This week’s Wine Word of the Week is dosage.

Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine:
Dosage is the final addition to a sparkling wine which may top up a bottle in the case of traditional method wines, and also determines sweetness, or residual sugar, of the finished wine. …. Champagne is naturally so high in acidity that even wines with relatively high residual sugar can taste bone dry. Bottle age or extended autolysis are excellent substitutes for dosage, however, and, in general, the older the wine, the lower the necessary dosage to produce a balanced wine, and vice versa. Some champagnes are made with no, or zero, dosage.

Layman’s terms from Kori:
Dosage is the addition of the same or a similar sparkling wine mixed with a specified amount of sugar to replace the small of amount of sparkling wine lost during the disgorging process. The amount of sugar added at this point determines the sweetness of the finished sparkling wine. For a refresher on the sweetness levels of sparkling wine, please refer back to Sparkling Wine Tutorial: Helping You Avoid Confusion at the Store.

Chateau Ste. Michelle is Washington State’s founding winery with its roots dating back to the repeal of Prohibition. In 1976, Ste. Michelle built a French-style chateau in Woodinville, just northeast of Seattle. While all of Chateau Ste. Michelle’s vineyards are located on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, all of their white wines are made in Woodinville. Their red wines are made at Canoe Ridge Estate in eastern Washington.

No matter where you live in the United States, you are probably familiar with the wines of Chateau Ste. Michelle, particularly their Columbia Valley line. While those wines enjoy national distribution, Chateau Ste. Michelle also produces a number of other reserve and limited release wines that are not as widely available.

Recently, we had the opportunity to taste several wines from Chateau Ste. Michelle’s Ethos Reserve and Limited Release series in a blind samples tasting.

The word Ethos means “character” in Greek, the “distinctive spirit” of a specific culture, movement, or philosophy. Head winemaker Bob Bertheau works to impart that distinctive spirit in the limited production Ethos Reserve wines which aim to showcase the best of the vintage.

The Limited Release wines allow the winemaking team to experiment a bit. These small lots are initially available exclusively to members of their wine club, the Vintage Reserve Club. After 30 days, these limited releases are offered to the public at the Chateau Ste. Michelle wine shop in Woodinville and online.

2008 Chateau Ste. Michelle Ethos Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (Columbia Valley, Washington): 94% Cabernet Sauvignon and 6% Syrah. Dark purplish red. Very aromatic with leather, earth, and a touch of creosote on the nose. Gorgeous black fruit and licorice come through on the palate. Full-bodied with crisp acidity and medium to high tannins. Well-balanced with a long, lingering finish.
Quality: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $38

2008 Chateau Ste. Michelle Limited Release Stone Tree Vineyard Syrah (Stone Tree Vineyard, Wahluke Slope, Washington): 100% Syrah. Dark purple in color. Nice nose with oak, black fruit, and black pepper aromas. Blackberry, black cherry, black pepper, and spice come through on the palate. Medium to full-bodied with crisp acidity and medium to high, dry tannins. Well-balanced with a very long finish.
Quality: 4 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 4 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $36

2008 Chateau Ste. Michelle Limited Release Malbec (Wahluke Slope, Washington): 87% Malbec and 13% Cabernet Sauvignon. Dark, inky purple. Nice black fruit and a touch of earth on the nose. Fruit-forward with black cherry, earth, and spice on the palate. Medium-bodied with crisp acidity, medium tannins, and a long, smooth finish.
Quality: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 3 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $25

2010 Chateau Ste. Michelle Limited Release Viognier (Columbia Valley, Washington): 100% Viognier. Pale, greenish straw yellow. Very aromatic with floral and white peach aromas and flavors. Light to medium-bodied with lively acidity and a long finish.
Quality: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 3 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $15

2008 Chateau Ste. Michelle Limited Release Mourvedre (Columbia Valley, Washington): 93% Mourvedre and 7% Syrah. Dark red in color. Aromatic with smoked meat and barnyard notes on both the nose and palate. Medium-bodied with lively acidity, medium tannins, and a medium to long finish.
Quality: 3 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 1 bang for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $25

Would you like a quick suggestion for a good wine to drink tonight (or this weekend) that won’t break your budget and is widely available? Many of our readers have said this is something they would like, so here is this week’s selection, the 2009 Columbia Crest H3 Merlot from the Horse Heaven Hills of Washington State.

