TN: When three Santas came to town (Arcadian, Melville, Samsara)

WINE TALK
21

Sounds like an awesome tasting. I’ve not been able to drink any Arcadian wines but I think Melville and Samsara are both superb. Interestingly, I prefer their Syrahs over their Pinots in both cases. If you haven’t had them, I highly recommend you do if they’re ever available to you.

22

Very true, Melville Syrah could be a very, very good match with Otto’s palate. And more recently with Chad Melville at the helm, Melville reds seem to be generally lower alcohol, yet still maintain the whole cluster goodness.

As was mentioned up thread, Melville Carrie’s is now Block M Pinot Noir. Carrie’s was named for the former winemaker’s ex-wife, who as the legend goes asked for royalties to paid from sales of the wine bearing her name post-divorce. The wine was then renamed to Block M.

I haven’t had the opportunity to age Melville PN and Syrah myself, and to be honest may not go past 5-7 years in most cases. But of the Pinots, Block M tends to be darkest, most concentrated and structured and in its youth looks the part of the cuvee that should age longest. Sandy’s is a more floral, red fruited impression with fine, but not immense structure and feels like it is destined for short term cellaring. Now, their Syrah is different story, I would not be surprised if it drinks great from release to 10-15 years, it is quite special and current vintages especially seem primed to develop longer term.

23

One more note - Chad Melville sold Samsara a number of years back and the new owners and their winemaker, Matt Brady, are making some great wines.

Cheers.

24

Ha! Total goof-up. :grimacing:

I must’ve stopped reading after the phrase “Unfortunately Norway is a bit cut off from the rest of the Europe” and switched to Wine-Searcher mode.

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25

Definitely a fan of Arcadian, less familiar with Melville and Samsara. Glad all these wines are getting some good press in Finland!

Cheers,
Doug

26

Otto,

Thanks for the terrific notes on my wines! I have not had the pleasure to visit Finland but have spent some time in Denmark and we do have an importer there. If you wish you can send an email joe@arcadianwinery.com and I can send you contact information on how to possibly get these wines.

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27

Just a small correction, the rest of the notes are impeccable as always [snort.gif]
I haven’t tasted any of the PNs mentioned in the thread but I’ve had the Melville Estate PN on many occasions and I did find that it has that typical cherry-cola flavor profile that is so common to find in many Californians PN. I’m surprised that none of the bottles you’ve tasted have shown that, or maybe they did but you use another descriptor for that particular flavor profile. [scratch.gif]
When it comes to Langhe Nebbiolo, I’m not a big fan as well, but so far I’ve tasted some of the 2020s and they have been amazing without exception: Guido Porro Langhe Nebbiolo Camilu, Roberto Voerzio Langhe Nebbiolo Disanfrancesco and Produttori del Barbaresco Langhe Nebbiolo
Of course, 4 cuvees (including the one you have tasted) are a very small sample to make a broad statement about the region/vintage but I can’t help myself from being extremely enthusiastic about 2020 in Langhe [cheers.gif]

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…given that Finland is actually not in Scandinavia champagne.gif

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29

One reason that might explain this is that I’ve probably never drunk a single drop of cherry cola. It’s hard to use a descriptor of a substance you don’t how it tastes like! :smiley:

Every now and then I’ve used “cola” to describe some new world Pinot Noirs, but usually that entails some sweet oak qualities that intermingle with Pinosity - and none of these wines showed such oak use.

OTOH, many TNs did have cherry mentioned several times!

When it comes to Langhe Nebbiolo, I’m not a big fan as well, but so far I’ve tasted some of the 2020s and they have been amazing without exception: Guido Porro Langhe Nebbiolo Camilu, Roberto Voerzio Langhe Nebbiolo Disanfrancesco and Produttori del Barbaresco Langhe Nebbiolo
Of course, 4 cuvees (including the one you have tasted) are a very small sample to make a broad statement about the region/vintage but I can’t help myself from being extremely enthusiastic about 2020 in Langhe > [cheers.gif]

This was probably one of only two 2020 Nebbiolos I’ve tasted, and while this was a very lovely wine indeed, Roccalini’s 2020 LN was a clumsy and somewhat dull effort clocking in at 15% ABV. Based on my experiences, my expectations are thus still quite mixed. :smiley: I really hope BarBars will turn out more reliably better!

