Talk-A-Vino

Continuing our historical angle, here is a new quiz for you. While reading a wine book, I was surprised to learn about harsh ways wine industry was using in order to promote itself. What do I mean by the harsh ways? So there was a town which enacted a law, requiring all households to plant and tend for grape vines. The penalty for not complying? Nothing less than “pain of death”! Don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound pretty for me.

Anyway, would you care to guess which town was it?

Have a great long weekend! Cheers!

So you had a bad day at work. During the meeting boss kept giving you the look, you know, that one. Engineering just informed you that project delivery will be delayed [yet again]  by 4 weeks, and you are the one to come up with the third(!) apology/excuse to the customer. And actually, this Sunday you will have to be on the plane, and it will be 3rd week in a row you have to travel over the weekend and cancel all your plans. Is that bad enough, or do we need to throw in a flat tire and a speeding ticket on the way to work?

Okay, you arrive home in sufficiently bad mood. Sit down, relax, may be put on some nice music (I don’t know about you, but Stan Getz, Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett will fit the bill for me). Will glass of wine help to cheer you up? Most probably. But what bottle should you open? If your answer is “the only one I already have”, this post might not help you much…

My wine teacher Kevin Zraly always said that “the wine should give you pleasure“. So another short answer would be “the one which will give you pleasure” – and what we need to keep in mind is that the wine I would enjoy immensely might be completely not your thing. Let’s put this aside, and let’s assume that I actually had a bad day at work. Well, it would be the easiest then to write this blog post empirically and emphatically, but I’m not sure than if I actually had a bad day at work, I would be able to write a good blog post, so … did I lose you yet? Let’s get back to the subject.

Here are three important criteria for selecting the “pick me up” wine. First, it should be an “instantly on” wine. What I mean is that the wine should be ready to drink as soon as the bottle is open. This will effectively exclude lots of big Italian wines, such as Barolo and Brunello, as well as many California Cabs (unless you have something aged to perfection in your cellar and it is actually ready to drink now) – anything which needs decanting or prolonged breathing time should be avoided here.

Then I would suggest that the wine should be familiar. It should be the wine you had before and you know how it will taste like. There is nothing wrong with opening a totally unknown bottle of wine, but – you are in a bad mood already, are you sure it is worth taking chances?

The last factor I want to throw in here – I want this wine to have a great smell. I think the “pick me up” process should start from the very first whiff from your glass, way before you take a first sip. Smell has a great power to transform your mood right away – and the great bonus or a great smell is that you can smell the wine indefinitely as it opposed to drinking it.

Oh, wait, there is one more desired feature here – the wine should be good. In other words, it should give you pleasure. In my personal book it means that the wine should be balanced and as an added bonus, have sense of place.

Let me give you some examples of the wines which should be able to improve one’s mood (I’m sure they will work for me).

2010 Fiction Red Wine Paso Robles by Field Recordings. I talked about this magnificent wine a number of times already in this blog, so let me just quote myself: “First and foremost, it is a smell which doesn’t lets you put the glass down. Fresh flowers, meadows, herbs, fresh summer air – it is all captured in the smell of this wine. On the palate, this wine shows bright red fruit, like raspberries and cherries, all perfectly balanced with a great finesse. Any time you want to experience beautiful summer day, reach out to that wine.”

Flora Springs Soliloquy Sauvignon Blanc 2009. “One of the very best California Sauvignon Blanc I ever had. Beautiful combination of traditional grassiness with fruit forward and finesse. Outstanding!”

Rozes Over 40 Years Old Port. “My best port ever. I can close eyes and imagine the smell and taste of this wine – multiple layers, tremendous complexity and great opportunity to reflect on life when the finish lasts for 15 minutes or longer.”

2007 Inniskillin Cabernet Franc Icewine - “This was definitely the best Icewine I ever tried. Light and effervescent (not your usual descriptors for the icewine), with perfect acidity complementing beautiful fruit. True masterpiece.“

There you have it – I’m sure either one of this wines will greatly improve your mood. However, there is an extremely good chance that any [your personal good] bottle of wine will help too. Besides, having a bad day at work is not at all mandatory to enjoy a glass of wine (or two). Tell me, what will be in your glass today? Cheers!

