Wine Tasting - Castello di Amorosa

Introduction

Oh, shit! I just realized I’ve got only 45 minutes to write up my freelance article for Wine Spectator magazine, about my visit to the Castello di Amorosa winery! I better get right to it.

Wine Tasting  – Castello di Amorosa

The environs

The site of the winery, or terroir in viticulture parlance, is quite extravagant, almost exquisite. The castle is so imposing, I have to wonder if our military has an arrangement in place to appropriate the property in the case of an attack. It’s kind of hard to believe that all that goes on in this mighty fortress is the production, tasting, and sale of wine. Oddly, the grapevines themselves are virtually unprotected and in fact during our visit several goats escaped and started chowing down on them! Fortunately, stone walls are not the only protection: the castle turrets have arrowslits, aka balistraria, which are those tall slots that an archer can shoot arrows through. Or, a crossbowman can launch bolts through them. How badass is that? So let’s say I’m not even tempted to return under dark of night to steal grapes from this place. Besides, they just finished their harvest.

(Note: I’ve just been advised, by someone reading over my shoulder, that terroir has nothing to do with territory and in fact pertains to the combination of soil, climate, etc. that influences the character of a fine wine. Yes, I’m embarrassed. But honestly, that sentence reads so well, I’m going to leave it.)

You might be wondering if there’s a moat. Hell yeah there is! It doesn’t look very deep, nor are there crocodiles, but who knows … maybe it has piranhas? Or maybe there’s an underwater cage of piranhas they can release on command, if anyone storms the moat? That would be so cool. Now, no moat would be complete without a drawbridge … so does this Castello have one? Yes! I’m not sure if it’s operational, though. The brochure says, “The heavy iron chains would be used to raise the drawbridge to prevent marauders from entering through the main entrance.” Well, yeah … it’s not like it’d keep marauders from coming through the side entrance. Or from doing something other than entering. But what really bothers me about that sentence is that the verb is in the hypothetical subjunctive, “would be used...” There’s such a whiff of “never” about that. How about “The heavy iron chains can be used…”? Or, since we all grasp the concept, how about just saying “the drawbridge totally works”?

So, does the castle live up to its reputation as “a magical place which will transport you to medieval Italy”? I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never been to Italy, but at a minimum the Castello transported me to modern Anaheim, home of Disneyland. But in a good way.

The tasting room is down a flight of stone steps. My party had been warned that it’s a cave and can be quite chilly, but in fact a) it’s not a cave, and b) it’s not chilly. Could my daughter have confused the Castello with some other winery she researched? Easily. The brick ceilings are hand-built which seems remarkable unless you consider the alternative: robot-built? Is that even a thing? The arches are impressively vaulted, if that makes any sense. The bars are travertine stone and present an impressive and quite functional surface on which to place glasses of wine and fill out our tasting forms. I’ll bet you could hand-mix ice cream or fudge on this bar, like at those tourist places. Or you could lay out a corpse on the stone surface. It’s like marble.

Here I am filling out my tasting form.

That’s not my purse, by the way. I don’t carry a purse. (It’s not that a purse would compromise my masculine dignity; I could totally carry it off. I just don’t happen to desire one. If I did though, it would be soft kid leather like the one you see here.)

White wines

Castello wines are sold only at the winery. I’m sure the vintner is tempted to say, “Not sold in stores!” but that phrase has such a strong association with the QVC network and/or Ginsu steak knives, it cannot be uttered. But it’s true: you cannot buy this Castello di Amorosa wine at any restaurant or store. So what happens if you’re entertaining late and run out of wine? Perhaps that is where the fortress, with its moat and drawbridge, come in to play. Don’t even try it.

During our tasting we were cared for by Elisa, who is new to the Castello, having just arrived from Italy. She spoke with a charming Italian accent, as in “We-a will-a start-a with-a the white-a wines-a and-a work-a our way-a down.” Come to think of it, it’s possible her name is Elise, and it just sounded like Elisa. (Full disclosure: as I mentioned before, I’ve never been to Italy, so it’s possible she’s not Italian at all and has just mastered a fake Italian accent. If so, she-a had-a me fooled!)

