Dr Debs over at Good Wine Under $20 (even though we have almost nothing under $20!) wrote an incredibly nice post about us today. You should go read it now.
For those of you who are not familiar with her website (what? you live in a hole?) Deb writes about all things wine: reviews, wineries, what's going on in the industry, the LA wine scene and so forth. Deb is an excellent and engaging writer and you should make her site a daily visit.
I meant NOW!!
...or as we prefer to call it, 
Cold technical facts:
-ing delicious, if you ask us!Please let us know what you think of this wine in the comments below!
Tanner Vineyard, looking south with Twisted Oak across the valley
- click image for larger version - photo by El Jefe, 2005.
Tim over at Winecast invited me to review a Twisted Oak Syrah for his Wine Blogging Wednesday #30: New World Syrah. The obvious choice would be our Gold Medal 2003 Calaveras County Syrah - but I opted instead to taste our limited production 2004 Tanner Vineyard Syrah. This wine is 100% Syrah from the Tanner Vineyard right across the highway from Twisted Oak in Calaveras County. We aged it for 20 months in a mix of French, American, and Hungarian oak, and bottled it unfiltered and unfined.
Tonight I paired it with the family dinner of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The meatloaf recipe I found on the Food Network web site and is attributed to Alton Brown ("Good Eats") - as you might expect it is a little non-traditional and has a distinct pepper and garlic flavor. I make it without a glaze so that it gets a nice crust. (The kids made the mashed potatoes...:)
With that pepper in the meatloaf the Tanner Syrah was a great pairing. This Syrah has its own pepper, along with raspberry and leather aromas. Our tasting notes refer to strawberry, vanilla, and rhubarb flavors - but tonight the vanilla seemed a little subdued (perhaps by the pepper) and I was getting some very strong blackberry flavors. The tannins provide great structure and the finish is long and actually sits more to the front of the palate than I might expect for a dry red.
You had to know that I wouldn't post a bad review of one of my own children (though I could tell you a few about my two-legged offspring - ask me about the "nightstand" if you meet me in person.) But seriously, this wine kicks booty.
Also, I'm probably jumping the gun a little, but this Tanner Syrah will be one of the Twisted Oak wines to be featured soon over at WineQ. Of particular interest is that WineQ already features a 2004 Syrah from the Tanner Vineyard, made by Smith-Wooton. This will be a great opportunity for side-by-side tasting of two Syrahs from an amazing vineyard!
(Oh, and the mashed potatoes were fluffy, light, and relatively lump-free - thanks for asking!)
You didn't know that Grape Nuts go great with Tempranillo? Well, if Petite Sirah goes with corn flakes...
Actually, Grape Nuts do go well with Tempranillo, because the nice folks over on the Grape Nuts Blog reviewed our 2004 Tempranillo. Thanks!
Scaramouche! A flurry of reviews of our Iberian style wines hit the web today! And extremely well written...
Appellation America checked in with a review of our 2004 Calaveras County Tempranillo, written by Master Sommelier Catherine Fallis.
Catavino (in Spain!) posted reviews of the 2004 Tempranillo and also our 2005 Silvaspoons Vineyard Verdelho, written by Ryan Opaz.
I will do the fandango.
(Don't forget A Menu For Hope ends Friday December 22nd!)
Wanted to give a shout out to Dezel over at Virginia Vine Spot for his great photo and review of our 2005 Calaveras County Viognier. If you are watching the game and see a guy "sporting a Thin Lizzy shirt and a rubber chicken", there is a chance it might be Dezel!
El Bloggo Rollo this morning popped up two very nice reviews:
Thanks go out to all the reviewers who have been willing to take a chance and try wines from a little wine region in California that no one has ever heard of...
No, this is not wine reviewers to date! (Not that some of them don't look quite date-able...) Rather, some reviews of Twisted Oak are starting to pop up around El Bloggo-sphere-o, and I see that I missed a couple of shout-outs, so I think a recap is in order...
Newest on the list this week is a review by the Winehiker of the 2005 Calaveras County Viognier. Winehiker has also reviewed the 2004 Calaveras County Tempranillo.
Basic Juice recently did a nice post about all of the wines (and, uh, chicken farts). And, Winesmith gave us his own take on the wines and the whole Rubber Chicken thing... Alan has also posted reviews (here and here) on WineLog of the 2004 Petite Sirah and the 2005 Viognier.
Finally, Open Bottles has a few reviews of our wines, just search on Twisted Oak and they'll pop up. I missed them mostly because they are a wine logging site (like WineLog) and not a blog.
Have you seen a recent review of Twisted Oak out on the web? If you have, please drop us a line!
And yes you too can post a wine review to El Bloggo Torcido! Just follow the instructions here. Clunk!
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