Wineography

Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé

2007-11-25T22:49:00.000-06:00

Man, I haven't posted a wine tasting on this blog in forever. I suck!

My apologies to any remaining readers or curious scragglers. I've just been pumping my time and attention into other things. Like video games and dreams about world leaders.

This year's Beaujolais Nouveau — my first — surprised me with its acidic tendencies. I guess I was expected a fruity, jammy juice of a wine that had no complexity to it. Instead, I got a smoky and fairly flavorful red with a juicier nose than taste.

There is something almost like cheap candy or licorice in the taste of this wine. It's hard to put my finger on it.

It's a quaffable wine, for sure, but not something I'm terribly crazy about.

Still, I'll probably seek it out year after year to see how each crop compares to the last.

Fifty lashes with a wet noodle

2007-07-22T00:18:00.000-05:00

I've been not only a terrible wineblogger lately, but also a terrible wine-drinker. Oh, I've been drinking wine off and on these past few weeks, but I've not paid much attention to what I was quaffing. This is an injustice I will work to correct this week.

Kimbrough is having a white sale on 2004 vintages, and, against my better judgment, I dropped $60 on several cheap bottles of Riesling this afternoon (I don't have the money for such a splurge, but, well, I can't return them now, can I?). My intention is to sample various vintages and vintners' offerings this coming week. I don't know if there is a term for tasting lots of wines from the same grape. It's not technically a horizontal tasting, since I jumped outside 2004 for at least one bottle. Anyway, I really like Riesling, so I'm excited to see how the grape's expression will vary from region to region — I've got a Southeastern Australia Riesling, two German Rieslings (one medium sweet and one medium dry), and an Alsatian Riesling lined up. All were purchased for around $10 (this is the unofficial theme of this blog, in case you haven't noticed; I don't venture upwards of $15 ... ever).

Tonight I cracked open the medium dry Riesling, hoping like hell it wouldn't be like the dismal Louis Guntrum dry Riesling experience that nearly put me off Riesling altogether. Blech. That crap was terrible. It still makes me think I was sipping liquefied latex gloves.

Thankfully, this Polka Dot German Riesling is vastly less offensive than the Guntrum. In fact, I dare say this Polka Dot stuff is tasty. Still pretty sweet to be medium-dry (which I interpret, perhaps incorrectly — so say so in the comments — as meaning somewhere between sweet and dry), but much more pleasant as an aperitif than some other Rieslings I've experienced. I have to say, though, the Polka Dot seems to be in keeping with its label aesthetic; it seems frivolous and fun, perfect for swilling at girly get-togethers and never to be taken too seriously. It almost tastes like California Pinot Grigio to me — lots of fruity notes (apple, apricot, etc.) with some honey, but enough acidity to balance it out quite nicely.

And it's super cheap. I'm not sure which I prefer — the medium-dry or the medium-sweet. Stay tuned and maybe I'll be able to suss it out this week. Also to come: My first entanglement with a true Alsatian Riesling.

I'm not dead — just drunk and lazy

2007-07-05T10:56:00.001-05:00

So, I'm still sampling my way through the cheapest wines in Memphis, but I've not kept tasting notes. A shame, for sure. I'll get back on the wagon (ha) soon enough. I beg patience!

Facing My Fears: Vol. 2

2007-03-30T00:15:00.000-05:00

The second installment in the Facing My Fears series is that grassy old coot sauvignon blanc. The first sauv blanc I had was from New Zealand, and boy did it taste like a mouthful of weeds.

At the time, I knew nothing about the grassy, herbal qualities of sauvignon blanc. I just knew that it had the word "sauvignon" in the title, which reminded me a lot of cabernet sauvignon, which I knew I liked. So I figured, what the hell, they must be as related as a red and white grape can be.

And then I felt like a cow chewing cud when I took a sip. I'm not sure that I even finished that bottle. I may have poured it out — shocking, I know!

So for my trip back into the land of sauv blanc, I decided to steer away from the bolder New Zealand offerings and instead settle on something French — 2005 Bordeaux Trocard Sauvignon Blanc.

To be fair, it's a blend — 80 percent sauvignon blanc and 20 percent semillon.

But the sauv blanc grape carries the flavor. It's got a grassy, minerally backbone, but it's kind of underwhelming. I expected my nostrils to flare and my salivary glands to squirt in defense. Not so. It's actually a quite balanced wine, a little on the timid side, and very, very dry. So much so that on my first sip, I actually said aloud, "Well, THAT's interesting."

And it is. I can see how this would pair well with food — particularly chicken, I think. I have had such trouble finding a good wine for grilled or roasted chicken. Everything I think would be good turns out to overshadow the food a little too much. This wine seems content with whispering its charms.

Facing my fears — Vol. 1

2007-03-29T00:02:00.000-05:00

So, in my short year (yes, year!) of wining, I've developed a loose set of guidelines upon which I base all of my wine purchases. Things like "don't pay more than $15 a bottle if you're just going to be drinking alone" and "skip the chardonnay." Mingling with those guidelines is my "blech" list — a mental collection of wines I've had bad experiences with and don't care to try again.

So, I'm granting myself some do-overs, specifically with shiraz/syrah, sauvignon blanc, and zinfandel — three varietals I've had icky experiences with.

An unfortunate run-in with a goopy Chilean shiraz put shiraz/syrah on my blech list last summer. The cheap wine was nothing but alcohol and grainy sediment; the pessimist in me assumed that maybe all shiraz was created like that. But I know that's not the case; I've just been reluctant to strike back out and try something different.

Which brings us to tonight's tasting: 2004 Domaine des Blagueurs Syrah.

Obviously, the first thing you notice about this wine is the wicked Ralph Steadman design on the label. But there's much more to it than that.

It's a hefty wine for its price; its nose is, at first — especially when warm — deeply alcoholic, giving way to dark, plummy fruit scents. A swig of it reveals a smoky thickness, one woven with tobacco and tannin, and black cherries. It's actually quite yummy and smooth — no sediment to be found crunching between my teeth.

If I can tackle the rest of my fears with such ease, I will enter a whole other realm of wine-drinking.

Esrom

2007-03-18T23:45:00.000-05:00

Man, this cheese's smell makes me feel yucky.

What wines pair with a fairly pungent cheese and downplay its ripeness?

I'm only able to recommend gouda with medium-bodied reds and muenster with sweet or off-dry whites.

What the hell can pair with a pungent esrom?

Bummer squared

2007-03-14T08:58:00.000-05:00

1. The blue-law shakeup bill was shot down in committee yesterday. This means still no liquor on Sunday and still no wine in the grocery store.

2. I'm detoxing this week. Mostly because I'm buh-roke, but also because it's good to every now and give the liver a break. So no tasting notes this week (I haven't done them in a while anyway). We'll see how long I can last.

News of note

2007-03-07T01:00:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here doing my Tuesday-night thing: Sipping wine and perusing blogs and reading my e-mails, trying to getting caught up on things I've missed.

I've just cracked open a bottle of Louis Jadot Beaujolais, and the first scent that hit my nose was that of buttered popcorn. I've got a glass poured, and even though I can smell the fruit now, I still can't shake the scent of popcorn. Is that weird?

Anyway two interesting things happening in the wine world today:

1. Ernest Gallo, the famous winemaker, has died.

2. Pinko commie Nashville blogger Sean Braisted has started a website that will track new developments in the legislative quest to de-crappify Tennessee liquor laws. There is pending legislation that would allow wine sales in grocery stores, and allow liquor sales on Sundays.

I'm adding it to the sidebar for easy access. Kudos to Sean!

Corked

2007-02-28T00:14:00.000-06:00

The Nashville City Paper has an interesting column up about cork taint.

The author's main complaint is that the vast majority of wines on the market — particularly the budget wines — would do well to consider entering the screw-top world instead of hanging on stubbornly to the notion that serious wines have corks.

If winemakers and wineries would do what seems obvious to me and change to alternative closures for almost all white wine, all rose, most merlots, most pinot noirs, all gamays, most shiraz, etc., the quality of the cork would improve so much that this problem would disappear. So, the next time a wine merchant or wine steward offers you a bottle of wine with a screw cap, don’t turn up your nose!

I couldn't agree more. I've had bad cork experiences only a few times, but each time, it's profoundly annoying.

Sure, some of the pomp and circumstance is lost when you remove the corkscrew from the equation, but there's not a lot of pomp involved in a $9 bottle of California drunk swill anyway, is there?

My first Bordeaux

2007-02-25T00:39:00.000-06:00

I've been reading up on Bordeaux, so when the first sip of Chateau Trocard Bordeaux Superieur 2003 hit my mouth, its flavors made perfect sense. There was that unmistakable flush of smoke and tannin that comes with a sip of Cabernet Sauvignon. But the full-bodied onslaught is tempered somewhat by a soft, round finish — to the point where I want to guess that there's some Merlot in there somewhere. I can't find the blend specifics online anywhere, and they're not listed on the bottle, so I'm sort of guessing.