Pinot Grigio

At Castello the Pinot Grigio is vintned with a young Malvasia grape. (An old grape would be a raisin, from which wine cannot be reliably produced.) This being an Italian style wine, it is more acidic than a traditional American wine such as Thunderbird, or a soft drink like Kool-Aid. The fragrance, or nose, is beguiling, almost coquettish, with hints of come-hither. The taste is light and frisky, almost meretricious, like the sassy tongue of a young prostitute. Overall I find the wine very sippable. I cannot say whether it would be quaffable or guzzle-able since I was given only about an ounce. (The exact tasting amount is unknown, because Elisa knows only the metric system and I was too enthralled with the terroir to calculate the conversion.)

Gewürztraminer

The Traminer grapes producing this varietal are notoriously difficult to grow, given their unstable genome, especially in Napa County, where the climate is a bit hot for them. As a result, the young grapes are often exposed to routine profanity and even abuse at the hands of frustrated growers. This results in traumatized grapes and a final product that’s easily the most hard-bitten bad-boy of whites I’ve ever sampled. The wine is initially sharp on the palate with notes of anguish (or agnosia in wine parlance) but tamped down by subtle hints of musk, lychee, and leach. The flavor starts out rather boldly and strongly, like a German with a megaphone, but then softens and dissipates like evaporating solvent and ultimately resolves into a graceful waft of gingerbread nostalgia as it rolls past your lingual frenulum.

Breadsticks

The breadsticks come lovingly wrapped in a form-fitting plastic bag, suggestive of both high density polyethylene and old-school cellophane. Presentation is in a simple glass, and I had the small thrill of tearing into the bag myself. The sticks are long and pale, like a British rocker’s slender fingers, but the flavor is pure Tuscany, with tones of airy sifted flour and extra virgin olive oil. The finish is salty, like a good sea shanty, and left me yearning for more wine, ideally right out of the spigot like how I used to get it in my childhood home.

Red wines

The reds are justifiably famous at the Castello, earning a loyal following among wine aficionados and culinary epicures, along with a begrudging but undeniable sense of street cred. Two of the reds on offer for the tasting have won awards from the SFC, which (I admit, I had to look this up) stands for Sucka Free City, i.e., San Francisco. Imagine all those ballers from the Western Addition or the Mission district rolling up to the castle in their low-riders or souped-up Acuras with aftermarket spoilers, subwoofers booming. “Don’t gimme no Clos du Bois, we don’t swill that shit in tha SFC.”

Pinot Noir

After much hemming and hawing, I settled on the Pinot Noir Morning Dew, known among local tech millionaires as a perfect breakfast wine and a nice replacement for their beloved Mountain Dew, now that they’ve graduated from coding in the garage to grandstanding in the boardroom. The flavor awakens the tongue with all the sharpness and clarity of a modern OLED digital display, accompanied by the bold stride of berry and accented with a tannic spice reminiscent of silicon. For all its cutting edge spine, though, there’s a reassuring coziness to the mouth-feel: a tongue-numbing cloak of gentle clove, summoning wistful affection for one’s youth, such as one might experience stumbling across a Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM at a yard sale.

Cabernet Sauvignon

It is said a winery can be fairly judged by its cab, and the Castello’s has plenty of swagger, with a flavor-forward bite that electrifies the tongue. The zesty tones of pepper grinder, like those very long wooden grinders favored by fancy restaurants, put you on notice just before the strong-armed tannins kick in. This is a big proud cab that quickens your pulse. If you met this wine in a bar it would challenge you to punch it in the stomach as hard as you can … but you won’t find it in a bar because, again, Castello di Amorosa is available only right here at the castle!

Sweet wines

If you travel widely among the many wineries in Napa and Sonoma, you’ll start to realize the age cohort is edging upward. Let’s face it, with the global ascension of California wines driving up prices, the only people who can afford it are those who’ve broken the backs of their home mortgages and whose 401(k)s are well into seven figures. There’s a reason Tesla charging stations dot the Napa landscape: these people are as foggy and forgetful as they are rich. So what is the industry to do, as its ageing patrons gradually die off? The Castello has taken a page from the cannabis gummy playbook and is clearly courting the younger set with a nice array of unapologetically sweet dessert wines. Think Hawaiian Punch or Hi-C, but with legs—and plenty of alcohol.

