2005 Voga Italia Pinot Grigio, Calmasino, Italy

We're suckers for groovy packaging. I think our whole culture is. We'd buy shredded phone books if they were offered in a cool, well-designed container. While this wine is far from shredded phone books (not that far, actually) it was the interesting bottle design that inspired us to pick it up and bring it home. Honestly, the only thing that keeps wine bottles looking the way they do is tradition. It is a package that is desperate for creative thinking and innovation. The storage issue alone demands that the arcane wine bottle shape be revisited by the likes of Starck, Newson or Mattisimo.

This bottle is pretty cool. The cap hides a longer neck that utilizes a synthetic cork for the seal. Opening this bottle made me feel like we were drinking wine in the future. Like on a spaceship. Anyway, you have to admit that going this direction is a really cool idea. The bottled water guys figured this out like ten years ago and have been hiring rockstar designers to reinvent their packaging for awhile. I know people who buy VOSS because, and only because, of the bottle design... which is actually startlingly similar to this Voga bottle.

That made me want to visit the Voga website. I highly recommend checking it out. It made me want to gouge out my eyes. I embrace wine as lifestyle as much as the next scheming marketer, but I think Voga may be going just a little too far. As if the bottle design alone isn't sending a message, they have to drive it home with a blunt instrument.

Moving on, this wine is made from Pinot Grigio grapes, a classic Italian white varietal that generally makes for a crisp and refreshing wine. Perfect for hot summer days on the patio. The fact that we opened this bottle in the middle of winter with temperatures hovering around 0 degrees and about 20 inches of snow on the ground says a lot more about us than it does about the wine. Anyway, we poured this wine and set about deciphering it. The nose was tart, bright and full of lemon. Concentrated lemon, almost like lemon drops or preserved lemon... with that sugary element. It also smelled of flowers, lilac maybe, and sharp green apple. The palate offered similar flavors, but more round and lush and missing the sharp tartness of the nose. Definitely a light bodied wine. The finish was quick and dry. Because of the packaging we wanted this wine to be awesome. It isn't awesome, but it is pretty good and I could see enjoying this on a hot summer day while sitting on the patio. Or on our spaceship. In the future.

cost - $11.00

winecommando rating (1-10) - 7

2005 La Crema Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast, California

This wine immediately strikes me as a classic Californian Pinot Noir. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily a good thing. I say that because I find that Californian style of Pinot to be very light and thin with a medicinal quality to the palate. Contrast that to the depth and richness of those Californian Pinot's that go their own way, and you cleave the lovers of these wines. Consider me in the camp of the Burgundian style, no surprise there, and in California I look for the wines of Walter Hansel, Jed Steele or Kent Rasmussen. Not so much Burgundian, these wines, as Californian meets Burgundy. Either way, they contrast well against the style of the La Crema tasted here.

Which is odd, really. La Crema's reputation is pretty solid, and they are known to make incredible, intense and delicious Chardonnay's. That's a long way of saying that I don't know that I would judge the winery by our tasting of this Pinot Noir. There are two reasons for that:

1. It is a 2005 and will likely deepen and become more complex with age.

2. This wine is entry level, and there are several beyond this that may get to where I want to go. I am going to seek those out and taste in comparison to this one in the coming weeks.

Melissa Stackhouse is the winemaker over at La Crema and she has been working to put her stamp on the house winemaking style. That is probably good, as Melissa is known to favor a Burgundian style of Pinot Noir. Actually, that would be a third reason why I will check out more wines from La Crema crafted by Melissa Stackhouse. For whatever reason, this Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir just didn't get there.

We decanted for a bit and poured to smell. The nose was a bit hot with alcohol, and had cassis and jammy fruit blended with that medicine quality I mentioned earlier. The nose is not bad, just not what we go for, and to my mind is simple and without depth. There is a sandy quality to both the nose and the palate which makes me feel like the grapes were grown in really arid, sun drenched vineyards... which they were not.

The palate is simple and restrained. I would say light with little complexity. The fruit is more strawberry, but it dissipates quickly leaving an aftertaste that is like, well... it's like medicine. There is an earthy component to the palate that we like, but it is not in balance with the rest of the wine. The finish is fairly short and dry.

