think so. Send me one in December then another in January. I don’t need one before I even get finished reading my first magazine. Speaking of wasting paper….
2) Paperless bills. Yes, I know, bills use paper and cost you postage. But, no, I don’t WANT to remember my login to see my bill. If you sent my personal bill to my personal email in a PDF like you send my personal bill to my personal mailbox. I’d sign up for paperless billing. But I don’t need one more login to remember with my 2,000 other ones. I don’t care if its not “secure”….someone can walk up to my physical mailbox and take my mail, so that’s not that secure either, so get over. Or, at least give me the option to log in or have it attached when I sign up for it.
3) Restaurants/bars being fussy about modifying their specials. Don’t tell me that a dirty martini is on special but if we ask for no olive juice you’ll charge me full price. (I happen to like my martini extra dirty so this doesn’t apply to me, but still) Now, I understand if we want to add something or the special order in question costs more money. (if the special comes with fries and I was to sub a twice baked potato, then ok, charge me) But really, you having specials but then making it so I can’t take advantage of them when I’m there doesn’t accomplish your goal…now I REALLY don’t want to come back and pay full price.

Ok, off my soapbox. That’s it for now.