Beautiful Simplicity
Is there a such thing as simple wine?
I really despise controversy. In a world where every word is twisted, turned, analyzed, over-analyzed, then twisted and turned, again and again, I don’t want to be the one to start a new controversy around wine (clean or natural, anyone?).
But really, is “simple” an applicable descriptor for the wine? If I say “simple wine”, can you relate to this as easily as to “tannic”, “acidic”, or “sweet”?
Everything in the wine world is personable. No two palates are the same, no two glasses of wine are the same. And so will be the concept of simple wine – it is highly personal.
There are thought-provoking wines – you take a sip, which triggers an instant process in your brain – analyzing flavors, looking for patterns, digging into memory looking for comparisons. Not every thought-provoking wine equates with pleasure – if we call the wine thought-provoking, it doesn’t always mean that we are craving a second glass. Need an example? How about Frank Cornelissen wines? Nevertheless, we all can relate to the wine we designate as thought-provoking.
Then there are complex wines. The wine presents itself in layers. You don’t need to over-analyze anything, and yet every sip keeps changing, offers you new depth and new impressions every passing moment. Complex is beautiful, wine aficionados love drinking complex wines.
So what is then a simple wine? A lot of people would equate the definition of “simple” with the price. We are trained not to refer to the $10 bottle as “amazing” – even if we enjoy it immensely, we would rather say “it’s just a simple wine”. Leaving the price aside, a simple wine has a very simple effect – take a sip, and your only reaction is “ahh, that’s good”. Simplicity doesn’t affect the enjoyment of the wine – the wine should still give you pleasure, and you should still want a second glass.
Every time you think you know a lot a good bit about your favorite subject, wine, life quickly humbles you, just so you know your place. Ever heard of Mack and Schuhle? I also never have. Meanwhile, they had been in the winemaking and wine distribution business since 1939, and currently have a portfolio of 25 wine brands from around the world – from New Zealand to Italy, Spain, and France to the USA.
When I was offered to review 2 of their wines, Montepulciano and Malbec, I agreed to do that because I was intrigued by the names – Art of Earth and El Tractor. Would you instantly agree to drink something called Art of Earth? For a wine geek like myself, such a name makes the wine simply irresistible. And tasting these wines, which are also very inexpensive, resulted in the diatribe about simple wines. For what it worth, here are my tasting notes:
2019 Art of Earth Montepulciano D’Abruzzo DOC (13.5% ABV, $12, made with organic grapes)
Dark garnet with beautiful ruby hues
Touch of cherries, a hint of funk,
Bright, pure, beautiful, succulent, tart cherries – fresh of the tree.
8+, delicious. This wine doesn’t have the complexity of Masciarelli, and I don’t believe it will age very well – but it is absolutely enjoyable right now.
2017 El Tractor Malbec Reserve Mendoza Argentina (13% ABV, $14, 12 months in French oak)
Dark garnet
Blackberries, cherries, sweet tobacco
Dark fruit, tobacco, cherries, a hint of smoke, nicely restrained, good acidity, good balance.
8, excellent. This wine is not going to rival Catena, but it is perfectly an old-world style, quaffable, and enjoyable Malbec.
Here you are – two simple wines, good for every and any day – or at least I would be happy to drink them any day. What is your definition of simple wine?
Guest Post: Treat Yourself – How to Spend the Best Solo Wine Night
Today, I would like to offer to you a guest post by Raichelle Carpio, retail assistant manager at Txanton Philippines. She obtained her Sommelier license with WSET2 by late 2018 and has been working in the hospitality industry over the past 10 years. Her exceptional skills have driven her to the top and the truth is she has a real passion for premium gastronomy, beverage, and service.
In the past, drinking alone was frowned upon. Somehow, it’s seen as the gateway to substance abuse. After all, everyone agrees that wine, or any other alcoholic beverages, for that matter, is better shared. Drinking wine, for most people, is ideally a social activity.
But that has changed due to the pandemic. To curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus, people had to self-quarantine. No social activities were allowed. As a result, wine-drinking shifted from communal to personal. And no one could be judgy about it. After all, we were all in it together. We were all self-isolating with our precious bottle, constantly reminding ourselves of the health benefits of wine, so we don’t feel guilty about drinking solo.
Still, it’s important to stay level-headed as you push through with your solo wine adventures. Pair it with the activities below, so you do not come off as a potential candidate for alcoholics anonymous.
Experiment with recipes that go well with wine
Even if you’re just a casual wine drinker, surely you know by now that white wine goes with fish or chicken, while red pairs best with red meat. Now, why not take your wine and food pairing knowledge to connoisseur levels?
