A Second Date

When I first tasted Phifer-Pavitt's Date Night Cabernet Sauvignon, I was impressed. That was a year ago. With the second release of this wine, the 2006 vintage, I think I might be falling in love.

Me and a California Cab? It's Montague and Capulet. I'm a Jet; this beauty's a Shark. This can't be.

But Date Night is made from a single, organically farmed vineyard in Napa's Pope Valley. The grapes are hand-picked before undergoing a wild yeast ferment. The wine isn't over manipulated. The goal of the wine-making is to express the site.

What's star-crossed about that?

The wine itself is beautiful. It has a bright, complex and perfumed nose of cherry confiture, pomegranate juice, stewed plums, allspice and cafe au lait. It shows elegant balance and pure fruit on the palate. Like the inaugural vintage, it is remarkably linear. And the dark chocolate and crushed rocks finish lingers long enough to make the 3rd date.

This could be the start of something serious.

For me?

You shouldn't have.

One of our favorite publicists sent us a Cabernet Sauvignon from Piña Napa Valley to commemorate the Lab's first anniversary.

Napa Valley, D'Adamo Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006.

This can't be a sample. It's a single-vineyard Cabernet. The bottle is very fancy, etched with gold. The wine-makers are actually vignerons (the Piña family have sustainably farmed vineyards in Napa for 5 generations). The wine-making is non-interventionist (mostly); the wines aren't fined, only lightly filtered, and commercial yeasts are used only minimally. This is way too nice to be a sample. Surely, this is a gift.

The Lab has a strict "No Samples" policy (presently under review by the Lab's Ethics Board). But we have no such rules against gifts.

The wine's aromas are dark berries, black cherry and kirsch, with notes of dusty sandalwood, camphor and stems. It's young; there's a phenolic bite, but still approachable with elegant, understated fruit. The barrel effects are gentle and welcoming. There's a taut structure that seems to literally spread out with time in the air; a dark chocolate finish stretches from curt to prolonged after the wine has time to breathe.

There's enough stuffing and complexity here to think that with a couple years in the cellar, this could be spectacular. And it's very good now.

Thank you!

Vigorous Decanting

Now that we've resolved our balance sheet issues and gotten the government monkey off our back, we can settle back into some good, old-fashioned wine science. But before we do, I'd like to make an important announcement.

When I got back from Washington, we convened a meeting of the Lab's Oversight Board. It was there decided that to avoid even the appearance of impropriety I would return 100% of my bonus for 2008. I have done so reluctantly, but with the full understanding it will be returned to me as part of my 2009 bonus when all the fuss has died down. It was also decided that we would not invite Lloyd Blankfein to any future meetings of the Oversight Board. Just to be safe. Appearance is everything.

Now, on with the oenology.

Today's experiment focuses on decanting. Our interest in this subject actually began with our first public experiment. Famed Rudy Steiner devotee, Nicolas Joly, recommends "vigorous decanting." But just what does that mean? I personally find decanting, vigorous or otherwise, generally unnecessary. Unless, as is often the case, I've stuffed up the cork removal and had to push it down into the bottle (but then I'm not really decanting the wine so much as I'm straining it).

Nevertheless, we wanted to see what would happen with some REALLY vigorous decanting. So we're putting a bottle of Root:1, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2007 into a blender.

Stay tuned.

The Planck Epoch and 8th Grade Algebra

The Planck Epoch is the earliest period of time in the history of the universe, from zero to 10^-43 seconds. It's when everything started.

With wine, we all have a starting point, a personal Planck Epoch. That great Burgundy where we first sat up and took notice. That trip to a winery where we finally made the connection between the dirt of the vineyard and the juice in the glass. It's that moment of crystalline awareness where we realized something great had happened and we wanted it to happen again.

