Month: March 2016

Bel Lago Cherry Wine

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Maker: Bel Lago, Cedar, Michigan, USA20160329_112358-1.jpg

Cherries: Balaton, Montmorency.

Place of origin: Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan, USA

ABV: 9.5%

Price: $15 (winery)

Appearance: Dark crimson.

Nose: Grape jelly, tart cherry pie filling, cassia, brown sugar, whiff of oak.

Palate: Full-bodied and velvety. Overdone cherry pie, allspice, mace.

Finish: Chewy, sweet and a little tart.

Parting words: Bel Lago has the reputation of being the best cherry wine produced in Michigan. That’s probably because they invented it. Michigan State’s Dr. Amy Iezzoni, wife of Bel Lago founder Charlie Edson, is responsible for bringing the Balaton cherry variety to the US after discovering it in Hungary. The variety’s original name was Ujfehértói Fürtös but Dr. Iezzoni thought Balaton (after Lake Balaton) rolled off the tongue a little better. Her goal was to help break up the Montmorency monoculture in the US. She has succeeded. Balaton produces wine and juice that has more depth and complexity than Montmorency and has the ability to reach wine-like sugar levels of 24 °Bx or so.

 

The wine is lush, complex and velvety in a way that few fruit wines are. There’s no doubt that this is cherry wine, but it transcends the category at a decent price. Bel Lago Cherry Wine is highly recommended.

Mulling it over: Spiced wine head to head to head

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A three person, three bottle mulled wine tasting.

HM= Homemade mulled wine. Westborn/St. Julian (Paw Paw, Michigan, USA) Market Red + Trader Joe’s Harvest Blend Herbal Tea + sugar.

WB= Witches Brew (Leelanau Cellars, Omena, Michigan, USA)

LR= Revenge of the Living Red (Sandhill Crane, Jackson, Michigan, USA)

ABV20160320_190951-1.jpg

HM: 12%

WB: 12.5%

LR: 12%

Price

HM: $8 (wine only)

WB: $8 (Hollywood Market, Madison Heights)

LR: $18 (Michigan by the Bottle Tasting Room, Royal Oak)

Appearance

HM & WB: About the same. Dark burgundy.

LR: Beet red, almost blood red.

Nose

HM: Sweet with cinnamon and orange.

WB: Big cinnamon with some cherry juice.

LR: More typical red wine. Dry.

Palate

HM: Tart orange. Tannic.

WB: Easy Drinking. Sweet cherries, cinnamon. Not much else.

LR: Spicy with a little orange zest and cherry.

Finish

HM: Chewy. A little sweet orange.

WB: Sweet & light.

LR: Spicy dried chillies. Ancho?

Amy’s thoughts

HM: Smells sweet but tastes dry. Good once you get used to it.

WB: Cinnamon bomb. Almost too sweet.

LR: Drier. Finish burns. Don’t like it too much.

Pete’s thoughts

HM: Don’t like it. Bad, bitter aftertaste.

WB: Like it better. Cinnamon is good!

LR: Like WB but drier. Like it the best.

Parting words: I had wanted to do a mulled wine tasting for a while, but having three bottles open at the same time is a bit much, even for me. Normally Mrs. Sipology Blog would help out but she’s currently very knocked up so I invited friends of the blog Amy and Pete over to help.

For the homemade mulled wine, I had used TJ’s Harvest Blend Herbal Tea for mulled cider back in the fall with very good results so I thought I’d try it with wine. I thought it was OK, but not as good as the two pre-mulled wines. I kept adding more sugar which made it better but still not good enough. Next fall maybe I’ll start work on perfecting a mulled wine recipe. My own creation is not recommended.

Witches Brew is a big seller for Leelanau Cellars (known for their seasonal table wines) and it floods into grocery stores statewide in September and lingers well into the winter. The Halloween theme has always been a little puzzling to me, since I associate mulled wine with the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Pete assured me that he and many other people do associate mulled wine with the fall hayride season. At any rate, cinnamon is the dominant flavor, but clove and nutmeg also go into the brew. It has it’s share of haters, but I think it’s a decent buy for the right price (<$8). It’s NV so beware of overly dusty bottles, but they drink fine at a year or a little more after hitting the shelves. Recommended.

Sandhill Crane’s goes with a hipper zombie theme. Their original spiced wine was Night of the Living Red ($17 from the winery). According to the website it’s made with “cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, orange peel… and essence of fresh-squeezed zombies!” Revenge is infused with all those (including the zombie juice) plus estate grown chiles. The chiles add a nice shot of heat to the wine and set it apart from products like Witches Brew. Some, like Amy, may find this off-putting but I loved it. It’s $10 or more than WB but the taste is worth it, plus $2 from every Living Red bottle sold goes toward the college fund of the artist who created the label. That’s added value. Revenge of the Living Red is recommended.

