Weekly Wine Quiz #35: What is Missing?
It is Saturday, people, and therefore it is time for the wine quiz!
Next Thursday, November 8th, will be an International Tempranillo day. As Tempranillo makes some of my all time favorite wines, I think it would be only appropriate to dedicate this quiz to the Spain’s “noble” grape.
When I was thinking about this post, I went over a lot of interesting facts about Tempranillo, and I couldn’t come up with the right question or a set of questions to ask. As I didn’t come up with the straightforward question, I will have to ask you for the straightforward answer (my logic is perfect, isn’t it).
Below is a group of numbers which have a direct relationship to the Tempranillo. You will need to figure out what those numbers mean and tell me what two numbers are missing and why do you think they should be there:
1934, 1948, 1952, 1955, 1958, ?, 1982, 1994, 1995, ? 2004, 2005, 2010, 2011
If you like Tempranillo wines this quiz will not be too difficult.
Have a great weekend and good luck! Cheers!
Paintball, Halloween and Writer’s Block
If you are trying to figure out the connection between paintball, Halloween and writer’s block – don’t, there are none. I’m experiencing a writer’s block as I’m trying to create a competition entry about the Tuscan wines (if you remember, I mentioned that competition in the Wednesday’s Meritage last week). I passionately despise (yeah, see, I’m doing pretty well avoiding the heavy word “hate”) the fact that I can’t write a post about Tuscany, one of the most diverse winemaking regions in the world, so I decided ( as many times before) to share a few pictures with you, while I’m pounding myself on the head trying to get the block out.
First, here are a few pictures from the friendly game of paintball which we played on Sunday (right before the arrival of the dear f…ing Sandy). My team lost all the games, but that is not important – we had lots of fun.
Our guns:
And here is me, first in the front:
and back (after the last “free style” round) – yes, it was painful, in case you are wondering:
Then after dear f…ing Sandy departed, we found ourselves super lucky ( knock on wood as many times as possible, still going), as our street didn’t lose power, so we managed to carve pumpkins and celebrate Halloween:
The Halloween dish (clearly influenced by the post from A Detailed House):
zoom-in:
And the pumpkins (kids had lots of fun):
May you never encounter writer’s block – and never experience the wrath of hurricane, even if it’s called by a cutesy name, such as Sandy.
That’s all for now, folks. I’m back pounding on that block. Cheers!
Wednesday’s Meritage – Wine Quiz Answer, International Tempranillo Day, Beaujolais Nouveau, Bad Wine Reviews and more
Meritage Time – and Happy Halloween!
Let’s start our meritage post from the regular place – an answer for the last week’s Wine Quiz #34 – Hello, my name is… I would like to say that I’m quite happy with this quiz, as there was a very good participation, and there was a full range of answers, covering all available options.
And the winners are (drum roll, please) PSsquared, VinoinLove and thedrunkencyclist as they all correctly guessed that Predicament is not a wine name. Believe it or not, but the rest of the names on the list are for the real wines. I don’t have the labels to show you for all of them, but here is some information and the links.
if you see kay: the wine is made by Jason Woodbridge, and yes, the name is controversial – here is one of the articles on the subject.
No girls: an actual wine by Christophe Baron, the winemaker behind Cayuse – here is the link to the winery’s web site, and here is the link to my short post about that wine (I’m a happy owner of a few bottles from the inaugural release).
Frequency: I can’t show you the label or a good link, as 2011 Frequency Central Coast GSM is the first release of the wine. You can search for it on Wades Wines web site (I guess this is the only merchant carrying it right now).
To the rescue: an actual wine by legendary Sine Qua Non, California’s cult Rhone style winemaker. The full name of the wine is Sine Qua Non Grenache To The Rescue, and you can look for it on Wine-Searcher (don’t be shocked at the prices, and if you will get a bottle for yourself, can you get one for me too, please?).
