(Posted March 26, 2024)
“A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover” ― Clifton Fadiman
This is the third in a series of wine blog posts highlighting some of my favorite wines from celebrities of note and whom I admire. Previous posts reviewed “Gaslighter Wines” by The Chicks and “Pursued by Bear” Wines from Kyle MacLachlan.
There have been very few times in my life when I was in my car listening to the radio and a song came on that was so powerful that it made me want to pull over – in admiration, enjoyment, emotion, whatever the reason. Now this is not especially recommended if you’re on a freeway, but regardless, there have been a few times in my life when a song moved me so much that I could barely catch my breath. One of those times happened in 2007 when I heard a song so powerful that I was almost frozen in admiration. At first, I thought it was a richer, more powerful incarnation of KD Lang, but when it was over the DJ said it was a new artist named Brandi Carlile. I was hooked on Brandi and her music from that day on.
From Washington State, Brandi quickly made a name for herself in several music genres, including rock, Americana, roots, and country, and released several wonderful albums in the 2000s and 2010s. She has won 10 Grammy awards (with 27 nominations) and was the first female artist to be nominated twice in the same year for Song of the Year (for “Right on Time” from her 2021 album “In These Silent Days” and for her collaboration with Alicia Keys for “A Beautiful Noise” to get out the vote prior to the 2020 election).
In 2019, she teamed up with Amanda Shires, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby to form The Highwomen, and they recorded and released a wonderful album together. The group name and the title song were a re-imagining of the supergroup The Highwaymen in the 1980s with Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.
There are too many other wonderful albums and songs to rave about, but I definitely want to include one more in particular. In early 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, one of my other favorite artists – John Prine – died of Covid. Several artists recorded John Prine songs in his honor, but one in particular stood out for me – Brandi’s version of the poignant “Hello in There,” about the ravages and uncertainties of growing old. She performed it (remotely of course) on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and it absolutely rips your heart out.
OK, enough with rip-your-heart-out music. What does any of this have to do with wine? Well, in 2019, Brandi branched out to making wine – for a good cause.
From Wine Spectator in November 2022:
Her Washington-based winery XOBC produces predominantly Rhône-inspired wines. Grapes are sourced from multiple Washington appellations, including Horse Heaven Hills and Walla Walla Valley. The wines are made by Sean Boyd, owner and winemaker at Rotie Cellars [in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, just over the border from Walla Walla, Washington].
The brand’s primary purposes are to raise money for Carlile’s nonprofit Looking Out Foundation and to bring previously ostracized or ignored communities into the world of wine. Managed by Carlile’s wife, Catherine, Looking Out has organized grassroots campaigns and raised money for numerous causes, including COVID-19 relief, racial justice organizations, and Doctors Without Borders.
From the XOBC website: “At XOBC Cellars, we set out to create exceptional wine that is not only notable, but notably generous. In partnership with Brandi’s wife, Catherine Carlile, the Executive Director of The Looking Out Foundation, and friends, Jeri and Amy Andrews, Brandi personally created these wines to be a catalyst for change.”
In an interview with Wine Enthusiast in March 2021, Brandi was asked if there was a connection between creating a memorable song and creating a memorable wine. She replied, “Absolutely. Both require time, contemplation and imagination. A song can never be heard the same way by two people just as great wine is never described consistently.”
But what about the wine? The good news is that it is universally described as excellent. A sampling:
- Sean Sullivan of Wine Enthusiast gave the 2018 “Catherine” Syrah a 92 rating, saying it has “aromas of wet rock, funk, blue fruit, dried orange rind, black olive and sea breeze. Soft, plentiful savory flavors follow. It’s rich but still brings plenty of sophistication.” Owen Bargreen, in his eponymous wine blog, gave it a 93, saying it is “inky in the glass, takes on Hoison sauce, Umami, black cherry cordial and shades of green olive tapenade aromatics. The palate has a soft mouthfeel and wonderful sense of texture. Ripe dark fruits collide with wet stone, seaweed, and salted smoked meats on the palate.” Wow!
- Another Sean Sullivan/Wine Enthusiast review gave the 2018 BC Cabernet (from Horse Heaven Hills in Washington’s Columbia Valley) a 91 rating, saying: “The aromas are brooding, with notes of Satsuma orange, cherry, fresh herbs after a rain and a whiff of wet penny. There are plenty of good things happening on the palate, with its Satsuma and cherry notes.” A couple of Satsumas in there – I had to look it up. It’s a Japanese citrus fruit.
- Another Owen Bargreen review, of the 2018 “Elijah” Grenache: “Right away pretty red rose petals and blood orange zest aromatics provide plenty of enjoyment, as the core of red fruits with stony undertones all take shape in the glass. The palate is fresh and vibrant with a seamless texture. Very pretty guava, Yakima cherry and red raspberry cordial tones mingle with stony minerals and charcuterie tones on the palate.” This one got a 93 rating.
The wine we tried was the 2020 “Crowded Table” wine. This one was 65% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 10% Syrah, or as the XOBC website calls it, a “Bordeaux-style, bespoke blend that shows off a pleasing approachability…. Merlot-dominant, the nose blossoms with plump blackberry, jammy purple fruits, and delicate violet. The palate is unctuous and brings forth essences of plum, currants, and pencil shavings. A harmony of dark fruit characteristics flow seamlessly into well integrated, fine-grained tannins from 30% new French oak barrels. Light notes of vanilla, wet stone, and cedar carry through the finish, leaving lasting impressions of a walk through wooded groves.”
