Wine

A quick hit today to highlight a few of the Answers.com Wine articles I’ve posted for May. There’s a good chance that even the geekiest among you will find one of these in particular quite interesting, though I should warn you that you won’t be able to un-see it or un-read it, and so it should be totally avoided unless you want to start having nightmares about water (and not the kind where you’re abandoned at sea like in Open Water). 5 Producers to Watch in Lodi I’ve been meaning to do something on this for well over a year now, so I’m happy to be able to give these winemakers some additional publicity as I really dig what they’re doing. I’m also hoping to make this a sort of regular series highlighting producers that I like but who haven’t received long-form features here on 1WD. Stay tuned… Wine Recommendations for Beer Lovers Beer (and wine) maven Ashley Routson and I worked on this one for *weeks*, and so I was really excited to be able to finally publish this wine-for-beer-lovers recommendation approach. I’m also really happy with the recommendations themselves, and the explanations that she chose, all of which show why Ashley kicks so much ass in the drinks world. If you don’t learn something new about beer, wine, and food pairings when reading this, then you probably aren’t paying enough attention (or you’re already a master sommelier… or both). An Introduction to Uruguay wine Because I did more than just eat and drink when I was down there… just not a whole lot more…; note that I would’ve liked to have included more stats on the country and its wine scene, but the Uruguayans, bless their hearts, didn’t get the additional material I’d requested back to me in time. Book Review: Pairing with the Masters My take on Master Chef Ken Arnone’s and MW Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan’s recent (and very technical) hardcover collaboration about food and wine pairing. The Dos and Don’ts about Wine and Water Look, just do yourself a favor and do NOT read this… Seriously, dude, you will never, ever look at a glass of water sitting on the same table as your vino the same way again without possibly going into an apoplectic fit about what type of water it is and from whence it came… you’ve been warned! Cheers! Grab The 1WineDude.com Tasting Guide and start getting more out of every glass of wine today! Shop Wine Products at Amazon.com Copyright © 2012. Originally at Got Wine Questions? We’ve Got Wine Answers (dot com)! from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

So, there I was in Montreal, with the Taste Camp 2013 crew, at the BYOB dinner that bloggers and writers famously throw for themselves on the second night of the dinner. The idea is you bring your best or funkiest or coolest bottle. Some bring wines that best represent their region, new forward thinking or natural wines, something local (for them). No rules, just great wine and fun.Ring leader of this show is fellow blogger and friend, Lenn Thompson, editor-in-chief, of the wildly successful New York Cork Report, and founder of Taste Camp which is a annual gather of bloggers in small, local wine regions in the US and Canada. With him, he brought a 2002 Wolffer Estate Premiere Cru Merlot.Premiere Cru represents numerous things about the estate and about Long Island's aspirations. In a way it is a strange juxtaposition to be drinking it when the Great Gatsby has just recently been released.To Wolffer, Premiere Cru was and is the highest expression of that estate's terroir and what it can produce, and by extension, what Long Island could produce.Lenn wrote about the wine, "Wolffer's Premier Cru is 100% Merlot made with grapes from their oldest vines (planted in 1990) on their steepest slopes, ensuring good drainage. Ocean breezes also protect the vines from cold snaps, allowing them to ripen fully into November. Through a time-consuming, hands-on process, the grapes were hand picked, hand sorted and any stems that slipped past the de-stemmer were also plucked out, leaving only the best fruit. The juice spent 28 days on the skins and the wine was moved to 100% French oak for almost 20 months." This was and is wine making technique at it's height.For Wolffer, it was like they were saying to the wine world, 'We are making world class wine. This wine is unbelievable. This wine is as good as it gets....anywhere.' It was also a statement -Wolffer is an estate to be recognized, and winemaker Roman Roth is a world class winemaker. It also meant that they and by extension other wineries, could raise the bar on prices of their lesser wines, many of which were also good.The Great Gatsby is possibly the greatest American novel, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which epitomizes the beauty and horror of the American dream. In America's vain promise of riches to any man, like Midas, the golden touch is sometimes ruinous. One true fact remains - money can't buy you love. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock, to Jay Gatsby, is the thing he yearns for like nothing else. It is his prize, his dream, his obsession. It is the promise of riches, acceptance, love, and all dreams realized. Yet in the end, it is unattainable, always illusive, always just beyond reach. And of course, written and set in Long Island, it is a quintessential part of Long Island history and folk lore.For Long Island wine, Premiere Cru was the green light on the end of Daisy's dock. When the first vintage was released, at $100, in 2002, it has represented the aspirations of the Long Island wine community. It was a bar stretcher. It was a bold statement, that said, "Our region has arrived. we are this good!" It was supposed to be the shape of things to come. It was controversial at the time. No wine in all of New York was worth $100, some said. $100???It was so important, upon it's first release, Howard G. Goldberg wrote in the New York Times, "In May, the Wölffer Estate expects to release a wine that Roman Roth, the winemaker and general manager, calls its masterpiece. It will be Long Island's first $100 bottle, and experts on the state's wines cannot recall any New York wine priced at $100 on release...Since merlot is the Long Island wine industry's métier, and the 15-year-old Wölffer Estate, in Sagaponack on the South Fork, is a leading producer, the wine is creating excitement, although few have tasted it. Few will. Only 1,200 bottles -- 200 six-bottle cases -- were made. Of these, 194 cases of 750-milliliter bottles remain.'Most likely the wine will be sold out before r

I’ve never figured why a company might make you go through a sign up process to access bottle images from their website, but there you have it. Or don’t in this case. Anyway…

Funny to think how quickly time flies. I’m regularly surprised when I realise the 1998 vintage is now 15 years old etc. etc. So, here we are.

I am not sure if Cudal falls into the Orange GI and certainly the bottle doesn’t cite Orange, nor does the website, really, but the vineyard was established in the vicinity of Orange in the 90s by a bunch of Charles Sturt Uni folk. It’s a big crew taking care of all things Monument – [...]

Remiss of me. This was stuffed into my hand on exiting one of the wine shows in Canberra, by one of the trio of Canberran wine dudes – Travis Cutler, Nick Barton and James Duffell – who put this wine together in their spare time with Nick O’Leary. All are forging a path in Canberra’s [...]

From McLaren Vale, from 2011, from the Silver Hammer. Or not from the Silver Hammer. But referencing Silver Hammer. Meanwhile, this sees American oak, for a change. Can be good with MVale shiraz.

Here are my top wine picks from the May 25 Vintages Release. I’ll be posting more of my Best Value Wines and Top Rated Wines this week. You can add my wine picks to your shopping list by clicking on the little shopping cart icon. You can also create a custom list just for this release that will be saved in your account. Print a text-only version of the reviews. Here are my tasting notes and scores that were published in the May 25 LCBO Vintages Catalogue, the most quoted Canadian source of wine reviews: Posted with permission of the LCBO. Get access to all wine reviews:

Why don’t more people seek out David Franz’s wines? Hard to find I guess. But so worthy. Such an interesting range of wines. Selected across bits of South Australia, this from the Adelaide Hills. A third of this ferment was whole bunch which was left under the two thirds de-stemmed, which was hand plunged so [...]

Always find the Haven wine of Kooyong the most austere of the premium trio, austere, but sexy in that way. Gotta unwrap it a bit. Peel it down real slow. Throw on the Barry White. Dim the lights. Set your voice to purrrrr.