mocking the box

Yes I am a growing wine snob, most of the time I try to keep that to myself. I don't think any less of anyone if they only prefer the sweet wines, that is their opinion and taste. I don't think any less of anyone when they drink wine out of a box. I just make a mental note that they don't have the same wine preferences as me. I did have a hard time not mocking the box of wine I discovered at my parents house this holiday. I think I may have raised an eyebrow and they quickly went to defending this wine and insisting I try.

It was an Old Vine Zinfandel so I figured I had to give it a try. I'd never seen old vine zins in a box before. In fact I'd never heard of Bota Box wines before. They have quite an array of wines in a box. Each box is the equivalent of 4 bottles of wine and sold for $18. It's quite a deal. The wine was ok. Less concentrated as the beloved old vine zin's from Lodi California. Bota was also lighter in color and a bit fruitier than most zins as well. But all in all it was an ok wine. I wouldn't get it just for me to sip on. But if I were hosting a large group of people for a holiday this would be really perfect.

I had many, many First Sips

I love going to Lodi, CA for wine tasting. Now everyone talks about Napa and Sonoma when they mention California wine areas, but Lodi has a special place in my heart because 1) It's super close. Seriously 10 minutes and I'm there; 2) It's far less pricey than the Napa and Sonoma areas (usually); 3) It's the first place I ever tried Old Vine Zin.

So, when my friends mentioned that they have a weekend called First Sip, I knew that it was going to be great. The wineries had only started storing the wine in the last few days, so it was a great chance to go an experience newly barreled wine. There were 40 wineries offering food, tastings and drinks, so what a great way to spend the weekend. Here's a run down of the places that I went and my thoughts (if I can remember them......we went to a lot of wineries):

Berghold Estate Winery - Recently my parents mentioned they were interested in getting an old school bar put into their house and I was super impressed with the huge one on display at Berghold. The place has a lot of cool antiques. The cabs were our favorites there.

d'Art Wines - Our first stop of the day and also our first barrel tasting. It's fun to taste the barrels, cause it's still so much like juice. This place also had some delicious lemon olive oil. One of my friends bottled his own bottle, however, it was just basically filling up a bottle and using the machines to put the cork and label on.

Harney Lane Winery - One of my favorite. The wine is seriously so delicious, I can hardly stand it. It's one of the newer wineries and I have a bottle of their zin waiting in my wine rack.

Jessie's Grove - I know they probably hear this all the time, but when I went there, I couldn't stop seeing Jessie's Grove to the tune of Jessie's Girl. I don't remember a lot about this one, it was near the end of the first day. But they make the Earth, Zin and Fire wine that I've had before.

Macchia - My friend is a wine club member here. They have a ton of yummy zins with cool names like Mischievous, Ambitious, Voluptuous, Victorious, etc. They also have a wine that raises money for breast cancer research called Boobylicious. They have a delicious sweet muscat called Sensuous, that I have waiting for a day when it isn't so could outside! Can we also talk about how they had a taco truck on premise and had delicious $3.00 burritos. Seriously, I kind of dream about those burritos to this day.

Michael David - Amy has already shared her love of the Petite Petit and I'm a wine club member here. A favorite of mine.

Periano - Amy recently talked about The Other wine. These are my everyday wines. They have a bunch of decent relatively cheap wines. We bought a case to split and the grand total was $6 a bottle. Awesome.

Dancing Coyote Wines - They had a moscato barrel tasting which was so super sweet and yummy. They also have some very cool labels. This was a second day stop so I didn't buy anything that day, but I'm definitely going to have to next time.

Vino Piazza - Again this was another stop, but holy cow they have a ton of wineries all nestled together. They had a really cleverly named wine that I cannot for the life of me remember that I totally wanted to buy. However, my 9 bottle purchase the day before made me a little gun shy. However, that just means I'll have to go back.

I so should have kept better notes, cause I know we made it to like 4 other wineries that I don't remember! Which just goes to show you how awesome it was right? Now I've just got to get prepped for the next Lodi Wine Event. Will it be Wine and Chocolate or Zinfest? Stay tuned.

Tollinger mit Lemberger

Earlier this year I received an awesome happy baby gift from a good friend in Germany. She sent a small bottle of German wine. She picked a kind that she had not tried with the great idea that we could try it on the same week and discuss. Later we came up with the idea that we should try it together via skype. Last Saturday Nordwolke and her husband sat in front of their computers in Germany and 7hrs and a gazillion miles away me and Chris sat in front of our computers while the four of us sipped wine and beer and chatted the night away.

