Archives for March, 2007
Linne Calodo Outsider, 2004
The blend was (from memory) zinfandel 68%, syrah 20%, mourvedre 12%. The label said 2004 but the tongue said 2007. It was like tasting from a barrel. Effervescent, sweet, bright, leggy, very grapey. I only bought the one bottle and wish I hadn’t opened it. It was fun but not ready for full appreciation. Whaddayagonnado? Drink it anyway and move on.
Do I Detect a little Gun Powder?
It’s a bucolic spring evening in the hills a few miles West of Asheville, North Carolina. We’re sitting on the porch, sipping some wine, snacking on rosemary crostini, and just generally being glad to be alive. I hope we’ll be saying that in the morning because the subtle and soothing sounds of wind wafting through the trees and chattering birds are suddenly upstaged by the pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire. It seems the neighbor has got a new toy.
I’d been enjoying an elegantly oaky Edna Valley Vineyard Paragon Chardonnay (2005) but of a sudden I am desiring something less refined, something more immediately earthy without the comforting smoothness of a new world wine. A buttery lemon chiffon-like wine just seems too sissified to drink in the face of gunfire.
A Movia Sauvignon Blanc (2002) feels more appropriate. It’s a country wine made in an old world country style. It’s simple, rough, phenolic taste almost reminds me of gun powder but I’m sure that’s just the power of suggestion. There’s also some honeysuckle and daisy on the nose both of which bring to mind the kind of idyllic meadow it would be nice to lie down and die in. From the dust we rise and to it we shall return and if I were to be called home by a stray bullet while drinking a glass of Movia, I could live with that.
French vs. Napa Cab Showdown
[This is the first of what I hope will be several posts during a weekend of foolishness drinking wine and celebrating the birthdays of Missus Dink, aka The Great Goddess Pam-ella and Shargarita — who hates that nickname but she aint given me anything better to call her.
Chateau Larose-Trintaudon, Haut-Médoc, 2001
Twenty Rows Cabernet, 2005
OK, so it’s not exactly a fair match but a general comparison none-the-less of old world Frenchie and new world Cally.
My first taste of the Haut-Médoc was less than exciting but with each taste it grew on me. It initially had that tinny metallic flavor that I often find in European wines. What I’ve learned is that that’s a characteristic of a wine that wants food to be fully appreciated and even one of our wine newbies immediately said as much after her her first taste. It’s lighter in body and taste than I would have expected from the dark color. I expect I would love this wine if I drank it with a steak but I’m eating crackers and bread while we wait for dinner. (Dinner will be fish and we’ll switch to white at that point — I’m not someone who thinks you have to start with light whites and work yourself up slowly to dark/heavy reds. In a bulk tasting situation that makes a lot of sense but at home when you can take your time and mix it up with water and crackers and other various palate cleansing techniques, I think it’s fine to drink whatever you want with whatever you want. I sometimes have heavier appetizers than I do main courses.)
From Art: “a chalky bitterness in the back of the — well, not all the way back…” “it goes incredibly well with butter!”
From Erwin (that would be me): it’s got a lot of familiar cab flavors but subtly so: licorice, cherry, green vegetable, noticeable tannins and good food-friendly acidity.
The Twenty Rows is the more popular wine in this group - about 10-11 people, many of whom are new wine drinkers. It’s fruitier, bolder, heavier and simpler. It’s got great structure — a very nice balance.
OK, I’m now too drunk to finish the post. I’ve drank two or three more other wines and I have nothing more to say for now…
May You Drink Interesting Wines
Edmunds St. John, Shell and Bone White, 2004 (B+)
Most unusual. Defies categorization. Wet hay (damp moss?) on the nose at first makes me think this is a white for people who don’t like white — oh, wait, that’s a categorization, excuse me.
As I taste I have no idea what grapes are in this wine but clearly viognier is going to have a significant presence∗. The slightly musty smell also suggested pear but just barely. The first taste, right out of the fridge, was too cold and hit hard like a shallow citrusy rock. After warming up a bit it mellowed. Mildly spicy/earthy with just faint suggestions of quince, rhubarb, garlic, yogurt and oh shit, I don’t know, multiple elements that are somewhat sweet, somewhat tart, somewhat salty. There’s a lot here if you have the patience to look for it.
This is not a wine for the effete. In fact, I like that about Edmunds St. John wines — they are not for wussies. Want some buttery California chardonnay? Fruity, oaky, faux Rhone white blends? Predictable grassy sauvignon blanc? Look elsewhere. Want a syrupy sweet California blockbuster? Not here. Don’t get me wrong — I can like all of those, too. I can drink and enjoy almost any kind of grape juice. But it’s wonderful to drink wine that tries to be so much more than popular. I really love being challenged and trying to write tasting notes for this kind of wine is difficult - the responses in my mouth (and nose) don’t easily fall into familiar categories.
∗ OK, Disclosure time: I know that Steve Edmunds makes Rhone style wines and I know that viognier is the prominent Rhone white grape. But that honestly wasn’t in my conscious mind when I took that first taste and when I started writing my impressions. Subconscious? Most certainly. I’m sure I knew it was a viognier blend but I forgot. I bought this wine in a mixed case several months ago without really paying attention to what I was buying other than that it was from Edmunds St. John. I only point this out because I don’t want to sound like I know too much about what I’m talking about. I mostly make this shit up as I go along.
Wine and Technology is a Hot Topic
There’s a lively discussion going on in the comments to a couple of Eric Asimov articles posted on the New York Times columnist’s blog, The Pour.
