Joel Goldberg

In the far corner, wearing synthetic trunks: Steve Heimoff, west coast editor of Wine Enthusiast magazine. I pilfered part of the column title from him; fortunately, Steve’s pretty laid back about such things.

Unlike “natural, schmatural” wine, over which he turns apoplectic: “‘Greenwashing’ is the perfect way to describe a large part of the whole natural, green, sustainable, organic, biodynamic thing. Everybody wants to portray his practices as purer than the other guy’s practices. It’s a holier-than-thou world out there, and IMHO that goes for the whole greenie-natural crowd.”

And here in the near corner, Ann Arborites Stacey and Rob DeAngelis, dressed in the all-natural cloak of DeAngelis Cantina del Vino, whose tasting room opens later this month. It’s the only winery with an Ann Arbor mailing address, though you’ll find it deep in Scio Township.

Not for them, the typical 21st century winemaker’s arsenal of chemicals, sulfites, color enhancers and designer yeasts.

What’s in the wines? “Just the grapes,” says Stacey DeAngelis, whose picture appears on their label.

She’s not kidding.

Rob and Stacey reflect a controversial paradigm shift among a small-but-vocal slice of the wine world. These “natural wine” advocates reject the winemaking techniques of the “international style” associated with the dominant critics and marketers of the last three decades.

The flagship Vinosesso, or "Sexy Wine," with Stacey DeAngelis on the label, has already sold out – before the winery's grand opening. (Photos by the writer.)

What’s the “international style”? Hypothesize a Platonic ideal of wine that lets you judge any wine, made anywhere, with a single set of universal, objective standards.

Best of all, you can plot the results on a 100-point scale.

If you accept that, it’s a short jump to conclude that winemakers carry an obligation to aspire to this ideal, using every tool at their disposal.

“Phooey!” say the naturalists. Where others see Platonic ideals, they see easy-to-drink “industrial” wines with too much ripe fruit and not enough acidity. Worst of all, they say these wines are “manipulated” or “manufactured” according to recipes and formulas to taste a specific way and earn mega-points from the critics.

Natural winemakers produce wines that embrace what their grapes naturally provide, particularly regional character and vintage variations. Their minimal-interventionist winemaking techniques mean they don’t manipulate wines to achieve specific results.

Of course, their wines also reflect any flaws in the grapes, and any mistakes that occur along the way.

If the wine industry is a three-ring circus, then natural winemaking is its high-wire act – without a net. One misstep can bring contamination from the flotsam and jetsam that reside in the ether, awaiting a tasty feast on some vulnerable grapes or wines.

For example, most modern winemakers inoculate crushed grapes with commercial yeast to jump-start fermentation and avoid unwanted microscopic critters accidentally dropping in for a munch. Winemaker Rob DeAngelis waits for the yeast that lives naturally on grape skins to slowly get to work, turning sugar into alcohol.

Most winemakers add sulfites to retard spoilage, and apply liberal blasts of inert nitrogen gas to separate the wine from damaging oxygen. Rob DeAngelis trusts his equipment and overall winery cleanliness to do the job.

And don’t get natural winemakers started about modernistic techniques like reverse osmosis or the addition of Mega Purple, a favorite bête-noir.

Nerves rubbed raw, advocates on both sides have reached a take-no-prisoners level of conversation, reminiscent of what passes for dialogue in the U.S. Congress.

Last week, critic Robert Parker, self-designated spokesman for everything the natural wine movement abhors, body-slammed those who are “saving the world from drinking good wine in the name of vinofreakism.”

Wow. Read that one again. “Vinofreakism.” That’s my kind of an insult.

But the vinofreaks know how to counterpunch the fan base’s soft underbelly. Natural wine importer Joe Dressner – popularizer of the word “spoofulated” to describe highly-manipulated wine – suggests that “the pointists and tasting notes crowd” are misguided souls who “like crappy industrial wines.”

Those would be acolytes of Parker and the Wine Spectator, if you’re keeping score.

In Michigan, Detroit wine guy Putnam Weekley (who puts in occasional Ann Arbor appearances at Everyday Wines) may be the area’s most vocal advocate for natural wine. His “Natural in Detroit” and “Detroit, the Paris of the Midwest” articles for the seriously geeky winesite Saignée have earned him a national audience, among the seriously geeky.

For the record, I’m agnostic on the subject, despite an involuntary cringe last week when I opened a Côtes du Rhône that tasted like someone had worked hard in a misguided attempt to turn it into an Australian Shiraz.

But in general, I figure a wine’s primary obligation is to pleasure the palate. Get that right, and I’ll gladly sit down with you to discuss pedigrees.

That’s why I wangled an invitation from Rob DeAngelis to drop by the nearly complete winery and tasting room, sample what he’ll have for sale later this month, and get his take on natural winemaking.

Rob DeAngelis of DeAngelis Cantina del Vino in Scio Township. He built the winery – and makes the wine.

