The importance of a quality wine vintage cannot be underestimated.

As a home wine maker, I know first hand what a poor vintage in the hands of someone incompetent can yield. One year, confronted with a half ton of mushy, moldy grapes, I produced a foul smelling liquid that tasted not quite as good as turpentine.

But this year, there’s some pretty good news for California wine lovers. The 2013 vintage is shaping up to be very good or, according to some prognosticators, even excellent. As a matter of fact, the harvest has already commenced with the picking of whites such as sauvignon blanc.

There has been a string of good to excellent vintages in California recently with 2012 being generally regarded as superb. The 2009 and 2010 vintages are also stellar, especially for reds such as cabernet sauvignon.

Only in 2011, where rains fell during peak harvest periods, was the vintage considered poor. However, some wineries, that had the foresight to pick before the rains or the patience (and nerve) to wait until late in the season, made good wines in 2011.

So how much should you pay attention to vintage reports in deciding which wines to buy? In general, these reports are helpful to use as a starting point. However, a region as large as California is full of very different appellations, microclimates and terroirs.

What is terroir (pronounced tare-wah) you ask? Terroir starts with the place where the grapes are grown. The vineyard location, its slope, topography and angle toward the sun are all part of terroir. So is the soil type, climate, (including rainfall and other precipitation) as well as the type of vine or clone of the vine used.

There really is no simple answer to the vintage date question because there is so much variability from wine region to wine region. As a matter of fact, there are usually significant differences among wine producing regions from within the same small geographic area. Vintage disasters in one area can be mitigated in another by Mother Nature, vineyard practices or good wine makers.

The individuality of vintages reminds us not to take things for granted in the wine world. It is a good lesson, and vintages like 2011 serve as reminders for us to dig a little deeper and find good wines in “bad” vintages.

So the next time you wish to know about the quality of a particular vintage, consult one of the many vintage charts available, but be aware that these guides can be general in nature and somewhat misleading. Always remember to trust your own palate.

Here are a couple of wines from two distinctly different vintages you might wish to try.

2011 MacMurray Ranch Russian River Pinot Noir ($25) – An example of a wine produced from a “poor” vintage that is very tasty. From a very cool region, this pinot noir has cherry and cola flavors along with an earthy toasty oak aroma. Pair it with roasted salmon that has been brushed with soy, Srircha and ginger.

2010 Cantine Colosi Rosso Sicilia ($13) From Sicily, this nero d’Avola red is full of ripe plum nuances and is a medium-bodied but rich wine. With excellent balancing acidity, try this with grilled Italian sausage and fried sweet and hot red peppers.

I have an abiding interest in all aspects of wine, particularly the historical and cultural components that make drinking the stuff all that more pleasurable. I am especially interested in how the wine industry developed in the good old US of A.

There were several wine pioneers in the industry that really provided the impetus for the breadth and quality of the products that we enjoy today. Agoston Haraszthy, a Hungarian immigrant and self-proclaimed “Count,” established the first premium winery in Sonoma in 1857 and Buena Vista Winery continues to make excellent wine today.

Since that time others, including Charles Krug, Karl Wente and Jacob Beringer helped establish the northern California wine appellations before Prohibition and were followed by more recent wine entrepreneurs such as Robert Mondavi, Joseph Heitz and a whole bevy of others who put California (and American) wine on the world map.

But I count Ernest and Julio Gallo as the most influential individuals in transforming wine from a mysterious, elitist beverage into something that began to be accepted by just about everyone. Ernest and Julio not only knew how to make good and affordable wine, they were master marketers who changed the way we viewed the product.

I first tasted the wines as a college student decades ago, discovering the pleasures -on numerous occasions -of Gallo Pisano and Hearty Burgundy. According to my fuzzy recollection, the Gallo wine portfolio of the 60’s and 70’s consisted primarily of 1.5-liter jugs that were produced from grapes grown on thousands of vineyard acres in California’s San Joaquim Valley.

While that area was not known as a great wine appellation, the fertile vineyards produced millions of cases of drinkable, inexpensive wines. In the late 70’s and early 1980’s, the Gallo’s focused on developing a market for inexpensive “fighting varietals” such as sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. At three to five dollars a bottle, these varietals created a whole new generation of wine drinkers who could afford to trade-up from the jugs and from that frothy stuff.

At about that same time, the family began purchasing vineyards in northern California’s Sonoma County. Quietly, the Gallo’s began acquiring huge vineyard tracts all over the county in such appellations as the Dry Creek, Russian River and Alexander Valleys.

While Ernest and Julio are now gone, the Gallo empire has expanded even more by purchasing wineries all over California (and the world) and has taken a quantum leap in quality while still maintaining very reasonable prices. Today, Gallo is the largest winery in the world.

