Grape of the Day

As a broad classification, the most expensive wines in the world are Burgundies. Primarily red, but a few whites as well. Are they worth it? It depends who you ask, but don't ask me as I will never know.  There is a website that every year compiles a list of the 10 most expensive labels on average and shows that average retail price. And, it is not split by vintage, so the most prized vintages are ever more expensive. In 2021, 9 of the top 10 are Burgundies (the other one being a TBA Riesling) and 8 of the top 10 cost more than $10,000 per 750 ml bottle, on average. Compare to 2019, when only 5 exceeded $10,000. In just 2 years, the price to make this esteemed list has gone up by more than 50%. That is inflation. The number one wine on the list is the Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru weighing in at an average of $32,857 per 750 ml bottle. On the 2020 list, the same wine was not #1, but it was only about $17,000 per bottle. What happened there? Who drinks this stuff? Presumably, it...

What makes you like a wine better than another wine? I don't know. It could be that it tastes like a Hawaiian pizza, that's it's overly oaky, or that it's so tannic that you're still puckered up from last night's glass. While I've exaggerated a bit, I have heard descriptions that approached each of those from various people describing wines they love. On the other hand, if you are reading a description of wine from people who are experts in the field or at least purport to be, you'll likely see descriptors a bit different from those. What are their keys and if you understood them, would they make a difference to you? It might be easier to start with what they are not. I've never heard a real wine geek describe what they really like in a wine with a particularly simple description. And, if you read a review of a great wine, it might go on and on ... and on. It's that last "and on" after the ellipsis that should be telltale. Experienced w...

Perhaps it's the alcohol. Maybe it's that you are just doing something fun. Could it be that only nice people drink wine? No, I know it's not that as I've had the other experience as well. But, by and large, when out tasting wine whether at a winery, a wine bar or restaurant, or just wherever it's an option, nice people seem to abound.  Consider yesterday. We chose to take our relatively new puppy (she's 4 1/2 months old now) out to do some wine tasting. We chose two wineries, one of which we had been to previously and the other which we had heard good things about, that claimed to be dog friendly. And, both were. Arriving at the first one, poor little Lola was amazed at everything around her -- the sights, the sounds, the smells, all the people, and even a few other dogs. While I went to get us wine, Lisa found a "sofa" on one side of an outdoor table. A couple less than half our ages was on the other side. I don't expect we have much in common wi...

Restaurants and banquet halls love large gatherings. They often have open bars and to go with the open bars, their charges for alcoholic beverages are often quite exorbitant. And, frankly, they like nothing better than the wine drinkers. More so than with other alcoholic beverages, they are able to move their bad wines at good wine prices. Really? How does that happen? There are a few brands that you can see over and over at functions like this. Typically, they have something in common with a more famous brand. But, these are the mass-produced wines from out of the way vineyards that a restaurant or banquet hall can put out there as the same thing as the top tier wine whose name it sounds like.  But, and there is a big but there, they don't resemble each other. They're not produced from grapes from the same vineyards, perhaps not even the same regions. They're not produced using the same exacting techniques. And, they don't taste anything remotely like the wine they are...

Some restaurants have what they call a Reserve List. This might be wines that are higher-priced, special wines, wines that they store or handle differently, wines that are poured in bigger or better glasses, or simply better wines. Some people always order off the Reserve List; others never do. I tend to look to the Reserve List in special situations: when it's "Half Off Night," when there is a steal on there, or on special occasions. Not all wines on the Reserve List are created (or priced) equally, however. There are some that everybody recognizes, some that a smaller group recognizes and some that only a few will recognize. Let's consider each of them. Unless the restaurant is featuring a particular wine, you tend to get your worst pricing on the wines that everybody knows although that is not always the case. While I rarely call out names, I am going to illustrate with a few. Where I live, there are two Cabernets that seem to be on every restaurant's Reserve L...

