Grape of the Day

It's tomorrow. It's the 147th Run for the Roses. And, honestly, there are good reasons that although wine is always appropriate, people just don't associate the Kentucky Derby with wine. Kentucky is known for Bourbon and for good reason. Kentucky does have a few wineries, however. But, I have to say that while I knew there were a few, I knew nothing about them. And, now I know why.  I went to the websites for all the Kentucky wineries that I could find. They all seem to "feature" wines the problem being that most of the featured wines are not made of grapes. No, they are made of blueberries (they must grow a lot of blueberries in Kentucky), blackberries, currants, and pomegranate. It's not even clear to me that they are made through a fermentation process in the case of one winery. The wineries in Kentucky seem to like to recommend pairings for their wines. That's a nice thing. They tell you what food will enhance their wines and vice versa. It's a cur...

Yesterday, we looked at the concept of blind tasting somewhat in competition (of the wines, that is) including your favorite, or one of your favorites, wines. I've done it. It's fun. You could also make it like a "King of the Hill" sort of thing. You do this in May and you get a winner, Gran Poobahhhhh Merlot. Perhaps you do it again in June or July letting a half dozen or so wines challenge.GPM. Make it a club. Perhaps 6 or 8 of you get together at a different person's home every month to get a new champion. Other than the fun and the social aspect to this, why would you do it? Well, if you are reading here, presumably you like wine. It gives you a chance to drink wine. And, wine is a social hobby, and especially after dealing with the last 14 months or so, with most people who are going to be vaccinated either fully vaccinated or close, we all need and are ready for social. There are wine reasons though. When you are doing your challenge to GPM, don't just c...

 I'm sure you have a favorite wine, or at least a group of favorite wines. If you are like a typical wine drinker, at least in the US since I can't speak as well for typical outside of the US, my guess is that at least one of those is a fairly pricey wine. I'd like you to consider whether it is really that good or whether you have been swayed by the name and the price. How is it that you are going to do that? Start by remembering what you paid for that wine or at least ballpark what you paid for it. Look at the vintage on the bottle because the last thing you want to do is to compare a mature wine to a youthful wine. My recommendation for this, if you have it available, is to not choose a particularly aged wine, but not an immature one either. So, varying by the style of wine, for example, choose a bottle with roughly five years on it, perhaps a bit less for most white wines (but not all) than for red). Now, remembering what you paid for that bottle and knowing something ab...

I read ads from time to time. They tell me ... well they tell me lots of things ... but the ones I am talking about tell me that the actual grapes in a bottle of wine -- that is the main components don't cost very much. In other words, you are paying for branding, the bottle, the label, and way too much in profits. It's one of the keys to negociant-produced wines : you are getting [supposedly] great grapes and therefore juice without paying for all the rest of that stuff. At the low end, Charles Shaw, aka Two-Buck Chuck, has made some award-winning wines. But, there have also been some really bad ones. And, to say a wine is award-winning might not mean much. If you present your wine at one of the myriad of wine competitions and find one judge on the tasting panel who likes it enough to sing its praises, that Bronze Medal might be within your grasp. And, that is an award, so you can say your wine is award-winning. But, these are not the wines we are talking about. We're talk...

I posted on social media a picture of a bottle of wine that we had with dinner the other night. A discussion ensued in which a question came up as to whether I remember each wine that I drink. Just to dispel the rumor, the answer is no. I do not. But, I do remember a lof of wines that I drink. Other than having a good memory, I'm not sure why. Perhaps it goes back to my posts from yesterday and the day before in which we discussed terroir fingerprints. First, if you are going to remember a wine, you need to pay attention to what you are drinking. If you guzzle the wine and happen to ask at some point what you were drinking, you are not going to remember it. But, just as you might remember a meal that you really liked, so might you remember a wine. To me, it all comes down to using my senses. And, then, if the wine was one that I would like to remember, or conversely, if it was so bad that it is etched indelibly in my memory against all will, I tend to categorize how my senses fou...

Yesterday, we learned that each terroir -- the wines of each unique vineyard or part of a vineyard, essentially -- has its own fingerprint. Wow, that's cool, but who cares? Can it be used? And, if so, how? And, if we figure out how it can be used, does the average wine drinker care? Let's start with an easy application. In recent years, there has been a spate of coutnerfeiting of ultra-high end wines. You can read about the sad tale of Rudy Kurniawan , perhaps the best known of the wine counterfeiters. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his exploits which included selling bottles so rare that he had in his possession more than were ever produced in one case and of a vintage that had not been produced in another. By knowing the fingerprints of the vineyards from which these wines were actually produced, it would be easy to identify his couterfeits as frauds But, let's consider more productive ways that these fingerprints could be used. If a winemaker truly understand...

