Grape of the Day

We're in an interesting wine region today. In southwestern Hungary, near the border with Croatia, lies the largest freshwater lake in central Europe -- Lake Balaton. Once a thriving wine region, the vineyards were ravaged by phylloxera , the mite that threatened to wipe out the European wine industry in the late 19th century. Enterprising businesspeople saw this, however, not as a disaster, but as an opportunity and they converted the area around the lake from vineyards to a tourist region where central Europeans could enjoy the wonderful beachfronts around the lake. Except on the northern side where the neighboring mountains shielding the north shore from some of the sunlight that beachgoers treasure and where the lake itself, from its cool waters serves to provide a morning fog and often overcast days. This microclimate is ideal for growing all but the warmest climate of the vitis vinifera grapes. One of the grapes that prospered until the late 19th century was Csókaszőlő, and no...

I snuck in a little teaser at the end of yesterday's post telling you that I owned what is, while not a collectible, a rare, yet inexpensive, bottle of wine. But, I didn't tell you what it was. Today, we will have the unveiling and we are going to taste it, albeit vicariously as we taste everything here. But, first we have to get to the winery. We're in the Tokaji region of Hungary in the northwest corner of the country, not far from Kosice in Slovakia to the north nor Lviv in Ukraine to the east. Just to the west of the Tisa River, The weather here is somewhat continental, whatever I mean by that with overnight lows in the winter usually dipping below freezing (0C/32F) and daytime highs in the summer typically getting up around 80F/27C. Evm in the summer here, however, it's usually cloudy most of the day. IN a typical year, it rains here on nearly 40% of days, but on most of those days, it's just a sprinkle. There are 6 grapes allowed in wines labeled as Tokaji (n...

Today, I'm not really writing about wine. Instead, in this blog, I am blogging about this blog. It's not easy every day writing about wine or in the case of today, writing about this blog. But, every morning, with a few exceptions when it has flipped over to afternoons, for slightly more than 370 of them now, I've persevered. Sometimes that's been easy; sometimes, it's not. I expect that most of you who read this do so by grabbing it on your Facebook or Twitter feed. Some of you follow this blog through Blogger and some get daily emails. But, from any who are willing, I'd like to know what you like and what you don't. What makes you want to read? You can comment in the Facebook feed, reply on Twitter, comment on this post on the blog, or contact me some other way that you know will work (email, text, phone call, probably shouldn't senf me a letter via the USPS). The other thing that has come from a number of you is that I should turn this into a book. If...

In some respects, yesterday was like almost every other Saturday of the last 25 years. Does that mean my life is boring, mundane, and meaningless? I hope not. What I mean is that I went to Costco to shop.  You don't have to like the shopping experience there. I do. I don't buy everything there, but I find many of their items to be excellent value, the people working there are friendly, and while I neither went in there yesterday to buy wine nor did I buy any, they have been the largest wine retailer in the US (and I think in the world) for a number of years now. They do this despite a very limited selection because it's convenient, they have a diverse selection, and depending on your particular warehouse of choice, they have wines ranging in price from a few dollars for a 3 liter box of wine to perhaps several hundred dollars for a collectible bottle. But, that's not why I am writing today. Although I escaped without buying wine (yes, Virginia, if it's not on my lis...

You'll often see advertisements for single vineyard wines. In them, there are a few things you will notice. Among them are the listing of the vineyard and the price -- almost always a fairly high number. Should you pay that much? It depends. It depends on a lot of things. But, for the most part, unless you really know wine, you are as often as not, if not more often than not, wasting a lot of money. The fact is that you likely don't know the difference and even if you do, it is more likely that you can't tell the difference. Note, though, that I didn't say impossible. There are some vineyards that I know well that I gravitate to. And, while most are among the pricier bottles that I own, some are not. What's going on here? Either a particular winery owns a vineyard, has exclusive rights to a vineyard, leases a part of it, or buys juice from it. You usually don't know which is the case. What you do know though is that it is virtually always the case that the best ...

With vaccines now being administered en masse, it won't be long before the skies are filled with flyers again. Some airlines are in the process of re-rolling out food and beverages and a traditional airplane drink, at least for me, is a glass of wine. I don't always drink one, but definitely when it's after work hours and I know I won't be driving, it makes the flight go faster. However, have you ever noticed that wine tastes different on a plane? Yes, the glasses are different, the bottles may be different (those little airplanes bottles don't have the same space in them that a traditional 750 ml bottle has), but the key likely lies with some combination of the different air circulation inside the cabin and the pressurized air in the cabin.  As much as we taste the wine we drink with our palates, we also taste with our sense of smell. That is, what we smell and how we smell it affects our enjoyment, or sometimes lack thereof, of a wine. You don't believe me? Th...

