Where the time Wente

by Rob Bralow, Wine Post Editor

It seems like forever ago (which means I really need to blog more often or at least be timely about my blog posts) that I participated in a Taste Live event with Wente Vineyards hosted by Karl Wente, fifth generation winemaker for the winery. It was a lot of fun to listen to Karl talk about his wines on twitter and to be thrown back into the community of wine bloggers and enthusiasts that are included in the Taste Live events.

Aside: Before I popped the corks and started the tasting I wandered around the Wente website and found on the homepage a link to something called "Discover the Wine Discover the Music" and felt the need to share. I particularly enjoy when wineries find ways to include other passions with wine. I find wine is best in company, with a meal, with music, or doing whatever else you might enjoy. Yes, plenty of bloggers (myself included) go a little gaga for the liquid on its own and for its own merits, but there are so many ways to enjoy life that it make sense to combine as many of those ways as possible.

This past year was Karl's tenth vintage as the winemaker of Wente Vineyards. Unfortunately those wines are still a bit fresh from the vine to taste yet, so we tasted three of the new releases:

2008 Riva Ranch Chardonnay - The grapes from this wine are primarily grown in Arroyo Seco in Monterey and the Chardonnay has a slight amount of Pinot Blanc and, surprisingly, Gewurztraminer. I say that is surprising because I do  not see a ton of Gewurz blended into Chardonnays. Karl said it was to bring some tropical notes to the wine. I found it to be clean and crisp with clear apple, pear and peach flavors. A very nice wine and a great expression of the grapes.

2007 Southern Hills Cabernet Sauvignon - This wine was not nearly as good as the Chardonnay. There was little fruit and what was there was muddled by the tannins. Nothing very exciting but this is also supposed to be an entry level wine.

2007 Nth Degree Syrah -  Here is a serious wine. What could be called Icon or certainly fantabulously awesometastic. This wine was rich, meaty, and filled with blueberry, blackberry, with lots of pepper. It is huge with a nice smoky, bacony finish. I let it sit in my glass for an extra hour and tasted it again and found a lot of the pepper had softened into more fleshy fruit.

Disclaimer: These wines were all received as samples.

Quick Taste: Patz & Hall

By Rob Bralow, Wine Post Editor


A little while ago I participated in a Taste Live with Patz & Hall wines. I was a little upset since I just received the wines that morning. Some believe that wines go through a travel sickness. Thomas Pellechia discussed the idea of travel sickness at VinoFictions some time ago, so I am not going to go back over it.

I am more upset with the idea that I haven't had the bottle in my possession for more than 6 hours before I have to pop the corks.


But pop the corks I did and I was not unhappy. The 2008 Sonoma Coast Chardonnay was very interesting to me. If it had been presented to me blind I could have easily mistaken it for a Sauvignon Blanc. It had a zesty nose with bright green apple and apricot mixed with some cream and dill. The taste was white peper and jalapeno that was covered in lemon zest and lime juice. So vibrant and zesty, perfect with oysters.


The 2007 Jenkins Ranch Pinot Noir was stained with sweet cherry and strawberry, a little light pipe tobacco smoke and cured meats. There was so much acidity on the taste. There was a bit of black crushed pepper, a bit of birch root, all held together by some bing cherry.

Quick Taste: The Rest of Robert Oatley

By Rob Bralow

A while ago I received a bunch of Robert Oatley samples for a Taste Live event that I missed. I will not be missing many more of those in the future. It is a lot of fun to compare and contrast tasting notes with a bunch of other wine people. The group that most often does these tastings is a great group that likes to bounce off of each other.

Since then I received more samples from Robert Oatley, so I thought I would do a quick review of them here.

2008 Robert Oatley Sauvignon Blanc, Western Australia - This wine was bright, with lots of grapefruit, kiwi, and gooseberry. The wine had a lot of zing in my mouth, with grapefruit and white pepper ending on an herbaceous note.

2007 Robert Oatley Chardonnay, Mudgee, Australia - Was not my favorite wine. Muted nose, missing some fruit.

2007 Robert Oatley Shiraz, Mudgee, Australia - Sweet plum and blackberry with some vanilla on the nose. The taste as rustic and peppery, with blackberry and spice.

Schloss Reinhartshausen - Taste Live

My own personal fail. I had everything ready to participate in this tasting. Then I had to go out and totally missed the entire event.

I came back and everyone had finished tasting! UGH! So I started tweeting anyway.

