Last Saturday afternoon I attended a tasting at New York Vitners wine shop located at 21 Warren Street. They poured about fifty wines which were available for purchase.

The last few tastings I’ve been to had not had much California wines for me to sample, so I made a bee-line to the Cali wines to start the tasting. First wine I tried was the 2009 Mount Eden Chardonnay “Wolff”. Typical Cali, tropical fruit and oak on the nose and palate but the finish dropped. They poured two wines from Copain Winery, the 2009 Pinot Noir “Tous Ensemble” and the 2010 Syrah “Tous Ensemble”.  The Pinot had a dusty, cooked fruit nose, light fruit with tart, sour cherry and earth on the finish.

A wine I really enjoyed was the 2007 Ferrando Carema Etichetta Bianca. A cool climate Nebbiolo from Northern Piedmont, it had a big nose of pencil shavings and cigar box with gamey fruit and a very long finish. Not a brawny wine but very elegant and tasty.

The 2005 Primitivo Quiles Raspay Tinto was an interesting wine. A red wine it was produced in an oxidized style and had the aromas of a sherry but with much darker fruit and a dry finish. A couple of other interesting wines from the Loire were the 2009 Cousin-Leduc “Le Cousin” and the 2010 Cousin-Leduc Gamay. Olivier Cousin is one of those natural wine makers that uses organic and biodynamic methods. The “Le Cousin” had a dirt, barnyard nose with definate terroir on the fruit. In fact it was like licking dirt and don’t mean that in a bad way. My notes on the Gamay was “dirty laundry, lots of character”. Very funky wines.