Archive
Weekly Wine Quiz #31 – A Guessing Game: Ultimate Challenge, Part 1
To finish off the wine reviews quiz series, today we are following the steps of the previous two wine quizzes (#29 and #30), only now going to the next level: you will need to match 5 reviews and 5 wines. Actually, that “finishing off” will separate into two separate quizzes – one for white wines and one for reds.
Here are your grape choices:
A. Chardonnay
B. Chenin Blanc
C. Sauvignon Blanc
D. Savagnin
E. Viognier
Here are the reviews. Just to make it a bit easier, note that all the reviews are for single-grape wines.
1. “Gently kissed with toast, giving the core of white peach, lemon and chamomile a broader frame of lightly toasted brioche and paraffin. A suave echo of flint chimes through the finish in this lovely rendering of the toasty style.”
2. “An enticing, lemony white that is both aromatic and rich on the palate. Apple and mineral notes combine with the lemon flavors that glide to a lingering finish”
3. “This has weight and depth but remains stylish, with ginger and glazed pear notes in reserve while persimmon, green almond and piecrust notes lead the way. Lovely cut on the finish keeps the ginger edge echoing. Should develop nicely in the cellar”
4. “Extremely rich and generous, with ripe, opulent peach, nectarine, apricot and tangerine flavors that are woven together on a full, lush body with smoke, spice, cedar and mineral details and a juicy acidity.”
5. “Intensely minerally and smoky, with a blanket of acidity behind the apple, sea salt and anise flavors. The long finish is bracing and powerful.”
Please provide the answers in the form of A1, B2 etc. Bonus question – provide country of origin for each grape/review combination. Double bonus – in addition to country, provide more precise appellation, like Finger Lakes, Oregon, etc (doesn’t have be exact, but it should be more narrow that the whole country).
Have fun, good luck and have a great weekend! Cheers!
Wednesday’s Meritage – Wine Quiz Answer, 16+% ABV Wines, CatchWine, Sake Day and more
Meritage time!
Let’s start from the answer for the Wine Quiz #30 – A Guessing Game, In Reverse. You were supposed to pick the right review for the Chateau Latour from the list of five options. I’m happy to announce that we have a winner! Before I will tell you who won, let me tell you about the reviews I cited. All four options were legitimate reviews, of course for the different wines. This is what they were:
A: “dense ruby/purple color as well as an extraordinary nose of spring flowers intermixed with blueberries, black raspberries, wet rocks and spice box. Deep, full-bodied, rich and intense, this gorgeous effort again demonstrates what brilliant winemaking and a top-notch terroir can produce. It should drink well for 15-20 years.”
This is Wine Advocate review for 2008 Hundred Acres Cabernet Sauvignon from California (99 points).
B: “deep purple-ruby. Pungent floral and spice notes enliven complex aromas of dark plum, cocoa and minerals. Large-scaled and juicy, with lively acidity giving sharp definition to the uncommonly deep, pure flavors of black fruits, forest floor and dark spices. The impressively ripe, powerful finish features youthfully chewy tannins and outstanding persistence. This big boy will require a lot of patience: forget about it in the cellar for at least 15 years”
International Wine Cellar review for 2009 Chateau Latour (IWC96+, WA100)
C: “bright ruby. Perfumed, expressive aromas of red and dark berry preserves, smoky herbs and lavender, with a touch of licorice adding depth. Fleshy and supple in texture, offering intense black raspberry and bitter cherry flavors lifted by a spicy quality. Shows the richness of the vintage but carries no excess fat. The finish lingers with impressive tenacity and echoes the floral and smoke notes”
International Wine Cellar review for 2009 Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape (93 points)
E: “Deep, bright violet. Intensely perfumed black raspberry and blueberry on the nose, with seductive Asian spice, lavender and incense qualities emerging with air. Sappy red and dark berry liqueur flavors are lifted by juicy acidity picking up suave spice and floral pastille notes on the back end. Velvety tannins provide shape but are absorbed by the lush fruit, which carries through an extremely long, sappy, incisive finish.”
International Wine Cellar review for 2009 Saxum James Berry Vineyard (96 points).
So based on the comments we have two winners – April and The Drunken Cyclist, who also almost correctly answered the bonus question about the vintage (almost is a key word here, as he couldn’t decide between 2005 and 2009, but still, very impressive). Great job guys, you got all the bragging rights which come with winning of this [I would think somewhat difficult] quiz. I wish my prizes could be more tangible…
And now, let’s move on to interesting news and updates.