On your solo wine night, don your apron and experiment in the kitchen. Cook something to pair with whatever bottle you have at hand. If you have a bottle of Barbera, it will go down well with a pasta dish like shrimp puttanesca. Ideally, you have gone grocery shopping before your wine date with your lonesome. Otherwise, you might not successfully pull off the dish simply by relying on makeshift ingredients available in your pantry.
Have around-the-world themed dinners
Take your wine and food pairing to the next level with around-the-world themed dinners. Planning to spend the next six Friday nights at home alone? Come up with a scheduled dinner where you take your palate to different countries with exciting culinary cultures. By the end of your quarantine, you will have traveled across six gustatory destinations.
For example, set the first Friday for Indian food. Curried chicken or vegetables will go well with a Riesling and Pinot Grigio. You may include Mexico, Japan, China, Italy, and Greece in your itinerary too.
Join virtual winery tours
Did you know that wineries host virtual tours? And you might find them enjoyable given your passion for wine. These tours will acquaint you with everything there is to learn about winemaking. From how grapes are harvested to how they are processed and stored, you’ll get up close and personal with your favorite beverage.
Look into brands like Martell, Louis M. Martini, Chateau Montelena, Kendall-Jackson, and Matanzas Creek. They are famous for not just their products but also for hosting virtual tours of their vineyards, production facilities, and cellars.
Photo by Matilda Wormwood from Pexels
Learn winemaking
If you got inspired enough by the virtual winery tours you’ve joined, it’s time to take your passion for wine up a notch. Learn winemaking is what we’re saying. No, you do not need a vineyard to pull this off. You can do this straight from home.
You’ll need some equipment, however. Do not worry because it won’t be expensive. Think fermentation containers and straining bags. You can even improvise.
As for ingredients, that’s where you can splurge. You will need lots of wine grapes, filtered water, granulated sugar, and wine yeast. A quick Google search will clue you in about the relatively graspable process of winemaking.
Wine movies marathon
Maybe you’d rather sit back and relax in front of your laptop instead of stressing yourself out cooking a dish in the kitchen or trying out winemaking. That’s OK too. Consider marathoning movies with lots of wine drinking. That way you won’t feel alone. You’ll see people enjoying the same stuff you’re taking pleasure in at the very moment.
Here you cannot go wrong with the film Sideways by award-winning director Alexander Payne, starring Paul Giamatti and Sandra Oh. Basically, the film’s about self-discovery set along California’s vineyards.
Other movies worth checking out include A Good Year, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, and A Walk in the Clouds.
Look into wine investments
Perhaps while nursing a glass of wine, it dawned on you that it’s time to diversify your financial portfolio. That’s an excellent realization to make while drinking solo. Commit to this realization by looking into potential wine investments.
You need to be a connoisseur to invest in wine successfully. If you have yet to fit the bill, do not fret. You have all the time to learn about all things wine. Once you’re confident with the knowledge you’ve acquired, it’s time to put your money in a, well, bottle. If you play it right, that bottle will earn you a massive profit in a decade or two.
You likely already know that drinking wine has health benefits, whether you’re nursing a glass of Spanish wine, Italian wine, or Costco wine. Wine is rich in antioxidants. It regulates your blood sugar and lowers bad cholesterol. It keeps your memory sharp and your heart healthy. These alone should keep guilt at bay whenever you drink wine solo.
Still, it’s worth noting that you must drink responsibly. Anything in excess is never good for anyone. You do not want to give those naysayers the chance to say, “told you so.”
To keep your wine drinking on the safe side, do it alongside other activities. The ones cited above are notable options you have, but they are by no means exhaustive. Get creative.
Wine Quiz #137 – How Well Do You Know Your Wines?
The Wine Quiz series is not meant to intimidate. The whole idea here is to have fun and learn something new. When answering the questions, it is fully encouraged to use all available sources of information, including Google or any other search engine. There are no embarrassing answers – the most embarrassing thing is not giving it a try…
Welcome to the weekend and your new wine quiz!
Let’s start with the answers to the last quiz #136. Once again, you needed to identify wines (producers) by the fragment of the wine label. Here are the full labels of the wines:
All of these are well-known producers, all from California, and all are mainstream wines.
I’m happy to report that once again, Zak correctly identified all of the wines and he gets the grand prize of unlimited bragging rights. I also want to mention Suzanne who correctly identified The Prisoner. It’s the game that counts – really you have nothing to lose – just give it a try.
And here is a new set of fragments of the wine labels, with the wine producers who should be reasonably familiar, and some even carrying good hints with them:
1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
There is something in common between all of these fragments – once you will figure it out, the rest should be reasonably straightforward.
Good luck, enjoy the weekend and your new quiz! Cheers!
In Rhythm With The Earth – Hawk and Horse Wines
Wine is Art.
