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events reviews

Event: Spec’s Tasting Tuesday

I had a freaking fantastic time at the Spec’s at Brodie Lane Tasting Tuesday the other day! It’s a neat event that occurs the second Tuesday of every month. You pay $10 and get a Riedel white wine glass (probably from the Vinum series, but who cares, it’s crystal and you get to take it home!), and there are little stands all over the store giving out food and wine samples. The night I was there, which I think is typical, they tasted 20 different wines.

With your fancy new glass, you are also given a sheet of paper listing all of the wines being poured, with location of the tasting stand and prices for the wines. All wines being tasted are on sale for that night, and all of them were under $20 per bottle, so it’s a very affordable opportunity to stuff your cellar full!

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grapes regions reviews

Wine Blogging Wednesday #37: Tasting Argiolas Costera 2005

Argiolas CosteraDrink Indigenous is this Wine Blogging Wednesday‘s theme.

Well, I’m a dumbass. I thought that the dominant varietal in this wine, Cannonau, was indiginous to Sardinia, one of the Italian islands. Wrong! It’s largely thought that Cannonau was brought to Sardinia in the 18th century from Spain — general consensus seems to be that it’s a derivative of Garnacha, or Grenache. Dissenting Italian opinions here. If a grape has been grown in a region for 4 centuries and has its own name, isn’t it indigenous by now? Probably not. But I tasted this wine up good, damn it, and so you’re going to hear about it.

Deeply purpley-red in color. Immediately in the glass, there’s a dusty-earthy nose, maybe cedar notes, with black licorice and ripe bing cherry. When it opens up, it’s got really ripe, sexy fruit. I can see why Parker gave this a 91 — it’s totally his style! And for only about $14!

On the tongue, it gives up some plum flavors (you know how the skin is a little sour? like that) and has a note of tar, mixed with a slightly minerally tone. It’s rare for me to detect minerality on the palate of a red wine (it’s much easier for me taste that flavor – like rocks in your mouth – in whites), but here it is! Happy Mouth Co-op, membership: me.

I kept thinking “boy, I bet this would be great with food, like a nice strong cheese” and so I made myself a piece of whole wheat toast with a gorgonzola cream cheese spread. Loveliness! The spicy acidity of the gorgonzola was a nice complement to the earthiness of the wine, and the fat in the cheese spread really smoothed the wine out. Those Eye-talians know how to make us some food-appropriate wine, yo.

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personal

Out of Step

When I was in the wine business, I had lots of people that shared my interest in wine, and who were just as excited as I was about tasting something or learning something new. We would gabble to each other about the latest neat wine we’d tasted in Advanced Winespeak, referencing winemakers and varietals and sub-regions… gobbledeegook to other people, but fun times for us wine nerds.
What if your wine tastes are not the same as those of your friends? If you are an experienced wine nerd like me, your idea of a great thing to bring to a party is an exciting wine. (Actually, the very notion of an “exciting” wine might just brand you an insufferable wine nerd right out of the box.
Also if you are like me, a wine that excites you may not excite the rest of your party. You may be bringing Chablis to a party of I-only-drink-red-wine-because-it’s-the-real-shit drinkers. When invited to a fish fry, you may be dying to drink that sassy Provencal rose that you picked up for next to nothing, while everyone else is studiously ignoring what they think is your nasty imported WhiteZin. You might want to serve a pleasant chilled Beaujolais to your guests, but they’re convinced that they don’t like anything but Merlot.
I know everything teeIt’s harder for me to enjoy a bottle of wine I’ve brought to someone’s house if I’m the only one drinking it. Even if I’m hosting, I feel bad if no one enjoys the wine I’ve chosen for the night. Maybe it’s just my insufferable need to please, or my indefatigable desire to widen people’s wine horizons. Quite possibly, it’s just the lonely road of the wine “expert.” As your interest in wine grows, and thus your education about wine deepens, you very well may find that not everyone shares your enthusiasm. Shocking!
Similar is the path of the die-hard foodie. I am fascinated with cooking and new flavors. I am very lucky in that my husband is very willing to try new things, but the truth is that my interest in food far outstrips his. In fact, I’m more interested in food than nearly anyone I know. At this point in my life, I can share my passion for new cuisines and techniques but by and large I entertain only myself with my elaborate dinners and wide arrays of hors d’oeuvres at parties.
What I’ve noticed, though, is that people are much more willing to try new things in food than they are in wine. Or maybe I’m better at cooking than I am at wine recommending? Commending a wine, when you Really Know About Wine, can be a big responsibility. At least, I’m always worried that people will blame themselves if a wine I recommend to them fails to please their palate. I Know What I’m Talking About, so if I think something’s tasty I must be right, right? Wine mystique makes the question of taste, like Pepsi vs. Coke, into a question of expertise and sophistication. I bet Coke wishes it could put that much pressure on its prospective consumersAnyhow, poor old me and my elevated tastes, right? Paranoid about my queer little bottles and what the neighbors will think! I guess my real message is the same old, same old: try new things, and trust your own sense of taste.
Do you have specialized interests that leave you alone in a crowd? Please share your experiences with the entire class via your fancy comment!

