1. On Wine and Toilet Paper

    June 12, 2012 by Winenewbie

    A few weeks ago, CNBC ran a special on Costco (it’s worth sitting through the advertisement to catch the video) which included a segment on the lead wine buyer, Annette Alvarez-Peters.  If you’ve been to one of these warehouse stores, you know they’re chockablock full of gallon-sized bottles of ketchup, car tires, and, of course, toilet paper.  There are a few, however, that also sell wine.  In the case of Costco, a LOT of wine.  As in, over a billion dollars per year.

    I don’t know if I was more shocked to learn that Costco sells that much wine yearly, or that the person responsible for choosing which bottles grace the shelves has such a bourgeois attitude toward wine itself, likening it to any other commodity.  Like toilet paper.  Maybe she should tell that to the guy who bought this bottle of wine.  The more I thought about it, the more mixed my feeling were.  I realized she was right when she said, “…at the end of the day, it’s a beverage.”  I mean, of course it is.  But it’s also elevated to something far more meaningful than that by the context in which it’s enjoyed.  You won’t see someone celebrating his daughter’s college graduation by telling his guests, “Hey, today is very special.  I’m talking Quilted Northern kind of special.”  At least I hope not.

    I don’t think most people are shopping for wine at Costco looking for the elusive bottle of ’82 Chateau Petrus.  And besides, does the lead wine buyer’s attitude really change what’s in the bottle?

    How about you?  Are you more in the Who cares as long as it’s cheap camp?  Or does  your blood boil with the idea of your precious wine being thought of as just another 30-pack of Charmin?

     

     

     

     

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  2. Ah, Screw It

    October 3, 2011 by Winenewbie

    Drink enough wine and eventually you’ll get a bottle with a little extra something in its bouquet. You know it when you smell it. That unmistakeable scent of wet, musty cardboard.  Or, even better, rotten wood. In wine terms, that bottle you just opened has cork taint.

    I can already hear the more childish among you (OK, I include myself) sniggering at the mere mention of the word ‘taint.’ But what I’m referring to is a stinky compound called trichlorosanisole, or  TCA for short.  Cork is a natural gift from mother nature and not without its own pratfalls.  At times, a little bit of mold within the cork can react with the chemicals used to clean the cork and, Voila!  Cork taint.

    It’s no raging epidemic.  Estimates put its occurrence at about 5-7% of all bottles of wine with natural cork closures.  Aha! you say.   Then why not just use synthetic corks or even screw caps?  Fact is, many wineries do.  Any of us who drinks a decent amount of wine has encountered a screw cap (sometimes called a Stelvin closure) or a synthetic cork.

    But nothing’s perfect.  While it’s great to let some wines breathe when you’re about to drink them, oxygen getting to the wine while it’s being stored can sound its death knell, leaving it brownish and flat, lacking the fruit that once may have made it so delicious. Synthetic corks have a greater likelihood of being wine’s executioner, since they have been found to let air in after only about 18 months.  Besides that, who wants to taste…plastic in their wine?

    So how about those screw caps?  I mean, there’s nothing technically wrong with using them.  They certainly prevent oxygen from getting to the wine. They also bring me on a little journey down Memory Lane, back to high school.  And a bottle of what I have come to know as Mad Dog 20/20 (“As majestic as the cascading waters of a drain pipe…”)  Not a good thing.

    Maybe I’m being a little snobbish.  I really don’t have any issues with screw caps.  In fact, I always enjoy the look on someone’s face when I open a bottle of wine with a screw cap.  There’s a reflexive wrinkling of the nose as if whatever is in the bottle would relegate it to being drunk out of a paper bag.  But then they try the wine, and that preconception goes right out the window.

    Let’s be honest.  I don’t see major Chateaux in France throwing their corks out any time soon.  There is something a little regal about the tradition of opening a bottle of wine that I would hate to see relegated to a simple twist of the wrist, like I’m opening a bottle of Miller High Life.  But in my wine cellar, there’s room for alternate closures.

    In fact, I’ve been feeling a little crazy lately.  Stay tuned for my thoughts on something I thought I would never admit to trying.

    Wine in a box.

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  3. Yes, I Am Drinking !@#$% Merlot!

    September 15, 2011 by Winenewbie

    “Develop your own opinions and get in touch with your own preferences. Remember that with wine appreciation, there are no rights and no wrongs. We all have different tastes, and no single one of them is right. Be open: There are other grape varieties than chardonnay, and there are other colors of wine than red.”