Rob turns out to be a 50ish, long-haired raffish character in perpetual motion, proprietor of the eponymously-named heating and cooling firm with which the winery co-habits in an industrial building on Jackson Road, west of Baker.

He proudly lays claim to 30 years of experience as an amateur winemaker, following the tradition of his Italian family, but disavows ever reading a book or taking a class on the subject, or entering an amateur wine competition to see how his wines stack up.

“Zero,” he says.

Stacey, the winery’s marketer-in-chief, pounces with spousal glee. “His mother buys him books which he does not read. So she’ll go through and tag all these pages and say, ‘Read this page, read that page.’ But I know for a fact he has never touched them.”

“Nah,” Rob agrees.

But Rob DeAngelis doesn’t lack self-confidence in his coming success as a winemaker, a certitude that takes on new dimensions as we speak.

“I’ve always succeeded at everything I’ve done,” he says. “The winery is going to succeed; failure isn’t an option.”

Rob says that he personally constructed the entire winery and rustic tasting room, which includes a magnificently repurposed wooden bar and stained bamboo paneling.

A bamboo-covered bar creates a rustic ambience in the tasting room at DeAngelis Cantina del Vino.

The tasting room connects to the winery via a long, appropriately-named barrel vault.

To make the winery’s initial releases, all from vintage-2009, DeAngelis purchased grapes grown in California’s Lodi appellation through a Detroit middleman, a decision he now acknowledges got him fruit he calls “second-rate.”

This harvest, Rob and Stacey are doing things differently. They recently returned from a buying trip to California, where they visited growers and contracted to purchase ten varieties of grapes currently ripening on vines in Lodi, Napa and Sonoma. New for 2010 will be a Cabernet Franc, Petite Sirah, and Muscat.

They’re also spending twice as much per ton of grapes as they did in 2009.

“We’re going to get a better grape that I don’t have to worry about,” says Rob. “Because to make it all natural, you want to have all those nutrients inside the grape. This year’s crop is going to blow away last year’s.”

Surprisingly for a natural winemaker, his grapes aren’t organically grown. Rob is convinced that any chemical presence is long-gone by the time the grapes are picked, and his focus on grape quality trumps any concern over how they get there.

“Besides, even if you have an organic vineyard, they still spray next door and it drifts over,” he opines.

But would he consider making wine from commercially-prepared juice or kits? “No juice. Never any juice. You buy juice, you don’t know what they put in it.”

The grapes will show up at the winery in late October or early November, after a three-day voyage east in a refrigerated truck.

“We expect them to arrive right after our opening date, so we’re encouraging people to come by and see how we make wine,” Stacey says.

Small fermenters used for the first vintage. Larger versions are on the way.

Ready to receive them: a new crusher and press, and eleven still-to-arrive 1,000-gallon stainless fermentation tanks that will replace the much smaller fermenters used for last year’s trial-run vintage.

Rob won’t age the wine in oak barrels, which he says create a “better chance of getting contamination and bacteria.” Instead, he uses oak staves and bags of oak chips to impart a desired level of flavor to the wine, but ages the wines in the same easy-to-sanitize stainless tanks where they ferment.

“I’ll pressurize and steam-clean them, and I won’t have to worry about bacteria,” he says.

Rob sends his wines out for testing that confirms just three parts per million of naturally occurring sulfites, no sugar, and no yeast. The labels proudly proclaim “No Added Sulfites.”

They did an end-run around the state’s cumbersome licensing legalities by giving a new home to Ypsilanti’s orphaned Frog Island Brewing Company. That business, rechristened U Brew, already had the needed winemaking license and now appears as the winery-of-record on the DeAngelis back labels. Rob, in turn, plans to construct a microbrewery on the other side of the building for U Brew once the winery is complete.

The California buying trip yielded 80 tons of grapes. That’s enough to ferment 10,000 gallons of juice this fall, which should translate into about 4,000 cases of wine. That’s sizable production for a new, unknown Michigan winery.

Neither labeling laws nor existing Michigan practice work to their advantage. Although his 2009 grapes came from California’s Lodi viticultural area, federal law won’t let him put that geographic designation on the front label, because he made the wine in a different state. So the bottles carry only a generic “American” designation.

But that creates a Catch-22: wines without a geographic designation can’t list a vintage date on the label. Their solution: a bottleneck hanger tag identifies the vintage.

Their use of California grapes also means that Cantina del Vino gets no love – or marketing support – from the state’s Grape and Wine Council or southeast Michigan’s Pioneer Wine Trail. Neither of those organizations officially acknowledges the winery on their websites or promotional materials, nor invites them to participate in regional wine events.

So what’s a winemaker to do? For Rob and Stacey, the answer is the same as for Saline’s Spotted Dog Winery: market their own wines at events and directly to retailers.

