K Syrah, Syrah
As we may have mentioned before, we love us some wine. While our tastes are biased against the lighter stuff (i.e., to paraphrase Kanye: Seattlest doesn't care about white wines), we loooooooove reds. We like them deep, dark, meaty and full-bodied with a smooth finish. All the better if they're stored in American oak barrels, which can give wine a nice nutty hint of baking spices.
With that in mind, we recently went "all the way to Ballard" for a wine tasting at Portalis. This wine shop doubles as a bar and, with its vast selection, has quickly become one of our favorite spots in town. While we do enjoy Portalis and their great service, the real reason why we made our last trip was to sample the new releases from K Vintners, based in Walla Walla. Seattlest was first introduced to the K family of wines this February at an Esquin tasting, and it was love at first sip. These are complex wines with a lotta personality, just like their winemaker Charles Smith.
A few words about Charles:
· He refers to himself as "El Presidente."
· He can't help but stand out with his huge fro of heather gray hair.
· He likes to tell crazy stories about himself, like that one time where he went to another winemaker's house, and, upon being told to make himself at home, promptly took off all his clothes and passed out on the billiard table.
Yeah, he's that guy---genuinely outgoing, boisterous to the point of gregariousness---but he makes a mean bottle of wine. He then throws the empty mean bottles on the floor, and yelled at us when we went to move them out from underfoot.
Additionally, Smith knows how to hook you with intriguing descriptions of his wines. His 2003 Milbrandt ($25) tastes of "deep and dark earth, bacon fat, marshmallow, minerals and tons of candied violets," while he assures that his Lucky No. 7 ($35) "Seven Hills vineyard syrah will kick your ass! Or something like that."
We're not sure if the wines tasted exactly like those descriptions, but we found the Milbrandt to be an even, complex syrah whose bouquet was so archetypal red wine that its scent could be used for a scratch-and-sniff sticker. Even the house wine (a mere $11) is pretty damn good, y'know, for a plain old table red blend.
But their pricier wines are really where it's at. The Morrison Lane syrah ($45) was like the Milbrandt, only better, richer, hearty and deep. With each sip, another nuance of the flavor came to the fore. This is a dense wine; we'd like to pair it with a big juicy steak. Smith also has two blends named after his parents: for his father, the Ovide (pronounced "oh-veed," $55), a 65% cabernet sauvignon/35% syrah, and for his mama, the Roma ($55), a 70% cabernet sauvignon/30% syrah. At our tasting, they ran out of all the Roma early on, so we didn’t get to try it. They also ran out of the new release (2003) of the Ovide, but luckily Portalis still had a couple bottles of the '02 in their cellar, which they were more than happy to offer up for sampling. The Ovide was a supple and meaty wine with a pleasant amount of spiciness, making for a very smooth drink.
But our favorite wine---and, oh sweet baby Jesus, we have never had a wine like this before---was the El Jefe ($55). This is a 70% tempranillo/30% cabernet sauvignon blend, and it was beyond delicious. We had previously tried the '02 variety at Esquin, but wasn't that impressed (perhaps because there was a great deal of build-up when the crowd got rowdy and chanted "Jefe! Jefe!" until Charles opened the bottle). But this '03 variety was UNBELIEVABLE. So says the official description:
Intense is the first word that comes to mind. Very fleshy, rich, and mouth-filling. Reminiscent of an Autumn day in Spain. It lingers on the palate so long it could get busted for loitering.
With all due respect, this account doesn't begin to do it justice. While the wine is intense, it's also very delicate. And its finish is so surprisingly sweet (yet not cloying), that we remarked it was as if we were drinking a glass of floral perfume. Normally, we would balk at the thought of paying $55 for a bottle of wine, but for this special blend, we'd like to own half a dozen or so. The adulation that would be bestowed upon us after our friends tried it would be well worth the price.
K Vintners doesn't make very much of the good stuff (only 120 cases of the El Jefe and the Roma), so if you're at all interested, you should order online soon because those varieties will go fast. We've heard that the best idea is to reserve bottles a year ahead of time, buying next fall's release as a future. Those on the mailing list can purchase futures at a slightly reduced rate the winter before the release. This can be risky when you don't know how consistent a winery's products are, but from our experience, K's wines are always amazing. So it's a safe bet to place a futures order sight unseen, or in this case, wine undrunk.