I like this wine. For the price — $10! — it's sophisticated and complex. Its coloration is a gorgeous plummy purple, and the nose is divine and smells almost exactly like it tastes. I imagine that if I could actually afford $80 bottles of Bordeaux, I might have found my signature wine. But I'm actually holding out that designation for a fabulous Burgundy. And I think I might have to skip the pond to find it.

Big Mamma's house

2007-02-20T23:54:00.000-06:00

The nose on Big Mamma's Negro Amaro 2003 is deep and bold, with an actual heat to it. There's a sweetness there, though, a sugary coating on top of the essences of plum and cherry. It's not unpleasant, but it smells a little too sugary for my taste in reds.

The smell makes much more sense when you take a sip. It balances out with some much-needed acidity although the wine seems to lack an essential foundation of flavor. This pretty much keeps its finish clipped and uneventful. No grand revelations, no change of heart. Just sugar and alcohol. Maybe a little too much cherry.

I kind of wish I had a big plate of something — something Italian — to help coax out this wine's personality.

Postscript, while on glass No. 2: This wine has a beefy quality to it. It almost reminds me of jerky. There is an underlying meatiness to it. And the color is red-brownish. It's almost dirty-looking, which kind of lends to its homemade-by-mamma aesthetic, I guess.

Wine waste

2007-02-18T13:18:00.000-06:00

I have a problem.

I absolutely hate throwing away bottles. It seems wasteful.

But since I can't very well continue to let the damn things accumulate in my apartment, which is cramped enough as it is, I supposed I better do the best thing and recycle.

Memphis has five recycling drop-off centers for apartment dwellers and others who can't take advantage of curbside pickup.

Recycling Drop-Off Centers

• Downtown — Located in the gravel parking area on Mud Island Drive at the North entrance to Mud Island Park.
• East Memphis — Located on Moore Ed, approx. 300 yards off Germantown Parkway So., just south of the Shelby Showplace Arena at the Agricenter International.
• Midtown — Located on the corner of cooper and Walker at the First Congregational Church.
• Southeast — Located at the Hickory Hill Community Center at 3910 Ridgeway.
• FCR — 3197 Farrisview Blvd. (located off American Way just west of Lamar intersection) This is the City's recycling processing facility operated by FCR of Tennessee. Place recycling material in carts located just outside the gate.

The site also says, "All empty clear, brown and green bottles and jars are accepted. You can leave labels attached, but remember to remove lids. Rinsing is not required."

Ride the White Truck

2007-02-11T02:45:00.000-06:00

Well, shit. This bottle passed by me so quickly that I had no chance to think about it. Basically, I was trying to push the whole Louis Guntrum experience out of my head. Because that wine is truly awful, and the remainder of the bottle will sit, ignored, in my fridge. I should give it to a bum or something. To help keep him warm.

Anyway, White Truck 2005 Pinot Grigio is an excellent value. Under $10, it's got plenty of acid and structure and just a hint of sweetness. It's mostly just a surprisingly fruity pinot grigio with a coasting finish and a beautifully pale straw coloration.

If you ever encounter a crappy wine and need to remind yourself of what good cheap wines taste like, you might ought to opt for this stuff.

Liveblogging the Louis Guntrum 2004 Dry Riesling experience

2007-02-10T01:20:00.000-06:00

Louis Guntrum 2004 Dry Riesling has an odd scent to it. Most wines I've tasted can be described in purely fruity terms; I've only once encountered a wine that I could describe by using terms other than those describing things kept in the crisper (that was a sauvignon blanc that I described as extemely grassy). That is, until tonight.

This Riesling's nose can be described as medicinal. Plastic. Sterile. I was actually hesitant to take a sip, so I've let my glass sit and settle for a while (after a few good swirls) and only now are some fruit scents coming through.

While I'm waiting to taste, I'm doing a bit of reading up on the vintner. The Guntrum family has been at it since 1648. That's a hell of a long time to be making wines that smell like medical supplies.

Okay, I've put it off long enough (seriously, the smell is not enticing at all). It's time to taste.

Meeeehhhhwww.

It tastes just like it smells, except there is a solid underlying structure that allows the weird taste to dissolve and give way to a more traditional Riesling finish — moderately long with hints of bright fruit, like apple and apricot. I wish the finish carried over into the initial taste, but I guess this wine doesn't work that way. That oddness, it's still there, upon every sniff and every sip. It's almost woody, in a way. Very organic. You know, it's almost grassy, the longer I sip on it. It just seems outdoorsy. And unlike any other Riesling I've ever had.

In fact, I'm wondering if this is because it's a "dry" Riesling. I suspect that most Rieslings I try are off-dry, meaning there's enough residual sugar in them to make them lightly sweet. This wine is supposedly bone-dry, though I doubt that its the dryness that is bringing out such an odd attribute.

Jesus, what if I'm ingesting arsenic?!?

Nothin' to 'em

2007-02-09T01:15:00.000-06:00

The good thing about sampling lots of different wines is that even if you encounter some that don't tickle your bean, they will still get you drunk if you keep at it long enough.

This week's offerings have been weak, unfortunately, but it's my sworn duty to let you people know what's up in the wino world. The cheap wino world, of course.

First up is the Cycles Gladiator 2004 Pinor Noir. I should have known that this wine would be sub-par simply by what the label told me: Jack shit. Click here to read the label text. Completely unhelpful, right? It's not often that I tolerate that kind of bullshit label from a domestic wine.

Cycles is strongly alcoholic — gird your nose hairs — and not all that complex. There's more alcohol than fruit, which is okay after a glass or two, but it signifies an inferior wine, as far as I can tell. There are much better wines to be had for the cheap-o $10 price.

Next up is this Blue Fish 2005 Riesling — a cute little concoction in a fun bottle with a name that just makes me think of the many dining establishments in Memphis — Bluefin, etc.

I was actually expecting a lot more from this wine than it delivered. The nose is subtle and supplies hints of apricot, but the actual taste is weak and the finish is so short that it's practically non-existent.

It's hard to even get a read on the taste before it's washed down and evaporated.

Oh, how I long to love the wines with cute labels and logos, but I can't recommend this one, despite its super cheap price (less than $10). It's a screw-top, which you know I love, but if I'm gonna drop $10 on a Riesling, I'm going with Relax.

Oenophilic thievery

2007-02-09T00:55:00.000-06:00

Kristin sends along this fascinating story to me, about a huge wine heist in California in which more than 400 bottles were taken from a private collection, totaling about $100,000 in value.

Unlike missing art and antiquities, hot wine has no official registry. “Something like an Amber alert would be very useful,” said George Derbalian, the president of Atherton Wine Imports, an importer of Burgundy and Bordeaux.
Theresa Lawless, a manager for the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, in Novato, Calif., one of several major American insurers of private wine collections, said loss of wine was typically a result of fire or power failures, not theft. “But this will definitely make people think twice,” Ms. Lawless said.

Wine cellar designers are increasingly installing fingerprint and voice recognition systems and crisscrossing laser beams that trigger alarms (à la the movie “Entrapment” with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones), said Tod Ban, a wine cellar designer in Atlanta who recently completed such a cellar for a private collector with 27,000 bottles.

I like wine, but I just can't imagine a bottle of anything — liquid gold, even — that would merit such measures. Can someone explain to me what makes a wine so valuable that it would require Hollywood-inspired security measures?

Life in the Big House

2007-01-31T00:02:00.000-06:00

I picked up a bottle of 2004 Big House Red for one reason: My local package store wisely attached a laminated card boasting Big House's critical accolades to its cubby in the wall. I learned, in a glance, that Big House received 90 points from Wine Spectator, and earned Best Buy honors.

Big House Red is a blend of mostly Carignane, Petite Sirah Sangiovese, and Zinfandel, which gives it nice structure and complexity, and a satisfying long finish.

There are punches of ripe fruit throughout — dark fruits like blackberry and black cherries, framed elegantly by acid and tannins.

Cheap — $9 — and no corkscrew required. Plus you gotta love the label; from afar it reminds me of a highly stylized Quentin Blake illustration. My biggest complaint? The back label is nearly impossible to read thanks to the annoying ransom-note typography. But I almost wish I hadn't been able to read the copy; it's insufferably "irreverent" and "hip." That said, at least they put anything back there at all. I often get annoyed when wines have absolutely nothing to offer on their back label.

We amateurs need all the help we can get.

Read. Laugh. Repeat.

2007-01-29T22:24:00.000-06:00

This advice column will cure whatever ails you. I swear.

California breezin'

2007-01-29T22:07:00.000-06:00

Pepi 2005 Pinot Grigio is sweeter than many PGs, perhaps a little off dry, and packed with more fruity aromas and creamy textures than you'd expect from a cheap screw-cap.