Fortunately, the all-natural label provides them a strong selling hook; natural wine is a hot commodity in today’s marketplace; they’ve already hired two part-time salespeople in the Detroit area and placed their products in over a dozen retailers. In the Ann Arbor area, DeAngelis wines are available at A&L Wine Castle, South Main Market, and Scio Foods Party Store, as well as Ypsilanti’s Keg Party Store and Ypsilanti Food Coop. Retail prices are in the $16 range.

They just returned from pouring three wines at Detroit Uncorked. Their flagship Bordeaux blend, Vinosesso (“Sexy Wine” in Italian), went into the high-end private tasting.

Rob laughs, “They poured our wine, but they wouldn’t let us in the room to talk about it.”

Fortunately, they didn’t need the sales. Vinosesso’s small production is already sold out, as are the Chardonnay and Pinot Gris.

The winery will open with limited quantities of just four wines, all from the 2009 vintage: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz and Zinfandel.

We tasted through nearly every tank in the winery’s production area, which will initially double as their site for private tastings and receptions. Overall, the best description of what I tasted was good, but highly variable, even from tank to tank of the same wine.

That’s not unexpected from natural winemaking’s high-wire act.

One tank of Zinfandel clearly stood out, tasting of fresh, bright red raspberry fruit with some peppery notes. It’s one of the more pleasant Zins to cross my palate this year, particularly if you enjoy the grape’s lighter style.

A couple of other samples were notable for lesser reasons. One small tank of Merlot carried the distinct vinegar taint of acetobacter bacteria, possibly infiltrated from a barrel of Rob’s homemade vinegar that resided for a time just across the room.

Just as it’s unfair to critique a restaurant during opening week, it’s unwise to evaluate a winery based on its first, limited quantity releases. For now, my best guess on DeAngelis Cantina del Vino is “Incomplete.” I’d buy some of the Zinfandel tomorrow, but other wines in the lineup aren’t as ready for commercial prime time.

Rob DeAngelis flaunts the motivation, and possibly the instinctive talent, to make quality wine. Ann Arbor offers a supportive market for a business that makes artisanal, natural products. The winery provides a unique, hospitable venue for parties and events.

But how much will the wines improve across the board? Will this year’s grapes make a big difference? Will Rob adjust his winemaking techniques to avoid the mistakes and high-wire issues that can plague all-natural wines?

Like I said: Incomplete – for now.

DeAngelis Cantina del Vino is at 7879 Jackson Road, west of Baker Road in Scio Township. The winery entrance is on the side of the building, with parking in front and back. They plan to open on Oct. 14, with the official grand opening scheduled Oct. 23. Initial hours are Thursday and Friday, 1-6 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Phone: 734.564.3260.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

As a benighted former president was wont to say, “Let me make one thing perfectly clear.”

My track record for New Year’s resolutions plumbs the depths of RichRod’s Michigan win percentage. Were things otherwise, the first days of 2010 would find me significantly lighter, fitter and wealthier.

But – in another context – Dr. Johnson sagely observed the triumph of hope over experience. So herewith follow 10 resolutions for current and wannabe wine lovers to consider in the New Year. One size doesn’t fit all, so pick and choose accordingly.

1. Drink local beverages with local foods

I grew up with the Hebraic variation of Peter Pan: every time a person goes into a deli and orders pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies.

A note made available on the Michigan Wine Council website.

Here’s today’s version: whenever someone orders locavore food and flown-in beverages, a local winemaker dies. If you’re eating Michigan-raised food, you should be drinking high quality Michigan wine – or locally crafted beers, ciders and juices, as appropriate.

Don’t see a good selection of local beverages where you go out to eat? Visit the Michigan Wine Council site – they’ve got an app for that.

2. Buy some wines outside your comfort zone

Wine lovers inevitably play favorites.

But nothing mandates that our preferences turn into ruts. The shelves are full of bottles from grapes and places you’ve probably never sampled; make 2010 the year to taste some.

The easiest way to branch out: look for kissing-cousins to those you already enjoy. Is your favorite white wine New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc? Then try the same grape from Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé, in France’s Loire Valley.

Do you prefer big, fruity California Zinfandel or Ozzie Shiraz? You might enjoy uncorking (or unscrewing) a Primitivo from Italy or Pinotage from South Africa. Or if you’ve taken to Argentine Malbec, it’s also the dominant red grape in France’s Cahors region.

Happy hunting!

3. Take a wine class

Learning alongside a local wine guru is a great way to pick up pointers – especially since you can sip as they talk.

Former Ann Arbor News wine columnist David Creighton teaches several one- or two-session classes throughout the year at Washtenaw Community College, typically accompanied by about eight tasting-size pours.

In April, Creighton will lead classes on “Michigan Wines” and “Really Good Wines You’ve Never Tried.” Check back in the fall for his “Introduction to Wine” and “Classic Wine Districts.”

Village Corner proprietor Dick Scheer offers occasional classes through the Ann Arbor Art Center. Scheduled for March: a one-evening session on South American wines.

