Sweet Tooth Twosome: Wine Blogging Wednesday #66

By Rob Bralow, Wine Post Editor


Today is Wine Blogging Wednesday and Jennifer The Domestic Goddess is our host for this month. She wanted us to think about our after dinner pairings and write about them. I love sweet things. Chocolate for sure, but there is a dessert that I have most often that I cannot get enough of. I have had this addiction since it was forced on me by my parents to keep me happy (or maybe they were just feeding their own addictions).


I of course am talking about the Oreo Cookie.


It is a delectable, delicious, and versatile cookie. It most often loves to be dunked in milk, but it can also be crumbled on top of pudding, ice cream, cake, pie, pizza, hot dogs, grilled chicken, and steak. At least... I think it would be good on those last couple.


I picked another sweet and delicious liquid to imbibe with my cookies for this post. I chose the NV DR Tawny Port. This Port was very good. On the nose there were beautiful notes of chocolate, raison, and almond, all of which were confirmed when I put it in my mouth. The raison turned into dried cherry and it was smooth with a wonderful length so that the mingling of Oreo and Port kept me happy. I also liked that the bottle's label looked somewhat like an Oreo.

What do you like your Oreo's with?

Tender Twosomes: Wine Blogging Wednesday #66 Announcement

By Rob Bralow, Wine Post Editor


It has been a while since I participated in a WBW, so I thought I would jump on this one. Jennifer The Domestic Goddess is a nurse turned foodie. Really, if you were done with treating the sick would not you also turn to food?


Jennifer has laid the challenge at our feed of not stopping with a wine pairing for the meal, but moving through and pairing the desert as well. So often the wine with dinner is the one that is given the most preferential treatment, with the desert wines overlooked. So choose a wine (not necessarily sweet) to pair with a desert of your choice.


Check out her blog post to see the details.


But do not stop there! There is a problem that has begun with Wine Blogging Wednesday. It has almost lost its charm. When I first started blogging I found out about WBW for one reason, because there were a ton of other bloggers that posted announcements about it so that EVERYONE could get the news. So write a quite blog post, just take 2 minutes to post in on Twitter. Get the word out and let us see if we can make WBW an even again, instead of something that most people let pass them by.

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.

My Muse - Wine Blogging Wednesday #63

I have twice met this man named Randall Grahm,
and each meeting I left as a genuine fan.
He is a respected winemaker,
an original Rhone Ranger,
whose ambition is to make the best wine he can.

Grahm's market sense is as prescient as Dune.
He started the Big House, and left to keep Doon.
He's now Been Doon so Long,
he's long from a swan song,
and now follows the phases of the moon.

I last met him at the Wine Bloggers' Conference,
where I was privileged to taste his new Cigar Volant.
It was tasty and smooth,
it had a jive groove,
and I was pleased he was there as a sponsor.

There I asked what he thought of new media
and if he felt this was the evolution of media.
He said he's not sure what to think
or if it will stick,
but he is happy to get past Wikipedia.

Then up came another fan, the Canadian Wine Bard,
who by the way just said her vows in the vineyards.
So I went on my way,
anticipating the next day
when I will again meet Randall at a wine bar.

So for today's Wine Blogging Wednesday
I have chosen to review Grahm's Sangiovese.
He calls it Ca' Del Solo,
and it is a great value.
I picked it up for about thirteen and eighty.

I enjoyed this wine for a lengthy amount of time,
about 35:31 to be exactly in line.
Nose of clean strawberry,
with flavors of ripe cherr,
make this a simple but delicious wine.

If you participated in WBW email me here
and I will recap your post, never fear.
You need not have rhymed
nor be a limerick like mine,
but I hope you used the same sum of flare.

A shout-out to WBW founder Lenn Thompson, for letting me host this WBW.

Find Your Muse - Wine Blogging Wednesday #63

Words are taken for granted in this world of instant information. No longer can we laugh out loud or properly use letters like R and U. The evolution of human interaction is being condensed into one hundred and forty characters and considered equivalent to a yellow canary named by the Warner Brothers.