I've seen a number of websites crop up in the last few years that use algorithms and artificial intelligence to curate wine selections for you to have shipped to your doorstep. And, I have seen words attached to them that they are foolproof. Hmm. Perhaps the letters after fool were incorrect and proof should have been ish or hardy. I tried a few of them, but didn't give them my address or credit card, so I wasn't getting burdened with their choices in wines, but I did want to see what they were like. Theoretically, it works. A decent programmer can tell a computer how to interpret data and once informed, the computer will always execute that algorithm perfectly. So, it's not the computer that is flawed, but the algorithm. Consider this set of questions and I am going to change them up just a little bit from what I went through in the questionnaire just to not incriminate any test. Which flavor do you like best: cherry, strawberry, or blueberry? Which would you eat first...

I've always been amused by the comments that I often see, typically toward the end of wine review: drink between [for example] 2024 and 2030. How do they know? The short answer is that they don't, but their guess is way more educated and usually way more accurate than yours and mine. They have data. Thay have experience. You and I likely have less of both of those things. I always wanted to find a way to weave my day job into this blog, but I don't think I found that avenue in my first year. Today seems to be the day. In my day job, I'm an actuary. As an actuary, I evaluate things like contingent risks. That is, I evaluate the potential outcomes of future evebts that depend on a whole bunch of stuff that could happen. In order to know which potential outcomes are more likely as compared to less likely or not at all likely, I need to make assumptions as to what will happen. When I do this, I do it based on available data as well as my experience, training, and education....

It was a year ago today. After an unexpected week at home due to this new virus that we really didn't know anything about, it sunk in that business travel might be over for a month or two. I needed something a bit different to do to take my mind off of this change in routine. So, I had this idea to start a blog -- for me, another blog. But, why wine? First, I digress. Throughout the first year, I've blogged every day, but I've resisted even going near the question I get asked most frequently. Today, at the very least, I am going to approach it.  The single wine question that I get asked more than any other is what is my favorite wine. I don't have a favorite wine. Never have. Never will. It changes with my mood and the day and the food that it accompanies. It changes with the weather. It changes with my spirits. And, heck, I didn't even always like wine. But, something changed and my passion grew. And, my passion really grew because I had some life-changing wines. N...

Leading up to tomorrow's one-year anniversary of this blog when I will do something different from this, I thought I would do one more day of value wines. Today, the focus is on some value regions where the similarities between those wines and those of either a neighbor or some other wine region are so tight, except for the price, that is. Let's start in Spain. Generally speaking, Spanish wines are a pretty good buy. You can get some relatively inexpensive Albarino that has great acidity and wonderful flavor from Rias Baixas. Located on the far southwestern coast of Galicia which, in turn, sits to the north of Portugal, Rias Baixis is the home of four estuaries leading to the Atlantic Ocean. It's also the home of Albarino . Classic notes are a combination of floral, citrus, and stone fruit. Drink it on a late spring or summer afternoon or with seafood or raw vegetables. While we are in Spain, let's also consider Jumilla. Here, we are in the opposite end of the country, ...

We started yesterday . While most of the truly great wines are quite pricy, you don't have to bring your checkbook, so to speak, in order to find a good wine. But, sometimes, the key is going off the beaten path or, at the very least, exploring something you've never tried before. Yesterday, we talked about Assyrtiko to go with shellfish. Well, suppose you can't find Greek wine in your favorite wine shop. It would be rare wine store without French wine and when you are having shellfish, particularly raw oysters, go no further than Picpoul de Pinet , often simply referred to as Picpoul. I first tried Picpoul on a hot summer afternoon eating lunch in Charleston, SC. Literally meaning lip stinger, the name is perfect for the racy acidity in this wine. So, what makes it so perfect is the way that acidity combats the natural brine in oysters to produce a wonderfully serene experience. And, if the wine is too acidic, simply squeeze a lemon wedge on to your oysters to calm acidity...