Yeah this too :smiley:

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30

Thank you for these terrific wines!

I will drop a message, because these wines were truly terrific and it would be definitely interesting to see how the other labels and vintages are.

I have no idea how readily Danish sell stuff abroad. I’ve purchased some beers there, but can’t remember ever seeing a Danish wine webshop that was willing to sell outside Denmark. These wines were purchased from a German importer of Californian wines, but I believe 2007 was the most recent vintage they had and even though they still had some stock last year, most of their Arcadian wines were sold out by now.

31

See what I mean! It’s mildly annoying. [rofl.gif]

Geographically, just a chunk of Finland is part of the Scandinavian peninsula. But I thought in terms of history, arts, culture, sociopolitical systems etc that Finland was loosely grouped in “Scandinavia.” And it’s also been part of the Kalmar Union with Sweden, no?

Or is Nordic a better term?

Do Finns even agree?

Thanks for the thoughts.

Now back to our regular programming: California wine!

32

Jost and Margot Schmidt of California Wines is my German importer and can obtain library wines from me. I can send you a menu and you can request them from Jost. Cheers!

33

Why does Norway put barcodes on their military ships?







So they can Scandinavian.

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34

Moreover, Finland and Norway are not linked by rail, right? [wink.gif]

35

Well, Nordic is the term that encompasses those history, arts, culture, sociopolitical systems etc. you mentioned. Scandinavia is every now and then used interchangeably with “Nordics” or “Nordic countries”, but as Scandinavia officially refers to the Scandinavian peninsula, which Finland really isn’t a part of (apart from the almost completely uninhabited northern reach of the country), it’s better to go with Nordics. At least there’s no possibility of confusion, as most of the time “Scandinavia” is used for a much smaller region than “Nordics”.

And finally, even if we share quite a bit of history and culture, one should remember that Scandinavia historically refers to the region inhabited by the vikings, whereas Finns never were vikings - on the contrary, we were the ones suffering from the viking raids! :smiley:

Well, actually all these bottles (and the few Arcadian wines I myself have) have been sourced from Schmitt (and I had understood that Margot passed away a short while ago and Jost now is taking care of the business, but at a much smaller scale than before). However, Schmitt had only a small handful of these bottles left when we placed an order, and the last time I heard from them, they had run out of most bottles, apart from one or two labels. Hence I was wondering if there were any other importers / wine shops that might still have some bottles left!

This is correct. Not only it would take crazy long to go to Norway by train (as Finland shares border with Norway only on a relatively short strip located on the northernmost edge of Finland) as one would first have to travel across the whole country to the northern border (which is impossible, as railroads cover Finland only up to 4/5 of the country, while the northernmost fifth is inaccessible by train), and then travel across Norway all the way back to the south. It would also be impossible as Finland has a different railroad gauge (larger Eastern European / Russian standard) compared to that of Sweden and Norway (smaller western standard).

If one wants to get from southern Finland to southern Norway, basically the only viable option is to fly. It’s quite different if one would live somewhere up north, where the Swedish and Norwegian borders are all relatively close by, but it’s so darn cold and dark there all the time, so I really don’t understand why anyone would want to.

36

Finns could bond with the Anglo-Saxons and Celts (and no doubt many others) on that issue.

Interesting. Making it impossible for the Swedes or Norwegians to invade by the non-existent rail lines between your countries. [wink.gif]

37

Speaking of Finnish things, I have a Finnish friend in New York whose first language is Swedish. I was curious if she identified as Swedish or Finnish. She said Finnish, absolutely, but that Swedish was dominant on much of the western coast of Finland and was the language of the elites until a generation or two ago. (She’s in her late 70s at least.)