Wine judge and AnnArbor.com blogger Ron Sober teams with Everyday Wines owner Mary Campbell for several one-session classes, also under the auspices of the Art Center. Although they haven’t yet set the dates, their soon-to-come classes will include “Wine 101” and “Fortified Wine.” Check the Art Center or Everyday Wines websites for updates.

4. Pull some good stuff from the cellar – for no reason at all

Nearly everyone with a well-established wine cellar recalls with embarrassment the stash of older bottles that inhabit some less-accessible corner, silently moldering into decay years after they should have been consumed.

Why? Because we never had just the “right occasion” to open them.

Resolved: next Saturday night is the “right occasion.” Prepare a good dinner and go for it!

Or follow the example of the Ann Arbor couple who stage an annual “Cellar Reduction Party” for their wine-tasting friends. We show up with food; they haul amazing older gems out of the basement.

No one complains when a few bottles inevitably turn out to be slightly past their peak; a sizable proportion of those in attendance fall into a similar category.

5. Develop a relationship with a local wine retailer – or three

Even if you believe that Gary Vaynerchuk is Bacchus incarnate – as opposed to the wine trade’s pre-eminent marketing huckster – you’ll still buy most of your juice locally.

So latch onto a go-to guy or gal. That’s not necessarily the person who knows the most about wine, but the one who’s best at recommending bottles you enjoy and challenging your palate with new ones to try. And it may not be the store owner or manager, but a sales clerk with a wine passion and the determination to taste everything on the shelf.

Ann Arbor is fortunate to have a number of retailers who qualify. Get to know some of them. Equally important, have them get to know your tastes and budget.

6. Curl up with a good wine book

If you’re a vinous newbie or want a structured approach toward wetting your wine appreciation whistle, try the 25th anniversary edition of Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World Wine Course. Zraly, former sommelier at the World Trade Center’s crowning eatery, doles out carefully measured pours of wine savvy along with how-to tasting sessions to accompany the reading.

The seriously committed – or obsessive – learner may prefer Karen MacNeil’s aptly-named 900-page tome, The Wine Bible, which offers a fact-crammed but highly readable in-depth primer to the wine world. It should come as no surprise that MacNeil runs the wine program at the Culinary Institute of America, located in Napa Valley.

Local wine teacher/writer David Creighton maintains that Tom Stevenson’s Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia is the first and only wine reference you absolutely need to own, though others point similarly to The Oxford Companion to Wine by Jancis Robinson. Both are better designed for in-and-out dips than a start-to-finish read.

Before hitting the road to visit Michigan’s wineries, From the Vine by Sharon Kegerreis and Lorri Hathaway is worth a perusal. The authors provide space for nearly 60 of our state’s winery owners and wine makers to regale us with their own stories in this well-illustrated, locally published volume that provides a good perspective on the state of Michigan winemaking.

For a different sort of wine yarn, pick up The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace to discover that Wall Street’s mortgage-bundling scallywags exercise no monopoly on economic chicanery. This non-fiction potboiler’s dramatis personae include the wine world’s answer to Bernie Madoff and a $150,000 bottle of Bordeaux putatively owned by Thomas Jefferson. The saga drags on today outside the book’s covers, in the form of a seemingly inexhaustible series of charges, counter-charges and lawsuits.

Owner/winemaker Lorenzo Lizarralde in the tasting room at recently opened Chateau Aeronautique.

7. Visit the Ann Arbor area’s wineries

Five wineries ferment their juice within an hour’s drive of Ann Arbor. All their tasting rooms are open year-round on weekends (some also during the week), and provide a perfect day-trip antidote to mid-winter cabin fever.

Last July’s column has the names, locations and other details. The only update: Chateau Aeronautique, on an airpark just outside Jackson, opened for business in September; its tasting room hours are noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

8. Spend a wine weekend in Northern Michigan or Ontario

Traverse City is 3½ hours away; Niagara on the Lake about 4½ (plus border-crossing time). Both areas have more wineries than you can possibly visit in a long weekend.

Start to plan your Michigan wine trip at the wine trail websites for the Leelanau Peninsula and Old Mission Peninsula. You’ll find details of the Niagara wine region at the Ontario wine site.

9. Enjoy some local wine tastings or dinners

Wine tasting shares a critical trait with other fleshly pleasures: greater enjoyment and improved skill come from indulging as frequently as possible.

But all tastings aren’t created equal, so make sure you know what you’re signing up for. Is it a walkaround, where you’re free to wander the room and sample from an assortment of wines? Or is it a sit-down tasting, where you’ll sample a fixed group of wines on a theme, normally with food? Will an expert attend to discuss the wines, or will you be on your own?

Locally, Village Corner offers the area’s most ambitious tasting schedule, through its Ann Arbor Wine Club and the local Tasters Guild Chapter.

The AAWC six-times-per-year walkarounds provide the city’s best bang for the buck, with dozens of wines available to taste; non-members can attend for a small surcharge, although only members can order. Remember to spit!

