Wine & music matching (as sweet and natural as wine & food)

What songs do certain wines remind you of? Like matching wine with food, this question always prods some of our funnest conversations... and runs to the stereo. Where the heck would our lives be without music? The Beachboys once sang, in five part harmony ("Add Some Music"),

The Sunday morning gospel goes good with the soul
There's blues, folk and country, and rock like a rollin' stone...

At a movie you can feel it touching your heart
And on every day of the summertime you hear children chasing ice cream carts
They'll play it on your wedding day, there must be 'bout a million ways
To add some music to your day...

So let's talk wine and music matching. On our Facebook page, we asked readers to throw in their thoughts. For starters, Ron Ricottone talked about what he'll play when he finally opens a bottle of '03 Murphy-Goode Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon signed by our fearless winemaker, Dave Ready Jr.: Diana Krall's sensuous "The Look of Love." We agree with the love connection; but really, as red blooded boys and girls, the wines that are actually more likely to give us that lovin' feelin' (baby, baby, I get down on my knees for you...) are Champagnes or French style methode Champenoise style California sparklers. We don't make sparklers, but two of our favorites happen to be made by our neighbors in the Green Valley/Russian River region, Iron Horse Ranch (their Blanc de Blancs is a guaranteed sexual stimulant) and, of course, J (as creamy smooth as... well, you get the picture)...


We don't make Pinot Noir either; but that's okay, because we only have to drive a few minutes to the west side of Sonoma to get all the satisfaction we need. If you're a Pinotphile, we're sure you know specialists like Williams-Selyem, Flowers, Rochioli, Hartford Family and Dutton-Goldfield. But have you had the Pinots by small, newbie craftsmen like Evening Land Vineyards' Occidental, MacPhail, Small Vines, and Pey-Marin... or lesser knowns like Papapietro-Perry and Tandem... each and every one, pure, sensuous, organoleptic sex! So what's our current Pinot/song match? After some kicking around, we're nominating the classic by the recently departed King of Pop... primarily because we just saw it again, and the males among us suddenly remembered how that brown skinned girl really made us salivate... like great Pinot Noirs... re "The Way You Make Me Feel"...


Okay, may we now talk about our own wines? We cut our teeth, twenty years ago, on classic Alexander Valley Sauvignon Blanc, which we call The Fume. So what is dis about "classic?" To us, it's perfumes of tropical flowers and fruit, not a hint of vegetal or green peppery notes, and the medium-bodied (never heavy, never light), crisp, dry feel in the mouth. A white that just makes you want to hang out and groove, particularly on a summer day. Hence, our nomination for the ideal The Fume song, Sublime's "Summertime," by the (also) late, great Bradley Nowell (rock on, dude!)...


Then there is our reserve cuvee, The Deuce, which sees partial French barrel and malolactic fermentation, resulting in a much deeper, lusher, round and smoky voiced style of Sauvignon Blanc... very much like Amy Winehouse. Re her "Do Me Good"... which, of course, we call "Do Me Goode"...


Rocky Slaughter wrote on our FB wall, suggesting that all we need to do is substitute Chardonnay for yellow in the lyrics of Coldplay's "Yellow," and you know what? It clicks, evoking a natural, flowing, yet hard hitting feel that we definitely find in our own Sonoma County Chardonnay...


In tribute to his home state, Dave Ready Jr. also fashions a Minnesota Cuvee Chardonnay, which amazingly combines both a deep, craggy, toasty oak edge with silken, sweet fruit tones. Such a juxtaposition just cannot help but remind us of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan's phenomenal rendition of Dylan's "Girl From North Country" on the old Johnny Cash Show. If you're not familiar with it, heah's the scoop: this collaboration actually took place during Dylan's sweet voiced, "country pie" crooning days (little resemblance to the sandpaper, bottom-barrel voiced Dylan of today), and Cash, as always, was in his deep, craggy, hard livin' element. This was history, folks, like Jr.'s winemaking...


But wait, there's more... our super-fragrant, intense, yet meltingly smooth, stony, fluid textured Island Block Chardonnay... from a vineyard so goode that even we often take for granted, like the effortless sounds of Jack Johnson (how can anyone possibly put so much "island" sun into music), particularly in his wet, tropical "Banana Pancakes"...


Sheilah Troiano evidently has a longer musical memory than we do, because to her, our soft yet zesty, sweetly blackberryish jammin' Liar's Dice Zinfandel is Elvis' "Suspicious Minds" all over. Yeah, we can see that... sitting at a table in Vegas, trying to psyche some stranger... yeah, we can see that...


Our Jackpot Zinfandel is classically varietal, yet an almost a different animal: more tannic, harder edged than the Liar's Dice, yet intense with raisined fruit and boysenberry flavor, lingering so long that it just makes you wanna shake. So here, we think of a harder, rougher, yet classically sweet brand of rock... so what more perfect song for sipping Jackpot than the Rolling Stones' layered, pent-up "Tumbling Dice?"...


The Murphy-Goode Snake Eyes Zinfandel, is star anise and pepper spice personified; thick and purple, not for the faint of heart. We thought Sheilah Troiano's suggestion of "Paralyzed" by Finger Eleven is as good a match as any for this black 'n blue bruiser...


Let's turn to the red Bordeaux grapes, our piece de resistance. We're Alexander Valley, and try as we might, we just can't seem to grow a Bordeaux grape that doesn't want to make itself perfectly at home. Our Alexander Valley Merlot, for instance, is classically smooth, velvety, lush... like a curvaceous tease, always at the back of the mind or tip of the tongue. If you're an old-timer, or (like us) a connoisseur of old-timey rock, you very well know the legendary Nico, the lead singer of Velvet Underground. Talk about dark, velvety, teasing voices... as in their classic "Femme Fatale"...


The Murphy-Goode Petit Verdot has been something of a longtime specialty of ours, almost out of default. But so what if other wineries don't bother bottling this classic Bordeaux grape as a single varietal? We absolutely adore the deep, compact, black velvet qualities of the wines this grape makes. Sure, it's not "big" like Cabernet Sauvignon, nor "soft" like Merlot. But it absolutely rocks, better than most grapes... just like forever punkish icon Chrissie Hynde totally rocks, like in The Pretenders' "Boots of Chinese Plastic"...


When Cabernet Sauvignon is goode, it is strong, muscular, yet classically smooth and balanced... veddy easy to love. Even we admit that the smooth style of Maroon 5's "She Will be Loved" projects much of this easy elegance...


But lest you misconstrue what we're all about, we also produce a stable of big, brawny, concentrated styles of Cabernet Sauvignon that may almost be the opposite of "smooth," yet is thrilling to the touch, and sweet in its own way. Was there a sweeter guitarist, for example, than the late Stevie Ray Vaughan? Good god, we could listen to that Texan hurricane riff all day and night. Remember how he once transformed the most innocent of songs, "Mary Had a Little Lamb," into something down 'n dirty black and wild as night, like the Murphy-Goode Terra a Lago Cabernet Sauvignon?...


We've got more, but we're going to give you (and ourselves) a break right now... 'til later!

The MGs...