Archive for the ‘wine tasting’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Casual wine tasting

Monday, February 25th, 2008

A real quickie today…

A friend threw a very casual wine tasting at his place on Saturday night.  He bought about 12 bottles, I brought over 4 and people brought their own.  No theme to the tasting, just grab a glass and pour yourself some stuff.

Stuff I noticed which I found interesting.  There was a guy there who liked white but not red and some ladies who had no interest in white and would only drink red.  Found that to be a little role reversal.  So much for stereotypes.

Everyone was responsible with their drinking.  Parties such as these are easy to pull off in Manhattan as there is sufficient public transportation for getting home.  One girl acted out a bit – seemingly a reaction to too much wine, but otherwise a fine time was had by all.

I was designated pourer for many people and as such I was privy to people’s reactions to the wine and ONLY the wine (they did not see the bottle, label, price, etc.).  Two of the favorites were an Israeli Cab/Merlot blend from the newly imported Ruth Winery.  And the other was a Chilean Cab made by Caliterra.  Both very fine wines indeed.

Final point I want to make about the evening touches on a point I raised just the other day that was confirmed by a guest.  It was a gentleman who indicated that he knows very little about wine.  I responded that what is most important is that he recognize what he likes.  He proceeded to tell the story of a snobby, pretentious and overall demeaning sommelier who completely turned him off from wine for many years.   He apparently is SLOWLY re-opening up his mind to wines, but the incident left him feeling that his wine knowledge was so inadequate that he’d be better off avoiding wine altogether.  SAD.  I hope I was able to shed a more positive light on industry people to this person.

I will be attending a more formal Rioja wine tasting later this week and look forward to sharing the results and feedback…

Have a wonderful & wine filled week!

WTG

Tags: , ,
Posted in Israel Wine, wine tasting | Comments Off on Casual wine tasting

Kosher Food & Wine Event

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

The event took place at the Puck building this past Wednesday evening. What can I say? I was disappointed. I recently wrote about a Chateauneuf du Pape event at Tribeca grill that was absolutely fabulous. No crowds, just enough wine & time to taste everything and very friendly people (even the French winemakers).

The kosher event had more wines, much more food, and took place at a time that was more conducive to drinking wine (in the evening rather than the afternoon). I will readily admit that there was a time before I made the transition to the wine industry that I would have been thrilled with an event like this. But given that i am now more interested in evaluating wines and hearing the stories behind the wines, this kosher event fell short.

The hall was too dark to evaluate color. Samples were being poured from older vintages – and I mean whites, which should be consumed young and fresh. The people pouring the samples were clueless as to what they were pouring (the winemaker was sometimes by his wines table – but often was not). And the crowds. ARGHHHH! One never wants to have to PUSH & SHOVE to get a sample, but this event was not for the timid. I tried not to follow the herds by shoving my glass into the pourers face, but I found that it was a strategy that while rude, it was effective. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I did not want to wait 5-10 minutes with an empty glass. I had a lot of “work” to do, and waiting while others shoved in front of me was going to really hamper my ability to get through as many wines as possible. So I became pushy – NOT something I am proud of. I did however attempt to apologize for my behavior to as many people as possible.

All that said, if you were a wine & food lover without any agenda you should have really enjoyed this event. It was a social scene. There were a tremendous amount of kosher wines, some of which cost about or more than $100 per bottle. There was plenty of food, some of it I hear was pretty good. And there were even some spirits to try. Sadly I did not get a chance to taste the Cognac, but I did try the “kosher for passover” tequila and it was not half bad.

If you were there and enjoyed it, good for you. I hope you discovered a wine which you previously hadn’t been aware of and that you decided you like because you tried it and it worked for YOU!

Now if I can only convince the people throwing the event to allow press/trade to come 3-4 hours early next year rather than only 1 hour early…

Happy KOSHER wine drinking!

WTG

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in wine - kosher, wine tasting | Comments Off on Kosher Food & Wine Event

Wine – Is it really THAT intimidating?