When writing a wine blog there are hundreds of ways to proceed. Wine Blogging Wednesday, founded by Lenn of LENNDEVOURS, creates a focal point once a month for wine blog writing. My thanks go to Lenn for inviting me to host this month's edition.

For the next Wine Blogger Wednesday, I present a simple challenge with the following guidelines:

• Choose a wine they you know well and have enjoyed many times, but perhaps have not had the time or the motivation to write about OR a wine you have seen in your wine shop that you have been meaning to try.
• Time how long you enjoy the wine. Round numbers are more than acceptable but exact numbers get extra points.
• Take twice that amount of time to write your blog post. Use the time to find out something you might not have known about the wine and to edit your writing. A wise man once told me that there is no good writing, only good rewriting.
• NO SAMPLES! Too often the wines written about are out of convenience rather than genuine interest. Make this one of the wines that you decided to purchase.
• Last but not least, give your writing some flare. Use a style that will challenge you. Be creative and enjoy writing for the sake of the words. Be picky about which words you use. Think about the rhythm and the rhyme. Poetic phrase will be rewarded.

My coach always told me that the simplest tasks can sometimes be the most difficult. There is a lot of room to maneuver in this challenge, but do not make the mistake of waiting until the last week to begin writing. You may find yourself running out of time.

The deadline: November 18

Send your submission by e-mail to me.

Happy writing!

Wine Blogging Wednesday - Boy am I late

Wow am I late. Perhaps I was too enamoured with my posting of the Twitteleh video, but I have been dropping the ball on blogging. Last Wednesday was the sixty first edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, founded and hosted by Lenn at LENNDEVOURS.

As the year progresses it is slowly becoming more and more obvious to me that my hobby of wine blogging is going to be hurting. The time commitment that blogging is will easily get in the way of work. I hate it when work gets in the way of life. So, I will definite keep blogging and tasting and writing. I just might not have the luxury of posting something on my blog as often as I would like.


That being said, lets dive into the topic: Drink Local. Lenn loves this topic, mostly because it allows him to write about the wines he covers anyway, and forces those of us in the New York area to taste and write about New York wines.


Not that I can blame the guy. Some of these wines are damn tasty!


The rub with this topic is that Lenn also wanted us to go out and visit the winery that we write about. Something I would have loved to have done, but there was just no way I was getting out to Long Island, the Hudson Valley, or the Finger Lakes. It just did not happen.


So, I did the next best thing, tasted (tasted... who am I kidding... guzzled!) a wine from a winery I had visited and tasted a wine from a winemaker I know who makes his wine in Long Island.



The first was one of the tastiest Sauvignon Blancs I have had the pleasure of imbibing from the East Coast. Channing Daughters Sauvignon Blanc 2008 is fantastic. The taste was so fresh and so crisp, that even though the cooler weather is here, I felt like I could have been enjoying this wine on a hot beach. It was that refreshing. Lime, grapefruit, and jalapeno (a taste I have been identifying in more and more Sauvingon Blancs) with a little roundness that might have been pear. It was supposed to go well with the sushi I wanted to have, but instead went very well with Vietnamese.


The other wine I drank (definitely finished the bottle and went and purchased another at Crush) was Schneider Vineyards "le breton" Cabernet Franc 2007. I can hear all of my old coworkers who are reading this (its OK, you can leave a comment!) making sounds of amusement. Not because of the wine, but because they still work with the winemaker, Bruce Schneider. Back in May, when I participated in Lenn's TasteCamp East, I had some amazing Cabernet Francs that blew away the Merlot I had tasted. Lenn even wrote about Bruce's wine last year.


So, for this blog post I asked Bruce if he had a bottle to spare. He humored be and let me have a sample. I should have asked for another bottle. This wine was very good, with tasty earthy cherry up front moving into a rich finish. You should go find it if you can, or you should become friendly with the winemaker...

All about Zin – Wine Blogging Wednesday #60

Five years ago, Lenn of LENNDEVOURS founded Wine Blogging Wednesday, where each month wine bloggers from all over would participate by holding a wine tasting with a similar theme. This gave wine bloggers searching for direction a purpose and a sense of unity and community. Five years later it is still going on and looks to have no end in sight.