You go to a wine shop or some other store that sells decent wines. Depending on the size, you see bottle after bottle or rack after rack or aisle after aisle of the same wines. You see California Chardonnay and Napa Cabernet and Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. And, you see some wines from the parts of France you have heard of, but depending on the price points of the store, they could be from very different parts of France. You probably see a load of Pinot Grigio from Italy as well as some Chianti and a whole bunch of Shiraz from Australia and Malbec from Argentina. And, don't forget Moscato, the 2020s answer to New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc from just a few years earlier. Some of those wines represent values, but many of them don't. While there is, in fact, just an incredible amount of demand for those wines, there is also a large supply. But, that said, there is a huge demand for wine, generally speaking.  But, compare the prices of those wines to where they were perhaps 10 yea...

Going a bit tongue in cheek today, we're going to talk about the transformation from wino to wineaux. But, first we need to define the terms. For purposes of this post, a wino is a person who grabs the bottle closest to their right thumb, hopefully screw cap because it's easier to open and hopefully low-priced and high in alcoholic content, doesn't actually look to see what it is and frankly doesn't care, pours as much as they can fit into any old glass, and guzzles it quickly. A wineaux, on the other hand, might be a person who chooses their wine carefully, wants to drink it to savor it, and wants to understand what they are drinking and why. But, you don't have to be one or the other. More than likely, you are somewhere on the spectrum. We all tend to start much closer to wino. And, then something happens to begin the transformation. Perhaps it is that moment when somebody serves you a wine that is just markedly different from anything you have ever tasted. And, y...

I tired an experiement yesterday. Well, I didn't exactly use the scientific method and I'm not sure it was even an intentional experiement, but it was awfully telling, at least to me it was. For the first time in my life, at least that I can recall and ny power of recall remains pretty good, I opened a bottle of Portugieser .  As you might recall, and then again, you might not, Portugieser is a red grape that seemingly has nothing at all to do with Portugal. In fact, it's found primarily in east central Europe and the bottle we had (quite inexpensive I must note) was from Hungary, the Villany region right on the border with Croatia. As a wine, it shares a lot of characteristics with Pinot Noir. This si a wine with good acidity and low alcohol content. For those who wonder why, it is likely a result of the grapes being harvested quite early so that they do not become overly ripe. Technically, as a grape ripens, the the sugar content increases (acidity decreases) meaning that...

The traditional St Patrick's Day dinner is corned beef and cabbage and it might include other things like shepherd's pie and Irish soda bread. The traditional beverages with it are Irish brews and Irish whiskey. But, for some, they would rather drink wine. Of course, that is permissible. But, if we do choose to drink wine, we must pair properly. And, not all of those foods are particularly wine friendly. Let's consider what we have going on. The corned beef is salty and spicy, but the spices are not the traditional ones that we consider when thinking about wine. And, the cuts of meat typically used for corned beef are typically pretty fatty. And, the cabbage is, well the cabbage is cabbage.  So, reading those descriptions, the first things that would come to mind red wines with lots of tannins. But, don't go there. In this case, the fattiness is not the traditional marbling of a steak and the saltiness is also not the steak type saltiness, but more of a briny saltiness....

I know. You thought this was going to be about how the sales of red wine have increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. And, you know what, they probably have, but I don't have that data. I would also hazard a guess that sales of white wine, blush wine, sparkling wine, dry wine, sweet wine, still wine, sparkling wine, jug wine, and boxed wine have all increased over the last year. So, probably have sales of whisky, gin, vodka, tequila, rum, and every other liquor. It's how a lot of people cope. But, that is not the topic here. I read an article  yesterday whose abstract said among other things "the possible role of polyphenols ... in containing [COVID-19]." Now, this is just a hypothesi .. a possible role . But, it's important. Polyphenols have been known for quite some time to promote a healthy body. You can find them in lots of places : berries, particularly blueberries, nuts, particularly almonds and cashews. Now, what in the world do they have in co...

What is the vintage of a wine? Well, it's the year on the bottle. Some bottles, often sparkling wine or particularly inexpensive wine might be labeled NV or non-vintage and some bottles simply skip that labeling altogether, but the year that is shown on the label is the year in which the grapes were harvested. Usually, but not always, they come from a single year -- a single harvest. Who cares? I do. And you do, as well, even though you might not realize it. Consider, for example, Chateauneuf du Pape in the southern Rhone. The wines produced there that are able to be classified as appelation d'origine controllee (AOC) are typically wonderful expressions of the famous grapes for which the area is known, most commonly Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre. These wines are often long-lived and do improve with age, up to a point, but that point can be pretty far out. However, consider the 2002 vintage. It rained. It rained some more. And, then it kept on raining. Vineyards flooded. Many e...