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

I ran a private wine tasting last night.  It was in a couple’s apartment, and the husband hired me for his wife’s 50th B-day party.  There were 3 other couples there, so 8 people in total.

The guests were all great.  Very interested in wine, asking lots of questions, really giving the full evaluation of wine a chance – as opposed to wine tastings where the guests just want to get SLOSHED.  But I noticed something.  Several of the guests, both the men and women, felt the need to qualify many of their questions by first stating that “I know nothing about wine but how/why/what…etc…”.  Why the qualification?  You may not be a wine expert, but how many people really are.

One of the issues I constantly try to hammer home is the idea that people need to trust their palate with wine, just as they do with food.  How many people seek out scores when deciding what dish to order or how to have it prepared.  Sure we have all been EATING longer (and with greater regularity) than we have been drinking wine, but any time someone has a new food/beverage introduced to them they simply try it and decide if they like it or not.

I suppose that if/when people start trusting their palates TOO MUCH when it comes to wine I might not be “needed” anymore.  But at the same time I still think people are unjustifiably insecure when it comes to wine.  Yes, i am happy to answer any question, provide some VERY PARTIAL advice (drink Israeli wine!), or help you drink that special bottle of wine you purchased many years ago.

But what I guess am trying to say is wine should be fun.  Unless you are just drinking it to get a buzz, think about the wine, how it makes you feel, how it tastes with the food you are drinking it with, how long the flavor sits on your palate, what smells/tastes you are reminded of when you are drinking it.  Don’t worry about being wrong – there is no such thing.  Whether you are smelling berries, nuts, cats pee or sweaty socks, how can someone tell you “no you are not”?  They can’t!  Whatever the wine smells like, tastes like, reminds you of, etc – YOU ARE RIGHT.  Enjoy it.  Wine is a beautiful & special thing.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!

Happy Presidents weekend & drink a wine YOU love!

WTG

Tags: , ,
Posted in wine tasting | 1 Comment »

Israeli wine tasting – Castel & Binyamina

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

The Kosher Wine Society hosted a tasting tonight with Israeli winemakers from the Castel & Binyamina wineries.

The evening started with a 2004 Sauvignon Blanc from the Binyamina winery.  Sauv Blanc, when not oaked, is generally a wine that should be consumed young.  As such this wine was nice and pleasant but a little over the hill and mostly indistinct.

Once everyone arrived we were treated to a very special talk by Eli Ben Zaken, the winemaker (together with son Eytan) and proprietor of Domaine du Castel.  Castel is among Israel’s best boutique wineries (producing approximately 100,000 bottles) and has received very positive reviews for their wines of late.

Eli gave an insightful talk about Israeli wines, the Israeli terroir, industry and varying winery philosophies.  The guests were then treated to The “C” by Castel 2006 Chardonnay.  Castel’s Chard is very well regarded.  I personally thought the nose hid the purity of fruit with it’s smoke (1/3 new barrels) and cream (full malolactic fermentation).  But the mouthfeel, balance, minerality and long luscious finish must be why the “experts” love this wine so much.  Very nice.

We then tasted both the 2005 Petit Castel & Grand Vin from Castel.  Again I had problems with the nose on both.  I found the Petit Castel had a heavy herbacious/green bell pepper nose.  I know many people love this characteristic, but I really only like it in very small doses.  As to the Grand Vin, although it had at least 1 hour in the glass to aerate, I still found it to be mostly closed.  It showed some subtle black fruit, earth & spice, but it was too subtle and probably could have used some decanting.   That said, the mouth-feel on both wines was great.  Really well balanced, soft gripping tannins, fruit & earth.  Yum!  Very nice wines.

We ended the evening with a brief talk by Assaf Paz, the winemaker from Binyamina.  Assaf joined Binyamina less than 2 years ago and I am confident that Binyamina has exciting times ahead.  While the guests drank a 2006 late harvest gewurztraminer Assaf talked about the challenges in producing late harvest wines.

All in all it was a very nice and charming evening.  The winemakers were all very engaging and were happy to answer questions. And oh yeah, there was even some cheese and crackers.