It seems that lots pf people took study of Prohibition experiment very seriously, which is showing in the results of the Wine Quiz #12, The End of Prohibition. Correct answer is State of  Utah, which had a [deciding?] Vote #36 which put an end to the Prohibition (note that both Ohio and Pennsylvania voted on the same day December 5, 1933, but Utah is listed as having the deciding vote).

Here is an answer to the quiz in the form of the picture, as the event was commemorated by High West distillery in Utah (I have to thank W. Blake Gray for this discovery of a great cocktail in a bottle):

You can read all about it on the side label:

Until the next time – Cheers!

The title for this post didn’t come up easily. I was back and forth with myself many times. The reason? Tasting these Rioja wines was a phenomenal experience, something which  doesn’t happen often during one’s lifetime. The brightness and openness of the 65-years old Rioja was nothing but stunning – but I think I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s go back to the beginning.

I happened to fall in love with Rioja wines about 4 years ago, after attending a Rioja seminar at PJ Wine store (the owner, Peter, is anything but fanatical about Spanish wines – of which PJ Wines houses an amazing selection all the time). At that seminar I was lucky enough to try 1964 Monte Real Gran Reserva Rioja and that was a revelation – the wine was fresh and bright, as it would’ve been may be 5 years old, not 40+. After that tasting I became Rioja fan for life. I have to also mention that even today, you can buy 1964 Rioja starting from less than $300 – for comparison, a bottle of 1966 DRC will set you back for about $10,000. I rest my case.

When my friend Zak told me that we can get a bottle of 1947 Rioja directly from the winery for less than $400, the decision was instantaneous – this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and it is worth it (don’t remember how many bottles were still available, but surely there were not that many). So we got that 1947 bottle and after a little while, were able to set the date for the tasting.

To make sure our 1947 Rioja will not feel lonely, we got a few more bottles to keep it company. You can see the full line up on the picture above, and here is an exact list:

2008 Raventos & Blanc Reserva Brut Cava
1993 Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Reserva Blanco
1947 Imperial Gran Reserva Rioja
1976 Imperial Gran Reserva Rioja
1995 Imperial Gran Reserva Rioja
Pinord Moscatel NV

There is one more bottle in the picture – Jorge Ordonez Malaga – but, guess what – we never opened that, being quite overwhelmed by the desert time (it is a great bottle of desert wine, but – oh well, there is always a next time).

We started with Cava, of course. It was fresh, round and pleasant – not necessarily hugely distinguishable, but definitely a nice bottle of wine to have before dinner starts.

The first foray into magnificent world of Rioja was with the 1993 Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Rioja Blanco. I will gladly challenge you to find a bottle of 19 years old white wine which will taste as fresh as this 1993 Rioja. May be you will have some luck with white Hermitage, Chablis or some of the white Burgundies, or may be some of the really obscure grapes like Romorantin – but in any case I’m sure it will not be easy. This wine was fresh and complex, with mineral notes, hint of white apple, perfect mid-palate weight and still bright acidity. Definitely a ”wow” introduction into the ”wow” lineup of reds.

Needless to say that we started with 1947 Rioja. Considering the tender age of 65 years, the first challenge of course was to get the cork out. I wish we had one of those glass cutting devices described in the PJ Wine blog post, which simply allows you to cut the whole neck of the bottle with the cork in it, and not worry about cork crumbling into your wine – well, we don’t drink wines of that age often enough, so we had to stick with more conventional tools, like the two-prong cork puller.

It almost worked.. and then not. It took two people and good 5 minutes of time to get cork our, little by little, piece by piece – but we managed to do it almost clean, with may be one or two tiny pieces falling back into the bottle.

Cork is out, and wine goes into the glasses. First thing to note is color, which is still red and not brown – of course it is not purple, but it is dark garnet red. And for the taste… Should I simply tell you that wine was magnificent and leave it at that? Well, okay, it wouldn’t be fair. Let’s continue. On the nose – coco powder, cedar dust, hint of cinnamon, smoked paprika. On the palate – good amount of red fruit, wine comes in bright and youthful, with good acidity. Then second wave came in as wine opened up a bit, with more sweet fruit and then tannins kicking in. I don’t want to bring in exotic animals to describe this wine, as Joe Roberts did with a black panther, so my description will be simple – grace and elegance. I can only wish to have the same grace and elegance myself when I will reach that age.