A reviewer from Terra Bella Flowers, a very interesting shop in Seattle that sells… um… flowers along with wine, chocolate, and other gifts, noted that the Crowded Table “showcases a rich garnet hue and demonstrates clear essences of blackberry compote, inky bramble fruit, kirsch and smoked cedar wafting out of the glass…. Abundant harmonies of rhubarb, black licorice, and red peppercorn intermingle with chalky tannins that impart a pleasant structural component. The finish is long-lasting with a toasted pecan note. An incredibly pleasurable every day drinking wine, this medium bodied Bordeaux-style blend is best shared around a crowded table [ha!] with a family style farmhouse meal.”
A couple of things. First, the review from Terra Bella Flowers referred to “kirsch.” I had to look that up too. According to Britannica, kirsch is a “dry, colourless brandy distilled from the fermented juice of the black morello cherry. Kirsch is made in the Black Forest of Germany, across the Rhine River in Alsace (France), and in the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland.” You learn something new every day.
Second, the reference to “Bordeaux-style blend:” As a good reminder, Wine Enthusiast tells us that “The phrase ‘Bordeaux-style red blend’ may be used informally to describe red wines produced from a combination of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and to a lesser extent Carmenère and Malbec.” Bordeaux wines are different from, say, Burgundy, whose winemakers generally do not blend wine (every bottle is usually 100% of something, primarily Pinot Noir or Chardonnay).
I found it to be very pleasing, very smooth. To me, it had aromas of ripe berries and licorice, and flavors of dark cherries. It initially had some heavy tannins (I guess that was the Merlot talking) and a strong finish. After it had breathed a while, it smoothed out considerably. Very enjoyable! It runs about $40.
XOBC wines are fairly limited in supply, but generally bought through the winery’s “Collector’s Club” (though it appears as if there is currently a waitlist to join). However, some are available at a few retail outlets, primarily in Washington State and Oregon but also in California, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, and New Hampshire. You can also find some vintages at a few online wine stores.
One final note: Where does the name XOBC come from? Rumor has it that that’s the way Brandi signs all her emails and letters. Sounds good to me!
Book recommendation: One of my recent acquisitions is a hefty tome called Oz Clarke on Wine: Your Global Wine Companion. I had heard of Oz before I read this book (see below) but didn’t really know much about him. But there is so much to know! According to his website, “Oz Clarke is one of the world’s leading wine experts, known for his phenomenal palate, irreverent style, accurate predictions, and enthusiasm for life in general (and wine in particular). He is the author of many award-winning books on wine. Before wine took over his life in 1984, Oz was a full-time actor and singer, appearing in West End hit shows and touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Alongside his entertaining television and radio broadcasts, including ‘Food and Drink’, ‘Oz and James’ with James May and James Martin’s Saturday Morning, he presents a series of concerts, Drink to Music! with the acclaimed Armonico Consort. Oz is also sports mad. He was awarded an OBE in 2020.” Now that’s a Renaissance man! (Sharp-eyed readers will remember that we recommended his book The History of Wine in 100 Bottles: From Bacchus to Bordeaux and Beyond in an earlier post.)
I think the most interesting part of his writing – apart from his absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of wine – is his gift for describing of the wines he tries. Apparently, his shift from acting to wine tasting and writing was due to his later-in-life discovery of his ability to amazingly and voluminously detect and describe wine aromas and tastes. One of his chapters is titled, “A Wine Taster’s Life,” and it describes his daily tasting and writing routines in … um… enviable detail (I want that life!).
But the tasting notes! In a chapter on Chardonnay, he writes of tasting Meursault wine in Burgundy:
Looking back at my tasting notes [he does that a lot!], I find that, straight from the grower’s barrel in the cool, bright winter sunlight, the young Meursault may still be pale, raw and roughly rubbed with fresh-hewn oak, but its smooth-sided succulence is already clinging to my tongue and cheeks. Tasting it two years later, this same Meursault is straw-gold cut with green, honey and hazelnuts languidly wrapped in oatmeal, with a lingering smell of breakfast buttered toast and fresh-brewed coffee. And now the wine is 10 years old, more evening gold than straw, and all those suggestions of sweetness have dissolved into something much more savoury, wonderfully rich, but it’s the richness of roasted almonds drizzled with cream; the curling brown smoke of toast is still there, and the melted butter still sticks to its crust.
Now those are tasting notes!
Wine-focused TV/movie recommendation: My friend Joe in Cape Cod turned me on to a sweet little movie called From the Vine, a 2019 film featuring Joe Pantoliano. You may remember Pantoliano primarily as a bad guy from The Matrix, Memento, and other action movies. But in this film, he goes in an entirely different direction. As IMDB tells us, “A downtrodden man experiences an ethical crisis and travels back to his hometown in rural Italy to recalibrate his moral compass.” What is missing from that description – his moral compass is recalibrated by taking over a vineyard and starting wine-making. Very enjoyable!
Wine Playlist: As mentioned in earlier posts, I like to create fun and funky playlists based on some of my interests, so I’ve created a wine playlist – songs with titles or lyrics that include wine. You can find it on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rAwgh9Thiary4zUplUsaN
This post’s entry is “Hey, Brother, Pour the Wine,” by the king of cool, Dean Martin. It reminds me of my month-long trip to Italy in 2022, where we tried … um… a lot of wine.
“Here we sit enjoying the shade (hey, brother, pour the wine)
Drink the drink that I have made (hey, brother, pour the wine)
Tell you why the day is sunny, I’m in love with lips of honey
Wait ’til you see the way she walks, hey, brother, pour the wine”
See ya next time!
The Cellar Door 
Love the funky descriptions… pencil shavings😳
LikeLike