    –Jancis Robinson

     

    My wine revelation came in 1999.  I had been harboring a steadfast refusal to drink Merlot.  I don’t even remember why.  So many people begin their lifelong love of wine with a Chardonnay, or maybe a Pinot Grigio.  Not me.  I was indoctrinated into wine with big, bold stuff like Cabernet Sauvignon.  Blame it on the impetuous nature of youth, but I was having none of the subtleties that wine had to offer, preferring Cabernet’s unmistakeable power over the finesse of what I then would have considered a lesser wine.

    I saw the light at the Capital Grille on Newbury Street in Boston.  While in town for a meeting, I joined a colleague and friend of mine to have dinner there.  He’d been around a few wine lists in his day and when it came time to order the bottle we were going to have with dinner, he had settled on a Merlot.  The movie Sideways wouldn’t be out for another five years or so, but I was already feeling Miles’s sentiment.

    The server brought the bottle to the table and poured each of us a glass.  Despite my protestations, I drank.  Now here it is, twelve years later, and I don’t know just what it was that I had against Merlot, but I clearly remember the bottle that turned things around for me.  It was an Arrowood Merlot.  One sip and the scales fell from my eyes.  Hallelujah, I was a moron!  Why had I limited myself to only one kind of grape?

    I can hear you veteran wine drinkers out there, mumbling about how the distance from Cabernet Sauvignon to Merlot isn’t as great as I would have folks think.  Yes, Arrowood Merlot is a big wine, full-bodied with ripe tannins, but that’s not the point.  The point is that I was no longer a one-note canary, perfectly content with turning to the same wine over and over again.  Sure, there’s something to be said about the oasis of familiarity.  But the real adventure in wine (if not in life) begins beyond familiarity’s borders.

    Now it’s your turn.  What wine do you seem to reach for every time you’re buying a bottle?  How willing are you to try something new?

    Image: http://www.hondurasgolpeada.net/

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  4. Hey, Nice Lederhosen!

    September 5, 2011 by Winenewbie

    When you think of Austria, several images may come to mind.  If you’re a classical music lover (or skilled at Trivial Pursuit), you may know that Mozart was born there.  Perhaps you’re an avid collector of yodeling tunes.  Or maybe your total recall of the best lines from the movie Commando reminds you that the toothy, former Governator himself hails from Austria.

    How many of you, though, gave even a passing thought to wine?  I mean, you knew I was going there eventually, right?

    For anyone whose reflex is to reach for a Chardonnay or maybe a Pinot Grigio whenever the desire for a white wine hits, I have a suggestion that will be a welcome detour away from what you’re used to.

    It’s called Grüner Veltliner.

    Just saying the name out loud can give you an Alpine rush: GROO-ner Felt-LEE-ner.

    For a wine with such a foreign-looking name, it’s really no wonder that few people would consider giving Grüner a go (it doesn’t help that many wine merchants keep only a few bottles of it in stock).  But muster the bravery to seek out a bottle of this wine and you will be rewarded for your intrepidness.

    With a whiff of white grapefruit and sometimes peach on the nose, the crisp acidity of GV makes it a welcome companion to many foods.  In fact,  you may notice that it has a freshness to it reminiscent of a summer garden.  Which makes it a terrific companion to a wide variety of foods.  I recently had a GV with grilled chicken and a salad of fresh tomato, mozzarella, and basil.  It was easily one of the best food and wine pairings I’ve had in a while.  It’s no coincidence that Grüner goes so well with vegetables, which are notoriously difficult to match wine with.  Grüner means “green” in German.  And it’s not uncommon to smell or taste things like peas or zucchini in the wine.  Trust me.  It’s delicious–just tell yourself you’re being good and eating your veggies.

    I’d love to know what you find and where you find it.  Give Grüner a try.  I’m sure you’ll be back.

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  5. Expensive Wine? Who’s Buyin’?

    August 18, 2011 by Winenewbie

     

    When I was in my mid-20′s, I was enjoying a business dinner at a swank restaurant in Philadelphia when I was handed the wine list and told that I could pick out the next bottle of wine, as long as it was under $150.

    $150 for one bottle of wine.