Spearheading the Gallo portfolio of wines is a third generation of the family, Gina (wine maker) and Matt (her brother and grape grower). Today, they are responsible for producing Gallo’s premium line of wines most of which are available statewide.

I recently tasted three of the Gallo Signature Series wines from the premium appellations of Napa Valley, Sonoma’s Russian River Valley and Monterey County’s Santa Lucia Highlands. Here are some tasting notes for the wines.

2010 Gallo Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($40) This round, rich and robust red has just a touch petit verdot and is a blend of grapes from three different vineyards in Napa. A nose of teaberry and mocha with just a hint of vanilla is followed by flavors of black raspberries, cola and chocolate. Pair this wine with a pan seared and oven roasted double cut pork chop that has been rubbed with sea salt, green peppercorns and rosemary and stuffed with herbed goat cheese.

2011 Gallo Russian River Chardonnay ($29) – 2011 was a cold and rainy year, but this wine is none the worse for it and, in fact, displays Burgundy –like balance. Crisp pear and citrus highlight the taste components that are rounded out nicely by soft oak notes. Excellent balancing acidity make this a tasty accompaniment to sautéed Chilean Sea Bass seasoned with ground fennel, a touch of garlic and lemon.

2011 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir (($35) – Earthy and ripe black cherry flavors highlight this spicy pinot noir from vineyards in the mountains overlooking the Pacific in Monterey. Nicely integrated oak gives the wine a floral nuance on the nose and complements this earth and fruit-driven pinot. Try it with grilled King Salmon that has been dusted with cumin, brown sugar and chili powder.

After three days of feasting, sightseeing and navigating the waterways of Venice, my crew of intrepid wineaux (e.g. the plural of wino) set off for the Veneto in our rented Auto Europe Van. Though our stomachs were distended, our spirits were hungry for more.

It is only an hour and a half along the A-4 autostrada to our first stop of the day in the tiny village of Fumane di Valpolicella where we were to spend an interesting half-day with the folks from Allegrini.

I have written about my affection for Pallazo Della Torre – one of Allegrini’s Valpolicella red wines that is made in the ripasso method. Valpolicella is made from corvina, rondinalla and molinara grapes, all of which produce light to medium-bodied red wines that can be very pleasant quaffs.

Valpolicella becomes something more, though, when the grapes are planted in select vineyard sites and when a process called ripasso is employed during wine making. First though, it is necessary to tell you about Amarone which is like ripasso’s bigger brother.

Amarone is produced from the same Valpolicella blend, but instead of taking the grapes from the vineyard to the crusher, the little buggers are put in buildings and on trays and allowed to shrivel up and dry out like raisins. This exercise increases the sugar content so that the resulting wine is a powerful, dark and very alcoholic brute that is then aged in wood for a couple of years before it is bottled.

To make a ripasso, new Valpolicella wine is refermented by combining it with the pressings or pomace from the Amarone, and sometimes with the addition of dried grapes. The resulting ripasso wine is considerably darker and fuller bodied than Valpolicella, but not as powerful as Amarone. The well-respected Valpolicella producer Masi invented the ripasso process in the early 1960’s.

So I was excited to be at Allegrini where my favorite ripasso (Pallazo Della Torre) is produced. However, after visiting the vineyards and tasting through the entire Allegrini portfolio as well as sampling the vinous wares of many other producers, I had an epiphany: Valpolicella is one of the most underrated wine appellations not only in Italy, but in the world.

I know that is a pretty bold statement and certainly will elicit some scorn from those who view the Veneto as a second tier appellation, but the proof is in the palate and mine was blown away by the quality and diversity of the wines – both red and white. But back to my visit at Allegrini.

The patriarch of the clan – the late Giovanni Allegrini – was among the most influential voices in the emergence of Valpolicella as a premium appellation. Much to the chagrin of the majority of producers back in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, he began to employ viticultural practices such as limiting the quantity of production, planting on hillsides and planting the proper varietals on specific vineyard sites. Until that time, producers were content with planting in the valleys and getting the maximum production to market where quantity counted more than quality.

We visited one of Allegrini’s single vineyard sites La Grola situated on a hillside overlooking the Valpolicella plain. La Grola is planted to corvina which is known to be the best red grape of the Valpolicella region. Later, we tasted the entire Allegrini portfolio at the actual medieval palace – Pallazo Della Torre.

This incredible pallazo, constructed in the 1300’s, is a treasure trove of antiquity and has some pretty startling stone work, including fireplaces constructed to look like lions and other beasts. Our tasting room had one of those fireplaces and I couldn’t help but think how scary they must have been to the kids living in the place way back then.

While we tasted several excellent white wines, the stars were the red wines. Prices range from a low of about $12 for the Valpolicella Classico and $22 for the Pallazo Della Torre to up to $80 for the single vineyard La Poja and around $40 to $50 for the Amarone wines. Most are blends of the Valpolicella varietals with La Poja made entirely with corvina and planted in the La Grola vineyard.