Moving along, it is now time for the 1976 Rioja. 29 years younger than the previous wine and… ahh, so different! Barnyard on the nose, very pungent, savory, with hint of the same barnyard on the palate, dried cherries, earthiness. If umami is a part of the wine tasting profile, this wine definitely had it.

And for the 1995, we decided to give it a little breathing time – it spent 2 hours in the decanter. The wine was fresh, with beautiful garnet color, bright fruit, very good acidity and soft tannins, touch of eucalyptus and cedar box. Very youthful and upbeat, if you will.

After tasting this line up of the magnificent Rioja wines from the same producer, the most interesting question in my mind is ”how will these wines evolve?”. Even the 1947 didn’t reach the end of life considering the way it was showing, never mind 1976 and 1995. Will pungency of 1976 stay, or will it evolve to something akin to 1947 in 29 years? How will 1995 taste in 48 years, and will it even last that long? These are all great questions I will not get an answer to – but this is part of the wine connoisseurship game – think about the future but definitely appreciate and enjoy what you have right now (huh – feel free to beat me up in the comments for banalities).

So far we I didn’t tell you about the food – there was a lot of great food. While you can’t taste it anyway, here is at least a picture of one of the dishes – roasted potato encrusted striped Bass:

We also had “death by chocolate” desert which perfectly paired with Pinord Moscatel, which happened to be well aged (the bottle simply got lost under the shelf and was “discovered” many years later).

Overall, this was a great experience, which will stay in memory for a very long time. To tell you honestly, I think it will not be easy to top off this experience, but as the very least I can promise to share all that with you. Wish you all great fun with wines – cheers!

It seems that wine quiz #11, Bubbles, Big and Small, was really simple, and most of you did great – yes, the correct answer is 49,000,000 – assuming our source of information didn’t make a grave mathematical error (you can read about it here).

For the next few of quizzes, I want to focus a bit on history. Actually, a wine quiz by 1WineDude Joe Roberts, called State of (Grape) Affairs, prompted me to look at the historical side of all things wine.

Have you ever tried a wine from state of Missouri? Me neither – and it appears that before Prohibition, there were more than 2 million gallons of wine produced in the State of Missouri, including internationally renowned wines. Prohibition squarely put an end to it and tremendous number of vineyards were destroyed.

I don’t know about you, but I’m surely glad Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933. Of course while majority of the states had to vote for repeal of the Prohibition, there is one state which is considered to have a deciding vote. Do you know what state was that?

As a bonus question, please provide a number of deciding vote (use comments section).

Have fun! Cheers!

It seems that Wine Videos almost becoming a feature on this blog – well, I’m not sure it will be possible to continue this trail indefinitely. After all, I only share the wine videos which cause at least some emotional resonance on my side – you shouldn’t expect to see dumb ads with flat voices here. But – as long as we are having fun, why not?

So for today let’s start with Australia (yes, again Australia, I know – but I promise that the next one will not be from Chile) – it is for the wine called Wild Oats:

The next one is from Portugal, and it is an ad for Sandeman Port (yes, it is not from Chile, but – it has a train in it):

To tell you the truth, I find both of them interesting – but what are your preferences?

Enjoy! Cheers!

It seems that my wine quiz #10 was a failure, as there were only 3 responses. Oh well – I wanted to make it “somewhat” difficult, but crossed the border into “very” difficult. Today’s quiz will be nothing like that.

Tomorrow is the Mother’s Day, which is a good reason to open a bottle of champagne (not that we need a special reason for that). Once the celebration liquid is in the glass, did you ever sit still looking at that glass and adoring the chains of tiny bubbles coming up, up and away?

Today’s test will require you to brush up high school or may be even college math curriculum, including Algebra 10, Trigonometry 12, Calculus 15 and …wait, don’t close this page – I’m only kidding. Today’s quiz will not require any math skills whatsoever, but you should put on your best guessing game (yes, check your answer with Google, please – but only after you will vote in your answer).

