The electricity of creativity
May 20th, 2012“I’m like a great big dark cloud, floating over the land, discharging my creativity in a sudden burst, like a lightning storm. If I were on twitter, facebook, etc. I feel I would waste the energy in lots of small bursts. I do not want to do that. You won’t find me on social networks. [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/N1R5bPrgFQw/
The powerful impact of our grazing herd in the vineyard
May 20th, 2012Preview: Knights Bridge Wine Dinner at Blue Ginger
May 20th, 2012
On Tuesday, April 24th 2012 Blue Ginger in Wellesley, MA is hosting a paired wine dinner featuring Knights Bridge Winery. The event costs $145 inclusive of tax and gratuity. Click here for details and more information.
I sat down with Knights Bridge Managing Director Timothy Carl to preview the wines slated to be poured at the dinner and learn more about the winery. I hadn’t heard of Knights Bridge until recently. For some reason, when I first heard the name Knights Bridge I immediately thought of the well-regarded-as-a-value-play Beringer Knights Valley line-up. The Beringer wines are good, but a better comparison for Knights Bridge would be Peter Michael whose vineyards are a stone’s throw from Knights Bridge’s 120 acre estate north of Calistoga in the slopes of the Mayacamas mountain range.
Tim is one of those guys who lives in many circles. PhD in genetics. Harvard Fellow. Consulting experience at McKinsey and Putnam Associates. Quartermaster in the US Navy. Chef. UC Davis-education in winemaking. The guy loves to learn.
In 2005 he left Boston to return home to northern California and he’s now bringing that experience, backed by 6 generations of winemaking, to the relatively new endeavor that is Knights Bridge. Their first officially released vintage was 2006 and they currently produce 1,200 cases.
When I asked him how he plans to get the attention of today’s fickle wine consumers he said, “By making the absolute best wine possible.” For him, everything comes back to that: Producing the best balanced wines they can.
We started off with a 2009 Pont de Chevalier Sauvignon Blanc. French for Knights Bridge, it’s their second label. It was aged in stainless steel and neutral oak barrels (previously used, in this case for Chardonnay). I thought it was golden and sunny yet balanced nicely by racy minerality and acidity. Green apples and lemon zest. Tasty. 120 cases produced, $40. 89/100 WWP: Very Good.
Next up was the 2009 Knights Bridge West Block Chardonnay. This wine was chosen, along with wines from Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Colgin, Staglin, Peter Michael and others, to be poured at a reception at last year’s G-8 summit at the Louvre. After tasting the wine I can see why it was included in this illustrious company.
The wine weighs in at 15.5% alcohol but you’d never guess it. Light golden in the glass, it’s tremendously round and creamy yet beautifully clean and elegant. Complex aromas and flavors that seemed to change each time I tasted it. Most notable were roasted pear with coconut cream pie in the background. But approached from a different angle when tasted with food, zesty citrus aspects came forward. Quite a wine. 200 cases produced, $65. 93/100 WWP: Outstanding.
Timothy explained that the Knight’s Valley AVA is unique in it’s ability to produce both great Chardonnay and great Cabernet Sauvignon. This, he said, was due to diurnal temperature swings greater than 50F in the summer along with cooler micro climates where Chardonnay can excel.
The winemaker for both the Chardonnay and the Cabernet Sauvignon is Jeff Ames. Jeff has served as an assistant winemaker to the highly regarded Thomas Rivers Brown and has helped produce wines for Schrader, Maybach, and and Outpost as well as his own label Rudius.
The first Cabernet we tasted was a 2008 Knights Bridge Cabernet Sauvignon produced from mountain fruit from their estate vineyards in Sonoma (the Bridge in Knights Bridge is named for the “bridge” of sorts their property forms between Sonoma and Napa). The wine was aged for 28 months in 100% new French Oak and weighs in at a moderate 14.5% alcohol. The wine snuck up on me a bit. At first it presented itself as a “nice”, pleasant, smooth Cab. But it built power on the mid-palate as it rested in my mouth and finished with a brawny, delicious chocolate-laced finish. 300 cases produced, $115. 92/100 WWP: Outstanding.
Next up was the 2008 Knights Bridge Beckstoffer Dr. Crane Cabernet Sauvignon. It was aged for 21 months in 100% new French Oak and is 14.9% alcohol. The Dr. Crane vineyard is just west of Tre Vigne restaurant if you’re familiar with the area and is known for its rocky soils which tend to produce wine with small berries and scorched earth characteristics. It was quite a bit more tannic than the Knights Bridge at this stage, but also more complex and powerful. 135 cases produced, $135. 92/100 WWP: Outstanding.
The final wine we tasted was the 2008 Knights Bridge Beckstoffer To Kalon Cabernet Sauvignon (pronoucned “tow-kuh-lawn” and Greek for “highest beauty”). To Kalon is arguably the most sought after vineyard in America – especially amongst those who sell their grapes to other producers. The only domestic wines Wine Spectator has ever rated 100 points came from this vineyard in the form of Schrader’s 2007 MM-VII and CCS bottlings.