Let’s move on to the interesting news from around the vine. First, I want to bring to your attention that November 8th is International Tempranillo Day – if you read this blog for a while, I’m sure you know that I’m very impartial to the Spanish wines, and Rioja in particular, and Tempranillo is a star there. Tempranillo is also successfully grown in many other regions of the world – Australia, California and Texas come to mind first. Find a bottle of Tempranillo and join the celebration on November 8th!
Talking about celebrations – Beaujolais Nouveau 2012 is almost here! The new harvest celebration, originated by the French wine maker and wine merchant Georges DuBoeuf, takes place on third Thursday in November, which this year will fall on November 15th. The Beaujolais Nouveau arrival is celebrated with parties and events all around the world, and celebration this year will be special, as it will be the 30th celebration of this tradition. Look for the events in your area – I’m sure you will find some interesting places to visit and celebrate in style. At the very least, make sure to pick up a bottle of that young wine and celebrate in the comfort of your home.
One of my favorite wine bloggers, W. Blake Gray, is back from vacation, so I’m offering to your attention an interesting blog post about bad wine reviews.
Last but not least, here is the post by Joe Roberts, a.k.a. 1WineDude, where he is defending usage of oak in the wines. I’m also curious what do you think about oak in your wines, so feel free to use comments section and express yourself.
That’s all for today, folks. The glass is empty. Happy (and spookingly exciting) Halloween Wine Wednesday! Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #34: Hello, My Name Is…
It is Saturday, and therefore, it is time for your Saturday wine entertainment (no, you don’t get to drink wine yet – first, you have to solve a puzzle, and if you don’t – no wine for you! Okay, I’m only kidding…)
Last wine quiz #33 caused some controversy – but you know what – this one might do the same. Or not.
Anyway, I have to thank Vino in Love for the idea for this wine quiz. In his last wine quiz, he used a made up name for the grape. Below you see a list of names of the wines – except one of them was made up by me. Do you know which name is a made up name?
A. If you see Kay
B. No girls
C. Frequency
D. Predicament
E. To the rescue
Give it a try! You don’t have much to win (outside of pride), but you have even less to lose.
Please provide your answer in the comments section. Have fun and good luck! Cheers!
Yes! (a short and happy post)
If anyone of you read my profile on twitter, you probably saw a mention of the martial arts. I’m practicing Taekwondo, and today I had my so called “tip test”. Yes, I passed the test, and got a green tip:
Now I “only” need to get five more tips (purple, blue, brown, red and black), and then I will be able to attempt the next big test. I guess if I would be 20 or 25, that probably would be “okay, great, whatever” kind of feeling (or not), but as I’m a bit older, and this stuff doesn’t come easy (I have a problem, people – my knees seriously hate me), so it feels great. Anyway, that’s done, and I’m happy.
While it is technically very early Saturday on the East coats, it is still Friday in may places in US – and this Friday, October 26th was 3rd annual Champagne Day (#ChampagneDay in Twitter terms). The way to celebrate #ChampagneDay is to open a bottle of Champagne and talk about it. Problem is, I generally don’t stock up on Champagne, so I didn’t have a bottle to open (and was publicly ostracized by thedrunkedcyclist, who really is in love with Champagne). As I wanted to honor the noble wine at least in some way, I decided to go for deconstructed Champagne:
Yes, this is the bottle of Burgundy and not Champagne, but this means that the wine is made from the grape which is a part of many Champagne wines – Pinot Noir, hence it is qualified for the “deconstructed Champagne” play.
This 2004 Domaine Dennis Carre Savigny-les-Beaune was exactly the type of Pinot Noir I love – light, smokey and earthy, with the light cherries profile, perfectly balanced with fruit , tannins and acidity, the wine with finesse and elegance. Drinkability: 8+
That’s all I wanted to share with you. Happy Friday (or may be already Saturday) to you. Cheers!
I Love Surprises
Do you like surprises? Yeah, I see you saying “that depends” – ahh, as we grow up, the life is teaching us to be cautiously optimistic when we hear the word “surprise” – from unadulterated “Yay, surprise!!!”, thanks to the gentle pressure of the life lessons it becomes “hmmm, surprise???”.