Lately, we've been looking for some value wines to flesh out the lower end of our cellar. Wines that we can enjoy whenever we want without feeling like we are robbing our daughter's inheritance. Just kidding. But seriously, we are looking for good value wines that we can keep and drink over the next year or so while we stock up on more long-term keepers. This wine is not either of those, obviously, but as I said we will continue to check out La Crema and let you know what we taste.

cost - $21.99

winecommando rating (1-10) - 7

2004 Montes Alpha Syrah Alpalta Vineyard, Colchagua Valley, Chile

People tend to think that the Chilean wine industry is new and novel. This is a total misconception as more than 500 years ago missionaries traveling with the conquistadors brought vine cuttings all over South America, mostly to make their sacramental wine... or so they said. In what is now Chile they found both the climate and soil perfect for the beginnings of wine making. This was WAY before the wine industries of California and Australia were even a glimmer in the eye of some savvy pioneering immigrant.

Now, this isn't to say that the Chilean wine industry has been nurtured and prospered all of this time. In the early 1800's wines exported from this area were competing with the export wines of the Spanish monarchy. That was not a line to cross, and the Spanish crown ordered many vineyards burned and the vines pulled. This was a setback for several decades, but in the late 1800's a wave of French immigrants to Santiago brought their vines and cuttings and Chile saw the beginning a new age of wine making. The French brought cuttings from Bordeaux and the Rhone, and Cabernet Sauvignon in particular seemed to find a natural home on the slopes of the Andes mountains. Note also that around the late 1800's the vineyards of France, Italy and Spain became plagued with the Phylloxera louse and began fighting a losing battle against this vineyard destroyer. That is a pretty interesting story that I will tell another time, but back in Chile the vineyards were protected from the spread of this pest worldwide by the buffer to the east of the Andes and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. Many of those original plantings, most notably from Bordeaux, still produce fruit. Phylloxera is still damaging the wine industry around the world, but Chile remains isolated and free from this scourge.

The Montes Alpha winery has become very highly recognized, especially in the last few years. The winery owner, Aurielo Montes, is a successful wine pioneer in the region staking out new and important vineyard territory and focusing on low production ultra-premium wines. This Syrah has been rated very highly and considered to be representative of the uniqueness of the Chilean wine industry. I was excited to try it. Cat and I opened it and tasted before decanting. It came out of the bottle TIGHT. Really tight. Sharp and tight. Freaking tight. This concerned us, but look back a few reviews ago and we had had a similar start to a wine only to see it open up beautifully an hour or two later. So, we decanted and let this wine sit for a bit. We came back to it while making dinner and found it really freaking tight. We let it rest in the decanter while we made dinner. We tasted again as we sat down to eat and it was still really tight, yielding very, very little. Hmmm...

We ate dinner, it was lovely but I can't remember what we had. Cleaned up, loaded the dishwasher, let the dog out, watched an episode of The Soprano's and then decided to taste it again. WOW! Pretty dramatic change, thankfully. We enjoyed a glass and discussed how frustrating it is when a wine requires upwards of three to four hours to open up. I did some digging and found that other reviewers had had interestingly similar experiences with this wine. The nose had become much softer and had moved from an almost acrid quality to one with dark cherries and plum balanced with almost a spiced wine like scent. The palate also was much softer and very elegant. There were hints of vanilla and plum with the dry sweetness of black berry. The finish was longish, but smooth with restrained tannins. I did not find this wine to be especially complex, and though it was good I did not really find it to be that memorable or differentiated from other Syrah's in a way that would make it unique. It was nice once it had finally opened, and we enjoyed it quite a bit. It just didn't make a strong impression on us. We will probably come back to this wine and this vintage in another year or two as I suspect it will begin to deepen and improve with a little more time.

cost - $21.99

winecommando rating (1-10) - 7

2003 Jean-Philipe Marchand Gevrey-Chambertin "Clos Prieur", Burgundy

This being the inaugural post on winecommando it seems fitting that it would be a Burgundian. This is for two reasons. The first is that the Burgundian style of pinot noir is a favorite for both Cat and I. The second is that we have been working our way through the wines of Burgundy for the last several weeks.

We decanted this wine and allowed to open for about an hour or so. It was still very restrained when we tasted it after this time. However, over the course of the next hour it opened up really well, and was good. Definitely an earthy pinot noir, light in body and with an apparent, but subtle, fruit. I tasted cherry and a little bit of licorice. It had a distinct, but really nice, vegetal quality as well. Cat can't remember what she tasted. Honestly, as a 2003 this wine is a tad young to be drinking. In all fairness, in about 4-6 more years this bottle would be very different and probably excellent.

cost - $34.99

served with - slow cooked chicken with roasted vegetables, marjoram, lentils and a vidalia onion sauce

winecommando rating (1-10) - 7 (will improve with age)