The nose is full and robust, offering up healthy whiffs of apricot, apples, and tart grapes. A gulp of Pepi PG tastes creamy and full, its alcohol content on the strong but entirely manageable. thanks to the irrepressible and fun fruit overtones.

In my estimation, one of the best things about a good white wine is the smell of the glass after you've emptied it. Granted, empty glasses are never quite as much fun as full ones, but an empty glass of this wine smells sugary, almost like fruit candy, and makes me wish I had a whole lot more.

Saturday night wine linkapalooza

2007-01-21T01:56:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, I might have been ashamed to blog on a Saturday night. Actually, that's not true. I'm embarrassed to blog on any night. But tonight I'm feeling kinda wordy and kinda nerdy and I've got a whole backlog of wine-related stories to highlight, so let's do this thing.

We're gonna need a bigger glass: The world's largest wine bottle is making its way to the states from Australia. The 1,300-pound bottle of Western Australia shiraz yields nearly 64 gallons of spicy red and stands six feet tall, the equivalent of 387 regular-size bottles. Full story.

Me wino, you wussy: A city councilman from Greeley in Northern Colorado argues against local wine stores being able to hold tastings by saying that womenfolk can't hold their liquor as well as men, therefore it's a danger to all living things to allow wine patrons to taste what they want before they buy it. You stay classy, Greeley.
Full story.

A curriculum we can all get behind: France's governing party wants its children to be schooled in the French wine industry, to keep the biz alive. Full story.

A holy union: Wisconsin woman combines yoga and wine-quaffing. Namasté, indeed. Full story.

Going green

2007-01-17T01:07:00.000-06:00

When I am in a hurry at the liquor store (especially if it's at one with an unreliable selection), I have a habit of choosing whatever's cheap and stylish-looking. Most of the time my selections end up being disappointing (I can't wait to graduate to the $20-$40 bottle range! ha!) but every now and again I find something that sticks with me. You just never know.

The other day grabbed a bottle of Gazela Vinho Verde, if for no other reason than it was $8 and I liked the clear label. I stuck it in the fridge on Saturday, when it was kinda balmy outside, and then popped it open tonight, when it was 30 degrees out.

I'd never had a vinho verde before. Nor had I ever really heard of one or understood what they were. So when I began pouring a glass, I was kind of surprised at how pale and fizzy it was. It's practically sparkling. Which is fine, I guess, just unexpected. So I started looking for more info to see just what it was I was about to ingest. As far as I could tell, vinho verde seemed like a diluted white with some bubbles piped in. Its nose was timid — seriously, take a big whiff and you'll get the slightest hint of apple peels and melon, but mostly air — and its taste was mostly uncomplicated and unremarkable.

In other words, this wine bored the pants off me.

But, as I read, its particular eccentricities began to make more sense.

Vinho verde comes largely from northwest Portugal, and is made from grapes that climb trees, fences, and poles. It's meant to be light and sparkly, and its alcohol content is significantly lower than many other wines' (Gazela boasts about 9 percent). It is, apparently, a celebration wine meant to be served super cold during hot weather. It's entirely likely that my boredom with this wine stems from the fact that it's freezing in here and I'm not celebrating anything.

I can see sharing this wine at a picnic under a huge shade tree, with people digging into a giant salad bowl and cutting their sweet little fillets of salmon. It's cheap enough that you can bring plenty of it, and — thanks to the low alcohol content — you'll need plenty.

So, my initial reaction to this wine is still "Why should I care?" Maybe this summer I'll pick another bottle up and have a couple of glasses while sitting outside in the sun.

Red Bicyclette, I'll see you in the morning

2007-01-16T02:19:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure how it happened, but I just ingested the entire bottle of Red Bicyclette pinot noir. I feel like I've just gotten to school and I'm having to come up with some sort of excuse regarding my homework: I left it in my car, I had to go to the hospital last night, my dog did't eat it but accidentally hocked a huge dog-loogie onto it.

It's 2:12 a.m. and, for the past several hours, I've been piecing together narratives culled from my trip home this weekend (fueled by a plate of Breton crackers and cheese; this fits into my diet since I didn't eat breakfast, right?). I am at the point now ‚ with a third of a glass left — that I am having trouble typing and seeing the screen clearly. This means I should go to bed.

I am quite sure I made a mistake — or two! — in starting and finishing a bottle tonight. But only time will tell how much I'll pay. I don't have to get up, really, until noon or so, so I've got at least eight hours to sleep this nonsense off.

I'm not worried, but I do wish I'd taken the time to note what this wine is like.

For the record, nothing's wrong with it. It's solid with some spice and heat. But it's subtle enough to stand alone. Another solid, cheap find.

Finally, 'Sideways'

2007-01-14T01:08:00.000-06:00

It took me two years but I finally got around to watching Sideways last night. Sober! Which is good; I might have fallen asleep otherwise. That's not to say anything about the film; that's just to say that I am a sleepy drunk, no matter what stimuli jockey for my attention.

The film was great. A solid story featuring real people with real flaws and real vulnerabilities — not to mention real looks — in real situations is kind of hard to come by these days in the comedy genre. Or any genre, except maybe all them wacky foreign movies. Paul Giamatti is a master of the surly and smart creative everyman (again, as he nailed Harvey Pekar a few years ago, too). His ability to communicate rage and defeat just by a twitch of his brow and a clench of his jaw is superb. (Too bad Lady in the Water sucked so bad, dude. My condolences. I couldn't even make it to the end of that flick.) Thomas Haden Church plays the aging frat boy/charmer with such slimy ease that I kind of feel like maybe he wasn't doing too much acting. Virginia Madsen, who I have never really cared for before because of her overwhelming vanilla-ness, was warm and smart. And Sandra Oh is just fabulous in anything she does, especially if she gets to beat the shit out of womanizers with a motorcycle helmet.

You can't help but feel squeamish as you root for Miles, seeing as he is sort of insufferable and dishonest and all (he stole money from his mom!) But compared to Jack, Miles is the Pope incarnate. Jack might be larger than life and the type to relish the spotlight while Miles slinks into a corner, but he's a total self-centered jerk. Well, they're both kind of self-centered jerks. KIND OF LIKE US ALL.

Of course the scene that had everyone buzzing is the Miles-Maya conversation about wine, in which Miles describes why he loves pinot noir, which becomes a metaphor for how he sees himself. It's a beautiful scene, almost painfully so, when you consider the paper-thin discomfort separating Miles and Maya, and the way Maya so warmly tries to bridge the gap but is ultimately awkwardly rebuffed by a nervous Miles. It's just so fucking perfect, that scene. The dude realizing after the woman has made a move that he missed his opportunity to do his part, and then trying to come in and do the duty after the moment has passed. It's humiliating and if we haven't all been there yet, then by god we will be some day.

We're all supposed to see a little bit of ourselves in this movie, if we're obsessed with self-definition (like we are; don't deny it). And, in me, I see the surly and anti-social behaviors of Miles mixed caustically with the completely irreverent and ignorant tendencies of Jack. Miles has enough patience for wine to spend time with it, sniffing, looking, thinking, then tasting. Jack throws that shit back and says, "It tastes fine to me!"

In many ways, I feel like I do the same thing. Which, really, is fine. It's a learning process. It's much more easy to learn to be less like Jack than to learn to be less like Miles — someone whose expectations are always so high that they can never be met, someone who is so socially awkward that he can barely even stand conversations with people he doesn't know but who he admires. Someone whose life is playing out very differently from how he had envisioned.

I think Miles' loving description of the finicky pinot noir is so sweet. Before I'd ever seen this movie, I'd decided that pinot was the varietal that played nicest with my palate, so what a surprise it was to see it given the attention this movie gave it. In fact, it made me kind of giddy to see Miles snobbishly rail against merlot and give pinot all his love. (I don't have anything against merlot except that it's kinda boring and one-dimensional, but I'm always looking for exceptions.)

I get that. I get feeling a kinship — however contrived and flimsy — to a grape that is finicky and temperamental, but whose harvest can bring unimaginable delights. That's how life itself feels to me, every day. And that, I think, is why this movie was such a hit. It's a metaphor for existence, but one we can connect to something so common as alcohol or road trips or friendship or, when we're really lucky, all three.

Mmmmmm, Mondavi

2007-01-14T00:40:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here with my first ever glass of Robert Mondavi wine. Oldman's Guide turned me on to the old man's charms; being an incurable amateur, I'd never been struck by the name or the label while browsing in stores, so I'd never ventured to pick up a bottle until today.

Naturally, I opted for a pinot noir (my oft-mentioned favorite varietal) — one from 2005 (I'd still like to learn how and where to shop for vintages; as far as I can tell it's a crapshoot when you go wine shopping around here, and by that I mean, what year you see is what year you get) and from Mondavi's "private selection," no less. (Fancy sounding, sure, but I'm confident this is a meaningless differentiation and marketing ploy.)

