Rosenblum Open House Feb 2007

I've been a big fan of Rosenblum for about 3+ years now. Their quarterly open house was this past weekend on both Sat and Sun, whereby they open their Alameda tasting room from 12-5 for a tasting of many their newly released wines. They typically have 30-50 wines to taste, somtimes including barrel samples. It typically draws 400-800 people per day. The nice thing is that if you show up early there is time to taste (and spit!) as many of the wines as you can stand.
And after attending the ZAP tasting at Fort Mason in SF, I appreciate the much more leisurely pace of the Rosenblum tasting.

The Rosenblum style is huge ripe fruit with a healthy dollop of oak. Their signature grape is for the last two decades has been Zinfandel, but as of recently their Syrahs and Petite Syrahs have also become a serious force to be reckoned with.

In addition, sometimes the growers of their single vineyard wines show up as pourers. On this past Sunday, the growers of the Holbrook Mitchell and the Kick estates were present. In many cases, the growers are modest farmers who have been at their trade for years or even decades. They are modest and unremarkable if you didn't know who they were.

For the first time, I thought the Syrahs and Petite Syrahs were the best wines at the tasting. I bought 8 Zins versus 11 Petite/Syrahs.

My favorites at this open house, prioritized by value. were:

1. Hillside 2004 Syrah $25 - a lovely smooth wine. A good bit of this wine was from th Kick vineyards which had a even better wine but at over twice the price the Kick wasn't the best bargain.
   
2. Monte Rosso 2005 Zinfandel $45 - rich complex Zin.
   
3. Rominger 2005 Syrah $25 - a tasty solid Syrah.
4. Kick 2004 Syrah $55 - my first tasting indicated this was the best wine overall and tied for the most expensive. Very smooth with a rich body. A later tasting when my palate was more fatigued was not so impressive.
5. Rockpile Ridge 2004 Petite Syrah $45 - smooth fruit with minerals.
6. Lyons 2005 Pinot Noir $30 - a big Pinot, yet with the classic stony red cherry pit flavor with some acidity. This was at the same table I was pouring, so I had several tastings.
7. Base Camp 2003 Syrah $26 - Nose of vanilla and chocolate.
   
8. Richard Sauret 2005 Zinfandel $25 - ((The 2001 Sauret was the wine that hooked me on Rosenblum so I always will have a soft spot for the RS)). Not particularly impressive with a med body and a somewhat pedestrian zin flavor profile.
9. Lyons 2004 Zinfandel $45 - big tannic fruit. Needs a few more years to soften up.