The theme for today’s WBW is Zinfandel, brought to us by the brilliant Sonadora (who also happens to have a great smile while she talks and amazing teeth… a story for another time). Sonadora is the editor for Wannabe Wino Wine Blog.

So, for today’s Zin review, of which I am sure there are 40 bad jokes about Zin being written, I have chosen the Titus Zinfandel 2006 from Napa Valley. I was able to hang out with Christophe Smith, the Sales Manager of Titus Vineyards at the most recent Wine Bloggers’ Conference and he let me taste some of Titus’ wines. I thought they were all pretty good. I happened to be in the wine shop and saw a bottle of Titus on the shelf, so I decided to buy it and give it a try.

I opened up the bottle with a few friends that are not really wine people. In fact, one got excited that she knew what legs were. I then started going through the motions of tasting the wine. It was cooked. My friends did not pick it up; to them it was just a wine. There was an oxidized thinness to the wine where I knew it should have been fuller and fruitier. It was really sad, but something that every wino needs to be aware of during the summer. Wines that have been sitting too long on a hot truck, on the tarmac of an airport, in the backseat of your car for too long can become damaged within hours.

Lesson learned, be kind to your wine, keep it comfortable and at a reasonable temperature and always go to a wine shop you trust.

Wine Blogging Wednesday - Fifth Aniversary

There is really nothing amazing about the concept. Its simplicity is probably what keeps it going. For the past five years, Wine Blogging Wednesday has been running. Every month, for one Wednesday, bloggers from all over the U.S. post a review of a wine, that has some esoteric connection to an arbitrary topic, all on the same day (or close to it). These bloggers have chosen to search for, buy, and drink one bottle of wine within a month.

It was brilliant.

And for this edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday, Sonadora, the Wannabe Wino, is our host for August's WBW. And she is a Zinner, probably one of the biggest Zinners I have ever Zeen. It is grill time and it just makes sense to to have a California favorite with an American past time.

The date to post you Zintastic post is August 12.

Sake Geeks

There is a geek for everything. There are wine geeks (heh hehm...), baseball geeks, computer geeks, movie geeks, etc. You can geek out about anything under the sun. Check around the Internet today and you will find hundreds of thousands of geeks posting on their geeky blogs about the particular subject they geek.

I consider myself an amateur wine geek. There is so much more out there that I need to learn before I can consider myself a full-fledged geek, but I am working on it.

Today's Wine Blogging Wednesday is hosted by Rich at The Passionate Foodie. Rich lives in Boston and writes a weekly restaurant/wine review column for the Stoneham Sun. I met Rich a while ago when we attended TasteCamp East 2009 (another geeky adventure), hosted by Lenn at LENNDEVOURS, who founded Wine Blogging Wednesday.

Rich's topic for this WBW is Sake and paying homage to Kushi no Kami, the God of Sake. Rich loves his Sake. If you read his blog (and why shouldn't you?), Rich write about Sake quite often.

For this WBW Leah (who freaking loves sake) and I went to Sake Hana, a Japanese restaurant/Sake Bar. We have been to this restaurant before and had done a Sake tasting there before, but I had never taken notes on it. This time I brought the notebook.

We had six different Sake's, each with their own character and flavor profile. Unfortunately, I think the waiter just brought me the names of the types of Sake, instead of the brand name, so that is all I will be able to list below.

Dassai Nigori (Unfiltered) - Leah found this Sake to be mild and clean. I found a peppery lemon/lime flavor, with lots of minerals and a black pepper finish.

Nigori (Unfiltered) - Leah decided this wine was sweet as candy, like bubblegum. I found it very fruity, like a sugar coated and caramelized pear.

Nanbu (Nami) - Leah found tons of peaches, while I found this Sake to be nutty with some white stone fruits (yes, peaches, but less defined for me).

Dewa No Yuki - Leah said that there was a sugary finish, with some white fruits and grassiness in the middle. I found it floral and very grapey, with some orange rind in the finish.

Narutotai - Leah and I both found chocolate, although I found the smell to be more cake-y.

