Taste: A bumper crop of wine tastings

A bumper crop of wine tastings

Recounting a sip-by-sip record of one taster's travels from Sarasota to Tampa.

By CHRIS SHERMAN

What a week it was for wine tasting, my favorite rite of spring.

Since it is quiet in the vineyards now, with last year's grapes in barrels and next year's crop only buds, winemakers came here to start our first round of tastings.

Wine festivals at the Longboat Key Club and Bern's in Tampa provided five days of fine wine and food for hundreds of wine fans, and yet to come is the Abilities tasting at Tropicana Field May 12.

Consider this the journal of what one lucky wine lover found in the wines that have washed up on our shores so far.

WEDNESDAY: I sip slowly my first taste of the 11th edition of Saraota's Florida Winefest and Auction.

Slow is appropriate, since I am at a $50 tasting of super-Tuscan wines with a standing-room-only crowd in a skylit tasting room above Morton's Market.

It's a fair price, for these are the very pricey wines vintners in Tuscany started making 30 years ago when Chianti was out of favor. They chose to add cabernet sauvignon and merlot to the native sangiovese grapes and age Italian wine in French barrels.

"It was heresy"' remembers Francesco Mazzei of Castello Fonterutoli. These rich reds broke Italian wine rules but won world acclaim.

The 1997 vintage is one of Italy's best. Each bottle costs at least $45 and Banfi's Excelsus and Antinori's Solaia twice that or more.

When the emissary from Antinori announces that Wine Spectator magazine has named Solaia the No. 1 wine in the world, the crowd bursts into applause, appropriate enough for the overdue honor, but the panelists see the taster's faces light up and nod knowingly as they savor the famous wine with new respect.

Judging by my notes -- and the surefire evidence of which glasses tasters empty first -- the best of the wines is not Solaia but a different Antinori wine, a cabernet-merlot-syrah blend called Guado al Tasso, and then Fonterutoli's Siepi, made of sangiovese and merlot.

THURSDAY: The day begins with Winefest's biggest event and one for which there is no admission charge and little publicity, the trade tasting.

This event is held under the same huge white tents at the Longboat Key Club as the fancy public tastings and black tie balls, but the tasters this day are "the trade": retailers, restaurateurs, their chefs and top servers. Each is invited by wine suppliers to get out from the kitchen or behind the counter, taste more wines and, ideally, help sell them to diners and retail customers.

"Wine is a relationship business," says winemaker Robert Brittan of Stag's Leap Winery in Napa Valley. "At the prices of my wines, every one is sold bottle by bottle, and these people help do it."

On this day he points out to them that his vineyard, one of the most famous for cabernet and merlot grapes, actually has its roots in more rustic grapes and makes exceptional, less expensive petite sirah and viognier.

For many it is a chance to promote new items such as Beringer's new Stone Cellars, big bottles priced at the entry level to compete with Mondavi's Woodbridge, or Geyser Peak's Block collection, cabernet and chardonnay produced from the tiniest parcels of vineyards.

Listen closely, and you'd hear that more and more high quality cabernets are made with a small portion of petite verdot, a grape that gives extra color and body to cabernet blends but also can be made into a wine of its own. Murphy-Goode of Sonoma makes one that is plush, smelling of violets and rose and as soft as most merlots.

The most exotic taste of the day is a Spanish wine made from Pedro Ximenez, a sherry, which is almost 30 years old and tastes like caramelized raisins yet costs about $25.

That night, chefs and winemakers pair up for grand $100 dinners in restaurants and private homes around Sarasota, showing off their finest -- which could be remarkably simple, such as an upscale grilled cheese from Fetzer's that John Ash made with an American farmstead cheese on walnut bread.

FRIDAY: Today it becomes clear there can be too much of a good thing.

The first grand tasting is for ordinary wine lovers, those who patronize the retailers and the chefs. They can sample venison loin and rutabaga mash and more than 200 wines or attend more seminars, a dull, dry term for enjoyable hours (priced from $35 up).