Wine is Magic.
Wine is a Mystery.
When you drink wine for pleasure (don’t take it for granted – there are many reasons why people drink wine – to fit into the crowd, to be socially accepted, to show your status – drinking for pleasure is only one of the reasons), mystery, art, magic – call it whatever way you want, but it all comes to a play when you take a sip. Wine is a complete mystery as you have no idea what will be your conscious and subconscious reaction to the experience of that sip – what memories will come to mind? What emotions will take you over? The magic is there, waiting for you in every glass of wine.
The magic and mystery in wine go well beyond that sip. “Well before” might be a better descriptor though. The creation of the delicious bottle of wine is not an exact science. It is an art. It is magic. It is a mystery. Mother Nature, who gifts us grapes, never repeats itself. Every year, every vintage is different. Every day of the growing season never repeats itself. It is up to the craft, the skill of the grape grower and the winemaker to create the wine which can magically transport you. And this magic starts in the vineyard.
I’m about to step into the controversial, really controversial space – the biodynamics. As I’m not an expert on the subject by any means, let me just share the definition of biodynamics from the Oxford Languages. Actually, here are two definitions:
Biodynamics is
1. The study of physical motion or dynamics in living systems.
2. A method of organic farming involving such factors as the observation of lunar phases and planetary cycles and the use of incantations and ritual substances.
It is the second definition that is interesting for us. And it is the last part of that definition, “the use of incantations and ritual substances”, which makes biodynamics so controversial for many people – I’m sure you heard of cow horns filled with manure and buried in the vineyard as part of biodynamic farming. Is that magic or pseudoscience? This is the question I don’t care to answer or get an answer for. Taken out of the context, that might sound strange. But the whole point of biodynamics is in creating a healthy ecosystem of the living things – bacteria in the soil, plants, vines, grapes, animals – everything should co-exist in harmony with each other and the Earth, create a habitat where the problems take care of themselves (magic!). When the vineyard is farmed biodynamically, it simply means that the grapes will be produced in the most natural way with the utmost attention on the health of all the elements of the ecosystem.
Delving into the depth of biodynamics rules is completely outside of the scope of this post – if you want to further your knowledge of biodynamics, there is no shortage of great books, articles, and blogs. My reason to share the excitement about biodynamics is simple – tasty wine.
Source: Hawk and Horse Vineyard
Hawk and Horse Vineyards started as the dream of David Boies, who purchased an abandoned horse breeding farm in Lake County in California. His partners Mitch and Tracey Hawkins planted the first vineyard in 2001 in the red rocky volcanic soil, at an elevation of 1,800 to 2,200 feet. The first wine, released in 2004, was a great success. The 18 acres farm became California Certified Organic (CCOF) in 2004, and biodynamic Demeter-certified in 2008. If you want to have an example of what biodynamic farming is, you can read about the Hawk and Horse Vineyard biodynamic practices here – it will be well worth a few minutes of your time.
Hawk and Horse Vineyard grows primarily Bordeaux varieties. I had an opportunity to taste (sample) 5 wines from Hawk and Horse Vineyard, and I was literally blown away from the very first sip I took (magic!). Here are the notes:
2017 Hawk and Horse Vineyards Cabernet Franc Red Hills Lake County (14.3% ABV, $65, 100% French oak (40% new), 150 cases produced)
Garnet color
Wild strawberries, mint, mineral notes
Cassis, fresh black berries, sweet tobacco, well-integrated tannins, firm, tight, perfect structure, excellent balance. Worked perfectly with the steak.
Drinkability: 8+, wow
2017 Hawk and Horse Vineyards Petite Sirah Red Hills Lake County (14.1% ABV, $65, 100% French oak (40% new), 150 cases produced)
Garnet
Tobacco, earth, sandalwood
Silky smooth, round, tart cherries, perfect acidity, dark and powerful, perfect balance.
Drinkability: 8+
2017 Hawk and Horse Vineyards Petit Verdot Red Hills Lake County (14.1% ABV, $65, 100% French oak (40% new), 90 cases produced)
Dark garnet
Cherries, eucalyptus
Tart sweet cherries, dark fruit, dry tannins, firm structure. Super enjoyable over 3 days, the addition of tobacco and sweet dark fruit with balancing acidity. Succulent. Superb.
Drinkability: 8+
2017 Hawk and Horse Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Red Hills Lake County (14.3% ABV, $75, 98% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Petit Verdot, 100% French oak (80% new), 1800 cases produced)
Dark garnet
Earthy flavors, eucalyptus, a hint of cassis
Good acidity, well-integrated tannins, the lightest wine so far.