Also aged for 21 months in 100% new French Oak, the grape clusters were destemmed and cold soaked for 24 hours then fermented on skins in tank. The wine is massive with explosive notes of blackberries, mocha, cinnamon, and chocolate covered espresso beans. Chalky, mouth-filling tannins support a long flavorful finish. Quite spectacular. 110 cases produced, $135. 94/100 WWP: Outstanding.
At last check there was still some availability for the dinner Tuesday night. Give Blue Ginger a call if you’re interested in attending: 781-283-5790 x18
If that doesn’t work out for you check out their wines at these (and other) restaurants and retailers in Massachusetts:
- Flemings
- L’Espelier
- Morton’s Seaport
- Radius
- Bauer Wine & Spirits
- Gordon’s
Next Steps:
- Check out the menu for the dinner at Blue Ginger Tuesday night
- Visit the Knights Bridge Winery website and sign up for their mailing list
- Look for their wines at retail via Wine-Searcher.com
BLUE MOON OF KENTUCKY BLUE RIVER BLUE SUEDE SHOES BLUEBERRY HILL BOSOM OF ABRAHAM
What 1% increase in spending will sell you more wine?
May 20th, 2012Ironically, the answer is probably not by increasing the quality of your wine. With the one exception, moving from a Parker (or other pointillistic) rating of 89 to 90, there is very little chance that you can find any benefit to a 1% increase in wine quality leading to a measured increase in wine sales. Yet [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/k6QZ4w5bZU4/
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Elk Cove Wine Dinner at Sprigs Restaurant in Acton, MA
May 20th, 2012Sprigs Restaurant in Acton, MA is offering what appears to be a fantastic dinner featuring wines from Elk Cove Vineyard. $63 per person gets you a 5 course meal paired with wines from Elk Cove, many of which we don’t see available at retail in Massachusetts.
I’ve found Elk Cove to be a reliable producer, vintage after vintage, of reasonably priced delicious Oregon Pinot Noir. Their wines always seem to deliver ample fruit while respectfully reflecting where they come from.
Click the menu image below to visit the Sprigs website and learn more.
Thanks to friend and reader A.L. for the heads up.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WellesleyWinePress/~3/zt1sXE5RXfg/elk-cove-wine-dinner-at-sprigs.html
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Tasting Report: 2009 Roar Pinot Noir
May 20th, 2012
Garys’, Rosella’s, Pisoni… While exploring top California Pinot Noir producers you’ll inevitably bump into a short list of vineyards that supply folks like Kosta Browne, Loring, Siduri, A.P. Vin, and Miner with grapes. When you dig a little deeper you’ll find that Gary and Rosella Franscioni are the owners of these vineyards and they produce wine under their own label: Roar.
The vineyards are within the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA in Monterey County California, which has become one of my favorite regions for Pinot Noir. The Russian River Valley, Anderson Valley, and the Sonoma Coast are up there too, but I’m really enjoying the bold fruit-forward Pinot Noirs from SLH.
The Franscionis have been farming in the area for over 100 years before getting into wine. They planted Rosella’s Vineyard in 1996 then decided to make their own wine in 2001. It’s amazing how quickly Pinot Noir quality has risen in California.
The name Roar comes from sound winds make as it tears through their vineyards. Roar recently released their Spring 2010 offer to folks on their mailing list. Their Pinots sell for $40-$50.
The winemaker here is Ed Kurtzman (Freeman, August West, and his own label Sandler) with consultation from Adam Lee (Siduri). They also make Syrah and recently added Chardonnay to their lineup.
Here are my thoughts on their 2009 appellation bottling.
2009 Roar Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir
994 Cases Produced
$40 Release Price
14.9% Alcohol
I had high hopes for this wine and it didn’t disappoint. At all.
Opened it to help decide whether to buy their 2010′s and I think I will. It’s ready to go immediately upon opening but boy does it reveal more with time. Each sip was better than the one before it. Tremendous.
Started off as a very good/outstanding Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir but evolved into much more.
Brimming with incredibly ripe strawberries with supporting notes of dry kindling. Like imagine you’re starting a campfire in the desert and you grab some mesquite and snap one open. Wow. But not doubt – the fruit dominates. It’s just always followed up with enough savory complexity to keep it interesting.
Unfined and unfiltered, and it shows at times with slight siltiness throughout and occasional rogue sediment. The mouthfeel is silky smooth and in keeping with its category. Long finish. Tremendous wine. Carries its price tag ($40) and then some.
If it were an NFL running back it would be Barry Sanders – starts off looking like it’s going to be just a solid effort and ends up breaking it wide open. So fun to watch it in action.
94/100 WWP: Outstanding
Based on this experience I’ll be buying their 2010s and looking forward to trying more of their wines. You can find them around at retail, but you’ve got to look around.