A study out of Argentina and published in Nature's Scientific Reports has found that each terroir imparts on a wine a specific set of chemical components. In other words, if you had a database of chemical components from each vineyard and through such fancy techniques as gas chromatography and or mass spectrometry, you were able to obtain the chemical composition of a wine you were drinking, you could identify the vineyard of origin, at least to the extent that it was a single vineyard wine. In other words, it's how the vineyard imparts its DNA. This raises a lot of questions. First off, what is terroir? It's a French term, not surprisingly, that has been incorporated into the English langage, at least as fas as wine is concerned. In a nutshell, it's everything about where the grapes were grown -- the soil, the topography, the exposure to sunlight, and the underlying climate. Of course, some people might have a slightly different definitiion, but that's pretty good ...

It was just yesterday that we talked about the red blend  and I heard such things from readers as "That's me" and "Every single day in a restaurant" [punctuated differently]. And, as we tried to point out, not all red blends are the same. Not all red blends are easy drinking. Not all red blends are soft on the palate. And, while I didn't say it yesterday, some red blends are just flat out horrible. Today, however, is not a red blend day. Today is a day to talk about white blends. To people in most of the world, this is a common thing to find in a wine bottle although they are rarely called white blends. In North America, however, white blends, compared to almost anything else you might ever see in a bottle, are virtually nonexistent. Virtually nobody asks for them in restaurants. Wine consumers in the US rarely buy them and as a group certainly do not seek them out.  The obvious conclusion must be that they are not any good. Well, that would be wrong. Althou...

I can't tell you how many times I have heard it at a restaurant: a diner asks their server if they have a red blend. The diner says they just love red blends because they are easy to drink or because they just taste so good. Let's consider what they are really asking for and whether it really should have more appeal than any other red wine. Legally, at least to my knowledge, there is no such thing as a red blend. But, practically, it is a red wine that consists of at least two different varieties of grapes. Most red wines do. Even those not called red blends. Really? Sure. Have you ever looked at the back label of a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that describes the wine? In the US, it can have up to 25% of other varieties; that is, it must be at least 75% Cabernet. So, it's not unusual to see one that, for example, shows as something like 84% Cabernet, 10% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Petit Verdot. On the label, it says Cebernet Sauvignon, but it might be just as much a ...

Truth is far stranger than fiction. And, with wine, sometimes the truth is, in retrospect, quite funny, but at the time was not funny as well. But, these two little vignettes remain with me to this day. One is more recent, the other far older. The older one goes back to probably the 1960s when, at least where I grew up, wine spritzers were all the rage. While not many men drank them, the women in the area seemed to love them. Men would not have been caught dead drinking these "girlie" drinks, so they drank them on the sly when nobody could see them. They were refreshing and somewhat fruity, I guess, and they contained alcohol, but because of their generally low alcohol content and ease of drinking, you could drink a lot of them and still get up out of your chair. For the uninitiated, it's a simple drink. You mix wine, preferably cheap and fruity, with club soda, or seltzer water, if you prefer that name for it. It is believed that this drink was invented in Austria in the...

There's a winery that we happen to like that puts a fair amount of data in its rear label. In particular, we get the required information such as percentage of alcohol by volume and the Surgeon General's warning that appears on all wine bottles in the US. But, we also get data about the particular vineyard or plot from which the grapes were picked, the elevation of that vineyard, the AVA in which that vineyard sits, a description of the soil, and the exposure. Who cares, right? Interestingly, for a wine drinker who knows little about the particular wine, that information can be the key to pairing the different wines with foods. But, we need to understand it. Diligent readers might recall that when we visited Napa Valley, albeit vicariously, we spent a lot of time talking about diurnal temperature shifts. If you read it, you probably went to sleep, but I persevered. However, for those who read on, you'll recall that more pronounced diurnal shifts result in higher acidity whi...

In the US, if a wine producer wants to label a wine as a specific varietal, generally speaking, that wine must be composed of at least 75% of that variety of grape. In much of Europe, the goal is to label the wine as being of a specific appellation (there are, of course, different names and types depending on country and language). And, with that appellation come the rules of the appellation.  It's not even constant within regions of countries let alone countries. And, while for the sophisticated wine enthusiast, it's not a problem, it is much more so for the relative newbie wine drinker in the US. Let's consider Italy for example. The country is broken into a number (I'm sure I could google the number, but that's your job if you want to know) of administrative regions. Further, in wine terms, each administrative region is broken into anywhere from a small handful to a few dozen  Denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG),  Denominazione di origine cont...