3 days later ( no air pumping, just reclosed)
The nose has a similar profile (cherries, eucalyptus, mint), maybe a touch higher intensity
Delicious on the palate, dark well-integrated fruit, firm tannins, tight core, lots of energy, a hint of espresso, perfect balance, medium-long finish.
This wine can be enjoyed now, especially with food. Or left alone for the next 15 years. Your choice.
Drinkability:8+
2017 Hawk and Horse Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Block Three Red Hills Lake County (14.3% ABV, $60, 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Petit Verdot, 5% Cabernet Franc, 100% French oak, 150 cases produced)
Dark garnet
Warm, inviting, succulent cherries, a hint of bell pepper, very delicate. Overall, ripe Bordeaux nose
It took this wine 4 days to fully open up. Bordeaux style, ripe berries with herbal undertones, well-integrated tannins, soft and dreamy.
Drinkability: 8/8+
Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Petite Sirah were absolutely delicious from the get-go. Both of the Cabernet Sauvignon wines, coming from the same vineyard and the same vintage really needed time – I don’t know if the type of oak used can make such a difference, but from my observations, it was clear that using more of the new oak made the wine a lot more concentrated and requiring the time in the cellar.
Here it is, my encounter with [magically], [mysteriously] delicious biodynamic wines. What do you think of biodynamics and biodynamic wines? What do you think of the magic of wines (no, you don’t have to answer that 🙂 ). Cheers!
Beyond Wine? Before Wine? Instead of Wine?
Today, class, we are going to talk about grape juice. The real grape juice.
Am I about to descend into the rat hole of “clear and unclear wine” with this “real juice” statement? Nope. Not at all. Today we are talking about pure, unadulterated, varietal grape juice which stayed in the form of juice without becoming the wine.
When I got an offer to receive a sample of the Castello di Amorosa varietal grape juices, my first reaction was “seriously???”. Juice is juice no matter what it is produced from, right? It is usually cloyingly sweet and not something I generally enjoy. I had a great experience tasting the juice of just-harvested Merlot grapes at Paumanok winery on Long Island, and I still remember how incredibly sweet it was, so I don’t really see it as a product on its own. But then curiosity prevailed, and I asked for the sample to be shipped.
I got three juices shipped to me – Muscat Canelli, Gewurztraminer, and a Sparkling Red blend, all beautifully packaged in the Riesling-style bottles and labeled exactly as the wine would. Muscat Canelli and Gewurztraminer are 100% pure varietal, and red blend consists of 90% Gamay, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Grenache. All juices priced at $14 per bottle and available at the winery or online.
When I first tasted the juices, I really didn’t treat them as wines – I didn’t try to analyze the profile and understand individual flavors, the nose, the palate – I looked at them more as binary “like/don’t like” type of experience. I also made the mistake of judging the “wine” by the first taste – thus I declared Muscat, which was open the first, to be “too sweet”. Gewürztraminer was open second and showed nicely (read: surprisingly) balanced. The sparkling red blend was my favorite – it was barely fizzed (”sparkling” is a big word here) and had a nice tangy mid-palate feel, sort of a burst of the wild berries – really, really delicious.
It is interesting to note that these juices not only taste like wines, they also behave like wines. On the second day, the initial sweetness of Muscat subsided – just a little bit, but it was enough to make the juice appear more balanced and the Muscat instantly became my favorite for the evening.
I had been writing about wines for more than 10 years. While writing about the wine, all the little details – technical details, shall I say – summarized in the tasting notes, published by the wineries for all the wines and all the vintages – are quite helpful. This is where you find the details about the vintage, grape composition of the wine, fermentation, and oak regimen. At least, this is what I typically use in my writing. Talking about wine’s technical details, you can also often find there some of the analytical data – namely, pH and amount of residual sugar. And so in my 10+ years of writing, I literally never paid any attention to pH and residual sugar – it took nothing less than unfermented grape juices to make me look at those. Let me share those details with you:
Castello di Amorosa Gewurztraminer Grape Juice – residual sugar: 200.9 g/l, pH: 3.19
Castello di Amorosa Muscat Grape Juice – residual sugar: 18.5 Brix (199.12 g/l), pH: 3.35
Castello di Amorosa Sparkling Grape Juice Red Blend – residual sugar: 18.6 Brix (200.28 g/l), pH: 3.25
As you see, all juices have about 200 grams of sugar per liter – for comparison, there are 113 grams of sugar in one liter of Coke. We can also compare these juices with world-famous dessert wines – Sauternes, which typically sport between 80 and 120 grams of sugar per liter, occasionally reaching 160 or even higher. When it comes to pH values, wines are typically falling in the range between 3 and 4, and the lower the pH value is, the more acidic the wine will be perceived (note that pH is not a direct measure of acidity in wine), so as you can tell the pH values of these juices are quite comparable with the wines.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to balance. Everyone’s palate is different, and your perception of sweetness, acidity, and bitterness can perfectly differ from mine, however, balanced wines exist in each one of our personal worlds. So I have to tell you that each one of these juices was perfectly balanced for me, and therefore, I’m aptly impressed by the mastery of the winemakers here. To make my excitement clear – these are unadulterated beverages. There is nowhere to hide. No flavor-enhancing yeasts, no oak, no blending. Nothing. You need to know when to harvest and when to bottle. Nowhere to hide.