It started on March 6 in a post titled, When Technology Is Worthwhile and continues in Natural Wines Redux posted ten days later. There are some recognizable names piping in to the mostly civil yet passionate fracas but whether you recognize them or not this is a great dialogue with many valid arguments on both sides of the “naturalist” versus “interventionist” debate.
Bring the Wine, Kill that Boy
Tallulah Syrah, Sonoma County 2004 (A)
I must say, I like my Mega Purple.
Ok, that was not fair and potentially libelous. I have no idea if this wine is made using Mega Purple. In fact, I have no knowledge of any wine that is made using Mega Purple but there are supposedly a lot of them out there. I said that because this wine is a very strong California fruit bomb, which I like. In a post-modern lower middle class kinda way. There are several wines I like that I honestly wonder about since I read about Mega Purple.
Drinking this wine before dinner is like eating dessert before the main course. It doesn’t typically go with what we’re cooking — pasta with tomato sauce — except that we used Paul Newman’s Bombolino sauce which is very sweet, and loaded it with onions, garlic and ground turkey so it paired well enough, at least for people who view food and wine pairing as an optional practice.
The rim of my glass (and somewhat my fingers) is sticky with syrupy, chocolaty, licorishy juice that will kick your ass. At 15.5% this is a Camaro of a wine. I posses more of a Rambler sensibility but still can’t deny the pleasure of a screaming hundred mile an hour frenzy down a suburban road.
The title of this post is a direct quote from Missus Dink who continually murders the title and lyric of the well known War song.
Wine Magazine For the Rest of Us
The title is misleading because I actually subscribe to, and really enjoy the articles in, Wine & Spirits magazine in spite of the fact that their web site sucks. But with the recent talk of the demise of Wine X magazine (see here and here), which purported to be an alternative the mainstream wine media, it’s nice to see the arrival of another contender. While I was a huge fan of the idea of Wine X magazine I hated the reality of it. I found it’s faux hipster posturing to be just as pretentious as the wine snobbery they claimed to be standing up against.
I hope The Second Glass does better. Here’s a quote from the editor’s letter on the site:
Non-dorks: we only included information you will actually use in your future wine drinking adventures. Dorks: there are some hidden gems in this issue, just for you. Enjoy our sophomore effort and remember; wine is only as dorky as you make it.
Notwithstanding the obvious contradiction of including only non-dork information yet including hidden gems for the dorks, he is on to something. Most wine magazines are aimed at the dorks and I’m “down” with that what with being a little bit dorky (although geeky feels more comfortable) but I also appreciate some no-nonsense plain talk about the less complex side of wine and drinking it. It’s been a very long time since I actually had a good champagne — excuse me, sparkling wine - spray fight (somehow we stumbled on 12 cases of something-or-other with bubbles while I was in High School) but it was fun to read their article, In the Name of Science: Champagne Spraying.
I can’t subscribe to the print version just now (I’m oversubscribed) but I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
Second Non Wine Post of the Day
I’ve been saying for months that I just don’t get the fascination with YouTube but maybe I’m starting to get pulled in. This is the second embedded video that I stumbled on this morning that I couldn’t resist, not only watching, but passing the link on for your edification.
Non Wine Post of the Day
Ezra Klein has embedded an excellent YouTube video that explains why we should support unions.
Wine Web 2.0 Roundup Update: A closer look at Winelog.net
[This is an addition to the still evolving article, Wine Web 2.0. It contains some updated notes on the wine site: Winelog.net>
The more I use this site the more I like it’s interface. It’s more graphics heavy than I usually like but it’s fast loading and there is a clean simplicity to the overall look. The few ads that managed to sneak past my adblocking software were reasonably sized and placed so as not to offend. I wish the comment text was larger but that’s something I’m seeing so often that I think it says something about the condition of my aging eyes.
I wish they had more — and more frequent — blog articles.
Many wines have a Buy Now button and they link to many different retail sites. It’s a nice feature but would be even better if it worked more along the lines of wine-searcher.com or winezap.com with multiple sources for each bottle.
I love the five star rating system and how easily it works. It’s much like Netflx’s movie rating. Any time you see a wine listed, whether it’s on someone else’s log or in search results there are five stars visible. The star colors are white for unrated wines, red for average ratings and yellow for my own rating (which can be updated at any time).
I was confused by the appearance of both “Comments” and “Loggers’ Notes” for each wine and it took a trip to the FAQ page to clear it up. Comments are always public, may be added by anyone whether a member or not and cannot be edited. Members and visitors can also add multiple comments to any wine. Loggers’ Notes are different in that only members can have them, they can only have one note per wine and supposedly notes can be made private but I didn’t see how. Notes can be edited or deleted.
There’s another user comment feature (on the bottom right of a users wine log page) that is similar to the MySpace comment feature which I’ve always thought was problematic. It’s not really possible to have a dialogue since there’s no threading — it’s just one long list of unrelated comments (in theory, that is… I haven’t actually seen it used for more than one or two comments). In this case it’s also hard to find.
I think their overall implementation of comments and notes is convoluted and potentially redundant. I’m not sure what a better implementation would look like but what I want to do is 1) keep track of my private tasting notes, 2) publish public tasting notes or longer articles on more general wine subjects, 3) add comments to other users published articles.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it is I’m looking for in a wine community site but I think the site that figures out how to incorporate more substantial inter-user activity will have a serious advantage over everything else out there right now.