This is a solid pinot (which I bought for about $14 but I found out on the website that is SRP is $11; d'oh!) of thick ruby coloration, with good structure. The nose is a little alcohol-y for my taste (it's kind of hypnotizing, though, to stick your nose in a glass and just inhale ... mmmm), but put some in your mouth and it the alcohol is tamed by some excellent tannins and the unmistakable presence of an oak foundation, upon which a subdued group of rich berries and subtle spices (coaxed into the spotlight by the vintage's small percentage of syrah in the mix) rests.

Mondavi is the American master. Which probably means a lot of what he does has been inflated and over-hyped. And yet! This pinot is sophisticated and yet playful, in the way it continues to dance in your mouth long after you've put the glass down. It will be fun to work my way through his other varietals, especially the much hyped fumé blanc, which is really a sauvignon blanc in hyper-marketed clothing.

The unremarkables

2007-01-12T01:42:00.000-06:00

I've been doing a piss-poor job lately of keeping tasting notes, and I'll tell you why.:

1. I am lazy.

2. (and this is the one I'm really banking on) I have had a week full of whites, against which I exhibit an unintentional bias. I am a red drinker by nature, by preference. When I imbibe whites, it just feels like fruit juice that gets ya drunk, and I am not diligent about paying attention to the scents and the colors and the tastes.

(This proves my undeniable amateur status, if ever there was a doubt.)

So let me try to recap the week in whites, which has really only amounted to a bottle of chardonnay plus a magnum of pinot grigio plus a bottle of Wrongo Dongo, which is a red table wine that I enjoyed but can't for the life of me describe now that I'm several days removed from it.

• Rock, Paper, Scissors chardonnay: I have been reading Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine and I have learned that big Cali chardonnays are often unremarkable and boring and overbearing, and I'd say that this screw-top variety definitely falls under that category. Although, I do feel like I should note that this is a fine wine for sipping with low expectations. It's cheap, the label is fun, the wine itself is fine if you don't expect it to do tricks for you — I can't imagine a $12 chardonnay being any better, to be honest, despite its poor showing when paired with a lemon-pepper chicken and brown rice dish.

• Wrongo Dongo: This basic red was deep and rich yet fruity enough to keep my interest (I get put off if wines are too spicy and too rich). Its lack of outstandingness makes it cheap ($9!) and, therefore, makes it an excellent candidate for food-less quaffing. I wish I could remember more and ponitificate further, but, as you know, I suck.

• Fetzer pinot grigio: Fetzer makes my favorite guwurtz, but I've not yet latched onto a particular pinot grigio that I love, despite knowing that at least one of my pals (Amanda) has a perpetual hard-on for PG. This PG is adequate enough; it exhibits peachy and floral scents while having an off-dry body that can be quaffed at length without getting too puckery, if you know what I mean. I've been nursing a huge bottle of this all week. It's my goal to further explore the piniot grigio world, but so far, Fetzer's cheap-ass $14 magnum has kept me entertained and fully hydrated for the past couple of nights. Maybe some day I'll actually document the wine itself as opposed to its impression. I'm getting hints of peach, apricot, and — glory be! — grape as I sniff and taste. It's solid. It's relatively light and uncomplicated — what you sniff if what you get. And, despite the zeitgeist, which insists that wines have to keep on keepin' on long after they've been swallowed, the Fetzer PG works for me.
I've not yet paired it with any foods (besides a slice of trusty old Kraft American, with which it paired beautifully), so I can't speak to the foodie aspect.

Sigh. Before January's over I'm going to rediscover my prized routines. Gym, careful wineblogging, etc. Bear with me. :)

Christmas 2006: The year of the wino

2007-01-03T01:00:00.000-06:00

I started getting into wine in March, if memory serves, so I had most of the year to obsess about wine to my friends and family. And you'd be amazed how much easier you become to buy for when you establish an interest in something.

So, in addition to the book I mentioned in this post and the Millington wine I mentioned here, here are the wine-related things I got for Christmas/birthday this year:

From Tamara:

• A gorgeous wine rack (photos to come, once I get some batteries for the camera) that's dark chocolate-brown wood in a Tic Tac Toe sort of layout that requires you to slide bottles horizontally into slats. It sits on the counter and makes my kitchen look about three hundred percent cooler.

• A wine glass that I have dubbed "The Queen's Goblet." It is medium-sized, with a triangular bowl, a roped glass stem, and gold accents. It's lovely, and I am the only one allowed to drink out of it. Unless, of course, Tamara visits.

From Ashley:

• Four very large LSA handblown red wine glasses. The glasses are huge. My guests and I drank out of them all weekend and we marveled at how, when you tipped them up to take a sip, your entire face was swallowed by the bowl. Very dramatic but very fragile. These four glasses plus my Queen's Goblet are the only dishes I refuse to put in the dishwasher.

Phrom Phil:

• Two Oneida wine stoppers, perfect for saving wine without getting that funky moldy cork taste.
• One Argyle Vacuum Pump, perfect for storing an opened wine a little longer than you might have originally intended. I haven't actually used this yet, because once a bottle is open, I rarely let it sit there undrunk, you know? But I know this will be awesome once I use it.

Next year I'll be rooting for some glass charms so that guests can tell their glasses apart.

What other wine-related gifts did you get, or would you like to get?

Buy this book for everyone you know

2007-01-03T00:50:00.000-06:00

I've sort of made half-assed attempts to find a good wine guide but haven't committed to anything because, well, everything seemed so similar that I wasn't sure what I should buy and why.

Luckily, Kristin solved my problem for me by giving me Oldman's Guide to Outsmarting Wine. This book is amazing, and I've barely scratched the surface. I've learned a ton of stuff already — about why certain flavors come through in certain wines depending on their aging techniques and such and the importance of the scent of a wine — and there's no telling what sort of wine freak I'll be when I finally finish the book.

The tone of the book is just irreverent enough, and the design is simple and sophisticated-yet-quirky. The chapters are bite-sized, so you could plunk this book down on your toilet and make bathroom time into learnin' time if you found yourself lacking any other time to read.

I can't imagine finding a wine book more suited to my personality and disposition.

Millington's finest

2006-12-30T02:08:00.000-06:00

For Christmas, Ashley gave me a bottle of Old Millington Winery's Crying Angel red table wine. I cracked it open a couple of days ago and have been quite impressed with it since.

The most striking thing about this wine, to me, is its color. Most wines I drink tend to stay within ruby red tones or dark chocolate colors. The Crying Angel looks a bit dirtier than ruby red; it's clear enough to see through but there are browns and yellows that catch the light and give the wine an aged, almost burned look.

The wine itself is full-bodied and robust, with deep spices and a strongly fermented feel to it. The nose is almost leathery with a strong scent of alcohol (stronger, even, than the taste of alcohol). But it's not overwhelming. It's just a hint of machismo, as if the wine is saying "hell yeah, I'll get you drunk!"

(Quite a contrast when you consider the label design.)

This wine won a silver medal in the Cynthiana category at the 2004 Wines of the South Competition, and I can't see a reason why such an award wasn't deserved.

An all-purpose, locally grown wine. Fabulous.

DIY ... or not

2006-12-06T02:00:00.000-06:00

Tuesday I caught some DIY show on HGTV, and the topic was creating things with old wine bottles. A pretty useful topic, I thought, considering I've got dozens of bottles (I've never thrown one away) collecting dust on the my top bookshelf.

But then I saw that the things the host made (a table — Relax Riesling bottles as legs — and a candelabrum made of wine and beer bottles) were awfully tacky, and I got a little discouraged.

About the only thing I can think to do is smash them up and use the glass to make mosaic tiles on something. But I'd kind of like to keep the labels intact and incorporate them into something too.

So, what do you do with old wine bottles?

Another good Pinot Noir for the books

2006-12-06T01:41:00.000-06:00

Gala Rouge is French but you wouldn't know it by looking at the label. It looks like your run-of-the-mill pop-art inspired red wine label, shipped straight out of California into your local package store. A nice surprise indeed to find out that this wine has traveled a long way and still tastes great.

Gala Rouge is sweeter than it is spicy, which is interesting for a Pinot Noir. It's light and crisp, with a fruity nose and a polite finish (it doesn't overstay its welcome but it's not too quick either). There are hints of deep red cherries and a bit of woodiness. But it's so light it's almost not there.

A great, great wine for drinking unaccompanied by food.

Yet another link dump

2006-11-30T00:45:00.000-06:00

You can tell I've not done much tasting lately when I dip into the wine links.

Never fear; this weekend it's going to be cold and I can't think of a better way to stay warm than to stay in drinkin'.

I totally went to the wrong school: Chaffrey College in Rancho Cucamonga is planting a vineyard on campus space, where students, presumably, will tend to the budding grapes through the process of becoming delicious Zinfandel in about four years. Full story.