Our selection criteria include:

• A very good Quality rating of >=3.5 stars (out of 5)
• A price tag of <=$20
• Must be widely available

Columbia Crest, located in Paterson, Washington, has been one of our favorite sources of value wines for many years. Last year, Juan Munoz Oca took over as head winemaker from Ray Einberger. Einberger had been at the helm since 2002 when he took the reins from Doug Gore who had been the winemaker since Columbia Crest was founded in 1983. The Columbia Crest winemaking team has produced more 90+ scoring bottles of wine than any other winery in the world. For those of us who live in Washington State, it is nice to have such a consistent, affordable producer in our own backyard.

H3, an abbreviation for Horse Heaven Hills, is one of the tiers in the Columbia Crest portfolio and showcases the region in which their winery is located. All of the fruit used to produce H3 wines come from the Horse Heaven Hills AVA.

“The H3 Merlot opens with aromas of raspberries, black pepper and earthy tones which lead to flavors of chocolate covered cherries and plum preserves on the silky smooth palate. The flavors and aromas culminate in an intense—yet elegant—finish.” –Winemaker Juan Munoz Oca

2009 Columbia Crest H3 Merlot (Horse Heaven Hills, Washington): 96% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 1% Malbec. Deep purplish red in color. Nice nose with jammy black fruit, plum, and leather aromas. Chocolate, plum, black cherry, leather, and a touch of licorice come through on the palate. Medium-bodied with lively acidity, medium tannins, and a medium to long finish.
Quality: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to Buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $15; Available elsewhere, $9 to $17

Over the years here on Wine Peeps, we have shared with you a number of our best wine party ideas: wine tasting dinners, digging into the cellar parties, and our wine tasting group activities. Today, we’re going to share another great wine party idea: a bottle swap. A friend of mine who read about it online, but couldn’t remember exactly where, brought this party idea to my attention. It sounded great to me, so now I’m passing it on to you. It’s a take-off on a Wine Swap party idea that our friend Gretchen Roberts wrote about in Wine Enthusiast a few months ago.

Anyone who is into wine probably has several bottles or more of a wine they really like, but are afraid it might go bad before they get to drinking the last bottle. Or you might have a bottle of a wine you bought because it was touted to be great, but you’ve found out it’s just not a style of wine that you really enjoy. In either case, wouldn’t it be great if you could clean out some old wine and bring home something new and different?

This is where the bottle swap party can be fun. Invite a group of fellow wine lovers over for a casual get together and ask each one to bring a bottle or two that they’d like to swap. As guests arrive for the party, you put all of the wines on display and have about thirty minutes of chat time over a bottle of sparkling wine for everyone to visit and tout the bottles they brought to the others at the party.

Then to kick off the bottle swap, everyone picks a number out of a bowl. The person who picks number one goes first and picks one of the bottles on display. The person with number two picks second, and so on. If the person picking immediately after you wants to challenge you for your selection, the party host can have some sort of a contest between the two of you like a wine trivia question, etc.

The whole idea is to have fun, and bring home something new to drink. If you have another wine party idea that’s worked for you and your friends, please share it with us.

Cheers!

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is sediment.

Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine:
Sediment is the solid material which settles to the bottom of any wine container, whether it be a bottle or a vat, tank, cask, or barrel. This sediment is a very heterogeneous mixture which at the start of wine-making consists mainly of dead yeast cells, the insoluble fragments of grape pulp and skin, and the seeds that settle out of new wine. At subsequent stages it consists of tartrates and, from red wines, phenolic polymers, as well as any insoluble materials added to assist clarification or to facilitate filtration.