Categories
reviews

Tasting Seeberger Riesling 2006

Seeberger RieslingYellow straw color. Simple yet powerful apple on the nose, with slight hints of violet. Palate echoes the green apples, good amount of sweetness here; medium acidity does not balance it out, unfortunately. There is a persistent minerality on the finish that doesn’t quite deal with the sugar, either, but it is varietally correct.

I bought this on the recommendation from the Austin Chronicle’s article on boxed wines; it was their most recommended white of all the 50 wines they tasted. It cost me $14.99 for a 3 liter box, averaging out to $3.75 per bottle. I was disappointed in it, but now that I do the math, I’m a lot happier with it! It’s sweeter than I’d like it to be (if you haven’t figured that out yet), but it is varietally correct, and I’ll just drink it with spicy food. Wines that lean toward sweetness make an excellent pairing for spicy foods — the sugar stands up to the spice and keeps it from overwhelming the palate. My friend J is coming to town for ACLFest; maybe I’ll make my favorite Thai red curry for her.  Between the two of us, we can kill this box in a few days, I’m sure!

Categories
basics industry

Quit staring at my legs

One of the things I will encourage you NOT to comment on when it comes to wine is legs.  “Nice legs” is a phrase best used in private, only with your beloved partner whom you think has attractive lower limbs and wants to hear your opinion of them. 

Unfortunately, wine legs are easy to spot, and commenting on them is one of the early defaults that a wine drinker learns.  Please, please, please resist.  Legs mean one thing: alcohol content.   If the wine legs you are seeing in your glass are so outstandingly pronounced that you simply must say something about them, then just say something about the alcoholic content in the wine, like “What percent alcohol is this?” or “What is this stuff, Port?”

Tears of WineHere’s how legs work:  wine is made of water and alcohol.  Alcohol evaporates faster than water but has lower surface tension, and so the wine in your glass of wine starts climbing the sides through capillary action.  This exacerbates the quicker evaporation of the alcohol, and the resulting change in the surface tension pushes even more wine up the side.  When gravity kicks in, the wine drops back into the glass.  The tracks of the wine running up and falling down the sides of your glass are the legs, which the French call the “tears of wine.”

Alcohol is one of the things that makes a wine full-bodied, creating that sensation of expansion in your mouth, and sometimes contributing to the mouth-coating texture of a wine.  There has been a lively discussion since late June in the wine world regarding how much alcohol is in modern, high-scoring wines, and whether that’s a good thing.  Wines from Germany usually have about 8-10% alcohol.  French & Italian wines tend to be about 12%.  California wines can range as high as 16%, which winemaker extraordinaire Randy Dunn says is too much.  Tom Wark at Fermentation agrees with him, as I tend to.  Wines & Vines pleads for an appreciation of alcohol.

No matter what side of the high-alcohol fence you’re on, or if you’re dazed by the whole hullaballoo, please take this home in your pocket.  It’s uncool to talk about legs.  Not uncool in a cool way, like Napoleon Dynamite, but simply and utterly inept, like the way our president ad libs.  Don’t say it!  You’ll thank me when you’re older.

Categories
regions reviews wineries

Tasting Famega Vinho Verde NV

Famega labelYummy goodness. Straw yellow with green reflections, it was slightly petillant (bubbly), and after the bubbles exploded in your mouth, the palate was totally dry and pleasently herbal. Tasted just like ripe yellow delicious apple with some lime squeezed over it. Very light: alcohol content is only 9%, so I quite happily drank half the bottle at our Blues on the Green picnic and drove home (don’t tell) with no ill effects. Exactly what I was looking for in a picnic wine!

This was lovely with our meal: gazpacho, green salad with feta, and a tortellini pasta salad with artichoke hearts. Also gracing the blanket: a rosemary sourdough bread, some aged manchego, and summer fruits. I also look forward to drinking this wine with seafood, fish, or a lemony grilled chicken. It’s really a good pair for almost any summer dish, with the possible exception of barbecue.

I had mentioned Vinho Verde in another post, one on Alvarino and its native region of Rias Baixas, saying how the two regions are fairly close and how I was looking forward to tasting the Portuguese version of this grape, which they call Alvarinho. Imagine my dismay when I research this wine after enjoying it so and discover that there’s no Alvarinho in it! Facestab! (I should have known, really, because of the low alcohol in the wine. Alvarinho in a Vinho Verde will bring up the alcohol content significantly.)

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grapes reviews wineries

Tasting Rosenblum Cellars Heritage Clones Petite Sirah 2005

Rosenblum PS Heritage ClonesThis was an impulse purchase — normally I don’t buy bottles this expensive, sticking to under $10-15, but I was meeting friends at my house and saw this in the wine store, and…

Color is dark and inky, like black blood in a movie. The aromas are warm and earthy, with some tarry characteristics. This wine is on the hot side (meaning the alcohol content is high enough at 14.4% that I can feel it burn my nose a bit), and presents vanilla oak, sweet cherry, white pepper and mocha notes. There is an interesting, elusive whiff of aged cheese or truffle or really sticky skunk bud.