My first, on wine and cheese, lets us taste why Stilton and port is the happiest marriage of wine and food, the kind of "lesson" I'd love to study over and over again, yet I learn that two very different cheeses, a hard, nutty Parmesan and a creamy, soft Brie, are both heavenly matches for the creaminess of a fine Champagne, such as the '95 Veuve Clicquot Reserve.

In another, experts from Beaulieu Vineyards in Napa show they are dedicated converts to the syrah grapes, showing luscious samples of the wine from different vineyards. The surprise here is that syrah, supposedly a hot-climate grape, is turning out beautifully in Carneros, one of California's coolest climates, with an elegant rosy aroma.

I miss a seminar across town, where the famous British wine authority Jancis Robinson draws a packed house on another grape Americans have been slow to love, riesling.

There is plenty of fine riesling at the tasting tables, from Jekel and Chat. Ste. Michelle's Cold Creek Vineyards in the United States and Frankland Estates in Australia as well as from the Germans who originated it. Max Grunhausen and Dr. Burklin Wolf show that German riesling is an exciting white wine for summmer at $10 to $15.

The other white wine getting attention is viognier from the Rhone, showing up in rich, peachy wines from R.H. Phillips EXP and Bonterra, Fetzer's organic line.

SATURDAY: I take a break from wine tasting, but the Sarasota wine crowd keeps on with a day-long party that stretches from brunch to dinner with an auction of rare wines that raises more than $200,000.

SUNDAY: The venue shifts closer to home with the Winefest at Bern's Fine Wines & Spirits in Tampa, which started out four years ago as a rump session of the Sarasota event. The white tents and the crowds are smaller, and there's tarmac underneath instead of fairway green grass, but the Tampa tasting is now a truly grand affair. In wines there is plenty of variety and luxury in a day of seminars, auctions, dinner and tastings, carefully organized with an easy-to-follow and remember guide for tasters (and perhaps shoppers).

To honor the great wine countries, there's food from Jeannie Pierola, Bern's executive chef, and a massive crew working out of a just-finished kitchen -- from salmon strudel with wild mushrooms to tapas or white truffle macaroni and cheese, all for $50.

There are bright crisp whites here today, especially the Alsatian pinot blanc of Albert Mann, lightly sweet at first but dry and clean at the end, or the Down Under dry riesling from Allan Scott, both fine summer drinks under $20.

But my mission is reds: Which of California's fabled '97 cabernets is best? Many of the top names are not yet ready, but the reserve cab from Sterling is already round and full of chocolate. Next best are Gallo's Marcelina cab, punched up with petite sirah, the up-and-coming Jessup winery and Dry Creek's Epoch II.

Of the '97 California meritages, which blend cabernet, merlot and other Bordeaux grapes in Bordeaux fashions, the Marlstone from merlot-leader Clos du Bois is best and ready to drink, followed by Jekel's Sanctuary and Estancia Meritage.

But for all the hype on the '97s and the buzz that '99 will be terrific, much of the red wine on the market today is from '98.

"They have been way over-bashed," contends Jill Davis of William Hill Winery, and her '98 cabernet is indeed a supple, smooth wine, lots of black berry and a little vanilla.

The bigger pleasure is a wide range of alternative and often less expensive reds.

Pinot noirs from J Wine Co. and Deloach O.F.S. are lush and full of cherries for those who want to spend $30 and up. Greatest fun for the money, however, is in wines with the fire and fruit of the Rhone and Beaujolais. For smooth drinking between $10 and $20, try Jade Mountain Provencal, Vigil's Terra Vin, Trevor Jones Boots grenache from Australia, J. Lohr's Valdiguie and Benziger syrah.

Most clever treat is Otima, a 10-year-old tawny port from Warre's, repackaged in a small, sleek bottle to show off its brilliant color and win over port-shy customers. The taste, somehow both delicate and rich, will convince them.

That process, dear diary, will go on all year and at a more relaxed pace.