    Now, to be fair, I’m sure there are folks who think paying that dollar amount is but a trifle (for instance, this guy, who paid $117,000 for a bottle of Chateau D’Yquem).  For someone not-so-far removed from college, however, where beer in a glass bottle was considered good drinkin’, $150 for one bottle of  wine was simply mind boggling.  And therein lay the problem.  I was so focused on the price column of the wine list that I didn’t give any real thought to what I was ordering.  It didn’t help, either, that I had no clue what the hell I was doing.

    The result was…disappointing.  In fact, for my first foray into what I considered to be expensive wine, I can’t even remember the bottle I ordered.  Only that it was something Italian.  Thank goodness for expense accounts.

    Fast forward a number of years to another business dinner, surrounded by people of means–some with enviable wine cellars–who had been making picks from the wine list for most of the evening.  Once again, I found the wine list in my hands, and the (self-imposed) pressure was on.  The decision was easy to make, however, because in the 10 or so years that had elapsed since my baptism into pricey wine, I had learned what I liked, regardless of price.  And when I found a particular bottle on the wine list that I had really enjoyed in the past, I picked it.  Not because I wanted to spend a lot of money, expense account notwithstanding.  Or because I wanted to impress anyone with a rare or expensive bottle.  It was simply a very good wine.

    It didn’t hurt my ego, either, that the bottle I chose was declared the best wine of the evening.  And it was easily the least expensive.

    I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t use an expense account to purchase the wine we drink.  Chances are that we consciously or unconsciously find ourselves reaching for wine at the same price point whenever we’re buying a bottle.  The good news is that you can find some pretty good wine at almost any price point (sorry, Two Buck Chuck).  No one should labor under the false impression that a dollar amount determines what’s inside the bottle.  While it’s true that you may have to kiss a few $10 frogs to find something good, they’re out there–try Stone Cellars Merlot, for example.  At around $4 per bottle, you won’t mind opening a bottle for just one or two glasses.

    What has your experience been with the wine/price relationship?  Have you tried something that was outrageously priced?  Were you disappointed, or was it the nectar of the gods?

     

    (Image: www.cocomatsnmore.com)

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  6. Summer’s Secret Gem

    August 7, 2011 by Winenewbie

    Smoke? Don't mind if I do!

    Despite the fact that the days are getting (sadly) shorter and Target is advertising Back to School deals, summer ain’t over yet!  From where I sit, there are still several weeks of glorious warm weather filled with picnics, cookouts, and impromptu get-togethers with friends and family.  If you’re like me, an invite to a summertime soiree means you’ll want to bring a nice bottle of something along with you to drink and share with everyone.  I’ll admit that I’ve struggled with choosing which wine to arrive with.  The prospect of showing up with something that won’t pair well with the food being served is almost insufferable, and I agonize over my choices for hours, even days.

    Well, not really.

    I do try to pick a wine that will complement the cookout fare.  Not as easy as it would seem, since what comes off the grill can vary from hotdogs to beer can chicken.  I have served both at the same party, albeit without wearing that fancy hat above.  The sheer variety of different foods that can be served can be overwhelming if you spend too much energy analyzing what wine goes with what.  So how about if I let you in on something that I discovered for myself this summer?

    Go ahead.  Lean in a little closer.

    It’s Beaujolais.

    Most of us have seen bottles of Beaujolais-Nouveau in wine shops and liquor stores around Thanksgiving.  The eye-catching labels are hard to miss:

    2001 beaujolais nouveau  2006 beaujolais nouveau  2007 beaujolais nouveau

    Gamay is the sole grape used in these wines–with Beaujolais-Nouveau  (10 Fascinating Facts About Beaujolais-Nouveau), the grapes are picked, fermented, and bottled in a matter of weeks, ready for their appearance in November.  While the Nouveau version of Beaujolais is meant to be drunk within months of hitting the store shelves, other versions are available year-round, like Beaujolais-Villages (Beau-joh-LAY Vee-LAHJ).  And this is what I’ve been enjoying with cookouts this summer.

    The wine is light and fresh, with aromas of raspberries and cherries, and it tastes great with food ranging from burgers to fried chicken.  It is as unstuffy and relaxed as a summertime Saturday afternoon should be, and I don’t know what took me so long to discover it (other than being intimidated by French wine labels–another story for another day).