As you can tell, I can wholeheartedly recommend these juices. They are perfect on their own. Perfect any time you desire a little sweet fix after the meal. They will perfectly well support a wide variety of dishes. And I have a number of friends who only drink sweet wines with very little alcohol in them – considering the quality of these juices, I would much rather prefer to serve them these juices instead of Bartenura Moscato di Asti or a similar plonk (my apologies).
You know me well, so I’m sure you understand that it is improbable that I wouldn’t have any gripes – of course, I have them. While winery information on the back label is nice to have, I would like to know when these juices were bottled. How they should be stored. For how long they can be stored. How the opened bottles can be stored (I’m presuming in the refrigerator, but still), and how quickly the opened juices should be consumed.
Nevertheless, this was a great surprise and a delicious discovery. We might be looking at the trend here – hard to tell, but I expect that there will be wineries that will follow Castello di Amorosa’s lead. And I personally would be happy to have a few bottles always on hand to delight oneself or a special guest. Next time someone offers you a glass of varietal grape juice, say “thank you” and enjoy. Cheers!
Double Lucky Number 8
Luck.
An interesting term.
Luck is extremely subjective, personable, and relative. There are many definitions of luck, starting with the cliche one “when preparation meets opportunity” – not sure how that would apply for example, in the case when the brick is accidentally falling off the roof of the building and missing your head by the quarter of an inch. Or when you win the lottery. When you miss your train and meet the love of your life – what kind of luck is that? Okay, let’s not get hung up on the research of the true meaning of “luck” as this is not the goal of this post.
Last year, 2020, can hardly be called a “lucky” year. Quite on contrary, for 99.9% of people living today, this was probably the unluckiest year of their lives to date (who knows what the future hold). Or was it? Yes, we lost the ability to travel, eat out, enjoy the concerts, and socialize with friends. And yet many of us who kept our jobs managed to pay off debt (Americans paid off the record of $83B in credit card debt), invest into their homes (the price of lumber doubled in certain markets in the USA, due to very high demand), and even get well on the path to early retirement. And those of us obsessed with wine even got access to the wines we couldn’t dream of before (thanks to the restaurants not buying those wines anymore), and meet lots and lots of winemakers who happily visited our houses – via zoom. Everything has its silver lining.
A few months ago I got an email from Cayuse, saying that I will be getting a bottle of wine called Double Lucky #8 – a free sample, plus there will be a special zoom with the winemakers to introduce the new wine. Cayuse, and all of the “sister” wines – No Girls, Horsepower, Hors Categorie – are super-allocated (never mind expensive), so the free bottle sounded very lucky.
The wine arrived a few days ago. A beautiful bottle that solicited an array of thoughts. Cayuse wines are better with age – 2017 is clearly too young to be enjoyed now. Also, I love sharing the wine – so what should I do – to open or not to open? I decided that as this will be a unique opportunity to taste this wine together with the winemakers, I should just open the bottle and go with the flow. But also do it in a smart way – open a few hours in advance and decant it – which I did.
I remember reading an article by W. Blake Gray, the wine writer and a critic I respect very much, who mentioned that Cayuse wines might be the best wines made in the USA. Ever since then, tasting Cayuse wines became a dream, which required more than 10 years of waiting to get on the mailing list. Obviously, meeting Christophe Baron was a similar dream, which materialized thanks to pandemic and zoom.
Our zoom session was moderated by Owen Bargreen, the wine critic from Washington, with Christophe Baron and Elizabeth Bourcier, the winemaker, talking about all of the wines produced by Cayuse – well, that is not exactly correct. As introduced by Christophe Baron, it is all the wines produced by Bionic Wines, the new overarching brand, which includes Cayuse, No Girls, Horsepower, Hors Categorie, and Champagne Christophe Baron.
It is all about the rocks (Cayuse is derived from Cailloux which means stones or rocks in French). If I would give you a cliff note on what Christophe Baron does, it would sound something like “he finds the great location, establishes new vineyard, and makes new wine” – really, this is the story behind various Cayuse wines, No Girls, Horsepower…
Everything at Cayuse is done in full respect and harmony with nature – all the vineyards are farmed biodynamically since 2002 – the only biodynamic winery in Washington. As Christophe put it eloquently during the webinar, Mother Nature is the Master, and we are all her servants – it is Mother Nature who produces the grapes, and the winemaker needs to covert those into the wine, hence the utmost respect and attention to producing the wines in full harmony with nature.