On the palate, I get licorice, tobacco, and powerful blackberry jam flavors. The wine has a strong tannic grip, which makes it meaty and chewy-feeling, like it’s tight on my teeth and gums. The acidity is good, though, balancing out those structured tannins. The long, lingering finish is very reminiscent of dried blueberries. This wine is rich and delicious, very rewarding for $23 a bottle. Drink it with something equally rich: italian sausage, duck, or osso bucco.

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food & wine pairing restaurants reviews

Pairing Perfection

Peanut butter and jelly. Car and driver. Movies and popcorn. Wine and food. Each of these pairs are lesser without the other. Sure, they can stand on their own if need be, but when joined, the whole is MORE than the sum of its parts. Case in point:

My husband and I had a lovely night out a week or so ago, stopping off at a wine bar for an aperitif, and then dining at Ciola’s in Lakeway. I had researched Ciola’s before for a potential company dinner I was asked to organize, and had wanted to go there for a while. Their menu looked interesting and their wine list was very well written. Back in my wine rep days, I did a lot of wine list analysis, and the wine list at Ciola’s shows a lot of careful, thoughtful selections.

Ironically, though, I didn’t really order wine off the list. Liberty School Cab labelOur waiter happened to be the wine steward, Tommy Williams, Jr., and once we ordered our entrees he told us about some wines he was pouring that weren’t on the by-the-glass list. One was a Vermentino, which he particularly recommended with my linguine & clam sauce, so I took the leap of faith (not a very big leap, considering the list) and acquiesced. T wanted a Cab, though, so he ordered a glass of the Liberty School Cabernet Sauvignon , always a solid choice.

The calamari we ordered for starters was very well executed: the squid was tender, the breading was light and crunchy, and two dipping sauces came with: a marinara and an aioli. Both delicious, but I stuck to the marinara… there’s something semi-obscene about dipping fried food into mayonnaise sauces, even if it is fish.

T’s Rigatoni Genzano was a heck of a meal: large chunks of Italian sausage, with what looked like quartered peppers. His Liberty School Cabernet Sauvignon (didn’t get the year) gave sweet oak and blackberry aromas, with some green pepper and clack cherry notes. The color (difficult to see in the very romantic lighting in the restaurant) was a nice dark red with some garnet highlights. Soft tannins on the palate with a black pepperyness, and big currant flavors. Slight taste of raspberry, as well. Overall, a rich & soft Cabernet with a very decent finish for $9 per glass. Tom liked how his wine tasted with his food; I could see how the green pepper of the wine matched nicely with the red peppers in his dish, but I thought the bite of the Italian sausage wasn’t all that flattering, wine-wise.

MY wine and food pairing, though, was phenomenal.

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Categories
grapes regions reviews wineries

Tasting Martin Codax Albarino 2006

Martin Codax Albarino 2006 labelBoy, I’m drinking a lot of white lately. I loves the red, and I believe in the Rose, really I do, but I am THIRSTY for white these days. Might that have something to do with the Texas summer having finally descended upon us, incarcerating my universe in an oven of sweaty, airless misery? Nah.

Color is a pale straw, because this wine is too cool for all your tired golden reflections. When cold, the nose presents a startlingly vivid scent of ripe pear. There are some herbal qualities, too, and it smells like it’s effervescent, but it ain’t. I see what you’re doing there… tricky.

Nice lemony, mineral palate, tangy rather than tart. Super clean and refreshing, with a hint of pear and/or golden delicious apple. Very long, pleasant finish: these flavors want to sit in my mouth for a while, and I’m loving it.

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industry

Boxed in

Such an interesting article from our local Austin Chronicle this week on boxed wines! Wes Marshall writes about wine and food for the Chronicle, and organized a blind tasting of wines packaged in boxes, inviting various distinguished Austin wine geeks, including the three Austin men that won the Texas Best Sommelier Competition: Devon Broglie, Craig Collins and Scott Cameron. There were 12 tasters in all, and they tasted a total of 50 wines, giving out a prize for Best Red, Best White, and Best in Show. The winners were:

1.) Seeburger Riesling from Germany

2.) Powers 2003 Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington State

3.) Hardy’s Stamp Merlot from Australia

Now, you may be surprised to hear about very serious wine people enthusiastically tasting box wine. The box stuff is cheap and nasty, right? Well, here’s the thing: not necessarily. Wine is finally having a much-needed packaging revolution. Wines that would sell for $10-15 a bottle are now frequently being packaged in the “bag in box” format and purchased enthusiastically in such wine-savvy locales as Europe and Australia. According to Wes Marshall, 54% of all wine purchased in Australia is in a box. These are people who care much more about substance over form, yeh?

Why give up the good old bottle and cork? Simple: air. When wine is exposed to oxygen, it starts to go south. Specifically, it oxidizes, robbing the wine of its fruit and causing the wine to brown. Wine that’s been packaged in that vacuum bag in the box is guaranteed oxygen-free for life, and therefore can be drunk in any quantity desired, over any timespan desired, without you haveing to worry about the wine going off. Do you drink a glass of red wine a night, like it’s medicine? Then bag-in-box is your Holy Grail.

Another good reason to buy wine in a box rather than in a glass bottle is portability.

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