Simpatica

After being pushed around so much by the Cab, I needed a friend—so when I saw the word Simpatica I was hooked right in. But I hesitated because this was last wine I’d get to taste. Would I be selling myself short by skipping the Moscato? Perhaps, but I couldn’t get past the “mosca” part, that being Italian for “fly,” and I just knew I’d take the bait and make a corny joke like “Elisa, there’s a fly in my wine, and he thinks it’s gazpacho.” (I’d already lost a bet that Elisa would make a joke about the wine-spitting bowl, along the lines of “We send that down to Charles Shaw and they bottle it.” She didn’t say anything of the kind. But like I said, she’s new.) In the event, the Simpatica did not let me down: this was a bright wine, redolent of pears and honey, that caressed my tongue, but then took an unexpected detour into light fizz, like fermented peaches at a salad bar, with just a hint of bong water. It’s a highly drinkable wine that says, “Hey, buddy, lighten up.” I could totally see myself drinking this out of a bota bag at a sweltering music festival. It would pair nicely with those weird cream cheese appetizers at P.F. Chang’s, or with Rice Krispies.

Il Passito

I only had a little sip of this, when my tasting companion insisted I try it. I know that, as a wine critic, I should use words like “remarkable,” but my honest reaction was OMG! This is by far the sweetest liquid I’ve ever had in my mouth. Honey is so over. The flavor is so fawningly unctuous, I thought this wine would try to sell me a timeshare in Honolulu. But as it lingers on the tongue it’s all Sweetness & Light, like old school Grade-A maple syrup without the maple. I suddenly had a craving for the totally crusty, blackened pork ribs you find in the dark corner of the grill toward the end of a barbecue. But Il Passito also has a regal flair; if this wine could talk, it’d tell a Bartles & James wine cooler, “You’re just a vulgar little street urchin.”

The scoring

Nobody in my party remembered to fill out the score card. Or maybe it’s not a memory thing; for me, numeric scores kind of seemed beside the point. I mean, would you give a point rating to the color of your child’s eyes, or to the length of your cat’s tale? Suffice to say, I shall surely return to the Castello di Amorosa, next time I need a full lineup of artisanal wines, or am fleeing a zombie apocalypse. As for which wine impressed us the most, I suppose that can be answered by the one we ended up deciding to buy: the Simpatica, at $30 for a 750ml bottle. I have a feeling it’s gonna go great with chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream.

Epilogue

No, Wine Spectator never did run my story. This may have something to do with the fact that I never submitted it. Why would I bother, when I haven’t arranged for the Castello di Amarosa winery to place an ad with the magazine?

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Curse of the Epicure

Introduction

Adam and Eve had a pretty easy life in Eden, with very few complications.  God took care of most things, and Adam could make minor fixes around the place.  Adam joked to the snake:  “How many humans does it take to screw in a light bulb?  /  It better not take more than two!’”  The snake, unimpressed, changed the subject:  “See that tree?  You should really try an apple from it.”  Adam refused, remembering it was forbidden.  But the snake eventually convinced Eve to try an apple.  When Adam saw this, he immediately had to have his own.  God appeared when Adam was on his second bite, but before He could say anything, Adam looked up and said, “God, these apples suck!  They’re all mealy and mushy and the flavor is so cloying.”  God roared back, “That’s why I told you not to eat them!  I haven’t perfected them yet!”  God was so furious He banished Adam and Eve from Eden.  Not long after, Adam suddenly noticed things about Eve that he hadn’t before.  “Eve … I don’t know how to tell you this, but, uh … you need a bra,” he said.  She fired back, “Well, I was just checking out your, uh, endowment, and you’re not exactly Big Man on Campus!”  So they were embarrassed and covered themselves up.  And that is the tale of the original sin:  being finicky.

A confession

I have a confession to make:  I used to love Chevy’s.  I once walked 2 1/2 miles to a Chevy’s, when I lived in San Francisco, only a mile from what is now my favorite taqueria, in the Mission.  I liked Chevy’s’ really thin chips.  I liked their stupid beans.  It seemed as good a Mexican restaurant as any.  What an idiot I was.  My roommate confronted me about it:  “Why would you want to eat mall food?”  He would bring salsa home from his favorite place in the Mission, and once even brought a couple quarts back from his favorite place in Denver.  But I didn’t listen.  It took me years to realize not only that Chevy’s is a mediocre corporate chain hawking non-spicy soulless fare to the uncultured masses, but that I should feel embarrassed to have ever thought that place was worth going to, especially when I lived in the best taqueria city in the world.

A cautionary tale

When I was in college, my then-stepdad took my mom and me out for a nice meal at this upscale French restaurant called the Metropole.  It was an old Berkeley standby, exactly the kind of place college kids get taken to when their parents are in town.  I was impressed by how swanky the place was, and thought the food was pretty good, but my stepdad complained about absolutely everything.  He had been to France, and this food didn’t seem French, and blah blah blah.  By the end of the meal he seemed downright miserable.  And yet, there were plenty of things he could have been happy about:  having enough money to eat in a fancy place like this; the fact that nobody was smoking like they would have been in France; the fact that were it not for his complaining I’d have thought it was an awesome place.

