A Guy, a Girl, and a Bottle

Episode 20 – Cinnabar Vineyards & Winery

Today’s wine podcast has us visiting the Cinnabar Vineyard and Winery. Situated 40 miles south of San Francisco between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, Cinnabar(http://www.cinnabarwine.com) overlooks Silicon Valley from the east rim of the Santa Cruz Mountains at 1,650 feet. Mild temperatures and clay-loam soils contribute deep fruit and earthy components to wines that express a unique sense of place. Twenty-three acres of hillside were cleared for planting in 1983. The first commercial vintage was 1986. The winery building was completed in 1987.
The name Cinnabar pays hommage to the important role the valley played in extracting gold from the Sierra Nevada range during the Gold Rush of the 1800′s.
Before starting Cinnabar, Owner Tom Mudd was a senior research engineer at SRI (Stanford Research Institute, International) and had 10 years of experience growing grapes and making wine at his one-acre vineyard in Woodside. As part of the show, we interview the Winemaker, George Troquato.
Cinnabar is open for Passport days four times a year and for special events. Please visit their website for events and dates.

00:00 Intro
01:41 Passport Days & Cinnabar Vineyards & Winery
03:42 2004 Monterey Chardonnay
06:08 2003 Santa Cruz Mountain Chardonnay
07:58 George Troquato, winemaker
16:31 2003 Pasa Robles Merlo
19:26 2004 Santa Cruz Mountain Late Harvest Chardonnay
21:00 Wrap-up and summary of visit
22:34 Bliss by Rob Costlow

The wines that we sample are:

2004 Monterey Chardonnay, $18.50
Winemakers Notes: This wine has a nose of pineapple and vanilla segues to tropical fruit flavors with a touch of toasted oak and minerals. It is very well-balanced with a full mouthfeel and bright acidity. Serve with shrimp, avocado and spinach salad or stuffed mushrooms.
Guy & Girl Notes: We both liked this wine because of the tropical nose and the taste is smooth and enjoyable.

2003 Santa Cruz Mountain Chardonnay, $ 25.00
Winemakers Notes: An nose of stone, fruit, vanilla and sweet oak softly engages the mouth of wipe green apples, citrus and wet stones. The acidity is bright while the solid structure lends itself to nearly 5 years of aging. A long finsh pears nicely with rustic polenta and mushroom cream sauce, rotisserie chicken stuffed with herbs and lemons or lobster bisque.
Guy & Girl Notes: Joe really likes this wine. He thought it was clear and fruity. It was more complex than we normally expect from a Chardonay.

2003 Pasa Robles Merlo, $ 20.00
Winemakers Notes: This wine opens with aromatic black cherry, spice and vanilla. It blankets the palate with blackberry, cocoa and toasted oak. Thick and velvety with full, integrated tannins. Serve with grilled foccacia pizza topped with mozzarella, romano and fresh tomato.
Guy & Girl Notes: Lori thought this wine was earthy, hint of spicy nose, low tannins. Joe thought it was very straight forward, smooth wine. They gave this one a thumbs up.

2004 Santa Cruz Mountain Late Harvest Chardonnay, $ 22.00
Guy & Girl Notes: This is a dessert wine. The grapes were frozen and then pressed to capture the sugar content. This is a very sweet wine. It tastes great and might be paired with cheese and grapes. Elegant boutque. Another thumbs up!

Our Artist this week is Rob Costlow, and the song is Bliss. You can find more music from Rob Costlow along with other great artists on the Podsafe Music Network (http://music.podshow.com).

Cinnabar Vineyards & Winery
23000 Congress Springs Road
Saratoga, CA 95070
(408) 741-5858
Google Map

Note: Tasting Room open only for passport days and special events.

As always, please let us know if you like what you hear, have suggestions, or would like us to review a particular winery. Would you like to see shorter shows? Perhaps more details? Let us know! You can drop us a line at guyandgirl@gmail.com.

Cheers!
-A Guy & a Girl

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Our Wine Podcast is about to get ZAPPED! The annual Zinfandel Advocates & Producers (ZAP) Festival is taking place in San Francisco on January 25-28, 2006. We will be covering some of these events. If you are attending, drop us line at guyandgirl@gmail.com, we’d love to meet you in person. For those who haven’t made plans yet, head over to www.zinfandel.org or call (415) 345-7575 for ticket information.

ZAP’s Zinfandel Festival is an internationally recognized series of tastings which are the premier single-varietal events in the world. With an estimated 300 wineries and over 10,000 attendees over four days, held exclusively in San Francisco, ZAP’s Festival is traditionally a sell-out. While I don’t think we can sample all of these wines for you, we are going to try to talk to some really great vintners, chef’s and perhaps even a fellow podcaster or two.