Several other stores sponsor tastings less frequently; sign up for the email newsletters at Morgan & York or Everyday Wines for alerts.

Uniquely in the city, Whole Foods Market on Eisenhower offers a wine bar where, for a small charge, you can choose several tasting-size pours with any prepared food purchase.

Several city restaurants sponsor sit-down wine dinners or tastings, sometimes with winery owners or winemakers in attendance. Those with more frequent events include eve, Logan, Paesano’s, Mediterrano and Vinology.

Santé!

10. Put on a tasting yourself, or with some friends

The perfect resolution to end with, because next month, Arbor Vinous will visit a number of Ann Arbor wine pros and collectors for tips on how to organize successful wine tastings – whether you’re sipping $5 Shiraz or $500 Bordeaux.

________________________________

For some other 2010 wine resolutions, check those from Dorothey Gaiter and John Brecher, the husband and wife team who lamentably just penned their final wine column for the Wall Street Journal.

And feel free to add your own, below. We’ll check back in December to see how you did!

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Joel Goldberg

Champagne price wars? Sacre bleu! What blasphemy!

But recessions produce unexpected consequences. The New York Times – while observing that “bargains are a crass notion for the industry, which carefully cultivates its image of luxury and glamour” – nonetheless reported recently that U.S. retailers are starting to discount high-end Champagne labels.

Price decay has already spread downmarket in Britain, where consumers are reaping the benefits from a glut of unsold bottles in Champagne’s massive underground caves. A full-throttle price war rages at the lower end of the market, and brand-name Champagne under $20 is the new normal.

Are we likely to see such dramatic price cuts locally? No bets – but in an early bellwether, Costco recently dropped the price on its Kirkland Champagne by $4, to $22. That nabbed it a spot in the Vinous Posse’s holiday roundup of under-$25 bubblies.

Ann Arborites who thirst for moderately-priced wines this holiday season have a great deal of company. Nationwide, the Great Recession hasn’t been kind to the wine trade’s pricier slices.

One recent California survey found that 40% of wine buyers had cut back their over-$30 wine purchases, and a like number simply stopped buying anything that costs more than $50.

Restaurants – where wine can sell for three times retail prices – took a particular wallop, as potential diners-out opt instead to eat and pull their corks at home. One recent forecast predicts wine sales in bars and restaurants will slide even further in the year to come.

Local wine-friendly restaurants Zanzibar and The Earle Uptown shuttered their doors this year, while the Detroit area lost Tribute, Morton’s and Five Lakes Grill.

These trends place high-end sparkling wines – which generate the bulk of yearly sales between Thanksgiving and New Year – squarely in the crosshairs. It requires lots of loose holiday cash to move prestige labels like Dom Perignon and Crystal that bubble up from France’s Champagne region and rely heavily on image to support their you-must-be-kidding price tags.

Even good quality $50 Champagnes – such as those Eric Arsenault recommends over at AnnArbor.com – will set you back a bundle if you plan to crack several bottles for a holiday party.

That’s why – for the second year running – we saddled up the Vinous Posse to round up some holiday-worthy alternative bubblies at moderate prices.

What’s to Drink?

It’s a dirty job – but we sampled 20 bottles of $25-and-under bubblies, procured in and around Ann Arbor. This year’s crop reflects six different countries. Some are widely available; others you’re likely to find only where we did.

(For a guide to the assortment of words and styles on and inside sparkling wine bottles, pay a quick visit to last December’s Chronicle bubbly column.)

One notable inclusion: Costco’s Kirkland Champagne – too expensive last year for the likes of us – lopped $4 off its price in 2009. It’s the first authentic French Champagne to beat our $25 cut-off.

One notable exclusion: Australia’s cheap and tacky “Bitch Bubbly” – currently being pilloried in the wine blogosphere – mercifully failed to land in Treetown by mid-November.

Also included: last year’s two top-rated wines: Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut and Montessel Prosecco, to see how they’d fare against a new crop of competitors.

We tasted and rated the wines on a scale from (Only mix with orange juice) to (A tingly party on your palate). We don’t grade on the curve, which means that middle-tier wines are definitely worth your consideration.

Since sparkling wine styles vary greatly, take a look at the notes along with the ratings – they’ll help you select one to suit your taste. Unless otherwise mentioned, all have brut levels of sweetness.

Pinot Prosecco: An offbeat top bottle with the all-important "yummy" factor.

Recommendations

For a delicious sparkler to remind your palate that you’re NOT sipping Champagne, look no further than CA’ DI PIETRA Pinot Prosecco, ($15 at Arbor Farms). This offbeat and decidedly off-dry rosé mingles Prosecco and Pinot Noir grapes from Italy’s Veneto region. Hands-down winner of the Posse’s coveted “Yummy!” award, it wowed experienced tasters and casual sippers alike.