I found this helpful in understanding the situation in Ukraine, where many Ukrainians whose mother tongue is Russian (including Zelensky) nonetheless identify as Ukrainians. It’s in contrast to other parts of the world where the mother tongue closely corresponds to or even defines people’s identities (e.g., Quebec, Catalunya, Basque Spain, Flems and Walloons in Belgium). The Finnish and Ukrainian attitude seems much more civilized.

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38

You are entirely correct - apart from Swedish being the language of the elites until a generation or two ago. The Swedish influence began to wane much earlier, already in the late 19th and early 20th century.

And to those who don’t know Finnish history (most likely 99% of the board users):
Until 1809 Finland was under Swedish rule
Between 1809 and 1917 Finland was part of the Russian Empire
When the Russian Empire began to falter in 1917, Finland declared independence.

During the Swedish rule, Finnish was the language of the peasants and Swedish was the language of upper and middle classes - about 15% of the population spoke Swedish back then (5% now). All education was in Swedish and any higher / official positions went either to Finnish-Swedes or to Finns who could speak fluent Swedish.

During the Russian rule, Finnish people never really began speaking Russian, so we remained an autonomic part of Russian empire where people spoke Finnish or Swedish, not Russian.

What’s interesting, though, is that during the Swedish rule, a big part of the Swedish-speaking population identified as Swedish and the Finnish-speaking population identified as Finnish - even if there was no country called “Finland” back then. Instead during the Russian rule, in the mid-19th century, the Swedish-speaking population began to promote Finnish national identity and the so-called Finnish national awakening began. The Swedish-speaking Finns had started to identify themselves as Finnish as well and began promoting Finnish culture, language and history. During this time many notable “Fennomanic” people actually changed their Swedish names to Finnish or more Finnish-sounding names (some even changed their names to names that might sound Finnish to a foreigner, yet sound weird to Finnish ears!) The Russians were only happy about all of this because they thought Finland would be easier to control if the subjects lost their connection with Sweden, guaranteeing their loyalty with Tsar. Thus, in 1864, Finnish language gained an official position in administration and finally in the 1890’s the status of Finnish language was equal to that of Swedish.

Swedish still remained as the predominant language of culture and politics for a few decades more, but by the 1920’s, Finnish had taken over. So I’d say Swedish as the language of the elite was a bit longer than a generation or two ago. :smiley:

Nevertheless, I hope this sheds a little bit of light why the Swedish-speaking Finns don’t associate identify themselves as Swedish; for the past 150-200 years both Finnish-and-Swedish speaking Finns have identified themselves only as Finnish people. The Russians hoped this kind of identity movement would help them rule over Finland, but it actually was borne out of desire for people to have a strong national identity that was clearly something not Russian.

A propos, I myself come from a Swedish-speaking family: my father’s father spoke mainly Swedish, so my father came from a bilingual family. However, my parents never really spoke any Swedish at home, so I really don’t speak Swedish that well - although I can understand spoken and written Swedish quite well. And my last name is Swedish, not Finnish.

I found this helpful in understanding the situation in Ukraine, where many Ukrainians whose mother tongue is Russian (including Zelensky) nonetheless identify as Ukrainians. It’s in contrast to other parts of the world where the mother tongue closely corresponds to or even defines people’s identities (e.g., Quebec, Catalunya, Basque Spain, Flems and Walloons in Belgium). The Finnish and Ukrainian attitude seems much more civilized.

Yes, to us Finns the situation of Russian-speaking Ukrainians is very similar to how things are over here, so I doubt Finnish people had no problems understanding how the Russian-speaking community could identify themselves as Ukrainians, not Russians. Your mother tongue doesn’t automatically dictate which country or culture you should identify with.