Talk-A-Vino

Surely these Italian wines will get you talking!

It’s Meritage Time!

First things first – the answer for the Wine Quiz #24 – Bottles Big, Bottles Small. The list in the quiz actually included names of the wine bottles of the different sizes, only slightly mixed up between the different regions. While some of the bottle names are the same between Champagne and Bordeaux, some of the names are unique and are used only in one region, and not in both. The question was to find “one which doesn’t belong”. While Piccolo (187 ml, or one quarter of a bottle) and Methuselah (6L, equal to 8 bottles) are uniquely used in Champagne, it is Imperial ( also 6L, or 8 bottles) which is one and uniquely Bordeaux, thus the right answer for the wine quiz is “Imperial”. Whomever marked “Imperial” as the right answer, please pat yourself on the back – you got all the bragging rights for the right answer for the wine quiz #24. In case you are curious about all the bottles sizes and their names, here is a Wikipedia link for you.

Now let’s talk about interesting “news and such” I came across during the last few days.

There was (yes, unfortunately “was”, not “is”) a restaurant in Spain, called El Bulli – literally the best restaurant in the world, by the famous chef Ferran Adrià (also one of the best in the world). The restaurant closed last summer, and now, as I learned from Dr. Vino’s blog post, about 10,000 bottles from El Bulli’s wine cellar will be auctioned at Sotheby’s in the near future. Dr. Vino’s blog post lists also a link to the El Bulli’s wine list, but for some reason it didn’t seem to work for me. However – in case you want to see the wine list – here it is, 139 pages of goodness… Drooling is acceptable.

Wine Bloggers Conference, a.k.a. WBC2012, is opening in Portland, Oregon in two days. At that conference, winners of the Wine Blog Awards will be announced. It seems that the subject of the awards is heated up considerably with various bloggers expressing their last minute opinions. You can reserch the subject on your own, but here is the opinion of Joe Roberts (1WineDude) – I recommend checking out the blogs he is referring to – they look quite interesting.

Last, but not least, a few interesting posts from The Passionate Foodie blog. First, here is a advanced notice of the upcoming great food holiday – October is a National Cheese Month! Cheese is definitely one of my favorite (if not The Favorite) foods, and knowing that in October I will have an additional reason to eat it, makes me happy. Also, as The Passionate Foodie writes from Boston, he mentioned that The Cheese Shop of Concord will be celebrating its 45th anniversary on October 6th, by offering a number of cheeses at 1967 prices – if you are into cheese, you still have time to find a good reason to be in Concord, MA on that date (I don’t think I need a reason – I plan to be there).

Also in the same The Passionate Foodie blog, you can find a series of posts about Port, one of the [wrongly] under-appreciated but amazing wines – here are the links for Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 for you – well worth your time, I think.

That’s all I have for today’s Meritage. Don’t forget – it is always [Wine] [Whisky] Wednesday – pour something good into your glass. Cheers!