Sediments in bottled wines are relatively rare, and usually signal a fine wine that has already spent some years in bottle. So unaccustomed have modern wine consumers become to sediment that many (erroneously) view it as a fault.

Layman’s terms from Kori:
Sediment is the “gunk” that settles to the bottom of a wine bottle. When you pour a wine that contains sediment, you may notice the sediment in your glass as you pour the last bit of wine from a bottle or it might catch around the shoulders of the bottle. While it may not be aesthetically pleasing, there is nothing wrong with a wine that contains sediment. It generally indicates a wine that has been aged a while. To prevent the sediment from ending up in your glass, it is a good idea to pour an older wine (or any wine you suspect contains sediment) through a filter into a decanter before serving.

We remember and honor all those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms that have been won for those of us who live in the United States. And, we express deep thanks and gratitude to all who have served in any branch of the United States Armed Forces.

(Photo by eddiecoyote)

Would you like a quick suggestion for a good wine to drink tonight (or this weekend) that won’t break your budget and is widely available? Many of our readers have said this is something they would like, so here is this week’s selection, the 2011 Brancott Estate Sauvignon Blanc from the famed Marlborough region of New Zealand.

Our selection criteria include:

• A very good Quality rating of >=3.5 stars (out of 5)
• A price tag of <=$20
• Must be widely available

Brancott Estate, located in Blenheim, New Zealand, was founded in 1934. Originally known as Montana Wines, Brancott Estate got its current name from Brancott Vineyard, which is its original Marlborough vineyard and home. In 1973, Brancott Vineyard was the site of the first Sauvignon Blanc plantings in Marlborough. Chief winemaker Patrick Materman joined Brancott Estate in 1990. Brancott is a founding member of New Zealand’s original sustainable winegrowing initiative established in 1995. Regular readers know that we are big fans of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, the country’s flagship wine. Brancott Estate has long been one of our favorite producers. We had the pleasure to visit the winery when we were in New Zealand in 2005.

Brancott Estate has embraced social media with their “Stay Curious” campaign. Their website is full of interesting information and is very easy to navigate, they interact with fans through their Facebook and Twitter pages, and they launched a smartphone app earlier this year. All newly packaged bottles in the Brancott Estate Classic still range, including this 2011 Sauvignon Blanc, feature a QR code by which consumers can download the “World’s Most Curious Bottle” app on their smartphone. Designed for both Apple and Android, it is a portal for entertainment as well as wine-focused education. It is well done and definitely worth checking out.

“It is immensely satisfying to taste this wine and see the essence of the grapes flavour as they tasted at harvest. A fantastically representative expression of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc fruit showing all it’s natural intensity.” –Patrick Materman, Chief Winemaker

2011 Brancott Estate Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, New Zealand): Pale straw yellow in color. Aromatic with grapefruit, lime, and freshly cut grass on both the nose and palate. Dry and medium-bodied with tart acidity and a long, refreshing finish.
Quality: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 4 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to Buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $10.99; Available elsewhere, $8 to $13

The Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi is one of the most famous wine producers in Italy. Located in Tuscany and comprised of nine estates, the Frescobaldi family has been making wine for over 700 years, spanning 30 generations. They operate 1,000 hectares of vineyards which are divided into nine properties throughout the Chianti region of Tuscany.

The family’s history in the wine industry started around 1300 when Berto de’ Frescobaldi left his properties to his children which included houses, mills, vineyards, orchards, farms, and other various properties. The wine produced on those properties was exported to Flanders and England. During the next 700 years, their wine business grew and flourished. Frescobaldi wines have received numerous accolades from wine publications. Today, many family members continue to be actively involved in the winery.

We recently had the opportunity to taste the current vintage of one of the most well-known wines within the extensive Frescobaldi portfolio, the 2008 Nipozzano Riserva. It is produced at the Castello di Nipozzano. We have enjoyed previous vintages of this wine, and this vintage is another good one.