Further Reading:
- To learn more and join their mailing list visit: RoarWines.com
- Tasting Report: 25 2009 California Pinot Noirs
- Critically Tasting Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir from Vinography
Question of the Day: Have you tried Roar Pinot Noir? If so what did you think? If not, what other producers in this category would your recommend?
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Short term wine storage: How warm is too warm?
May 19th, 2012Weather-wise this past week in Boston has been gorgeous. The high temperatures topped 80F yesterday and I started to get concerned about the boxes of wine I have sitting around that don’t fit into my wine fridge. The room where I tend to keep wine got up to 76F yesterday afternoon so I decided to take the wine down to the basement where it’s in the low 60Fs.
With quite a bit of wine in-flight across the country as spring shipping season is in full swing I’ve also been wondering whether those shipments might be exposed to more heat than we’d like.
It got me thinking I might be overreacting a bit.
The wine sitting on a retailer’s shelf has, in some cases, been through much worse. Who knows what weather that wine was subject to when it was shipped? And how long as it been sitting on the retailer’s shelf in a room that’s usually air conditioned but likely hits the mid-70Fs during the warmer months?
And what about my friends who live in warmer climates? Wines stored on the counter spend most of their life in the high 70Fs. How long until those wines are spent?
I know first hand how extreme heat can destroy wine. When we were moving from Arizona to Massachusetts a few years back I had a couple boxes of wine in the $30-$60/bottle range. It wasn’t enough to warrant exploring separate climate controlled transport – or so I thought – so I just shipped it with the rest of our household goods. The wine was totally cooked. Some wine seeped out of the corks as I could see on the capsules. The wine tasted lifeless and like stewed vegetables. After popping 2 or 3 spoiled Sterling SVRs (that blew me away at the winery) I was thirsting for anything fresh and clean. Anything!
So, for short term storage, how critical is it to keep wine cool? Here’s Wine Spectator’s Dr. Vinny weighing in on a similar question:
Is it OK that a bottle of wine was exposed to a temperature of 70-75 degrees for 24 hours? Answer: http://bit.ly/GH5HXo
My take is that I’m comfortable keeping wine in the mid-70Fs for a month or two. But if it’s going to be longer than that I’d seek out some way to keep the wine cooler. Especially for nicer bottles that merit mid-term aging.
Question of the Day: What’s your take on this?
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On Being an Enthusiast and Sharing Useful Information
May 19th, 2012An excellent blog post popped up in my Flipboard Google Reader feed this morning. It has nothing to do with wine but it was useful, interesting and made me think a lot about the things I write about here on this blog.
The post is about procuring new wheels and tires for a BMW by Chris Parente. The steps Chris went though researching, ordering, tracking, negotiating, receiving and assembling the order were very familiar to me. They’re eerily similar to what we go through as wine deal hounds.
With the exception of installation, I do all of these things when I’m buying wine. Sure, there’s the occasional impulse buy at a local wine shop or grocery store, but the bulk of my buying these days is online, in response to email offers, or winery direct. Like Chris with his interest in specific wheels and tires, once you’ve gone Wine Berserkers you want very specific wines.
What I liked about the post is that he gave specific examples of resources he used and how he went about the process. I can see my way to leveraging his techniques and having a more enjoyable experience by getting better products and service at the best possible prices. Coincidentally, if I had once sentence to describe the mission of this blog that would be it.
What got me thinking the most about his post, though, is the question of whether it’s worth it. Or rather, whether I’m interested in getting into another high involvement hobby. You can tell how much time and research went into tires and wheels for one of his cars – imagine extending that across the entire enthusiast experience. You’ve got to want it and it’s got to be a priority to do it well.
I spend hours each week thinking about wine. Reading articles, blogs, consulting and contributing to CellarTracker, looking for deals on wine-searcher.com. Buying it, drinking it, visiting wineries, attending events – writing about it.
When I need new tires or wheels I just got down to DirectTire and they take care of it. Similarly when I needed a new bike for our 7 year old recently. We just went to a couple shops nearby and bought what seemed to be a good fit for our needs. And maybe that’s fine for the occasional purchase. Spend the time saved burning up the web for the best deal on healthier pursuits. Life in balance, right?
But I wouldn’t mind being more savvy in more domains. And that’s why I enjoy acquiring and sharing knowledge via blogs and social networks. Mainstream publications just don’t cover this stuff in a way that’s as focused on the consumer experience.
You can’t go too deep into too many hobbies. But you can learn a little from someone who’s deep in a topic and can share useful information. Chris does that and reading his post reminded me to try to do a little more of that here on this blog.
Check it his blog here: Work, Wine and Wheels
You can follow Chris on Twitter: @cparente
I’d love it if you SUBSCRIBED to The Wellesley Wine Press
PS This post was written on an iPad with Blogsy.