We talked about all the wines under the Bionic wines umbrella, how they came to being (remember, new vineyard – new wine), and what is the philosophy behind them all. Almost at the end of the session (the time flew unnoticed, all thanks to the incredible energy and enthusiasm of Christophe), we finally talked about 2017 Double Lucky #8, a blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Tempranillo, the same three varieties which comprise No Girls offering. Double Lucky is Elizabeth Bourcier’s project, from start to the finish – her idea, her execution. She wanted to create the wine similar to Cotes du Rhône – simple and approachable from the get-go, a sort of Cotes du Walla Walla if you will. Was she successful? Let’s talk about it.
When I poured the wine at first, it literally jumped out of the glass. I call Cayuse wines “liquid rocks” – Double Lucky was no exception, with granite, iodine, and smoke being prevalent both on the nose and on the palate. The wine was definitely drinkable, though not for the faint at heart – if you like massive wines, you would be pleased. 2 hours in a decanter made the wine more mellow, shifting the balance towards some cherries and herbs. For my palate, the wine continued up and down until it was gone.
Elizabeth shared her winemaking philosophy, which includes whole cluster fermentation and use of the stems, as stems “give the wines freshness” in her own words. I’m rather cautious about both – I guess my palate is overly sensitive to the tannins extracted from the stems – I perceive them as “green” tannins, which are unpleasantly bitter, and thus I’m generally not a fan. So I don’t have a strong opinion on Double Lucky #8, and while the wine is influenced by Cote du Rhône, it will last for the next 10–20 years, unlike Cote du Rhône wines, which typically have only a few years to be enjoyed, so I would definitely mark it as “needs time” right now. One more parallel with Cote du Rhône – those wines are usually inexpensive – and Double Lucky will be the cheapest wine in Bionic Wines portfolio, at $44 when it will be officially released next winter as part of the No Girls wines release. While the wine is a blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Tempranillo, there are no exact proportions, as the blend will change every year. I can only guess Grenache makes the majority of the blend, given Elizabeth’s propensity for use of Grenache as she does in her own sought-after wine, La Rata.
I have to tell you that while the zoom is exceptional, it is hard to keep attention all the time. As the result, I don’t know if it was just me, but I didn’t really get the real story behind the intriguing name (Double Lucky) and the meaning of #8. Was that the blend #8 which became the winning one? Was the idea behind this wine associated with some lucky moment? I would love to know, but I have no idea. Hopefully, someone will be luckier than me and we will learn the story behind the name.
Was that a lucky break drinking Double Lucky and listening to Christophe Baron? Oh yes, it was. I wish all of us lots and lots of luck, whether we are prepared for it or not.
Wine News and Updates
It seems that the wine world is moving at an ever-increasing pace, with new wines and wine products continuing to surprise even the most adventurous wine lovers. Today, we want to cover some of the most interesting news and announcements.
Loic Pasquet is the winemaker at Liber Pater, the winery in Graves, producing some of the most expensive wines in the world. He is well known for his unique approach to winemaking, using pre-phylloxera vines and old grape varieties which are not used in winemaking in Bordeaux anymore, thus forcing his wines not even carry Graves appellation on the label. It appears that Loic is also an avid coffee lover. After tasting Kopi luwak, the coffee produced in Asia from the beans partially digested by the rodent, Loic decided to try to replicate the same in the winemaking, training presumably marmots (this work is done in full secrecy, so very little information is available) to eat grapes which they can’t fully digest. We hear that in the blind tasting, the wine made from partially digested grapes showed an immense promise, but I guess it will take it a few more years for those wines to become available to the wine lovers (you can imagine production quantities of a few cases a year, each bottle probably costing around $100K – but at the moment, we can only speculate about it).
Continuing the wine and coffee theme, it appears that Starbucks entered a partnership with E.&J. Gallo Winery to produce wine directly from the coffee berries. The coffee berries (or cherries, as they are properly called) are imported from Guatemala and Costa Rica at the moment. Coffee cherries are crushed and fermented at the E.&J. Gallo facility in Northern California, with some batches undergoing malolactic fermentation. Once fermentation is complete, the coffee wines are aged in ceramic eggs for 9–12 months and additional 6 months in the bottle. Few of the wine critics already had an opportunity to taste the wines and had been wildly raving about them. Starbucks and Gallo are currently in conversation with coffee farms in Kona, Hawaii, to add famous Kona coffee to its line of coffee wines. The new coffee wines, branded CoStarWin, should appear in Starbucks shops next year, first in San Francisco and Seattle, with more locations getting access to the much-desired beverage.
