Wine

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My goodness! Tracie P and I have almost four cases of wine stacked up in our samples corner! That’s not a bad thing: I’m always game to taste wines I’m unfamiliar with and always geeked to taste new vintages of wines that I know and follow. Luckily for us, the Texas summer is already here and it’s too hot to ship wine. And we have plenty of bottles that I need to sort through and taste in coming months. The other night we opened the Bastianich Adriatico Ribolla, sent to us by my friend Wayne who works as the Bastianich “special ops” man in Friuli. Of all the Bastianich wines, I tend to like the entry-tier the best. They are always fresh and food-friendly and relatively inexpensive. The Sauvignon Blanc is always an affordable winner at my table but the wine I really like this year is the Ribolla. So many young wine professionals in the U.S. only know Ribolla through its most extreme expressions: the skin-contact “orange wines” from Friuli that have enjoyed a lot of attention in recent years. Few know that when you travel to Friuli and Slovenia, Ribolla is most often vinified as a light, inexpensive, and easy-to-drink white wine, with balanced fruit and minerality. Nothing extraordinary. Just right. Ribolla, just plain Ribolla. And on a night when I craved my cafeteria-style penne al pomodoro, it was just the right wine to complement the zinging acidity in the passato brand we use (Central Market, one of Austin’s local gourmet market chains). I call it “cafeteria” penne because it reminds me of my early university days in Italy when the cafeteria-line servers delivered a ladleful of pomodoro or ragù over your pasta and you had to mix it in yourself. On most nights, I fold the pasta into the sauce in the hot pan (with some of the pasta’s cooking water) so that the noodles will absorb as much flavor as possible. But some nights, I just want to be transported back to those early years in Padua (although back then, they served Pinot Bianco from a spigot at the cafeteria). Here’s the only link I could find with an image of the Via San Francesco Mensa (from the ESU, the University Students Association). Buon ponte a tutti! as they say in Italian. Happy long weekend, yall!

craig.camp posted a photo:

Last year the commune of Epeigné-les-Bois bought a small barn just across from Le Lézard Vert, the village café, restaurant and shop (cream building in left hand corner of photo). The barn's roof, which had fallen in, has now been replaced and now the small patch of ground (see above) had been cleared of its scrubby trees and will be turned into a garden. This morning clearing the space was in full swing. Inside the barn (above and below)Loading up tree roots and other debris into the lorry

Folks, please consider voting for steveheimoff.com as Best Overall Wine Blog. You can click here, or on the big logo to the right. Thanks. * * * I’ve been invited to participate on a panel to be held at the Kapalua Wine & Food Festival early next month. The name of the panel is “The Pritchard Hill Gang Wine Seminar, co-hosted by Michael Jordan, M.S., and moi. We’ve got quite a lineup of winemakers: Phillip Corallo-Titus (Chapellet), Phillipe Melka (Brand), David Long (David Arthur), Austin Peterson (Ovid) and Carlo Mondavi (Continuum). I’m especially jazzed, because this tasting is the direct outcome of an article I wrote for Wine Enthusiast last Fall on the Cabernets of Pritchard Hill. The article was, I’m told, the first in-depth ever on that region of Napa Valley, which is in the Vaca Mountains, above Lake Hennessey east of the Silverado Trail. I’d been fascinated by it, as a growing region of distinctive terroir, for several years, and wanted to investigate it with the object of writing about it, but just couldn’t find the time. Eventually, through a series of happenstances, Tim Mondavi (Carlo’s dad) reached out to me and offered to set up a blind tasting for me at Continuum. One of the pleasures of my trip to Pritchard Hill was an invitation from Greg Melanson (Melanson Vineyard) to take me for an aerial ride over the region in his helicopter, which he parks (is that the right word?) just steps from his home on the Hill. Folks, the best way to understand a wine region is from the air, especially a region as undulatingly complicated as Napa Valley. (It was fascinating to see the topological connections between Pritchard Hill and Atlas Peak.) Tim Mondavi hitched a ride with us for that occasion, and what a great tour guide he was, pointing out every little landmark and connecting it to some memory from his childhood. (And I wish that Greg’s wines were included in our panel. I don’t know why they’re not. Other producers on Pritchard Hill include Colgin, Montagna, Gandona and Bryant.) At any rate, Michael Jordan read my article and liked it. He told me it had inspired him to set up the Pritchard Hill event at Kapalua (he’d held an earlier one in, I think, Anaheim, which I was unable to attend). Michael is an exciting, interesting guy, not only an M.S. but a true entrepreneur in the restaurant field. By another coincidence, just this past week I sat down with Carlo Mondavi (on the phone) and had a little chat for an article. I’ve never met him in person, and didn’t realize right away that he’d be representing Continuum at Kapalua (nor did he realize I was on the panel). So we both got a chuckle out of that and vowed to spend some time together on Maui. I would think Pritchard Hill will be an American Viticultural Area someday, but it won’t be one for quite a while, as there is opposition to it from the Chappellets, who own rights to the name. In the end it doesn’t matter what the appellation is called; the wines speak for themselves.

