A land of pure imagination - Wine Blogging Wednesday on Music

What is the connection between our senses? How often do you notice yourself hating a particular taste or flavor when you are in a bad mood? Or a good mood? Or a jazzy mood? Or a rock mood?

Katie from Gonzo Gastronomy wanted us to explore just that. 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?

I had a hard time figuring out how this would work. How much thought should I put into this? Do I need to taste wines that I was familiar with or pick music I particularly liked or did not like? Should I shut the hell up and just turn on some tunes and pop some corks? Well, yes I should...

So I chose two wines that have been sitting in my storage that I wanted to try, the Big House Prodigal Son Petite Sirah 2005 and a bottle of McManis Family Vineyards Petite Sirah 2007. I chose them because I had no idea what was in the bottle. Well, at least only a slim idea (I have some experience with Petite Sirah).

For my musical inspiration, I chose to go with several stations from Pandora. That way I could add an element of random to the experiment, something no good scientist should do. Another reason why I am not a scientist.

The list of music that came out was:

1. Shostakovic Prelude (25) for Piano Op. 31 - eventually someone will explain to me what all of those numbers and works mean. Still trying to figure out what prelude means
2. Allman Brothers Ain't Wastin' Time No More
3. Tracy Chapman Change
4. David Cook A Daily Antham
   

And I was also joined by my lovely tasting helper.

And so it began...

On initial tasting (without music) I enjoyed the Big House was more enjoyable. I then started going back and forth between the two wines as the music played and I came to a conclusion.

Every time I tasted the McManis after the Big House I enjoyed both equally. Every time I tasted the Big House after the McManis I liked the Big House better. Looking at my notes, I could not find a real correlation between the music and the wine. Both were very tannic and juicy (as I expected). The McManis had more caramel and medium dark fruits, where the Big House had more sweet black cherry and chocolate.

A pleasant experiment and a good notion. Perhaps I am just not as in tune to the music as Katie is.

Let's talk Pinot Grigio

I do not really know much about Pinot Grigio. I have always considered the wine to be a harmless and uninteresting, something that someone looking for a harmless sip of wine with dinner or just sitting outside in the sun. My experience has been that if a person well advanced in years is not drinking white zinfandel it is a good bet that they are drinking Pinot Grigio.

I cannot point to statistics, I cannot say that I have surveyed this possibility among a sample population, but I think it is true. My personal opinion of the wine is negative. Sorry for having an opinion.

Not really sorry though.

Then I was sent a bottle of Tenuta Ca'Bolani Pinot Grigio 2007 from Friuli. Friuli is in the north eastern corner of Italy. Ca'Bolani seems to be the largest estate in Friuli and is owned by the Zonin Family Vineyards. Pinot Grigio makes up roughly 1/6 of the Ca'Bolani land under vine. The rest is a wide variety, including, Pinot Blanco, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Riesling, Tocai, Prosecco, and more.


I tasted the wine with a variety of other white wines (I was having a samples tasting day of wines such as Torrontes, Albarino, and Sauvignon Blanc) and found that I really enjoyed the wine. There was some nice peach with a little hint of cream on the nose and very zesty, tangerine and lemon zest on the tasting. It was a sipping wine, not a wine so intensely citric as a Sauvignon Blanc that it would need food. I am not saying that the wine would not go well with food, but it does not need it.

Worth a try. I found it online listed for $20 at its highest, and $7 at its cheapest, which means one of those retailers is ripping people off like CRAZY.

Everyone has to have their say

I have been reading wine blogs for what I consider to be a very short time, but there is something that has occurred to me that I think is well worth remembering: Everyone gets to have their say.


Yesterday, I read a blog post by Steve Heimoff. Steve is one of my favorite bloggers to read. His position as a journalist for the Wine Enthusiast gives him access to wine and information that many wine bloggers (or at least the ones blogging for their own fame and fortune) dream about. He called me out on his blog for mistaking his feelings towards bloggers (rightfully so), and is very much an advocate for thoughtful discussion on the Internet.

Steve writes:

In their eagerness to topple the old order the bloggers sometimes
over-react, sensing blood in the water and moving in for the kill. But reactions
should be judicious; the punishment should fit the crime.