I encourage you all to go check out these wines.  You’ll be happy you did!!

WTG

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Israel Wine, wine tasting | Comments Off on Israeli wine tasting – Castel & Binyamina

Chateauneuf-Du-Pape tasting at Tribeca Grill

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

This afternoon I attended a fabulous Chateauneuf du Pape (CDP for simplicity) tasting at The Tribeca Grill in downtown Manhattan. The tasting was seemingly co-sponsored by Le Du Wines and Alain Junguenet Selections.

This was not one of those HUGE industry tastings. It was not a packed open to public tasting. It was a rather intimate tasting with just the right number of wines that one could taste them all, speak with the producers, occasionally cleanse the palate (ample bread, crackers & water was provided) and do it all in about 2 hours. I say that because that is what I accomplished having arrived following a meeting in the diamond district.

In all I managed to taste 36 reds, 6 whites, 1 rose’ and 1 dessert wine. I’d like to share some overall thoughts as well as some interesting tidbits I learned while speaking with the pourers, and I will then list a few standouts.

A quick note about CDP. CDP is a blended wine with as many as 13 permitted (to be called a CDP) varietals (types of grapes). The base of most however is Grenache, often blended with Mourvedre, Syrah, & Cinsault.

Overall I found these wines to be quite different from some of the CDP’s I recently tasted at my wine tasting groups CDP tasting. At that tasting we tasted through some 2004’s and 2005’s. This tasting was mostly 2006’s with some ’04’s & ’05’s mixed in. The tasting was also not ALL actual AC (Appelation CDP Controlee) CDP’s. Many were wines made in the region, but were Cotes-du-Rhone.

As to the wines, and maybe this is a reflection specifically of Alain Junguenet Selections, but they seemed more approachable. My overall impression of the “better” CDP’s I previously tasted was that they were very tightly wound and just simply too difficult for me to appreciate at a young age (the wines – not me :-)). I brought this subject up with Alain’s son John, as well as some other people who were around at the time. I asked them how to compensate for the fact that CDP is known to be a wine that ages gracefully but in its early years is often unapproachable. The simple explanation was that the 2006 vintage was a much more approachable vintage that the 2005 vintage. The less simple explanation was that one really needs to KNOW the wines (having tasted each producers wine for many vintages) to be able to understand and anticipate what the wine will show when it reaches its prime. Tough stuff. No wonder so many people have for so long spoken of the pretension of the wine industry.

Next thing I wanted to touch upon were some interesting tidbits I picked up while speaking with many of the producers/winemakers. The first thing, and this is related to the topic above, is that producers are making many wines which are more approachable at a young age. Some vintages don’t allow this, but when possible it seems the producers are harvesting a little later, allowing the fruit to become a bit more ripe – consequently leading to more fruit forward wines. This was not something which was readily admitted by the producers, but it was eluded to when they spoke of “harvesting the fruit late”.

Which leads me to another interesting tidbit about the harvesting. Many of these producers harvest all their vineyards at the same time. And I don’t just mean all vineyards with the same varietal (type of grape). ALL THEIR FRUIT/GRAPES. What I had previously understood as being the norm is that vineyards are harvested when the fruit reaches optimal ripeness. But that seemed not be the case for many of the producers here. As to why, well that leads to my next interesting tidbit…

Many of these producers spoke of fermenting their fruit all together. I asked if they meant many different vineyards together (rather than fermenting each vineyard separately). They said well yes, but also, different varietals together. HUH? Well apparently, varietals that are destined to be blended together are frequently fermented together in CDP.