Need more wine holidays (the last one we celebrated was International Grenache Day on Friday, September 21st)? You are in luck! 35th Annual (show some respect!) Sake Day is coming on October 1st! Here is the blog post about it from The Passionate Foodie blog.
Wine Til Sold Out Full-On marathon is coming up next Tuesday, October 2nd – 6 AM – Midnight, wines are priced $15.99 – $$$.
Joe Roberts of 1WienDude fame had an interesting discussion in his blog regarding wines with ABV in excess of 16% – can those be balanced? If you have an opinion – join the discussion in Joe’s blog.
W. Blake Gray had a great post about wine collectors versus wine lovers – I highly recommend that you will read it.
I accidentally came across very interesting web site called Catch Wine – it seems to list a lot of very useful information about wineries in all the different states, including address and phone number, the hours when tasting rooms are open, wineries near by, user reviews and more. Check it out!
Last but not least – PJ Wine’s Grand Tasting in New York is coming up on Friday, November 16th – if you are in the area, you don’t want to miss Chateau Margaux, Chateau Haut-Brion, Vega Sicilia and many many other amazing wines (click the link above for more information).
That’s all for today, folks. Happy Wine Wednesday! Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #30 – A Guessing Game, In Reverse
In the last week’s quiz, you were given two reviews of the wine, and you were asked to identify the wine (from the multiple choice selection). I want to continue with that “guessing game”, but change it around. In today’s quiz, you will know the wine, and you will need to select the proper review for it.
There is no reason to be shabby with our wine for this quiz – as you could’ve guessed from the picture, you will need to select a correct review for Chateau Latour, one of the original five so called “First Growth” from Bordeaux 1855 classification, and in general, one of the grandest wines in existence.
Here are five possible review choices for you – again, all coming from professional publications (well, may be except one – you will figure it out):
A: “dense ruby/purple color as well as an extraordinary nose of spring flowers intermixed with blueberries, black raspberries, wet rocks and spice box. Deep, full-bodied, rich and intense, this gorgeous effort again demonstrates what brilliant winemaking and a top-notch terroir can produce. It should drink well for 15-20 years.”
B: “deep purple-ruby. Pungent floral and spice notes enliven complex aromas of dark plum, cocoa and minerals. Large-scaled and juicy, with lively acidity giving sharp definition to the uncommonly deep, pure flavors of black fruits, forest floor and dark spices. The impressively ripe, powerful finish features youthfully chewy tannins and outstanding persistence. This big boy will require a lot of patience: forget about it in the cellar for at least 15 years”
C: “bright ruby. Perfumed, expressive aromas of red and dark berry preserves, smoky herbs and lavender, with a touch of licorice adding depth. Fleshy and supple in texture, offering intense black raspberry and bitter cherry flavors lifted by a spicy quality. Shows the richness of the vintage but carries no excess fat. The finish lingers with impressive tenacity and echoes the floral and smoke notes”
D: None of the reviews here are for Chateau Latour
E: “Deep, bright violet. Intensely perfumed black raspberry and blueberry on the nose, with seductive Asian spice, lavender and incense qualities emerging with air. Sappy red and dark berry liqueur flavors are lifted by juicy acidity picking up suave spice and floral pastille notes on the back end. Velvety tannins provide shape but are absorbed by the lush fruit, which carries through an extremely long, sappy, incisive finish.”
Bonus question – try to identify the vintage of Chateau Latour as well, at least the range. Again, just for fun, try to answer without using the “brute force” methods.
Have fun and a great weekend! Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #29: A Guessing Game
I have to admit – I was beaten up by some folks for the last week’s quiz, denoted as too difficult. This week’s quiz will be a traditional multiple choice type, so will see what you will think about this one.
Nowadays, wine reviews are coming from everywhere. On a high level, you got Wine Spectator, Wine Advocate, James Suckling, Wine Enthusiast, Stephen Tanzer and many tens of others, and then you got thousands of wine bloggers, store owners, educators, aficionado – fine, I know, you got the picture. All of the reviews are written in the context – here is a bottle of wine, and here is the review – so when you read it, it is easy to connect particular wine with the particular review. Now, what if we break the context link? How easy it would be to identify the wine just based on the review by itself?
Here are two reviews for you, both belonging to the “professional” category. First:
“bucolic, natural bouquet of bright red cherries, balsamic, mint and a touch of dried honey all with superb delineation. The palate is medium-bodied with wonderful delineation and supple, lithe tannins. The acidity is very well judged and it leads to a pert, tense finish of bitter cherry, loganberry and licorice. This is an outstanding wine drinking perfectly now, but it should age effortlessly.”
and second:
“deep red. Sexy, intensely perfumed bouquet of ripe raspberry and cherry with suggestions of potpourri, sandalwood and vanilla. Shows more power and darker fruits on the palate, picking up a touch of singed plum that adds a serious quality to the sweet black raspberry and cherry flavors without costing the wine any of its vibrancy. The long, sweet finish hangs on with very good tenacity.”