Speed dating for drunks: Some singles seek solace sipping spirits surrounded (s)by strangers. Damn! Full story.

More unhealthy American tripe, apparently: British scientists have found what they feel is conclusive evidence that wines from traditional vineyards in France and Italy contain the highest amounts of the stuff thought to make wine good for you.
Full story. I can't say I care too much, though. Other scientists contend that in order to truly notice the effects of reservatrol (the chemical thought to make wine heart-healthy), you'd have to drink 100 bottles of wine a day. And who has time for that? Full story.

A fad diet worth trying: Put simply, The Wine Diet will save your life. So says this guy. Full story.

The spread

2006-11-23T01:12:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow my family's kitchen will be ripe with the smell of baked potatoes and roasted turkey, green bean casserole and pecan pie. I can't wait, even if there's only one thing on that list I will actually eat.

Today I went to the store to select my Turkey Day spirits, and I went with an additional bottle of Fetzer Guwurtz (that's two for those of you keeping score at home), plus a bottle of Réserve Perrin for myself (no one likes the reds but me) and a bottle of Wild Bunch white, simply for the name (it applies infinitely to my family). Each of these wines cost less than $12. I'm looking forward to seeing how each pairs with a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm also looking forward to seeing just how drunk I can get my family before they say uncle.

Hee.

No. 4 is the only one I'd have

2006-11-23T01:03:00.000-06:00

WineGirlOnline has a hilarious list of awful gifts for the wine-lover in your life, and I have to say, more than a few of this are objectively awful, even if you rule out the possibility for kitsch.

Rehabilitation

2006-11-23T00:33:00.000-06:00

Can you rehabilitate a bottle of wine that has gotten a little tainted by mold/mildew/general stank?

I've done some cursory Googling on the subject but I'm not finding anything that answers my question. So I'll just tell you my story and you can tell me yours and we can rejoice in the wonders of blogs and community journalism.

The night after I popped open my positively reviewed bottle of Blackstone Pinot Noir, I poured myself another glass of the stuff and right away knew that something was wrong. It smelled kinda funky, kinda mildewy or moldy or something — wet and murky and gross. I sniffed the cork (it's a real cork, not rubber or whatever those newfangled whippersnapper winemakers use these days) and sure enough it smelled a little on the ass-y side. I sniffed the bottle and it smelled the same. I tried to drink the glass of ass wine and it tasted grody. Completely unlike the night before, when it had been understated and lovely. I was upset — as upset as one can be over a $10 bottle of wine — and poured out the remaining third of the glass after I could gulp down no more.

But, not feeling cheeky enough to throw out the rest of the bottle (about half), I just let the thing sit on my counter, corkless. This morning I got the bright idea to cover it up somehow without using the nasty-ass cork. Being completely ignorant of the myriad complicated chemical reactions involving air required to make a bottle of wine taste good, I figured I'd just improvise using found objects and cover up the damn thing so at least flies wouldn't get in it. So I got a sandwich baggie and placed it loosely over the bottle, leaving a bubble of air at the top in case the thing needed to expand for whatever ridiculous reason, and I snapped a thin (hair) rubber band around the baggie at the neck a couple of times.

Tonight I came home from work and polished of the remaining Zin and, not wanting to dip into my Thanksgiving arsenal but still wanting to celebrate another successful day of not killing people at work, I took the baggie off the bottle and took a sniff.

And you know what? That shit smelled normal again. I took the baggie off and poured a glass and the wine tastes virtually the same as it did the day I popped the rotten cork, before the rot made its way to the wine.

So I don't know if this technique could work for any or all types of wine (I doubt it strongly, despite my general ignorance), but it seems to have worked in this case.

Anybody got the goods on the science? I'd sure like to know.

Women and wine

2006-11-19T00:34:00.000-06:00

My very first Wineography link dump! Someone take a screenshot!

Art and wine: The South Okanagan (that's way up in British Columbia) Women in Need Society has joined up with Therapy Vineyards for a fund-raiser in which local artists are called to submit artwork that will appear on an upcoming new wine made especially for the fund-raiser. Five dollars from each bottle sold will go to the fund-raising effort. Full story.

Ith a lady!*: As the traditionally male-dominated field of the sommelier sees more and more female wine experts, women sommeliers find that their clients sometimes are surprised and even angered by their lack of a penis, as if a penis is required for proper tastebud function. Full story.

Against the odds: Chilean Maria Luz Marin faced immense skepticism from everyone around her when she decided to become a winemaker. In a rare dream-come-true story, she has defied everyone's expectations and is now one of the world's most renowned and innovative winemakers. Full story.

*I heart Tim Meadows.

Smooth operator: Blackstone Pinot Noir

2006-11-19T00:12:00.000-06:00

There is something lovely about a wine with enough poise and grace to step back and let its flavor and essence wash lightly over your tongue and seep into your consciousness, instead of dropkicking your uvula and giving your nose a painful uppercut and calling it a pansy.

Blackstone Pinot Noir, if anything, is soft-spoken and lovely. And way more sophisticated than I am, as far as I can tell. Which makes it the perfect sort of social sipping wine, to be enjoyed by itself or with dainty little finger foods. There's no wincing to get it down; the alcohol's presence is refreshingly muted and even the scent is kind of nice in a musky perfume kind of way. There are notes of smooth jam and cherry. My only complaint about Blackstone Pinot is that it's not quite as complex as I like Pinot to be. The finish is relatively short and doesn't really leave you with much to ponder. Other than, Damn, I'd like to have another glass.

At about $10, this seems like a great candidate for an exoteric crowd-pleasing wine for people who are not insufferable winos. So allow me to add this to the list of varieties to take home to serve with Thanksgiving dinner. And if no one else likes it, I guess I'll just have to take care of it myself.

Your thoughts: What shall we drink on Thanksgiving?

2006-11-18T01:46:00.000-06:00

I grew up in a household where alcohol was, if not demonized, scrutinized to the point of being so taboo that I looked upon adults who drank even a beer with dinner or during a football game as morally suspect.

I'll never forget the time my parents got in a fight and my dad left the house for a few hours. I found out he had gone away to drink a beer!!! and, for a time, it changed the way I felt about his standing as the Most Perfect Man Ever. (First person to say the word "Electra" gets a good smack upside the head; Freud is not allowed on this blog.)

These days I'm in many ways grateful for such a rigid upbringing, because it kept my ass out of trouble knowing that my parents would kick said ass if I went out and got drunk before I went off to college and became legal age. And even then, if I made enough of a fool out of myself.

Now that I'm well within my legal right to drink and my brother isn't a kid anymore, it's funny to watch the ways in which my family's attitudes toward drinking have changed. Since becoming a wine wonk, I am always bringing home stuff for the family to try, and the spirits flow much more freely than they did during my childhood.

The family transformation actually happened before I started getting into wine, so I can't take credit for their debauchification. During my first couple of years of college, I would come home periodically to find fruity winecoolers in the fridge. And while you might think fruity winecoolers sound like something my mom would drink, fruity winecoolers are the province of my father, the Turner alpha male. Never a devoted beer drinker, he found his niche in the fuzzy navels and the flavored Zimas of the world. He usually falls asleep before he can get too drunk, though, so they just give him a nice warm feeling before he dozes off.

Lately the real drinkin' in the family is done by my mom and my grandmother and me when I come to visit. (And my underage brother when he can get away with it, which he does with alarming frequency considering I was never allowed to sit at the kitchen table and drink peppermint schnapps in front of my parents.) And my mom and my grandmother totally drink because I bring them good wine.

And that makes me feel awesome, because a couple of glasses of wine can make any evening with the Turners even more interesting than it is already.

A few summers back, I would come home with vodka and peach schnapps and juice and make cocktails for everyone. It was tedious. Now, I just bring a couple of bottles of wine and uncork them, and I don't have to do any work at all. It's great.

I've learned that they like whites better than reds, and that the fruitier the better. (My grandmother recently brought over some elderberry Manishevitz, which tasted like straight-up sugarplum juice, but she swore a doctor told her it would improve her immune system, so she takes two tablespoons a night.) They enjoyed the Relax Riesling I brought, along with some others I've forgotten about by now.

So I'm trying to plan what to take home for Thanksgiving. I've already picked up a bottle of Fetzer Guwurtztraminer, which they both raved about two weeks ago when we tried it (I wasn't as crazy about it, but it's still a solid wine I'd gladly have with Thanksgiving dinner). Now I'm looking for one or two more — a white and a red, preferably — to offer up with the standard Thanksgiving dinner of turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and macaroni and green beans and bread and whatnot.

Maybe I should go for a white (a crowdpleaser) and a dessert wine for pecan pie and banana pudding.

Any suggestions? What's on your table this Thanksgiving?