BLUE MOON OF KENTUCKY BLUE RIVER BLUE SUEDE SHOES BLUEBERRY HILL BOSOM OF ABRAHAM
The electricity of creativity
May 19th, 2012“I’m like a great big dark cloud, floating over the land, discharging my creativity in a sudden burst, like a lightning storm. If I were on twitter, facebook, etc. I feel I would waste the energy in lots of small bursts. I do not want to do that. You won’t find me on social networks. [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/N1R5bPrgFQw/
DON T FORBID ME DON T LEAVE ME NOW DON T THINK TWICE IT S ALL RIGHT DOUBLE TROUBLE DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE
Would you like a Gold or Silver with that Red or White?
May 19th, 2012Guest blogger and wine judge  Stacie Hunt offers some insight into being a judge at the Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition. Stacie is a commentator on wine for National Public Radio, a Certified Sommelier (AIS), an international wine judge, educator, journalist and blogger. Everyone has his or her own idea of spring. In the city, the [...]
Source: http://blogs.fairplex.com/blog/wine/?p=51
AMEN AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL AN AMERICAN TRILOGY AN EVENING PRAYER AND I LOVE YOU SO
Rue La La: $20 for $40 at Wine.com (ends this morning!)
May 19th, 2012
UPDATE: This offer has expired.
Deal site Rue La La is running a $20 for $40 for Wine.com but you’ve got to act fast. The sale ends at 11:00 am EDT today (Sunday, May 13th 2012).
The usual restrictions apply to this offer – most meaningfully that the voucher can’t be applied to the price of shipping.
If you’re not yet a member of Rue La La sign up and get $10 off your first order, bringing the price down to $10:
http://ruelala.com/invite/winepress
Then head over to Wine.com to use your voucher. Check out the 2010 Belle Glos Meiomi Pinot Noir- always enjoyable and for my money the best $20 Pinot Noir on the market today.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!
BIG BOSS MAN BIG LOVEBIG HEARTACHE BITTER THEY ARE HARDER THEY FALL BLACK STAR BLESSED JESUS HOLD MY HAND
$25 for $50 at Daily Wine Deal site Lot18
May 19th, 2012Deal site Fab.com is offering $25 for $50 at daily wine deal site Lot18.com. Buy through the link below and get $10 off your first Fab.com purchase bringing the price down to $15 for $50 of Lot18 credits:
Fab.com sign up required.
Lot18 runs free shipping offers quite frequently, and they’re shipping more wines to MA than they used to. Check it out!
ARE YOU LONESOME TO NIGHT? ARE YOU SINCERE AS LONG AS I HAVE YOU AS WE TRAVEL ALONG ON THE JERICHO ROAD ASK ME
Shut the Front Door: A Vinsane, Pay-it-Forward, Drinks 4X the Price Wine Recommendation
May 19th, 2012The problem with sleuthing out good wine under $10 is the recommendations usually come with provisos like, “This is pretty good for the price,” or “This isn’t bad for the style of wine.” Rare is the time that a wine recommendation for vino under $10 is just, “This is a fantastic wine.”
Who can blame the wine recommender for their caveats and written sleights of hand when they’re left to tout the middling amongst the insipid; the redemptive within the felonious? It’s like the back-handed compliment from the parents of an axe murderer who note plaintively from the front stoop, “He has a good heart.”
Adding insult to this injury, it seems like nearly all domestic wines under $10 are manipulated to appeal to a demographic. Far too often, they are oak chipped to a formula, softened, vortexed and plumped back up into a wine beverage complete with a label that screams, “Benignly vague and blandly appealing. I am inoffensive to a large group of people.”
And, forget about pairing under $10 bottles of vino with food. Do so only if your idea of wine pairing centers on condiments with artificial coloring and HFCS, so duotone are the wine flavor profiles.
When it comes to what should be reliable international value wines, forget about it – most of them aren’t even has-beens, they never were. France and Italy – I’m talking to you. For a sawbuck, these are sad, middling, barely potable wines evocative of an athlete whose entire identity is wrapped up in jockdom, but for whom life’s fate never provided him acclaim beyond the local playground. The fact that these wines often taste like a sweaty gym sock may, in fact, be no small coincidence.
Harrumph.
What I want is what most wine consumers want: A non-spoofulated wine with quality that stands on its own—a good wine at $9.99 that is a good wine, period. No half-hearted caveats associated with it. If the wine pairs with dinner, instead of being a digestif, all the better. Tie me up, spank me and call me Shirley if this mystical and elusive under $10 wine also has any of the following characteristics: Organic, old vines, unfiltered, native yeast, judicious oak, and complexity whilst being food-friendly.
I’m pretty sure I won’t have to have any dalliances in the wine S&M dungeon save for one emerging country.
Recently, I started to see glimpses of where quality, inexpensive wines might be coming from in the future when I tasted through a sampling of wines from the Navarra region of Spain. One $5 bottle of wine was so screamingly good it defied the law of reason.
