Honeywood - Mulller Thurgau

May 20, 2008 means election day here in Oregon.

As I watched the Kentucky and Oregon results, I decided it was important for me to enjoy some wine to either ease my pain, or assist with the celebrating based on how candidates performed. Now, you may recall I wrote about Honeywood Winery a couple of weeks ago. In that time, I, mostly with the help of Aileen, have consumed the other two bottles I purchased while there - without being a true blogger and writing about them. Tonight I knew I had to remedy that and make sure I wrote about this Muller Thurgau.

When we were at Honeywood, Stan, the salesman/proprietor who chatted and gave us our tasting, and I spoke about Muller Thurgau wine as Aileen and her friends were unfamiliar with it. While not bad wines, a Muller Thurgau is a wine that just is. The noses may vary, the coats and the clarity may waver slightly, but you are just not going to find a Muller Thurgau that will differ too much from another. Nor will you generally come across a Muller Thurgau that you find tastes amazing or any of those other adjectives that people use to describe something overly desirable. This one from Honeywood is no different.

According to the Honeywood website, their Muller Thurgau is a "distinctive dry white wine with a hint of muscat aroma, finished in a traditional European wine style...Flavorful, spicy and complex food demand a wine that is refreshing and uncomplicated." The nose on this wine is one that might deceive the drinker. There is a sweetness that you perceive might occur based solely on the nose, but it isn't a heavily sweet scent, rather a light one with a mixture of grapes and pears.

When you take a sip, your tongue and taste buds wonder and battle each other a little bit for who will win - the spices or the sweet, and it ends up being a draw, almost. Initially, you feel this spiciness which feels good on the palate. After you swallow, there is a light sweet aftertaste that makes you wonder what you just drank. (After a glass or two, that slight sweet aftertaste almost goes away, but not completely.) But it isn't over yet. Just a second after the sweet aftertaste comes, once more, the spices - they are not heavy, but just ever so lightly.

I need to be clear - this tasting battle that occurs does not mean that this is a wine that is going to be "complicated," because Muller Thurgau is not - it is a simple wine. It is neither a great wine, nor is it a bad wine, it just is, and that's completely okay.

2006 Sokol Blosser Muller Thurgau Estate Cuvee

Considering the recent weather here in the great Northwest, gray and chilly, I needed a reminder of sunny skies and warm weather. What better than a opening a bottle of white obtained from the Dundee Hills during Memorial Day Weekend?

The bottle in question was Muller Thurgau Estate Cuvee from Sokol Blosser. This wine has a beautiful straw color and coats the glass wonderfully. After a thorough chilling, the nose on this bottle was not, at first, noteworthy... As the solution warmed, apple, pear, and mineral notes intensified greatly! After thirty minutes in the glass, just a hint of caramel and vanilla tingle the palette. Note to self, slightly chill this Muller, then turn it loose to breathe!

Like many Rieslings, this varietal has a fruity flavor up front, but finishes clean, smooth, and with a slight mineral linger. Yep, I remember that cool spring day at Sokol Blosser.

This wine was paired with a Gruyere cheese fondue and sun-dried tomato chicken sausage. Fabulous. Definately something that I will pick up again on my next diversion North. Oops, too late, this vintage is already sold out!

Bottoms Up!

Saginaw Vineyard 2006 Muller Thurgau

A good way to end the weekend...

Tonight, while I sit enjoying some of my favorite Sunday night television, I am drinking a glass of wine from the Saginaw Vineyard. Saginaw is located south of Eugene, in Cottage Grove, in a very literal off the beaten path area. It is a small family owned winery that gets most of their grapes from other locations. I went there Labor Day weekend when my friend Chris Michaud came to visit.

When travelling to Saginaw, and you turn off the main road, you almost think that you might be driving onto someone's private property, and if you are not careful, you will miss your turn. The tasting room is in a red barn, but the inside is delicately decorated very similar to other small wineries I have been to, particularly a couple small ones in the Tri-Cities area of south-central Washington.

One of the wines we tasted was one that I had not heard of before - which is slightly odd because my parents are HUGE into wine. When I did some research, I learned why it was I might not have heard of this kind before - this particular wine is a Muller Thurgau. Muller Thurgau has sometimes been considered a bit of the bastard child of grape wines being seen as lesser quality and thought of as cheap. This has been particularly true in Germany, where it originated, but the grape has gained popularity in other parts of the world.

The Muller Thurgau from Saginaw Valley is quite enjoyable. Served chilled, when poured it looks a bit darker than white grape juice. I noticed the citrus smell when I gathered a couple whiffs of this wine. When swirled, there is a nice coat that the glass gets, which is slightly slower to run down the glass, yet this wine is far from heavily alcoholic (11% alcohol by volume). I find the taste to also be a bit more citric in nature than some others I can recall. There is a slight flavor of sweet but if you aren't paying attention, you might not be aware that it is there. When you take a sip, you get a burst of flavor, and once swallowed, the taste diminishes, with a very light remnant remaining on the palate.

I was glad that I tried this wine, and I don't know that I would call this a low quality by any stretch of the imagination. I believe that I might have spent $20 for this bottle, and I found it to be well worth it. I would recommend this to anyone wanting to try something a little different, and I would recommend visiting Saginaw Vineyards to everyone who is not a complete snob about where they taste their wine, Scott and Cheryl were very welcoming and will tell you the story of how they came about as wine proprietors.