Wine Outlook

At Rosenblum Cellars we make about 25 different Zinfandels, from all over the state, each one different. One of my absolute favorites is the one from the Planchon Vineyard. This bottling is classified under the San Francisco Bay appellation, as the fruit is from Contra Costa County (near Oakley). This wine is also one of the reasons Wine & Spirits pronounced us America’s best producer of wine from SF Bay. Most Saturday afternoons, we get a visit from Frank, who grows grapes for the vineyard designate, and his lovely girl Helen.

The Saturday crew has been trying to plan a dinner with the two of them for a while now, but schedules made it hard. Finally, this past Saturday, we all came together at Angela’s Restaurant for a vertical tasting of the Planchon wines. We had been working hard that day at a wine club event, so it was nice to relax among friends with really good food and an amzing line-up of wines. Frank even brought some wines from Franus, that also use the Planchon grapes, which enabled us to do one horizontal comparison.

1999 Franus Zin: dust, raisin, plum, bandaid on nose/ spicier and bigger than expected with clove and anise for the taste

2000 Franus: chocolate, espresso beans, dried cherry, a little oxidized
2000 Rosenblum Cellars (RC from here on) Planchon: (not as brown as the Franus) raisins, nuts, cherry cola, Dr. Pepper, very hot however, went well with the house salad with its yummy dressing and walnuts
2000 RC Planchon that had been opened several hours earlier: less hot, more chocolate and vanilla

2002 RC Planchon: good until comparing it to the 03, then it smelled metallic, like blood or iron, and peet… and later of formaldahyde

2003 RC Planchon: coffee, chocolate, smoke, big and rich…YUM

2004 RC Planchon: very rich, high alcohol but not as much as the 2000, perfect with my hanger steak cooked in a decadent port wine sauce

2005: by then my notetaking had stopped, but it was one of the favorites: always smoky, full fruit flavors

The 2005 and 2003 were the favorites of the evening, along with the Acacia Lone Tree Pinot Noir I had brought in case anyone munched on lighter fare.

Overall, we had a really fantastic meal. And maybe a little too much fun…. our waiter had to ask us to keep it down due to complaints from other diners. Granted, there was a lot of wine on the table, but we had several cups and one coffee pot into which we were pouring wine out as we took notes. However, we did share wine with our waiter (and a higher-than-normal tip for his troubles) and sent some wine over to the the people we had annoyed.

We are so grateful to Frank and Helen for sharing such a wonderful array of wines with us. For a group of wine geeks, it was a truly perfect evening!

Planchon Vineyard, San Francisco Bay appellation, wine from SF Bay