A final tidbit I found to be interesting was the extensive use of cement tanks for aging the wine. And I do not mean before being transferred to barrels. I mean aging – PERIOD. Several of these wines never saw the inside of a barrel. While the new world seems to be dosing out large amounts of oak flavor in their wines (either through the use of barrel aging, or any other method – Oak chips, staves, even a powder), many “purists” are avoiding such a process by using older barrels, stainless steel tanks, or as previously eluded to by aging the wine in large cement tanks. Hmmm….and I thought the minerally flavor in CDP came from the stoney soil…

As to standouts I want to mention 4 reds and 1 white. I considered these to be standouts as they each seemed to possess something very unique. I feel compelled to note that I enjoyed most of the wines and enjoyed speaking with most of the producers. But these 4 wines simply spoke to me in a way the others did not…

The one white that had me thinking was A Domaine Moulin-Tacussel Chateauneuf-du-Pape Blanc 2007. This blend of 45% Roussane, 30% Grenache, 15% Clairette, & 5% each Bourboulenc & Picpoul (please don’t ask me to pronounce these unusual varietals). The color was a bit hard to see given the lighting, but the nose struck me with immediate scents of freshly cut pears. This was something I got from some other whites as well. What was most unusual about this wine was after getting past the pears I was struck with something that was a bit harder to discern. I decided it reminded me a bit of applesauce and a bit of melon flavored baby food. Sort of chopped/pureed & a bit artificial apple/melon scent. Really nice & complex. On the palate the fruit came through with a crisp acidity that was lacking in some of the other whites. This wine retails at Le Du’s Wines for $44.19.

As to the reds…

The Bosquet des Papes ‘Cuvee Chante le Merle’ Chateauneuf-Du-Pape 2006 had a nice ruby color, a nose that was both fruit and mineral, a full, round and silky mouth feel and a very nice smooth long finish. Retail price: $60.34.

The Cuvee du Vatican Reserve Sixtine Chateauneuf-Du-Pape 2006 has both blue (bluberries, plums) & black (casis, blackberry) fruit on the nose. On the palate it was very full bodied, yet round, silky smooth and very well balanced, with a medium to long finish. Retail price: $55.24

The Mas de Boislauzon Cuvee du Quet Chateauneuf-Du-Pape 2006 had a nose that I had trouble with. It was a bit tight and closed to me. But when I tasted the wine it opened up in my mouth to show big ripe fruit, gripping tannins, and a lot of earthy and minerally flavors, with a nice long finish. Overall i was a bit disappointed at not being able to appreciate the nose, but I found it to be a very complex wine. Retail price: $74.79

Finally, I am proud to say that my favorite wine was also a sub-$50 bottle (unlike the 3 reds previously mentioned).

The Domaine de la Cote de L’Ange Cuvee Vielle Vignes’ Chateauneuf-Du-Pape 2006 took some swirling in the glass to access the nose, but when I got it…POW! The nose was really unique. Some sort of floral, spicy fruity thing going on. Really had me going. The palate had such a beautiful feel to it. With flavors of fruit, spice, earth, stone…all leading to a very elegant and long finish. This was a complex, well balanced beauty. All for the low low retail price of $46.74.

I’d like to mention that there were some very nice sub $20 wines as well, but most were pretty simple and straight forward. Not a bad thing, but not a wine that is going to sit on your palate for a long time and make you think about it too much.

WOW. That took a long time. Oh, poor me, the tough life of a Wine Tasting Guy….

Off to LA LA land (Los Angeles) to spend my niece’s 1 year b-day with the family this weekend. I hope to drink wine out there worthy of writing about. But if not I’m sure to have some tales to tell upon my return next week.

Until then, happy tasting!

WTG

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in wine tasting | 2 Comments »

Blind Tasting

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

I just enjoyed another article written by Laurie Daniel for the San Jose Mercury News. This one titled “Blind tasting Can Be A Real Eye-Opener”. OK, the title is a little old-man-pun style, and the article was written citing some recent research done by Standford Business School and California Institute of technology (regarding how price influences people’s appreciation of wine)…but she sheds some light into wine appreciation. And as an advocate of blind tasting, I like to see other people touting its unique ability to force people to appreciate what it is the glass as opposed to its label, reputation or price tag.

I like blind tasting for a multitude of reasons. As someone who DOES NOT profess to having a master palate it is OK when in a blind tasting I pick a (supposedly) inferior wine over one priced much higher or said to be much more highly regarded.