Ichi (Nami) (Unfiltered) - Both of us found this Sake to be slightly sparkling, very rich with a dark mineral finish.

The most geeky part of the evening was not us tasting the Sake. While we were sitting there a group of Japanese patrons came in and sat down. The proprietor of the restaurant came over to sit with them and the patrons brought out a bag with two boxes, each with a bottle of sake inside. They sat there for about 20 minutes pointing at one part or another of the labels, running their hands over the bottles, and turning it over to read the back label. I could not understand a word of what they were saying, or of what was on the bottle (all Japanese), but I knew exactly what was going on. It was like when a wine geek brings THE bottle of the night to the table with them and everyone wants to fondle it and read the label, just to be able to say that had done so.

It made me feel like I could get more into Sake...

Kushi no Kami: Japanese Wine God

Rich at The Passionate Foodie is a nut for Saké. For the July Wine Blogging Wednesday, Rich has chosen Saké as the beverage of choice. Check out Rich’s blog for all of the details. Blog posts should be up on July 8.

I have tried some Saké, mostly at the encouragement (nay, the insistence) of Leah. She has not been able to post much on her blog because she has started her preparations for her residency as an emergency medicine resident. For those unfamiliar with the lingo (as I usually am), that does not mean she will now be living in the ER. Or… well, actually it might. Really it means ER doctor.

But for this WBW, I bet I can pull her away from the whole sleepless Dr. routine for a few hours, especially since she loves Saké. I think perhaps a trip to Saké Hana might be in order…

It’s the Big House for me

Ok, stop what you are doing right now and check out the website for Big House Wine (http://www.bighousewine.com/).

No, its ok, I’ll wait.







Done playing yet? No? Ok, take some more time.






Now was that not the most interesting and fun winery website you have ever been on? When I taste wines I geek out. I think about how the wine tastes, what I would eat with this wine, and really anything else that I can ponder. Then I usually come back to the computer and do my best to research the wine and look up as much information as I can find. This is usually impeded by the fact that I finished the bottle and possibly opened up another one, but in general I think I get a pretty good understanding of what information I can find and make a note of it so I can go back and find the information while slightly more sober.

Usually I am disappointed by the information available online. You would think that in today’s information hungry society, every single winery and organization has a website that they at least keep the contact information up to date on. I constantly find this to not be the case as I look up information on wines I find interesting.

Big House Wines not only has a website with great content, but its flat out fun to navigate around. I loved the concept and design and it played so well with the wine’s branding that I honestly wonder what came first, the website or the wines? One of the area’s I really loved was Rehab. If you have not yet checked it out (BAD!) you should definitely do so.

Big House used to be owned and operated by Randahl Graham, the fabulously creative winemaker at Bonny Doon, which incidentally also has an amazing website that I hope to review in a future post.

For today, I picked up a bottle of The Prodicgal Son 2005, a Petit Sirah from Peso Robles. I tasted this wine as part of yesterday’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, but I thought that I needed to share the website with everyone.

This is really what wine is supposed to be about. It has its uber geeky side (I am BLOGGING about it for heaven sakes!), which some enjoy and some think it ridiculous. But it also has its fun side, which everyone should remember. It is just wine!

A musical Wine Blogging Wednesday

The next Wine Blogging Wednesday has been announced by Katie at Gonzo Gastonomy, and this time she puts forth an interesting theory.

Music has been a consistent source of emotional enjoyment, ever since one caveperson scraped a rock in rhythm against a cave floor (perhaps an exaggeration). Music has a strong power over our senses, the way a cymbal crash makes us excited or the way a violin pulls on our heart strings. The way a fiddle might make us want to tap our heels or the way a harp might put us to sleep.

Katie's challenge is to experience for ourselves how different genre's of music make us feel about a wine. If perhaps a song is on that is particularly grating against your nerves, do you then think less of the wine you are tasting?

The interesting part is I am not sure what wine to pick! Picking the music will be relatively easy (I have a very diverse library). But do I pick a wine I know I like? Do I ask for a recommendation of a wine someone I know likes?

I guess we'll see. The post is due on June 10th (that's like tomorrow!!). I missed the last one, hopefully I will get my act together for this one.