Finally, a Zin I don't hate

2006-11-18T01:22:00.000-06:00

The last time I bought a Zinfandel, it was a Ravenswood and I hated it. The moment I choked down the final glass, I swore to myself that I'd never bother with Zin again. There was just something foul about it — it was too in-your-face, too unapologetically nasty for me to enjoy.

I guess it could have been that particular bottle that had gotten a little too ripe, but I assumed I just wasn't synching with Zinfandel.

Well, there's hope.

On a whim, while distracted from my original mission to buy some Beaujolais Noveau, I decided I'd give Zin another try. I was feeling charitible, I guess, and kind of boxed in since I really tend to stick to my Cab/Pinot Noir routine quite rigidly. So I brought home some Bogle Old Vine 2004 Zin.

And I don't hate it!

Too bad I wasn't wineblogging back when I had that Ravenswood crap, so I could remember what put me off about it.

The Bogle is complex and spicy, with deep notes of masculine stuff like tobacco and oak and chocolate, and just a hint of the more jammy flavors — blackberries and black cherries. It seems to me to be a very utilitarian wine, something you'd seek out to pair with a specific dish instead of something you'd just open up and swill at your leisure.

Even its scent is a mite serious.

This wine would never break its curfew or go out without at least $20 in cash.

Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé ... apparently

2006-11-16T13:34:00.000-06:00

From local blog Information-Bureau:

It's the third Thursday in November, and you know what that means: Beaujolais Nouveau Day!

Nouveau is a red wine, different from most wines because it's meant to be drunk immediately, rather than aged. It's produced using a different fermentation process of some kind (I won't pretend to understand the details), which allows it to be ready much sooner than most wines. And its release is strictly controlled; no matter where in the world you are, wine sellers are forbidden to sell it before midnight on the third Thursday of November.

The backstory is interesting; this is basically a hugely successful marketing gimmick. As I understand the story, Nouveau was considered an inferior trash-wine until, in the '60s, Georges Duboeuf came up with the idea of making a big production out of its annual release, having big parties, etc.

Unlike most reds, it's meant to be drunk chilled. Being so young and without the mellowing effects of aging, this is not a wine to be drunk slowly and savored; drink it in quantity, and quickly. Cork-dorks (of which I am not one) consider it the wine equivalent of Hawaiian Punch: Totally devoid of subtlety or craftsmanship, as nuanced as a Big Mac.

As a pathetically uninformed aspiring cork-dork, I know nothing about Beaujolais Nouveau Day beyond what I've read at I-B and the linked articles, but it sounds like my kind of day. I'm off work, so maybe I can hunt around town for a bottle today, get all drunk and sentimental and then go sway to some introspective modern folk-rock by one of my favorite artists.

Should be an awesome day.

Question One: Booze Edition

2006-11-09T22:34:00.000-06:00

While Tennesseans have spent the past several months pondering our own ballot questions, the fine folks of Massachusetts (I'm ashamed that I just had to look up how to spell that) have just finished wrangling over whether or not they want to be able to buy wine in supermarkets.

And the people have spoken and sent a resounding HELL NO to the powers that be.

Alls I can say is Whaaa?

As a resident of a state with wacky liquor-related laws, I am continually fascinated with the idea of purchasing spirits in other locations than seedy liquor stores where they shove everything in a brown bag inside another brown bag, so the God-fearing people on the streets don't have to be confronted with the knowledge that you, at some point in the future, are going to get a little tipsy and commit a social faux pas that will haunt you 'til your lonely, pathetic death.

So when I see a relatively progressive state like Massachusetts pooh-pooh the idea of strolling from the toilet paper to the orange juice to the dry reds, I marvel at the weirdness. Who wouldn't want to be able to buy booze in the damned grocery store?

Other than package-store owners, that is.

Apparently the liquor lobby pulled a Hail Mary to come from behind and defeat the ballot initiative.

Polls taken two weeks before the election showed Question 1 favored by a two-to-one margin among those surveyed. The opponents blitzed TV and radio airwaves with ads portraying the proposal as a public safety issue. They claimed teenagers would be more likely to obtain alcohol because convenience stores also could apply for wine licenses if the question were approved.

Right. Because teens are all about waltzing into a Piggly Wiggly to buy a $16 bottle of wine when they could just go to MapCo and buy $8 worth of beers and get equally as drunk.

Anyway, too bad for Massachusettianistans. I feel their pain. The lack of availability of wine in grocery stores confounds me. Not only does it suck outright having to hoof it to a liquor store — which, thanks to the laws 'round these parts, close at 11 p.m. on every night but Sunday, when they're not open at all — but it also undoubtedly keeps prices from being very competitive across the board. Just imagine the creative discounts the supermarkets and liquor stores could launch to best one another. Just imagine the savings! Just imagine the slurred speech and stumbling and fuzzy holiday memories!

Maybe one day, when Tennessee is done putting Teh Gays in their place, we'll tackle an initiative like this.

Good 'Clean' fun

2006-10-27T01:35:00.000-05:00

I'm on a mini-quest (one of those quests that you go on when you get around to thinkin' about it) to try more Rieslings, and this week's attempt has not proven disappointing.

Clean Slate Riesling, from the famed Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region of Germany, is a crisp, fruity wine that's sort of got the attitude of something carbonated. That is, it jumps around on the tongue just a little, and feels a little bubbly.

There are notes of citrus and peach and even a little spice. Er, acid. Whatever. It's not quite as smooth as the Relax I tried (another German Riesling) and loved, but it is just as lush and fruity and at a price of around $10, I'll definitely be taking one of these home for Thanksgiving.

The label design is also really nice. The bottle is clear, the label is narrow and long, with good typography, and requires no translation. (Their website design is nice, too.)

A solid screw-top white if ever there was one.

Local wine

2006-10-23T13:31:00.000-05:00

Last night I hung out with my friend and co-worker Ashley at her and her husband's apartment in Cordova. We'd spent the evening working our way through the Jones Orchard corn maze, and by the time we got out we were parched and Ashley was all, "Let's get drunk!" and who am I to argue with such a pure sentiment?

She and her husband, JD, had recently made a trip up to the Old Millington Winery, a small outfit about 20 minutes north of Memphis. Old Millington specializes in sweet wines. Ashley and JD brought back several bottles of the winery's offerings, including blackberry, muscadine, peach, and Delta red.

I had a glass of the peach first. Normally I don't care for peach-flavored spirits, but this peach wine was more tart than sweet. It was very light and crisp and not at all sulfury or sour.

Next was a glass — okay, a couple of glasses — of the blackberry, which was also sweet and tart, and a bit like grape juice. According to Old Millington's website, blackberry is one of the most popular of their offerings. I can definitely see why; it's just downright pleasant to drink.

At about $10 a bottle, Old Millington's selections are a good value. I'm gonna do my best to get up there soon and support Tennessee wine country.

Tasting notes: A tale of two blahs

2006-10-23T11:31:00.000-05:00

I've been sick and post-vacation broke for the past couple weeks, so the only drinkin' I've done is from a couple of bottles of generic Nyquil.

But I'm more or less over my crud (with the exception of my right ear, which, at this point, feels like it could use a nice lancing; Amber, can you come down to help me out with that?) and I had some money to burn (not really, but I burned it anyway) so brought home a couple of cheapies from Tip-Top, my neighborhood liquor store.

Sampling, the first

The Little Penguin Cabernet Sauvignon is a bold, heavy wine. It's sort of like drinking a grape-flavored steak. In other words, this wine is not fucking around, despite the cute little penguin waddling around on the label. Little Penguin is an Australian wine — South Eastern Australia, to be precise — and much like Yellowtail (the only other Australian red I've ever tried; it was a Merlot/Cab combo), Little Penguin seems to be a lot heavier than many domestic Cabs.

I bought a hunk of Vincent gouda and laid out several cubes on a plate with my beloved Breton crackers and proceeded to form a whole different opinion of the Little Penguin as I shoved cheese and crackers into my cheese-and-cracker-and-wine hole. Its aforementioned heaviness (I'm serious, the wine is nearly black) nicely complemented the dry sweetness of the gouda and the flaky consistency of the crackers. The Vincent link up there suggests trying medium-bodied reds like Zin and Merlot, which sounds like a fabulous idea. But Vincent and Little Penguin ain't a bad combo either.

Ha, I am totally blogging about cheese and crackers.

Anyway, Little Penguin seems to me to be a wine you'd want to save for a time when you're eating something savory: Cheese, or perhaps a nice steak. It's a bit much to drink by itself. That said, I also think you can find a much smoother, much better Cab for the same price range (about $10).

Sampling, the second

Hacienda, yet another Pinot Noir from California, is nothing much special. In fact, I drank the whole thing and totally forgot to write down any tasting notes. I remember thinking "meh" on the first couple of swigs and by the time I got to the second glass or so, I remember liking it a bit more. But, well, every wine is good by the second or third glass.