And, then, I received a recommendation for Masia de Bielsa’s 2009 Garnacha, a Spanish wine from the Campo de Borja area in the Aragon region of Spain, southeast of Navarre and La Rioja. Adam Japko, a wino friend and author of Wine-Zag, and I did some horse-trading on bottles and he threw in a bottle of wine in a wine shipment to me and noted, “Curious what you think of this…”
What do I think? I think I owe you favors to last a month of Sundays for turning me onto a beauty.
Of course, wine recommendations don’t happen in a vacuum and the Masia de Bielsa 2009 Garnacha is no different even if it follows a certain circuitous Internet-borne dynamic that seems unusual even in this day and age of “brand vs. land, there are no secret wine values anymore…” online battle.
Jose Pastor is a wunderkind (30 years old) wine importer with a fast growing reputation amongst wine insiders for his portfolio of Spanish wines that are typically natural in style – producers who farm organically when possible, emphasize terroir, use ambient yeasts, filter sparingly and use minimal oak. In other words, his wines, and especially his inexpensive wine selections, are the anti-brand. Or, should I say, “They’re the antidote to brand wines.” The good stuff.
Jose’s wines won’t have an end-cap in stores with promotional materials, nor will they follow you on Twitter or ply you with faux-flattery for a “Like” on Facebook. Ditto that for Pastor playing the points scoring game. He doesn’t do it. The wines and wineries in his portfolio simply represent something good and honest and rely on smart trade buyers who know good juice when they taste it and are interested in paying that forward to consumer’s one bottle at a time.
This formula isn’t a recipe for getting rich, but it is a recipe for long-term, slow-burning growth based on a purity of vision.
When Richard Schnitzlein, a longtime wine buyer in the greater Boston area, took over the wine section at Ferns Country store in Carlisle, MA in early 2011, he started to remake the selection of wines on offer and that meant much more diversity, spreading the selection from two distributors to 14 over a seven month period.
A part of that remaking was to engage Genuine Wine Selections, a wine distributor in Massachusetts, who carries the Jose Pastor portfolio.
When Genuine Wine Selections partner Dennis Quinn showed up at Ferns in the spring with samples to taste, the ’09 Bielsa was a part of the mix.
Enamored, Schnitzlein started stocking the wine. “Initially (the Bielsa) was a hand sell, but (it) soon became a wine that people were asking for,” he noted.
Japko was turned onto the Bielsa from Schnitzlein and mentioned the Bielsa on his site in June. A September Ferns promotion dropped the price on the Bielsa from $11.99 to 9.95 and that yielded 15 cases of the Bielsa moving through the door for Ferns including a stock-up from Japko.
Within a week of receiving my bottle from Japko, I had taken to the Internet to find this wine and I bought a ½ case online from Marketview Liquor in New York state who sells it for $7.99 a bottle.
I’ve gifted a bottle to a friend at work, and, well, I’m writing extensively about this vino, too – my own pay-it-forward juju for having been tipped off to this wine.
The moral of this story? Finding a gem of a wine for $10 or under isn’t a hopeless process, but you do have to sift a lot of muck to find the gold nugget. In my opinion, you’re more likely to find a gem by keeping your ears open for word of mouth recommendations from wine-inclined friends or a local wine shop then to take to the wine aisles of your supermarket wine section playing brand roulette. Here, the internet and Wine-searcher.com is your friend, as well. In addition, Spain is a country that is producing some excellent wines across all price tiers, and my very recent and very anecdotal track record at the lower-end has been very good. And, finally, it pays to know people. It pays to know what Jose Pastor is all about, and it pays to know the Richard Schnitzlein’s and Adam Japko’s of the world who freely share where to find the good stuff, even if finding the good stuff requires an Importer in California, a wine buyer in Massachusetts, a generous friend and internet ecommerce.
2009 Bielsa Vinas Viejas Garnacha
Huge, pure nose with mulberry juice, black cherry, orange peel, earth and a meaty savory quality that gives way to an expressive palate with plum, black cherry, spice and fresh squeezed orange juice. The finish lingers with plum, pepper and earthiness. This is a varietally correct, gorgeous, natural, unfiltered wine that screams for food and would be a bargain at 4X the price. Highly recommended. At under $10 a bottle, you’d be foolhardy not to find this wine.