The unbound creativity of Coravin is widely known – the non-stop innovation coming from the maker of the famous wine preservation system is simply incredible. It was recently reported in the news that Coravin partnered with none other than Patek Philippe, a famous Swiss watchmaker, to create a new version of Coravin which allows to age wine for a precise number of years as the wine been poured into the glass. Let’s say you want to drink Opus One, and you only have the current vintage of the wine. Take your trusted Coravin, set the dial to 15 years, pour a glass, and enjoy delicious Opus One in its prime, tasting exactly as it would 15 years from now. The technology behind the new gadget had not been revealed, however, it is known that Coravin filed 16 patent applications with USPTO in conjunction with this new product. The new device, aptly named Coravin Patek WineTime, is supposed to be available in time for Christmas shopping this year and will retail for $1199.
I’m sure you will find the next news update quite surprising – Procter and Gamble is not readily associated with wine, but still. It was recently leaked to the press that Procter and Gamble, or P&G for short, is developing a new type of toilet paper using … yes, grape skins! – as the main source material. The project started out of a desire to find a new use for the abundantly available grape skins, and quickly developed into a major R&D undertaking. The first results are very encouraging, with users raving about the pleasure of using the colored toilet paper instead of just the boring white. It appears also that grape-skin-based toilet paper has excellent skin-soothing properties, so this product definitely has a bright future. It seems that Walmart got exclusive distribution rights for Charmin Grape Magic Ultra, so look for it starting in January 2022, and see how you will like it.
The last one for today is again, somewhat unexpected. Wine is usually associated with gourmet food, and Velveeta, the infamous cheese spread, is as far from gourmet food as it can be. Nevertheless, in an attempt to expand its customer base, Velveeta just announced a new line of cheese products called BoozyV. The BoozyV cheese spreads are made with the addition of the wine directly into the spread. As wine is added at the end of the mixing cycle and right before packaging, it doesn’t lose any alcohol content and offers the best of both worlds for the wine and cheese lovers – the product which instantly combines both together. Initially, the BoozyV line includes Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, and Zinfandel cheese spreads, with a nice buttery Chardonnay version hitting the stores at the beginning of the next year. As BoozyV products contain alcohol at full strength, they will be exclusively available at fine wine retailers nationwide.
That’s all I have for you for today, my friends. Cheers!
A Week In Cancun
For many, travel is still a virtual concept. We broke that notion two weeks ago and ventured to Cancun – or to be more precise, Iberostar Paraiso Maya resort in the Riviera Maya area. I already shared my impressions as a week in sunrises, but as you can imagine, I have a lot more pictures to share.
We like active vacations where you live hotel in the morning and you come back at night, happy from all the new experiences, but incredibly tired. We also like relaxing vacations, where your whole day runs a small sequence of events in a circle – food, sand, waves, cocktail, food, sand, pool, food, cocktails, sleep – that’s it. There is pure joy in doing nothing, just enjoying the sunshine, as long as you can take your mind under control and tell it to relax together with the rest of the body.
Our week in Cancun was exactly like that – relaxing. This also means taking lots and lots of pictures – whoever invented digital photography – thank you very much. And thus I have the pictures to share with you.
I used to travel with my trusted Nikon and a few lenses. The iPhone camera doesn’t replace the Nikon, but it has a “good enough” advantage. Comparing the advantages of the DSLR versus the simplicity of the single device to carry around, if you are okay with “good enough” and not looking for perfection, your phone camera is all you need.
I love the versatility of the iPhone camera, where you can have both zoomed-in and ultra-wide pictures, as well as the capability to build a panorama. I’m not good at taking panoramas, as it requires you to hold your phone absolutely still while you are turning around – nevertheless, I made an effort to take sunrise panorama shots every morning together with the pictures of the sunrise. Here are the panorama sunrise pictures which I found to be good enough to share:
The resort we stayed at is called Paraiso Maya, and its main building is shaped as a Mayan pyramid. It is very well lit and changes colors at night:
Here are a few more pictures from the resort:
A few flowers:
And, of course, the food. We ate at a buffet and at 5 restaurants, out of which only the Italian restaurant was really good. We also found a new favorite wine – 2014 Oscar Tobia Rioja Reserva – the wine was outstanding, with dark fruit and cedar box notes, fresh, and vibrant as only Rioja can be.
And last but not least – sand and waves:
Here you are, my friends. If you still can’t travel, I hope these pictures will help you cope.
You will travel soon.
Wine Quiz #136 – How Well Do You Know Your Wines?