So there’s a flip side to having sophisticated tastes.  Once we know what we’ve been missing, we’re no longer satisfied by what used to please us.  Meanwhile, there’s an ego aspect.  Consider my confession about Chevy’s:  should liking a restaurant chain really be embarrassing?  Should there be any shame in not knowing from good Mexican (or French) food?  I mean, so what?  But there you have it:  we’re all a bit afraid of being seen as uncultured rubes.  (What, you’re not?  You mean it’s just me?  Fine—go read something else then … your sensibilities are too advanced for this blog.)

When we become judgmental about aesthetic choices, we sometimes stray into other territory.  Have you ever noticed that when you see litter, it’s always a McDonalds wrapper or a 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup?  You never see a Godiva wrapper or an empty Veuve Clicquot bottle on the side of the road.  It’s tempting to conclude that unsophisticated tastes, or at least the poverty that makes it necessary to embrace them, are a sign of vulgarity, part and parcel with the ignorant impulse to just throw your trash out the window.  But (as I shall explore) there’s also a coarseness in aspiring to impress people with your aesthetic sophistication.

Sophistication for sale

Consider Godiva chocolate:  it’s really expensive, and the packaging is really fancy, but the product itself is mediocre.  No, I’m not some expert or chocolate or anything, but I was shocked at how waxy and bland it was when I first tried it.  (My opinion isn’t unique; I had my albertnet fact checker google “godiva chocolate sucks” and he reported 444,000 hits.)  Am I trying to impress you with my taste in chocolate?  Well, maybe I am, but I’m also making a point:  Godiva chocolate exists simply because there are plenty of people out there willing to pay extra for it, just to look rich and savvy.

We’re surrounded by the blatant marketing of sophistication.  For example, there are Stella Artois billboards that show a glass of the beer with the headline “Perfection has its price.”  Normally “price” in such a context is figurative, suggesting sacrifice, but with a beer I guess the point is “this beer is expensive so it must be good.”

Magazines like “Cigar Aficionado” make their nut teaching, or seeming to teach, their readers how to be more discerning about cigars.  I suppose there are people who actually do love cigars (though the only thing I’ve found them good for is filling a friend’s car with smoke), but could you really predict how much you’d like a cigar based on its ratings?  A review of a mainstream product like a camera gives all kinds of objective information, and can provide sample photos taken by the camera itself—but the flavor of smoke cannot be described in any useful way. 

Each issue of “Cigar Aficionado” has a rich celebrity cigar smoker on the cover and I guess that’s really the point:  the reader can think, “Yeah, if Jack Nicholson and I met, we’d hit it off.  I’d show him my humidor, and we’d hang out and smoke some fine Cubans.”  This seems like the kind of magazine you’d leave lying around on your coffee table to showcase your expensive tastes (because your wife would never let you light up around guests—cigars stink too bad).  I’m going to guess not many subscribers to “The Costco Connection” would leave that mag lying around.  (I’m not the only one to mock “Cigar Aficionado”; consider this.)

I’m not quite as skeptical of “Wine Spectator” (put out by the same publisher as “Cigar Aficionado,” by the way), because I understand there is a huge, rich vocabulary available for describing wine.  I won’t attack the validity of that vocabulary (how could I, being an uncultured rube?), but there does seem something fishy about “Wine Spectator.”  First, there’s the name.  Spectator?  Like, the point of wine isn’t just to drink it, but to watch others drink it?  See, drink, be seen, and be drunk?

Okay, I’m quibbling.  But consider this:  the magazine has an award it presents to restaurants that have great wine lists, which brought about a great hoax in 2008.  A guy created a fake restaurant (nothing more than a mocked-up menu and website), put together a wine list comprising wines that “Wine Spectator” itself had reviewed harshly, submitted his $250 application fee to the magazine, and his “restaurant” won the Award of Excellence, following which magazine’s ad sales department contacted the “restaurant” soliciting an ad to accompany the Award of Excellence listing.  I dare you to try to convince me this is anything more than a circle-jerk-for-profit.  Subscribers would surely defend the magazine, but that’s because their own standing as wine experts depends on its good reputation.  It’s the emperor’s new wine journal.

Taste, if I’m not mistaken, is supposed to be a personal thing.  We try a bunch of different things, and decide we like certain ones more than others.  (Yes, our friends help turn us on to new things, but those friends presumably know us well enough to guess what we’d like.)  Defining our tastes by ratings in a magazine smacks of insecurity.  Really, what could be more vulgar than letting ourselves be manipulated by advertisers and other profiteers, just to make sure “our” tastes show sophistication and class? 

A dilemma

On the one hand, it makes sense to cultivate refined tastes, lest we miss out on the best the world has to offer.  (If Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the apple, humanity would still be in Eden, getting nothing but Middle Eastern food.)   On the other hand, striving to be an epicure can end up being just another treadmill of one-upmanship, with the ever-present threat of getting jaded.  (I sometimes wonder if the hallmarks of a mid-life crisis—fancier food, better booze, faster cars—aren’t actually the cause of the crisis, given the ageing process and how it ruins our earthly pleasures via heartburn, hangovers, and the need to drive responsibly.)

So the question is, how can we best walk the fine line between cultural refinement and mere contentment?  I’ve mulled this over and here are my suggestions.

Don’t forsake your old tastes just because you’ve developed new ones.  Take Chevy’s, for example.  No, I no longer think it’s great, and wouldn’t recommend it to others, but if I went there, could I still enjoy my meal?  Sure—my taste buds haven’t changed, and I won’t let my attitude spoil my appetite.  (That said, those doughy, baking-soda-y “tortillas” made by “El Machino” are pretty disgusting.)  Former delights we’ve transcended don’t have to be abandoned; they can have a long afterlife as our guilty pleasures.  I kind of like the Uno pizza chain, which is more like Pizza Hut than it is like the original Uno.  And speaking of pizza and forsaking old tastes, when I told my daughters I was coming to prefer Little Star over Zachary’s, they looked stricken, like they might never get their beloved Zach’s again.  “Take that back!” Alexa demanded.  (I told her not to worry … I’ll always enjoy getting bloated on stuffed pizza even if it’s not from my favorite place.)

Try to keep ego out of it.  Naturally, when we discover something wonderful, we want to turn others on to it, and occasionally to help them overcome their hesitation.  This is well and good—but we should keep an eye on how we conduct ourselves.  I’ve seen my own enthusiasm turn into a bludgeon, where the person I’ve exhorting to try something becomes reluctant to admit he dislikes it.  Things can get worse if the supposed expert demeans a product rather than promoting one.  Consider this rant on chowhound where, instead of answering a question, somebody decided just to complain, unbidden, about the pizza crust at Zachary’s:  “Had a think [sic] crust slice at Zachary’s on Solano the other day and was kind of shocked at how bad the crust was.”  Of twelve replies, eleven were negative, and it seemed like the reviewers were trying to outdo each other with their explanations of why the crust is bad (e.g., “the cross section of the dough that touches the pan was dry”) and of what else is wrong (e.g., “I find their sauce rather bland”), and with their own credentials (e.g., “didn’t start disliking Zachary’s until I returned from an Illinois trip … doesn’t come close to Giordano’s or the even better Art of Pizza in Chicago”).  That Zach’s pizza is hugely popular among a discerning Bay Area clientele, and yet gets such poor treatment on chowhound, suggests a striving among these reviewers to out-foodie each other.  On a somewhat related note, I’m often relieved I know nothing about wine, because I’d hate to see myself getting into one of those logorrheic pissing contests you sometimes see when wine experts clash in the night.

Cultivate tastes that can’t be marketed.  If you’re afraid of being played for a sucker by luxury brands, slick marketing, veiled ads (i.e., magazine “articles”), and/or peer pressure, consider focusing on pleasures that are impervious to such manipulation.  For example, you can search for the perfect taqueria (which will have no advertising budget at all), try to learn how to mix for yourself the perfect martini (which, I have it on good authority, has as much to do with technique as with good ingredients), or tackle a culinary challenge (e.g., learn how to make your own pasta).  Such quests for the finer things take effort, as opposed to merely “buying” sophistication by trusting the authority of this or that brand, magazine, or celebrity endorsement.

Along these lines, would you like to know what soft drink is my very favorite?  I’ll tell you:  it’s that ice-cold can of Coke (or Pepsi, whatever) you get at a convenience store in the middle of a long bike ride, on a hot day fifty miles from home when your blood sugar is crashing.  Try that out and you’ll be the greatest snob of all:  the connoisseur of epic experience.