Wine 1: Schloss Reinhartshausen Foutain Blue Riesling 2007
Wine 2: Schloss Reinhartshausen Old Vines Riesling 2007
Wine 3: Schloss Reinhartshausen Erbach Schlossberg Monopole 2007

RobBralow: #TTL wine #1 Fountain Blue, lemon rind, wet creek smell, taste like a lemon drop rolled in salt and then lemon zest

RobBralow: #TTL #winesofgermany not digging the old vines #2. in my glass nothing but acid and petrol @winebratsf (at about this time Thea noticed I was doing #TTL about 2 hours late and by myself and she laughed at me)

RobBralow: #TTL @winesofgemany wine #3 smells like peach/apricot buttercream frosting. buttery smooth with late peach and brine flavors


Looks like I forgot to Tweet about the last wine, but it was my favorite. It was the Schloss Reinhartshausen Erbacher Marcobrunn Auslese 2006. It smelled of candied apricots and has a perfect balance of sweetness and acidity. So worth picking up if you can find it.

All of these wines were from the Rheingau region in Germany and all were samples that were sent to me by Wines of Germany.

Robert Oatley Tasting - Tweeted Too Late

I received a few bottles of the Robert Oatley wines from Bin Ends, a retailer in Boston who has also become the producer and driving force behind the constant Twitter Taste Live events.

I feel really bad because these wines were sent to me months ago and I missed the tasting. Then the wines just sat in the back of my samples queue and kept getting passed over for other wines. It wasn not that I did not want to taste the wines, I did because I see them in store windows all around New York.

The Robert Oatley Vineyards was created by Bob Oatley, who was one of the forces behind Rosemont Estates. Auzzie wines all the way and for a good value.

I tasted the Pinot Grigio, Rose of Sangiovese, and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Cab did not impress me and while the Pinot Grigio is worth buying for the value, its the Rose which really won out. It was floral and soft, but bone dry. Pick it up if you like that sort of thing.

Want another opinion? Check out my frient Tori's review of this wine.

The Art of a Virtual Tasting

Last Friday night at 8 pm I joined a group of other wine geeks to taste wines and compare our notes. We all went through the proper motions: swirl, sniff, sip, swish and swallow (I don’t think anyone spits in this crowd). We were all meticulous in noting the different flavors and aromas that our senses perceived. I might be the only one to admit it, but some of us got a little tipsy. And we did it while we were all hundreds of miles from each other.

We were all participants of a tasting on Twitter Taste Live. On November 19th Lenn Thompson of LENNDEVOURS announced that he was hosting the tasting and that his choice was four wines from Humanitas Winery, a winery owned by Judd Wallenbrock who is also the winemaker. I read Lenn’s blog all the time so I decided to check it out. Judd blogs at Drink Charitably and the concept of his winery is a beautiful one, to make good wine and to give back to charities in local communities where the wines are sold. The profits from the winery go to three primary causes: hunger, affordable housing and illiteracy. They have chosen Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest), Habitat for Humanity, and Reading is Fundamental as their targeting charities, but do not limit the donations to only those. Judd and company are just as likely to donate to local charities that best address these issues in individual communities. One of the best winery missions I have heard to date.

If you’ve never seen or heard of Twitter before, you are not the only one. It might be the latest online craze, but then again it might not. The format of using Twitter Taste Live (TTL) was an interesting one. The notion is that everyone buys the wines and meets at the same time and tweet about them. Yes, that’s the new verb, and no I did not coin it (thank goodness). TTL was created by Craig Drollett, John Hafferty, and Chris Gillis and was originally connected to their retail store Bin Ends. Today TTL has distanced itself from the store and is completely open to the world of the wine industry, especially the consumers. The userbase is currently nearing 500 with participation in 8 countries. Not bad for a site based on tweets.

“The real vision is that this platform is a direct line of communication between consumers and wine makers,” explains Craig. “So far it’s working out very well.”

The tasting itself was very interesting, but turned into a case of the hiccups that won’t go away. I loved being in an online space where there are so many people who love to talk about wine all expressing their opinions of the same wines. The way it works is that as long as your tweet has #ttl included then it will pop up on the live feed. The only problem was that every ten to fifteen minutes or so the live twitter feed (I almost said tweet feed, but that seemed wrong somehow) would cut out. The only thing that really kept everything together was Matt doing a live video feed from his house.

All said and done, it was a good experience. The wines we tasted were:

• Humanitas Sauvignon Blanc 2006, 13.8% ALC, Monterey County, California, USA


• Humanitas Oak Free Chardonnay 2007, 13.8% ALC, Monterey County, California, USA


• Humanitas Gap’s Crown Pinot Noir 2006, 14.6% ALC, Sonoma Coast, California, USA


• Humanitas Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, 14.2% ALC, Paso Robles, California, USA

My clear favorite and that of the two others I tasted with (ok, so it is also nice to taste wine with live people too) was the Chardonnay. It was that classic pear and apple that Chardonnay should produce and had a great balance on the taste. The Cabernet started coming through for me after it sat out a while; I had not expected to need to decant it. When I first tasted the Cab it had huge tannins and was extremely rough. It started to smooth out and find some fruit after about an hour or so. I’ll know better for next time.

You can buy the wines here, and be sure to check out Twitter if you have not done so yet and Twitter Taste Live.