Saving

2006-10-18T22:37:00.000-05:00

Our staff foodie has a story out today about starting a wine cellar. Basically, the premise of the article is that you needn't freak out and think you need a head full of great vintages and a dedicated, temperature-controlled room to start a cellar. All you need, Leslie says, is a dark, undisturbed space whose temperature, rather than being cool, is simply constant.

The experts suggest using the back of a closet, stacking bottles on their sides to keep the corks moist.

Ed McCarthy, one of the authors of "Wine for Dummies" (a book I'll be mentioning frequently to my parents when Christmas/my birthday rolls around) shares this advice:

"People can start with wines in the $18 to $20 category," he said. "Most people aren't going to start out spending $75 on a bottle. And there are some inexpensive Bordeaux and Burgundies people should consider. Believe it or not, the best values are not from the U.S."

Egads! I've only once spent more than $20 on a bottle and that was by accident. I'm still stuck in the $7-$15 range. I want to see a list of tips for stocking cheap wines. Do the same principles apply? Do cheap wines by default not age very well because of ... their cheapness? Inquiring minds and all that.

What surprises me in McCarthy's quote is his assertion that the best values can be found across the pond(s). I tend to stick with domestic wines (love my California reds) because I usually assume that the shorter distance they have to travel to get to me, [insert random benefit here]. It's taking some work challenging that assumption. (Work, ha! Since when is drinking work?)

So, despite the friendly encouragement from the enthusiasts in the article, starting a wine collection still seems to be an enormously complicated undertaking. (Of course, what obnoxiously bourgeois hobbies aren't ridiculously complicated? The middle class loves jumping hurdles like thoroughbreds, to prove their dedication to a craft that defines them in an utterly post-modern way.)

For one, you've got to have the space. Right now I have two small closets in my apartment. One houses boxes I never unpacked (10 or so) and the other houses my suitcase set and my clothes. It's conceivable that I could hollow out some room at the base of one of the closets. But then, a week later, I will run the risk of forever losing whatever wine gets deposited, because, you see, the things that go into my closets often never find their way out.

For two, you've got to have money. I cringe when I think about dropping $13 on a bottle; how the hell would I pony up the cash for an entire case? And then convince myself to save what I'd bought and not drink it to drown the pain of dropping a ton of money on several bottles of wine I'm not allowed to drink for a couple of years?

No one told me wine enthusiasm was part masochism.

The Hazards of Grape Stomping, Vol. I

2006-09-30T11:46:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Amber, for sending me the link to this video and reminding us all of the sacrifices made to bring wine into the world. Truly inspirational.

I feel so bad for this woman. The noises she makes after falling are just heartbreaking. Yet, I can't stop laughing. Fate, why hast thou equipped me with such a foul, black heart?!?!

Gourmet dinner

2006-09-27T01:50:00.000-05:00

Never underestimate the ability of a good wine to make a mediocre late-night dinner of fast-food leftovers even better.

Case in point: Reheated KFC — extra crispy (though when reheated this usually translates to extra soggy) — with macaroni and cheese and a biscuit.

With Rex Goliath 2004 Pinot Noir (my favorite wine), this paltry excuse for a meal can become something homey and welcoming and savory.

As for the Rex itself, there is a meatiness and a spice to it (not too much spice, though) that many other Pinot Noir varieties lack. And, while it is a savory wine, it's not the kind of wine that takes center stage when it needs to be more of an accent. It's versatile and I imagine would work equally as well when paired with a rack of lamb.

The coloration is like stained glass — a dark cranberry color except around the edges, where there's more of a ruby sheen. And the scent? Subtle yet lush.

And the label? Brilliant.

If you've got $10 to spare, find a bottle of this stuff, grab some genetically engineered chicken breasts, and kick back and bask in the supreme awesomeness.

2002 — a good year

2006-09-25T17:58:00.000-05:00

Definitely NSFW.

Relax — DO do it!

2006-09-24T23:40:00.000-05:00

That title pretty much wrote itself. I was almost hoping that the Relax was going to suck so I could use the more obvious "Relax — don't do it" variation of everyone's favorite Frankie Goes to Hollywood song, but this wine is actually excellent and I need to tell you all about it and spread the Good News.

I'm more of a reds person, but this Riesling is something I could enjoy any time, day or night, with food or without. The bottle is gorgeous — it's this silky translucent blue that resembles a Swedish vodka bottle more than a wine bottle. The label design is minimalist — it's German — and commands you, simply, to relax. Because you are a dumb American who gets freaked out by foreign words on wine bottles because you don't know what they mean and what's in the bottle and oh my god the room is spinning and something just brushed my leg and won't someone please tell me what kind of wine this is?!?!!?

No, just relax and buy the pretty blue bottle and stick it in the fridge overnight and the next night crack it open and inhale and find your inner child and let her have a sip because this wine tastes like juice! Like apples and peaches and a little bit of greenery and even some citrus. It's light and crisp, like a super cold 7-Up, and I can just imagine quaffing this on a picnic blanket on some warm grassy knoll somewhere, and then lying back and falling asleep, my breath smelling of fruit and sandwiches.

God bless the French

2006-09-24T02:13:00.000-05:00

The wine that started it all.

Today I had the chance to visit Kimbrough Liquors (probably my favorite place to get wine, but I haven't had a chance to try any of the Millington or Cordova outlets, so this could always change; let's just say Kimbrough is my Midtown go-to) and lo and behold, what did I see but a bottle of Réserve Perrin, the little French ditty that sparked my wine interest back in March.

Back in February, I attended a weeklong HTML and web design seminar for work, and I carpooled to Germantown every day with my art director. As a way of thanking me for driving him to the classes every day, he gave me a bottle of the aforementioned Réserve Perrin, which I, completely ignorant of all things wine, stuck in the fridge and ignored until I could figure out a good time to drink it.

I had tried wine on several occasions prior to my Réserve Perrin experience. I recall quaffing some homemade peach wine at my parents' house (homemade in the sense that whoever they bought it from had made it; to my knowledge my parents have never made any alcoholic beverages on purpose, though I recall drinking some completely fermented orange juice from their fridge many years ago and spitting it into the sink, thinking it was rubbing alcohol) and trying to choke down some Erik the Red for New Year's Eve. I also remember trying a fruity blush wine at a wedding of one of my former friends/co-workers, but I ended up giving my leftovers to Cox, I think. So, never having had a positive wine experience, I let the Réserve Perrin languish in the fridge for a month.

Then it was Phil's birthday, and I wanted to bring him a bottle of whiskey to drown his newly 26-year-old cares after work. But at 11:30 on a Saturday night in this city, you're SOL if you haven't stocked up on booze for Sunday. So I reluctantly brought the bottle of Réserve Perrin over to Phil's apartment so we could "celebrate" his milestone in a drunken stupor, were we to actually make it through the bottle.

At the time, I was expecting an overpowering aroma and taste from the wine. But I was surprised when it was extremely mild, to the point of being understated. I made my way through several coffee cups, and when the warmth began to spread through me and my words and laughter came more easily and with a hint of true, basic joy, something in me clicked. I could get used to this, I thought. And the next morning I didn't feel a single trace of any drink from the night before.

For someone who routinely has violent reactions the day following moderate drinking, this was a revelation.

Ever since, I've decided I'd give this wine-drinkin' thing a go. I've had lots of misses and a few hits.

Tonight I got the chance to revisit the Réserve Perrin, when I spotted it at Kimbrough, where it's probably been sitting for months while I occupied myself with the California offerings.

The Réserve Perrin is extremely dry, with some strong spice notes that fade into black cherry and other berry flavors as time passes. Very complex. A little meaty on the finish. It's fantastic with cheese (as are most deep reds, in my estimation). I'm finding that this wine is absolutely beautiful on its second and third glass. And I'm not just saying that because I'm tipsy; the complexity of the flavor, once you're sort of acclimated to the spice, really comes alive. I wish I had a big fat steak to eat with a glass of this stuff. It seems decadent, though restrained in a lot of ways. Very versatile. The bottle says it'd be good with Mediterranean cooking. I'm imagining some chicken parmigiana would be outstanding with this wine.

Let us count this among my all-time favorites. For sentimental reasons, sure, but for its sheer force of flavor and complexity. Magnifique!

It's hard to document your drinkin' when you're doin' none

2006-09-20T02:10:00.000-05:00

So I've been on a sober bender, if you can believe it, since, really, the last time I posted here. Because that night I polished off my last bottle and I've been too broke to splurge and buy any since. (It can be a terribly expensive habit, even if you limit yourself to $10 bottles.)

But rather than let this blog languish because of my own boring sobriety, I'm going to post about something or another, a real point be damned!

Oooh, this is good. It's a primer on Long Island wines*.

I've only ever had a sip of one particular Long Island wine, and it was extra special because I was actually on Long Island and drinking from a bottle procured by Amber's roommate, who works for the vineyard where the bottle was made.