Valpolicella Classico – Deliciously fruity light to medium bodied wine that would be excellent with antipasti or grilled Italian sausage.

Palazzo Della Torre – medium to full-bodied – almost zinfandel like- with black cherry and toasty oak flavors. This would be hit with double-cut, pork chops stuffed with herbed goat cheese, pan-seared and oven baked with a soy-honey glaze.

La Grola   – Full-bodied and long-lived, this wine demonstrates that Valpolicella can be a serious wine. Ripe and rich with blackberry and cola flavors, this would pair nicely with a grilled bone-in ribeye.

La Poja – Slightly more elegant than the La Grola, the La Poja is a 100% corvina that is aged in new French oak for more than 20 months. It has licorice and plum flavors and is one you will want to lay down for a few years. Try this with a butterflied veal chop that has been marinated in red wine, garlic and rosemary.

Villa Giona – A blend of cabernet sauvignon 50%, Merlot 40%, Syrah 10%, this wine shows how well Bordeaux varietals take to the soils of Valpolicella. Aged for about 18 months in French oak, Villa Giona has aromas of tea and leather and flavors of ripe cherries. Marry it with oven roasted pork tenderloin that has been rubbed with kosher salt, coarse black pepper and fennel seeds.

Amarone – Ripe, but not overripe, this Amarone is full of sweet and sour cherry flavors. Very intense, but not raisiny as some Amarone’s can be, this wine would be a lovely accompaniment to a sweet (dolce) gorgonzola with roasted walnuts. Great by a roaring fire around a campsite or at the fireplace during winter.

I just returned from a trip to Italy and I’m in a self-imposed food and wine de-tox program with the goal of deflating my dirigible-like countenance to something less frightening to small children. And, of course, I will have many experiences to share with you over the next few months.

I love visiting wine regions whether in this country or other viticultural regions of the world because there is always something new to discover. On this recent trip, I was privileged to not only taste a substantial number of different wines, but also to explore the variety of local foods that were paired with the indigenous wines.

I concentrated most of my time in the Veneto region north of Verona in Valpolicella, and in Trentino -Alto Adige (on the border with Austria and in the southern Alps known as Dolomites). These two areas presented distinctly different types of wine to explore – many of which were blends of two or more local grapes.

Like France, Italy has a government office that sets forth regulations determining which grapes can be grown and produced into wine for each viticultural area in the country.

Denominazione di origine controllata (“Controlled designation of origin”) or DOC is a quality assurance label for Italian wine. DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) on the label of an Italian wine is an even stronger and higher quality assurance rating.

The government does not prohibit wineries from planting different grapes than those approved by them for a specific region, but in the past, the resulting wine had to be labeled as “vino de tavola” or table wine. Unfortunately, that designation was viewed as inferior by the wine cognoscenti.

For example, cabernet sauvignon was not an approved grape for Tuscany and therefore had to be labeled as table wine regardless of the quality of the product.This all changed about 30 years ago when the government, with extreme pressure from influential wine makers, set forth a new classification – IGT (indicazione geografica tipica) allowing wineries to produce wines from grapes not approved by them.

The wines known as “Super Tuscans” in the Maremma region of Tuscany led the way by producing Bordeaux-type blends such as cabernet sauvignon and merlot. Ornellaia is perhaps the best known example of a Super Tuscan” and is also considered one of the greatest wines in Italy.

Next time, I’ll tell you about some of the wines I experienced during my trip to that boot full of wine, but in the meantime, here are two wines (available right here in good old West Virginia) from northern Italy to tease your palate for what’s to come.

 2011 Abbazia di Novacella Lagrein ($24) – Great to find this relatively obscure red grape from Trentino in the foothills of the Italian Dolomites.  I just returned from that breathtakingly beautiful land and tasted several different lagrein wines.  Lagrein (pronounced lah-graw-heen) is a deeply colored medium to full bodied wine and the Abbazia is chock full of ripe, red cherry flavors with a mineral-like finish. Excellent balance in a wine that would marry well with a pork roast basted a port-cherry sauce.

2009 Matteo Correggia Rosso Roero ($19) – From northwestern Italy in the Piedmont, this wine is made from nebbiolo – the noble grape from which the world famous Barbaresco and Barolo are made. Grown in an area of Piedmont known mostly for the fresh and sprightly white called Arneis, the wine has a nose of cola and leather and ripe plum flavors.  This is a great and inexpensive introduction to nebbiolo and tastes like a baby Barbaresco.  Pair it with grilled flank steak spiced with black pepper, olive oil, garlic and kosher salt.

 

Summer is on the way and, while I don’t need a warm weather excuse to roast animal parts on the grill, I am fired up to fire-up the old Weber Performer in clement (as opposed to inclement) weather.

