Two Vines for Two Faces

After the disappointing loss on Friday night to Sioux Falls, our heroes, the Mad Ants, turned around and beat the Skyforce handily on Saturday. As excited as I would normally get for a Mad Ants win, I have every confidence that the strength of the win was directly related to the game being broadcast nationwide on Versus. Although most of these guys are used to having played on CBS as collegians and you would think it would not be a big deal, they have just enough collective ego to act like tough guys in front of the cameras. Whatever the reason, I'll take the win.

As you can imagine, there is a large degree of frustration that comes with watching such uneven performances and so I chose a bottle of 2005 Columbia Crest Two Vines Chardonnay (http://www.columbiacrest.com/twoVines/release/198) from Washington State in honor of the two faces of this team. At $8.99 this wine was a steal. Truly a terrific bottle of wine for the money, and one for which I would have gladly paid upwards of $16. The wine had a very bright nose for a Chardonnay, which is fairly typical of Chards from Washington, with pear, honeysuckle, apple, candied lemon and caramel forming a very complex and delicious combination. All of these flavors transitioned nicely to the palate, where they turned into caramelized pear and pineapple, with caramel and toast lingering at length on the finish. Overall, I highly recommend this wine as an everyday wine.

That said, I do have an ax to grind with the marketing behind both the Two Vines and the 14 Hands that I reviewed yesterday. Both 14 Hands and Columbia Crest are part of the Chateau Ste. Michelle family of wines, with all of the above being owned by tobacco giant US Tobacco (a subsidiary of Altria Group, aka Philip Morris). That being the case, you can imagine that they have some pretty savvy marketers behind the brands, all of whom are doing whatever it takes to get you to buy these wines. I mean this with no offense to the CEO of Ch. Ste. Michelle, Ted Baseler - who is actually a family friend - but the marketing that they have done with these wines is so transparent as to be offensive.

Allow me to explain: I mentioned that these wines are from Washington State. This is these wines' "appellation". Wines are given an appellation based on where the grapes are grown. For example, if a wine is made exclusively from grapes grown in Napa Valley, the label will say Napa Valley on it. If, however, a wine is made from grapes sourced from a larger area than Napa Valley, then the label may say "Central Coast" or "California", depending on just how spread out the vineyards are.

An appellation is often very important to determine a wine's quality, as a winemaker and vineyard manager will have substantially more control over the quality of the grapes and the care that the grapes are given if he or she can go into the vineyard and personally inspect the grapes. As such, smaller and higher priced wineries often have more specific appellations, with some wines even having single vineyard appellations that denote that all of the grapes for a wine were picked from one vineyard. Massive wineries that sell wine in grocery stores nationwide rarely have that luxury and so are forced to fulfill their demand for grapes by sourcing them from vineyards over a large geographic area.

This in itself is not damning of a winery. However, the blurb on the back of both the Two Vines and 14 Hands both make bold and poetic proclamations about the tending of their vineyards that create a romantic image in the buyer's mind and infer that the wines come from quaint little vineyards. If this were the case, the wines' appellations would be "Walla Walla Valley" or "Columbia Valley" (which is a pretty massive appellation in itself). Instead, they are designated "Washington State" which means that the wineries did not get their grapes from any one vineyard, but rather sourced them from all over the state. Again, this is not a terrible thing in itself, but combined with their descriptions of the respective vineyards, the marketing is misleading at best and more accurately deceitful.

Offended or not, I still enjoyed this wine tremendously and would recommend it to all of you. Further, I got to enjoy it while basking in the glow of a Mad Ants victory! Let's see which of their two faces the Mad Ants wear next time.