Tullamore D.E.W. Phoenix

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Maker: Tullamore, Tullamore, Offalay, Ireland (Wm Grant & Sons)2016-03-18-21.07.50.jpg.jpeg

Distiller: New Midleton, Midleton, Cork, Ireland (Pernod-Ricard)

Style: Blended Irish whiskey

ABV: 55%

Michigan state minimum: $56

Appearance: Bright caramel with thin crooked legs.

Nose: Velvet, alcohol, oak, lavender, grape soda, serrano chiles. Water brings out a lot more oak.

Palate: Sweet and mild at first, then warms up. Alcohol, sherry, plum, golden raisins, oak. With water, shows butterscotch, mostly.

Finish: Alcohol, old sherry, almond paste. Not too different with water. Just milder.

Parting words: Phoenix is named in memory of what the label claims was the world’s first aerospace disaster in 1785. It seems like an odd thing to name a whiskey for, but I’m guessing that it’s also supposed to symbolize the brand’s rebirth with its purchase by Wm. Grant & Sons (owners of Grant’s blended Scotch, Glenfiddich, Balvenie and Hendrick’s Gin among others) and the opening of a new distillery in the village of Tullamore. The original distillery there closed in 1954. The Phoenix itself appears on the crest for the village and symbolizes the rebuilding of the town after the tragedy.

Recently I’ve posted a couple twitter rants or snarky photos involving Tullamore Dew, err, D.E.W. I’ve done this in the past and the usual thrust of the rants is how boring Tullamore is. It’s probably the mildest major Irish brand on the market and that’s saying something. It makes Jameson taste like Four Roses Single Barrel. One of the reasons Tullamore is so dull is that all their expressions (except this) are bottled at 40%. When your product is already mild compared to its competitors, bottling it at the lowest ABV allowed by law doesn’t do it any favors.

Phoenix is bottled at a stout 55% and finished in Oloroso sherry casks. The old sherry comes through in a pleasant way, never getting rubbery as in some sherried Irish and Scotch whiskeys. Fruit, oak, spice, this whiskey has it all and is one of my top five Irish currently. The price is not bonkers either. This is how good Tullamore can be when Grant gives it some damn guts. Tullamore D.E.W. Phoenix is highly recommended.

Fleur Blanche

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Maker: Lone Oak Vineyard, Grass Lake, Michigan, USA2016-03-16-12.32.43.jpg.jpeg

Place of origin: Michigan, USA

Grapes: Unknown (Riesling and something else?)

Vintage: NV

Style: Semi-sweet white blend

ABV: 12.8%

Purchased for $15 (Papa Joe’s, Birmingham)

Appearance: Dark gold, chablis-ish with some particulate matter.

Nose: Oxidized. Strong canned peaches, leather, cooked green cabbage, apple juice.

Palate: Peach syrup, cabbage, winter savory.

Finish: Sweet pear juice, white grape juice, lemon thyme.

Parting words: The last Michigan wine I reviewed was one that I though was over the hill. While it didn’t taste bad, it didn’t taste like it should. It had fallen apart. That was a varietal from a big (by Michigan standards), Up North winemaker.

This wine, Fleur Blanche, is a blend from a small, downstate winemaker. Lone Oak is a fairly old winemaker in Grass Lake, east of Jackson, Michigan founded by Kip and Denise Barber. It’s not technically a part of the Pioneer Wine Trail, but it’s in the same general region, north of the Irish Hills. This specific blend is no longer produced by Lone Oak and it hasn’t been for a few years. I stumbled across it at a grocery store yesterday. It’s oxidized, but it’s really not too bad. It’s retained a luscious texture and perfumed, fruity nose, even if a bit of cabbage has wafted in. It goes to show what time in a bottle can do even for table wines. It lacks the freshness and vitality it probably had at a younger age, but it’s still a fun drink, at least on an intellectual level. Just goes to show that an old cheap wine is not necessarily a terrible one. Fleur Blanche NV is mildly recommended.

Consecrator Dopplebock

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Maker: Bell’s, Comstock, Michigan, USA2016-03-14-17.17.58.jpg.jpeg

ABV: 8%

Purchased for $15/6 pack (Hollywood Market, Madison Heights, Michigan)

Appearance: Ruddy brown with a short-lived head. Leaves a thin, lacy layer of foam on top.

Nose: Toasted malt, cherry juice, faint alcohol

Palate: Easy drinking but flavorful. Relatively fruity. Sweet, toasty malt, leather, plum juice.

Finish: mixed berry, hops, roasted malt.