For the wine quiz, here are my questions:
Question #1: Are these two reviews for the same or different wines?
Question #2: Which wine do you think it is?
A. Burgundy
B. Super Tuscan
C. Oregon Pinot Noir
D. Rioja
E: Chateauneuf-du-Pape
Bonus question: How old do you think this wine is – approximately, of course?
See, it is a multiple choice, as I promised – but you will have to use the comment section. Just for fun, try to answer this question without using “brut force” methods.
Have a great weekend! Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #28: Where Is The Wine In This Picture?
This week’s quiz will be slightly different than most of the quizzes before – it will not be a multiple choice question. It will be more of a “what is it” type of posts which I’d done a few times in the past (here is one example for you, and here is another). This time, you will have to use the comments section to provide an answer.
Below is the picture which is very much relevant to wine – but this is up to you to figure out how. So this is the main question – how this picture relates to wine. For the bonus questions, all the particulars – what, where and even when. I understand that it is not an easy question – you can find some clues in my twitter stream @talkavino if you will look at my tweets over the last few days. Good luck!
Have a great weekend! Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #27 – This Whiskey Can’t Age Any Longer…
As you know, the subject of Whiskey is not foreign in this blog, so that is what today’s quiz will be all about.
Similar to the wine, whiskey is usually aged before it is released to the market. Again, similar to the wine, all kinds of wooden casks are used for that process of aging. Quite often used wine barrels become whiskey casks – you can see on the bottle “Port finish”, “Madeira finish” and many others – but this is not the point of this quiz.
Again, similar to wine, when whiskey is aging in the cask, it gains complexity and usually mellows down. There is nothing you can do to substitute time in this process of aging, so as you can expect, the older the whiskey is, the higher price it commands when in the bottle, but again this is not the point of this quiz.
Look at the whiskey shelf in the liquor store, and you will see a lot of bottles with the “age statement” on them – 10 years old, 12, 14, 15, 21, 25, or may be even 30 or 40 (I’m glad this post is not about prices). Typically the decision for how long to age each particular batch of whiskey is taken by the cellar master at the distillery, and whiskey is tasted along the way until it will be declared worthy of the release. But in some cases, external circumstances dictate the maximum age of the whiskey which can be achieved at the distillery, and nothing can be done to age the whiskey for longer. For instance, at Stranahan’s distillery in Colorado, whiskey doesn’t age longer than 5 years, and if they will try aging it until 8 years, they will have a big problem after all. What do you think can cause such a limitation?
Bonus question – explain what exactly happens with whiskey that it can’t age any longer?
Have a great long weekend! Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #25 – Extreme Wines
Most of my wine quizzes come about somewhat easy – “ahh, yes, that would make it a nice quiz” kind of revelation. Today, I was struggling. Must be the weather (or some other obnoxious, but definitely external factor). Anyway, I think this will be a pretty easy quiz for you – but it is better to stay with weekly routine than to look for excuses.
What is “extreme wines” you wonder? There is a number of “elements” which are considered extreme enemies of wines – heat, oxygen, extreme humidity or dryness, vibration and more. Out of many elements, heat and oxygen are probably competing for the crown of “Nemesis #1”, both rendering wine pretty much undrinkable.
Talking about heat specifically, when applied to the wine for some period of time, it makes the wine to taste “cooked”, removing any notion of fruit, acidity and balance from the wine. But – there are no rules without exception, right? There is one type of wine which is purposefully heated up in the process of winemaking, and heat doesn’t destroy that wine at all.
Do you know what wine is it?
Have a great weekend! Cheers!
Weekly Wine Quiz #23: There Is A Vineyard In UK …
As the world’s eyes continued to be glued to the XXX Olympic Games in London, I think it is appropriate to follow the steps of our previous wine quiz and talk about UK wines.
Global warming or not, but the winemaking in UK is booming lately. Few years back, nobody thought of United Kingdom as a world-class wine-producing country, and now UK sparklers are winning one wine competition after another and attracting a lot of attention as worthy competitors of coveted Champagne. And it seems that winemakers in UK are moving pretty rapidly past just the sparkling wines and making other wines worth seeking.
As UK is a very young wine-producing country, there is limited number of grapes which are successfully growing there and producing the wines of notice. Below you will find a list of some of the grapes successfully used in the winemaking in UK, except one. Do you know which grape doesn’t belong?