    But, Keith! you say.  Who wants to drink red wine on a hot summer day?  I’m glad you asked that question, gentle reader.  Beaujolais thumbs its nose at the old belief that only white wines should be chilled.  Don’t be afraid of sticking the bottle in the fridge for an hour or so.  Doing this will only make it that much more refreshing.  Because the wine is so low in tannin (see Wine Terms, Demystified (Part Deux–Tannin)), the colder temperature won’t make the wine feel astringent in your mouth.

    And one of the best things about this wine?  Its price.  I generally see it listed for around 10 bucks.  A bargain by any measure.

    So give Beaujolais a try and let me know what you think.  It’s a great red wine for anyone who has sworn sole allegiance to white wines, too.  If this is you, stand up and be brave!  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

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  7. My Big Nose

    August 3, 2011 by Winenewbie

    I have a large-ish nose, despite what my mother would tell you.  I would love to be able to tell you that it gives me some advantage in identifying all the different aromas in a glass of wine when I give it a sniff.  Alas, this is not the case.  The average person can identify over 2000 scents.  My big(ger) nose gives me no advantage here.

    The truth is that being able to tell if a wine has a hint of raspberries or rose petals takes practice.  Not only do you have to stick your nose in quite a few glasses of wine, you need to be able to identify just what it is that you’re smelling.  If you’ve spent some time wondering how it is that wine critics and snobs alike seem to gush with exotic descriptors of wine aromas, you’re not alone.  In fact, there are some companies (like winearomas.com) that sell kits containing multiple “aroma vials” to help train your nostrils on what the most typical aromas in white and red wines smell like.

    Wine Aromas (Le Nez du Vin) - 54 Aroma kit

    That’s great.  If you have an extra $399 laying around.  For that money, I would rather buy actual bottles of wine that I could at least drink after I smelled them–those vials don’t look very tasty (yes, I know they’re not meant to be drunk).

    So what to do?  It helps to have a basic, consistent approach to smelling and assessing wine after it’s poured in the glass (contrary to popular belief, smelling the cork will allow you to smell…cork aroma.  The best method is to sniff the wine in the glass.)  Do it often enough, and you won’t even have to think about it.  Here are the fundamental steps and also a video here, to boot:

    1. Swirl the wine in the glass.  If you’re concerned about spilling, it’s perfectly OK to keep the base of the glass on the table.  The reason we do this is to get oxygen into the wine and help release its aromatic characteristics.
    2. Bring the glass of wine toward your nose.  Resist sticking your nose immediately inside the glass, since you want to determine how intense the aromas are.  Can you smell the wine before the glass even reaches your nose, or do you need to really stick your nose in there to get a whiff?
    3. Once your nose is in the glass, take just 2 or 3 sniffs of the wine.  You can swirl some more in between each.  Don’t be shy.
    .  .  .
    Kevin Zraly has stated that wine has over 200 different aromas. And they range from familiar scents like blackberry to the smell of a barnyard.  Yikes!  Do you have to remember all those aromas to enjoy wine?  No way!  But the more you enjoy wine, the more you want to learn about it, the more you’ll be aware of the scents of different kinds.  The best part?  Practice makes you better!

    What memorable scents have you experienced in wine, good or bad?

     

    Category August | Tags: | 2 Comments

  8. Wine Terms, Demystified (Part Deux–Tannin)

    July 31, 2011 by Winenewbie

     

    Ever suck on a teabag?  I didn’t think so.  If you had, you would have a sense of what tannin feels like inside your mouth.  In wine, tannins come from the skins, seeds, and stems of grapes.  During the fermentation process of red wine, the skins of the grapes are fermented with the juice, imparting red color to the wine, along with tannin.  This is why virtually no white wines have tannins in them, since only the juice is fermented, without contact with the grape skins.  While most red wines will have some tannins in them, their sensation while you drink can be very different–from silky smooth to bitter and puckering–depending on the grape the wine was made from.  For instance, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes have thicker skins and so produce more tannic wine–as a rule of thumb, the darker the wine, the more tannin in it.

    The most memorable way I’ve seen tannin described (impressive, since my memory is like a sieve) was in the book Great Wine Made Simple, by Andrea Immer:

    A waiter I once worked with told me, upon tasting this style, that it felt as though the inside of her mouth had been wallpapered in velvet and suede…

    I, personally,  have never wallpapered the inside of my mouth with anything.  But I do know what tannin feels like.  It’s a tactile sensation that starts in the middle of the tongue and can coat the entire mouth.