Wine Blogging Wednesday - Missed this one

So this month's edition of Wine Blogging Wednesday has come around and I completely missed the boat. There have been so many things going on in my life that I just could not get my act together.

May the blogger Gods forgive me.

I am sure there are many people who have posted today about their California Inspiration. I would suggest you check around the blogosphere and read about it.

For details on what this month's WBW is you can check it out here.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #57 – California Inspiration

Fifty-Seven is one of those numbers that a person might throw out as random. I remember reading somewhere that when a person is thinking of a random number it is usually a combination of 3, 5 and 7. However, for the next installment of Wine Blogging Wednesday, the topic is well thought out.

For the month of May, Jeff at the Good Grape will be hosting the next WBW and with the topic as an Homage to Robert Mondavi.

In remembering Robert Mondavi, the challenge for this topic is to pick a California wine that you might have tasted already and revisit the wine and tell a story. The story should be personal, about a fond memory that included the wine, or something special to you that was a part of a memorable stage in your life.

Happy reminiscing!

Fine Kosher Wine from Israel – Wine Blogging Wednesday #56

Welcome to the next Wine Blogging Wednesday installment! Our host today is The Cork Dork who has chosen Fine Kosher Wine for Passover. The challenge is to find a fine kosher wine to report back on.

This is an easier challenge than most people think. Easier for me since I know the PR people for Yarden Inc. but I still think that it would be hard to find a few good bottles of delicious kosher wine.

As my mother would say, what about wine is not kosher? In order to be considered kosher, a Sabbath-observant Jew, starting at the harvest of the grapes and continuing throughout the entire winemaking process, must handle the wine.

There is another process of making a wine kosher called mevushal, which means, “cooked” or “boiled.” Literally, the wines are flash pasteurized, causing the juice of the grapes to simmer or boil. The process is not supposed to have an effect on the flavor of the wine, but most wine drinkers do not particularly care for the results. I honestly cannot weight in since I cannot remember having a wine that was made mevushal.

My choice for this WBW was the 2006 Galil Mountain Barbera from the Upper Galilee in Israel. The mountains of the Upper Galilee rise to heights over 3,000 feet, allowing for cooler temperatures in what would otherwise be an area too hot for grape-growing.

Galil Mountain Winery is a joint venture of Golan Heights Winery and Kibbutz Yiron. The winery has five vineyards in the Upper Galilee Mountains, each with a different microclimate determined by the soil and their elevation on the mountain. With so many different climates available, the winery can make a large variety of grapes.

The wine was great! Even after the few years that I have been tasting wines and armed with the knowledge that you need to taste a wine before writing it off, I was still really surprised by how much I enjoyed this wine. It had that wonderful easy drinking quality that I love from a Barbera, while still showing plenty of flavor. The color was a light ruby. There was liveliness to it that I cannot really describe, with great bursts of cherry and rich wildberries. So bright and juicy that I would have felt more than comfortable opening this wine at an outdoor picnic.

Got to go back to Alba

In one of the past Wine Blogging Wednesdays, the theme was wine from the Piedmont region of Italy. I had chosen a Barbera D’Alba because I had a deep trust of the grape whenever I see it on a restaurant wine list. Unfortunately it turned out that I had just had some good experiences in restaurants, or perhaps one bad experience at home.

So I decided to try another wine from Alba, a Dolcetto 2006 from Vietti. I have complained about wineries not having useful websites and other wineries that have done particularly good jobs of expressing the information that bloggers such as myself want to find. This wineries did a good job making it available on their website (www.vietti.com), but the content looks half finished.

A for effort, C+ for presentation. However, under further review none of the recent vintages are listed on the website. They still get some points though for having the website on the back label of the bottle.

Like most wineries in Europe, Vietti claims to have been making wine for the past four generations and was one of the first wineries in Italy to export their wines to the U.S.

I really should have tried this wine for my Piedmont post. There was a nice dustiness to the nose, with some rich sweet dark fruits like blackberry and blueberry. Definitely some oak used as I picked out smells of cedar wood and vanilla. My first taste was a little rough, and a put too tannic, with sour cherry and blackberry the predominant flavors. Then, as the wine opened more, there was a lot more juiciness to it, some of that lively fruit that I love.