I also like blind tasting as a result of an experience from my time working in the lab at a Napa custom crush. There was a producer who made their wines there that consistently had trouble maintaining the natural balance of their wines. They would doctor the heck out of their wines just to get them into better balance. Yet these same wines carried a triple digit price tag and a reputation to match. Proof that marketing, a high price tag, or for you conspiracy theorists – paying off critics, is enough to “fool” consumers. (One of the many reasons why I STRONGLY advocate tasting wine YOURSELF and buying wines YOU like – not those you are told you should like).

The last reason I’ll mention here as to why I am such a fan of blind tasting has to do with my affinity for Israeli wines and my STRONG belief that they are STILL under appreciated. We Israeli wine people joke that simply being “Israeli” means that critics will (subconsciously??) deduct 3-5 points from their scoring of the wine. Oh how I would love to set up a blind tasting for well known critics and sneak a few Israeli wines in with some other New world wines.

Bottom line, read the Laurie Daniel article, and know that when you are contemplating that $100 bottle vs. the $30 bottle, yes you may enjoy the $100 bottle more – but it will only be BECAUSE it cost you $100 and NOT because you were drinking a better wine…

Now how do you go enjoy that $500 bottle of Bordeaux after reading that…????….SORRY!

Happy drinking!

WTG.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Israel Wine, Wine critiquing, wine tasting | Comments Off on Blind Tasting

Wine Australia Festival – wrap up

Friday, January 25th, 2008

Yesterday, January 24th, jet lagged and feeling a bit under the weather, I attended the Wine Australia Festival in NY’s Wall St Cipriani.

I have admitted on several occasions to being an amateur taster (although I wonder what qualifies those who claim to be experts as experts) yet I have also stated often that I believe the most important aspect of wine appreciation is recognizing what wines YOU like and enjoying those, not listening to what the SO CALLED EXPERTS have told you to drink.

Back to the tasting, there were 39 official tables set up, each with at least one producer and about 3-6 different wines, ranging from Whites such as Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc or Viognier, and Sparkling wines made from Chard or Pinot Noir (or a combo of the two) to the famously fruit forward reds made from Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noir & of course Shiraz (AKA Syrah)…just to name a few.

I attended the tasting with a good friend & fellow wine tasting group member – a fellow who happens to be selling wine at a prestigious Manhattan retailer while waiting for the publishers to duke it out over his book. Upon arriving at our first table I announced to said friend that my palate has been evolving and that I have been growing tired of the heavily extracted & rich reds, seeking more elegance, finesse & complexity in wines. While I know this seems quite snobby, and may have been, I am about to make a confession. I MAY have initially made such a proclamation believing that that is what one SHOULD do – progress past the “fruit bombs” and learn to appreciate the more “well made” wines. So what happened – I realized about 2/3 of the way through my tasting that I still do prefer the fruit forward styled wines to the more “elegant wines” (which just seemed to me to possess an absence of fruit). By the same token I did very much enjoy some wines that had obvious fruit but seemed to be in better balance given a lower alcohol level (less than 14%).

By my compatriots calculation we tried about 75 wines each – within 3 hours. This is a feat I believe is difficult enough for the so called experts, let alone little old me with my cold (oncoming flu?). For the first 10-20 wines I tried to diligently take notes. Didn’t work well. Especially when i began to feel the pressure of hitting as many as possible before we were ceremoniously told THE TASTING IS OVER. (The subtle tactic used was “the coat room will be closing in 10 minutes – get your coat now or it will forever become the possession of Cipriani). But I digress. After the first 10-20 wines complete with note taking I reverted to a simple characteristic word (ie. Oaky, fruit bomb, earthy) or adjective (ie. Wow, ehh, hmmm) and number ranging from 1-5 (although I found no 1’s and only one 5).  I must note that the numbers are a personal thing – only to indicate to ME how I felt about the wine.

