Wine

By Leigh Pomeroy

On the wine trail

Revisiting old haunts, discovering new wines

At the end of January of each year, I head west to points warmer than what Minnesota offers in February. I visit friends and family in Colorado, then head south to Santa Fe to visit old college buddies.

This year I picked up one friend, a retired airline executive, who drove with me to a shared family house in Newport Beach, California, where the weather is mild, the fish excellent, the restaurants terrific (and, if chosen correctly, reasonably priced) and the wine shops awash in choices I haven't even heard of.

Surprise of surprises, I didn't have to wait till arriving in southern California to find some compelling quaffs.

First of all, my go-to wine shop in Colorado Springs is Coaltrain Liquors, less than a block away from the campus of Colorado College, of which I am an alum. Its location is not by accident, as one of the owners is also a Colorado College grad. (Note to parents of high school students: Like many private colleges in the country, Colorado College offers generous scholarships for outstanding students wishing to study there.)

At Coaltrain I found some intriguing Coloradoproduced wines, which hail from a splendid ShangriLa-like climate near Grand Junction known as the Grand Valley. The bottle that most impressed me was a Colterris Cabernet Franc 2019, young but inherently drinkable and similar to the terrific Cabernet Francs of Washington.

An aside: Cabernet franc was once the primary varietal of the Saint-Émilion region of Bordeaux. Regrettably, and this is true all over Bordeaux, cabernet franc has been replaced by merlot, which is easier to grow, yields better and is more resistant to diseases.

Yes, in some Bordeaux areas, such as Pomerol, merlot reaches its pinnacle, and these wines, due to their scarcity, command astronomical prices. But, in my humble opinion, merlot does not yield a wine anywhere near that made from cabernet franc or cabernet sauvignon.

Arriving in Santa Fe, I was greeted with a culinary and enological surprise at an off-the-beaten-track place called the Tesuque Village Market, in a little valley about 15 minutes north of downtown Santa Fe.

While the wine list is limited, the store and restaurant combination offers impressive choices of unique wines on the store's shelves, which one may bring into the restaurant.

I selected a 2018 Pinot Noir Cuvée Gilbert Gruet, made by the now well-known New Mexico producer of high-quality, reasonably priced sparkling wines, Gruet Winery. While the grapes for this wine were not entirely grown in New Mexico — the label reads "American" as its appellation — the wine was impressive and well made, and paired well with our dinners of chile rellenos with roasted corn, sautéed mushrooms and piñon nuts, and green chile chicken posole. Pinot Noir with Southwestern cuisine? Que paso? The next day we trekked west to one of my favorite hotels, the La Posada Inn, in the town made famous by the Eagles, as in "Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see ..." There's a long history behind the La Posada, a former Harvey House railroad hotel, originally designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, who worked her way up from summer employee to lead architect for both the Fred Harvey Company and the National Park Service. After many years of standing derelict, the La Posada was rescued in the 1990s by a young couple from the East Coast and is now a gem.

The hotel restaurant, called the Turquoise Room, is also a gem and features unique Southwest dishes such as Elk Ribeye Medallions with a Black Currant Brandy Sauce, which I enjoyed, and Cassoulet of the Southwest with grilled quail, elk and smoked andouille sausage, which more than stuffed my traveling companion.

While the wine list does not quite come up to the uniqueness of the cuisine, we took a breath and sampled the improbably named 2019 Chateau Tumbleweed Le Blend, sourced from the Willcox AVA in southeastern Arizona, not far from the Mexican border. I know what you're thinking: Who the heck drinks wine from the Arizona desert?

Not so fast, pardner. The growing area is 4,000 feet in elevation, which modifies the hot days and allows for relatively cool nights, perfect for the cultivation of warm climate varietals like the Italian sangiovese and the Spanish graciano and tempranillo, the three of which make up over 75% of the neighborhood muttlike blend.

The result? A really surprising and exotic red that paired perfectly with our entrées.

Thus well fed and well wined, we continued on to California, where our culinary and enological adventure resumed.