Wine 2.0 - Slightly less digital than 1.0

For some reason it feels like we slipped somewhere. There is so much great technology out there, so many new and interesting things, and somehow I saw none of them at Wine 2.0. In fact, I felt like it was very 1.0.

First of all the tasting happened at Webster Hall. This is the place where I go to rock out to upcoming bands, check out some awesome face-melting DJ's. I even think I saw my friend David, the drummer of Sweatheart play there. By the way, in case you wanted to know one of my songs of Sweatheart is "Finger Bangin'." It just has such a catchy chorus, you cannot help but get hooked.

But Webster Hall is a dark music venue. Fun for a night out on the town to do something more interesting than going to another cocktail bar. Not a place where I really felt the technology of and around wine tasting really shined.

And then there was the technology. Not a whole lot of technology was present. You had Snooth, Bottlenotes, Wine Twits, and one or two more. Nothing I found exciting or new or different. Maybe my expectations were set too high, but I thought this was going to be a melding of technology and wine. I found lots of wine, but not a whole lot of technology.


Thank goodness for the wine. There were some great wines there, and I have no idea why. Seriously, at two tables there were wines which had a total production of less than 500 cases. In the grand scheme of wine that is TINY. I asked David Rossi, the owner/winemaker of Fulcrum Wines, a winery that only sells wine through its mailing list, why he decided to come to this event. His response was that he wanted to find out more about the technology of wine consumers. He made a great point about how we now have a good idea of where we are right now. We have twitter, bloggers, rating aggregates, and cellar recording software. Everyone wants to know the answer to a big question, "where is this going?" What is the next evolution of technology? Does it matter? Are wines selling through these channels?

Man, if I knew those answers I could retire to a life of wine tasting and cool ocean breezes.

Another great wine I tasted was 2006 Smith & Hook Cabernet Sauvignon. It is a big wine, ready for a year or two on the shelf, but also great with a steak. And a fatty steak at that. Avoid the Fillet with this one. That said, there is some great balance and fruit in this wine.

Another great Cabernet that I tried was from Arkenstone. The first photo that appears on this website could easily be from the bluff of Echo Hill Camp (ah, so many good summers). This is the other winery that I thought had no reason to be at this tasting. These were excellent wines, for appropraitely high prices ($120 for the Cab), and extremely limited productions which were only available through their mailing list.

I did taste a few other wines, but these were my highlights.


Note: Hahn Family Wines paid my entrance fee for this event.

Wine Blogging Wedensday #63 - Musings Round-up

I hosted the most recent edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday and my challenge was for people to find their muse, to really get into the writing of their blog post. A select few rose to the challenge and came up with these posts:

• What was probably my favorite post was from Silene's Cellar. The review was clever and imaginative and showed a true musing with lots of time obviously spent on the post. Silenus waxes about the 2004 L'Oustal Blanc Minervois. Well worth the read.
• The Suburban Wino worked to bring a degree of eloquence to a 2004 Rivata Borolo and found that task I set to be more difficult than it seemed.
• Remy from the Wine Case not only showed an excellent writer, but also happened to find a song by Muse from YouTube. The wine he reviewed was a 1990 Torres Mas La Plana
• Another poet post came from the Wine Undertaker at Undertaking Wine. His wine was the 2005 Schneider Vineyards Cabernet Franc Petit Verdot.
• Sonadora the Wannabe Wino referenced her muse (was it Thea or the butterfly?) in her post. The wine she reviewed was the 2006 Wertzberger Syrah.
• Mary at Vindulge definitely spent the time to understand where the wine she wrote about comes from. Her post explored the 2005 Condado de Haza.
• Kori at the Wine Peeps also found a muse in multiple wines, comparing two Washington state Syrahs, the 2007 Kerloo Cellars Les Collines Syrah and 2007 Syncline Syrah
• The Chronic Negress tasted a favorite wine of hers, the 2007 Can Blau.
• Debbie the Hudson Valley Wine Goddess had a short post, although she did say she tasted each sip for 35 seconds. The wine she chose was 2002 Dark Star Cellars Paso Robles Merlot.

If you missed my musings on the 2006 Ca' Del Solo from Bonny Doon, you can find them here.

Thanks to those who participated. Thanks to Lenn for putting me into the rotation.

Thanksgiving Wines

I have not posted a list of wines that I would suggest for Thanksgiving, and I am not going to here. There is no question that Thanksgiving is a massive gastronomic event. However the food has always taken second chair to the stars of the show, my family.

Do not spend too much timing thinking about what to have with Thanksgiving. Spend more time thinking about how great it is to have a four day weekend where you can catch up with the ones you love and the ones who love you.

Be safe. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Yeah, that's an old photo.

Blueberry Pie

There are few things that are less traditional than pie on Thanksgiving. My mother usually makes an amazing pecan pie and another amazing apple pie. Truth be told, I had convinced myself that I didn't like the pecan pie for years until I retried it and it was delicious. Just goes to show that you should always check in with your taste buds, you may find you like what you did not like the day before.

So where am I going with this... I had a party recently where I opened a bottle of Horton Vineyards Tower Series Blueberry Wine. I have very little experience with wine made from anything other than grapes, although my buddy Ryan is trying to get me to taste more cherry wine from Michigan. I picked up this Blueberry wine at Total Wine in Delaware (amazing place without taxes. Delaware that is, not Total Wine).

The Blueberry wine was the life of the party. I was shocked. Maybe I am way too geeked out with this whole wine thing, but I was only luke warm on the wine. My non-geeky friends loved it! Sure, they tasted some of the other wines I had brought, and there was a good response to the wines I thought were good, but none of them compared to the response the blueberry wine got.

For me, the Blueberry wine had a ton of oak. Vanilla, Caramel, toast out the wazoo. Then the oak gives way to blueberry cotton candy on the nose and nothing but sweet, sugary blueberry pie in my mouth. It's tasty, but nothing to go gaga over.

Quick Taste: Turning Leaf

We are truly blessed for the creation of Turning Leaf wines.

It's ok. Please, suck your tounge back into your mouth and close your jaw, it is unbecoming. Let me explain.

If it were not for Turning Leaf, hundreds of thousands of grandmothers would not have a heart healthy glass of wine every night. If not for Turning Leaf, millions of college students would not feel like they were having a special night for $5. And if not for Turning Leaf, wine geeks everywhere would have nothing to compare truly great wines to.

We all need the low end of the scale in order to appreciate the high end. And there is no question that Turning Leaf is the low end. I tasted the Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon from the 2008 vintage. I cannot tell you how happy I was to see a vintage, unlike some other super value brands I knew that this wine has not been in a warehouse for 25 years.

How were they? Fresh, juicy, and completely forgettable. The Chardonnay was buttery, the Merlot was innocently sweet, and the Cabernet Sauvignon has no definable characteristics that I could determine. This is something common in the very low end, I have found. These are not wines for the intellectual. These are wines for grandma: comfortable, safe, boring, and alcoholic.