Prefer something that’s more Champagne-like? Try the ROEDERER ESTATE Brut ($20 at Plum Market). Its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes grew in California’s cool-climate Anderson Valley, where they were crafted into wine by the New World scion of France’s Roederer Champagne house.

For those with tight budgets – or lots of glasses to pour – we suggest CRISTALINO Cava Rosé Brut ($7, widely available) or its non-pink sibling, CRISTALINO Cava Brut, tasted last year. Both are bottle-fermented and garnered “Top Value” ratings.

Finally, area locapours may want to seek out the L. MAWBY Blanc de Blanc ($18, widely available) made from Chardonnay grapes grown on Leelanau Peninsula by northern Michigan winemaking pioneer Larry Mawby.

Something Completely Different

We sampled two wines from France’s Bugey region but didn’t include them in the ratings, because their style differs so greatly from everything else tasted.

Both ALAIN RENARDAT-FACHE Bugey-Cerdon ($25 at Everyday Wines) and PATRICK BOTTEX “La Cueille” Bugey-Cerdon ($19 at Morgan & York) are slightly sweet wines with low alcohol – in the 7% to 8% range – and massive up-front fruit flavors that originate in the Gamay grapes from which they’re made.

Traditionally, Bugey winemakers ferment wine in open cement tanks and slap them into the bottle while still fermenting – which creates the bubbles you’ll enjoy in the finished product. Think: effervescent, light-colored Beaujolais.

While these aren’t for everyone, I rated both at 4 stars, with a slight nod to the Bottex based on its darker, more mouth-filling fruit flavors. One Posse member described it as “a chorus line of frothy pink tulle.”

Which pretty much sums it up.

Ratings

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CA’ DI PIETRA Pinot Prosecco, Italy (Arbor Farms, $15). Blast of rose petals and strawberries with easily-noticeable sweetness, guaranteed to jar awake any jaded holiday palate. Well-balanced, with nice depth and a long finish. Works better as an aperitif than with dinner. Top marks across the board from the Vinous Posse, earning its first-ever five star rating.

MONTESSEL “Vigna Del Paradiso” Prosecco Extra Dry, Italy (Village Corner, $22). One of last year’s top wines; we liked it just as much this time around. Very pale and frothy in the glass, fine bubbles and a great feel in the mouth. Slightly off-dry, with a profusion of light and bright fruit flavors, including lemon, pink grapefruit, and pear.

ROEDERER ESTATE Brut, Anderson Valley, California (Plum Market, $20). Domestic wine with a Champagne heritage and style. Granny Smith aromas and a creamy mix of toast and tart apple flavors with fine bubbles and a lingering finish. One taster called it an “apple explosion.”

Cristalino Rosé Brut: Top value at $7

CRISTALINO Cava Rosé Brut, Spain (Cost Plus, $7). TOP VALUE! Last year, the Vinous Posse gave four stars and a “Top Value” to the white version of this widely available budget bubbly; this year the Rosé yielded identical results. “Pretty in pink” – a mélange of berry flavors with some underlying tartness and long-lasting bubbles. Wine Advocate, 88 Points.

GLORIA FERRER Sonoma Brut, California (Trader Joe’s, $18). One of last year’s top two wines. Big, round apple fruit and toast flavors, with lots of fine bubbles and a long finish. Wine Spectator, 90 points.

KIRKLAND Champagne Brut, France (Costco, $22). A holiday-season staple Chez Goldberg. Shows its Champagne breeding! An apple nose, soft and easy-drinking palate with good depth, along with very fine bubbles that dissipate quickly. Wine Spectator 90 points.

PARIGOT Crémant de Bourgogne Rosé, France (Village Corner, $20). Light salmon color and a lemony palate with a slight Pinot Noir funk. “Goes well with Brie cheese,” opined one taster.

REGINATO 2007 “Celestina” Malbec Rosé, Mendoza, Argentina (Plum Market, $18). Our first Argentine bubbly. Beautiful deep pink, with ripe raspberry aromas and lots of frothy bubbles, but delivers slightly less than promised on the palate and finish. “Just a pretty face,” one taster suggested.

CHARLES DE FÈRE “Cuvée Jean-Louis”, Blanc de Blancs Brut, France (Cost Plus, $11). Light, crisp and lemony with a pleasantly round feel in the mouth. Wine Enthusiast, 87 points.

EMERI Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc, South Eastern Australia (Arbor Farms, $14). Something completely different – grapefruit and lemon zest, with hints of hay, herbs and some petrol. Certain to be controversial – it elicited a wide range of opinions among the group.

L. MAWBY Blanc de Blanc, Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan (Plum Market, $18). Slightly darker color than the name might imply; yeasty, bread-like aromas and a round palate with flavors of Granny Smith apples.

LE CHETEAU Vouvray Brut, France (Trader Joe’s, $10). Apple nose with a tart, relatively lean but pleasant palate. Lots of up-front froth that disappears quickly.

ARGYLE 2003 Brut, Willamette Valley, Oregon (Whole Foods, $25). Pretty peach and apricot nose, but a slightly oxidized and sherry-like palate. A just-bought bottle better opened a couple of years back.