With a QPR rating of 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5), it is an excellent value that is worth a try if you see it on the shelf at your local wine shop. I look forward to trying it again, this time with food. I think it would be great with pasta dishes or beef stew.

2008 Frescobaldi Nipozzano Riserva (Chianti Rufina Riserva DOCG, Italy): 90% Sangiovese and 10% complementary grapes (Malvasia Nera, Colorino, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon). Deep, dark ruby red in color and very aromatic. Red Vines, fresh red fruit, earth, and leather come through on the nose; more red cherry, raspberry, and leather on the palate. Medium to full-bodied and lively with medium tannins and a medium to long finish.
Quality: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to Buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $23; Available elsewhere, $16 to $25

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is phylloxera.

Official definition from Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine:
Phylloxera. This small yellow root-feeding aphid has probably had a more damaging impact on wine production than any other vine pest, or any vine disease. It attacks only grapevines, and kills vines by attacking their roots. For many years after it first invaded Europe there was no known cure.

The effects of phylloxera were first noted in France in 1863…. The phylloxera louse was an unwelcome import from America which devastated European vineyards until appropriate control measures were found. …. Phylloxera invasion had a major social and economic impact, involving national governments and local committees, and requiring international scientific collaboration. For a while the very existence of the French wine industry was threatened. ….

Phylloxera is now widespread around the world, having been found in California (1873), Portugal (1871), Turkey (1871), Austria (1872), Switzerland (1874), Italy (1875), Australia (1877), Spain (1878), Algeria (1885), South Africa (1885), New Zealand (1885), and Greece (1898).

Layman’s terms from Kori:
Phylloxera is one bad bug. It is actually a root louse that attacks the roots of grapevines. It originated in America but has spread around the world, devastating numerous wine regions.

Columbia Crest, located in Paterson, Washington, has been one of our favorite sources of value wines for many years. Last year, Juan Munoz Oca took over as head winemaker from Ray Einberger. Einberger had been at the helm since 2002 when he took the reins from Doug Gore who had been the winemaker since Columbia Crest was founded in 1983. The Columbia Crest winemaking team has produced more 90+ scoring bottles of wine than any other winery in the world. For those of us who live in Washington State, it is nice to have such a consistent, affordable producer in our own backyard.

Well-known for their Grand Estates, H3, and Two Vines lines, it is their Reserve line that puts them in the league with the premier producers in the state. As you may remember, the 2005 Columbia Crest Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon was named as the #1 wine of 2009 in Wine Spectator’s annual Top 100 Wines list, the first Washington wine to receive the honor. Their well-known reserve Bordeaux-style blend became designated as Walter Clore Private Reserve with the 1999 vintage to recognize the pioneer who did the unexpected in Washington State—prove that premium vinifera grapes could flourish in the Columbia Valley.

Recently, we had the opportunity to taste the current releases of both the Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and the Walter Clore Private Reserve in a blind samples tasting. While we thought both wines were very good, the 2008 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon is excellent.

If you ever find yourself in Paterson, Washington, you should definitely visit and tour Columbia Crest. And even if you aren’t able to visit, be sure to seek out some of their Reserve wines.

2008 Columbia Crest Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (Columbia Valley, Washington): Deep, dark red in color. Gorgeous nose with black fruit, cinnamon, and clove aromas. Black fruit, earth, clove, and pencil lead comes through on the palate. Medium to full-bodied with good acidity and medium to high, smooth tannins. Well-balanced with good complexity and a long, lingering finish.
Quality: 4 stars (out of 5)
QPR:  5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $45; Available elsewhere, $32 to $50

2008 Columbia Crest Walter Clore Red Wine (Columbia Valley, Washington): 57% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, and 3% Malbec. Deep, dark red. Aromatic with red and black fruit, leather, and Red Vines on the nose. Black cherry, blackberry, and black pepper come through on the palate. Medium to full-bodied with lively acidity, medium tannins, and a medium to long finish.
Quality: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 3 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $30; Available elsewhere, $30 to $35