Have a great weekend! Cheers!
Wednesday’s Meritage
Meritage Time!
As usual, we are staring with the answer for the Wine Quiz #22: Olympics for all, where you had to figure out which “unusual” country supplied one of the “official” wines for the XXX Olympics in London. It was interesting again to see the spread of the answers – however this time we have a winner (as he left a comment in the Quiz post). And the right answer is …(drum roll, please)… Brazil – as the host of Summer Olympics 2016. And the winner is – The Drunken Cyclist – he gets a big prize in terms of unlimited bragging rights!
I have a couple of things to bring to your attention. First, I found a very interesting blog called Foodimentary. Particularly, this blog lists all the daily (!) food holidays in US. I didn’t check all 365 days, but so far it seems that every day has a designated food holiday! If before you had to eat simply because you were hungry, now you can eat with the purpose and celebrate particular foods! There is a lot more in that blog besides the list of the food holidays – check it out.
Next, there was an interesting post by W. Blake Gray, talking about New York Post food critic’s opinion regarding restaurant wine lists – I don’t want to spoil it for you, I will just tell you that it is quite controversial ( and practically 100% opposite to my own opinion), so read it for yourself.
And last but not least – an advanced wine Holiday warning for you. While Foodimentary blog lists tons of food holidays, there are many wine holidays which are not mentioned – and I think the important one is coming up. On August 30th, wine social media will be celebrating 3rd annual #CabernetDay! I’m sure this will be quite exciting for many of my readers. I have only one request – if anyone plans to open Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Colgin, Bryant or anything else of that caliber, can I please, please (with the cherry on top!) get an invitation? There, I said it – now I have to let universe to work its magical ways.
We reached the bottom of our Meritage glass. Cheers!
Wednesday’s Meritage
Hello and welcome to the special Wednesday – Wine Blogging Wednesday #79 it is, a.k.a. #WBW79.
Let’s start from the usual routine – the answer for the Wine Quiz #21 – Do you Know the King? Similar to the previous quiz, this one also had a diversity of opinion as to which wine is called a “King of the Wines”. And the answer is … Barolo!
Believe it or not, but until the middle of the 19th century Barolo was a sweet wine (it probably sounds funny for anyone who experienced the power of Barolo) due to the deficiencies of the winemaking process. In the second half of the 19th century, invited French oenologist managed to change the winemaking process which resulted in production of completely dry wine. This dry Barolo wine became so popular among nobility of Turin that it was often described as “the king of wine” (here is a link for you with more information on the subject). Now that you know the king, you can enjoy Barolo even more (but don’t forget to decant it!).
Now it is time for the wine news. Let’s start form the Wine Blogging Wednesday #79 – Summer Reading, Summer Wine. This is probably one of the more difficult WBW events, as you are required not to drink the wine yourself, but rather explain to the world what kind of wine your favorite fiction character should be drinking, and why. I’m still not decided if I will will be writing my blog post for #wbw79 – may be yes, may be no – but I’m sure it will be fun to read what the other people will have to say.
Now, all the wine lovers who like value – please pay special attention. Wine Till Sold Out (a.k.a. WTSO) Cheapskate Wednesday is coming up on August 8th. Starting at 6 am Eastern, deeply discounted wines will be offered for sale every 15 minutes or may be even faster. All the wines will be priced in the range of $7.99 to $18.99 and you will have to buy 4 bottles or more to get free shipping. These “marathon” events are usually offering great values and shouldn’t be missed – here are couple of reports (one and two) I compiled from the past events in case you want to have a frame of reference. Get your cellar ready!
Moving along. Next, I want to bring to your attention two more interesting posts. First, W. Blake Gray wrote about the results of market research of consumers’ emotional attachment to the brand (of course primarily concerning alcohol brands). This is pretty short post (here is the link) – read it, some of the results are staggering and hilarious at the same time.
Last but not least: if you love wine and live in a close proximity of Boston (remember, airplanes are known to greatly shorten the distances), there is a restaurant you must visit until the end of August. Why? Because this restaurant (Troquet) is offering mind boggling dealson superbly aged wines (1966 Bordeaux for $75? unreal…) – for more details, please read this post by Richard Auffrey who writes The Passionate Foodie blog.
That’s all for today, folks. Hope you enjoyed this Meritage, and don’t worry – the next Wednesday will be here much sooner than you are expecting, so we will be talking again. And… don’t forget to leave a comment. And – think about your #WBW79 post. Cheers!
Last Bottle Sign Up ($10 credit)
Talk-A-Vino 