A quick count of wines tasted by going through the book and noting which wines had some writing alongside, indicating a wine I tasted revealed that I did in fact taste 68 different wines. 14 of the 68 were tasted upstairs in an area designated for VIP’s. How my partner in wine crime and I made it into the VIP area is still somewhat unbeknownst to us. We were tasting wines at the Grant Burge area when the winemaker encouraged us to go check out his “Meshach” Shiraz up in the VIP area. He told us who we should speak to about entrance to said VIP area. What fools we were. Fighting with the ordinary masses to taste sub-$20 wines when the VIP and its $30, $40, $50…even $100 wines were awaiting. Truth be told, after tasting 50+ wines before arriving at the VIP area I was spent by the time I got to the VIP wines.

OK, this has turned in to a very long post with little concrete revelation. So I want to end by recalling something I pointed out to two fellow tasters in the VIP area. I noted that some of the expensive wines I was suddenly privy to taste reminded me A LOT of the other wines I had tasted just minutes earlier that possessed much less inhibiting price tags. BUT…and there was one noticeable BUT. The more expensive (VIP) wines seemed to have a softer mouth feel. Same heavily extracted fruit, high levels of alcohol & noticeable gripping tannins.  Yet either my palate was completely numb by that point or these wines I was now tasting were somehow a little more well rounded, a little more balanced & had softer, smoother& silkier mouth feels to them.

In summary, while I had a great time, drank (or I should say tasted) A LOT of wine, much of it quite enjoyable, I was not blown away. Many of these wines seemed to me to be quite indistinct from one another. Yes I learned that the hotter regions were where more of the richly extracted wines came from. And the cooler regions are where the more minerally/earthy wines came from. But overall, trying to taste through as many as 100-200 wines seems a lesson in futility. Of the 3-400 people of the trade in attendance I wonder how many can truly assess wines in such a setting. And if they could, were there really a handful of standouts???

Have a fabulous weekend fellow wine drinkers. Hope you have a nice special bottle put aside for the weekend. CHEERS!!!

WTG

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Wine Industry, wine tasting | Comments Off on Wine Australia Festival – wrap up

Moderate Drinkers Who Also Exercise Are More Likely to Live Longer

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

Got this fabulous headline from a Wine Spectator email.

“A study published Jan. 9 in the European Heart Journal… concluded that moderate consumption of alcohol and moderate exercise are both associated with longer life but, more important, the benefit increases when the two behaviors are combined. ”

Yet another study hailing the health benefits of RESPONSIBLE wine consumption.

Well, I made it back from Israel last night in one piece. What an amazing trip. There is a big Australian wine tasting today in lower Manhattan that i will be heading to. I expect to write a full report either later tonight or tomorrow.

Until then, Happy (and HEALTHY) wine drinking!

WTG

Tags: , ,
Posted in wine health, wine tasting | Comments Off on Moderate Drinkers Who Also Exercise Are More Likely to Live Longer

What makes a good wine?

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

What makes a wine GOOD?

Is it a high score from a critic?

Is it a technically well made wine (proper balance of tannins, alcohol, acid, fruit, etc.)?

Is it a wine with a nice mouth feel?

OR, is it simply a wine that YOU like?

OBVIOUSLY, this is a loaded question. I think presented with this question in a comparable multiple choice format, 99 out of 100 people would say – well of course it is a wine that YOU like.

But I am raising the question as i wonder if this is a question many winemakers & wine consumers need to really examine.

With regards to consumers, this question is both complicated and straight forward. Complicated in that I don’t think too many people would admit that they buy wine based on price or scores, but it is a sad reality. Wine consumers have SOOO many choices, how does one narrow those choices down? Start by eliminating wines out of your price range (too high) or whose price tags lead you to believe they can not be any good (too low).

You can then narrow it down by deciding between red or white, eliminating wines from countries you might not be interested in (DO NOT eliminate Israeli wines) or whose labels you don’t like (silly but frequently done). Skip wines made from varietals (grapes) you are not interested in (or are out of fashion ie. Merlot), or a host of other reasons that make sense to you. Easy right? Well, you probably still have several thousand wines left to choose from. OK, I’ve gotten a bit carried away, especially since this was not the intended direction of this post. And while any method you choose in picking a wine is right, I’ll simply say that while variety is nice, I would recommend tasting wines and finding ones YOU LIKE. One of the best ways of doing this is attending wine tastings and going to Wine bars to find wines, styles & wine producing countries you like.