Anyway, this post is about good surprises, so you can already sigh with relief. Let me get to it. Today I saw an e-mail from a friend which briefly mentioned “blind tasting”. Okay, as the whole e-mail was about something else, I ignored that “blind tasting” part. Then, when I heard the entrance door opening and closing, I figured that my friend had arrived. By the time I got downstairs to the kitchen, I was greeted with this:
Yes, call me slow, but only now I realized that the “blind tasting” part was related to me and that the bottle is actually waiting for me.
Okay, so double blind tasting – I’ve done that before, it was fun, so yes, let’s do it again. The cork is out, wine goes into the glass. Perfect fresh ruby color, bright and inviting. Fresh, very fresh raspberries on the nose, some hint of sweetness – based on the initial assessment, the wine appears to be young and gives an expectation of being somewhat lighter on the palate. Also, the nose has that touch of green (really a touch) and earthiness. My friend is impatiently pacing back and force – “what can you say, what can you say” she rather demands.
Okay, I think it is a young wine, 2 to 3 years of age. Also, based on the nose and appearance, my guess is that it is one of he local wines – Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York Hudson Valley – my thought is that it is one of the indigenous varieties, like Chambourcin or Marital Foch.
She seems to be satisfied with my assessment, and we are moving on. On the palate, the wine shows some cherries and raspberries, and somewhat unusual (for me) tannins, in a very front of the mouth (I believe the wine spent time in oak, but I’m curious what type of oak it was exactly. Then the wine finishes with the hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. The wine is perfectly drinkable by itself, but should also nicely complement some charcuterie and lighter cheeses. All in all, it is a nice bottle of wine in my opinion, and I would put Drinkability at 7.
So now I’m allowed to remove the foil, and this is what I find:
As the back label says “made from the best California grapes”, I’m clearly out of luck with my varietal guess. But at least I got the place (totally by accident, but – WOW – the wine is from my home town, Stamford!!), and the age – it is 2010 vintage, so I’m right there with my 2-3 years old guess.
There you have it – as I mentioned many times in this blog, blind tastings are fun! I’m definitely impressed with the fact that the wine of this level can be produced by the amateur winemakers, but hey – everybody got to start somewhere!
Wishing you all great wine experiences! Cheers!
Wednesday’s Meritage – Wine Quiz Answer, To Terroir or Not To Terroir, Halloween for Adults and more
Meritage Time!
Let’s start from the answer for the Wine Quiz #33 – Right place, Wrong vineyard. In the quiz you had a list of 5 wineries from California, and you had to figure out why one of them shouldn’t be on the list. Two answers seemed to single out Pride Mountain as the winery which shouldn’t be on the list, as it is supposedly located in Sonoma and the rest are in Napa. However, this answer is incorrect. All the wineries on the list (or at least their vineyards) are so called “mountain wineries”, as they are all located in the mountains (Bryant, Colgin and Sloan are located on Howell Mountain, and Pride Mountain is on Diamond Mountain), except Araujo, which is so called “Valley floor” winery. So the right answer is Araujo – but it also means that nobody won this time (time to get upset about the huge prize you missed out on…).
Let’s move on to the “interesting stuff” department. First, we are exactly one week away from the Halloween (I guess next Wednesday social media buffs will wish each other happy “Halloween Wine Wednesday”, or #HWW in the twitter terms). As you know, Halloween was invented by dentists and candy makers, and it is all about about sugar consumption by the kids. But – it doesn’t mean that us adults are left out in the cold. First, we can participate by converting plain sugar into a scary one. Need suggestions? Here is the blog post with some scarily wonderful ideas (brrr, careful, those fingers might give you shivers). Then, to celebrate in style, while little monsters are diligently working on future contribution to the college fund for your family dentist’s kids, you can also have a celebration with an arsenal of the spookingly crafted adult beverages. Here is an example – this is what my friend Zak has available at his Cost Less Wines store in Stamford:
Black Vodka, anyone?
Are you blood thirsty?