You're lucky enough to have been invited to a wine tasting or you're paying to attend one. It doesn't matter. There is etiquette to be followed. And, like much of the other etiquette in life, it is all about respect. Respect your hosts, respect the other guests, and respect the wine. Wine tasting are about tasting wine. There shoud be no mistake to that. The label does not say getting drunk on wine or being obnoxious about wine. It says wine tasting. So, do that; taste the wine. With all of your senses. If a wine tasting is being run properly, you and all of the other guests will be given a small pour of each wine. Note. Small. You have been given enough to taste, not to drink. In fact, it is a far bigger sin, believe it or not, to complain about the small amount you have been given than it is to leave some behind or even to spit some out into a spit or dump bucket. When each guest has been served, look at the wine, swirl the wine, smell the wine, and then take a small tast...

Georgia has been my home state for more than 33 years now (it actually shocked me to say that). And, while the wine here has gotten much better, what Georgia has been known for historically is Muscadine wine, as well as a lot of other things like peaches (they grow more in South Carolina), peanuts (the world's second most despicable food trailing only peanut butter), and pecans. But, they just don't make wine out of any of those things. But, they do out of Muscadine. For starters, Muscadine is not vitis vinifera  as most warm weather wine grapes are. Instead, it is vitis rotundifolia [sic]. It loves heat, does not worry about cool nights, and thrives in high humidity. So, where  Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, which also loves heat, likes particularly dry growing seasons and thrives when there is significant diurnal temperature change, Muscadine just wants heat and humidity. Its skins are incredibly thick for a grape, it is extremely disease resistant and its vines provide sh...

Yesterday, I wrote about the inherent conflicts in drinking your wines before they are ready, or in any event, long before they reach their peaks. In other words, you paid for a lot of falvors and complexity that you did not get to experience. Today's question deals with whether that really affects your wines or if it is far more focused on someone else's. Frankly, the focus is much more likely to be focused on someone else's. The typical wine that the typical wine consumer buys is intended to be consumed within a day or two. Warning: almost no wines are intended to be consumed as soon as you get them home from the store. They have probably been jostled a bit in the car or in shipping or however you got them home. Give them at least an hour or so to rest even if they are just that bad. Make them a little bit better. But, suppose you are the person who bought that better wine. How do you know if it is ageworthy? First, let's limit the wines. Among white wines that do not...

You just spent a lot of money for a bottle of wine or a few bottles or a case. Were not talking just a little bit more than a normal purchase, but we're talking serious money. And, you spent the money for lots of reasons hopefully a few of which are that you could afford it and that you can tel the difference.  You can't wait to taste this bottle. So, it arrived at your house earlier this week, however it is that it got there and today you are opening it. Now, just for illustration, let's suppose it cost you $150 (there are lots of right answers to this one). Why did it cost that much? Again, since we don't know what the bottle is, we're just guessing here, but these guesses might be pretty good ones. It's one of those grapes or blends that is pretty popular. It's likely a pretty good demonstration of what can be done. It's complex, but that complexity is likely to increase with age. And, speaking of age, it's ageworthy. Yes, you, the consumer, are p...

Some wines go well with some foods. Some other wines go well with almost no foods. And, then there are some wines that go well with lots of foods. What common bond do they have? In order to figure that out, let's consider which wines tend to go with lots of foods. Among the whites, I think of Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio, Gruner Veltliner, and certainly some others, but that is a pretty good list for starters. Among the reds, let's start with Pinot Noir and continue with the likes of Grenache/Garnacha, Sangiovese, Tempranillo, and there are a bunch of others we could certainly add. Noticeably missing are what I believe to be the two most popular varietals in the US, perhaps not by sales, but by mention -- Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. What's going on here? What do those first sets of grapes have that the last two don't and what do the last two have that the rest tend to be missing. Food wines as a group do not overwhelm food -- pretty much any...

Let's go to Tunisia today. The northeast corner of the country is not far from Sicily  and long-time readers will recall that we have featured some grapes very specific to Sicily.  Despite the proximity, however, Tunisia has a french influence, rather than Italian. So, the grapes that are grown there tend to be far more French in nature than Italian. And, the weather in Tunisia can be flat out hot. Not warm, but hot. Even in the northeast corner just to the east of the capital city of Tunis and right on the Mediterranean Sea, remember that we are not that far from the Sahara Desert. If the Sahara is known for anything, it has brutally hot daytimes with intense sunshine reflecting off the sand, incredibly arid conditions, and large diurnal temperature swings as the nights cool significantly. Of all the grapes grown in France, this screams for the reds of the southern part of the country, in particular Cabernet and the traditional southern Rhone grapes of Grenache, Syrah, and Mo...

