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I’m sharing Tom Simoneau’s “Best Wines of 2010″, which I think you’ll find interesting.  Tom is “The Wine Guy” on KSRO radio where I have my show, “The Good Food Hour”, broadcast every Saturday morning at 11 AM Pacific.  You can hear it live on the net or check out archived shows at www.ksro.com.  If you are in Sonoma County you can hear the show at 1350 AM.

Be sure to share your thoughts on these wines after you’ve tried them.  I’d love to hear what you think!

Tom Simoneau’s Wines of the Year 2010

Best Whites:
•    Sparkling Wine : J Vineyards and Winery, 2001 Vintage Brut, $50. Always among the top California Sparklers. Owner Judy Jordan and wine maker George Bursick make up a dynamic duo in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley.  250 million bubbles in each bottle. It has just been discovered that Champagne bubbles contain up to thirty times more flavor than the wine itself. The bubbles act like a flavor escalator.

•    Chardonnay: Saintsbury, 2008 Carneros , $19. From the original cool region appellation, lots of talk about the Russian River, but don’t forget Carneros. Multi-clone, 100%ML, unfiltered, and lees stirred – a classic. And it’s screw capped.

•    Sauvignon Blanc: Lake Sonoma Winery, 2009 Dry Creek Valley, $14. Lean and lightly grassy, delicious. Lake Sonoma Winery – part of Heck Estates which also includes Korbel, Kenwood, and Valley of the Moon.

•    Alternative White:  Hess Collection, Gruner Veltliner 2009 Small Block Series Mount Veeder, $36. This hard to find varietal with Austrian roots is worth a search. Hess is not afraid to stretch the envelope and I applaud them. Melon, granny smith apple, and snap peas.

•    Off Dry White:  Mill Creek Vineyards and Winery, 2009 Gewurztraminer, Dry Creek Valley, $19. How does that song go? “We are family.” Local boy and girl make good owners. Bill and Yvonne Kreck both attended Healdsburg High. Bill’s dad planted their Cab in 1965. Their son Jeremy is the winemaker while his brother Brian runs the web. Can you say locavore?

•    Rosé:  Boeschen Vineyards, 2009 Katie Rosé Merlot, St Helena, $20. I first discovered Boeschen through the Napa Valley Vintners and St. Helena Star Tasting Group. Every time I taste them, Boeschen is in my top three. This year’s discovery – a father, son, and son-in-law team.

•    Best Value White: Chateau St. Jean, 2008 Chardonnay Sonoma County, $14. Solid, best value, available everywhere, often discounted. Food friendly sipper that is a can’t miss, if you like Chardonnay, you’ll like this wine.

•    Dessert Wine: Merry Edwards, 2008 Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc Russian River Valley, $39 for the 375ml. Miss Russian River Valley known for her stunning Pinot Noirs scores big with this sweet nectar from the wine gods. Fruit drops, cane cut, bird netted, picked on Halloween, cold soaked, then finally barrel fermented producing a wine begging for fois gras, if you are so inclined, or dessert in the form of a white peach gallette.

Best Reds:
•    Cabernet Sauvignon:   Rodney Strong Vineyards, 2007 Reserve Alexander Valley, $45. Rodney Strong was a pioneer of Sonoma County’s modern wine industry. The Klein family purchased the winery in 1989. Every bottle of wine produced under their ownership has Sonoma County on the label. Their commitment to Sonoma is second to none. And this reserve is a great example.

•    Zinfandel: Wilson Winery, 2008 Sawyer Vineyard, Dry Creek Valley, $34. In the Dry Creek Valley the name Wilson is synonymous with Zinfandel. Fruit forward and perfectly balanced. An electrifying, yum, yum of a wine.

•    Rhone Style: Bella, 2007 Syrah Lily Hill Estate Dry Creek Valley, $40. Bella Vineyards is a family owned red wine house located deep in the heart of Dry Creek Valley. Bella, Italian for beauty, was named after owners Scott and Lynn Adam’s daughter, Julia Belle.

•    Blended Red: Lancaster Estate, 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, $65. A blend of all five of the Bordeaux varietals from their Alexander Valley hillside estate. 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Malbec, 9% Merlot, 1% Cabernet Franc, 1% Petit Verdot. Could be the best yet from Lancaster.

•    Luxury Red: Opus One, 2006 Oakville, Napa Valley, $160. The head of the class. Opus One, the original cult wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon based wine with all 5 Bordeaux Varietals, 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Merlot, 5% Cab Franc, 3% Petit Verdot, 3% Malbec.