BIG BOOTS BIG BOSS MAN BIG LOVEBIG HEARTACHE BITTER THEY ARE HARDER THEY FALL BLACK STAR
Authentic American taste with an innovative twist at Bambara in Salt Lake City
May 19th, 2012Situated in the beautiful Salt Lake City of Utah, Bambara is a perfect gastronomic enclave to serve its diners in a homely atmosphere. This eating house excels in serving seasonal cuisine with a focus on seafood and meats. Its outstanding location with superb service and hospitality ensure guests return here repeatedly to savor its awesome [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vagablond/ysSN/~3/vuaub6ClezY/
BOSSA NOVA BABY BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER BRINGING IT BACK BRITCHES BROWN EYED HANDSOME MAN
Social Connections are still about people not stats
May 19th, 2012Small world story; as I walked towards my local coffee and sandwich shop, St. Davids in Forest Hill, I got an email to say my Foursquare mayorship had been lost to another user. I didn’t know this lady, but I have to admit I felt slightly affronted than I should lose this title, despite it [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/6a0cnyMjPEM/
BAREFOOT BALLAD BEACH BOY BLUES BEACH SHACK BECAUSE OF LOVE BEGINNER S LUCK
A re-telling of a wine fairytale
May 18th, 2012This story has been put together in a sustainable way from recycled & organic tales collected from around the world, and  its morals are entirely a product of indigenous references. Consume in moderation — Once upon a time, there was an old man who had been a respected winemaker, but his intended bride had pricked [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/I35VD0OwrAg/
The electricity of creativity
May 18th, 2012“I’m like a great big dark cloud, floating over the land, discharging my creativity in a sudden burst, like a lightning storm. If I were on twitter, facebook, etc. I feel I would waste the energy in lots of small bursts. I do not want to do that. You won’t find me on social networks. [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/N1R5bPrgFQw/
Shut the Front Door: A Vinsane, Pay-it-Forward, Drinks 4X the Price Wine Recommendation
May 18th, 2012The problem with sleuthing out good wine under $10 is the recommendations usually come with provisos like, “This is pretty good for the price,” or “This isn’t bad for the style of wine.” Rare is the time that a wine recommendation for vino under $10 is just, “This is a fantastic wine.”
Who can blame the wine recommender for their caveats and written sleights of hand when they’re left to tout the middling amongst the insipid; the redemptive within the felonious? It’s like the back-handed compliment from the parents of an axe murderer who note plaintively from the front stoop, “He has a good heart.”
Adding insult to this injury, it seems like nearly all domestic wines under $10 are manipulated to appeal to a demographic. Far too often, they are oak chipped to a formula, softened, vortexed and plumped back up into a wine beverage complete with a label that screams, “Benignly vague and blandly appealing. I am inoffensive to a large group of people.”
And, forget about pairing under $10 bottles of vino with food. Do so only if your idea of wine pairing centers on condiments with artificial coloring and HFCS, so duotone are the wine flavor profiles.
When it comes to what should be reliable international value wines, forget about it – most of them aren’t even has-beens, they never were. France and Italy – I’m talking to you. For a sawbuck, these are sad, middling, barely potable wines evocative of an athlete whose entire identity is wrapped up in jockdom, but for whom life’s fate never provided him acclaim beyond the local playground. The fact that these wines often taste like a sweaty gym sock may, in fact, be no small coincidence.
Harrumph.
What I want is what most wine consumers want: A non-spoofulated wine with quality that stands on its own—a good wine at $9.99 that is a good wine, period. No half-hearted caveats associated with it. If the wine pairs with dinner, instead of being a digestif, all the better. Tie me up, spank me and call me Shirley if this mystical and elusive under $10 wine also has any of the following characteristics: Organic, old vines, unfiltered, native yeast, judicious oak, and complexity whilst being food-friendly.
I’m pretty sure I won’t have to have any dalliances in the wine S&M dungeon save for one emerging country.
Recently, I started to see glimpses of where quality, inexpensive wines might be coming from in the future when I tasted through a sampling of wines from the Navarra region of Spain. One $5 bottle of wine was so screamingly good it defied the law of reason.
And, then, I received a recommendation for Masia de Bielsa’s 2009 Garnacha, a Spanish wine from the Campo de Borja area in the Aragon region of Spain, southeast of Navarre and La Rioja. Adam Japko, a wino friend and author of Wine-Zag, and I did some horse-trading on bottles and he threw in a bottle of wine in a wine shipment to me and noted, “Curious what you think of this…”
What do I think? I think I owe you favors to last a month of Sundays for turning me onto a beauty.
Of course, wine recommendations don’t happen in a vacuum and the Masia de Bielsa 2009 Garnacha is no different even if it follows a certain circuitous Internet-borne dynamic that seems unusual even in this day and age of “brand vs. land, there are no secret wine values anymore…” online battle.
Jose Pastor is a wunderkind (30 years old) wine importer with a fast growing reputation amongst wine insiders for his portfolio of Spanish wines that are typically natural in style – producers who farm organically when possible, emphasize terroir, use ambient yeasts, filter sparingly and use minimal oak. In other words, his wines, and especially his inexpensive wine selections, are the anti-brand. Or, should I say, “They’re the antidote to brand wines.” The good stuff.
Jose’s wines won’t have an end-cap in stores with promotional materials, nor will they follow you on Twitter or ply you with faux-flattery for a “Like” on Facebook. Ditto that for Pastor playing the points scoring game. He doesn’t do it. The wines and wineries in his portfolio simply represent something good and honest and rely on smart trade buyers who know good juice when they taste it and are interested in paying that forward to consumer’s one bottle at a time.
