Posts Tagged ‘wine’

Full Circle

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

The year 2009 involved lots of memorable times with friends and family, some of those times involved a nice bottle of vino. Here I’d like to note some of the most memorable wines/wineries.

Nalle

I went wine tasting with one of my buddies about 2 months back. It was a pick-up trip for him stopping by all the wineries he belonged to. For our last winery of the day, my friend Nic took me to Nalle. We walked into a small barn where it looked like all the production occurred. Nic was a pretty big fan of these guys. We were able to meet the head wine makers and he even signed a couple bottles and sent us off with a poster. I’m sure Nic probably has this hanging in his cellar somewhere. Great wine, great people. We both ended up leaving this winery with multiple bottles of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Both wines were very easy to drink and tasted great. You could easily drink a bottle with a friend and wonder where it went.

Robert Young

I was fortunate enough to do a one for one trade with a friend of mine’s father. I traded him one of my Nalles for the 2006 Alexander Valley Private Reserve Chardonnay. I shared it with a couple friends and enjoyed it thoroughly. I find this is one of those wines that packs some punch once you first pour it, even whites need a little time breath. Lots of good oak and malolactic on this particular wine, which I am known for loving in my Chardonnays. Definitely worth trying if you are a Chardonnay fanatic, but it’ll be a bit pricey (usually retails for $50) and will be hard to find as they only made 2 barrels.

Benziger / Imagery

Let it be known this family makes some amazing wine. Benziger follows the typical Napa/Sonoma big Pinots / Cabs / Chard line of wines you see all over the Northern California wine country, a few organic/biodynamic. All are wonderful wines and recommend doing a Pinot tasting if you ever make it out to the winery. Joe Benziger decided to branch out and make wine that wasn’t as prominent in Sonoma. Imagery pushes out White Burgundy, Viognier, Malbec, Tempranillo, Sangiovese among many many others. The big push is that each bottle and vintage carries its own signature piece of art. Each piece contains a likeness of the Parthenon replica on the Benziger Estate. If you sign up for one wine club, the other winery will take good care of you as well, and you’ll have a hard time convincing yourself not to be a member at both.

J. Lohr

J. Lohr is a Paso Robles based winery. I was able to visit this winery earlier last year going out on a wine trip amongst friends. However, I’m recommending this winery because you are more likely to find this brand in stores (see BevMo!) in the California area. Most of the wines are above average, but I felt the newly released 2007 Chardonnay really shined. It should be reasonably priced at about 15-20 bucks a bottle.

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Brixr and the Evolution of Wine Tasting

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

I was planning on staggering my updates over the next few weeks, but I figured I would try and get this article out in time for the holidays.  The wonderful fellows over at Crushpad have recently launched Brixr.  Brixr is a great new innovative product from Crushpad that brings wine tasting to you.  They ship you a box with 4 50ml vials that you use for tastings.  In addition, they have videos with wine connoisseurs posted for people to taste along with.

While the whole idea of tasting along with someone online was originally brought to my attention by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV, Brixr brings it to a whole new level with the advanced web technologies on their site.  As you go through the videos the web site will follow along with it, highlighting each wine so you know exactly where you are in the tasting.  Each wine listed on the side also features additional details that open/close with ease.  On the way you can add bottles to your order when you find a wine you like.  The web site is still in beta, but a cool feature I’d like to see in the future would be a text box somewhere for each bottle that I can make my own tasting notes.

The main reason for making this post early is that the cutoff for arrival by Christmas is this Saturday at midnight.  The tasting kits make wonderful gifts, and you can even purchase a bottle in the form of a coupon along with it.  They can taste the wine, choose the bottle they enjoyed the most and order it directly from the site.  I think the future for this product is very bright and look forward to more wine offerings from different wineries from around the country.  Gary V, if you’re listening, jump on with these guys in future if you aren’t on board already!