Shucks, I’m like a dedicated athlete. You know the type. Nothing gets in the way of our mission to be the best regardless of whether (or weather) the contest is imminent.
While you were warming your tootsies by the fireplace last winter, I was out back trying to start a charcoal fire in a blizzard. Hey, frostbite is a small price to pay for the culinary treats I created.

Today, I’m going to regale you with a recipe for one of those cold weather creations and suggest two really nice wines that match this food just about perfectly.

When I was a tyke (before R&B – aka Rocky and Bullwinkle), my Italian grandfather would lead a few cousins and myself to his chicken coop where he would select a fat hen or two for the guillotine. Then he would revel in our pasty-faced reactions as the little critters pranced around headless for a few seconds.

After dispatching the birds to chicken heaven, he would present them to my grandmother and assorted aunts for de-feathering and cooking. The usual method was frying or roasting in the oven. I’m sure if grandpa had a charcoal grill he would have approved of my iteration of grandma’s roasted stuffed chicken.

I call this B.S. Chicken. No, I’m not disparaging my own recipe since the B.S. simply refers to Barbecue -Stuffed Chicken. Here goes.

B.S. Chicken

1 three to four pound chicken (fryer)
4 tablespoons of garlic chopped finely
1 tablespoon of smoked paprika
1 teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper (optional)
1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of Kosher salt
1 half teaspoon of oregano
1 teaspoon of ground mustard
3 ounces of olive oil
1 teaspoon of ground fennel
1 red pepper chopped
I cup of wild rice (healthy minded folks can sub brown rice or quinoa)
1 Italian sausage patty
4 ounces of mozzarella cheese shredded

Make a wet rub by mixing 3 tablespoons of garlic, the black pepper, salt, oregano, mustard, paprika, cayenne and one ounce of the oil.
Discard the unmentionable parts inside the chicken cavity
Rub the chicken all over – inside and out -with the wet rub placing some under breast and leg quarter skin
Sauté the onions with the red pepper, garlic and add the Italian sausage and cheese
Cook the wild rice until fluffy and add salt and pepper to taste
Mix the onions, peppers, sausage, cheese and rice together
Allow mixture to come to room temperature
Stuff the chicken with the mixture
Make a charcoal fire and spread coals to either side of grill for indirect cooking
Or, heat one side of a gas grill so chicken can be cooked indirect
Place the chicken on the grill but not over the coals
Cover the grill and cook one and one –half hours (or to 175 degrees F.)
Allow the chicken to rest for 25 minutes and serve

Purists might insist on a full-bodied white to accompany this dish, but I recommend a medium to full red- no B.S. Here are a couple that should make this chicken cluck.

2010 L for Lyeth Merlot ($16) –Merlot has been catching a bad rap lately from the snobs, but this little lovely from Sonoma has just the right combination of ripe black fruit and balancing acidity to marry nicely with the chicken.

2012 Mulderbosch Rose ($15) This cabernet sauvignon rose from South Africa is about as full-bodied as you’ll find with the crispness and liveliness you expect from a rose. The wine is full of bright ripe cherry and strawberry nuances and delivers enough backbone to stand up to the full flavors of the B.S. Chicken.

Area food, wine and beer lovers should mark their calendars for the weekend of May 31-June 1 and seriously consider attending the annual Taste of Parkersburg (TOP).

This event features gourmet edibles from local restaurants, West Virginia farm to table foods and a whole host of wines from around the world. You will also be able to taste a good sampling of craft beers too. In addition, TOP will feature local artisans and crafters as well as excellent music.

The weekend kicks off with a special Bordeaux wine tasting from 7 to 9 p.m. on Friday May 31, at the Blennerhassett Hotel. Parkersburg native and Bordeaux’s U.S. wine ambassador Robert Cavanaugh will share his knowledge of the famous French region, and lead attendees through a tasting of eight wines.

Cavanaugh is a master sommelier with certifications from the Wine and Spirits Education Trust of London (WSET), the Court of Master Sommeliers and Le Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux as part of the International Bordeaux Ambassador program.

From all accounts, Cavanaugh sounds like my kind of wine guy. He says he got his start in the beverage industry at Parkersburg’s North End Tavern where, I assume, he was inspired to move beyond that frothy amber fluid to the fruit of the vine.

On Saturday June 1, there will be several events taking place simultaneously – all from about 5 to 11 p.m., including tasting the wares of several restaurants, sampling wine and beer from a multitude of vendors – all the while being entertained by several different musical groups.

In addition to the public events, there will be a trade wine tasting on Friday afternoon where those involved in the wine industry are invited to taste and interact with winery representatives.

Events will take place in and around the Blennerhassett Hotel located at 3rd and Market Streets in downtown Parkersburg. For ticket prices or other information, you may call 304-865-0522 or email carrie@downtownpkb.com.

Sounds like a great weekend.