You've decided you want to plant some grapes to make your own wine. So, you go about your business and buy some seedlings and go about to plant your own grapevines. You pick your favorite grape, you plant, and you expect to have thriving grapevines that you will harvest come the early fall and you will make them into wine.  Simple? Huh? Your wine will be great, you just know it because how hard can it be to ferment and blend once you've finished the hard part: growing. And, yes, you probably can grow grapes. Some of them are extremely hardy. They might even taste pretty good. But, what it is much less likely that you can do is produce great grapes of the type that make wine. If you've been a regular reader, you'll recall some of the things we've discussed over time. We've talked about hillsides and elevation and sun exposure and proximity to water and diurnal temperature change and soil differences and richness of soil. We've also talked about some grapes th...

When you go into a restaurant -- not one with a really expansive wine list -- with a normal, perhaps 20-item wine list, you can immediately tell something about the person -- usually a wine manager or beverage manager -- who built the wine list. You can tell if they are trying to show off the restaurant's food. You can tell if they are just trying to move wine independent of the food. And, you can tell if they are beholden to one distributor who really has leverage on them. What does that last one mean? For whatever reason, the restaurant is only working with one distributor. And, there are a few labels that the wine manager really wants. The distributor can sense it and says something like, "You know what; I'll get you a case of [insert name of red blend that wine manager wants] and a case of [insert name of Chardonnay wine manager wants], but you need to take some of this crap, some of this swill, and some of these two other wines that nobody likes off my hands. So, the ...

When you take your wife or husband or life partner or significant other out for their birthday, wine comes with it. It has to; if it doesn't, you are clearly reading the wrong blog. And, while there is no requirement that you order the most expensive wine on the list or even close (in fact it extremely rarely makes sense to order the most expensive wine on a list unless you have far more money than sense), you must appeal to the (in this case) birthday girl's senses. There is a starting requirement. With us, it starts with bubbly. It can be Champagne or some other sparkling wine preferably made in la methode traditionnelle/la methode Champenoise . It sets the stage. It's fresh. The bubbles are exciting. It's food friendly and well-made, it just tastes good. There is just something about the vibrant little bubbles hitting your tongue and your palate that prepares you for the meal. Then there is the wine to go with dinner. No matter how much the wallet might like to escap...

Some wines are quite subtle. The aromas light and pleasant, the flavors reserved, and even the feel on your palate is soft and serene. Others are far more in your face. Their aromas are strong, often earthy with deep floral tones fighting to come through, the flavors are intense and can hold up to any food, and their mouthfeel is perhaps harsh to some from the intense pucker we get from the tannins. For some of us, the latter group is just too much. We cannot stand the sensory overload from all the stimulation we are getting. For others, the subtleties of the first wine type we described just don't have anything going for them. I've heard words such as flat, boring, and blah as descriptors. But, each wine has a style ... a purpose. Well, some wines are so bad that they have no style at all, but we're not considering them. Frankly, however, among people who would tell us that they like wine, I've rarely heard someone refuse a well-made wine because it just didn't hav...

You are excited. You've decide to open a bottle of the 2015 Chateau Your Favorite. It's a red blend or a white blend or a Cabernet or Chardonnay or Pinot Noir or Riesling or whatever it is. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that tonight, you are in the mood for your favorite wine. Your favorite wine of all time. With anticipation, you uncork a bottle a full hour before you play to serve it, carefully decant it just the way we told you,   And, then an hour later, when dinner is ready, you serve it. And it doesn't taste so good. Understand, it's not bad. But, it's not as good as the last time you  had it. Not nearly as good. What is going on? The conditions are different. Even though the last time you had a bottle wasn't that long ago, the wine has changed, albeit likely not very much. Over long periods of time, that change might be drastic, but over a month or two in a good wine, significant change would be rare. But, the climate in the room is different...

Look at a bottle of wine, particularly those that you see in other than local wine shops. You will periodically see on a bottle little stickers showing that they did well in a wine competition. Well, in the US, among the most prestigious is that held by the San Francisco Chronicle, likely because of its proximity to the most storied wine region in the US. And, the 2021 competition was held about a month ago. The judges are not names that you would know unless you are really in the wine world, but trust that they know what they are doing. These are professionals in the industry who have been tasting wines critically for years. It doesn't mean that their tastes and yours will align, but when they say a wine is horrible or outstanding, you should probably take notice. The lowest award category is the Bronze Medal. Frankly, if your wine scores Bronze, while it's better than no medal at all, you're likely not going to brag about it. Silver is not bad. But, the winners are the G...