Links: Brixr

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Argentine Wine Pt. 1 – Torrontés

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Currently I’m down in Argentina for the month of January.  The first thing I did when I came down here was shoot straight for the wine store and buy a couple Malbecs.  If you’re looking to expand your palate and try a bunch of different wines for fairly cheap, Argentina is a great place to start.  Argentina is even a great place for new comers to wine to explore and begin to find what they like.  That being said, you may not find the cheapest 90+ point wines down here as you might expect, but you will be getting 80+ wines for under 20 pesos (~6 USD) each.

Argentina is the home of the Torrontés grape.  While it can also be found in Chile and Spain, Argentina is the largest grower and user of the grape for wines.  This wine in particular is great for new comers because it is light and usually a bit sweeter.  So if you are introducing someone to wine for the first time, this should be a good wine to start with.

Since I’ve been down in Argentina I’ve had the opportunity to try 4 of the Torrontés wines for a mere 32.5 pesos (~10 USD).  Below I’ll give you the list of wines I’ve tried and a little heads up on what to expect from each of them, but keep in mind different people have different palates.  Dan, my partner in crime down here often differs with my opinions.

  1. Reservado 2008 – 8 pesos (~2.5 USD) – This wine was very simple and didn’t do anything amazing for me, but was enjoyable.   The nose was sweet, crisp, and reminded me of a very tart apple sauce.  The mouth was totally a box of tiny tarts just poured into my mouth.  I haven’t had them since I was a kid, but I very distinctly remember that taste when my grandma bought me some in a plastic case at Disney World.  It manages to stay light while giving lots of flavor.  I feel like this wine would go well with some shrimp.  It’s a bit tart for my taste, but perhaps some of you out there like that.  80.
  2. Colon 2007 – 10 pesos (~3 USD) – This wine was if anything extremely interesting.  The color was a very rich for a white wine.  I would almost want to describe it as a light amber.  The nose was unlike anything I had ever really had before.  If you just brisked your nose past the glass, you got freshly sliced apples.  If you were near the top of the glass you got a baked apple pie coming from a freshly cleaned oven.  Once you stuck your nose straight in it, carpet cleaner!  Now after letting it breathe for a bit, it kept the same nose on top, but sticking your nose in got you some interesting tropical fruits.  The taste on this was very interesting.  My friend Dan absolutely couldn’t stand it.  I was intrigued, for some reason I couldn’t stop smelling and drinking this wine if for nothing other than the fact that I wanted to understand how they made it.  The taste itself wasn’t all that great.  It reminded me a bit of papaya.  Drinking it, it coated my tongue like it was wrapping it up in a silk blanket.  An interested mouth feel for sure.  While I’m not sure I’d pick this up again, I’ll give this wine an 81 for keeping me interested.
  3. Santa Julia 2008 – 14.5 pesos (~4.25 USD) – This nose was quite tight.  For taste, it has a slow entrance and doesn’t come on too strong, but slowly grasps your tongue as it comes up to the mid palate.  The finish lasts after the wine leaves your mouth, but doesn’t linger on for too long.  Unfortunately as far as describing the flavor I can’t give you much else other than just straight citrus.  80
  4. Quara 2007 – 13 pesos (~4 USD) – I think these guys have a cool label.  It has a little llama right on the label, but we can’t judge wines by their covers.  The color isn’t much of anything worth note.  The nose initially was very tight and never really opened up.  The overall mouth feel was okay.  It has kick right up front, then it starts to settle on your palate and tighten up a little bit.  For the finish it slowly runs off your as if it were rolling down your throat trailing the rest of the wine you just drank.  The end hits you with a little bit of alcohol.  If you like your white wine room temperature I have a feeling this will finish a little hot for you.  Overall though I feel like this wine lacks flavor.  With a wine such as the Torrontés, known for its higher sugars, I feel like there should be more flavor on this.  This wine is tarter than the Reservado, too tart for the level of sweetness present leaving it unbalanced.  I wanted this wine to be more than what is was but unfortunately I think I’ll have to leave this wine at 75.

Perhaps there are some other wines out there that do the Torrontès better justice, but we only spent 10 dollars try 4 wines.  For those of you looking to learn more about Torrontès, I highly recommend checking Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV show on Torrontès here.

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