FREIXENET “Cordon Negro” Cava Brut, Spain (Trader Joe’s, $10). Big lemony nose; a mouthful of bubbles leads to a simple palate with apple and lemon flavors.

OLIVINI Garda Rosé, Italy (Everyday Wines, $21). Pretty salmon color, strawberry flavors and a round mouthfeel, marred by the heavy-handed presence of burnt toast flavors. A rosé bubbly for oak lovers.

GIOL Raboso, Veneto, Italy (Whole Foods, $15). Lean red wine with black cherry and celery flavors; highly deficient in the bubble department. May have been a flawed sample, as several of the group had previously tasted better versions of this wine.

CONVENTO CAPPUCCINI 2007 Brachetto d’Aqui, Italy (Village Corner, $21) Red and sweet but slightly astringent, its simple flavor profile variously described by Posse members as “alcoholic Kool-Aid” and “Black currant Jell-O”.

POEMA Cava Brut, Spain (Plum Market, $11). Yeasty nose leads directly into earthy barnyard notes on the light, slightly acidic palate. Consistently low scores across the board.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.

Blind-tasting rosé bubblies: We taste bad wines so you don't have to.

Joel Goldberg

Eat your heart out, John U. Bacon. While the football Wolverines plummet weakly toward the depths of the Big Ten, a very different Michigan eleven just beat up big time on its arch-rivals from Ohio.

This squad doesn’t strut its talents in the Big House or cavernous Crisler. Its slightly smaller – but decidedly more refined – field of combat lies a couple of miles north on Main Street, around a crystal-bedecked tasting table at Vinology Wine Bar.

Earlier this week, the second annual Ohio vs. Michigan Wine Clash turned into a rout, as eleven of Michigan’s finest wines drubbed a like number of Buckeyes during back-to-back judgings in both Ann Arbor and Columbus.

It wasn’t really a fair fight with the amazing red wines from Michigan’s 2007 vintage, the finest in the state’s history. The lopsided results: the best wine overall, and four of the top five, were proudly Wolverine – though Ohio provided the lone bargain among the bunch.

Wine Clash logo

The Clash is the brainchild of Ohioan Andrew Hall, and sponsored by Slow Food Columbus. The event was designed to promote “drink local” and coincide with the annual release of air-shipped French Beaujolais Nouveau and the UM-OSU football game – last year’s Chronicle article detailed its origins.

Last Sunday, I sat down with four other Michigan judges to taste from 22 bottles cloaked in brown paper bags – half from Michigan, half from Ohio. A few days earlier, a team of Ohio judges went through the same exercise in Columbus.

Our host, and one of the judges: Vinology owner Kristin Jonna. Other local tasters included Master Sommelier Claudia Tyagi, Rochester Hills collector Errol Kovitch, and Wyncroft Winery owner/winemaker Jim Lester.

(For an Ohio view of Clash results, see the article by Dayton Daily News wine writer Mark Fisher, who judged at the Columbus tasting.)

A word about prices: flying in the face of both recession and flagging market demand for ultra-premium wines, price tags among Michigan’s best producers have skyrocketed in the last couple of years. Top 2007 reds sell for $35 to $50, while medal-winning ice wines can fetch $60 to $90 – for a half-bottle.

As with limited-production wines elsewhere, these prices can reflect not only the very real quality inside the bottle and added costs of hand-crafting tiny batches – often under 100 cases – but also an indeterminate “scarcity value.”

So who came out on top at the Clash?

#1: MICHIGAN: 2007 “Winter Ice” – Longview Winery, Leelanau Peninsula. $60 (375 ml bottle)

The Clash’s top dog came from Longview Winery – located in the off-the-beaten-track Leelanau Peninsula town of Cedar – where owner Alan Eaker and consulting winemaker Shawn Walters teamed to create Michigan’s first-ever ice wine from the Cayuga grape, a hybrid developed at Cornell for its cold-weather hardiness.

Ice wine originates with ripe grapes left to hang on the vine and slowly desiccate, long past normal harvest season, when the leaves drop and the vine enters its winter hibernation. When nighttime temperatures hit the 15- to 20-degree range and freeze the grapes solid – think: small marbleized pellets – they’re picked and pressed while frozen, preferably at 6 a.m. on an absurdly cold December morning.

Wine Clash organizer Andrew Hall, behind a gaggle of paper-bagged wines. (Photo by the writer.)

In the interim, just about anything can go wrong. Grapes can turn moldy or otherwise rot on the vine, fall to the ground, or become the dish-of-the-day for birds and animals. Even when things go right, each pellet yields just a couple of drops of ultra-concentrated juice. That accounts for ice wine’s tiny quantities and typical stratospheric pricing.

But why Cayuga? Call it a leap of faith on Eaker’s part.

