In the Land of Cocktails

WWoW:Darcie Kent, Rava’s Black Jack Vineyard, Monterey County Gruner Veltliner, 2009

Posted by on June 23rd, 2011

I am (admit­tedly so) a sucker for wines made with grapes grown out­side of their coun­try of ori­gin. I am fas­ci­nated by the thought of it. I admire the vint­ners and grow­ers that take risks on doing such and I become giddy 

with antic­i­pa­tion before tast­ing these wines. The purists will scoff and turn their nose up at the very thought but some of these wines are down­right excit­ing! Tast­ing dif­fer­ent vari­etals out of their nor­mal con­text is a great way to give you and your palate per­spec­tive and some real insight into the true char­ac­ter of that par­tic­u­lar grape. So, in the spirit of adven­ture this week we get into a bot­tle of Dar­cie Kent Gruner Velt­liner from Mon­terey County, California.

‘A Gruner from Cal­i­for­nia, you say?!?!’ Yep, that’s right. Gruner Veltliner’s usu­ally hail from Aus­tria; cool cli­mate wines that exhibit a racy acid­ity (I’ve learned that when writ­ing about acid­ity in wine the word ‘racy’ is employed a lot, so I am jump­ing on the bandwagon…until I can think of a suit­able alternative…I am pon­der­ing ‘zippy.’), deli­cious green apple and cit­rus fla­vors with a sub­tle (…or not so sub­tle) hint of spice. These are usu­ally fan­tas­tic food wines, deservedly so. GV’s became the Sommelier’s dar­ling about ten years ago and remain in favor. I am a fan of their crisp­ness and I have for­saken Sauvi­gnon Blanc as my go-to sum­mer wine to be with my dear­est GruVe. That being said, some of these wines can be too aus­tere; too much ZIPPY acid­ity and not much else. This is cer­tainly not a prob­lem with Dar­cie Kent’s Gruner Veltliner!

Dar­cie Kent is an artist and wine­maker, in fact I am told that she paints all of her own labels. Dar­cie and her hus­band founded Dar­cie Kent Win­ery in 1996, in Livermore’s Crane Ridge Foothills. They focus on hand-crafted, lim­ited pro­duc­tion, sin­gle vine­yard wines. Their 2009 Rava’s Black Jack Vine­yard Gruner Velt­liner is one of these wines. It has a won­der­ful nose of cit­rus, lean­ing heav­ily on the lime notes. That crisp cit­rus con­tin­ues on the palate and leads into some white fruit fla­vors. I imme­di­ately noticed that the mouth feel was a bit dif­fer­ent for a Gruner. This wine actu­ally has body. It is medium in weight and fin­ishes with almost trop­i­cal notes. It is a much riper ver­sion than its Aus­trian pen pal but still pos­sesses all of its good qual­i­ties. Good acid, good fruit but with an added rich­ness. This Gruner Velt­liner does noth­ing to dis­pel the fact that these are fan­tas­tic food wines. Pair this with seafood of the shell­fish vari­ety and you can­not go wrong!

So go ahead, crawl out on that limb and reward your­self. GRU-VE!

Robert Wailes is the man­ager and head Adult Bev­er­age Con­sul­tant for Café Ade­laide and the Swiz­zle Stick bar in New Orleans. He has been inter­ested in wine and adult bev­er­ages for as long as he can remem­ber (seriously!).