Just bought

I just bought five cases of 2006 Hirsch Gruner Veltliner #1 and one case of S.C. Pannell 2006 Grenache Rosé from my friend Cliff at Michael Skurnik Wines.

The Hirsch is biodynamic and it has a screw cap, which I look for in a wine we’re going to pour by the glass. The poor bartender is so busy that the screw cap is a godsend. I tasted this wine at Skurnik’s East End tasting in April and remember its distinct minerality. The rosé is Cliff’s suggestion.

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Curran 2006 Grenache Blanc

Grenache Blanc is unusual for California. Click above link for what Curran has to say about their wine. Here’s what Jancis says about the grape in the Oxford Companion to Wine:

the white-berried form of grenache noir, is discreetly important in France, where it was overtaken by Sauvignon Blanc as fourth most planted white grape variety (after Ugni Blanc, Chardonnay, and Sémillon) as recently as the late 1980s. Although in decline, the variety is grown on a total of more than 6,000 ha of France, half of them in Roussillon, where it produces full-bodied whites that vary from fat and soft to nervy, terroir-driven cellar candidates of the upper Agly valley. It can also be an important ingredient in the paler Rivesaltes.

Grenache Blanc is also often encountered—with the likes of Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier, and Rolle—in the blended white wines of Languedoc-Roussillon, to which it can add supple fruit if not longevity. It need not necessarily be consigned to the blending vat, however. If carefully pruned and vinified, it can produce richly flavoured, full-bodied varietals that share some characteristics with Marsanne and can be worthy of ageing in small oak barrels. It is also an ingredient in white Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Also

Garnacha Blanca is the light-berried grenache blanc of which in 2004 there were about 3,000 ha/7,410 acres in Spain, where it plays a role in north eastern whites such as those of Alella, Priorato, Tarragona, Rioja, and Navarra.

What I have to say about the wine