And the question is: how many bubbles are in a bottle of Champagne? Of course your answer should be only approximate, if you think it is 500,000 or 900,000, chose 700,000 from the list below, it should work just fine. Of course you can use the empirical approach and actually open the bottle of champagne and count all the bubbles, but you better be a very, very fast counter. Good Luck!

No matter what you answered, and sparkling or still, but don’t forget to open a great bottle tomorrow to celebrate Mom! Cheers!

About five years ago, during one of my numerous trips to California, I had a little bit of free time. What do you do when you are in California, have a little bit of free time and love of wine? Of course, you go visit the winery!

A that time I decided to go visit Ridge Vineyards, located in Santa Cruz Mountains region, not far from San Jose. All I knew is that the winery is making wine called Monte Bello, which became famous after beating classic French Bordeaux during 1976 Judgement of Paris event. So I managed a steep 4 miles ride up the Monte Bello road, reached the winery, tasted 5 or 6 different wines and … didn’t like a single one of them. No, I don’t remember what exact wines and what exact vintages I tried, I just remember that none of the wines created any ”oompf”. I was disappointed and squarely put all the Ridge wines into ”I [really] don’t like it” category.

Holding that unhappy memory through the years, last year I even expressed my opinion in the comment to the twitter post by Jancis Robinson (she selected Ridge for a special wine tasting in Hong Kong), which caused some very unhappy reaction among her followers (to say “very unhappy” is a very mild understatement).

I can’t tell you why, but when this year I found out that I will be in San Jose area and I will have a bit of the free time, very first thought was ”I have to try Ridge wines again”. Four steep miles up the Monte Bello road and here I’m again. The air was beautiful, and so was the scenery – let me share a few pictures with you.

Ridge Vineyards is located near the top of Monte Bello Ridge. This is the “view from the top”:

These are the vineyards at Ridge (by the way, in case you recognize the picture, it gives you an answer to the wine quiz #10, Where in California – correct answer is Santa Cruz Mountains region):

Here are some beautiful flowers for you:

Can you guess what happened now? I tried 7 different wines and … I liked loved every one of them. They all had common trait – balance and elegance, a quiet beauty, and may be most importantly, a sense of place – terroir, as French would put it. None of the wines were in-your-face, see-how-much-muscled-fruit-i-have – all of them were rather subtle, thought provoking and requiring time to reflect upon the content of your glass.

I don’t have an explanation. How come I didn’t like any wines the first time? Was that a ”leaf day”, a ”root day” or ”generally unfavorable” day? Did my palate evolved (that one I’m quite sure is true)? As you can’t enter the same river twice, I will not be able to relive that day 5 years ago and understand my reaction at that time. But I’m glad someone somehow somewhere decided that I have to go and try Ridge wines again – and discover something really beautiful.

Here are the tasting notes for the wines I tried:

2010 Estate Chardonnay – A little edgy in unusual way, some herbal undertones, oak is unnoticeable, except back palate burn. Opens a bit cleaner later on, long finish with hint of lemon.

2009 East Bench Zinfandel (15.1% ABV) – dry, with some dry rub spices, nice nose of blackberries, unnoticeable alcohol level, very balanced, perfect fruit and acidity on the palate.

2007 Lytton Estate Syrah/Grenache (14.49% ABV) – nice fruit, touch of spice, hint of dry cherries, gentle tannins, good acidity. Perception of tannins increases going forwward.

2009 Estate Cabernet – Tremendous minerality on the nose, you can literally smell the earth. Very nice – hint of green, very Bordeaux-ish in style, restrained and balanced

2009 Buchignani Ranch Carignane – Tobacco and tar, nice bite of spice, nice simplicity. good tannins on the finish.

2006 Dynamite Hill Petite Sirah – Beautiful fruit right on top, dark fruit undertones, some cherries.

2006 Monte Bello – Beautiful fruit, perfect balance, very classic Cabernet Sauvignon blend, very long finish with tannins which are growing on you, hint of tobacco and earthiness on the palate. I’m glad this was the last wine I tasted, as the finish actually lasted at least for the next 20 minutes.

Yes, I was wrong before, and I don’t have any problems admitting it and getting over it – Ridge Vineyards makes great wines with the sense of place, and  – better late than never – I’m very happy I made this discovery. Let’s raise the glass to the great discoveries of our lives! Cheers!