We're back in Italy today or more specifically in Campania. It's a scenic region known for the seashore of Naples, Mount Vesuvius, the ancient ruins, and the Amalfi Coast. It also produces some pretty good wine, most of it red. While it is far and away the most famous, Vesuvius is not the only volcano in Campania. In fact, geologists have found 24 of them in the region although most remain bubbling underwater some in the many lakes of the region. What this does from a wine standpoint, of course, is to provide the local grape growers with a rich, quite minerally soil in which to grow those grapes. The natural acidity that the soil imparts to the grapes makes for wonderful pairings with the often tomato-based dishes that the Neapolitans are known for. If there is one part of Campania that is more volcanic than any other, it is undoubtedly Campi Flegrei or the Phelgraean Fields. Slightly more than 10 miles nearly due west of Naples where Campania meets the Gulf of Napoli, the soil...

What is a grape tell? You can't look it up on the internet, at least I don't think you can. Why not? I just made it up. Where did it come from? Have you ever played poker or some other game where you wager based on the cards you hold or something similar? Great players approach every hand the same way. Lesser players have "tells." They might scratch their head when they have a great hand or lean to their side when they are bluffing. They might take a deep breath when they are pretty sure they are making a bad decision. Many grapes have tells as well. No, they don't scratch their heads. That might be a bit challenging for them, but in grapes, they are flavor tells. You pick up a glass of white wine. You swirl it and smell it to get the aroma. You taste it. The one thing you can't get out of your mind is lychee. You can smell it, but even more so, you can taste it. The grape is Gewurtzraminer. Your large glass is filled with red wine. It's you detect a hint ...

We all know you can't make wine from local grapes on the island of Bali. It's part of Indonesia; it's hot and humid, and it's on the equator. That's three strikes and you're out. Well, let's go to Bali to see if they can prove us wrong. It's another tough trip from the US to this island paradise. Our first leg takes us to Seoul, South Korea, technically Incheon just out of town. It's a long flight, but in the world of vicarious travel, time stands still. Our layover is scheduled for 18 hours, but magically we are cutting it to 18 minutes. We're leaving South Korea to go to Indonesia and flying into Jakarta, the capital, and by some measures, the most populous city in the world with the metropolitan area having more than 33 million residents. Another 15 hour layover gets transformed by the magic of the grapeoftheday and 15 minutes later, we head on the much shorter, roughly 2 hour, flight to Bali.  Bali has an interesting shape to it. It looks a b...

We've not been to Bolivia before, so let's go there today. It's a new country, relatively speaking for wine, so we are looking forward to it, but first we have to figure out how to get there.  We called all the major airlines and none of them were overflowing with flights to this country. Finally, we worked out a route and boarded our first flight of the day from Atlanta to Miami. Thos one was easy as we've made it before. Arriving at Miami International Airport, we changed terminals to fly outside the US and took another flight to Bogota, Colombia. Despite being in South America, we still had two more flights to go. The first took us to Viru Viru International Airport in Santa Cruz and finally, we boarded a little prop plane for our lest leg to the southern Bolivia town of Tarija. Nearer to Argentina than any other country and closer to Paraguay than the heart of Bolivia, Tarija is the epicenter of the Bolivian wine industry. It's about the only place in the countr...

Who doesn't like dessert? Actually, I'm not a big dessert eater. When push comes to shove, however, I'd probably rather drink my dessert than eat it. And, when I do it, there are oh so many choices. For today, let's stick with wines. As a group, Americans shy away from dessert wines. They say they are too sugary sweet in a sickening way. Frankly, there are an awful lot of wines that do fit that horrible description. As bad as the taste, or many would say worse, those same wines are probably highly likely to give you a hangover if you drink too much of them. Where did those wines come from and why have they skewed American tastes? I think it goes back to those points when many Americans start drinking -- underage. They buy what is cheapest because they really don't care. And, bad jug wine or now bad box wine is cheap. It also goes through production processes to leave sugars that just shouldn't be in wines in wines. So, we have a stigma about dessert wines.  Comp...