After I tasted this wine I sat on this post for a little while. I walk into wine stores more often than I used to and as I do I start noticing what is on the shelves instead of just looking at it all as a wall of wine. The more I look the more I pick out this label and others as prevalent in the retail stores near me (of which I frequent quite a few). It is truly amazing how they start sticking out from the walls after you have tasted them and written about them. Makes this whole blogging thing worthwhile.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #56 – Fine Kosher Wine

The next Wine Blogging Wednesday has been announced! Our host for April is The Cork Dork who has chosen Fine Kosher Wine for Passover. The challenge is to find a fine kosher wine to report back on. The subject, besides being timed to be posted on the last day of Passover, was inspired by a Napa Valley Cabernet that was made in the kosher tradition.

My mother had a very defined view of kosher wine, that if it says manischewitz on the label it has no place on the table. Luckily enough, I know of a few kosher wines that my mother would approve of.

A lot of people mistake kosher as manischewitz as well as Israeli. For those that do not know, manischewitz wine is made here in the US and has nothing to do with Israeli wine.

There are more Kosher wines on the shelves than most people think. I have found Kosher wines from every part of the world and I look forward to tasting a few and seeing what others review.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #55 - Why the North is better than the South

Seriously, there needs to be a longer lag time between one Wine Blogging Wednesday and another. They expect me to put together a post once a month. Ok, really I am just a slacker and need to get my act together and do more thinking ahead of time and less putzing around.

For this edition of WBW, our host is Remy of The Wine Case with a challenge to compare a wine from the North with a similar wine from the South.

The goal is to take two wines that are made from the same type of grape and compare one from a more northerly region with one from a more southerly region. That could mean a Cabernet made in Texas vs. one made in Washington, or a Pinot Noir made in Burgundy vs. one made in South America, or a Sauvignon Blanc made in New Zealand vs. one made in California.

I had a hard time with this topic, mostly because I had too much freedom to choose which wines to use. My natural response is to pick California and Chile. There are so many good comparisons between the two, especially with the wide range of wines that both produce. But, I still feel like that is a conflict of interest, so I did something a little more interesting.

A little while ago I received a Riesling from Michigan. This was a return gift from a friend of mine. Actually, I did not so much give him a wine as force it on to him. As a few of my twitter friends (@Sonadora and @winebratsf) have told me, I am becoming somewhat of a wine pusher. So, he went back to Grand Rapids, Michigan and he and his family picked out a bottle of Chateau Grand Traverse Riesling 2007 and sent it to me.

Edward O’Keefe founded the CGT in 1974. The winery is situated on the Old Mission Peninsula of Michigan, located in the very northwest corner of Michigan. The peninsula actually holds several wineries, all of which make white wines with some red wines.

So I figured this was the perfect opportunity to taste it and compare it to something more mainstream. A German or Austrian Riesling would have been perfect, but would not have fit the criteria of the challenge, so I went with a Riesling from Australia. I had tasted a few Aussie Rieslings before and had found them to be quite pleasant. Riesling gets a little tricky sometimes because of the sweetness factor in many of them. For this tasting I tried to scout out something dry, since I knew the CGT to be a dry Riesling (said so on the label). The bottle I chose was the Thorn Clarke Terra Barossa Eden Valley Single Vineyard Riesling 2008. It says on their website that the Terra Barossa range of wines was made specifically for the US, which actually worried me a little.

The result was rather mixed. The Chateau Grand Traverse was very pleasant, with a floral apricot and honeysuckle on the nose and a bright green apple, sweet peaches with a strong mineral melody running through the taste. The Thorn Clarke was so perfumed that for a moment I thought I had put my nose in a Viognier or at least a Muscat. The flavor was rounder and richer with more apples and pears. I had these wines with some fabulous Chinese food from Grand Sichuan and the combination was perfect. I felt that the Thorn Clarke was better with the food, but I really loved the Chateau Grand Traverse as an aperitif.