Last week I asked you about your preferences between Concha y Toro Frontera and Yellow Tail commercials. Continuing the same subject, here are couple more for you to chose from. Let’s do Australia versus Chile again.

First, a commercial for another Australian wine, Yalumba:

And for Chilean, here is a commercial for Casillero del Diablo:

And this one is just for laughs…

So, what do you think now? Cheers!

After publishing the first post about Must Try Wines, I had an extended dialog with @PeterZachar on Twitter, where Peter provided good suggestions as to more ”must try wines” to be added to the list. Then I thought about whole rationale of ”must try”, ”must do”, ”must see”, ”must experience”, and I believe it makes sense to talk about it first.

When it comes to ”must experience” in the wine world, I believe there are few deciding factors to get a given wine into that category. First one probably is a price. In the end of the day, this is how first known ”must try” classification came about – famous Bordeaux 1855 classification was made out solely on the price of the wines sold by various Chateaux. Of course price is just a consequence, an artificial showing of other, more fundamental factors, such as quality, reputation, demand and availability – but it is easy for us, humans to comprehend numbers, so the price serves as an aggregate measure instead of quantifying all other fundamentals independently. Looking at Chateau Petrus, Screaming Eagle or Seppeltsfield Port, each one faring at about $2500+ a bottle, it is easy to say ”if ever possible, I really really want to try it”.

Next factor is a reputation of the wine. Reputation in general is hard to assess, right? Well, when it comes to the wine world, one side of reputation also happened to be quantified for us – in the form of the infamous wine ratings. All over the wine blogosphere you can find beating and bantering of the various point rating systems – however, whether good or bad, consumers like to have some simple numerical indication of one ”thing” being better than another ”thing”. No, I’m not planning to divert into the 100-points scale discussion – what I’m alluding to is the fact that it is very easy to include wines rated 100 points into the ”must experience” category. Probably 98 to a 100 points will do just fine, as I can bet I would never be able to tell the difference between 98 and 99 rated wines, so 98 to a 100 is a good range. Should all 100 points rated wines be included into ”must try” list? I don’t think so, simply because you have to draw a line somewhere.

Another side of reputation shows up in the form of someone’s opinion – not a single person, but rather as a collective opinion. If the wine receives multiple [substantial] praises from multiple people, it is probably worth considering for the ”must try” subject – however, all these praises will most likely become reflected in the price, and almost certainly will affect one more ”must have” deciding factor – availability.

What do we usually want the most? That’s right – something we cannot have. In the industrial world, if we run out of something, we can make more of it. It doesn’t work the same way in the wine world. Deeply engrained in the concept of terroir, the most sought after wines are produced from the very specific vineyards – yes, you can plant more vineyards, but they will not bear the same fruit and you will not be able to produce the same wine. Therefore, you can’t address the increased demand by just making more – and your wine becomes less available (and its reputation most likely is increasing). The next step is for the wine to be sold only through the mailing lists thus injecting some sanity into that supply and demand equation. And in many cases price of wine goes up, completing the full connection between our three key ”must have” factors – price, reputation and availability.

I hope I gave you enough insight into my logic. To come up with the additions to the original ”must try” list, I did two things. First of all, I used the exact recommendations from Peter. Second approach was based on using the Wine Spectator online and searching for the wines with 98 to 100 ratings in particular regions and countries – then looking at the prices and styles to decide if I would be interested in experiencing that wine. The result can be found in the updated table which is available as a standalone page on this site (please click this link).

Few more comments, if I may. For most of the wines from France, actual vintage is not essential – all these wines show remarkable consistency in good years and in bad years. Also for Bordeaux, Burgundy and Sauternes the actual ”must try” wine is a flagship which usually goes under the same as the winery itself. Same is true for California ”cults” outside of Rhone Rangers. For all other wines, the exact wine is listed. Also for Port, Madeira and Spanish wines the exact vintage is listed and important.

I just want to repeat the same disclaimer as last time – this list is a personal reflection – feel free to criticize it or make it yours and change it. I’m sure there are plenty worthwhile wines which can be added to this list – this is why I’m sharing it with you. Yes, you are welcome.

Let’s raise the glass for the best experiences of our lives! Cheers!