•    Alternative Red: Kent Rasmussen, Esoterica, 2007 Cabernet Franc, Napa Valley, $40. Originally intended for use as a blending component in their Cabernet Sauvignon, their Cab Franc was so good they bottled it separately and with one taste you’ll be glad they did.

•    Best Value Red: Columbia Crest, 2007 Grand Estates Syrah, Columbia Valley, $12. Washington State ranks second only to California in total U.S. wine production. Land cost and grape prices are the reason Washington State equals big wine value. And Columbia Crest is big on value and taste.

•    Most Fun Wine:  Parducci, True Grit 2007 Petite Sirah, Mendocino County, $29. So good they named a movie after the wine… or was the wine named after the movie? The latter is correct and let’s just say this is a John Wayne of a wine. True Grit the movie, the wine, the sequel.

•    Alternative Packaging: Black Box Wines, 2008 Malbec Argentina, $24.99 for 3 liters. The wine business is global and a wise wine consumer can find value if he or she is not afraid of innovation. Wine in cans, in plastic, and in boxes. Big on value and on the environment.

•    Pinot Noir:  Goldeneye, 2007 Anderson Valley, $55. Dan and Margaret Duckhorn of Duckhorn Vineyards established Goldeneye with the goal of creating a Pinot Noir house of equal stature to their Duckhorn Vineyards Merlot. They chose Anderson Valley and the wine defines the flavor of this Mendocino Appellation.

Merlot:  Duckhorn Vineyards, 2007 Napa Valley, $52. Duckhorn Vineyards was one of the first North American wineries to champion the idea of producing exceptional quality Merlot as a stand-alone varietal. Duckhorn played a big part in creating Merlot popularity. This ’07 is outstanding.

Winery of the Year: Duckhorn Vineyards. Since Duckhorn Vineyards was founded in 1976 they have grown slowly and thoughtfully through the years. Today the brands include not only Duckhorn, but Paraduxx, Decoy, and Goldeneye. Are you detecting a theme here? Hint – waterfowl. New Zealand born Bill Nancarrow is the executive winemaker.

Photo from It's Holly

A few more thoughts about collecting and cellaring wine:

• Wine is best kept in the dark.  While incandescent or fluorescent lights seems to have no effect over the short term, long term exposure to light can affect the quality of wine especially whites and sparkling wines.  In France a lot of work has been done on the effect of ultra violet rays on Champagne.  Apparently in certain circumstances ultraviolet can lead to the creation of hydrogen sulfide, which gives off an odor similar to rotten eggs or cabbage.  The condition is known as gout de lumiere.

• Let wine rest in the cellar, especially precious old wines, after they’ve been transported.  Active motion seems to “stir things up” and subtleties can be lost.  A fragile old beauty may need a rest of 2 or more weeks before it’s opened.

• Although attractive shelving can be beautiful in a cellar, I prefer to leave bottles in their case.  Cardboard cases are good insulators and bottles are protected even better when wrapped in newspaper.  Both of these help maintain constant temperature and keep out the light.

• Wine as an investment:  If you are serious enough to build a cellar then it means you have some interest in wines.  For a short time in my life I actually got infatuated with the idea of buying wine, holding it in my cellar for a few years and then selling it at a gigantic (I hoped) profit.  I came to realize that this isn’t why I bought wine.  I bought wine for the love of its flavors and more important my ability to share it with my friends and family.  To see it only for its commercial value demeaned why I came to it in the first place.

• Collecting more wine than I’ll ever consume:  I have finally resolved this.  I’ve given myself permission to collect as much as I can afford, never to hoard it and share it at every opportunity.  If there is some left over in my cellar when I pass on, then what a wonderful gift to my children and friends!

1. How much wine could I realistically expect to consume before it began to fade?

2. How much could I afford?  I unfortunately was becoming a bit addicted and was beginning to collect some impressive trophy wines.  As I look back now I’m not sure who exactly I was trying to impress!

3. How much space did I have to properly store the wine and what did it mean to “properly store”?

When you store wine, you need to realize that wine is a “living” thing.  Like it or not, from the moment that a wine is bottled there is a gradual, seemingly imperceptible but absolutely inevitable, change in the flavors in the wine.  Two bottles filled with the same wine and stored in the same conditions will be different over time.  In the beginning the young fruit flavors dominate but over time as these soften and diminish through the action of chemical changes (basically aging of the polymers) and sometimes bacteriological influences.  The “loss” of the primary, up-front fruit flavors will usually (but not always) be more than offset by the gain in secondary flavors and characteristics. Even with all the tools that modern science has for analysis such as gas chromatographs or ultraviolet and infrared spectrophotometers, the reasons for the flavors that develop is still not clearly understood.