Rosé. It's become wildly popular in the last several years. But, do you know that not all Rosé is the same? It can be made dry or sweet or somewhere in between. It can be made still or sparkling. And, it can be made by any of several methods. Today, we'll talk about that. The primary methods of making Rosé are skin contact, blending, and  saignée. And, it can be anywhere from the sparkling Rosé of Champagne to the refresshing Rosé of Provence to the variety of other Rosé of Spain ( rosato ) or Italy ( rosato ) to the cheap, sweet, I-don't-know-why-people-drink-it White Zinfandel. When the primary product to be made from a batch of grapes is Rosé, it is typically produced using the skin contact method. Red (usually black-skinned) grapes get crushed and the skins are left in contact with the must for only part of a day before being discarded. In the case of the palest of Rosé, that might be just an hour or two. With the more vibrant looking Ros...

Let's go to Portugal today. We're going to fly into Lisbon and head south. Specifically, we are going to the Alentejo region of Portugal, literally meaning below or south of the Tagus River. Alentejo covers about a third of the country and is essentially the part south of Lisbon, but north of the Algarve -- the Portuguese "riviera." In the wine-producing parts of Alentejo, it is hot. Not just warm, but hot with wet and mild winters. Summer temperatures often exceed 40C/104F and the summers are quite dry. Not every grape can grow in a climate like that, but several are indigenous to the area. One such grape is  Antão Vaz, a white grape that has been found to be the offspring of a white grape that I have never heard of and a red grape that has been extinct for generations. But, we don't care about them today because we are drinking wine made from 100%  Antão Vaz. It is a particularly thick-skinned grape, disease-resistant, grows in loosely formed bunches, and loves...

It's been one of the more difficult things about the pandemic for me. Wine is supposed to be social. We share with others. We talk about it. We talk about other things We're happy. We smile and we laugh. This topic came to mind because it was on March 12 last year that I had just finished a grueling business day in another city, had prepared for a meeting to be the next morning and then was flying home. As is not unusual for me in these circumstances, I had dinner, sitting at my hotel bar (not really a bar so much as it is the place where they prepare drinks in the hotel restaurant). It's not the late night bar scene, but a place where the bartender serves you and you don't feel all alone at a table too big for one. I remember sitting at the bar and having a burger as was the gentleman on one side of me while the lady on the other side had what I think was some sort of salad with a piece of fish. And, each of us had a glass of wine (mine was the least expensive, but the...

You need a bottle of wine. Or a case of wine. Or a cellar full. So, you go to your local wine shop. You find a friendly person working on the floor and ask for help. What kind of help might you get? That's a really tough question. To help you understand how diverse that advice might be, let's consider a tale of two such people on the floor of the same wine shop. While changing the characters to protect the innocent and the guilty, the story you are about to read is true. I was in this shop and to me, the layout was quite confusing. Despite the signage, I could not find what I was looking for. I knew they had it ... somewhere ... but due to the organization, that where part was a mystery to me. So, I located a nice man wearing a name badge which to me meant that he worked there. And, that assumption was correct. I asked if he could help me and here, I am going to invent a few facts, again to protect the guilty. He asked me what I was looking for and since I was looking for some ...

We went out to dinner last night -- not to a fancy place, but to a neighborhood gem. It's a smallish restaurant and quite friendly with excellent food, a good bar for the size, and everybody knows your name (where on earth did that come from?).  We decided what we were having for dinner and went to choose a wine to go with it. These dinners really needed a white wine, but one with some body. In a perfect world, I was hoping for a Chenin Blanc and this restaurant used to have one, but no more. So, I looked to Chardonnay. Their list of Chardonnay is expansive given the size of the list in total. But, looking at it, I find it curious. Going from memory, I think that all, as in 100%, as in every last Chardonnay out of probably 10 or so is from California. When you have 10, they don't all have to be from California. Although, to the credit of the proprietor, several are outstanding and I suspect that their customer base does look a fair amount for California Chardonnay. But, then th...