Parting words: Bock is a style of beer that drinks like an ale but is brewed like a lager. It’s also one of my favorite styles. Bock has a long history in Germany but was hard to find in the US for many years. The microbrewer movement changed all that and now almost every small brewery makes one or more. The story goes that the style was originally made in the Lower Saxon town of Einbeck, but the name was corrupted to ein Bock (a billy goat) by brewers in Munich. That story sounds fishy to me, but beer history is not my field, so I’ll let it go for now. At any rate, most bocks carry a picture of one or more goats on the label as a play on the name.

Doppelbocks (i.e. double bocks) are brewed at a higher ABV than the standard bock. They usually have a name that ends in -ator as a tribute to the first brewers of the style, the Paulaner Franciscan friars, who called their beer Salvator. Consecrator is a good example of the style, but as noted above it shows more fruit than most. It still works very well, though. I don’t normally buy beer that’s this expense (I admit that I probably overpaid), but this one is just worth the price. Consecrator is recommended.

Liberator Barrel Rested Old Tom Gin

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Maker: Valentine, Ferndale, Michigan, USA2016-03-10-16.36.44.jpg.jpeg

Batch 2

ABV: 45.2%

Michigan State Minimum: $49

Appearance: Bright copper.

Nose: Lime zest, orange peel, juniper, earthy red wine.

Palate: Full bodied and semi-dry. Hot. Like eating lemonheads under a pine tree.

Finish: Raw ginger, fresh cut pine.

Mixed: Surprisingly good in Tom Collins and with tonic. Adds a pleasant gingery bite. Does as well as expected in a Negroni, Princeton, Aviation, Bronx and a perfect martini. Much better than expected in a dry martini. This gin was great every way I tried mixing it.

Parting words: I’ve had this gin in my liquor cabinet for quite some time now. I didn’t drink it much because I view barrel rested gins as good for Negronis, perfect martinis and not much else. I was wrong in this case. Liberator barrel rested gin is good for anything you want to do with it.

Like its unrested sibling, Valentine’s rested Old Tom gin is aggressive but still elegantly blanced. It’s like a tall, attractive exchange student who grinds on you at your senior prom. Yes, it may cost you a lot of money, but it’s well worth the experience. Liberator Barrel Rested Old Tom Gin is highly recommended.

Cherry Blush Hard Cider

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Maker: Chaos Cider/Verterra Winery, Leland, Michigan, USA20160308_175236-1.jpg

Style: Cherry flavored apple cider.

ABV: 6.5%

Purchased for $13/750 ml (Michigan by the Bottle Tasting Room, Royal Oak). Growlers available at the winery for $20, with $16 refills.

Appearance: Dark pink with light bubbles.

Nose: Fresh cut Golden Delicious apples, cherry jello salad.

Palate: Effervescent and semi-sweet. Apple juice, cherry cola, fruit salad juice (with cherries of course), slice of Granny Smith.

Finish: Crisp, dry and quick.

Parting words: I reviewed the Just Apple from Chaos Cider (Verterra Winery by day) back in the fall and I liked it. I like this too. According to a phone conversation with the owner, Cherry Blush starts as cider, then is fermented with a “cherry wine base” (unfermented I assume). This is not a case of adding cherry juice or flavoring to a finished cider. The more complex method shows in the excellent balance here. This isn’t fruit covering up subpar cider, it’s a harmonious blend of cherry and apple. I like it before, during or after a meal. Chaos Cherry Blush is recommended.

Arcturos Dry Riesling, 2012

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Maker: Black Star Farms, Traverse City, Michigan, USA2016-03-02-11.08.03.jpg.jpeg

Place of origin: Leorie, Montague Estate, Capella vineyards, Old Mission Peninsula AVA, Traverse City, Michigan, USA

ABV: 12%

Price: $19 (website, 2013 vintage)

Appearance: medium gold

Nose: Canned peach syrup, freshly opened can of mandarin oranges, almonds, dried herbs de Provence.

Palate: Very mild. Faint tang then abruptly shifts to a bitter herbal taste, like ripped sage leaves.

Finish: Similar to the palate, but even fainter. Fades quickly.

Parting words: This is a cautionary tale, my friends. According to Cellartracker, I bought this wine last June at the winery. I don’t remember going to Black Star Farms last June, but I was in northern Michigan last summer so it’s entirely possible that I did. I wish I had opened it that summer instead of waiting until today. The 2012 vintage was not a consistently good one for Michigan Riesling and dry Rieslings often don’t age as well as late harvest ones. Those two combined with possible poor storage on my part may have doomed this poor wine. It’s not undrinkable, mind you, just fallen apart. I’m sure it was better a year ago, but as it is right now, Arcturos Dry Riesling, 2012 is not recommended.