She sent a small bottle of wine from the Felsengartenkellerei Beigheim winery. It's the Trollinger mit Lemberger the name of two grapes blended together. It was a good wine, something different than I'd ever had before. It was the color of cranberry juice, darker than a blush but lighter than a normal red wine. It tasted sorta like a concentrated blush. Strong fruit flavors but it was dry wine. Definitely not too sweet. I can't really think of anything to compare it to that I've tried before. I enjoyed this over a blush. It is a great table wine in that you don't have to eat to enjoy this wine, or it would go great with just about any meal. I would try this again, or maybe try another from the same company.

My Weekend

When I first traveled to California to see if I wanted to move here, I made my way to the Lodi area and tried my first Old Vine Zinfandel. Ever since then, I have been hooked. And while I didn't move to California just because of the wines, it sure didn't hurt. 

So you can imagine how excited I am to be spending the next two days hitting up the Lodi Wine region for The First Sip. There are 40 different wineries that are giving tastings, food, music and other awesome activities (barrel tasting, grape stomp, music). I'm really excited to get some of the first sips of the 2010 vintages. 

Now, the key is to keep the number of bottles I purchase under control. Fingers crossed. I hope to keep good notes and to offer a great writeup after the event. However, I've got me a designated driver.......so fingers crossed.

A Very Good Year

At dinner one evening at a friends house I mentioned wanting to read a book about how wine is made. The story behind the wine. Wine lovers they are they recommended and let me borrow A Very Good Year by Mike Weiss.

It's an interesting read in that he literally takes you through all the steps of how a wine is made from the vineyards in early spring through the harvest and on to the wine making process. We meet the owners and get a vague idea of what these millionaires are like. Mostly we get a feel for the field workers and the wine makers. We meet the head guys and we meet the grunts, the Hispanics that migrate up and spend 10 months of the year doing hard labor in the fields. I enjoyed these parts of the story. Learning the smaller details and I can't think of any Mike missed. At one point he goes into detail about how corks are made and picked out by each vineyard, and the quality control measures Ferrari-Carano takes.

At times I found the writing annoying with too many similes for my taste. But more than anything I found it informative and interesting. The book de-romanticizes the wine industry and explains how much the wine industry thrives on that romanticism. How vineyards make a Story and how important it is for them to keep this story alive even if it isn't reality. Which I think they have a point. I knew wine making had to be hard work, I was surprised by the drama between the farmers and the wine makers. Or the the scoring system that could make or break a wine or even that vineyard. But when I'm drinking a glass of wine I tend to forget that and look at a pretty bottle, with a fun label and just enjoy the drink. Now I might drink a glass and think a little deeper now and then. But I think its more enjoyable to just listen to the story.

All in all I did enjoy the book. I'm glad I borrowed because it's not a fave. I do want to go out and get a bottle of Ferrari-Carano's Fume Blanc (Sauvignon Blanc). I'm curious after reading so much about it. Knowing the vineyard names and the personalities in it. The vintage won't be the same but it'll be close enough.

labelpalooza

For a long time a wine's label was solely how I chose what bottle to buy. Now after sampling many bad and good wines I can kinda look at a description and think if it would be good or not. I'm in no way above picking based on label and still do. This just means I'll now get a boring label now and then. Picking based on label is purely subjective. What strikes my fancy won't many others. To me I don't like to think of wine as hoity toity and in an upper class, I like to think of wine as fun and hence I'll choose a bottle like Michael and David's Petite Petit over the Francis Ford Coppola design. Even though I enjoy both bottles immensely. Alright I'm rambling....the purpose of this post is that Miranda sent me this link this morning that I found interesting. It's a list of 30 Creative and Unusual Wine label designs by theCoolest.com.

I'm curious... which of these 30 designs would you buy based on label design?
I would get the
Matsu Organic Wine
Shefa Profusion Wine
Vine Parma Wine
Lazarus Wine's Braille Wine bottle

'The Other' Red 2008

Label was everything with this wine. I'd seen it before in the wine store we visit while in the Chicago area, and this time I impulse purchased based on the theory that wine with a naked lady on the label's gotta be good. The Other is made at Peirano Estate Vineyards in Lodi California and is a blend. 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, and 10% Syrah.

I thought this wine was ok. I haven't tasted a lot of blended wines to say whether this one particularly well blended. It definitely benefited from breathing. I sipped after 10 min in my glass and it needed to sit for another 20 min or so. The bite mellowed out a bit and I could taste a bit of plum or fruit to it that I think comes from the merlot. I associate plum flavors with merlot. Two days after sitting in the decanter and the wine is still good. I can taste the beginnings of oxidation but the initial bite is still there but much mellower than the first night.

My theory of naked ladies on the label has so far panned out. This wine wasn't bad, although I'm not sure I'd go out and buy it again.