So which side won? Both! No, this is not a cop out; I am making one of those points about wine that people sometimes get wrong. How a wine presents to you is a lot about what is in the bottle, but the moment also needs to be accounted for. I could probably think that this plonk was absolutely delicious if I decided to drink it on my wedding day, but I am not even talking about the euphoria of certain events. Here I have two wines, both with different strengths. I think if I were just drinking the wine alone I would prefer the Michigan Riesling. However, with food I preferred the Australian Riesling. Even my two companions that I was dining with split in their decisions on which one is better.

So wine is not just about what is in the bottle (although that is most of the battle), but also where you drink it and whom you are with and what the occasion is. Are you having it with food or alone? All things to think about the next time you open up a wine.
Still, I am partial to the North in just about everything else…

Wine Blogging Wednesday #55 – North vs. South

As one Wine Blogging Wednesday leaves, the next one is hot on its tail. For the next edition of WBW, our host is Remy of The Wine Case. His challenge, a comparison of the North vs. the South.

He’s not talking about the Civil War. He’s not talking about when Quebec City sent American troops packing in 1775 (of which all of us Americans DEFINITELY remember as much as the Canadians do… NOT).

No, the topic is much broader than that. The goal is to take two wines that are made from the same type of grape and compare one from a more northerly region with one from a more southerly region. That could mean a Cabernet made in Texas vs. one made in Washington, or a Pinot Noir made in Burgundy vs. one made in South America, or a Sauvignon Blanc made in New Zealand vs. one made in California. It might be interesting to try an Icewine from Canada with a sticky from Australia.

You get the idea. If you want to join the fun, just post you’re your review on March 18th. It’s coming up soon, so be quick in picking which wines you want to try together.

Also, a shout out to the founder of Wine Blogging Wednesday, Lenn Thompson founder and editor at LENNDEVOURS, who started all of this 55 months ago.

And now a word from our sponsors: If you are interested in using Chilean wine as your southern contender, let me know. I’d be happy to help support you in any way I can as a representative for Wines of Chile. You can find me on twitter or by leaving a comment below.

Wine Blogging Wednesday #54 – A Passion for Piedmont

I must admit I was so behind on this Wine Blogging Wednesday that I had to go back several times to remind me what it was about.

David McDuff at McDuff’s Food & Wine Trail hosts this month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday. He noted that when talking about Italy most people are familiar with the region of Tuscany and the wines of Chianti and Chianti Classico.

Piedmont is surrounded on three sides by the Alps, including the Monviso (Mont Vis), where the Po rises, and the Monte Rosa. It borders with France, Switzerland and the Italian regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna and Aosta Valley. The Geography of Piedmont is that of a territory predominantly mountainous, 43.3%, but with extensive areas of hills which represent 30.3% of the territory, and of plains (26.4%). Piedmont is the second largest of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, after Sicily.

I really love Piedmont. It is actually my go-to region in Italy when I order off a wine list. My favorite grape is Barbera, with is why for this WBW I chose Guidobono Barbera D’Alba 2006.

The Barbera vine is very vigorous and capable of producing high yields if not kept in check by pruning and other methods. Excessive yields can diminish the fruit quality in the grape and accentuate Barbera's natural acidity and sharpness. In Piedmont, the vine was prized for its yields and ability to ripen two weeks earlier than Nebbiolo even on vineyard sites with less than ideal exposure. This allowed the Piedmontese winemakers in regions like Alba to give their best sites over to the more difficult to cultivate Nebbiolo and still produce quality wine with Barbera that could be consumed earlier while the Nebbiolo ages.

The Guidobono Barbera D’Alba was decent but not amazing. When I poured the wine I noticed a very deep red/purple color. Very inky. When I stuck my nose in I found a bit of sweet blackberry, very ripe with a nice fleshy smell. There is also some minerality that does a good job of holding back from being sharp. When I tasted the wine the fruit is a little lost when it hits my mouth. There is an immediate drying sensation while the wine is still in my mouth. There is a ton of acidity, almost over the top. I can pick out a fruit here and there, but the wine’s almost sour acidity covers it up. Definitely drinkable, but I want to have some food ready to soak it up.