“I noticed it hangs well,” he told me. “The grapes don’t break down after the leaves come off the vine. And there’s a good acid-to-sugar balance. I felt I could gamble a row.”

So he left a single row of Cayuga vines unpicked – at the front of the vineyard, as he explained, “so I could take the snow blower and blow off the fruit.”

Eaker got that right. If your idea of ice wine revolves around thick syrup and an unadulterated sugar rush, get ready for a surprise. Cayuga grapes yield an ice wine that’s lighter in body and alcohol, with intense honeydew flavor and enough acidity to provide a mouth-puckering counterpoint to all that sweetness.

In addition to its Clash victory, Longview’s Winter Ice scored a double gold medal at last August’s Michigan Wine Competition. You’ll have to decide for yourself about the quality-to-price ratio: it’ll set you back $60 for a half-bottle, from the 65 cases produced.

#2: MICHIGAN: 2007 Reserve Cabernet Franc – 2 Lads Winery, Old Mission Peninsula. $40

2 Lads is Michigan’s hot winery du jour, with streams of tourists trekking north through Old Mission to its industrial-design facility overlooking the east arm of Grand Traverse Bay.

Winemaker Cornel Olivier calls Cab Franc his signature grape, and this marks the second time his flagship red played runner-up; it also nabbed second place, among 24 wines, at the Harding’s Cup Cabernet Franc Challenge last summer.

Be forewarned: this brooding, ultra-concentrated tannic beast isn’t your grandpa’s idea of Michigan red wine. But it is indicative of the best that the state produced in the unique 2007 vintage – especially if you give it license to improve in the cellar for up to a decade.

#3: OHIO: 2007 Cabernet Franc – Kinkead Ridge, Ohio River Valley. $18

The only repeat-winner winery in either state from last year’s Clash, Kinkead Ridge makes its home southeast of Cincinnati, near the Ohio River.

They scored this time with the lone under-$30 wine among the top five. It provides the yang to 2 Lads’ yin; instead of a hulking bottle to lay down for years, you’ll be hard-pressed to keep your hands off this, with a berry nose that jumps from the glass and silky, fruit-driven palate that seduces your taste buds with a serious “yum” factor.

Top 5 Wine Clash bottles. (Photo by Andrew Hall)

Co-owner and winemaker Ron Barrett – who formerly owned a winery in Oregon – explains his pricing as “part of our philosophy. Our whole objective is to show we can be competitive in the marketplace. If we priced higher, we’d still sell out – but at the same time we’d turn off some people to our wine.”

Unfortunately, you can’t find Kinkead Ridge in Michigan – and the winery doesn’t have a shipping license, since it sells almost exclusively through Ohio retailers. But the other co-owner, managing partner Nancy Bentley, says that if you email her she’ll try to get you a few bottles from the mere 40 cases that remain. At the price, it’s a steal.

#4: MICHIGAN: 2007 Cabernet Franc/Merlot, Gill’s Pier, Leelanau Peninsula. $35

No surprise in this top-five finish. Gill’s Pier, another out-of-the-way Leelanau winery just north of Leland, took home the Best Dry Red trophy at the Michigan Wine Competition with this wine, from grapes grown in its lakeside vineyard, adjacent to the winery.

Bryan Ulbrich, who makes wine for Gill’s Pier owners Kris and Ryan Sterkenburg, is better-known for the trophy-winning whites he’s crafted at Peninsula Cellars and his own Left Foot Charley. But this highly-extracted youthful red exudes blackcherry fruit and massive tannins in equal parts. Again, stash it away for several years for maximum enjoyment.

Michigan judges Kristin Jonna of Vinology and Jim Lester of Wyncroft Winery. (Photo by the writer.)

#5: MICHIGAN: 2007 Pinot Noir – Avonlea Vineyard, Wyncroft, Lake Michigan Shore. $45

Tiny, high-end Wyncroft Winery, from the equally small southwest Michigan town of Buchanan, makes wines more talked-about than tasted. With no retail distribution or on-site tasting room, you’ll find its wares only through its website and mailing list.

Don’t expect an ultra-ripe fruit-bomb; while Wyncroft is known for highly-concentrated wines, the style here is dark and focused, the Pinot fruit more like Burgundy than California. As with the 2 Lads, it’ll be lots better if you can put it away for a while.

Yes, Wyncroft’s Jim Lester was one of the Michigan judges. While it’s fair to presume that he recognized his own wine during the tasting – and may even have ranked it highly – all the other judges who put it in the top five tasted and scored it blind.

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Next month, the Vinous Posse will sniff, sip and spit its way through a roundup of bubblies from around the globe, designed not to bust your holiday budget. If we didn’t taste your favorite under-$25 sparkler in last year’s assortment but you think it coulda been a contender, let us know by email: bubbles@michwine.com.

About the author: Joel Goldberg, an Ann Arbor area resident, edits the MichWine website and tweets @MichWine. His Arbor Vinous column for The Chronicle is published on the first Saturday of the month.