There is a huge difference. When someone goes to visit a winery, there is a continuum in the experience. A the one end, there is the scenario where they as the visitor pay a fee, usually very overpriced, and for that, they get tastes of some number of wines often that they choose off of a list. There is no education. There is no experience. It's largely about sitting outside or inside with family or friends and thinking you like wine that you probably really don't and getting a bit tipsy by the time you visit your third or fourth of the day. These wineries hope you will leave with a few bottles of their wine or better yet, join their wine club, but they are frankly in the business of being a wine bar that sells only their own wine. While I've done this and enjoyed it, it's more about the day than about the wine because the wine is often, in a word, bad. Let's move up the continuum. The next step up adds a degree of professionalism. You are probably standing or sitti...

You decide to go out for brunch and you've made the decision that you are going to enjoy some wine with that brunch. Both of you look at the menu and sensing the warm spring day ahead of you and the bright sunshine coming in the window, you both order the same thing from the brunch menu -- bagel and lox with all the trimmings. It's got cream cheese, red onions, and capers on the toated bagel with fresh lox (smoked salmon for the unknowing). How do you choose a wine to go with this, usually a breakfast item? Salmon gives you interesting options. While we typically think of fish as wanting white wine to go with it, the color of the salmon (that color would be called salmon if you were to ask the good folks at Crayola) moves you toward red wine. But, it's noon. Unless you're touring wineries, red wine just doesn't feel right.  To complicate matters, you've got the cream cheese which would ordinarily ask for white wine, red onions with their acidity, and the capers ...

A friend and loyal reader who will undoubtedly recognize themselves, but I don't expect anyone else will, texted me yesterday afternoon wanting to purchase a good bottle of Sauvignon Blanc for not more than $15-18. There was a requirement that it be domestic; I didn't ask why. To quote, California, Oregon, or Washington for domestic Sauvignon Blanc? Well, again, I don't know why it was important that this particular Sauvignon Blanc be domestic. The text that I received went on to say that the texter could not afford Merry Edwards. For those not in the know, Merry Edwards is an outstanding winery in Russian River Valley, Sonoma County, California. Founded by its eponymous original winemaker, a tall woman with a passion for food and then wine originally now in her early 70s. Now, she has handed over the winemaking reins, but keeps close watch on all that goes on. And, if you are fortunate enough to land a bottle of their Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Noir, or even their Chardonnay...

Look at a bottle of wine. Not just any wine, but look at the back labels or obverse labels if you prefer. You'll probably need to look at a few before you find this, but sooner or later, you are going to find one that has a suggested serving temperature. How do they know? They experiment. People with presumarbly more expertise on the subject than you or I have might actually take the time to taste a wine at different temperatures. They are looking for that small range of temperatures at which the wine expresses itself best. And, when they find it, that becomes the recommended temperature. That's pretty simple, huh? It would be simple except that most of us don't have a way of controlling such things. I happen to have a cooling/warming device that gets wine to within a degree or two of a specificed temperature. It wasn't expensive, but I haven't seen one for a while. Alternatively, even if you don't have any means of temperature controlled wine storage, you can b...

Have you ever been to a restaurant and ordered wine and then been really disappointed with what you got? If you haven't, either you don't drink wine in restaurants or you don't have much of a sense of what you are drinking. Frankly, you can't avoid it all the time, but you can some of the time. Let's start with how you order. Are you sitting at a restaurant bar or at a table? At the bar, if you are getting a glass of wine, it's not unusual that you can ask for a small taste before getting a glass. If you do that and then have a bad experience, that's probably your fault. But, at a table, it's different.  Probably, at a table, you and one or several other people have ordered a glass of wine or some other drink and then eventually, the glass comes and the server serves everyone and walks away and then you taste in the middle of a conversation and pfftt%%##!!. Yuk. It just doesn't taste very good -- not a poorly made wine problem, but more of a there sh...

When do people drink a decanted wine? If you're like me, you probably have a higher percentage of your wines that you drink in restaurants decanted than the percentage of wine that you drink at home. In other words, for every 10 bottles you drink in restaurants, you might have 2 decanted while at home, you decant far less than 1 of 10.  Why? In my case, the answer is easy. I'm lazy. It takes more effort to decant a bottle. And, then, once I've finished the bottle, in addition to cleaning glasses, I have to clean a decanter. And, I have to dry a decanter. Let's assume, however, that you are not as lazy as I am. When should you decant a wine and if you choose to, how should you do it? What are those one or two key steps that we leave out? The single most obvious reason to decant is to get rid of the sediment in the bottle. Even if you don't mind the taste of it and honestly, I don't although it's different from the wine, it looks ugly. Which wines have sedimen...