Here's a couple of interesting older labels from the Santa Clara Valley. They were opened at a recent party by Wes Barton, who has a great knack for finding interesting local wines. I didn't get the chance to take proper notes, but I managed to rescue the empty bottles and remove the labels.

Congress Springs was founded in the 1970s by Daniel Gers. He discovered a derelict vineyard in Saratoga with head pruned Zinfandel vines dating back to before prohibition. Together with his wife Robin they restored the vineyards and launched a successful winery. Around 1990 Daniel sold the winery and it became Savannah-Chanelle winery. The head-pruned Zinfandel vines are still producing today.

Congress Springs was well known for their San Ysidro Chardonnay, which often gained 90+ ratings from Spectator. The wine was still in very good shape despite its age; an amber colour and nice mature flavours.

Fortino was established in 1970 in Santa Clara's Hecker Pass, and is still going 40 years later. They make around 15,000 cases, mainly sold from the tasting rooms and local stores and restaurants.

Ruby Cabernet is a cross developed at UC Davis in the 1930s. The aim was to to produce a vine combining the quality of Cabernet Sauvignon with the heat and drought tolerance of Carignan. An acre was planted at Ridge in the 1950s, and the winery produced a series of rather good Monte Bello Ruby Cabernets from the late 1960s through the mid 1980s, but overall it wasn't a great success and is now mainly planted in the central valley, where around 6,000 acres are grown as a blending grape for bulk wines.

So a 30 year old wine made from an unremarkable grape by an unremarkable winery? It turned out to be surprisingly pleasant, still having a fair amount of fruit left as well as a little tannin. The colour was a nice red brown.

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Looking back at the wines I've tasted for this blog, almost all of them were rated above average. This might not seem logical until you consider the millions of gallons of mass produced plonk out there. Bronco, makers of Charles Shaw, farm 100 times as many acres as are planted in the whole of Santa Cruz County.

Of course there are the exceptions. Take for example the 2007 Picchetti Viognier, Still Water Vineyard, Paso Robles. Viognier typically makes light, crisp, floral wines, but in this instance it's been pummeled with oak and malolactic fermentation to the point that it resembles a generic over-manipulated Chardonnay. Loads of vanilla and buttered toast masking the fruit apart from some honey notes. 75

Then there's the NV Fortino Mirabella, Central Coast. Now this time I had fair warning; non-vintage, generic appellation and no vineyard or grape varieties listed. It's just a few left-over barrels blended together, and it tastes as you'd expect; a simple, sweet fruit cocktail, without much structure. It's a wine for people who don't like wine - which is fair enough, but the $16 asking price is unreasonable for what you're getting. 75

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Sometimes a wine needs the right food pairing to show well. A light bodied wine that tastes thin and acidic alone might match well with a tomato pasta dish, and a full bodied, tannic red is a great match for a thick juicy steak.

Last weekend we had some friends over for dinner. I'd been to Costco and picked up some of their USDA Prime steaks; season them with salt and pepper, put them on the barbecue and eat them in the garden under the stars with a nice red wine, grilled vegetables and fresh bread. A perfect summer evening.

We'd had a spectacular 1990 Penfolds Bin 389 with the steaks, and followed that with a rather nice 2006 Stefania Uvas Creek Cabernet Sauvignon. It was still early, so I went to open something else, and pulled out a bottle of 2005 Fortino Santa Clara Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

The nose had lots of sweet blackcurrant with a whiff of nail varnish in the background, but on the palate it was tart and tannic, with flavours of sour blackcurrant, oak and a 'green' streak that I didn't care for. We decided on reflection that we'd drunk enough for the night so I recorked it and put it in the fridge, thinking I'd probably cook with it.

The following night Alison had a tennis match, so while she was out I made a curry. I love hot, spicy Indian food with loads of methi (fenugreek) and fresh dhania (coriander/cilantro) but pairing it with wine is always problematic as the food tends to overwhelm them. Some people recommend spicy off-dry whites like Riesling or Gewurztraminer, but I'm not a huge fan of off-dry whites - I'll usually just have a beer or water.

Anyway, I spotted the opened bottle of Fortino Cabernet and thought 'why not?'. Surprisingly it worked; the green streak was masked by the herbs and the tomato and vinegar took care of the tartness. The blackcurrant fruit showed through quite nicely.

So the moral is, if you happen to open a bottle of wine and it's not to your taste, you don't have to decide between suffer it, throw it away or cook with it; with a bit of imagination the right food can make all the difference.

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