After reading the full blog post (which I would suggest), I think the issue Steve is bringing up is not that the articles now streaming the Internet's twitter, flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. byways are unjustified. There are just so many of them and there seems to be no end to the number of people chiming in on the subject.

To fill in my readers that do not know what is going on, there has been a particularly intense round of navel gazing happening on wine blogs in the past month, due to the issues surrounding Robert Parker at the Wine Advocate. Then there was an intense round of anti-navel gazing. Now there are people who are just fed up with the whole idea of a navel, but I digress.

I think what some bloggers do not realize is that just because 3,000,000 other people have written about a subject, taken it to their cellar, beaten it to death, performed a mighty two footed jump on its lifeless body, does not mean that one more blogger will not take it into their mind to give the corpse one more go round with the paddle.

This is the blogosphere, where there are no rules (yet), no editor, no grammar, no spellcheck, and certainly no end to the number of times a subject can be written about. Everyone gets to have their say and there is nothing anyone can do to stop them.

But that is what makes the blogosphere so powerful! It is a wine marketer's dream to be able to have all 700+ wine blogs (or any blogs!) all writing about their client all at the same time. But there is no way to ask all 700+ people to do that. That is not the way it works. At best you will have a handful of people writing about a wine within a month. And that's only if you have done your research, made relationships with the bloggers, and understood what it is they write about and why.

This works for all subjects, not just wine. If we could get everyone to agree to write on a deadline, then we could move on to the next subject without a problem. However, bloggers all read each other's blogs (or so I have found), which means that a blogger might read a story about the ethics issue 700+ times in four weeks. It is understandable that one would get tired of reading about the issue, but such is the nature of the beast (blogging that is).

My suggestion: stop worrying about it. People will get it out of their system, just give it time. Go back to doing whatever type of blogging you were doing before these shenanigans started. The 700+ people reading your blog will appreciate it.

On a completely different note, I want to take this opportunity to congratulate my girlfriend Leah on graduating from medical school. Leave her a comment on here blog here: Pets, Posts and Other Medical Mysteries

Not rocket science - but yet...

Gary Vaynerchuk

I cannot help but respect the guy. He is making wine marketing history happen everyday and he shares it with the world. None of it is rocket science. It is just a matter of thinking up a good idea (hard enough, but not impossible) and working harder than anyone else to make it happen. That second part is what trips a lot of people up, but those that take those two pieces and put them together and you can take over the world.

Here is a clip from Gary's website, going out to all wine marketing people (myself included). Check it out. It is worth it.




(my first embedded video... I hope it works...)

Please - No More Idaho!

I really do not want any more. It seems like such a strange thing to say, especially coming from someone whose first word was "more." But please, stop sending these wines to me.

I tasted the Zhoo Zhoo wines. I tasted the Pend d'Oreille. I tasted Sawtooth. I even did a little research on Idaho as an AVA. I just recently tasted the wines from Bitner Vineyards, Hell's Canyon Winery, and Koning Vineyards. And after tasting all of those wines I have formed an opinion: There is a reason why Idaho is not known as a quality wine producing region.

Why did I taste these wines? Let me start at the beginning. I had decided to put out a press call through ProfNet, asking for more information about little or unknown wine regions. What I got was a ton of e-mails that wanted me to check out the Ohio wine tourism trails, Arizona wine trails, and Idaho's Snake River Valley. The only group to send wines to me were the Snake River Valley people, and I am very thankful that they did. It has given me some great insight into their wine industry and the terroir that is Idaho.

That may sound strange to those who would consider the great wines of Bordeaux and Napa to have terroir, but I truly believe that Idaho wines have particular indicators that announce to the world that they come from the state of Idaho.

I just do not think the world really wants to pay attention.

Looking back at my tasting notes, there is one word that repeats again and again and again: "Bitter." About 90% of the wines I tasted had such a bitter finish that it left me gasping for something to wash it away.

That does not mean I have not found some gems. I thought the Koenig Riesling Icewine 2006 was decent. The Pend d'Oreille Wood River Terroir Series Malbec 2006 was pleasant, even enjoyable. The Zhoo Zhoo Claret "Veronique" 2005 is worth checking out.

These are of course my own opinions (and I am no expert), so feel free to check out any other Idaho wine you find. All I am saying is, I could have done without tasting them...