The Wine Quiz series is not meant to intimidate. The whole idea here is to have fun and learn something new. When answering the questions, it is fully encouraged to use all available sources of information, including Google or any other search engine. There are no embarrassing answers – the most embarrassing thing is not giving it a try…
Welcome to the weekend and your new wine quiz!
Let’s start with the answers to the last quiz #135. Once again, you needed to identify wines (producers) by the fragment of the wine label. I’m making an effort to ensure that the fragment of the label will be telling enough to allow for the producer to be identified. Here are the full pictures of the labels so you can compare:
All of these are well-known producers, most from California with the exception of Chateau Ste. Michelle from the State of Washington.
Sadly, nobody attempted to answer this quiz, so I have to keep all the prizes where they are.
Here is a new set of fragments of the wine labels, with the wine producers who should be reasonably familiar, and some even carrying good hints with them:
1.
2. 
3.
4.
5.
6.
Good luck, enjoy the weekend and your new quiz! Cheers!
Pleasures of the Obscure – New Discoveries
If you follow this blog for some time, you might (or might not) know that I identify as an obsessed wine geek. There is definitely more than one trait that would allow such an identification, so the particular one I want to talk about here is the love of obscure grapes.
I was bitten by The Wine Century Club bug more than 15 years ago, and since then I’m on the quest to seek the most unusual wines made from the most obscure grapes. The Wine Century Club offers to wine lovers a very simple proposition – for every 100 different grapes you taste, you get to the next level in the club. With more than 1,300 grapes used in wine production today, this shouldn’t be very difficult, shouldn’t it? Yet, of course, it is, as an absolute majority of the wines readily available today in the supermarkets, wine stores, and even from the wineries direct, are made from 50–60 mainstream grapes – the rest requires quite a bit of work of procuring as most of the wines made out of the rare grapes are produced in minuscule quantities and not sold anywhere outside of the immediate area of production.
So if finding those rare and unusual wines is that difficult, why bother you may ask? I can give you a few reasons. One – I can simply tell you that I tried 555 grapes at the time of writing this post, so it kind of “mine is bigger than yours” type of reason. Yep, lame. Let’s leave it.
The better reason is the fact that every bottle of wine made from grapes one never heard of before is an opportunity to experience great pleasure. The grape is unknown, so we have no expectations whatsoever. While drinking Cabernet Sauvignon, that simple little piece of information – the name of the grape you are well familiar with – has a tremendous effect on how you perceive the wine. The level of pleasure will depend on how well the particular wine matches your expectations. It might be the best ever for you in the blind tasting, but in the non-blind setting, you are instantly influenced by your prior experience and thus your level of pleasure is limited by your expectations.
When you pour yourself a glass of Bobal, Trepat, or Hondarrabi Zuri, you are presented with a blank canvas – you can draw any conclusions you want. You will decide if you like the wine not in comparison but simply based on what is in your glass and if it gives you pleasure, or not. Simple, straightforward, easy.
Here, let me share with you my latest encounter with obscure grapes.
Let’s start with the white wine – 2017 Paşaeli Yapincak Thrace Turkey (12% ABV, 100% Yapincak). Yapincak is a native variety of Şarköy – Tekirdağ region in Northern Turkey. The grapes for this wine, produced by Paşaeli winery in Turkey, come from the single vineyard located at about 500 feet elevation, 35 years old vines. Upon opening the wine showed some oxidative notes, I even thought it might be gone already. A few hours later, it cleared up, and presented itself as a medium to full-bodied wine, with fresh lemon and a touch of honey notes, crisp, fresh, easy to drink. This can be a food wine, but it doesn’t have to be, quite enjoyable on its own. (Drinkability: 8-/8)
My rare red wine was really a special experience, as it brought back really special memories. I got this 2014 Agricola Vallecamonica Somnium Vino Rosso (12.5% ABV, 100% Ciass Negher) 4 years ago, during a press trip to the beautiful region of Franciacorta. As we were the guests of the Franciacorta consortium, we were mainly focusing on the Franciacorta sparkling wines. During one of our lunches, I noticed this wine and had to bring it home, albeit only one bottle. This wine is made out of the ancient grape called Ciass Negher in the local dialect, used in the winemaking by the Romans about 2,000 years ago, and resuscitated by Alex Belingheri in his vineyards at Agricola Vallecamonica.
This wine was absolutely unique – as you would expect considering its rare pedigree. I perceived this wine as something in a middle between Pinot Noir and Chianti/Sangiovese. A touch of Pinot Noir’s sweetness, smoke, and violets, with the undertones of leather and tobacco, and a little funk. Each sip was begging for another – easy to drink, perfectly balanced, and delightful. If this would be my everyday wine, I would be perfectly happy about it. (Drinkability: 8+)
Here you are, my friends. The wine pleasures are everywhere – you just need to look for them.
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