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...