This formula isn’t a recipe for getting rich, but it is a recipe for long-term, slow-burning growth based on a purity of vision.
When Richard Schnitzlein, a longtime wine buyer in the greater Boston area, took over the wine section at Ferns Country store in Carlisle, MA in early 2011, he started to remake the selection of wines on offer and that meant much more diversity, spreading the selection from two distributors to 14 over a seven month period.
A part of that remaking was to engage Genuine Wine Selections, a wine distributor in Massachusetts, who carries the Jose Pastor portfolio.
When Genuine Wine Selections partner Dennis Quinn showed up at Ferns in the spring with samples to taste, the ’09 Bielsa was a part of the mix.
Enamored, Schnitzlein started stocking the wine. “Initially (the Bielsa) was a hand sell, but (it) soon became a wine that people were asking for,” he noted.
Japko was turned onto the Bielsa from Schnitzlein and mentioned the Bielsa on his site in June. A September Ferns promotion dropped the price on the Bielsa from $11.99 to 9.95 and that yielded 15 cases of the Bielsa moving through the door for Ferns including a stock-up from Japko.
Within a week of receiving my bottle from Japko, I had taken to the Internet to find this wine and I bought a ½ case online from Marketview Liquor in New York state who sells it for $7.99 a bottle.
I’ve gifted a bottle to a friend at work, and, well, I’m writing extensively about this vino, too – my own pay-it-forward juju for having been tipped off to this wine.
The moral of this story? Finding a gem of a wine for $10 or under isn’t a hopeless process, but you do have to sift a lot of muck to find the gold nugget. In my opinion, you’re more likely to find a gem by keeping your ears open for word of mouth recommendations from wine-inclined friends or a local wine shop then to take to the wine aisles of your supermarket wine section playing brand roulette. Here, the internet and Wine-searcher.com is your friend, as well. In addition, Spain is a country that is producing some excellent wines across all price tiers, and my very recent and very anecdotal track record at the lower-end has been very good. And, finally, it pays to know people. It pays to know what Jose Pastor is all about, and it pays to know the Richard Schnitzlein’s and Adam Japko’s of the world who freely share where to find the good stuff, even if finding the good stuff requires an Importer in California, a wine buyer in Massachusetts, a generous friend and internet ecommerce.
2009 Bielsa Vinas Viejas Garnacha
Huge, pure nose with mulberry juice, black cherry, orange peel, earth and a meaty savory quality that gives way to an expressive palate with plum, black cherry, spice and fresh squeezed orange juice. The finish lingers with plum, pepper and earthiness. This is a varietally correct, gorgeous, natural, unfiltered wine that screams for food and would be a bargain at 4X the price. Highly recommended. At under $10 a bottle, you’d be foolhardy not to find this wine.
ALL SHOOK UP ALL THAT I AM ALLA EN EL RANCHO GRANDE ALMOST ALMOST ALWAYS TRUE
As my Riesling gently weeps
May 18th, 2012Riesling. It’s like the wine world in microcosm. Wine experts love it but cannot understand why consumers don’t go gaga over it, but ultimately this is our fault. Consumers have heard about it, and when it is poured in their glasses really do enjoy it, but feel confused by its many styles, provenances and the [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/spU8m9xDt3I/
FINDERS KEEPERS LOSERS WEEPERS FIRST IN LINE FIVE SLEEPY HEADS FLAMING STAR FLIP FLOP AND FLY
What 1% increase in spending will sell you more wine?
May 18th, 2012Ironically, the answer is probably not by increasing the quality of your wine. With the one exception, moving from a Parker (or other pointillistic) rating of 89 to 90, there is very little chance that you can find any benefit to a 1% increase in wine quality leading to a measured increase in wine sales. Yet [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/k6QZ4w5bZU4/
FAME AND FORTUNE FARTHER ALONG FEVER FIND OUT WHAT S HAPPENING FINDERS KEEPERS LOSERS WEEPERS
Tasting Report: 2009 HALL Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
May 18th, 2012
Here come the 2009 Napa Cabs.
In general, the pros are expecting 2009 to continue a string of outstanding vintages from Napa. With the exception of 2007 (which was exceptionally good) 2005-2009 are all outstanding Napa Cab vintages which elude quick bookmarking as being universally better or worse than one or another. Look for wineries whose style you enjoy and 2009 will likely satisfy.
The deal hounds among us have discovered HALL Wines’ Napa Valley bottling as a reliable one worth seeking out. In the $40 range it’s not cheap but it can run with the big boys costing $50-$80.
About HALL Wines
“At HALL Wines we offer an elegant and stylish approach to the wine experience that combines the art of winemaking, design and contemporary art,” says owner and vintner Kathryn Hall.