Let's stay home at least for today and put a temporary stop on whirlwind travel. You know, it's tough going from country to country, traveling for sometimes 12 or more hours, drinking wine all day, and then getting up and doing it again. It's a good thing it's all vicarious. While we're drinking though, let's consider one of the things about wine that a lot of people think is just yucky -- sediment. Sediment -- it's the often flaky somewhat crystalline mostly solid stuff that often sticks to the side of your glass, but sometimes floats in the wine and often gets in your mouth. Oh no! What will happen if you consume some. Will you get sick? Could you die? Well, here is the good news. While you might not like sediment, and frankly, while it's not wine, it doesn't particularly bother me since it does taste like wine, but with a different texture, sediment will not hurt you. That's right, it won't give you strange diseases, it won't make you ...

For many years, dating back to the beginning of regulating such things, the grapes that have been allowed in the wines of Bordeaux have been limited. Most of us know the classic grapes, the reds being, alphabetically, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Merlot, and Petit Verdot, and the whites Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. Far less used and not originally permitted are red Carmenere and whites Colombard, Merlot Blanc, Mauzac, Merlot Blanc, Muscadelle, Sauvignon Gris, and Ugni Blanc. Yes, I know that stuff. it's fair game for sommelier tests and maybe one of these days, I'll break down and take one or more. The winemakers of Bordeaux have been struggling in recent years. It has been hotter than traditional temperatures by several degrees over almost all of the last 10. The worry is that these grapes alone cannot be used to produce wines that stand up to these temperature  variations. Zut alors! Earlier this year, the  Institut National de l'Origine et de la Qualite ...

We've not made a single trip to Russia on this journey. Let's put an end to that today. Since we were in Romania yesterday, we're going to find a new way for getting to our destination. Traveling to the east across Romania about 3 hours to the east of Bucharest, we come to the Black Sea port town of Constanta. There, our captain awaits and our chartered yacht will take us first easterly and then northerly through the tiny isthmus at Kerch Kepy and into the Sea of Azov. In the northeastern corner, we disembark at Rostov on the Don River. As a port city and a gateway to the Black Sea, Rostov has been a strategic military stronghold during every invasion of Russia during modern times. Austrians and Germans occupied the city during World War I, it was a primary battleground during the Russian Civil War and the Germans blocked access to the south by occupying Rostov when they invaded Russia early in World War II. Today, its people are mostly ethinic Russian with a fair number of...

Today we are off to Romania to a place I had certainly never heard of. But, I let the internet be my friend and I was able to locate Drăgășani on a map. I was not, on the other hand, able to pronounce it. But, we are going there because it is the home of Crâmposie. Part of Wallachia, Crâmposie sits on the bank of the Olt River about 3 hours mostly to the west of Bucharest. The ride through the countryside is slow averaging only about 60 KPH/ 37.5 MPH. We arrive in Drăgășani, get out of the car and the first thing we notice is the dry heat. It's early afternoon and the temperature is already sitting at about 37C/99F. This is not for fragile grapes. I did something that I very rarely do on this blog; I tried to do some research on this grape (about 98% of what I write here is off the top of my head, but today I tried to use the internet). Wow, that's tough. People don't write about Crâmposie, at least not in English or in anything that Google Translate was able to translate i...

From Slovenia yesterday, today we are headed to Spain. And, we have to get to the Eastern part of the country near Valencia. In fact, we are headed to a fairly obscure wine region in the country known as Utiel-Requena.  We couldn't fly directly from Ljubljana to Valencia, so instead we took a trip to Madrid. There, our driver met us at the airport for our trip to Utiel Requena. No matter how we take the ride, it's about two and one-half hours and it is not an exciting ride. Traversting the relatively flat countryside, we see unassuming vegetation most of the way. Sadly, nothing in particular strikes our fancy on this trip. Technically, Utiel-Requena is a  denominación de origen protegida  (DOP) in Spain set off by the neighboring towns of Utiel and Requena. It's not one that we, outside of Spain think of often, but it is notable in the wine world for being the indigenous home and current producer of probably 80-90% of the Bobal in the world. Should we care? Of course. In ...