I'll need to keep my eyes open for Long Island wines that can be bought locally.

*I am swooning over this website. So pretty and sophisticated it hurts!

God bless the Japanese

2006-09-09T01:21:00.000-05:00

Who needs a cure for cancer when we can build robots that can taste and identify dozens of different wines, cheeses and hors d’oeuvres?

Japanese researchers and scientists have built a wine-tasting robot!

From the story:

At the end of the robot’s left arm is an infrared spectrometer. When objects are placed up against the sensor, the robot fires off a beam of infrared light. The reflected light is then analyzed in real time to determine the object’s chemical composition.

“All foods have a unique fingerprint,” Shimazu said. “The robot uses that data to identify what it is inspecting right there on the spot.”

The winebot can be personalized to tell you which wines you'd like based on your current preferences. The drawback?

Of the thousands of wines on the market, the robot can be programmed to accurately identify only a few dozen at most. It also has more trouble with the task after the bottle has been opened and the wine begins to breathe and thus transform chemically.

I dunno. It's a cool concept with a pretty lousy execution. I mean, kudos to these researchers for going all out and trying to demystify the wine experience by breaking it down to just the science, but the relative uselessness coupled with the exorbitant price makes this little gadget mostly useless.

Plus, there's a pretty big margin of error:

When a reporter’s hand was placed against the robot’s taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon.

Mmmm, bacon hands.

Sucking Loon

2006-09-09T00:52:00.000-05:00

Back when Phil worked at Quetzal, he told me that one of their most popular wines was Smoking Loon. So I picked up a bottle of the merlot one day and I think I enjoyed it. Well, I enjoyed it enough to get a bottle of the pinot noir, which, if memory serves, I didn't enjoy as much as the merlot (which is weird, as I am a pinot noir enthusiast).

But my memory sucks, and I picked up yet another bottle of Smoking Loon pinot noir a couple of weeks ago when stocking up.

And now, thank god, I've got enough sense to write down that I don't much care for it.

While I appreciate a wine whose mere presence alludes to how much fun it is being crazy, I just don't care for the two variations of Smokin Loon I've had. The label design is lovely, as you can see, with, what, Moroccan and Indian design influences? And the cork is kinda cute, with "whooh" written all over it in some sophisticated typeface, alternated with the word "cough" written in the typeface Reel Big Fish used during their heyday.

But the wine itself is less fun.

It's spicy, much more spicy than I prefer. I can't tell if it's the alcohol or some exotic spice I'm tasting, but I don't really like it when a wine burns my lips. Call me finicky if you must, but damn. If I wanted my drink to taste like liquor, I'd dive into some frigging vodka.

Blech, I just mentally barfed at the thought of diving into vodka. Could you imagine?

Anyway, some other flavors I detect:

The nose is very alcohol-y, with just a hint of ... cherry? Jesus, I have no idea. And the label doesn't even give me any hints!

Seriously, I need to take a wine-tasting course or something. My palate's growth was stunted in childhood when I decided to eat nothing but fish sticks for five years. Really, how do people get to the point where they can smell a wine and deduce that there's a tiny bit of oak flavoring in it? Amazing!

Okay, the website is a little more helpful:

Brilliant garnet color with seductive rose petal green tea aroma. The palate is ripe with heavily extracted cherry and strawberry flavors with a slight astringency akin to pomegranate seeds

Dudes, I've never even seen a pomegranate, much less sniffed its seeds.

I've got so much further to go.

(And I just guessed that there were some cherry notes in there; there are cherry notes in everything!)

I'm a drinkin', bloggin' fool

2006-09-06T01:44:00.000-05:00

Tonight I'm working on my third glass of Jindalee Chardonnay, an Australian wine plucked out of the great year 2004.

Jindalee is another $10 wine I picked thanks to its cute label, but it's a pretty good white, if you're in the mood for something kinda fruity and light. I tried to get Phil to try it by saying that it tasted like sparkling cider. I think he could tell that I was lying, because it doesn't really taste like cider. It tastes more like alcoholic pineapple juice, only without all the pineapple. It's pretty good, but it's kind of forgettable, which is sort of how I feel about most white wines.

I'm such a red snob.

I had a nice chardonnay back in Nashville at Rumba when I was visiting Kristin, and the server asked us, as we were tasting it, if it was buttery. It was, decidedly do.

But for some reason, I have this neurotic impulse when drinking wine to instantly lose all sense of critical taste when asked about what I'm experiencing (hence, in part, this blog, meant to hone my tastes). That is, I couldn't tell the server one way or the other if the damn wine was buttery, because I was afraid I was being trapped. It's the height of ridiculous, I know, but I am always on guard that someone is going to try to trick me into saying something profoundly stupid about the wine I'm drinking, like some server is going to delight in my monumental ignorance about wine and its pretentious everything and try to make me look dumber than I'll readily admit I am.

Why any random bar attendant would go to such trouble is anyone's guess; but I'm always assuming that someone is making fun of my winely ignorance. That's how paranoid about my ignorance I am.

Dear God, I'm insane.

So, yeah, this Jindalee. It's definitely NOT buttery, but is certainly fruity and I taste some apple and strawberry in there, but I could totally be making that up, because I haven't read the label yet.

Okay, I just read the label and I was sort of close. There's peach accents and Jindalee has something to do with cod ... blah blah blah. Did I mention I'm on my third glass?

So, yeah, Jindalee is a decent cheap wine but I wouldn't seek it out.

Look

2006-09-02T03:04:00.000-05:00

A new banner and some edited link colors.

A white background? That's so un-me I don't even know what to think.

Nice, no?

What I'm drinking tonight

2006-09-02T00:31:00.000-05:00

This blog is taking its sweet time getting off the ground, that's for sure. I bought four bottles of wine last weekend and had every intention of photographing each one and posting its photo along with a lengthy description, but it hasn't quite panned out that way.

It, will, dammit! Just not tonight. I don't feel like getting the camera out and loading the photos and editing them and all that. So I'll just tell you what I'm drinking and you can use the internets and your imagination to fill in whatever blanks remain.

And by you, of course, I mean me.

I started the night with a glass of Twin Fin pinot noir (somehow three of the four bottles I bought last weekend ended up being pinot noir, even though I set out to specifically get a cabernet; the other is a chardonnay, which I'm saving for daytime drinking).

Twin Fin is a screw-top wine, real cheap-looking, and it runs for about $10 a bottle.

I'm going to take a stab at describing its taste, even though I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about (and I'm kinda getting a headchange because I'm on my second glass, though of a different kind). I have had Twin Fin pinot noir before, back when I was burning through a couple of bottles a week in search of my favorites. I recall enjoying it, which was my experience this time around, too.

When I first took a swig (I don't sip, darlings, I don't sip), it instantly made me smile because it's full-bodied and very rich, almost meaty or nutty. The website says there are strong cherry and strawberry and plum notes, but I can only vouch for the cherry. And maybe the plum. I don't taste strawberry, and to be honest, I've never eaten a plum. But I can totally see how you could say it was plummy, though that's not the first thing that came to my mind.

The glass went too quickly (as do they all), and it was the last bit in the bottle, so I shelved it on my dead wine shelf (I'll write more about that some day and maybe post a photo) and set my eye on the only other open bottle in the apartment: The Pinot Evil.

I'll be honest — I bought this wine based on its cute name and label. People as ignorant as I am tend to browse the aisles of wine and pick things based on their prices and the design of their labels, and putting monkeys on your label is a guaranteed way to get schleps like me to buy your mediocre wine. Pinot Evil, hyuk, it rhymes with "see no evil!"

So, yeah, the Pinot Evil was a disappointing pick. It was around $10, I think (like most of my purchases), and comes from France. The label claims it's a guilty pleasure, but I won't be buying another bottle any time soon. There's just not much to it. It's not complex, in fact, it's kind of like a flat Coke. It's still Coke, but it's not as much fun. There is virtually no aftertaste, and when you swoosh it around in your mouth, nothing blooms or expands like in a lot of good wines.

To tell you the truth, it tastes like a cheap Sutter Home $4 wine to me, and that would be the only price I'd be willing to pay for it again. Because it's boring. Not bad, mind you, but so much more boring than tons of other stuff to get for the price.

So the Twin Fin wins this round, even though I'll be heading back to the ~~wine cellar~~ tiny-ass kitchen to get another glass of Pinot Evil.

What? It's Friday night!

Every blog has a first post

2006-08-27T23:32:00.000-05:00

So I thought I'd start a blog and write about wine, and sort of keep a catalog. It probably won't be interesting to anyone but me.

Tonight I had a glass of $6.50 Ravenswood Cabernet at a restaurant. It was fabulous; I think I've had a bottle of that before and I'd forgotten how good it was. Dry, a little spicy, rich — especially the aftertaste. Is there a technical term for the aftertaste? The finish?

I'm learning.