    So what is the benefit of tannin in wine?  There are a few, not the least of which is tannin’s ability to help make certain foods taste, well, better.  There’s a reason that tannic wines like Cabernet Sauvignon go so well with steak and foods with cream sauces–proteins and fats soften tannin’s grip on your palate.  Also, like acidity, tannin is a great preservative of (unopened) wine.  To be fair, 95% of wine is meant to be drunk when you purchase it (hooray!), but tannic wines can be laid down in the coolness of your basement for a year or longer.  During that time, the tannins will slowly precipitate out of the wine (if you’ve ever wondered what that sediment is in the bottom of a bottle of wine, wonder no more–it’s made up of tannins bonded with the color pigment of wine), leaving it with a softer texture and less bitterness.  Tannin is useful in balancing out the ripe fruit flavor of wine, too.  The fruit in some wines could be overpowering, were it not for a level of astringency that tannin brings with it.

    Hopefully, with a greater understanding of tannin,  you’ll enjoy your favorite red wines even more, and be willing to venture out and try new ones.  It certainly beats sucking on a teabag.

     

     

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  9. Wine Tasting Terms, Demystified

    July 25, 2011 by Winenewbie

    Deep garnet coloured wine fading to tawny at the rim showing good development. Intense bouquet of mature blackberries and cassis, with soft cedary tones. Dry with balanced acidity, soft tannins mellowing well into the fruit. Lots of ripe autumn fruits, blackberries and damsons with a long smooth well rounded finish. A very well made wine, mature and drinking now. Will last several years and may evolve a little more.

    Huh?

    If you’ve ever read a description like this one on the back of a wine bottle and been left scratching your head in confusion, you’re not alone.  Wine makers and critics use terms like “body,” “palate,” and “acidity” to describe the characteristics of a particular wine.  That’s great for folks familiar with what those expressions mean, but what about the rest of us?

    Fear not, gentle reader!  We will tackle these terms together, starting with a wine’s acidity (for a good video explaining acidity, click HERE).  Anyone who has enjoyed white wine (and many reds)  has had experience with acidity–it makes its presence known by causing your mouth to water.  The edges and tip of your tongue may feel a little tingly as the wine makes its way across.  It’s a component of wine that can be very helpful in choosing what to serve with a particular food, too.  Kevin Zraly, author of “Windows On The World Complete Wine Course” refers to acid as a “turbocharger for flavor.”  And that’s where the acidity in wine is so helpful.  Need something to go with that tangy tomato-based pasta dish?  Try a Chianti.  Creamy sauces and greasy food can benefit from a crisp Sauvignon Blanc or a Chablis (definitely not the jug wine (more on Chablis later…)).

    So.  One term down, a few more to go.  And in case you were wondering, a damson is a kind of plum.  I had to look that one up.

     

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  10. Don’t Let the Cork Stop You

    July 17, 2011 by Winenewbie

     

    The price of this corkscrew starts at $70,670, and begins climbing once you choose other options, such as whether you want the fingertip lever cast in 18 carat gold or platinum.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Nearly $71,000 to open a bottle of wine.  As conversation starters go, it’s certainly better than talking about the weather, but at least that’s free.

    Opening a bottle of wine is a pretty straightforward, simple task.  Until the cork breaks and only half of it comes out.  The next few minutes are spent cursing under your breath–or loudly–and trying to get the corkscrew down far enough into what’s left of the cork to get the rest of it out.  And most likely, even if you’re successful, you end up with cork crumbs floating in the wine.  Awesome.  I’m not ashamed to say that I have poured wine through a paper towel to filter those cork bits out.

    There has to be a better way to remove the cork, you say.  A quick search on Google for “corkscrews” comes up with a dizzying array of results, ranging from the familiar to some that look as though they belong more in a bar-room brawl than behind a bar.  For my money, though, the best corkscrew I have ever used is a lever-style model called the Le Creuset Screwpull.  A video of it in action can be viewed here.  The Screwpull is not inexpensive, but it is incredibly easy and fast, and I have never broken a cork since I started using it (sorry, Bounty paper towels).  If $75-$80 is too steep an investment to make in a corkscrew, the good news is that lever-style openers can be found online for around $20 or even less, and most come with a foil cutter, too.

    In the meantime, though, if you find yourself with a broken cork, spare yourself some aggravation.  Just push what’s left of it into the bottle.  It won’t ruin the taste of your wine, and you can save the paper towels for spills.

    Category July | Tags: | 2 Comments

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