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.

New York Wine Expo this weekend!

A quick reminder for everyone:

The NYWE will be happening on February 27th, 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm and February
28th, 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm. So if you are more of an afternoon “taster,” head there on Saturday, but if you are looking for a kick-start to your evening, try the Friday night special. There will be hundreds of wines to taste, knowledgeable people to talk to and dancing (well, not technically. But lets be honest, its New York and the only criteria to get in is if you buy a ticket… there will be dancing).

Tickets are $85. To order go to http://www.wine-expos.com/Wine/NY/.

I will be heading there tomorrow night. Will you be there?

Recommendations from all sources

When it comes down to it, the best recommendation comes from the person next to you when you are in the wine shop. That is how I came to purchase a bottle of Valduero Crianza 2003 from Ribera del Duero in Spain.

I went into my local wine shop and asked for them to show me a good bottle of wine for a decent price. The guy in the shop, In Vino Veritas handed me this wine and it had a tag on it that noted that the Wine Advocate had rated this wine 92. The sales person really seemed to think this wine was a good one and so I took it. There was little else to recommend the wine over any of the others.

When I got home I went to check out the wine on the other major reviewing sites and I could not find it. I went to the International Wine Cellar, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine & Spirits and I could not find this wine listed. Surely, if one of them had rated the wine as highly as a 92, it must be at least listed in the other publications, right?

Nope. I even took a look at Valduero website and the most recent wine listed is the 1999 Crianza. To be fair, I did find some other vintages of this wine listed and rated, but not with any consistency. However, this leads to the question of was the wine tasted and just not good enough to be rated? Is it possible that one reviewer rated a wine in the 90’s and another did not think it worth even a lowly 85 (usually the lowest a wine can be rated while still having its rating published).

It really shocks me how hard it is to find information about this wine. And this is not the first wine I have tried to look up with such poor results. It seems that even the simplest of ideas, that the winery’s website should be up-to-date with the most recent vintages of the wines (an activity that would at most take a half hour once a year), are simply too much for some of these businesses. With the blogosphere growing at such a rapid pace, and wine blogging becoming a part of this movement, company websites have become an important resource for those that cannot travel around the world to discuss the product with the business/winery.

I popped open the bottled and drank to the health of the clerk. It was an ok wine, I think perhaps a little past its prime. It definitely did not age gracefully. Perhaps when the wine was young, it could have been interesting, but at the moment I tasted it there was little left. The main component was a bit of vanilla and prunes. There was some fruit up front, but I found it to be choked off by new oak flavors.

When all was said and done, I can only blame the staff member at the wine store for the recommendation. Yes there was a 92-point recommendation from the Wine Advocate, but it turned out I didn’t like the wine all that much. There could have been other factors why this wine ended up in my hands. It is possible they had not tasted the wine, or had not tasted it lately. It’s possible that it was a wine they wanted to unload and I was the sap that walked through the door.

The moral of the story? Find a retailer you trust and visit them often. Let them get to know you and your tastes. The stronger the relationship, the better wines that they will steer you towards.

And wineries, please update your websites. It is the simplest thing and will help you greatly in your goal of promoting your wines.

A sobering fat Tuesday

At the moment there is an almost manic intensity to go out and celebrate Mardi Gras tonight. Each $5 beer (yup, it’s New York), $8 wine, or $10 mixed drink I buy might keep one more person in his or her job for a little longer.

I just do not feel like celebrating tonight, as many of my friends were laid off this week and it feels wrong to feast during their famine. For those that have not seen it first hand there is a sobering reflective quality during a time when you know that friends of yours will need to find a new job. When it comes down to it, there are few things in life scarier.

There is definitely a consensus of the mentality that “it will never happen to me, I have produced and am good at what I do.” For you reading this who has not yet seen a friend lose their job, I know you are thinking this very thought. To have such bliss ripped from you is somewhat hard to manage.

I will be ok, the axe man missed my head this time. But when you know that it is not your performance that determines your fate, instead it is some other intangible economic factor; it changes your perspective of the business world.

I will listen to the President this evening with guarded hope and skeptical optimism. I will judge his words, not by my own experiences, but that of those friends of mine whose lives just got a lot harder.

It sucks to lose your innocent bliss.

I would love to hear your thoughts, your stories, your situation in the comments below.

A little Blue Fish swims in a great white sea…

There are no critters on the bottle of this wine, but I cannot help but feeling the strong hand of marketing as I hold an azure blue bottle of Blue Fish Original Riesling 2007 in my hands. The bottle is simply so blue that it shouts at you, with a relaxed yellow and blue label. The wine’s logo is well designed as the word ‘blue’ spelled out in the shape of a fish. Yes, kudos, very clever.

According to the Palm Bay website, BLUE FISH is a recent initiative from the enterprising growers of Niederkirchen in the Pfalz region of Germany, who first banded together to bottle and sell their wines more than 100 years ago. Today 466 families – almost every second family in Niederkirchen – participate in the venture, of which Blue Fish is the latest creation.

Blue Fish comes from the Pfalz region in Germany, located in the middle of the western edge of the country and bordering France on the south west. According to Wines of Germany, it is Germany's second largest wine region in acreage, but often has the largest crop of all. The word Pfalz is a derivation of the Latin word palatium, meaning palace. The English equivalent, Palatinate, is sometimes used to refer to the Pfalz. Only the Mosel region has more acres of Riesling.

Before I go much farther on this wine I want to take a step back and give some kudos to Palm Bay Imports. I have worked with them for the last couple years and they have always helped me get samples to journalists or for events or even charitable donations. I never realized until I started blogging how good a job they did with accessible information. I always try to look up and research the wines that I write up here and I have such a hard time finding information on any of them. Palm Bay has a fact sheet and winery notes on every wine that they import or distribute in the US. Very gratifying!

Right, back to the wine.

I found this wine for an average of $9 on Wine Searcher (my favorite wine search tool). For a wine in colorful packaging it was reasonably enjoyable. It was simple, a little sweet, a tad bit sparkling on my tongue, and plenty of fruit and acidity to go around. There was a lot of stone fruit and some good minerality that made it interesting without being a thinking wine. Really it was just pleasant to drink, which is everything I could have wanted in this wine and more.

Find it, enjoy it, and don’t let the color of the bottle turn you blue.