Today is a day to celebrate for a number of reasons. So, we are hopping on our plane and heading out. The flight to Paris wonderful. Catching some wonderful tailwinds, we arrived far sooner than we ever expected. But, our driver was waiting for us nevertheless. We're headed east today and just barely to the north into Champagne. And, we are not going to drink just any Champagne. We are going for the best of the best. We're going for the ones that the critics said that you just haven't lived if you haven't experienced them. We begin our day in the town of Epernay. There, in 1849, a young wine merchant by the name of Pol Roger started a champagnerie. By his early adulthood, Winston Churchill considered it his favorite beverage of all. Today, Queen Elizabeth has made it the Champagne enjoyed at Buckingham Palace. And, after Churchill's death, the Roger family designated a new Champagne, a Cuvee made from predominatly their finest Pinot Noir grapes and only in the best ...

I can't tell you how many times when talking about wine with someone who says they like wine that when I ask them what types of wines they like, at least part of the answer is red blends. They tell me they like red blends because they are easier to drink than other red wines. I'm not entirely sure what that means. How much of a blend do they have to be? 5% not of the primary grape? 10%? 30%? How many different grapes do they need to have? 2? 3? 9? 13? They're easier to drink than what? Pinot Noir? Cabernet? Merlot? Or are they easier to drink than white wines? I expect that the typical person who gives me this answer has had a series of experiences with wines that goes like this. They started out drinking likely okay and or buttery Chardonnay. If the tastes of those don't repulse you, they are probably easy to drink, whatever that means. They don't have the tannic bite, they don't have a lot of acidity and they tend to have a somewhat creamy mouthfeel. I guess t...

It started with Robert Parker and his Wine Advocate, or so I am told. And, now, wine is so much about ratings. But, what do they all mean? Have they gotten silly? Which ones matter and which ones don't? And, how about those medals -- bronze, silver, gold, and double gold? The short answer is to take most of them with a grain of salt, some of them you should probably ignore entirely and a few are probably fairly well worth it. When, in my opinion, you should really take notice is when lots of critics give a particular wine a really high score. Of course, if that's the case, you're probably going to notice a dent in your wallet for those wines. As I started, wine ratings as they are popularized today all started with Robert Parker. A lawyer by training, he started publishing his Wine Advocate, not a fancy publication by any means as it comes without pictures or even articles. He popularized the 100 point scale and even defined what that was based on and what the ratings meant...

Yesterday was a long day. Yes, it was 24 hours, but just the waking hours felt longer. But, it was a good day -- productive and probably good for business. But, both of us being tired and neither having the wherewithal to cook, it was a carry-out night for dinner. So, the debate happened. The dinner decision was easy -- really good burgers from a local neighborhood gem, one with a healthy vegetable to accompany and the other with a far less healthy vegetable, both to be shared. So, the debate happened, but I alreadysaid that. No wine, cheap wine, good wine, great wine. The first and last choices were immediately ruled out. Hemming and hawing, back and forth, and then we elected to go for a good bottle of wine.  We had our reasons. Among them was that the cheap wine was going to have been kept somewhere at room temperature and we really didn't have time to cool it while the good wine had been resting comfortably at 56F/13C. Good wine it was. Always anticipatory while pulling the cor...

I did a little bit of reaearch. I looked up some wines that I was drinking about 10 years ago and what I paid for them then and then looked at current prices for the current bottlings today. In doing so, I made sure that I was comparing apples to apples; that is, same winery, same vineyard, just different vintage. Now, before I go on, let's assume that the increases in cost of producing the wines and getting them to the consumer should have increase by roughly the general rate of inflation. We all know that wages haven't been increasing at massive rates over the last 10 years. While the prices vary wildly from day to day, overall, the cost of petroleu-based products hasb't changed much. And, in fact, the cost of most products hasnt't changed much. I wanted to see. So, I looked at the CPI-U (without getting to technical, it's one of the broadly used measures of Consumer Price Index). In January 2011, the CPI-U was at 220.223. In January 2021, the CPI-U was at 261.582...

You go out to eat and you order wine with your meal. That's not unusual if you are reading here. Some of the most difficult questions, however, relate to tipping on the wine. And, part of the problem is that there is no right answer -- not even close. I've seen Wine Spectator try to tackle this question several times. They struggle with it as do their readers who are willing to weigh in in their Letters to the Editor section. So, this must not be an easy question to answer. My opinions here might be controversial. In fact, I expect they will be as would anyone else's be on this topic. But, they're my opinions and I haven't had any establishments fail to welcome me back ... yet. We're stuck in the US with a system where tips, or gratutities if you prefer, in restaurants are based on the amount that you spend and really not on the level of service although, frankly, there is often a connection between the two. So, that would suggest that you tip twice as much on a...