Episode 19 – Interview with Kermit Lynch

Hey there Guys & Girls, in today’s episode of A Guy, a Girl and a Bottle we interview Kermit Lynch, a well-known and well respected importer of wines. Joe visited with Kermit at his store in Berkeley California in early December and talked with Kermit about wine, music, his travels as a Wine Merchant. Stay tuned as at the end of the episode we play a song off of Kermits’ recently released CD – Quicksand, with Songs written by Kermit Lynch and Featuring Boz Scaggs, Ricky Fataar, and Alvin Youngblood Hart. The CD is available on Kermit’s website at www.kermitlynch.com

00:00 Introduction
01:30 Interview with Kermit Lynch
27:16 “Awake for the Count” featured on the CD Quicksand Blues

About Kermit:
Kermit Lynch was born and raised in California. In 1972 he opened a retail wine shop and later began importing and distributing nationally. He has been named Wine Professional of the Year by the James Beard Foundation, and the French government presented him a medal and named him Chevalier de l’Ordre de Mérite Agricole. His book Adventures on the Wine Route, won the Veuve Clicquot Wine Book of the Year award. In 1998 he purchased the historic Domaine Les Pallières in Gigondas in partnership with his friends the Bruniers of Vieux Télégraphe.

visit the shop at

1605 San Pablo Avenue
Berkeley, California, 94702
Google MAP

Phone: 510.524.1524
Open Tuesday-Saturday 11am to 6 pm

Thanks again to Julie Geer from Vintage Wine Merchants of San Jose, CA. Be sure to check out their shop located in Santana Row.

Cheers!

a Guy and a Girl
guyandgirl@gmail.com

Subscribe to our Wine Podcast at iTunes or Yahoo!

Episode #18: Wine Blogging Wednesday #17 – (or Have you ever seen a Red Kiwi?)

We hope that everyone had a wonderful (and safe) start the the New Year. Today’s wine podcast is for the January 2006 installment of (insert booming echo here) Wine Blogging Wednesday (/echo). The theme for WBW#17 is “Red Kiwi’s” and is graciously hosted by our San Francisco neighbor to the North – The Cork Dork. As we still consider ourselves newbies to this Wine Blogging thing, we actually sample wines on that Wednesday, although I am surmising that if we sampled this yesterday, you really wouldn’t know the difference would you dear reader? :b Anyway, after waking up in a cold sweat, I realized that it was Wednesday and we hadn’t even begun to look for a New Zealand Pinot Noir! Where to find one? Well
seeing as I had to grocery shopping anyway, I headed out to the local Safeway supermarket. After spending an enormous amount of time trying to figure out how Safeway has their wine aisle sorted, there they were, the Kiwis, the challenge d’jour. I chose a 2002 MARLBOROUGH PINOT NOIR from Kim Crawford Wineries and felt better. Now all I had to do was get the bottle home, get Lori to come over and taste this thing. Hard thing to do when it is only 930AM, but Lori being the trooper and the wine girl that she is agreed that it was in her job description to consume wine on demand (MY demand specifically….)

What did we have to say about this wine? Did we like it? Listen to our special Wine Podcast and check it out.

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– The Guy
guyandgirl@gmail.com

The notes below are provided for the readers benefit and are conspicously copied directly from the winemakers’ site.

2002 MARLBOROUGH PINOT NOIR
These grapes are from various vineyards in Marlborough. The cool dry conditions experienced in 2002 were ideal for the ripening of Pinot Noir. Hand harvested at night, these grapes were cold macerated for three days and then inoculated with a pure yeast strain. When dry the grapes were pressed and a portion of the wine racked to older barriques for malolactic and ageing. After four months the wine was pumped out stabilised and bottled.

ANALYSIS AT HARVEST
Brix: 22.5
Titratable Acidity: 6.8 g/l
pH: 3.35

WINE ANALYSIS
Alcohol: 13.1
Titratable acidity: 5.7l
pH: 3.62
Residual sugar: nil

TASTING NOTES
Colour: Moderate depth of colour with strong crimson on the edges.
Aroma: Distinctively Pinot Noir with berry fruits, especially raspberry, strawberry and cherry, and hints of oak. A subtle beef Bovril complexity is beginning to occur.

Palate: A savoury Pinot Noir with elegant, ripe fruit coupled with soft tannins and a touch of oak. Medium bodied style with the ripe fruit, good weight and persistence.

Cellar: Medium term with careful cellaring.

Food Match: Great with pasta, lighter red meat and fish. An ideal summer red.