My moment? I pretty much missed it. Completely unawares. I wouldn't even know it had happened until years after. But in my defense, I was only 13. At the time, Doug Shafer was explaining why he was applying his U.C. Davis oenology degree to teaching my 8th grade Algebra class and not to working for his family's new winery. It was that moment where the seed was planted. Wine is interesting was the formative impression.

Doug's vineyard sabbatical lasted 3 years. No doubt, wine drinkers everywhere benefited from Doug's decision to return to the vineyards. But I'm sure the math scores at my junior high did not. Looking back on my 12 years of primary education, Doug stands out as a true highlight. He was enthusiastic and excitable. His lessons were memorable (especially the first one where he danced like a mad, tribal shaman trying to convey something about language, dance and mathematics). He was one of those teachers you write your college application essay about, describing the ones who influenced you at fundamental levels.

I was in 8th grade in 1980. So when I found a bottle of 1980 Shafer Cabernet Sauvignon, I could hardly resist. I paid more than it was worth, then emailed Doug to find out who had made it (remember he was teaching Algebra in Tucson, Arizona at the time). Fellow named Nikko Schoch made the wine and Doug suggested I use it for salad dressing.

And we almost did. Started out with a sharp nose and a balsamic tang. But we held out hopes and decanted the bottle anyway. After an hour, our optimism was rewarded. The nose opened up brilliantly with beautiful aromas of dried cherry, woodsmoke and vanilla brandy butter. It reminded everyone of Christmas for no specific reason we could point to. The fruit was surprisingly bright, cherry and cassis, and infused with cigar smoke, a dash of pepper and a few still biting tannins.

This was a more delicate Cabernet than the muscular ones Doug would later make to great acclaim, but it more than kept up with the bottle's inestimable sentimental value.

Science/Wine is Sexy

In 1995, Swiss scientist, Dr Claus Wedekind, conducted a study that's a favorite here at the Lab. Known colloquially as the "Sweaty T-shirt Experiment", Wedekind had men abstain from soap and deodorant and wear the same t-shirt to bed for 2 nights. The shirts were then boxed and put before a group of women. Each was asked to rate the shirts' odor for "sexiness," "pleasantness," and "intensity of smell." Wedekind found that women expressed clear olfactory preference for men with divergent major histocompatibility complexes (MHC). In other words, women found a man sexy if his immune systems was unlike her own. Apparrently, this is DNA's none too subtle way of providing for offspring with expanded capacity for survival.

Interestingly, woman on "the Pill", a form of contraception that fools the body into thinking it's already pregnant, expressed a preference for MHC that was most like to their own. The speculative theory being that if you are already pregnant, you retreat to the safety of your own tribe. But if half of all marriages fail, perhaps the ubiquity of this form of birth control is an underlying cause? Do your own flow charts.

For what it's worth, this preference for divergent MHC has also been observed in mice and fish.

Clearly, this is an easy, try-at-home experiment. And to help with that, we'd recommend a newcomer. Phifer-Pavitt's Date Night Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. The launch vintage.

Our first hypothesis was that Date Night would be low-grade plonk with a gimmicky marketing plan. Boy oh boy, were we wrong. Of course, when we were formulating our notion, we didn't know the wine is only available via mailing list and costs $75!

Date Night is a delicious, subtle and focused California Cab destined for cult celebrity. The nose is ganache and cherry with a swirling, nutty earthiness; with a little air, a rich, floral perfume drifted in. There's some oak (65% new French), but it steps elegantly. The wine has a beautiful, unexpectedly linear palate. Red fruits, with black cherry dominating, highlight the attack. An earthy, sensual mid-palate builds into chewy tannins with a slightly herbal expression of anise and black tea. And a chalky chocolate finish arrives and lingers long enough to revive long dormant memories of your first birthday cake.

Grapes were sourced from a single block, organically farmed and hand-picked. Vinification is low-intervention using only wild yeasts. No fining, lightly filtered.

If your date is good enough to stand up to this Red, it probably should end at a little chapel in Reno.


(t-credit: © Stocksnapper | Dreamstime.com)