October 22, 2003
Four Bottles-Two GlassesFour bottles-two glasses. At a vintners' dinner I attended a week ago, on the menu was a "celebration of sangiovese" with two vintages of Tantara and two vintages of Vandale, both local Santa Barbara County wineries.
How great, I thought! With real simplicity we can demonstrate the difference between a vertical wine tasting and a horizontal wine tasting.
If you pair both the 2000 vintage of the Tantara and the Vandale in the two glasses (or the2001 vintage), you have a horizontal tasting. If you pair both vintages of either the Vandale or the Tantara side-by-side, you have a vertical tasting. For a "compare and contrast" exercise, this is a very informative way to taste wine.
It's fun and informative to do this. Depending on the combination, the wines taste so different side-by-side.
A horizontal tasting focuses on the vintage. A vertical tasting focuses on the producer. Both provide really good themes for a wine tasting.
Sangiovese, by the way, is one of the great red varieties of Italy. It makes the great wines of both the Chianti region and Tuscany region. In Chianti, it is the major component of that famous fiasco-clad red wine. In Tuscany it is a major component in that genre of Italian red wine called "super Tuscan." (The fiasco is the straw basket enshrouding the bottle.)
Sangiovese, my new favorite varietal after pinot noir and syrah, is proving itself as a superlative grape in the warmer climate of the eastern Santa Ynez Valley and the Paso Robles region of San Luis Obispo County.
Besides Tantara and Vandale, other top-flight producers include Stolpman and Palmina. Stolpman fruit comes from their vineyard on Ballard Canyon Road, and Palmina's sangiovese comes from Alisos Vineyard out east of Los Alamos.
Harvest Report
Last Friday I spoke to Norman Yost of Foley Estate and LinCourt Vineyards. He told me "we're down to the short strokes. The hot climate syrahs from Happy Canyon and the Santa Ynez Valley are in. Cooler climate syrahs from Santa Rita still not ripe, but getting close-probably a week to a week-and -a-half away."
He added that cabernet sauvignon from the famous La Cuesta Vineyard above their winery tasting room, "we are picking now."
Syrah and cabernet sauvignon are later ripening varieties. Pinot noir, on the other hand, is an early ripening variety.
Bon appetit!
Times wine columnist, Bob Senn, lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
