Talk-A-Vino

An extensive French wine inventory to explore.

It’s Meritage Time!

Today’s Meritage issue is somewhat unusual – it doesn’t contain the main element, the answer for the wine quiz. The reason is very simple – nobody even tried to answer that quiz. Come on, my wine loving friends, at least you can give it a try! To remind you, in the Wine Quiz #32 you were supposed to match 6 red wine grapes (out of 7) with 6 wine reviews. Please try it again – hopefully there are some brave wine lovers out there.

As far as interesting wine reading is concerned, I came across a few articles I wanted to bring to your attention.

First, there was an interesting article by New York Times’ wine and food critic Eric Azimov about Bonny Doon winemaker Randall Grahm, who started putting wine ingredients on the back label of his wines. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I care to know if he added tartaric acid or oak chips to his wines – I mostly care about the taste of the wine, and I trust that winemaker did his or her best to create a good wine. But – that’s me – and I would be interested in your opinion.

Next is an article in Food and Wine magazine about best winemakers of the year 2012 – I personally never heard of them before nor tried their wines – but thanks to the article, I now will be on a lookout for them.

And now a couple of articles on one of my all times favorite subjects – ageability of wines. Not all the wines in general, but mostly the California Cabernets. Both articles are from the Palate Press, an online wine magazine.

First article is written by Evan Dawson, and it is discussing the subject of California cult Cabernet Sauvignon being fit for aging (or not) depending on the source of the fruit (valley floor or mountain) and the ABV level of the wine – with discussion referring to the opinion of Randy Dunn, a winemaker behind eponymous Howell Mountain Cabernet. I don’t think I drunk enough California cult Cabernet to have an opinion one way or the other, but I can tell you that I had 2002 Dunn Cabernet when it was about 9 years of age, and it took that wine 5 days just to start opening up.

The second article is by the W. Blake Gray and it is talking about many wines (again taking California cult Cabernet as an example) are made for instant consumption and not meant to be aged – however, many wine connoisseurs still acquire those wine specifically for aging, and will be disappointed in the long run (and will lose money).

Both articles are excellent and are very interesting to read in my opinion – but let me know what your thoughts are.

That’s all for today, folks. The glass is empty. Happy Wine Wednesday and Cheers!