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Daily Glass: WTSO Wines – Mockingbird Hill Cabernet Sauvignon, Just Add A Little Time…
As you probably know, I’m a big fun of Wine Til Sold Out (WTSO). As someone who consumes wine all the time, I greatly appreciate an opportunity to save money but still drink great wines – and that is what WTSO allows us to do.
A number of wines sold by WTSO are really of an unknown pedigree. Yes, when the wine is offered for sale at WTSO, you get all the info associated with that wine – winemakers notes, technical details, etc. – but quite often, nothing else can be found on Internet.
The Mockingbird Hill wines belong to that group. I know that my WTSO posts are quite popular, and Mockingbird Hill wines come up quite often among search terms in my blog stats (yes, I do look at that info). But when I searched for the info on Mockingbird Hill wines, I was unable to find much. So I decided to try some of the Mockingbird Hill wines and write the review on my own.
Our wine today is 2011 Mockingbird Hill Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Napa Valley (14.5% ABV, $19.99), 100% Cabernet Sauvignon (according to the info on WTSO web site). I have to honestly tell you that the pop-and-pour model failed completely for this wine. Open the bottle, pour into the glass, nice ruby color, sniff and…nothing. Really, not much to report. The first sip left me disappointed – definitely wine, but very tight, maybe some underripe blackberries. So I decided to stop right there (yes, this was not a happy stopping with a sigh), pump the air out and put it aside.
The next day… What do you think happened to this wine on the next day? Well, in a few words – it actually became pop’n pour wine. Great inviting nose of the succulent berries from the get go. Cassis and blackberries on the palate, bright and fresh, acidity, tannins, all together in a perfect harmony. It is pretty incredible what little time can do with the wine… Drinkability: 8-
I would definitely recommend this wine – as long as you are willing to give it little time. Yes, you can cellar it, or you can decant it – it is your choice, but in the end, you will not be disappointed.
That’s all I have for you folks for today. Happy Monday and cheers!
Before The Time Runs Out – To Replace The Google Reader, It Is. Or – How Do You Follow?
If there ever be a contest for the longest blog post title, I would have a good shot at winning, don’t you think? It also shows that I can’t make decisions – as to what title is better, as the least. But then I know from the business world that huge number (majority?) of e-mails are not read past the first line, so one really needs to put out all at once…
Anyway, let’s move closer to the subject. As you probably know, Google announced the End of Life for their Reader as of July 1st – and I don’t know about you, but Google Reader was one of my tools of choice to follow the blogs en masse. With Google reader, it was easy to see what is new with the blogs I follow, and easy to focus on reading posts from one blog at a time. Yes, you can subscribe to follow most of the blogs via e-mail – possible, but considering how we all are inundated with the e-mails, it is easy to expect that many posts will just slip through the cracks – lots of e-mails will accumulate for “I will read it later” section, until one gets overwhelmed with amount of unread e-mails and then hits “delete all” button.
Just to give you an idea of how my Google Reader screen looked like, here is a snapshot:
My Google reader Screen – see how everything is grouped by the blogs?
So I started to ask around. I heard from my friend Patty of P’s 2013 Photo Project that she started to use Feedly, but has limited success. Then I asked my friend Kfir, who is The Guru of Social Media, and his advice was – well yes, try Feedly. So at last, I also decided to consult another friend who is close with billions of people (yep, Google search engine), and I found a web site called Replace Reader. This is what I saw there:
Replace Reader screen
As you can see, Feedly has #1 spot. But before going to Feedly (I have to make my own mistakes, part of my DNA, I guess), I decided to try Bloglovin – easy installation, quick sync with Google Reader, and voila. But I didn’t like what I saw too much:
Bloglovin reader screen
The reason I was not too happy with it? It resembles WordPress Reader, which only presents all the blog posts sequentially, sorted by day and time, and if you didn’t read the blogs for a few days (I know, you don’t believe this can happen to anyone – not to read blogs for a few days – OMG, the world is ending…) – but if you actually didn’t read blogs for a few days, good luck following up on what you read and what you didn’t read… This is my WordPress Reader screen, just to give you an idea:
So it seemed that trying the Feedly is inevitable. Download, install (it actually installs a browser plug-in, so you have to restart the browser). Sync up with Google Reader. The first view is a mess – it is called “Title only view”, and it is just a collection of blog posts sorted by date – nowhere near to blog-sorted Google Reader:
Feedly Title Only View
But – Feedly actually offers a number of different views – Magazine view is better, as it allows me to see the blogs I follow in more structured way:
feedly magazine view
See that list of the blogs on the top right side? Now I can see with single glance what do I have to read where. But the best view in my opinion is the one which is provided as “Index”
feedly index view
So I think Feedly with the Index view is what I’m looking for – hopefully it will help me to stay on top of my “follow” game.
Now, the big question is – how do you follow? I’m really curious to know what do you do to follow the blogs you want to read?
Also hope you had a good glass of wine before the new week starts. Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #59: Grape Trivia – Zinfandel
Traditional gnarly look of old Zinfandel vines. Picture from Wikipedia.
And the new weekend is upon us, together with the wine quiz.
We are continuing the grape trivia, and we are continuing exploring the red grapes (let me know if you think it is the time to switch to the whites). Today’s subject is Zinfandel, an American star.
Zinfandel is the black-skinned grape, known as an early ripening variety and capable of accumulating very high levels of sugar – this is one of the reasons why you can often see Zinfandel wines with alcohol by volume levels easily exceeding 15%.
Story of Zinfandel is one of the most fascinating ones compare to many other grapes you can think of – considering the amount of genetic research which went into establishing the origins of Zinfandel, the amount of attention this grape received is pretty mind boggling. After many years of back and force, it is now established that Zinfandel and Primitivo (an Italian grape from Apulia) are two individual clones of Croatian grape called Crljenak Kaštelanski. As The Drunken Cyclist, a regular winner of these quizzes, pointed out in his own quiz a while back, both Zinfandel and Primitivo are considered independent varieties and should be listed as separate varieties on the wine labels of the wines in US.
Another interesting part of the Zinfandel story is that actual powerful and seductive Zinfandel red wines as we know them now, almost became extinct at some point due to the success of sweet and insipid Pink Zinfandel wines (but please pay some respect – Pink Zinfandel still accounts for almost 10% of wine sales in US).
And now, to the quiz! As the subject is very narrow (Zinfandel is not growing all over the world), enlisting Google as your helper is totally fine (not that it was not with any of my quizzes before) – but this is up to you, of course. In any case, even if you can only answer a few questions – please do!
Q1: It was established recently that Zinfandel existed in Croatia under a different name, at least from the 15th century. Do you know what was that name?
Q2: While Zinfandel typically listed on the label, very often some other grapes are added to the blend. Name one grape which can be considered a traditional blending partner of Zinfandel
Q3: White Zinfandel was discovered by accident. Can you explain how that happen, and possibly use the proper winemaking term for the “accident”
Q4: Two California winemakers are largely credited with putting red Zinfandel wines on the wine map. Can you name them?
Q5: Most of the well known Zinfandel producers still make other wines from the different grapes. But there is one winery in California ( at least that I know of), which make nothing but Zinfandel wines. Can you name that winery?
Good luck, enjoy your weekend and cheers!
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