The whole question of which wines to age and for how long, unfortunately is a bit of a crapshoot.  Since none of us have exactly the same preferences and tastes, YOU, in the final analysis, have to be your own judge and jury.  This means that you’ll need to monitor the progress of your wine by sampling a bottle or two over time to determine when it hits its peak for you.  Obviously this is one of the great reasons to have a cellar!  Again, a good merchant can help council you in this process and give you some time ranges to operate within.  Usually, (but not always) the best candidates for cellaring are red wines with their tannins and color (mostly anthocyanins).  As these slowly change because of the interaction with oxygen introduced at bottling time and also through a “seepage’ through the cork, red wines will soften and gradually change color from deep purple to a brick red or tawny color.

Though reds are usually the best candidates for cellaring it should be noted that some white wines would also age beautifully even though they are much lower in tannin and have no anthocyanins at all.  I can remember having old Rieslings from Germany or Vouvrays from France that when young were bright and crisp and over time softened beautifully to flavors of rich butter, toast and sherry.  Both ends of their life were wonderful but clearly different.  Sort of like all of us, I hope!

Perhaps the most important consideration in the cellaring of wine is an understanding of how the cork works.  Since it’s a natural product, (the bark of the cork tree) it will slowly allow a bit of oxygen to makes its way into the wine.  Since no two corks are the same and in fact no two necks of the bottle are exactly the same (so the cork will “seat” itself differently) these two things together will allow more or less air or oxygen to meet up with the wine.

One other thing figures in here too.  The greater the airspace between the bottom of the cork and the top of the wine (known as the ullage) will also speed up, even if slightly, the oxidation or chemical change in the wine.  Over a long time, corks will deteriorate and allow unacceptable amounts of oxygen to interact with the wine.  This is why great “museum” wines are routinely recorked after a decade or two.  The action of the cork then will have much to do with the successful life of the wine.

It must be noted here that because corks are sometimes not perfect and subject to variation (like all things in nature), a better closure for a wine bottle is actually the screw cap.  They are inert, seal better and are nearly perfect as closures.  Screw capped wines will still age due to the fact that some oxygen is stored in the wine itself when it is made, but more slowly, which isn’t a bad thing.  A number of blind tastings have been held over the years in many parts of the world and the conclusion has invariably been that screw capped wines were fresher and showed no “corky” flavors that sometimes show up in natural corked wines. So why don’t we see more screwcaps?  I suspect we will as the quality of cork comes more into question. A lot of the resistance, I think, comes from the fact that a natural cork pulled from the bottle sounds infinitely more romantic than the “pling” of a screw cap!

Given the importance of the cork then, there are at least three related components for an ideal cellar:

1.  Constant and Ambient Temperature

Having a constant temperature all year round is actually more important than the degrees.  A cellar that varies between 58 and 72 during the day is not nearly as good as one that is consistently 70 degrees.  Changes in temperature can become harmful because both the wine and the cork expand and contract allowing a greater exchange of air or oxidation.  The rule here is the lower consistent temperature the better, ideally around 56 to 58 degrees.
2.  Good Humidity

Humidity in a cellar should be in the 70 percent range.  Much lower than this and the cork begins to dry out.  In the short term, the end becomes brittle and crumbles when you try to extract it with a corkscrew.  Over the long term, with low humidity the cork will actually shrink and lose its elasticity.  As a result it becomes an imperfect seal and eventually allows more oxygen in than is desirable.  Many wine cellars use air conditioners to maintain temperature.  Unfortunately conventional refrigeration units dehumidify the air substantially.  It’s why vegetables and cheese dry out so quickly left unwrapped in your refrigerator.  It’s important then to also have a humidifier in your cellar if you are using refrigeration in order to maintain cork “health”.
3.  Still Air

Though less important than the two conditions above, air movement, especially in cellars with air conditioning units, also can have a tendency to dry out the ends of corks.  It should be noted here that any kind of movement of the bottles should be kept to a minimum.  You’ll need to be careful not to draw out your prized babies and fondle them too much.  Excess movement seems to affect the quality of the wine.  This may be the reason that wines tasted near their birthplace don’t taste the same once they’ve been shipped across an ocean.