As to where I INTENDED to go with this email…the wineries and their respective winemakers.

I completely understand that as idealistic as it would be to have a winemaker who makes wine THEY like as opposed to one they can sell, that winemaker might find them self out of business very quickly. Obviously they have to make a wine they can sell.

OK, then what? Do you make a “Parker Wine” (a wine made in a style known to be preferred by influential wine critic Robert Parker)? Do you make a “Lab Wine” (one whose PH, TA & other technical aspects are all where they “should” be)? Do you make a wine you think you’ll be able to sell? Do you make a wine YOU like? Or do you make a wine you think your peers will like?

This is a question I won’t even attempt to answer. But I raise it having recently read about a winemaker in California who admitted to falling into the Parker trap. He was making a very ripe, heavily extracted, high alcohol wine. And he found himself getting high scores, selling a lot of wine, and shopping a lot for OTHER PEOPLE’S WINES. He has since declared that he is getting back to making wines he can enjoy that are to be lower in alcohol & less ripe. I wish him a lot of success. While I think that his “Anti-conformist” attitude might help to initially garner some loyal customers, in the long run a lower score might hurt overall sales.

I feel like I opened up a big can of smelly worms and am now walking away… I’m sorry – I’m tired and have football on my mind. I know I resolved nothing here. I suppose just some topics to ponder and revisit in future posts. Or maybe I reintroduced something for both consumers & winemakers to think about…and maybe they should each ALSO consider what the other thinks about when either making or purchasing wine.

Have a great week everybody. And drink whatever BLEEPIN wine you want to drink!

WTG.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Wine Bars, Wine critiquing, wine tasting | Comments Off on What makes a good wine?

Italian Wine tasting (Sicily) & Pizza

Monday, January 7th, 2008

I just got back from a fabulous impromptu Italian wine & pizza tasting with several of my wine tasting group members (and some guests/possible new members??).

There were only 7 of us there, and 5 of the 7 can be considered “industry” people (the other two are “public defenders”). The fact that there were so many industry people should not intimidate anyone as we all CLAIM to know a thing or two about wine, but in reality we are just a bunch of open-mined AND opinionated (is that possible?) wine lovers who have sacrificed a good livelihood for one we infatuate over.

There are so many things I can write about. The heated argument about whether JOE consumer cares about HOW his wine is made. Which is better, New World wines or OLD WORLD wines. How to interact with those who know less about wine. The evening prompted so many interesting topics yet I must admit…I am too BUZZED to get deep right now. So I’m simply going to blog (briefly) about “TECHNOLOGY”.

We talked about the improvements wines from all over the world have made in recent years.  Someone commented how they wonder if wines from the same winery in a recent vintage & one from a vintage many years ago were made (and tasted) the same (or at least comparably). At which point the phenomena of technology & perceived “better quality” came up. We wondered if improved technology has in fact improved quality or has led many AUTHENTIC & genuinely hand made wines to have now become more generic – also unaffectionately known as “laboratory wines”.

Overall, I liked 3 of the 7 wines we had. I felt the other 4 were overly extracted and lacked balance. They were too jammy (or as our gracious host put it possessed – “stewed plums”) & did not have the acidic & tannic backbone to hold up to the sweet/extracted/jammy flavors. The 3 I liked were not the types of wine I typically go for. They were not Bordeaux style wines. No Cabernet Sauvignion. No Merlot. No Cab Franc, Petit Verdot or even any Syrah (shiraz). Lots of varietals I am not all that familiar with. But the ones I liked had interesting yet subtle fruit, nice minerality, a hint of spice or floral to the nose. But most important was a backbone that sufficiently supported the flavors.

I’m off to Israel this week to meet with my fabulous boutique wine producing contacts and help to bring back NY/US worthy wines.  Barring unforeseen wine drinking within the next 48 hours my next report comes from the holy land AKA the next “up-and-coming wine haven”…

Until then, happy wine tasting…

WTG.

Tags: , ,
Posted in wine tasting | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »