Best Brands: A Hard Name to Argue

As a Man of Two Jobs, the interesting perks of the night job run into conflict with other commitments. Not confounds me as much as the distributor trade shows, always scheduled during the afternoon and mid-week, the hardest time to take a late lunch.

But person after person at the store told me not to miss Best Brands's show. So here I was, racing through the Stadium Club of LP Field. I only had 45 minutes for unprintable reasons, and Best Brands had nearly 70 tables of alcohol, so there was no time to mince words at the Jim Beam or Hybrid tables (for the uninitiated, Hybrid makes solid if unspectacular $10 wine).

Justin, Grand Cru’s resident fine wine guy, already scoped out the locations for the high-end reds Best Brands poured at these events. First came Bond, makers of $400 Cabernet from tiny vineyards in Napa. Despite all the elegance of Quella and Vecina, they could not rationalize that price. For better value and comparable elegance, I truly enjoyed my splash of Shafer’s First Select, a ridiculously rich $250 Cab. The other Shafer Cabs would prove slightly less rich, but just as enticing. The Staglin Cabernets were their equals, especially a 2005 Cab poured from a 375 mL split bottle and a 25th anniversary Cab from 2007. Orin Swift’s Papillon, a Cab blend with tiny doses of Cab Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec, topped the Cab-based blends that I tasted.

Just down from the table of riches sat the Silver Oak display , which curiously did not appear on the map. You could classify its renown Alexander Valley Cabernet as good, but not transcendent. It’s top tier California Cab, just not at the top of that tier. But its reputation carries it, and anytime someone without much wine knowledge wants to drop a name, it’s usually Silver Oak. However, the Twomey Merlot told a different story, a Merlot that stood apart from the California pack due to use of methode suterage to age the wine. It was full, elegant, but had those rough edges necessary for character.

My namesake pinot noir, from the Melville Vineyards in Santa Barbara, did just as well with its 2008 vintage as its 2006. I couldn’t peg the blending grapes, but this pinot noir definitely had a little more meat to it than expected. Immediately, I chased it with the Hanzell Pinot Noir, a $100 California specimen with all the elegance and mouth-watering textures classic Burgundy should produce. Williams Selyem Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir also had some nice flourishes.

Gaja provided the best Italian of the day with its Margari, a Bourdeaux-style blend of 50 Merlot, 25 Cab and 25 Cabernet Franc. Before release, they aged it for 18 months in barrels, then 6 more in the bottle.

The gentleman at the B.R. Cohn table would not let me pass with an empty glass, so I sampled their Olive Hill Cab, definitely a step above their standard $20 Cabernet, which is a steady seller. Their neighbor, poured a fine single vineyard Howell Mountain Zinfandel from Highlands Winery, was the day’s sole zinfandel, but easily on par with Seghesio, Ridge and the other $30 zins in our collection.

Justin had an eye for Scotch, and circumstances forced me to consider one more table of fine wine before exiting. I stumbled onto Blackbird Vineyards, which we stocked and sold had sold good volumes of their $30 Arriviste Rose. Devoting that much space to Cabernet Franc in a California blend ensured my rapt attention. They offered a revelatory trip through their three $100 red table wines; as their president explained to me, they don’t mess around with varietal names, instead choosing to go the French route with the trio – Illustration, Paramour, and Contrarian.All three were Bourdeaux style blends, with different percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot with a little Malbec blending into the Illustration.

They tout their use of Merlot in blending, and rightly so – the Paramour takes the template of a classic Cheval Blanc (50 Merlot, 45 Cab Franc, 5 Cab Sauv) and shows Americans can rival the French in crafting such regal blends. Contrarian was the clear winner to these taste buds. A blend of 46 percent Cab Franc, 34 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cab Sauv, it has the richness and texture of blueberry, blackberry, cherry and a little earth often lost on California wines.

With Blackbird, there was no need to travel further through the dozens of unexplored tables – nor was there time. That window into the industry had closed, but for the first time, I could describe most bottles in our fine wine room. From that vantage point, a few minutes and a few tiny pours made all the difference.