In 2009 their winery in St. Helena was the first in California to receive Gold LEED Certification. In 2010 their vineyards were certified organic. Last year, their 2008 Kathryn Hall Cabernet Sauvignon ($90) received a 96 point rating and landed on the number two spot on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 list.
The Kathryn Hall and Napa Valley bottlings are often confused. Remember that the white labeled wines are from their Napa Valley series and cost between $38 and $50 at retail. The Kathryn Hall bottling has a red label and sells for at least $70 and up at retail. I saw a guy at Costco last year filling his shopping cart with the white labeled Napa Valley bottling whispering to me (incorrectly) that it was Wine Spectator’s #2 Wine of the Year. Not that the Napa Valley isn’t a fantastic bottle of wine – just a word of caution be familiar with the bottlings in their lineup.
Here’s what the track record looks like for the 2009 HALL Wines Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon:
| Ratings Pedigree | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| Wine Advocate | NR | 90+ | 91-93 | 95 | 88 |
| Wine Spectator | 86 | 94 | 88 | 91 | NYR |
| CellarTracker | 88.8 | 91.1 | 89.5 | 91.5 | 90.8 |
| WWP | 89 | 91 | NR | NR | 91 |
The drop-off from a 95 point rating in 2008 from The Wine Advocate to an 88 point rating on the 2009 comes as the publication switched from Robert Parker to Antonio Galloni covering Napa Cabs. From this you might think Galloni doesn’t like their wines – but you’d be wrong. Referring to their 2009 lineup he said:
“This is a thrilling set of wines from Hall. The estate favors a rich, extroverted style, yet all of these wines have distinct personalities and tons of sheer character. … Simply put, I was blown away by what I tasted.”
Here are my tasting notes for this wine:
2009 HALL Wines Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
Varietal Composition: 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot, 1% Malbec, 1% Cabernet Franc
Barrel Aging: 16 months in 55% New French Oak
14.9% Alcohol
$48 Release Price (high $30s street target price)
100% opaque – mostly purple with ruby red in the background. Bright, high toned and fresh with lively fruit. Grippy mouth feel with cinammon and blackberries on the nose. On the palate I get coconut rum and cola. Needs time to settle down but I like what I see.
91/100 WWP: Outstanding
Look for Laube’s rating (Spectator) to fall in the 90-93 range and continue a nice run for this Napa Valley bottling.
Find this wine for sale at retail on Wine-Searcher.com
Visit the HALL Wines website to learn more – they ship 6 or more bottles for just $1 and offer nice deals to club members.
Further Reading
Sample for review.
Question of the Day: Have you tried HALL Wines lately? If so, what did you think?
Frankie And Johnny Paradise Hawaiian Style Spinout Easy Come Easy Go Double Trouble
Assembling Our 2011 Vintage Blends: Done. And Wow!
May 18th, 2012A Little Competition Never Hurts!
May 17th, 2012That’s right – it’s time. The Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition begins tomorrow. Nearly 100 international judges, more than 3,000 international wines. Who will take the gold? Keep coming back to find out more information about the 3-day event and watch for judges to be blogging and twittering in between judging!
Source: http://blogs.fairplex.com/blog/wine/?p=60
A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW A LITTLE BIT OF GREEN A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION A MESS OF BLUES A THING CALLED LOVE
Wine labels done right, a discovery at VinCE
May 17th, 2012A couple weeks ago I found myself in Budapest for the VinCE wine event – An event that is more consumer focused than trade, but a place to discover new wines and meet new people. I have to admit that I rarely find myself discovering  a wine label, or bottle design, at such events that [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheWineConversation/~3/5R-0iGsvEkk/
Wine Tasting Dinner: 2008 Washington Syrah
May 17th, 2012Washington Syrah compares favorably with the best in the world. Washington Syrah generally falls somewhere in between the jammy Shiraz of Australia and the more austere Syrah of the northern Rhone. It generally has good acidity and tannins. The common denominators of our favorite Syrahs from Washington have been deep, dark purple color and luscious [...]
Wine Tasting Dinner: 2008 Washington Syrah was originally posted on Wine Peeps. Wine Peeps – Your link to great QPR wines from Washington State and beyond.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WinePeeps/~3/Uhrc6GBQjDw/
ALMOST ALMOST ALWAYS TRUE ALMOST IN LOVE ALOHA OE ALWAYS ON MY MIND
Authentic American taste with an innovative twist at Bambara in Salt Lake City
May 17th, 2012Situated in the beautiful Salt Lake City of Utah, Bambara is a perfect gastronomic enclave to serve its diners in a homely atmosphere. This eating house excels in serving seasonal cuisine with a focus on seafood and meats. Its outstanding location with superb service and hospitality ensure guests return here repeatedly to savor its awesome [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/vagablond/ysSN/~3/vuaub6ClezY/
ECHOES OF LOVE EDGE OF REALITY EL TORO EVERYBODY COME ABOARD 500 MILES