And here is some Vampire delight
To take it to the next level, here is a great post by Chris Kassel of Intoxicology Report, explaining why Ravenswood is a perfect Halloween wine. If you are not following Intoxicology Report – you should.
Okay, let’s move on. Here is an article by Steve Heimoff, talking about terroir, or may be an absence of it in California Cabernets and Pinots. I had to refrain from commenting in his blog, as I realize that my comment will probably be of a size of a good blog post – but in any case, it is interesting to read.
Next subject – Italian wines. Here is a blog I just discovered, called On the Wine Train in Italy by Alfonso Sevola – it is well written and will be well worth your attention. Then there is a blogging competition dedicated to the wines of Tuscany – sorry for bringing it to your attention so late (submission deadline is November 4th), but you still have a few days to submit your entry. I was thinking about the blog post for this competition for a while, but muse was not kind to me and didn’t visit, and I can’t produce anything worth sharing. But – the major prize is 6 bottles of a very good Chianti – you should definitely think about joining in.
And with this, we are done here – the glass is empty, folks. Happy Wine Wednesday! Cheers!
Daily Glass: Norton, a True American Grape
Today was my wife’s 19th anniversary of coming to US, so I was looking for the appropriate wine to celebrate. I didn’t have anything from 1993. There were ’86, ’88 and ’90, but somehow opening those wines didn’t make too much sense. And then I saw a bottle of Norton. No, it was much younger than 19, but Norton is often called a True American Grape, so it should be perfect for the occasion.
So I pulled this bottle of 2005 Chrysalis Vineyards Norton Estate Bottled from Virginia (12.8% ABV), which I got during our visit to Chrysalis Vineyards about two years ago (here is the post about it). Somehow, from the moment the cork was pulled, the wine worked perfectly. It had that hint of barnyard aroma, just a hint, as much as you get from the well made Loire Cabernet Franc – a bit of explicit earthiness on the nose. On the palate, it was very restrained and balanced, quite dry – somewhat similar to Barolo, only without a bear claw grip of tannins, with some leather and again earthy notes. As the wine warmed up, it showed more fruit, some raspberries and plums, with good acidity, and it stayed very balanced until, well, the bottle was empty. In terms of rating, I will put Drinkability at 8.
I’m sure this wine will continue evolving – but this was my only bottle, so it is what it is. Oh well, at least it was a good bottle of wine, so no regrets here. Cheers!
P.S. I’m purposefully avoiding mentioning the debates, which were also an all American event today – let me only tell you that the wine was far more superior than the 5 minutes of debates I watched…
Sharing Sunshine And Beauty: Fall in New England
We had been blessed with such a magnificent weather today that I couldn’t help a strong urge to share that feeling with you. Fall (I guess the word Autumn will be more appropriate for my European readers) is a very special time in New England. People plan special sightseeing tours and getaways to immerse into this spectacular fiery of colors.
For those of us fortunate to live here, in one of the north-eastern states which comprise New England (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont), such an immersion comes easy – it is enough to step outside and walk around the street, and all the beauty will surround you.
This year the colors had been beautiful (last year, unfortunately, the trees went from green to empty), so let me share with you a walk around my street. And before you will scroll down the pictures (by the way, my daughter helped me to take some of those), let me mention the wine. You know, you can pair wine and weather, right? So the beauty of this weather is that both white and red wines will pair equally well with it. It is the Fall, so you know that red wines are appropriate, but it is so sunny and beautiful that you want to get a little sunshine in your glass too.
Enough words – enjoy New England Fall colors!
Weekly Wine Quiz #33: Right Place, Wrong Vineyard
It is Saturday, and therefore it is time for the new wine quiz. I expect that you will not have much difficulty with today’s quiz. Here we go.
Below you will find a list of wineries, all of them from California, and all of them quite famous, if not legendary. While famous, one of those wineries doesn’t belong to the list. You need to figure out which one and why.
Here is the list:
A. Bryant family
B. Colgin
C. Araujo
D. Sloan
E. Pride Mountain
Please provide an answer in the comment section below.
Have fun and good luck! Have a great weekend! Cheers!
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