It’s going to be a cool and rainy Memorial Day weekend here in the Northeast–boooo! So I’ll spare you the dummer quaffers and hit you with something structured yet fun and gulpable at the same time: Sunier, Fleurie, 2011. It turns out that although Julien Sunier is from Burgundy, he’s not from a wine family. In fact, his mother is a hair stylist. One of her customers was Christophe Roumier who allowed young Julien to to work at the Domaine, where he decided that the whole wine thing was pretty fun. After exploring the wine world’s corners in California and New Zealand he came back to Burgundy and later Beaujolais, starting making his own wines in 2008. He has parcels in Fleurie, Morgon and Regnié that have old vines, which he hand harvests and uses indigenous yeasts in the fermentations in concrete vats. After the fermentation, the wines are aged in older Burgundy barrels from… Christophe Roumier. I bought the 2011 Fleurie for $25 (find this wine). It’s worth seeking out. I give it my highest (Beaujolais?) rating: quickly emptied. The post Sunier, Fleurie, 2011 appeared first on Dr Vino's wine blog.

There wasn’t much happening drink-wise in Episode 5. That was fine. There was a lot of heavy history happening in that episode – I’ll forgive them a lack of cocktails. That brings us to episode 6, where Roger starts picking up clients in airport lounges. The orders start with Roger drinking (ewww) water with an onion and ordering a Jim Beam, double, for his friend. I was all set to tell you all about the history of Jim Beam, but then something interesting happened. Bert ordered a spirits of elderflower. Let’s talk about that. Elderflower liqueur is one of my favorites. I love to ask a craft bartender to create a drink for me – whatever they want – using elderflower. I’ve also used it in sugar cookies and it’s quite tasty. The brand you’ll see on the shelf most often these days is St-Germain. If you’re familiar with Paris, you’re probably already recognizing the name of the famous street, St Germain, where Hemingway wrote and Picasso painted. The St-Germain web site describes its signature liqueur as follows: “It has been said that Paris is a mélange curieux, a curious mixture of flavors, styles and influences. So it is with St-Germain.”  Technically, the liqueur is made from elderberries, but you’ll taste everything from flowers to peaches to grapefruits in the liqueur. Honestly,  I enjoy drinking it on its own. It’s also quite wonderful mixed with champagne or sparkling wine. Here’s the classic St Germain cocktail, straight from their web site. I was so tickled by their “variation” that I grabbed the thing as an image instead of retyping. Have a laugh … and have a cocktail.

Cheap and cheerful. Big fat bubbles, sweet tasting. Fam [...]The post Nino Franco Prosecco. Prosecco but not as you know it… appeared first on The Wine Sleuth.

Issue 168 of the International Wine Cellar, published last week, leads off with our most extensive coverage to date of new releases from Napa and Sonoma, featuring tasting notes on nearly 1,800 wines. The new issue also includes in-depth coverage of Bordeaux 2012 and a special report on the  wines of South Africa. For as little as $19.95 for a two-month subscription, you can get immediate and unlimited access to the current issue, as well as to the easily searchable and sortable IWC data base of over 100,000 tasting notes. Whatever you normally spend on a bottle, the International Wine Cellar will help you become a smarter consumer and drink better wine. READ MORE »

What’s the Claw Factor? Sauvignon Blanc is a wine that has a fascinating range and it deserves its own rating system, in my humble opinion. On one end of the spectrum, there are the commodity Sauvignon Blancs. You know, the ones that have no character, no finesse, and something important is missing (like flavors). On [...]The post The Claw Factor + Two Favorites: 2012 Casillero del Diablo Sauvignon Blanc & 2012 Gracianna Sauvignon Blanc appeared first on Wine Blog.